LITMIR.BIZ

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      And then everything went black.

      Damn it, she shouldn’t have parked here.

      She should have known better. But the street out in front of the Embassy Hotel was being torn up in both directions. The ongoing reconstruction of MacArthur Boulevard had forced her to pull the cab around to an alley that was best left to inhabitants of the night and to burly deliverymen driving large trucks. The alley certainly wasn’t any place for a recently graduated nursing student who drove her brother’s taxi in an attempt to earn a little money.

      One eye on the fight, her heart pounding double time, Alison Quintano looked frantically around for a patrol car, but there was none in sight. It figured.

      Swearing, she grabbed the lid of a trash can and hurled it at the second mugger who had appeared out of nowhere. The arm that had her older brothers swearing should have belonged to a first draft baseball rookie remained true and she clipped the second mugger on the back of the head, throwing him off balance. But not before the man had knocked out her recent fare.

      Fury was in the man’s eyes as he swung around. Reflexes had him clutching at the back of his head. When he looked at his hand, there was blood. “Son of a bitch, I’m going to make you pay for that.”

      He started after her, only to have his partner yell at him. “Ain’t got time for that.” He rifled through the prone man’s pockets. “We’ve gotta get out of here!”

      The second mugger looked torn. Common sense prevailed and he followed the first man, stopping only to grab the fallen suitcase. Running down the alley, they disappeared.

      Alison fought back the desire to chase after them. That would be stupid. There wasn’t anything she could do. Besides, there were two of them, and while not big, they could still easily overpower her. Look what they had done to her fare.

      Abandoning the thought of pursuit, she hurried over to her Good Samaritan.

      The man was flat on his stomach.

      She got a sick feeling in hers.

      Dropping to her knees, she placed her fingertips to the side of his neck. A pulse. She released the breath that had gotten clogged in her lungs at the sight of his unconscious body.

      He was alive, but out cold. The second mugger had come up on him from behind, hitting him over the head with what looked like a kid’s bat. How much damage was there? Very gently she rolled the man onto his back. Gingerly she pried apart his eyelids one at a time. His pupils didn’t appear to be dilated, but that could still change.

      Except for one cut over his left eye and what looked like the beginning of a nasty bruise on his cheek, it looked as if her Good Samaritan hadn’t been too seriously hurt.

      She hoped.

      Placing her hand lightly on his shoulder, she gently tried to rouse him without success.

      “Are you all right?” She leaned in closer so that he could hear her. “Mister, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

      He lay still and unresponsive.

      This wasn’t good.

      Worried, Alison looked around, but there was absolutely no one walking by the alley’s opening. Murphy’s Law. It seemed almost impossible, given that she was practically in the heart of Seattle.

      For a second, she debated trying to wake him again. Maybe she should just go for help. To do the latter, she’d have to leave him and she was reluctant. He was unconscious and couldn’t defend himself, and while crime didn’t exactly run rampant in the streets, they had just been mugged. She didn’t want to take any more chances. The man was unconscious and that made him her responsibility.

      Alison settled on trying to raise her brother on the two-way radio in the cab. She glanced at her watch. Almost two, but it was still considered lunchtime by a few. If she had any sort of luck left, Kevin should still be in his office.

      This was going to make her brother blow his top, she thought. He hadn’t been keen on her taking the part-time position to begin with, never mind that it was with the cab company he owned. She was the baby of the family and everyone was always being protective of her.

      Except once, but that had been no one’s fault.

      Right now, she was far more concerned with her Good Samaritan than her brother’s reaction. She’d deal with that later. As she began to rise, she saw the man’s eyes flutter slightly.

      He was coming around.

      The next second, he opened his eyes. She hadn’t realized, when she’d glanced back at him in her rearview mirror earlier, just how blue his eyes were.

      Alison sucked in air, and then exhaled it again, in almost a sigh of relief.

      “You’re awake.” Relief was short-lived as her training reared its head again. Just because his eyes were open didn’t mean he was all right—not by a long shot. Sympathy flooded her. At the very least, the man had to have one mother of a headache. “How do you feel? That was some wallop he gave you.”

      It took him a second to realize she was talking to him. He’d been too mesmerized by what he saw to absorb any of the words. He’d opened his eyes to find himself looking up at an angel. An angel with an abundance of dark, chestnut-colored wavy hair and eyes the color of the sky that was above her head.

      She was talking about someone hitting him. “Who?”

      He looked a little disoriented. Under the circumstances she couldn’t blame him. “The mugger.”

      “Mugger?” He struggled to sit up, feeling as if there was an anvil on his forehead.

      Maybe he hadn’t put two and two together yet, she thought. Taking his hand, she slowly helped him into a sitting position, watching his face carefully. “Yeah, there was another one.”

      He was trying to make sense of what she was saying to him and having very little luck. “Another one.”

      The unease slowly began to return. “Why are you repeating everything I say?”

      Luc passed a hand over his forehead. “Just trying to get a clear picture in my mind.”

      Or any picture, he thought. God, but his head ached. The pain was crowding out any thoughts he was trying to grasp, squeezing them away.

      Looking at his eyes, Alison sat back on her heels. “Anybody would be muddled after going through what you just did.” The blank look on his face had her adding, “Coming to my rescue like that was nothing short of sheer bravery.” Something straight out of King Arthur, her favorite section of literature. She smiled at him. “Don’t see much of that these days.” Guilt began to nibble at her again. He did look rather out of it. “Sorry you seemed to have gotten the worst of it. I beamed the second guy with a garbage can lid, but it didn’t seem to hurt him very much. Man probably had a head made out of stone, which would be in keeping with his Neanderthal behavior.” And then she smiled at her rescuer. “Not like you.”

      He was trying, but he just wasn’t following any of this. “Not like me what?”

      “Hurting him. I didn’t hurt him the way you did the other guy.” Now she was really concerned. She looked at him more closely. Her initial impression held. His pupils hadn’t dilated, but that didn’t mean they were out of the woods. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

      The pounding in his head was beginning to jar his teeth. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure what all right is.”

      Oh, God. Anxious now, Alison held up her hand in front of him.

      “How many fingers am I holding up?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she moved her hand back and forth until she secured his attention. “How many do you see?”

      Luc blinked, but even that seemed to bring about an avalanche thundering in his brain. It took effort to speak. “Two, you’re holding up two fingers. When you’re not

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