LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      One

       N othing, absolutely nothing, had gone right for Sophie Colton that entire early-April San Francisco day.

      The new telephone system touted by her advertising agency boss to make everyone’s life easier had lost her a hard-won connection with a client in Tokyo—twice—and had probably cost her an important account.

      The child star who had just been signed for a national commercial had picked this week to have his voice go from angelically pure to crackly pubescent, and would have to be replaced.

      She’d gotten a run in her panty hose on the way to lunch with a client, been caught in a quick shower the weather forecasters had missed, and now she’d had an argument over dinner with Chet Wallace, her fiancé since this past Christmas.

      Okay. Maybe not an argument. Maybe that was too strong a word. A disagreement. She and Chet never argued. Mostly he talked and Sophie listened. Sometimes she wondered why she listened.

      Chet wanted to leave their cushy jobs at the San Francisco advertising agency and strike out on their own, form their own company. Sophie wasn’t so sure. She liked her job, had worked hard to get it, and in this cutthroat world, starting a marriage and a new business at the same time…well, it scared her.

      At least that was what she tried to tell herself as she walked home in the dark after throwing a mini-tantrum at the restaurant and leaving Chet to finish dessert and pay the check on his own.

      Maybe what really bothered her was that Chet had done just that. He’d stayed behind, sipping coffee and eating his chocolate mousse, and let her go. Granted, she lived only four blocks from the restaurant, but did he have to be so blasé about it? Tell her to take a walk, cool down, and he’d meet her at her apartment in thirty minutes? She hated Chet when he was reasonable. Didn’t he know that?

      Sophie stopped at the curb of an alleyway situated halfway down a long city block. She lifted her head, sighed and pushed at her chin-length golden brown hair, tucking a naturally blond-streaked lock behind her ear. She blinked her huge brown eyes that were so like her mother’s, sighed again and stepped off the curb, one long straight leg in its three-inch heel making contact with the macadam…before she was suddenly being pushed, shoved back into the alleyway.

      “Hey!” she called out loudly, trying to disengage herself from the arms that held her. She was pushed against a dew-slick brick wall so hard that anything else she might have said was lost. The side of her head slammed against the bricks, and seemingly all the air in her lungs whooshed out of her body.

      It was unreal. Surreal. Couldn’t be happening. Certainly couldn’t be happening to her.

      But it was. As she fought to stay conscious, as she struggled to breathe, to beat down the panic that rose like bile in her throat, Sophie felt the tip of a knife press against her throat.

      “Move, bitch, and I’ll cut you. You got that?”

      She couldn’t nod. She’d be cut if she moved. So she blinked. Yes, that blink said silently. I’ve got that.

      “Okay. Okay-okay-okay,” the male voice said. Her attacker was obviously very excited, possibly high on drugs. Sophie didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. She just knew the man was nervous, hyper, definitely out of control. He might kill her even as he said he wouldn’t.

      The knife eased away from her throat, and the next thing Sophie knew she was facedown on the hard gravel in the alleyway, her right knee exploding in agony as it took the brunt of her fall.

      Sophie closed her eyes against the white-hot pain and swallowed. “What—what do you want?” she managed to ask, still unable to move, for the man’s knee pressed hard against her back. “I don’t have a purse, but there’s a wallet in my coat pocket. Money. Credit cards. Let—let me get it for you.”

      “Don’t listen, do you, bitch? Huh, huh?” the man growled against her ear, his putrid breath and body odor turning her stomach. “Move and die, bitch, move and die.”

      Then his hands were on her, touching her through her light coat, for the evening had been warm, and

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