Anita Birt's Notebook

I never quit, do I?  No comments on my blog yet I persist on blogging. It's like an illness or a compulsion, something interesting to fill an hour or two a day. I'm not doing creative writing but my fingers itch to tap away on the keyboard. So.....To entertain myself and, hopefully, find buyers for my books I shall post the first few pages of my book, TOO YOUNG TO DIE. I own the Copyright to all my books, including Too Young To Die.

CHAPTER ONE

"Keep singing, lady."

The armed man sitting across from Ellie in the nursery casually pointed his assault rifle at her. She cuddled the whimpering baby and tried, unsuccesfully, to stay cool and remember the words of the old nursery rhyme.
 "Rock-a-Bye baby on the ..." Her voice cracked on the first line.
 "Sing," he demanded.

"Can't sing. Can't breathe. Throat's too dry. Can I get a drink of water from the bathroom?'
 He shambled to his fee. "Don't move. I don't hurt ladies and babies."
"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Ellie shifted Nicki from one arm to the other and gulped air into her oxygen-deprived lungs.

"Don't give me that crap, you're up to your next in this same as the rest." He slung the weapon under his arm. "Sing to the kid while I get you a drink."
"I can't."
"Do it and keep the kid quiet." He lowered his brows. His eyes sank into the folds of scar tissue. "Sing about the mocking bird. You sang it before."
Ellie cleared her tense throat. "Hush little baby, don't say a word...that one?"
He nodded and propped his beefy shoulder against the door. "My old lady used to sing it to my little sister."
The gorilla had a human mother. Hard to believe he hadn't come fully formed from the lab of a mad scientist.
"Please get me some water. I'll sing it and a couple more."
If she escaped from the house alive, she'd never answer another advertisement for a nanny. Magda and Stefan Blesnicoff had seemed such a nice couple. They'd sent their chauffeur to drive her from Seattle to their estate in the Cascades. She'd been with them a week and tonight she might die, blown away in a hail of bullets.
She choked back a sob. She was too young to die. So was Nicki. He squirmed and screwed up his face. "It's all right, Sweetie." She found back her panic. Stay calm. Stick to a routine. She held him against her shoulder and patted his back. "
"You're hungry aren't you?"
"You'd better feed him I won't look."
"Why?"
A sheepish grin spread across his beat-up face. "It's not respectful to watch a lady feeding her baby. That's private."
A light dawned inside Ellie's terror-stricken brain. "He isn't my baby. I'm his nanny. You'll have to get his bottle from the fridge and warm it."

That's all for today. If you want more, leave a comment - or buy the book. It's a page turner with guns, bad guys and Ellie escaping into the woods with the baby in the middle of the night. There's a hero, of course.

Anita
www.anitabirt.com