Wheezing for breath, I was pulled against a frail body that smelled of a putrid odor as the apartment door was slammed shut behind me. The arm that was wrapped around my throat was skinny and shaking.

Relief washed over me.

This man wasn’t my stalker. The predator that hunted me was a much taller, more muscular man. And I would have recognized his scent anywhere. After all, the stench of death was unmistakable. For now, it seemed I was still safe from his clutches.

But not safe from this one’s.

I still had an imbécil trying to suffocate me.

I heard another person moving around the room as the one holding me snarled in my ear, “Where is it, whore?”

“Where’s what?” I croaked.

The second man stepped in front of me, but I couldn’t see much of his face. They hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights when they’d broken in, so everything was in shadows. “The money,” he sneered. “We know you work at that titty club, which means you have cash in here somewhere. Tell us where it is or we’ll mess up that pretty face real bad.”

The tweaker roommates.

These guys had to be the two junkies that lived at the end of the hall. They had clearly run out of money to buy their drugs and apparently had nowhere else to get it.

“All I have is what’s in my purse,” I rasped as I clawed at the sweaty arm squeezing my throat. “Just take it and leave.”

I wasn’t stupid enough to keep any cash in this apartment. It probably took even these nitwits all of thirty seconds to break through that flimsy lock on the door. I had a secure location where I stored what measly cash I could scrounge up between my two jobs.

I heard the second guy rummaging around in the purse I’d dropped on the floor. “Fifty bucks?” he spat, enraged. “That’s fucking it?”

“Bullshit,” the voice in my ear hissed, his forearm pressing down on my windpipe. “The kind of tits you got make a hell of a lot more than that in a single night in one of those clubs. And whores always make a ton of bucks on the side. Where’s the rest of it?”

That word had always touched a nerve with me. I didn’t usually react well when people mistook me for something I wasn’t, especially that. Yes, I knew how foolish it was to provoke them. But like so many other times in my life, my dignity eclipsed my self-control and sensibility. Another thing my papí always liked to say?

Your pride is admirable, mija. But it is also treacherous. It will get you into trouble one of these days.

And he was right. It had. Many times.

But I had yet to learn my lesson.

They must not have been very experienced at robbery because they clearly didn’t realize I was still clasping my keys in my hand. I tightened my grip on the can of pepper spray and flicked open the lid.

“The money I make shaking my tits at little boys like you all night is too good for your junkie hands, puta.” Bitch.

“You stupid fucking—”

Closing my eyes, I sprayed him directly in his with the pepper spray before he could finish his sentence. He instantly released me and started wailing like a child. Outraged on his behalf, his friend charged at me. My foot instinctively shot out and kicked the side of his knee, the action accompanied by a sickening crack.

“Aw, shit!”

He dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, screaming in agony, grasping his knee that was bent at a disturbing angle. The madman who’d held me suddenly pushed to his feet and shouted a furious tirade of curses. Even in the dark, I could see him glaring at me through squinted, bloodshot eyes.

“You’re fucking dead, you whore.”

Unfortunately, he was between me and the kitchenette where I kept a single steak knife. Knowing I’d have to make due with what I had, I held tighter to the pepper spray, transferred all my weight to my toes, and didn’t think about anything except staying alive.

By any means necessary.

The moment he lunged in my direction was the moment my front door burst open and the dark form of a hulking man filled the dimly lit doorway. With the hallway light silhouetting him, all I could see was the monstrously large figure of a man, as tall and wide as a redwood tree. A hood was pulled over his head, so I couldn’t see his face.

He took a single step inside the room.

When he spoke, his voice held pure murder in it. Menace. Maybe even madness.

“Get the fuck away from her.”