Mind Me, Milady by Anne Rothman & Kenneth Hicks
ISBN: 9781622060269 (ebook)
ASIN: B00IVV22AG (Kindle edition)
Publisher: Barbarian Books
Publication date: November 2013
As the book begins, the life of thirty-five year old Eve Petersen is in upheaval. She is an attorney who is in the process of winding up her recently deceased mother’s law practice, and she has just broken up with her control-freak boyfriend. She now has a new client to protect: a sweet but troubled young woman named Susan, who is struggling to understand both her foggy memories of the past and her constant sense of unease and danger in the present. And, as if all that weren’t enough, Kate herself keeps receiving unsettling phone calls from an Upper East Side serial rapist who has named himself “the Gentleman.” Each time he calls, the Gentleman casually discusses his latest victim in his eerily even, British-accented voice, hinting all the while that Kate will be the next one.
Read an excerpt:
It was almost noon when he looked out to the street and saw her stepping from the cab. A familiar pounding rush ran through him—a blood rush of fear, of anticipation.
He could hear her running up the stairs as he had expected she would. She was an athlete, after all, and desperate for this apartment. Rent controlled, one bedroom, East Side, dirt-cheap. Run, Natalie, run.
On the third floor she saw the door was open and came right in. This was one of the reasons he was drawn to her—her confidence, her self-esteem. There was not a tentative bone in her body.
“Hello?” she called. “It’s me. Natalie.” She looked around, pleased by what she saw, no doubt; floors newly sanded and stained, walls freshly painted, kitchen appliances all scrubbed clean. For the rent he had quoted her, it was more than a steal. It was highway robbery. And she was carrying cash for a promised “bonus,” as she put it, because a bribe would be so tacky.
She stepped into the bedroom and heard nothing as he slipped the wire over her lovely head, pulling it tight around her lovely neck. She struggled, but not for long. A knee pressed against the back of her legs forced her to the floor. Lovely legs.
“Mind me, Milady,” he whispered in her ear in the British accent he affected for occasions like this. “Mind the Gentleman.”
There was no choice. Denied breath, she was seconds from dying.
Quickly, he placed a wide piece of tape over her eyes and another over her mouth. Two longer pieces bound her wrists and ankles. Only then did the wire slacken. Air rushed in through flared nostrils. What was she thinking? Was she grateful just to be alive? And how many more times would he have to bring her to the very edge of death before she learned who was in control?
His hand disappeared inside her jacket. She tried to pull away. A whimper emerged from beneath the tape.
“Mind me, Milady,” he repeated. “Mind your master.”
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Also available at Barbarian Books
