Captive Star Read Free Page A

room.
    She thought about running. She could have been out of the door and away before either of them untangled. But she thought about Bailey, about what she had weighing down her shoulder bag. About the mess she'd somehow stepped in. And was too mad to run.
    She went for the gun and ended up falling backward as Jack flew into her. She cushioned his fall, and he was up fast, springing into the air and landing a double-footed kick in the big man's midsection.
    Nice form, M.J. thought, and scrambled to her own feet. She snagged her shoulder bag, spun it over her head and cracked it hard over the sleek, bullet-shaped head.
    He went down hard on the sofa, snapping the springs.
    "You're wrecking my place!" she shouted, and smacked Jack in the side, simply because she could reach him.
    "Sue me."
    He dodged a fist the size of a steamship and went in low. Pain sang through every bone as his opponent slammed him into a wall. Pictures fell, glass shattering on the floor. Through his blurred vision he saw the woman charge, a redheaded fireball that flew up and latched like a plague of wasps on the man's enormous back. She used her fists, pounding the sides of his face as he spun wildly and struggled to grab her.
    "Hold him still!" Jack shouted. "Damn it, just hold him for a minute!"
    Spotting an opening, he grabbed what was left of a table leg and rushed in. He checked his first swing as the duo spun like a mad two-headed top. If he followed through, he might have cracked the back of M.J.'s head open like a melon.
    "I said hold him still!"
    "You want me to paint a bull's-eye on his face while I'm at it?" With a guttural snarl, she hooked her arms around the man's throat, clamped her thighs like a vise around his wide steel beam of a torso and screamed, "Hit him, for God's sake. Stop dancing around and hit him."
    Jack cocked back like a batter with two strikes already on his record and swung full out. The table leg splintered like a toothpick, blood gushed like water in a fountain. M.J. had just enough time to jump clear as the man toppled like a redwood.
    She stayed on her hands and knees a minute, gasping for air. "What's going on?

    What the hell's going on?"
    "No time to worry about it." Self-preservation on his mind, Jack grabbed her hand, hauled her to her feet. "This type doesn't usually travel alone. Let's go."
    "Go?" She snagged the strap of her purse as he pulled her toward the door.
    "Where?"
    "Away. He's going to be mean when he wakes up, and if he's got a friend, we're not going to be so lucky next time."
    "Lucky, my butt." But she was running with him, driven by a pure instinct that matched Jack's. "You son of a bitch. You come busting into my place, push me around, wreck my home, nearly get me shot."
    "I saved your butt."
    "I saved yours!" She shouted it at him, cursing viciously as they thudded down the stairs. "And when I get a minute to catch my breath, I'm going to take you apart, piece by piece."
    They rounded the landing and nearly ran over one of her neighbors. The woman, with helmet hair and bunny slippers, cowered, back against the wall, hands pressed to her deeply rouged cheeks.
    "M.J., what in the world—? Were those gunshots?"
    "Mrs. Weathers—"
    "No time." Jack all but jerked her off her feet as he headed down the next flight.
    "Don't you shout at me, you jerk. I'm making you pay for every grape that got smashed, every lamp, every—"
    "Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. Where's the back door?" When M.J. pointed down the corridor, he gave a nod and they both slid outside, then around the corner of the building. Screened by some bushes in the front, Jack darted a gaze up and down the street. There was a windowless van less than half a block down, and a small, chicken-faced man in a bad suit dancing beside it. "Stay low," Jack ordered, thankful he'd parked right out front as they ran down the walkway and he all but threw M.J. into the front seat of his car.
    "My God, what the hell is this?" She shoved at the can