Primitive Secrets Read Online Free

would be safer if he were blind, disoriented, and in disabling pain. Unconscious would be ideal.
    She wasn’t going to give up her brand new laptop easily. No fucking way. She’d just paid it off.
    She raised her knee into the guy’s face and felt what might have been a crunch. But the stocking mask padded his face and he was still standing, so she raised the laptop case over the back of his head. She had centered her weight over the bent-over figure to let him have it with whatever she could when a man’s voice shouted from a distance.
    â€œStorm!” Heels clattered across the concrete floor.
    The attacker, doubled over, scuttled away like a crippled crustacean. Storm lowered the laptop and leaned against the car.
    â€œYou just saved my computer,” she said to a gasping Hamlin.
    He dropped his own briefcase and reached for her. “Jesus! Are you okay?”
    Storm slumped against him for a minute. The adrenaline was fading and she was left with shaking knees and a face pounding with pain. Hamlin put his arm around her for support, but she struggled upright. “I’m all right. Really.”
    Hamlin held her at arm’s length. “What’s all over your blouse, then?”
    Storm looked down. “Shit,” she mumbled.
    â€œFortunately, it’s only blood. I got my nose creamed like that once, too.” Hamlin took her gently by the arm. “Come on, you need to be looked at. Who’s your doctor?”
    â€œSame as yours, probably. Remember, Wang got a corporate rate at that new HMO.” Storm stopped and looked around. “Maybe we should call the police.”
    â€œLet’s do it from my car.”
    Storm sagged in the leather bucket seat of Hamlin’s Porsche. Her adrenaline rush had waned and all the energy had left her limbs. She didn’t feel as if she could lift a finger, but when Hamlin handed her a cell phone, she took it and managed 911.
    After explaining to the cops that they should meet her at the emergency room, she hung up and looked over at Hamlin, who was jamming his parking card into the exit slot for employees. “Mind if I make another call?” she asked. “I was supposed to meet my friend Leila and her son Robbie for dinner.”
    â€œHuh? I hope you’re canceling.”
    She answered Hamlin with a mute nod and spoke into the phone. “Hi Leila, I got mugged.” She could hear the fatigue in her own voice. “No, you should see the other guy. Really. Okay, I’ll see you later.” She handed the phone to Hamlin. “They’re meeting us at the ER, too.”
    Leila and Robbie burst through the wide glass door to the emergency room two minutes behind Storm and Hamlin, who were standing at the admissions desk.
    â€œGeez, Storm,” Robbie said with wide eyes. “You look bad.”
    Storm pulled away the ice pack an ER nurse had given her and peered at him from slitted eyes. That comment had multiple meanings in ten-year-old speak.
    He grinned and touched the ice bag. “I mean, you’re gonna have two black eyes. Way cool. I’ve only ever had one.”
    Leila dragged him away by the neck of his tee-shirt. “Tomorrow, you’re going to look much bet—”
    â€œWorse. You’re gonna look like you went skydiving without a parachute.” An ER doctor loomed over Storm and squinted at her. “Come here and sit down, please.”
    He poked at her nose and stopped a whole two seconds after she yelped and tears crowded her eyes. Then he shone a light into her blurred and sensitive orbs. She had to tell him how many fingers he held up and who the Vice-President was. “You’ll start to look better in about a week. At least your nose isn’t displaced. We don’t have to set it.”
    So much for bedside manners. Storm tried to glare him down, give him stink-eye that would tell him what she thought of his alleged compassion, but he’d moved on to