Captive Star Read Free Page B

she'd sat on, kicked at the wrappers littering the floor, then joined them when Jack put a hand behind her head and shoved.
    "Low!" he repeated in a snarl, and gunned the engine. The faint ping told him the man with the chicken face was using the silenced automatic he'd pulled out.
    Jack's car screamed away from the curb, and he two-wheeled it around the corner and shot down the street like a rocket. Tossed like eggs in a broken carton, M.J. rapped her head on the dash, cursed, and struggled to balance herself as Jack maneuvered the huge boat of a car down side streets.
    "What the hell are you doing?"
    "Saving your butt again, sugar." His eyes flicked to the rearview as he took a hard, tire-squealing right turn. A couple of kids riding bikes on the sidewalk lifted their fists and cheered the maneuver. In instant reaction, Jack flashed a grin.
    "Slow this junk heap down." M.J. had to crawl back onto the seat and clutch the chicken stick for balance. "And let me out before you run over some kid walking his dog."
    "I'm not going to run over anybody, and you're staying put." He spared her a quick glance. "In case you didn't notice, the guy with the van was shooting at us. And as soon as I make sure we've lost him and find someplace quiet to hole up, you're going to tell me what the hell's going on."
    "I don't know what's going on."
    He shot her a look. "That's bull." Because he was sure it was, he took a chance.
    He swung to the curb again, reached under his seat and came up with spare cuffs.
    Before she could do more than blink, he had her locked by the wrist to the door handle. No way was she skipping out on him until he knew why he'd just been tossed around by a three-hundred-pound gorilla.
    To block out her shouting, and her increasingly imaginative threats and curses, Jack turned up his stereo and drowned her out.

Chapter 2
    At the very first opportunity, she was going to kill him. Brutally, M.J.
    decided. Mercilessly. Two hours before this, she'd been happy, free, wandering around the grocery store like any normal person on a Saturday, squeezing tomatoes. True, she'd been weighed down with curiosity about what she carried in the bottom of her purse, but she'd been sure Bailey had a good reason—and a logical explanation—for sending it to her.
    Bailey James always had good reasons and logical explanations for everything.
    That was only one of the aspects about her that M.J. loved.
    But now she was worried—worried that the package Bailey had shipped to her by courier the day before was not only at the bottom of her purse, but also at the bottom of her current situation.
    She preferred blaming Jack Dakota.
    He'd pushed his way into her apartment and attacked her. Okay, so maybe she'd attacked first, but it was a natural reaction when some jerk tried to muscle you. At least it was M.J.'s natural reaction. She was an ace student in the school of punch first, ask questions later.
    It was humiliating that he'd been able to take her down. She had a lot of notches on her fifth-degree black belt, and she didn't like to lose a match.
    But she'd pay him back for that later.
    All she knew for certain was that he seemed to be at the root of it all. Because of him, her apartment was wrecked, her things tossed every which way. Now they'd gone, leaving the front door open, the lock broken. She didn't form close attachments to things, but that wasn't the point. They were her things, and thanks to him, she was going to have to waste time shopping for replacements.
    Which was almost as bad as having some gun wielding punk the size of Texas busting down her door, having to run for her life from her own home, and being shot at.
    But all of that, all of it, paled next to one infuriating fact—she was handcuffed to the door handle of an Oldsmobile.
    Jack Dakota had to die for that.
    Who the hell was he? she asked herself. Bounty hunter, excellent hand-to-hand fighter, slob—she added as she pushed candy wrappers and paper cups around with