.

world. The sense of euphoria she was trying to maintain blended well with the music she was listening to. Consequently, she took no notice of the white van that abruptly stopped less than a foot away from her, didn’t hear the passenger side doors opening and didn’t see the two men dressed in black jerseys, black slacks and ski masks who swiftly leaped out of the vehicle.

      Eyes intent on the traffic signal, Pru was completely unaware of the men until the two grabbed her, one from the side, the other from behind, and attempted to drag her into the van.

      Startled, Pru reacted instantly. Twisting, she bit the hand that was covering her mouth.

      The assailant who was behind her and whose fleshy palm now had an almost perfect impression of her teeth howled in pain. He jerked his hand back, uncovering her mouth.

      “She bit me!” he cried, furious. “The damn bitch bit me!”

      “Suck it up,” the man to his right snapped.

      Pru’s semi-freedom lasted less than half a heart-beat as the other man’s grasp on her tightened. Though she twisted and bucked, it was useless. Within thirty seconds of the initial encounter, she’d been packed away in the rear of the van like baggage. Even before the doors were shut, the vehicle was whisking away in the opposite direction of her apartment.

      The only minor triumph she’d attained, other than leaving her mark on the tallest of the three kidnappers, was that she’d managed to drop her MP3 player where they’d grabbed her. It was the only clue she could leave. The player, a gift from her stepmother, had her initials on it.

      Now all that had to happen was for the device to remain unnoticed until someone her father sent came along to retrace her steps.

      She tried not to think of the odds.

      “What do you want?” she demanded, seething.

      She was being manhandled and for two cents, given half an opportunity, she would have cut the hearts out of all three of their chests. Her hands were already bound behind her and one of the three men was crouching in front of her, wrapping duct tape around her ankles. She felt like a damned Christmas turkey about to be shoved into the oven.

      “For you to shut up!” the assailant she’d bitten snapped.

      Before she could retort, the man who’d been binding her feet rose to his knees and pressed a length of gray, sticky duct tape across her mouth. “That should do it,” the man told his companion proudly as he began to rise to his feet.

      Before he could, Pru threw her weight forward as she jerked her head down, hitting her forehead against his with all the force she could muster. It was enough to catch him off guard and send him staggering backward. He fell on his butt as he cried out in pain, then began to curse. A hail of expletives rained down on her.

      And then a sudden, searing pain exploded not from the initial point of contact on her forehead, but from the back of her skull.

      The world went black before she could struggle to hold the smothering blanket at bay.

      The last thought Pru had was that she was dead.

      Chapter 2

      When he wasn’t working, Joshua Lazlo found himself at loose ends. While his professional life was precision personified, his private life was the exact opposite.

      He had no doubt that if his uncle Corbett had not plucked him out of the social whirl he had resided in from the tender age of sixteen, making a tentative offer to him to join his “group,” his life would have been a complete and utter shamble. More than likely, he would be well on his way to becoming this generation’s version of his father. Which probably would have been more than his poor mother, Abigail, could stand.

      Ambitious, his father, Edward Lazlo, had made a small name for himself in Parliament over the years. He’d made a bigger name for himself among the ladies. A scandalous womanizer, he never allowed the fact that he was married to interfere with his actual life’s ambition: to bed as many women as humanly possible before he died.

      Not that there was anything wrong with that, Joshua thought, a half smile playing on his lips as he made his way into the bathroom. Though not exactly an admirable avocation, it did have its merits.

      There were, after all, a great many beautiful women in the world.

      But the fact that these affairs, after all this time, still bothered his poor mother, despite her rather sad little charade that she was unaware of her husband’s philandering, bothered him in turn. There was no love lost between his father and him.

      A man shouldn’t marry if he had no intention of remaining faithful.

      Which was why, Joshua reasoned, not for the first time as he stepped into the sleek, black onyx tiled shower stall, he was never going to get married. The world was filled with an endless supply of delightful women with long limbs, soft curves and willing bodies.

      And he’d never met one he wanted to spend more than a weekend with.

      Joshua turned on the water, moving the lever toward the hot side. It was his day off, but there was no reason to spend it with the scent of Miranda still clinging to his body.

      Not unless Miranda was close at hand, he added silently.

      When he was on assignment, he could work round the clock. Adrenaline pounding, he needed little to no sleep to keep him going. But on his days off, he changed completely, sleeping in, allowing the sun to rise without him.

      He supposed it could be called recharging his batteries. Or viewed as being the sloth he could so easily revert to had his uncle not seen something in him and turned him into a crusader.

      Not that they were associated with any specific higher power or world government. The agents who comprised the Lazlo Group were essentially free-lancers. It gave his uncle the privilege of being able to turn down whatever work he didn’t choose to do.

      When all was said and done, the causes they took up, the people they aided, could all be found on the side of freedom and democracy.

      With the possible exception of the time eighteen months ago when he’d had to save the wife and son of the Chinese ambassador from a radical fringe group of would-be terrorists. It had been touch and go for a harrowing thirty-six hours before he brought them both to safety. Since then an expensive bottle of vintage wine had arrived at his door the first of every month like clockwork.

      He liked to think that he had accomplished a bit of détente in rescuing the ambassador’s family. Not to mention sending up the price of vintage wine.

      “Maybe you’re not as worthless as the old man says you are,” he murmured under his breath, sticking his head under the steady stream of water and removing the shampoo from his hair.

      The old man, of course, was his father, who had never had a good word to say to him from the time when such things had actually mattered. Now, all his father’s disdain meant to Joshua was that he was doing something right with his life. He knew that his father found it particularly galling that he was working with his uncle and that he quietly admired the man. There was no denying that Edward Lazlo was a jealous man, jealous of any attention not sent directly his way.

      The pulsating noise slowly wove its way through the sound of the shower’s running water.

      Joshua stopped, listening. Shutting off the water, he angled his head to hear better.

      Ringing.

      It was his cell phone.

      The next second, Joshua swiftly left the confines of his shower, marking his path with splotches of water that dripped off his body as he retrieved his phone from the nightstand where he’d left it. Day off or not, he knew better than to ignore the phone when it rang.

      He’d had the presence of mind, just before falling into bed last night, to plug the phone in. It was still tethered to his charger.

      Joshua didn’t bother disconnecting the device as he picked it up. Flipping the