Star Witness by Mallory Kane Page A

fast as he could, tugging her with him until, out of nowhere, he stepped into a pothole. “Ahh!” he cried as his leg collapsed beneath him. He winced as pain shot up his leg from his ankle. He flexed it gently. To his relief, he could move it.
    “Harte!” Dani knelt beside him as he tried to push himself to his feet. But when he put his weight on the ankle, a sharp throbbing stabbed him to the bone. Damn it. It was sprained. He knew from the first- and second-aid preparation courses he’d taken as a precaution for solo backpacking trips that he needed to wrap it as soon as he could. But right now he had no choice but to grit his teeth and bear it.
    Dani touched his foot with her hand. “Is it broken?” she asked.
    He grabbed her hand. “Get up. We’ve got to go.” He knew the ankle was just sprained, not broken, but it hurt like a son of a bitch even so.
    He pulled her to the edge of the alley. The rain was in his eyes, soaking his clothes and shoes. He tried his best to see whether there was a vehicle waiting for them on the far side, where the alley opened out onto Orange Street.
    As far as he could tell, both the alley and the street beyond it were clear. He wiped his face on the drenched sleeve of his white shirt. It didn’t help.
    He headed across, pulling Dani with him, doing his best not to limp. A pair of glowing orbs was visible in the distance.
    Headlights.
    Dani saw it too. She squeezed his hand. “Harte! A car!”
    “Hurry, before they see us.” The vehicle was approaching much faster than it should have been, considering that the driver had to be barreling blindly through the rain.
    They headed across the street and ducked under an overhang. Without the rain beating down on them, they both leaned gratefully against the side of the building, trying to catch their breaths.
    Suddenly, the whole street lit up as another flash of lightning ripped through the sky, followed by a deafening roar. The rain, which was already a downpour, now fell in sheets.
    “Harte—” Dani cried.
    He blinked as he desperately tried to see through the beating rain. It was dangerous and stupid to stumble blindly around without knowing where they were headed.
    He’d studied the streets near the B & B, but the combination of the rain and the darkness was doubly disorienting, and there was no hope of reading a street sign from more than a few inches away.
    “Harte!” She tugged on his shirtsleeve and stood on tiptoe to get close to his ear. “Look. The headlights aren’t moving.”
    He focused on the pallid, blurry spots of the headlights. They were still. He blinked and looked again. The vehicle was still moving, but more slowly. Then he noticed dark shadows in front of it, heading in their direction. But he couldn’t tell how many. Two? Three?
    “It’s them!” Dani cried.
    Harte tightened his hand around her wrist and jerked her with him as he ran unevenly, gritting his teeth against the pain in his ankle.
    He spotted a darker rectangle in the midst of the gray. The entrance to the alley? God, he hoped so. If he was wrong, they’d be sitting ducks. He sped up, tightening his grip on Dani’s wrist.
    But moving forward through the rain was like pushing through a maze of heavy drapes while fording a stream, because the water rushing around their feet was at least three inches deep, making the roads slippery. And the pain in his ankle wasn’t helping. He stumbled and his fingers slipped off Dani’s wrist.
    That quickly, she was gone.
    Dani lost her footing when her hand slid out of Harte’s grip. Her knee hit the wet pavement, hard. With a small cry she tried to regain her footing. But the road was too slippery; the rain pressed on her shoulders like a heavy hand and she was quickly losing strength from fighting it.
    Where was Harte? She squinted through the rain and held her breath, listening. The drumming roar of the rain was confusing and disorienting. It was impossible to tell where any sound came