ONE
Somerset, Kentucky

Eight Years Later

It was a nightmare.

No, it wasn't a nightmare, because she was pretty damned sure she was awake. And in nightmares, bullets weren't real. They weren't real, and they weren't exploding around the warehouse like hellish fireflies destroying everything they lodged inside.

Nightmares came with a certain understanding that it was a dream, not real. This was definitely real, and if something really good didn't happen very soon, then she was going to have holes in her body that were not supposed to be there.

She fought to hold back her screams as bullets whizzed over her head again, popping in the wood crates around her and sending a shower of wood chips and shattered glass from inside around her head.

This was bad. Very bad. She stared around, wide-eyed and dazed, as she scrambled around more boxes, more crates, fighting for as much protection between her and the bullets as she could find.

Crista Jansen was certain her horoscope hadn't said anything about bullets today. Something about dark knights and ill-advised trips, but there had been nothing in there about bullets.

She would have remembered.

She would have changed her plans.

Oh boy, would she have changed her plans.

Scuttling behind what she hoped was a very thickly packed crate, she covered her head with her arms as glass sprayed around her.

Those weren't just regular bullets. Those were fast bullets. Automatic? Uzi? Something. The kind that spat fire as they pelleted out dozens of rounds at a time. And she knew because the red flashes of light in the otherwise dark interior of the warehouse were a pretty good clue.

A terrified squak, a cross between a squeak and a squawk, fell from her lips as chips of wood exploded from the sides of the crate she found to hide behind.

They were serious out there. People were killing people, and she was caught in the crossfire and wondering how the hell she was going to get out of this one.

She knew this was a bad idea.

She knew. She had felt that sick feeling in her gut the minute she stepped into the cavernous warehouse and realized the lights didn't work. But had she, dumb ass that she was, backed out and left? Oh, hell no, she had just pulled her penlight from her purse and trudged merrily on her way, looking for that stupid box. She told the delivery company to deliver to her home, not here. Yet when she returned home from work, what had she found? An official notice that her package had been dropped off at their local distribution warehouse and why, lookie, there had been the magical key to open the damned locker it was in.

Well, guess what? There's no locker here, she told herself sarcastically. No locker, but plenty of bullets singing a macabre tune through the darkness.

So now, rather than collecting her belongings, she was just trying to stay alive. When did fate decide to bust Crista Jansen's ass? For God's sake, hadn't she had enough bad luck in the past eight years?

This was all Dawg's fault, she decided. Every bit of it. He lived and he breathed and because of it; fate hated her. Fate was female, right? It was probably jealous. There could be no other explanation.

This was so bad.

"Where did the fucking girl go—?" a harsh, accented voice muttered roughly.

Okay she was the only girl she knew of in this stupid place. She had only heard male orders, commands, and screams since hell had erupted around her.

Copyright © 2007 by Christina Simmons.