Free Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards Page A

of herself for coming up with such a fast and unassailable rebuttal. There were indeed no ants anywhere in sight: Tony couldn’t argue with that.
    Michael gave a grunt of laughter. “You know that sounded nuts, right?”
    Even as she flicked Michael the briefest of withering looks, she picked up a few coins and Tony handed her a couple of receipts and a nail file and that was it: the contents of her purse were once again back in her purse. The contents of her Miracle-Go kit were in there, too. Along with her laptop. The fact that everything was a jumbled mess and her purse was bulging and filled to overflowing was something she would deal with later. She did like things organized, but at the moment she had more urgent problems, like a giant murderous monster that could reappear at any second.
    “Thank you.” She smiled at Tony, then wasn’t able to stop her expression from changing as, with a look of grim determination, Michael surged to his feet. That brought him so close that she found herself staring at the T-shirt-covered center of his wide chest before automatically adjusting her gaze upward, over his square jaw and beautifully carved mouth and straight nose and chiseled cheekbones to his eyes. For the most fleeting of moments their eyes connected; his were still terrifyingly black. If she hadn’t known him, she would have taken an instant, instinctive step back: only the damned should have eyes like that. As it was, though, she took in the soulless eyes right along with the handsome, hard-planed face and the tall, powerful body, sweeping all of them with the kind of anxious glance a mother would throw over an injured child. He might be on his feet, but he was far from recovered. She got the impression that simply remaining upright was costing him every bit of strength he had.
    “Something wrong?” Tony asked with a frown, apparently correctly interpreting her changing face without any inkling as to the cause. He slid a supportive hand around her upper arm. It felt large and warm and comforting against her chilled flesh, but she was too jittery to do more than register it in passing.
    “N-no,” Charlie answered, already busy scraping salt out of theway with a hopefully discreet foot to make a path that would allow Michael to escape. From this point, everything needed to happen fast: once the circle was open, the hunter could pounce without anything to even slow it down. Barely repressing a shiver, she refused to let her thoughts go there. Both men were looking at her, and for a moment her attention was torn between them. Tall, dark, and handsome, stalwart and gainfully employed in a respected profession that required him to wear a suit and tie (her mother’s criteria for the kind of man Charlie should be on the hunt for), her perfect dream man, in fact, if only she had the sense to realize it, Tony watched her with concern. Taller, more powerfully built, gorgeous, golden (dead) Michael, with not one thing in his favor except that he was pure sex on the hoof and she genuinely liked him almost as much as she wanted to sleep with him, fixed her with an inimical gaze.
    So unsteady on his feet that he was swaying slightly, Michael shifted his eyes from her face to frown down at Tony’s hand on her arm, then looked at Tony in a way that would have been forbidding even if his eyes weren’t as black as night. Tony, of course, had no idea that Michael was even there. His focus was all on her.
    “This is hopeless. I’ll let the janitorial staff deal with it,” she said lightly, seeing that Tony was looking down at her busy foot even as she nudged the last few grains of salt aside.
    “Good idea,” Tony replied. “So, are you coming with me to Vegas?”
    Charlie’s eyes flew to his face. The thought of Kaminsky’s pain made her want to say yes, but there were so many factors to consider. “I—”
    “Let’s go.” Michael stepped through the opening she had made for him. “Chop-chop.”
    Instead of rushing