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.