Her desperate cry came out more whisper than scream. Terror knotted her throat, so instantaneous and bone-chilling that her mind could not grasp what was happening. That man with the terrifying light eyes…but he wasn’t alone. “Now you just shut up and take it easy, lady,” he hissed to her.
Through a frantic blur, she saw three more men surrounding Craig, and yet another standing behind her tormentor. Horror bubbled over. They were all young and filthy and reeking of liquor, their eyes all similarly glazed. The one who’d taken her on was the worst, with his long, stringy blond hair and acid smile…evil, her mind hissed. She tried to lurch up and felt the heel of his hand slam into her chest.
“Sonia! Run-!”
Through the tangle of limbs, she caught Craig’s eyes; for an instant he looked insane with panic for her. His shouted curse brought the pack on him. She heard the terrible sound of fist connecting with bone, and desperately tried to run to him. Her arm was wrenched from its socket, bent back and behind her, and she was forced to stumble into the blond man’s chest.
“Let her go, you-”
Pain stabbed her shoulder as the blond twisted her arm yet more tightly, cursing. “Keep him quiet, I said!” Craig was being pulled to his feet, two men holding his arms. One was trying to rifle through his pockets. Craig kicked out, and there was a confused rush of motion as he tried to wrench free from his captors. “Let her go, you-” he bellowed again.
A fist connected with his face.
Sonia screamed. Before the sound was halfway from her mouth, a filthy hand clamped over it, and her arm was again yanked so roughly that she knew the blond man was more than willing to break it. She cringed-inside, outside, all over.
“Fifty bucks,” one of Craig’s tormentors called out disgustedly to the man who was holding her.
“What the hell. Get his watch.”
“Sonia-”
The blond laughed. The sound made Sonia swallow with revulsion. “The man sure don’t seem to like it much when we touch his lady, now, does he? Hold him, I told you,” he snapped roughly to the others. His voice changed from command to insinuating drawl. “Maybe the lady’s got a little something of value.”
A flush of nausea heated Sonia’s face as rough fingers tried to burrow into the pockets of her jeans. She carried no purse; there had been no need to bring one. In the first pocket, all the blond found was a quarter, and for one insane instant Sonia felt the hysterical urge to laugh. Never go anywhere without a coin to make a phone call in an emergency, her mother had told her a thousand times. Sonia wasn’t aware she’d never broken the habit.
The blond kept glancing at Craig as he checked the other three pockets. “Man, look at him go,” he chortled to the others. God, stay still, she wanted to beg Craig; stay still, they just want money. But her husband hadn’t stopped struggling from the instant he’d seen the blond grab her.
One rough hand dug into her waist; the other again wrenched her arm behind her until tears blinded her eyes. Nausea clogged her throat; the terror was so acute she was losing her breath, sobbing without even being aware of it. So dark, so black a night, and the smile on the stringy blond’s face…He wanted to hurt…someone. He was angry they didn’t have more money, and he was crazy and he was loaded to the gills.
His free hand crept over her stomach. “Hey, man, she keep anything worth hiding in her blouse?”
He was talking to Craig.
“Don’t,” Sonia whispered desperately. “Please. Please…”
The next second took years. That filthy hand deliberately crawled slowly up from her waist. She saw Craig’s eyes just those few yards distant from her, insane with rage, brilliant with fury…No! her mind screamed to him. No, Craig, don’t! Don’t…but before the hand could touch her breast, Craig had broken free from the others and launched himself at the blond.
“Get him!”
A keening moan escaped from Sonia’s throat. In a tangle of limbs and fists, Craig was buried beneath the other three. The blond laughed, and Sonia felt terror for herself shoved aside in her brain, an insidious horror taking its place. They were going to kill Craig. She could already see the wet, shiny red liquid on his face. Blood. If some instinct of self-preservation had kept her still before, that instinct died, replaced by another. Desperately, she began to kick the blond; her nails became deadly claws; her teeth snapped at the arm of her tormentor like the fangs of a wounded animal. He grunted, his arms loosening long enough for her to jerk free.
For an instant. She didn’t make it to Craig’s side. Her face connected with the damp, hard earth, the breath knocked out of her, as the blond tackled her and tossed her hard and flat on the ground. Then he flipped her on her back. Her scarf had disappeared; her opal must have glinted in the moonlight, because she felt the chain being ripped off, slicing a quick, sharp pain at her neck.
“Hell. Split,” the leader ordered. “They haven’t got a damn thing worth all this hassle anyway.”
Like creatures of the night, they took off at a dead run, silent, part of the shadows, and then gone, disappearing as if they had never been. Only one sound pierced the lonely night, the choking whimpers that came out of Sonia’s throat, sobs very close to hysteria.
Soaked from the dew-drenched grass, she was freezing, shaking like a mad thing. Sharp, darting pains shot up the arm the blond mugger had wrenched so badly. She had to move, had to get to Craig, yet nausea still gripped her, and she felt a terrible need to curl up in a ball, to hide. Human beings-they were actually human beings, she thought dazedly. She knew violence only as a statistic in the newspapers-it had never touched her life before.
Tears streaming from her eyes, Sonia jerked herself up to a sitting position. A razor-sharp pain promptly sliced through the back of her head, and an unexpected dizziness overwhelmed her with potent waves of nausea. Her shoulder…She saw Craig lying not five feet from her and forgot her own pain. He was still. There was blood on his face and his legs were sprawled and his skin looked ghost-gray in the moonlight. Damn her tears! She couldn’t see through the blur…
Stumbling to her feet, she staggered over to her husband and knelt down, roughly brushing her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, refusing to let any more tears fall. They didn’t. She no longer had time for them.
She put her ear to Craig’s chest and her hand on the pulse in his wrist at the same time. That terrible knot loosened its hold on her heart. He was alive. But he was so terrifyingly still…His heartbeat seemed shallow, unsteady. Gently probing with her fingers, Sonia found a swelling mound at the back of his head. The blood on his face was from his nose-had they broken it? He made a low, guttural sound when her fingers gently tested his ribs, then a small spot beneath them. The bastards! The total bastards…
“Craig?”
But his eyelids didn’t even flutter. Frantically, she glanced around. Neither blankets nor bandages miraculously appeared. There was no one, not a hint of sound indicating another person might be near. Well, she was not going to leave him. Nothing could make her leave him; she couldn’t leave him…any more than she could continue to let him lie there motionless on the damp, wet grass, unconscious.
“Craig?” Gentle fingers smoothed the hair back from his forehead, gentle, calm fingers. Reassuring. “You’re going to be fine. I won’t be gone a minute. Just long enough to get help. You’ll be fine, darling…”
She touched him one more time before she forced herself to stand up. A thousand years ago she’d learned first-aid skills. Too long. Were the feet supposed to be raised for shock? For concussion? Could she do him harm if she tried to drag him? Dammit, she couldn’t possibly leave him like this.