LITMIR.BIZ

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hadn’t been what he’d expected. One look at her and he’d known he’d have to handle her with kid gloves. At least until he got her in the car.

      Now he had to move fast. Once he had her under his control, he told himself, it would be smooth sailing. He grimaced at his own inside joke.

      Where the hell was this sailboat painting that Simon had told T and Worm he’d hid the disk in? Landry had come to believe it existed. Simon was smart enough to know that by telling T and Worm, he would also be telling the rest of them. That could explain the intricate description Simon had given the two goons.

      But as Landry’s luck would have it, the painting T and Worm described wasn’t in the gallery show.

      So where was it? T. and Worm had said that some blond woman had been working at the back of the art studio last night when Simon had gone in. Their description of her matched the artist’s—Willa St. Clair.

      She was the key to finding the painting—and ultimately the disk. And Willa St. Clair was going to tell him. One way or another, Landry would have that disk before the night was over.

      As he reached to start the car engine and go after her, he heard a soft tap on his side window. He turned and glanced up, only half surprised to see Zeke standing next to his car.

      “What the hell do you want?” he asked as he powered down his side window. “Didn’t Freddy D. tell you to call it a night?”

      Zeke smiled. “Change of plans, old buddy.”

      WILLA KNEW she would hate herself in the morning if she didn’t go out with Landry Jones. For the rest of her life, she would think of him, actually building him up in her memory—if that were possible—and always wonder what might have been.

      She stopped walking up the block and turned, blinking as she looked back. The BMW hadn’t moved but she could hear the purr of the engine. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw that a man was standing beside the driver’s side talking to Landry.

      Now was her chance to just disappear. Take the coward’s way out. Run!

      Funny, but that’s exactly what her instincts told her to do.

      Pop! Pop! The sound took her by surprise. She stared, unable to move even when she saw the glint of a gun through the windshield, saw the flash as Landry Jones fired two more shots.

      The man next to the car staggered back, slammed into the wall and slid slowly down, his head dropping to his chest.

      Poleaxed, she stared at the dead man—her first dead man—her mind screaming: Landry shot him! He shot him!

      She felt Landry shift his gaze to her and suddenly she was moving, kicking off her high heels and running for her life. She could hear the roar of the BMW engine as he came after her, the headlights washing over her.

      A main street was only two blocks away. She could see the lights of the traffic. There would be people around. She could get away, get help. But she knew she would never reach it. The BMW was bearing down on her.

      She glanced back and blinded by the headlights didn’t see the man with two dogs on leashes appear out of the darkness off to her right.

      The man avoided crashing into her, but she got caught up in the dogs’ leashes and went down hard.

      “Are you all right? I’m sorry I didn’t see you,” the man said, sounding distraught as he knelt beside her.

      “Help me,” she cried, not yet feeling the pain. “He’s going to kill me.”

      “Who?” the man asked, glancing around.

      She managed to sit up, vaguely aware that her hands and knees were scraped raw from hitting the sidewalk. The street was dark. No BMW. No Landry Jones.

      Three sets of eyes stared at her at ground level, only one set human. The dogs were big and wonderfully muttlike. The man knelt next to her, looking scared and upset.

      Willa began to cry. “That car that was chasing me….”

      “It went on past,” the man said.

      Her hands and knees began to ache and she saw that her dress that she’d bought especially for the showing was ruined. Her new shoes were back down the street where she’d kicked them off.

      “Are you sure the car was chasing you?”

      One of the dogs licked her in the face. She put her arm around its neck, hugging it tightly for a moment before she dug her cell phone out of her purse and punched in 911.

      Chapter Three

      Landry couldn’t believe how badly things had gone. What a nightmare. Simon was dead. So was Zeke. Zeke.

      He put his head in his hands. What the hell had happened?

      Unfortunately, he knew the answer to that, he thought as he gingerly touched his side. He’d been lucky. Although the wound had bled like hell, it hadn’t been life threatening. Still, he’d had a hell of a time finding a doctor to stitch him up and make sure it didn’t get infected. It wasn’t like he could just walk into an emergency room. By law, doctors were required to report gunshot wounds.

      He’d had to find a doctor he could trust not to turn him in. He couldn’t chance using Freddy D.’s or any of the ones the cops knew about.

      The wound, though, had turned out to be the least of his problems. Since that night, he’d been a hunted man. Willa St. Clair’s eyewitness testimony that he’d shot Zeke Hartung down in cold blood had every cop on the force and the feds after him—not to mention Freddy D. and his boys.

      For days Landry had been on the run, keeping his head down, but he’d known from the get-go that he couldn’t keep this up. He had to find that damned disk. The proof he needed was on it. Without the disk, he was a dead man.

      He’d come close to getting the girl—and in the long run, the disk. He still had a few friends on the force he could trust, ones that wouldn’t believe he was a dirty cop, even if he was, and one of them had given him the safe house location where Willa St. Clair was being held.

      Unfortunately, Freddy D.’s men must have had an inside source as well because they hit the house before Landry could.

      He’d almost had Willa St. Clair, though. He’d been so damned close he’d smelled the citrus scent of her shampoo in her long blond hair. But she’d managed to get away from not only him, but also Freddy D.’s men. The woman had either known about the hit on the safe house or she was damned lucky.

      Like the night of her art show. If that fool with the two dogs hadn’t come out of nowhere, Landry would have caught up to her, got her into the car and he’d have the disk by now and be calling the shots instead of running for his life.

      But she’d seen him kill Zeke and he had known getting her into the car that night would have been near impossible if she’d been alone. Landry was good but he couldn’t have taken on the guy with the two big dogs, too. And Freddy D. had said T and Worm would be nearby. If they’d seen him kill Zeke, then he couldn’t be sure what those two fools would do.

      He would be sitting behind bars right now or dead if he hadn’t gotten the hell out of there.

      So he’d disappeared into one of the small old-fashioned motels along the beach, blending in as best he could with the tourists, waiting for his cell phone to ring with news.

      Since the safe house hit, he’d been hot on the trail of Willa St. Clair. His one fear was that someone would get to her before he did. There was no way she would last long out there on her own. That’s why he had to get to her first. It was now a matter of life and death. His.

      His cell rang. He took a breath, hoping that one of his cop friends he could trust had come through for him. But Zeke had friends too, friends who were taking his death personally and would shoot first and ask questions later if they found Landry.

      “Hey,”

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