THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

sounding cold when August weather was anything but.
    “I should have asked for a hurricane instead of a thunderstorm,” she muttered under her breath. But hurricanes weren’t as prevalent along the North Carolina coast as lightning storms. All she needed was a brief power outage. Not that she had any reason to believe in divine intervention at this point in her life.
    A short life if she didn’t get out of this place now.
    She rolled a golf-ball-shaped compass in her hand, a dangerous stress reliever. She’d stolen it from his office, and to hell with any guilt she felt.
    It would get her fingers snapped like twigs if Mason caught her with his solid gold desk toy.
    No chance he’d let her off easy.
    She’d learned that the hard way. Just like everything else in her life.
    Mason Lorde, her dream employer. The bastard had turned into her worst nightmare. But with a conviction in her past, who could blame her for jumping at a chance for a job with a highly reputed firm? Assisting the manager in one of the warehouses for Lorde’s revered import enterprise beat cleaning toilets or scavenging aluminum cans any day.
    She’d thought.
    Brilliant light flashed across the heavens, illuminating the edges of the brass bed at her shoulder. She glanced at the burgundy silk duvet covering the lump she’d built with pillows. Would that gain her an extra minute?
    Maybe. She hated maybe. Reminded her how often her worthless court-appointed attorney had spouted that word.
    Maybe you’ll receive leniency for a first offense.
    Maybe you’ll get out early on good behavior.
    Neither happened.
    Maybe men would stop screwing her over at some point, but she wasn’t counting on that, either.
    Angel consulted her black plastic sports watch.
    In sixteen minutes Kenner would begin his two a.m. round.
    On the dot.
    Unlike the rest of the security, the knuckle-dragging commander now in charge of Mason’s thirty-room mansion lacked any tolerance. Kenner had been brought in from another of Mason’s locations to replace Jeff, who’d overseen the property for the past ten years, according to his last screaming words.
    He’d pleaded for his life.
    Then Mason had ... nausea rolled through her stomach.
    Another glance at her timepiece. Fifteen minutes, forty-eight seconds left.
    She reached for the doorknob, desperate to flee, but paused short of touching it. She had no allies beyond patience. It wasn’t as if Kenner would repeat Jeff’s mistake. Poor Jeff, too slow on the uptake to be hanging with a bunch of killers. He’d smoked one too many cigarettes a week ago while she’d scurried down the Italian marble hallways in a fevered attempt to escape.
    One of the other guards had caught her.
    Mason didn’t tolerate mistakes. He’d ordered everyone to witness Jeff’s punishment. Angel, in particular. She still had bruises from where she’d been dragged outside and shoved up front for the show being performed for her benefit.
    The citizens of nearby Raleigh would never believe what went on inside this private compound belonging to one of their most prominent city businessmen.
    Just over six feet tall, with thick golden hair and a champion’s physique, Mason, the Nordic antichrist, had calmly raised his .357 magnum revolver to Jeff’s head and squeezed the trigger.
    A deafening explosion. Then blood. So much blood .
    She clenched her fists. The horror lived on, burned on the insides of her eyelids.
    And the smell. Who could forget the god-awful coppery stench of fresh blood? Her stomach roiled again.
    Hard to believe a week had passed. Seemed like just minutes ago. She squeezed her eyes shut and saw it all again. The hole in Jeff’s forehead. His eyes locked open in horror. The back of his head ... she swallowed and took a breath. She’d carry that brutal image for as long as she lived.
    Along with the responsibility for his death.
    And all because of a job she’d thought was a godsend. What had she done so wrong in her life to have ended up involved with a criminal again ?
    The first time, she’d been eighteen. And naïve to the point of being clueless about drugs. That had cost her.
    She’d had no reason to think her own father would take advantage of her job as a city courier and use her to mule drugs without her knowledge.
    Then throw her under the judge’s gavel to save his own hide.
    This time, she was not going down without a fight.
    If she got out of here tonight, she had the hammer that would bring down Mason. And