hairline did not go unnoticed. There had to be a tie-in between what had happened to Kiley, the message on his screen and his nightmare. He didn’t believe in coincidences, not even when they involved dreams.
Most of the time, Prudence Hill, daughter of the prime minister of England, liked to shake things up. By definition, she was not a creature of habit. However, some things in her life just naturally seemed to fall into a pattern. Barring a monsoon or a pronounced case of the flu, she always jogged first thing in the morning. And her route was always the same.
Unencumbered by bodyguards, which she vehemently refused to live with, she ran clockwise along the oblong perimeter of St. James Park until it eventually fed back to the street she started out on, at which point she’d jog back to her apartment. It was as close to a country setting as she could get in the West End.
Pru preferred running as early as possible, when there were fewer cars out. She was more than a little aware of the irony of attempting to maintain a healthy cardiovascular regimen while breathing in the exhaust fumes being belched out by the many vehicles that sped or crawled along the London streets. But it couldn’t be helped. Since breathing in exhaust was a permanent part of the equation in London whether or not she jogged, she chose to jog.
Perspiration slid down her spine, working its way through her sports bra and turning her baggy T-shirt into an uncomfortable collection of cotton threads that adhered to her body. The air was heavy. The famous runner’s high had found her less than midway through her jog, but it was battling mightily with fatigue because the weather was so oppressive.
Jogging in place, waiting for the light to turn green so she could cross, Pru slipped into her own world. The sense of euphoria she was trying to maintain blended well with the music she was listening to. Consequently, she took no notice of the white van that abruptly stopped less than a foot away from her, didn’t hear the passenger side doors opening and didn’t see the two men dressed in black jerseys, black slacks and ski masks who swiftly leaped out of the vehicle.
Eyes intent on the traffic signal, Pru was completely unaware of the men until the two grabbed her, one from the side, the other from behind, and attempted to drag her into the van.
Startled, Pru reacted instantly. Twisting, she bit the hand that was covering her mouth.
The assailant who was behind her and whose fleshy palm now had an almost perfect impression of her teeth howled in pain. He jerked his hand back, uncovering her mouth.
“She bit me!” he cried, furious. “The damn bitch bit me!”
“Suck it up,” the man to his right snapped.
Pru’s semi-freedom lasted less than half a heart-beat as the other man’s grasp on her tightened. Though she twisted and bucked, it was useless. Within thirty seconds of the initial encounter, she’d been packed away in the rear of the van like baggage. Even before the doors were shut, the vehicle was whisking away in the opposite direction of her apartment.
The only minor triumph she’d attained, other than leaving her mark on the tallest of the three kidnappers, was that she’d managed to drop her MP3 player where they’d grabbed her. It was the only clue she could leave. The player, a gift from her stepmother, had her initials on it.
Now all that had to happen was for the device to remain unnoticed until someone her father sent came along to retrace her steps.
She tried not to think of the odds.
“What do you want?” she demanded, seething.
She was being manhandled and for two cents, given half an opportunity, she would have cut the hearts out of all three of their chests. Her hands were already bound behind her and one of the three men was crouching in front of her, wrapping duct tape around her ankles. She felt like a damned Christmas turkey about to be shoved into the oven.
“For you to shut up!” the assailant she’d bitten snapped.
Before she could retort, the man who’d been binding her feet rose to his knees and pressed a length of gray, sticky duct tape across her mouth. “That should do it,” the man told his companion proudly as he began to rise to his feet.
Before he could, Pru threw her weight forward as she jerked her head down, hitting her forehead against his with all the force she could muster. It was enough to catch him off guard and send him staggering backward. He fell on his butt as he cried out in pain, then began to curse. A hail of expletives rained down on her.
And then a sudden, searing pain exploded not from the initial point of contact on her forehead, but from the back of her skull.
The world went black before she could struggle to hold the smothering blanket at bay.
The last thought Pru had was that she was dead.
Chapter 2
When he wasn’t working, Joshua Lazlo found himself at loose ends. While his professional life was precision personified, his private life was the exact opposite.
He had no doubt that if his uncle Corbett had not plucked him out of the social whirl he had resided in from the tender age of sixteen, making a tentative offer to him to join his “group,” his life would have been a complete and utter shamble. More than likely, he would be well on his way to becoming this generation’s version of his father. Which probably would have been more than his poor mother, Abigail, could stand.
Ambitious, his father, Edward Lazlo, had made a small name for himself in Parliament over the years. He’d made a bigger name for himself among the ladies. A scandalous womanizer, he never allowed the fact that he was married to interfere with his actual life’s ambition: to bed as many women as humanly possible before he died.
Not that there was anything wrong with that, Joshua thought, a half smile playing on his lips as he made his way into the bathroom. Though not exactly an admirable avocation, it did have its merits.
There were, after all, a great many beautiful women in the world.
But the fact that these affairs, after all this time, still bothered his poor mother, despite her rather sad little charade that she was unaware of her husband’s philandering, bothered him in turn. There was no love lost between his father and him.
A man shouldn’t marry if he had no intention of remaining faithful.
Which was why, Joshua reasoned, not for the first time as he stepped into the sleek, black onyx tiled shower stall, he was never going to get married. The world was filled with an endless supply of delightful women with long limbs, soft curves and willing bodies.
And he’d never met one he wanted to spend more than a weekend with.
Joshua turned on the water, moving the lever toward the hot side. It was his day off, but there was no reason to spend it with the scent of Miranda still clinging to his body.
Not unless Miranda was close at hand, he added silently.
When he was on assignment, he could work round the clock. Adrenaline pounding, he needed little to no sleep to keep him going. But on his days off, he changed completely, sleeping in, allowing the sun to rise without him.
He supposed it could be called recharging his batteries. Or viewed as being the sloth he could so easily revert to had his uncle not seen something in him and turned him into a crusader.
Not
