Twisted Read Free

back, looking deep into those desperate eyes. It was the desperation that concerned her. Those wild eyes told her he’d shoot her as soon as look at her, and the knowledge made her chest squeeze. She’d thought about being shot in the line of duty, but she’d never envisioned having her life ended by some tweeker with rotten teeth.
    He turned and grabbed the bills with his free hand as Sal stacked them on the counter.
    “Faster!”
    A flutter of movement in the convex mirror near the ceiling caught her eye. She tried not to call attention to it, but she glanced up to see someone slipping from the corridor at the back of the store into the aisle closest to the door, which led straight to the register. Tall and dark-haired, the man wore a charcoal suit and looked remarkably like the defense attorney Allison had gone to war with in court just last week. But it wasn’t the attorney. This man was leaner and broad-shouldered and made a lot less noise.
    “That’s it ? That’s all you got ?” Meth Man snatched up the pile of twenties and waved them at Sal. “I want all of it!”
    Sal grumbled a response as Allison cut a glance to her left. The businessman hunched low now behind a beer display. His gaze locked with hers, and his hard expression commanded her to stay put.
    Crap, just her luck. Don’t try to be a hero, she tried to tell him with her eyes, but his focus was on the confrontation now.
    “Hand it over!” The perp was bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet—shrill and angry, but distracted.
    Now was her chance.
    She flung the pizza away like a Frisbee. In the next instant of confusion, she whipped out her gun and lunged for the man’s weapon.
    His pistol tracked her far too closely. She registered the black barrel pointed at her face as a shoe came up and the gun cartwheeled out of the perp’s hand.
    Allison thrust a heel into the side of his knee. He howled and crumpled to the floor. The man who’d kicked the gun away shoved Allison aside and flippedthe robber onto his stomach. A Glock appeared from nowhere, and he jabbed it against the perp’s neck.
    “Don’t move!”
    Allison’s mouth fell open. The man turned and gave her a blistering look.
    “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
    “You plan to arrest this guy?”
    Her shock lasted maybe a second, and then she sprang into action, jerking a pair of handcuffs from her belt and elbowing the suit out of the way. “I got it,” she said, taking control of the prisoner with her knee on his back.
    The robber squirmed and spewed obscenities as she yanked his wrists behind him and slapped on the cuffs. Allison’s back felt damp. She took a steadying breath and tried to regain her composure as she conducted the pat-down.
    “You’re under arrest,” she said, with much more bravado than she felt at the moment. Her lips were dry, her hands clammy. She glanced up at Sal, who was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. “Tell them to send a cage car,” she told him.
    Sal nodded.
    “You got any other weapons on you?” she asked the perp. “Knives, needles, drug paraphernalia?”
    He didn’t answer and she checked his pockets. When she was satisfied, she started to climb off him.
    He exploded in a blur of movement. Pain stung her cheek as she caught an elbow, and she had to sit on his butt to make him stop thrashing. The man in the suit pressed a shiny black wing tip between the prisoner’s shoulders as Allison struggled with his legs. At eye level was a shelf of fishing supplies, and she grabbed a rollof twine. She ripped open the package with her teeth and lashed the binding around his ankles. The prisoner cursed and squirmed for a while, but eventually the fight went out of him. He was trussed like a turkey now, and she knew she was going to catch all kinds of S&M jokes from the guys at work.
    Allison glanced up at the man now leaning against the checkout counter. His palms rested casually on the Formica, and the Glock had disappeared beneath