Read Tek Net for Free Online Page B

that. Her hands, arms, legs, were pulsing with pain and her ribs hurt. Breathing, now that she was aware of doing it again, was painful, too. Her lungs didn’t feel as though they were working properly anymore.
    â€œStungun,” she murmured.
    They’d used a stungun on her last night.
    Was it last night, though?
    She realized she had no clear idea of how long she’d been unconscious. No notion of how long she’d been here.
    Wherever here was.
    There’d been two of them who’d caught up with her at that run-down park. One was a big, hulking robot—dented, painted a milky green—who walked with a lurching, wobbly gait. The other was a short, ugly man, bald with a smear of whiskers on his chinless face. He was the one who’d shot her.
    â€œWant to try to run for it, love?” he’d asked, chuckling, pointing the big silvery stungun at her from across the room.
    Jill hadn’t moved, but he’d used the gun anyway.
    She shuddered now, remembering the brief, intense wave of pain she’d felt as the beam from the silvery gun touched her just below her left breast.
    Jill pushed at the floor with her palms, struggling against the aches that produced. She managed, eventually, to sit up.
    The surrounding blackness was as thick as ever. She could see absolutely nothing.
    Leaning forward, she began, very slowly, to crawl on her hands and knees. She didn’t think she was ready to stand up and walk just yet.
    After crawling about ten feet, pausing frequently to feel at the darkness in front of her, she came in contact with a wall.
    A smooth metal wall that felt very much like the floor.
    Breathing through her mouth, still experiencing considerable pain in her chest, she turned and sat with her back to the wall.
    She, for some reason, remembered Gomez then.
    Yes, she’d called him just before they’d run her to ground.
    Jill and Gomez hadn’t had an especially happy or calm marriage, but she’d liked him. Trusted him, too, which is more than he’d have been able to say of her. He’d helped her out of a lot of bad situations.
    â€œTerrible situations,” she said softly. “And too damned many of them.”
    She still had faith in him. If anybody could find her, find her and get her free of this, it would be Gomez.
    Her husband was all right, but she knew he’d never be able to handle anything like rescuing her. That was why she’d turned to Gomez.
    Jill decided to attempt standing.
    She was only halfway to her feet when a door suddenly slid swiftly open and a large glaring rectangle of harsh yellow light blossomed in the opposite wall.
    The village of Ralfminster was in the Somerset district of England. And the quaint thatched cottage, surrounded by a picturesque low stone wall, sat on the outskirts with nothing but rolling hills and hedgerows stretching away all around it.
    Early on that clear spring afternoon a heavyset man, wearing a thick coat sweater, came shuffling out of the back door of the cottage. He was in his middle seventies somewhere and the tufts of hair that showed beneath his checkered cap were white.
    Following close behind him came a younger man. He was carrying a folding chair, a folded metal easel, a partially done canvas, a realwood box of paints and brushes and a palm-size black control box. “Same spot as usual, Mr. Anzelmo?”
    â€œWhat do you think, peckerhead?” Anzelmo halted on a patch of green lawn.
    There was a large blond man sitting on the fence a hundred or so feet away. He had a stunrifle resting in his lap.
    â€œHey, Toby,” called Anzelmo, “am I paying you to sit around on your fat ass?”
    â€œNo, Mr. Anzelmo. Sorry, sir.” Toby hopped free of the wall and started pacing along it.
    The man carrying all the painting gear had opened the chair and placed it on the lawn. He was now concentrating on arranging the easel.
    â€œThe chair belongs two feet to the frigging right,