Any Way You Want Me - By Jamie Sobrato Page 0,67

unclean, as if just by looking at her he was soiling her.

“Who are you?”

“I’ve been watching you. I know everything about you. I know you’ve been screwing my former partner, when you should have been screwing me. He’s always the one women notice, but I’m the one you’ll remember most.”

His words registered a few at a time. Penetrating her anger, then her fear and sinking in deeper still. He’d been watching her. He was Alex’s former partner. So he was, or had been, an actual FBI agent. And his intentions were far from good.

She tried to imagine how he knew she’d been sleeping with Alex. Had he bugged her apartment? Had he been in contact with Alex? Could it be that they were still working together somehow?

No. He sounded genuinely pissed off at Alex. And she couldn’t let herself believe right now that Alex was capable of that depth of betrayal.

She had to get away.

But for now, while the car was moving too fast for her to make a move, she had to distract him.

“Why me?” she asked. “Why did you pick me?”

“I’ve had my eye on you for years. I saw your picture in the paper when you were a teenage wet dream, and I knew back then that I’d have you someday.”

She bit her lip to keep from saying anything. Of all the reasons she had to be sorry for her childhood mistakes, this one had just gotten bumped up to number one. She knew she’d attracted the attention of some creepy guys, but after all these years, she’d thought that was behind her.

“I wrote to you back then, told you what I wanted to do to you. But you never answered me. So now I’ve had a lot of years to think of all the things I want to do with you.”

Memories of all the creepy e-mails she’d gotten came flooding back to her. She tried to recall if any one stood out to her as more disturbed than the others, but she’d done her best to forget details like that. And she’d always deleted the sleazy messages back then—never dwelled on them.

“Why now? Why wait all this time?”

“I would have left you alone if it weren’t for Alex. He just had to chase after you, just had to stir things up….”

His tone had turned harder, and she watched his one-handed grip on the steering wheel tighten. Her gaze dropped to the gun, cradled in his left hand, and her stomach knotted again. She fought off the urge to vomit.

Focus. She had to stay calm and focused.

Yasmine saw that the next light was green, and her stomach twisted into a tighter knot. She had no idea how she could escape with a gun pointed at her, anyway, unless she caught him off guard. Unless she jumped when he wasn’t expecting it.

Which would be painful as hell, especially considering they were passing cars parked on the curb. Maybe she couldn’t even jump out safely. But she glanced over at the gun, at the grim set of Agent Connelly’s jaw. And she knew he wouldn’t let her go. No one pulled a gun on a person he intended to have a friendly agreement with. No one made sexual threats toward a woman he didn’t intend to harm.

She had to find a place to jump out, maybe at an intersection during a green light.

But her unlocking the door would alert him to her intentions. So she’d have to distract him somehow. She mentally inventoried the contents of her purse for anything that might catch him off guard, but unless she could disarm him with a tube of lipstick, she was out of luck there.

Her gaze settled on a cup of coffee in the cup holder between their seats. Steam rose up through the small hole in the plastic lid. Still hot. But could she reach for it without him getting an itchy trigger finger?

The radio volume was turned low, and a barely audible talk show played over the car’s speakers. Could she turn up the volume without him getting suspicious? Maybe ask to change the station?

Too risky.

They passed a homeless man wearing an orange coat and pushing a child’s stroller piled high with garbage, and Yasmine watched as he wandered into the street. Their car slowed to a stop at a red light, while the homeless man continued making his way between the parked cars and the traffic on the street.

Agent Connelly spotted him, too, just as he headed for