Crazy Wild Read Online Free Page A

definitely wasn't going to go tonight.
    He scanned the library again, wondering whether or not Dominika Starkova had already gotten out, when she suddenly came into view—a dark-haired “boy” wearing an ugly brown sweater and a nondescript gray coat, riding down the escalator with her nose stuck in a book.
    Hell, the escalator was going to dump her right at Reinhard's feet. He started across the lobby, determined to get to her first.
     
    CASTING a quick glance up from underneath her lashes, Cordelia “Cody” Kaplan saw and instantly recognized Reinhard Klein. She swore under her breath, her already racing heart taking a quantum leap into overdrive.
    Relax. Relax. Relax, damn it,
she told herself, trying to ignore the sudden sick feeling churning to life in her stomach.
Stay cool. Don't give in to panic.
The moment she'd seen Bruno the Bull, she'd known Reinhard would be somewhere in the library, waiting for her. Bruno was Reinhard's favorite dog, and the two were never very far apart.
    So suck it up and tough it out.
All she had to do was act natural, make no odd movements or show any interest in anything other than her book, and slip into the fiction stacks as quickly as possible. She could make her escape through the service entrance on the north side of the building. Chances were Reinhard wouldn't recognize the scruffy kid on the escalator as Sergei Patrushev's club princess from Prague.
    It would be a helluva stretch for anyone. Really. She knew what she looked like, and she did not look anything like Dominika Starkova. Not tonight.
    Not ever again—so help her God.
    Chances were she'd get out of this mess alive.
    She swore again, silently, not inclined to self-delusion. She was in up to her neck, and the chances of her getting out of her current mess in one piece were slim and getting frighteningly slimmer. How in the world had they found her? Denver, Colorado, was nowhere, and she was clean as Cordelia Kaplan, perfectly clean, an all-American girl living an all-American life on a set of perfectly forged papers.
    An all-American girl who was running out of places to hide.
    A little cover might have helped, but the snowstorm outside had kept people away from the library. The place was practically deserted, which left her alone to run the Reinhard gauntlet.
    Her stomach clenched at the thought.
    They'd danced together one night in Prague, at a club called Radost FX, and she'd turned down his offer of a more intimate association. But Reinhard Klein was used to getting what he wanted.
    The warehouse in Karlovy Vary.
A trickle of fear ran down her spine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his gaze shift. Suddenly, he was looking right at her . . . but he wasn't seeing who he was looking for, not yet.
    She considered running back up the escalator, but discarded the idea as too risky. It would only draw attention to her, and she figured she had a better than fifty-fifty chance of cruising by Reinhard as an ill-kempt boy.
    God, even one other person in the main hall would have been helpful. Someone, anyone, to draw attention away from her, even if only for a couple of seconds.
    In the next moment, she got her wish, but in the worst possible way. A noisy commotion above her drew her head around and made her blanch. Bruno had boarded the escalator and was pounding his way down the moving stairs behind her.
    The natural reaction would be to get out of the big man's way, but for the space of a heartbeat she was frozen, the last of the stairs slipping out from under her and Bruno bearing down on her.
    “Hey, kid,” someone said at the bottom of the escalator, the voice casual and friendly, low-pitched.
    She jerked her head around, the stairs came to an end, and a large hand came down on her shoulder, making sure she didn't fall.
    Oh, God
. Her breath stopped. She'd been caught by—of all people—the angel-faced surfer god from the third floor, the one who'd been reading newspapers all evening.
    “Hey, watch it,