The Perfect Stranger by Jenna Mills Page A

he’d wiped away her tears and held her, pressed soft kisses to her forehead. “You were just playing me.”
    “With you,” he corrected with a slow, devastating smile. “We both know games are more fun when played together.”
    The truth seared through her, bringing not warmth but a penetrating chill she’d not felt since the day she’d dropped a single red rose into a gaping hole in the ground.
    “You told him about me.” It was the only explanation. The only reason Lambert would want her dead. “You knew he would kill me, but you told him anyway.”
    The man whose kisses had made her dream again might as well have set the fire himself.
    Now he moved. Now he stepped toward her. Just one step, very slow. Very deliberate. “I’m afraid I need you to be a little more specific here, belle amie. Told who, what?”
    She glanced at the shards of glass beneath the window. On the sill lay a piece the shape of a flat cola bottle, one edge more jagged than the others. “Is it because I recognized you?” she asked, inching closer. “Because I wasn’t useful anymore?” In the distance sirens wailed. “Because you were afraid I would expose you?”
    Even as he took another step, the stillness to him deepened. “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”
    No, she didn’t. That had always been one of her greatest strengths—and, according to her brother, an equally great flaw. “You’re not going to win,” she vowed on a low breath. Lunging, she grabbed the piece of glass and jutted it between them. “Stay where you are.”
    The lines of his face tightened. “Easy now,” he drawled. “You don’t want to do that.”
    Arms extended, she edged toward the back door, which still hung open. “Give me one good reason why not.”
    “For starters,” he said, glancing toward a bulge in his jacket. “I’ve got a gun.”
    She took another step. Never bring a knife to a gunfight was one of her uncle’s favorite sayings—but she didn’t have the luxury of choice at the moment. “You going to shoot me?”
    He watched her, didn’t seem all that concerned. “That wasn’t the plan.”
    If she could get a head start…if she could make it to the busy street one block away. “Back away then,” she said.
    He moved only slightly, bringing his body against a ledge separating the kitchen from the living area. There, he lounged. “You know you can’t go back to him, don’t you? Lambert doesn’t tolerate failure, not even from pretty ladies.”
    Failure. It was an odd choice of word. She would have said betrayal. “Then I guess that means you can’t go back either,” she pointed out.
    He shrugged. “Probably not.”
    Heart kicking hard, she wasted no more time, lunged for the door and started to run. The porch boards protested, but she didn’t slow, not even when she tripped on a warped plank. She staggered and caught her balance, raced for the steps.
    A few cars lined the sleepy tree-lined street, but none of them moved. She surged out the rusty gate and down the sidewalk, looking for signs of life. Activity. For someone in their yard or a passerby. Her lungs, screaming from the smoke inhalation, burned with every breath, but she ignored the pain. Prytania was only a few blocks away. If she could reach it—
    The man rounded the corner on a dead run, and everything blurred. Too late the survivor in her realized her mistake. She hadn’t outwitted the stranger. Hadn’t outmaneuvered or outrun him. He’d…let her go. He’d let her run from the shadowy kitchen, straight into the path of his accomplice.
    Mind racing, she darted across the street and headed between two old houses.
    But the new man was faster, and in less than a heartbeat he was on her. They went down hard against the winterbrown grass. The impact crushed her, but she kept fighting, scraping and clawing against the cool, damp ground to crawl out from beneath him.
    “Easy now,” the man who’d tackled her said—and Saura went very still. That