Free Sleepwalker by Karen Robards Page B

stretch of snow leading from the tennis courts to the boathouse was empty. For now.
    “So you want to tell me why you’re helping me escape?” he asked.
    “I like you?”
    He laughed. “Your name’s Mick, right?”
    She was surprised he knew her name, until she remembered how many times the guys had shouted it out. He would have to have been slow on the uptake indeed not to have eventually realized that when they’d yelled “Mick” they’d been referring to her.
    “Yes. And yours is …?” she asked craftily, hoping he’d assume that, because she was helping him escape, they were now friends. Just in casehis picture or fingerprints or whatever weren’t in any law enforcement database. Just in case he should manage to elude her before she could bring him in. Which she wasn’t intending to allow, but, as tonight’s adventures so far illustrated, stuff happens.
    “Whatever you want it to be.”
    Okay, maybe he wasn’t totally stupid. “Fine. I’ll just call you Ali.”
    “Ali?”
    “As in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
    “Cute.”
    “Look! The boat! He’s stealing the boat!” The shout from shore was thinned by distance but still perfectly comprehensible. Glancing around, Mick saw tiny dark figures racing through the snow toward the edge of the lake.
    “Shit,” the thief muttered, echoing Mick’s sentiments exactly.
    “Stop him!”
    “Shoot him!”
    Pop. Pop. Pop.
    Gunshots. The sound was unmistakable. Mick’s heart lodged in her throat.
    “Get down!” she yelled. Following her own instructions, she ducked low over the wheel and grabbed at the throttles. Was the boat too far away to be hit? She didn’t know. Distances over water could be deceptive.
    Pop. Pop. Thunk. Pop
.
    It took Mick a second to register that the sound like a palm smacking the wooden strut near her head was actually a bullet slamming into it. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. Clearly nobody was worried about accidentally shooting her. Or, more likely, they just assumed the thief was driving the boat and were aiming at the pilot’s seat, where they assumed he would be.
    Yikes!
    “Whoa.” The thief crouched beside her seat. “That was close. Another inch or so and …”
    He didn’t need to spell it out. She got it. “Hang on.”
    Now that the need for subterfuge was past, Mick slammed the throttles forward and gunned the engine. The thief grabbed onto the edge of her seat for balance as the
Playtime
skipped like a stone across the surface of the water. As more gunfire peppered the air, he stood up, balanced a hip against the back of her seat, and returned fire in a quick burst.
    The explosions of sound so close at hand made her jump. Her head jerked around so that she could see him. “Stop that!”
    “What? They’re shooting at us.”
    “There is no ‘us.’ Anyway, I don’t care. Stop it.”
    “Whose side are you on?”
    “Give me my damn gun.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    But he didn’t fire any more shots even though the return barrage from shore exploded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Bright bursts from the nozzles blinked on and off like hyperactive fireflies. No more bullets hit the boat, which raced away as fast as Mick could make it go, fast enough so that the bow came up and sheets of water blew past them in twin showers of fine white spray. The windshield and half roof over their heads kept them dry and protected them from the brunt of the weather, but the wind howled past, and within minutes the cockpit became as cold as the inside of a freezer.
    Now I know how an ice cube feels,
Mick thought, shivering. Shifting so that she was sitting cross-legged in the wide seat, she tucked her poor frozen feet beneath her flannel-clad thighs. As far as keeping herself warm was concerned, it was the best she could do.
    Hanging grimly on to the wheel, she willed herself to ignore the biting cold. Now that they were gunning it, waves slammed into the hull, making the boat heave and dip like an