The Protector Read Free Page B

steps, knocking her off her feet so that she skidded down the last six treads on her bottom. Leaping up, she raced him to the door. “Quiet!” she hissed when he barked with excitement.  
     
    The rear exit was as heavily bolted as the front. No doubt there were cameras guarding it, as well. Ignoring the frantic voice that whispered that it wasn’t safe to leave, Eryn twisted the locks and yanked the stubborn door open.
     
    It wasn’t safe to stay, either. Another day of this uncertainty and she’d lose her mind. Besides, she’d been assured she was a guest here, not a prisoner. She could call it quits whenever she felt like it.
     
    And today she desperately wanted to call it quits.
     
    Winston bounded past her as she stepped into the fenced yard and drew up short.
     
    Now what? There was no gate or exit out of the enclosure, only a section of the fence that looked like it was propped in place.
     
    Crossing over to it, she gave a push and, to her astonishment, a six-foot partition keeled right over. Grabbing her dog’s collar, she waded cautiously into the grassy alley that divided the rows of condominiums.
     
    She sensed the stranger before she actually saw him; he blended with the shrubbery so well that she would have looked right through him if his green stare hadn’t drawn her gaze.  
     
    He stood up slowly, never breaking eye contact. Too tall. Too broad. Eryn stepped back, her heart jumping.  
     
    She wheeled and ran the other way. The muscles in her legs, weak from inactivity, strained to carry her as fast and as far away as possible. She should have listened to her spidy-sense days ago.
     
     
     
    Well, I’ll be damned, thought Ike. He’d been studying the back of the safe-house waiting for Cougar to show up when the part of the fence he’d compromised keeled over and out stepped the woman he was supposed to recover, all blue eyes and wild hair.  
     
    Up till then he’d had no idea how Cougar had planned to retrieve her without the FBI agents’ knowledge. He stood up, relieved. She’d saved them a hell of a lot of trouble.
     
    Or not.
     
    To his incredulity, she took one look at him, clutched her handbag to her chest, and sprinted the other way, up the grassy alley with the dog at her side, heading in the opposite direction from his getaway vehicle.
     
    Sonofabitch.
     
    The other camera, tucked under the rear eaves was filming her exodus. It would film him, too, if he went after her, but the odds of snagging her were better now than they’d ever be, especially if the FBI caught her first.
     
    So Ike took off after her.   
     
    The girl was surprisingly fleet-footed. She had almost made it to the tree line before he curled a gloved hand around her elbow and swung her around. Lunging for the dog’s collar at the same time, he pulled them both to a jarring halt. “Wrong way,” he grated.  
     
    “Let go of me!” Her voice came out high and thin. “I’m not going back.” She struggled against his grasp, proving more difficult than the dog, who eyed him warily.  
     
    The odds of a successful nab and grab depended significantly on the amount of time it took to seize the recovery target and disappear. Ike had two minutes, tops, to make them disappear.  
     
    Ignoring Eryn’s shriek, he banded an arm around her waist and plucked her off her feet. “Come,” he said, relying on the dog to follow his mistress. He carried the squirming woman into a fenceless back yard where he hid them all behind a utility shed.  
     
    She was a wriggling bundle of resistance. “Let me go!”  
     
    He had to pin her to the shed’s wall. “Quiet,” he ordered, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. Her face went waxen; her pupils dilated. Christ, she was terrified of him, and he had mere seconds in which to reassure her.   
     
    “Look, I’m not with the FBI and I’m not a terrorist,” he said, peering around the corner of the shed for any sign of pursuit. “Your father sent