Sleepwalker by Karen Robards Page A

incompetent as you’ve been so far tonight? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”
    “Don’t worry. I’m not going to pull the trigger. As long as you behave.”
    Mick seethed. But with Otis’s and the guys’ eyes on her, she grabbed her self-control with both hands and held on. Ordinarily, just the fact that a criminal had turned her own service weapon against her would have made her boiling mad. And, being boiling mad, she would have reacted strongly. But this instance was unique. Having him think he was calling the shots suited her. Having Uncle Nicco’s guys think she had been taken hostage suited her. Therefore, instead of doing her best to take him out, she relaxed in his hold, letting him use her as a shield, helping him out, facilitating his escape, even though doing all those things went against every instinct she possessed. Her pulse raced, and she was breathing faster than normal, but that was from the situation in which she found herself, not fear. She was shivering, but that was from cold, not fear. She was doing what her captor said, but again fear was not the motivating factor. The good news was, she doubted anyone else could tell that, and she deliberately exaggerated her reactions so that hopefully fear was what the guys saw. She even tried to keep a look of wide-eyed panic on her face, just so the gang would register it and report how scared she was to their boss later.
    It was all a matter of keeping her options open until she could figure out what to do for real.
    “He’s getting away,” somebody—she thought it was Abrizzo—cried out in alarm as the shrubs around the pool house, unfortunately bare of their foliage now, partially obscured them from view.
    “Go,” somebody else answered, and the pack moved after them in a group surge.
    “No,” Mick yelled, real fear in her voice now at the idea that the thiefmight be killed or captured and she might be “freed” to await Uncle Nicco.
    “Stay back,” the thief yelled at the same time. Her gun nudged her temple. The arm around her neck tightened. He still wasn’t deliberately choking her, just taking her with him as he picked up the pace, but the net result was the same: if she moved in any direction other than the one he wanted her to take, she couldn’t breathe. They had reached the walk that led around the pool house now. Another couple of feet, and they could duck around the corner and out of sight.
    From there, she could only hope his escape plan was sound.
    “I gave you a fucking order,” Mick screamed at the guys, who were still following them in a slow-moving but relentless advance. “What part of ‘stand down’ don’t you understand?”
    Her voice came out sounding more high-pitched than usual, probably because she was terrified they were going to rush them, but it stopped them in their tracks. The situation was touch and go: she could feel the thief’s tension in the rigidity of his muscles, in the heat he emanated, in the rapidity of his breathing. She could almost hear the gears of his brain grinding as he tried to work out what to do next.
    “What do we do?” Kevin Touro demanded of his companions. He was a thick-set, hairy, twenty-something punk, but he had a good heart. She could see him clearly because he was standing at the edge of the gang, almost directly beneath one of the security lights. He stared at her bug-eyed, biting his lip, his gun jiggling nervously. A number of the guys looked at him, but no one replied.
    To hell with it. She wasn’t about to wait for any of them, the thief included, to figure this thing out.
    “Tell them you’ll let me go as soon as you’re safe out of here,” she instructed her captor in a husky whisper.
    Before he could respond, Ed Snider and Ray Petrino burst throughthe French doors she and the thief had exited moments before. The goons pounded toward Mick and her captor, riveting everyone’s attention. Clearly they’d been the first responders, the ones who’d rushed into the house,