“I’m not gonna hurt you. . . . I just need money.”

With his body still forcing her against the car, he dumped the contents of her bag on the muddy ground, her cell phone, wallet, keys, everything pouring free. And then he tossed her sixteen-thousand-dollar Birkin bag over the hood of the Audi.

Stupid bastard. He could have gotten more for that on eBay than any cash he’d find in her wallet.

Half of her mind was in a panic, the other part icy calm, and she went with the latter, because she was nothing if not her father’s daughter: This freaked-out addict was going to spin her around at some point because he was going to want her jewelry, and when he did, she had a good chance of kneeing him where it counted.

Even if she had to pretend she wasn’t about to throw up all over her shoes—

The weight crushing against her wasn’t so much removed as it was vaporized, gone as if it had never been: One second she couldn’t breathe. The next, she had all the oxygen in the world.

As she dragged in a tremendous gulp of air and held on to the car roof to keep standing, grunts sounded next to her.

Pushing herself around, she had to blink a couple of times to understand what she was looking at—but no amount of wait-maybe-I’m-not-seeing-this-right changed what was going on: Isaac had come out of nowhere, pinned her assailant to the ground, and was giving the guy a root canal the hard way.

Namely with his fist.

“Isaac—” Her voice cracked and she coughed. “Isaac! Stop it!”

Louie the PI’s voice echoed through her head: That SOB could be a murderer.

“Isaac!”

She was expecting to have to jump on him or call for help to get him to stop the beating, but as soon as it started, it was over. Isaac quit the Rocky routine on his own, flipping the man onto his stomach and wrenching his arms back to immobilize him.

Nothing was broken this time.

And Isaac wasn’t even breathing hard as he glanced over at her. “Are you okay?”

His eyes were sharp, his expression deadly and calm, his voice even and polite. It was obvious that he was in total control of himself and the situation . . . and it dawned on her that he might possibly have saved her from something awful. With addicts, you never knew what they were going to do.

“Did he hurt you?” Isaac said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she answered roughly, not sure which question she was answering.

With sheer, brute strength, Isaac picked the man up and gave him a shove and there was no argument, not even a comment. Her attacker scrambled away like he was damned well aware he’d narrowly missed the beat-down of his life.