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  Without a backward glance at her surroundings, head bent in the rain and wind, she didn’t see the man come up behind her.

  By the time she did, it was too late.

  Spotting the girl dressed in her school uniform, getting all wet in the drizzle, he left his lamppost to tag along behind her. Who would have guessed the miserable weather would have given him such a gift and one as precious as the cute little redhead? She’d be his reward for the lousy week he’d had. Four days earlier he’d tried to snatch another child only to have the kid scream her head off. Because of the racket she’d made, he’d been forced to let her go before he ever got her to the van. He’d been sloppy. He was already in trouble with the boss. Today, failure wasn’t an option.

  He took a second glimpse at how sweet and young and innocent-eyed this one looked, almost beyond belief. He liked knowing he’d be her first. Just the thought made him realize some things were meant to be.

  As the girl quickened her pace, he did as well, enough so that his long legs overtook hers. But he had to act fast. The girl was getting closer to the train with every step she took. He had no intentions of letting his prize slip away.

  From the downtown skyscrapers came the working stiffs, pouring through the doors in mass exodus as if someone had opened a giant floodgate and given them their first whiff of freedom in five days.

  The sidewalks filled with people, shoulders bunched under umbrellas. They darted to waiting cars or rushed to catch buses or made mad dashes toward Central Link. Still others scurried to a few of the local neighborhood bars hoping to spend the next several hours joined in happy hour solidarity as they kicked off the weekend with friends or co-workers.

  The cold rain beat down making it a perfect night to stay huddled indoors. Whether it was keeping warm in front of a crackling fire at home with family or getting sauced with your colleagues at the local pub, it didn’t matter. Unwinding, relaxing after a long week was expected, especially when it capped off a harried, stress-filled five days at work.

  And because Josh Ander was a creature of habit, he walked among the throng of people on the streets of downtown as if it were a sunny day instead of pouring down rain. Dressed in his everyday garb, jeans, a Polo shirt, and well-worn Nikes, the Seattle native wore his proverbial raincoat like a proud uniform as if the wet were no more than a mild nuisance. He let the water sluice off his long ebony hair that had a tendency to curl up over his collar.

  Craving a cold beer, hoping for a couple hours of mindless drinking with his programmers, he was certain happy hour would put him in a better frame of mind. A mood had been nagging at him that he couldn’t blame on the wintery weather. He’d spent enough time dwelling on the past of late and looked forward to spending the evening with his employees, drinking at their favorite watering hole, Gull’s Pub. He’d learned early on that spending time with his staff in a social gathering was a crucial, even necessary event to keep morale high.

  As founder and CEO of Ander All Games, Josh never missed an opportunity to socialize with what he believed was the backbone of his company. His employees deserved more than benefits, more than bonuses, even though they got those as well. He’d discovered that when he took the time to pick up the tab for several rounds of brews every Friday night, his employees appreciated the attention and responded in kind when he had to ask for extra effort on their part.

  Josh relished hanging out with his gang. In fact, he enjoyed their company as much as they seemed to enjoy his. On some level the gesture worked both ways. After busting their asses, sometimes putting in a solid seventy-hour work week, the very least Josh could do was buy a few rounds of beers. It was Josh’s way of making sure he kept his staff happy—and loose.

  That way when he asked them to step up and produce a newer, better version of the game that had put Ander All in the history books, The Mines of Mars, they’d do it without question, without fanfare. Because of that, Josh considered his employees nothing short of gold. Simply put, they were some of the best and the brightest people he could find.

  By the time he walked through the double doors of the downtown pub, his wire-rims were spotted with raindrops as water dripped from his six-foot, lanky frame and onto the scuffed, hardwood floor. Before he even removed his coat, he began to try and clean off his glasses so he could see. When his programmers gave out a shout to get his attention, his head turned at the greeting. He noted several of the square bar tables had already been pushed together to accommodate their Friday night ritual, which apparently had been underway for some time. Josh’s gray eyes took in the tabletop where two pitchers of brew sat half full. It hadn’t taken long for his team to start without him.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” Josh announced as he took a seat at the end of the table. “Had to finish the package design for Hidden Cities of Mars before Georgia leaves on vacation next week.”

  “How’s that looking?” Gareth Myer asked.

  As one of the newest and youngest members of his team, Gareth perhaps felt the greatest pressure to contribute. At least that was the way Josh saw it. And with Gareth’s next comment, Josh was sure of it. “Did you get my suggestions? I emailed them to you last week. There were some improvements I thought we should make so I included a detailed attachment.”

  Josh smiled, nodded at Gareth’s confidence and enthusiasm. “I did. I appreciate your contribution. I added a few of your recommendations to my proposal. Georgia will consider the ones she finds creative and toss out the rest.”

  “But…it’s your company,” Gareth pointed out. “You…”

  Josh held up a hand, adjusted his glasses. “True. But that’s why I hire people who know what they’re doing. Georgia knows marketing and you know programming. Since you both seem to be good at your jobs and that makes you both an asset to the company in different areas, Ander All benefits and I’m happy. Georgia tells me we’ve already created a ton of online interest with help from our savvy marketing team and the sales department backs that up. It seems the preorders for Hidden Cities are breaking the records for Mines by a wide margin.”

  “That’s because as programmers we’re the rock stars of the game world,” chipped in Todd Graham, second-in-command and another long-haired geek who thought nothing about wearing his brown hair tied back in a ponytail with a white piece of string.

  Josh rolled his eyes. Todd had been with him at the beginning when they’d both taken an idea in a smelly college dormitory at UDub and turned it into a multi-million-dollar company. Even though Todd had been the one to build the platform, it had been Josh who had taken the initiative and scrounged for all the funding. Knowing full well Todd preferred staying in the background and wouldn’t walk into a bank to do a pitch if you paid him, Josh relished his front man role, didn’t mind the limelight. In fact, as long as Todd didn’t like leaving his programming world, their partnership thrived. Plus, Todd’s lack of social skills weren’t exactly conducive to navigating the financial world. Just one of the reasons Todd was left alone to create code in a fantasy realm while Josh handled people and all the details and responsibilities dealing with the day-to-day issues of running a company.

  With another successful launch on the horizon, all eight programmers raised their mugs in mock salute to Josh Ander.

  “Here’s to Hidden Cities of Mars then and working all the bugs out before release. To the best boss in Seattle,” Kyle Weaver added, hoping a little kiss ass would go a long way in landing him the promotion he’d been lobbying so hard for over the better part of six months.

  “Come on guys, you think I don’t know I’m just here to pick up the tab?” Josh teased as he picked up one of the pitchers of dark brew and poured his own first pint of the night.

  “True. But we thought we were pretty clever at hiding that,” Kyle tossed back good-naturedly.

  Josh finally hung his wet coat on the back of his chair and settled down to shoot the bull and swap war stories with these people he considered the heart of his company.

  They kicked a
round new game ideas. You couldn’t get programmers and geeks together for any length of time and the talk not turn to planning and designing another type of futuristic game. They all offered input.

  “You know,” Gareth Myer began, “the Internet’s all abuzz over the sightings of a lone wolf on the prowl in urban Seattle. That would make a helluva game.”

  “I read about that,” Todd chipped in. “In the area near the marketplace. Very strange reports. The sightings always occur at night under a full moon.”

  “Oh come on,” Kyle chortled. “They probably saw coyotes. The paper did a story a few months back on how coyotes are hunting pets in King County. Cats and small dogs aren’t safe.”

  But Gareth shook his head stubbornly. “No, these reports are in addition to the coyote sightings. Don’t believe me? Here,” Gareth said as he pulled out his cell phone to show Kyle all the websites. But it was Josh who took the phone out of his hands and stared at the small screen. He read the articles in fascination.

  “Maybe we could design a game around the wolf, trying to avoid humans while at the same time looking for food in an urban setting,” Josh suggested.

  “Sounds boring,” Todd retorted. “We’d need something to spice it up, like a gorgeous female warrior that accompanies the wolf everywhere he goes.” With that, the chatter took off to how exactly they could accomplish that.

  Two hours later, after doing his part to down two more pitchers, Josh looked up to see Michelle Reardon sidle up to stand beside their table. Michelle, an aggressive five-foot-three-inch blonde annoyance he’d been trying to let down gently for the past three weeks without success, stood a couple of feet away, glaring at him. She’d been a friend of Annabelle’s, someone who’d showed up on his doorstep one night four months ago after he’d gone on a drinking binge. In his drunken state, he’d taken Michelle to bed. Huge mistake on his part. Something he had regretted since the morning after. Since the first of the year she’d been doing her damnedest to move in with him, an event he had no intentions of letting take place. The fact that they’d slept together more times since then, only made Josh more aware of what an error in judgment he’d made.

  Because over the past three weeks Michelle had upped the ante.

  She had taken to showing up uninvited at his office, worming her way into a few social gatherings around town, and like now, popping up unexpectedly at the pub. Gull’s was his bar, had been for almost a decade. He’d ordered his first legal pint here. He’d be damned if he’d let Michelle Reardon ruin his only watering hole.

  He didn’t need a stalker. No surprise she’d followed him here. She somehow always knew his schedule better than he did. He’d made a mistake, a big one, but that didn’t mean he was willing to keep making that same slipup over and over again by letting her win each round.

  “Hello, Michelle,” he managed in a low voice.

  “Hi there, Josh. You should have told me you were coming here for happy hour.”

  Josh had also discovered Michelle could lie with the best of them. “Why? I’m here every Friday night, rain or shine. You know that.”

  When his developers started to make room for her at the table, it pissed him off. “Michelle, we need to talk.”

  “Oh, Josh, relax. I’m just having a beer with you guys. No big deal.” She looked around the table and said, “Look, there’s plenty.” To prove her point, she picked up his pint and drank a long sip. “You’ll never even know I’m here.”

  At that moment, Josh realized he was done. He wanted her out of his life and tonight it was now or never. But it wasn’t his style to make a scene in a public place and especially in front of his staff. “Fine. We’ll talk―later.”

  Another couple of hours flew by and he did his best to ignore Michelle, tried to concentrate on listening to the guys relate tales from the salt mines. The stories about how they’d managed to put together code, found and fixed bugs over the course of a week, became a series of jokes. And when Josh glanced Michelle’s way, it made him giddy to see that she acted bored with it all. Nothing pleased him more. Maybe she’d leave on her own. But as the evening progressed, she stubbornly stuck.

  When the talk turned to spouses, stories about their significant others, their kids, babies, even due dates, Josh saw Michelle’s persistence start to falter for real. The conversation had hit the highs and lows, the ins and outs and Michelle showed all the signs of wavering.

  After draining his glass, Josh got up to go to the bathroom. Swaying slightly from all the booze, he made his way to the back of the pub and into the men’s room. While standing at the urinal, he heard the door open to his right and glancing over his shoulder, saw Michelle enter the restroom.

  “Goddamn it, can’t I take a piss without you following me in here? Get out!”

  “Come on, Josh, how about a quickie?” She moved toward one of the empty stalls. “I know you want me,” she offered suggestively as she started undoing the buttons on her dress. “You’ve proved it to me over these past months.”

  “Get out of here!” he yelled again. “Get out, now!” he repeated. He quickly finished up his business, flushed the toilet and zipped up his pants. When she simply stood there, he stormed past her and out of the men’s room into the small corridor leading to either the front of the pub where his friends waited or the back and the door to the alleyway.

  By damn, he wasn’t taking this anymore. No way would he go back to the table, not now, not back to where Michelle could latch on and cling like a gnarly vine. He was not going to buckle and take her home with him tonight.

  Spotting the back exit and needing the fresh air to cool off, he slipped through the back door. The stench of stale beer and garbage hit him immediately and pissed him off even further.

  Damn it, the pub was his place to unwind on a Friday night and be left alone. Michelle had no business coming here, intruding on his turf.

  Pacing back and forth he drew in deep breaths, sucking in cold, damp, smelly air. He wished he had a cigarette even though he’d given them up after meeting Annabelle. Damn Michelle, anyway. He’d taken her to bed because he’d been lonely. But even having Annabelle in common wasn’t enough of a connection for either of them, not by a long shot. Couldn’t she see that? In all these months there had been no chemistry between them, not an ounce. Hadn’t she seen that, too?

  He decided what he needed was a pot of strong coffee to help him get sober before he headed home. But when he turned to go back inside, a noise at the end of the alleyway had him stopping, turning around.

  Four men of various sizes appeared from behind a Dumpster. But one stood out, grungy, taller than the rest, taller than Josh with the look of the street about him. In a matter of seconds, the four guys had Josh surrounded.

  In his annoyed state, Josh suddenly realized how far he had wandered from the back door.

  In the glow from a streetlight, he saw the glint of a knife as the taller man came within three feet. “Hand over your cash,” the man demanded quietly as he looked Josh up and down. When he caught sight of the Rolex on Josh’s wrist, his lips curved. “Well, well, what have we got here?”

  One of the other men added, “See it. Let’s have the watch. And that ring. Come on, we don’t have all night.”

  Josh wasn’t about to risk his life for eighty bucks and a wristwatch he could easily replace. Nor was he going to fight these guys since he happened to be three sheets to the wind and unsteady on his feet. But damn it, a man had his pride. He brought the cash out of his pockets and undid the clasp on his watch. But when it came to pulling off his wedding ring, he hesitated. “Let me keep this. It has sentimental value.”

  “Bullshit. That’s what they all say.”

  “No, really,” Josh countered, doing his best to explain. “My wife died last year. This is the ring she gave me the day she married me. There’s an inscription.”

  As if to prove a point, one of the other men got tired of listening to the drunk get all sappy. All at once, the thug threw a punch, wh
ich Josh took full force on his chin. The blow knocked him back a step. It took Josh a couple more steps backward before he was able to right himself.

  Another man chose that moment to try and wrench the ring off his finger. At the same time the man wielding the knife made a jabbing motion toward Josh’s chest.

  Outnumbered, Josh managed to dodge one jab but saw the men had no plans to leave without getting the ring. Josh watched the knife dart in then out, up and down. The taller mugger seemed determined to scare him. Shit. He was in deep shit, he realized as he finally lost his balance and went down, slamming into the ground butt first.

  All at once, she came out of nowhere dressed in black and leather.

  Josh watched through bleary eyes as the scene before him unfolded.

  The woman warrior waded into the street gang armed with nothing more than what looked like a toy lightsaber. But man, could she wield that thing.

  Josh looked on as his avenging angel whacked heads with her nightstick, used her long legs to land kicks to the belly, the head, and anywhere else she could reach. She hit like a linebacker, shoved bodies out of the way like a running back.

  At one point, her leg swept up in an arc in a perfect karate kick. Her boot made contact with the tall guy’s arm. The knife he held in his hand flew through the air. Josh heard the clatter of metal as the blade hit the concrete.

  But the warrior seemed too busy to notice. Her next move sent one of the guys airborne. His body met up with the brick wall. She pinged another into the Dumpster like a pinball. Josh watched as the thug slid down in a heap. The last one took a dive toward her and paid for his efforts when she dodged the blow, used her nightstick to whack him in the back and then shoved him with a foot, sending him head first against a concrete abutment guarding the garbage bins.