Sleepwalker (4 page)

He did the only thing he could: dropped one suitcase and flung the other at her, hard. She dodged, yelping. Shrugging out of his tool bag, he dived at her. The suitcase hit the wall with a thud and burst open. He saw this from the corner of his eye while in mid-dive, watched the suitcase disgorging rubber-band-bound bundles of cash, manila envelopes
and papers, which exploded across the room like so much shrapnel. Before she could recover enough to go for the panic button again or snap off a shot or do anything else remotely effective, he connected, knocking the gun from her hand and grabbing her around the waist, meaning to spin her around and lock her down before she could cause him any more problems.

“Damn it,
no,
” she cried. Struggling to free herself, she was as hard to get a grip on as a wriggling snake. “Get back!”

Strong-arming his shoulder in an effort to back him off—fat chance of that—she tried whirling away and almost succeeded. But even as he caught her by a hip bone and an arm and jerked her back toward him, he felt steel talons dig into his wrist. Without any other warning, he heard a triumphant “Hah!”

Then he was airborne, sailing high before slamming hard into the floor—
oomph
. The crash landing knocked the breath out of him. It happened so fast, and was so unexpected, that he didn’t even have time to react. For a moment he saw stars. Stunned to find himself lying on his back wheezing as he blinked dazedly at the ceiling, he had no time to properly assess the situation before two sharp objects—it took him a second to identify them as her bony-ass knees—slammed into his rib cage. A throat chop that would have been disabling if he hadn’t reflexively hunched a shoulder in time to deflect it sent pinwheels of pain shooting through the base of his neck.

Holy cow, Miss Tits was a ninja! Who would have thought it?

“Get on your stomach!”

“Ow!” Forced into instant defensive mode as she wrenched at his beleaguered wrist in an effort to enforce her command, he was able to yank it free, then fell under immediate, savage attack. He fought off a lightning rain of blows that he just managed to evade by the skin of his teeth. They fell hard and fast on his head and shoulders,
chop
-
chop
-
chop
-
chop
-
chop
, landing with solid-sounding
thunk
s that promised he was going
to be hurting later. Straddling him, her thighs closing as tight as twin pincers on either side of his hips, she recaptured his wrist with the swift sureness of a diving hawk and twisted.

“Yeow! Goddammit, lay off,” he roared, trying to shake free.

“Give up!”

She had gravity and surprise on her side, coupled with the fact that his ski mask had slipped out of place just enough so that he could barely see. Unless he abandoned the no-hitting-women principle of a lifetime and flattened her with a punch—always assuming he could get one off, with her doing her best to twist his arm into a pretzel—subduing her was going to be a war.

“Roll onto your stomach!” she screamed again, attempting to flip him over with every bit of leverage she had. Then, clearly addressing whoever was monitoring the camera, on which, as she had no way of knowing, he had disabled the audio feed at the same time as he had covered the lens, she added, “Damn it, Snider, are you watching this?
Think I might need help here?”
The tiniest pause. A tone change. “What the … There’s something over the lens!” Her attention riveted on him again. “You put something over the lens!”

Duh
was on the order of what he would have replied if her stiffened fingers hadn’t just then driven as painfully as four sharpened screwdriver blades into his solar plexus.
Oh
,
shit
,
hello
. His wrist let out a silent shriek as she gave it a violent jerk. At that point, he figured, a lesser man would have caved and rolled. He might have rolled a little—anything to ease the burning pain that shot like a fire-trailing arrow up his arm—but he damn sure didn’t cave.

“
Ow!
Enough! Somebody’s going to get hurt.” Squinting blurrily up through the tiny slit that was still available to his right eye, defending himself as best he could without dislocating his shoulder or actually doing her any real harm, he devoutly hoped it wasn’t going to be him. By means of strenuous effort Jason managed to dislodge her long
enough to get the arm she wasn’t trying to break hooked around her waist. A yank, and she was off-balance, toppling forward onto his chest.
Yes
. He got a whiff of shampoo—some kind of floral smell, surprisingly feminine for a ninja assassin—and then she was on the rebound, wriggling on top of him once more, jackknifing into a sitting position. …

And answering his yank with a chop to his neck, then a twist to his wrist that practically broke it.

“Enough!” he yelled again, meaning it. “Ow! Damn it to hell anyway!”

“I said
on your stomach
. Snider, Petrino, anybody!
Get your asses in here
.
”

Working on freeing his wrist, he blocked her would-be disabling blows as best he could while still keeping the arm that wasn’t in the process of being dislocated clamped around her waist so she stayed off-balance. At the same time he tried with a notable lack of success to once again yank her close enough so that her blows lost force. Silky-skinned, sweet-smelling, unmistakably all female, she was also wiry and strong and a hell of a formidable opponent. Managing to break her hold on his wrist before she could totally disable his arm, aiming to roll with her so that his weight held her trapped and helpless beneath him, he was instantly outmaneuvered one more time. Instead of pinioning her beneath him, he instead found himself engaged in a pitched hand-to-hand battle with a martial-arts-trained opponent who was terrifyingly effective despite being little more than half his size.

“Stop it!” Real annoyance colored his voice now as one deflected blow whacked him hard across the mouth. His ingrained aversion to hurting women gave her a distinct advantage, but it only went so far, especially when this particular woman was clearly trying to knock him senseless and might actually succeed at any moment. The damn mask was nearly blinding him. It was also starting to hamper his breathing. His arm, which she was twisting again, felt like it was on fire. He didn’t want to hurt her, he would cause her as little harm as he could, but he also wasn’t
about to lose this fight. The stakes were too high: one and a half million dollars, in fact. Plus if the unthinkable happened and she actually bested him and then captured him, probably ten to twenty behind bars. To say nothing of the injury to his pride.

Just because he was currently practically getting his ass kicked didn’t mean the situation was out of control.

“Give up! You’re under arrest! Get over on your stomach!
Now.”

A metallic sound coupled with the feel of something cold snapping tight around his wrist widened his eyes. Somehow, in the midst of the grunting, grappling, no-holds-barred wrestling match they were engaged in, she’d managed to clamp a handcuff around his left wrist.

“Damn it to hell!” He yanked his wrist free of her hold even as she once again did her best to flip him onto his stomach. Luckily, he was big and she was slight, and their relative positions meant she lacked leverage. He wasn’t going anywhere, and she seemed to realize it at the same time he did. Thwarted, growling, she snatched the ski mask from his head and aimed a punch at his temple. Surprise instantly coupled with relief at being able to easily see—and breathe—again. Both were immediately superseded by the urgent need for a reaction. In the nick of time he managed to catch her fist before it could connect. For a split second the battle paused as they glared at each other. Then she yanked her hand free and aimed another one of those killer chops straight at the base of his nose.

“Stop!”

“You’re dead!” Her face flushed, her pigtails flew, her breasts heaved: Jason would have found the sight riveting if he hadn’t been so busy dodging. A split second slower, and he would have been out like a light, or worse.

“That’s it,” he roared as the side of her hand slammed into his cheekbone and the whole side of his face went instantly numb. He meant it, too. No more Mr. Nice Guy. The thought that he’d barely escaped
having his nasal bones driven into his brain was motivating. His arm around her waist tightened like a vise, and he finally succeeded in jerking her flat against his chest. Unfortunately, she managed to keep her grip on his wrist as she folded, with the net result that he practically broke his own damn arm.

“Ow! Holy Mother of—” Curses spewed from his lips.

She struggled to free herself and sit up. “You’re under a—”

“Yo, pigtails. Give it up or somebody’s going to be cleaning your brains off the wall over there.” Jelly loomed into view at this critical juncture, gun thrust toward the cop’s head, voice faintly muffled by the ski mask that still covered his face.

The cop froze, and suddenly the fight was over. The tumbled mass of her hair spilled across his mouth and throat as she turned her head to look up at Jelly, and Jason had to shake his own head to free his lips of encroaching, feminine-smelling strands. Despite their pitched battle, and the fact that he had her pinned tight to his chest, she was still grimly hanging on to his twisted, handcuffed wrist.

“You want to shoot me? Go ahead,” she said to Jelly, who was aiming his .38 with precision. “Then you’ll have every cop in Detroit after your ass.”

“No,” Jason warned him. Then, remembering his opponent’s ferocity, he added, for effect only and knowing Jelly knew him well enough to recognize mendacity when he heard it, “Unless she leaves you no choice.”

“Just make a wrong move,” Jelly told her.

As Jason moved his captured arm experimentally, needles of pain shot toward his shoulder, making him grimace.

“Uh, you want to let go of the wrist?” he asked her.

She looked at him. He’d seen caged pit bulls with kinder eyes.

“How about you let go of me first?” she countered.

He did, and she did.

“Sit up,” Jelly ordered.

Lying flat on his back now with her straddling his hips, both of them
breathing hard in the aftermath of the battle, Jason had a groundhog’s eye view as her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed. She was, he felt, weighing the possibility of going for Jelly’s gun.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned her, and she flashed him a look that should have pulverized his eyeballs even as Jelly, never slow on the uptake, backed off a pace.

“Get off him,” Jelly said, his gun trained on her threateningly. “Stand up.”

Unlike Jason, who had nothing against cops when they weren’t trying to chop him to death or arrest him or otherwise interfere with him personally, Jelly actively disliked cops on principle. Also, Jelly was a confirmed misogynist. As a consequence, Jason saw no trace of consideration for his opponent’s profession or gender in Jelly’s demeanor. Given enough provocation, and without Jason to serve as a deterrent, Jelly couldn’t be trusted not to shoot her. Later, Jelly might tease him about being wrestled to a draw by a woman, but for now, Jelly’s sense of humor, like his sense of proportion and any leanings toward compassion he might possess, were on hold. All he wanted to do was get out of there with the money.

Amen to that. It was all about the money. But Jason wasn’t about to let Jelly shoot somebody just because she happened to be a woman and a cop and in their way.

“Easy. No harm done,” Jason said as a reminder to Jelly, who grunted derisively. In response to Jelly’s reinforcing gesture with the gun, the cop eased herself off Jason, moving with obvious reluctance. As she rose slowly and carefully to her full height, Jason rolled to his feet himself, feeling a little the worse for wear but not caring to have either of the others know it. His arm tingled like it was asleep, his face was still half numb from that killer chop to his cheekbone, and he could feel at least half a dozen bruises forming elsewhere. His adversary was looking slightly the worse for wear, too. Her hair—reddish-brown, thick, wavy
hair that reached the middle of her back—had come loose from those schoolgirl braids to straggle wildly over half her face, which seemed to be naturally pale but was at the moment flushed pink from their tussle. Her eyes were big and brown and flashed angrily beneath black slashes of brows as she pushed the hair back out of her way with one hand. She had a high-cheekboned, triangle-shaped face with a pointed chin. Slim, delicate nose. A wide mouth, currently tight-lipped. She wasn’t beautiful, but with her lithe build and small, firm breasts jutting out at him through the barely there layer of her tank top, she was wicked sexy. A hot cop with the chops to almost take him out: it would have been a near-irresistible combination if he’d had time to pursue it.

Unfortunately, he didn’t. They were on the clock. The operation had been timed for five minutes, in and out. A quick glance at his watch confirmed it: they were already a minute over. Outside in the van, Tina would be getting antsy.

“Here.” Jelly passed him the cop’s gun. As Jason took it, she gave him a black look. Then her eyes flickered past him, fixed on something, and widened.

“You got trouble, tough guy. Your insurance policy just expired,” she said. Then she smiled.

That smile was gloating enough to make Jason look where she was looking. It was only as he saw the aluminum foil lying amidst the scattered bundles of rubber-band-wrapped bills and other detritus on the floor that he realized that his do-it-yourself lens cap had come off.

And experienced one of those
oh, shit
moments that he really, really hated.

Unless whoever was working the security system was blind or absent or drunk off his ass in honor of the holiday, they did, indeed, have trouble: the house eyes had just lost their blindfold. Unable to help himself, Jason shot an instinctive glance at the camera, which unfortunately wasn’t the kind with the tape in the unit but instead sent images
directly to the monitoring station to be viewed in real time. His worst fear confirmed, he quickly averted his gaze as he realized that giving anyone who might be looking a guaranteed-to-be-recorded, full-face view of himself was just about the stupidest thing he could do. Jelly still wore his mask, but Jason’s was long gone.
Not that it mattered anyway
was the corollary thought that hit him a split second later: the cop had seen his face. She was looking at him right now, as a matter of fact. Venomously. Triumphantly. Having probably already memorized every feature. No doubt in the world that she would be ready, willing and able to describe him, pick his photo out of a lineup, identify him if he was ever picked up, the whole nine yards.