Suzanne Brockmann - Tall, Dark and Deadly: Get Lucky; Taylors Temptation

I T WAS LIKE BEING HIT by a professional linebacker.

The man barreled down the stairs and bulldozed right into Sydney, nearly knocking her onto her rear end.

To add insult to injury, he mistook her for a man.

Sorry, bud, he tossed back over his shoulder as he kept going down the stairs.

She heard the front door of the apartment building open and then slam shut.

It was the perfect end to the evening. Girls night outpluralhad turned into girls night outsingular. Bette had left a message on Syds answering machine announcing that she couldnt make it to the movies tonight. Something had come up. Something that was no doubt, six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, wearing a cowboy hat and named Scott or Brad or Wayne.

And Syd had received a call from Hilary on her cell phone as she was pulling into the multiplex parking lot. Her excuse for cancelling was a kid with a fever of one hundred and two.

Turning around and going home would have been too depressing. So Syd had gone to the movie alone. And ended up even more depressed.

The show had been interminably long and pointless, with buff young actors flexing their way across the screen. Shed alternately been bored by the story and embarrassed, both for the actors and for herself, for being fascinated by the sheer breathtaking perfection of their bodies.

Men like thator like the football player whod nearly knocked her overdidnt date women like Sydney Jameson.

It wasnt that she wasnt physically attractive, because she was. Or at least she could be when she bothered to do more than run a quick comb through her hair. Or when she bothered to dress in something other than the baggy shirts and loose-fitting, comfortable jeans that were her standard appareland that allowed the average Neanderthal rushing past her down the stairs to mistake her for a man. Of course, she comforted herself, the dimness of the 25-watt bulbs that the landlord, Mr. El Cheap-o Thompkins, had installed in the hallway light fixtures hadnt helped.

Syd trudged up the stairs to the third floor. This old house had been converted to apartments in the late 1950s. The top floorformerly the attichad been made into two units, both of which were far more spacious than anyone would have thought from looking at the outside of the building.

She stopped on the landing.

The door to her neighbors apartment was ajar.

Gina Sokoloski. Syd didnt know her next-door neighbor that well. Theyd passed on the stairs now and then, signed for packages when the other wasnt home, had brief conversations about such thrilling topics as the best time of year for cantaloupe.

Gina was young and shynot yet twenty years oldand a student at the junior college. She was plain and quiet and rarely had visitors, which suited Syd just fine after living for eight months next door to the frat boys from hell.

Ginas mother had come by once or twiceone of those tidy, quietly rich women who wore a giant diamond ring and drove a car that cost more than Syd could make in three very good years as a freelance journalist.

The he-man whod barrelled down the stairs wasnt what Syd would have expected a boyfriend of Ginas to look like. He was older than Gina by about ten years, too, but this could well be more proof that opposites did, indeed, attract.

This old building made so many weird noises during the night. Still, she couldve sworn shed heard a distinctly human sound coming from Ginas apartment. Syd stepped closer to the open door and peeked in, but the apartment was completely dark. Gina?

She listened harder. There it was again. A definite sob. No doubt the son of a bitch whod nearly knocked her over had just broken up with Gina. Leave it to a man to be in such a hurry to be gone that hed leave the door wide open.

Gina, your doors unlatched. Is everything okay in here? Syd knocked more loudly as she pushed the door open even farther.

The dim light from the hallway shone into the living room and

The place was trashed. Furniture knocked over, lamps broken, a bookshelf overturned. Dear God, the man hurrying down the stairs hadnt been Ginas boyfriend. Hed been a burglar.

Or worse

Hair rising on the back of her neck, Syd dug through her purse for her cell phone. Please God, dont let Gina have been home. Please God, let that funny little sound be the ancient swamp cooler or the pipes or the wind wheezing through the vent in the crawl space between the ceiling and the eaves.

But then she heard it again. It was definitely a muffled whimper.

Syds fingers closed around her phone as she reached with her other hand for the light switch on the wall by the door. She flipped it on.

And there, huddled in the corner of her living room, her face bruised and bleeding, her clothing torn and bloody, was Gina.

Syd locked the door behind her and dialed 911.

A LL EARLY-MORNING CONVERSATION in Captain Joe Catalanottos outer office stopped dead as everyone turned to look at Lucky.

It was a festival of raised eyebrows and opened mouths. The astonishment level wouldnt have been any higher if Lieutenant Luke Lucky ODonlon of SEAL Team Tens Alpha Squad had announced he was quitting the units to become a monk.

All the guys were staring at himJones and Blue and Skelly. A flash of surprise had even crossed Crash Hawkens imperturbable face. Frisco was there, too, having come out of a meeting with Joe and Harvard, the teams senior chief. Lucky had caught them all off guard. It wouldve been funnyexcept he wasnt feeling much like laughing.

Look, its no big deal, Lucky said with a shrug, wishing that simply saying the words would make it so, wishing he could feel as nonchalant as he sounded.

No one said a word. Even recently promoted Chief Wes Skelly was uncharacteristically silent. But Lucky didnt need to be telepathic to know what his teammates were thinking.

Hed lobbied loud and long for a chance to be included in Alpha Squads current missiona covert assignment for which Joe Cat himself didnt even know the details. Hed only been told to ready a five-man team to insert somewhere in Eastern Europe; to prepare to depart at a moments notice, prepare to be gone for an undetermined amount of time.

It was the kind of assignment guaranteed to get the heart pumping and adrenaline running, the kind of assignment Lucky lived for.