Confer, Lorelei - Deadly Deception (Siren Publishing Classic) Read Online Free Page A

relaxing but then retightened.
    He looked away from her while his hold loosened once again. When he didn’t turn to look back at her right away, she chanced a glance. She wanted to see what made him smile without drawing his attention. Keeping her head still, she moved her eyes to the side. A sleek, shiny black limousine made its way toward them.
    “Oh, shit,” Joe mumbled as he pulled her into nearby bushes at the entrance into the park.
    She looked up in time to see a police car pulling in at the curb right behind the limo. Joe stared back and forth between the limo and the cops. He slackened his hold on her arm a little more each time his attention lapsed until he had let go of her arm completely. He started to cross the street toward the limo.
    And then it happened. Joe wasn’t even halfway to the limo when it suddenly started to move. It moved ahead and turned the corner and left, the police car following close behind, leaving Joe left standing in the middle of the street, his hands held out to the sides.
    As soon as Joe left her side, Isabella saw her window of opportunity open, and expand. And she captured it.
    No way was she going to run to the cops for help. She had to depend on herself for survival. If her father had done that, he would probably still be alive today. There were just too many dirty cops, and she couldn’t trust any of them. Not anymore.
    She took off running for some woods on her right side. She ran, trying to be as quiet as possible so no one would hear her while hoping to get a good head start. It felt great to be running again, but because she had been lying around for so many days, her lungs and leg muscles soon began to burn, to cramp. She slowed down, slouched behind a tree, and took in big gulps of air while clutching at the stitch of pain in her side. She sank to the ground, listened for and heard the sounds of trampling brush behind her.
    She heard Joe hollering to Amanda. “She went ov’r here, this way. We hafta find the bitch before she gets away. Hurry up! Boss is gonna kill us if we lose her.”
    Isabella knew she had to run and keep on running in order to get away, no matter what. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going but she wasn’t going to let them catch her, not this time. She began running in the opposite direction of the sound of their voices, crawling and jumping, scrambling over and under fallen trees, shrubs, and bushes. Her shirt caught on a bush and ripped along the side, but she kept running. She fell, tearing her pants in the knees, but she didn’t care. She scrambled up and started running. Her lungs burned, and her side felt about to split. She was unable to take a deep breath. She kept running.
    Eventually she slowed her pace and listened to the sounds behind her. The sounds were farther away, but she could still hear twigs shattering under stomping feet.
    Exhaustion began to set into her tired, burning muscles. Her mouth pursed tightly as her tongue swept her dry mouth. She could barely swallow. She felt as if she had been running for hours.
    The sun began to set, casting ominous shadows through the tall trees. She didn’t want to have to spend the night in the woods. She would have to find somewhere to hide-soon.
    She reached down deep within herself for more strength, took a cleansing breath, and began running, this time setting a slower pace.
    She glanced up from the path and thought she saw a dim light. Tired, she thought her imagination was playing tricks on her. She slowed down and, wiping the sweat running down her face on her sleeve, drew in a couple of deep breaths. Again, she looked and the light remained—like a beacon in the night—the promise of civilization. She stumbled toward it.
    As she got closer, she saw the light coming from a long, narrow, horizontal window on the end wall of a huge house located in a large clearing. She searched the side away from the woods, found a door and turned the knob. Damn! Locked .
    She poked