Getaway Girl

by Michele Hauf

  Think pain au chocolat, Jamie. I would live to devour another.

  But before that, I’d make it hell for Things One and Two to chew with missing teeth.

  “Wait until they slow down,” I murmured, trying to hear my own voice. “Just be calm, Jamie.”

  Sooner or later, they’d have to stop for a stop-and-go light.

  The urge to beat at the boot door led me to take one frantic punch. “Ouch.” Pressing bruised knuckles to my mouth, I closed my eyes. Thankfully, the erratic tune came to an end and a slower seventies’ anthem began to wail across my frazzled nerves.

  What the hell was going on? Who were Things One and Two?

  Was this how it would end?

  Jamesina MacAlister had become a getaway-car driver. For years, she had driven all sorts, from thieves dashing away from the scene, to thugs transporting weapons and/or money to secret railway docks or helicopter pickups. Only when her mentor was killed did she finally step back and examine her rocket path to Hell.

  I thought wistfully of those childhood friends who had likely settled into domestic bliss. Baldness be damned. I’d take domestic right now if it was handed to me in a plain white envelope.

  Was this my punishment for wanting a bit more? (I hadn’t wanted a bit more; I genuinely needed it.)

  The car began to slow and I listened fiercely. The radio went quiet. Horns honked and the chugging exhaust of a city bus sounded nearby. We were in the city. Where didn’t matter. Somewhere on the Left Bank, which could be in the university area.

  The Audi slowed to a stop. Time to rock this tiny little boot.

  Wasting no time, I grabbed the release tab. As the car stopped, the forward motion plunged my body backward. The boot flew open. Gripping the edge with bound hands, I stretched one leg up and over, and landed the tarmac in a crouch.

  A Renault waited in line behind the Audi. The driver rolled down his window and shouted to me, “Mademoiselle, you are kidnapped?”

  Close, but not on my watch. I waved at him to reassure, but my bound hands only made the move a desperate plea.

  I saw the worried driver frantically punch numbers into his cell phone. The police would soon be on their way. Not my scene, even if I had turned over the leaf just this morning. Obviously I hadn’t flipped the bloody thing over far enough.

  I dodged around the back of the car and stopped. Thing Two exploded from the passenger’s side. His left arm swept out, but there was no gun. He wasn’t completely out of the car. I had two seconds…

  Spinning on one foot to swing around my leg, I kicked high, connecting the rubber sole of my shoe to the side of the thug’s jaw. I landed solidly, assuming a defensive stance with fists before me in a double—yet bound—threat.

  Thing Two took the kick with a snap of his head and his arms flailing out. He wasn’t down—but I wasn’t finished. Hands still bound, I couldn’t punch, but I could stomp. I crushed the arch of his left foot. An elbow deflected his left fist, but I felt the pins and needles in an electric burst. Twisting at the waist, I lunged around with another elbow, aiming for his solar plexus.

  Taking a hit to the ribs, I chuffed out breath, but used the backward motion to bring up my foot to ratchet between his legs. I delivered a superb groin shot. Yes! The judges award la lapine a perfect ten for her performance.

  Thing Two went down.

  The driver leaned across the passenger seat and introduced a gun to the performance.

  “I’m out of here.”

  I swerved around the open car door and dashed behind a moving van parked at the curb. I managed a glance at the Audi. The driver had begun to turn around in the intersection, door open, causing a literal jam of four vehicles. Thing Two—Monsieur I’m Not Really Sick—staggered to his knees, clutching his groin. I should have laid him out, but I had been going for speed and escape.

  Kicking a small moving box out of my way, I decided to take a chance, and ran through the yard where the packed boxes were being dispatched. The hornbeam shrubs were high, which disguised my path, but likely not for long.

  Avoiding a moving man clad in white jumper and wielding boxes that towered higher than his head, I skipped up the front steps and dashed through the empty house. The smell of disinfectant was overpowering. Someone must have owned pets. Someone protested in what sounded like Arabic—but I don’t speak the language, so it’s a guess. Sunlight at the far end of an empty kitchen signaled the back door.

  Something about this job stank of my past. The criminal element had infested my newly sanitized domain. I knew the feeling, the stench of wrong. I had had an initial moment of unease when picking up the men.

  Not legit, kept ringing in my brain.

  Why hadn’t I trusted my gut?

  Slapping the back screen door with both palms, I forced the steel-framed door outside. I flew down the back steps, dodging the cement fountain dried to a green crust around the base of a gaggle of naked cherubs. The backyard was enclosed by more of the high hornbeam shrubbery. Normally, I can appreciate a nicely trimmed shrub, but…

  Risking it, I ran straight for the bushes. Bound hands blocking my face and arms, my legs fought against the pull of the resilient and scratchy branches. I dragged my feet through closely spaced trunks. Glossy leaves slapped my face, fruitlessly attempting to hold me back. This was so grim!

  Emerging on the other side in a faltering walk-run, I got my balance back. I huffed and paused, glancing to the wall of shrubbery. “Merci, there were no thorns.”

  A quick study determined I’d not have time to wrestle with the rope about my wrists. Grease blackened it in places, making the rope grip tightly.

  The back door slapped against the outer wall of the emptied house. Things One and Two were on my scent.

  Time to kick it into high gear.

  Chapter 5

  Twenty minutes must have passed before I slowed my full-out-gasping-for-breath pace and reduced my strides to a walk. I was in the 14th arrondissement. My home was close by. I lived in the relative quiet shadows of the cimetière du Montparnasse.

  I know, what’s with the cemeteries today? Was it some strange sort of foreshadowing for my life? I didn’t believe in woo-woo stuff, so I trudged onward, putting that ridiculous thought out of my head.

  No sight or sound of either Things One and Two, or Max’s Audi, for ten minutes. I could be in the clear.

  Could be.

  But I wasn’t willing to risk it. So I turned a sharp right, zigzagging as I had been, taking the alley behind a row of small antique shops. No straight lines, and keep away from the main streets. Just like driving.

  Huffing from exhaustion—I was not in such good shape that a three-kilometer dash didn’t tax me—I was encouraged only slightly that home was close.

  Striding out to the sidewalk before a flower shop (de rigueur in this neighborhood. Cemetery. Get it?), I followed my body’s need to wilt and bent at the waist, catching my palms on my knees.

  Whew! What a workout. The thing about the French was, they didn’t do gyms or diets. They didn’t need to; they had that whole live-pleasurably-die-right thing down pat. So I had been ignoring my workouts for years. I was trim and ate like a horse, but this body now screamed for a nap.

  There are people walking by on the sidewalk, staring at your bound hands.

  Right.

  Scampering across the cobbled sidewalk, I shuffled down the block toward my building beneath the blessed shade of ancient lime trees. Sunlight speckled the sidewalk here and there. I checked my perimeter. No charcoal Audis. No henchmen on foot.

  Dodging to the right, I insinuated myself onto the steps of my building. Emery, the concierge, buzzed me in without comment or even a look—so I saved the smile. He always had his nose buried in the latest Stephen King novel. Oddly, he looked very much like the horror writer with his thick brows and evil yet goofy grin.

  Thankful the lobby was empty, I trundled across the marble tiles and into the elevator. Pushing the five button for my floor, I then collapse
d into a corner.

  Never had the cool slate tiles of my apartment felt so welcoming, so homey and warm. I tread through the living room, toeing aside one of dozens of velvet pillows I kept piled in the middle of the floor and went straight on into the cool violet shadows of my bedroom. The blinds were drawn, the pale lavender curtains pulled, allowing a soft haze of light to touch the bed, and shading everything in tints of purple.

  I eyed the high tester bed. Heaped with bead-embroidered blankets and velvet comforters and sequined pillows in green and violet, it offered a nest of softness. Collapse beckoned, but a hot shower nagged.

  Using my teeth, I picked at the soft white rope that had loosened only slightly about my wrists. Gnawing at the dirty knot, the taste of grease didn’t bother me so much as the situation I’d allowed myself to be put in. It took a few minutes, but after half a dozen swear words, the rope slipped off.

  I rubbed at my sore wrists. “Bloody…unfashionable thugs!”

  That was about all the protest I could muster. It had been my fault that I’d allowed myself to land in the situation in the first place. But I still felt it had been a wise choice not fighting getting into the boot of the Audi initially. Whoever had wanted me might not have cared if I was kicking and screaming, or quiet and dead.

  Odd, though, that they’d gone through the motions of me driving them out of the city. Yes, but it had worked, hadn’t it?

  I stripped on the way to the shower, leaving a trail of wrinkled clothing. A shiny chrome-plated tire rim from a Hummer 2, standing between the toilet and the tub, served as a makeshift stool and clothes catchall.

  Oh, blessed relief. While my body surrendered to the rush of a hot shower stream, my mind would not allow one moment of complacency.

  The pickup had been compromised. Before or after the initial setup? Before. Definitely preplanned, with the rope in the case.

  Who the hell were Thing One and Thing Two of the unimaginative black suits?

  Fitch would get to the bottom of it. I’d call her soon as I dried off.

  Hell, I hadn’t even gotten paid. The white envelope was still in the Audi.

  Paid for what? My own kidnapping? There likely had been blank strips of paper in the envelope.

  And now I was short one car. Max had loved that car. Praise the girl goddess of gears I still had my BMW.

  No time to linger in the shower. I had a mystery to solve.

  I towel-dried and went naked into the bedroom. Digging my toes into the ultraplush purple carpet bedside, I glanced to the googly-eyed kitty clock on the night table. I had modded the thing by attaching inch-long false eyelashes and a carbon piston ring that served as a crown.

  “One o’clock,” I murmured. Eight hours had passed since I’d left this morning. And in that time I’d performed my first legit pickup and had gotten kidnapped. And lost fifteen thousand euros.

  Wait, make that twenty thousand euros! The money from this morning’s pickup was still in the glove box, and that five thousand was likely real. “Buggers.”

  I cursed because I really did need the cash. Two months of not working had eaten away my finances, save for a small emergency stash. A bit more was required for my survival.

  Riding a shiver that raced from my neck to my extremities, I noted it was not a chill, but more of an inner, something-is-not-right shiver. That same feeling had tapped my skull immediately after the cemetery pickup had climbed into my backseat.

  “I’ve got to stop ignoring my intuition.” Though I hadn’t ignored the need to ask for payment up front. Hmm…

  I was off my game. And what did I expect after a dry spell?

  Shrugging a hand through my tousle of wet wavy hair, I paced the plush rug. A scan of the bedside table tripped over a dog-eared erotica novel—I like my reads hot—retro black phone, lamp embellished with more dangling beads than a Cher costume—so I had a crafty streak; sue me—and my passport sticking out of the drawer.

  This intuition I wasn’t about to ignore. “Right. I’ll need my passport, and gather some cash.”

  I had no closet. I’d purchased a designer’s wheeled dress rack at an open market and it held everything I owned on cedar hangers. The pink-striped slip dress was too cheerful. Not right for investigation mode. A black linen suit slinked over one of my sore wrists. Not right, either.

  A hip-clinging plaid skirt and a simple violet blouse would serve. I slipped them on and buttoned up the blouse, which stopped just above the skirt and displayed a slice of toned belly. Ease of movement, and plucky. I needed plucky right now.

  Hell, I needed answers.

  Snatching up a kick-ass pair of scuffed Doc Martens, I paced to a narrow red metal tool case that stood five feet high and served as my armoire. Inside one of the drawers, a pink-and-black Madame’s powder tin is where I kept my stash. The apartment building’s safe was not a consideration. Anything I could pick, I certainly didn’t trust. I was no expert lock picker; it was a simple skill Max had taught me. Came in handy when I once used to jack cars for getaway. I ran a much classier outfit now. The thought of grand theft auto, well, it couldn’t be justified.

  Drawing out a stack of banknotes I folded them and slipped the wad in the small front coin pocket of my skirt.

  Boots in hand, I strode into the living room and bending over the leaf-green chaise longue, I collapsed onto my stomach, cheek hitting the velvet like a rock.

  “Suck it up,” I commanded my aching muscles.

  Trolling the floor, my fingers pushed aside scatters of lug nuts and an assortment of bolts, from head bolts, to manifold bolts, to rod bolts. Finally, I latched onto the phone I’d covered with crystals last fall. (Be it a car part, or tiny rhinestones, I rocked when it came to creating beauty out of junk.) I’d lost a cell phone in the Audi. If the thugs were curious, they might give Fitch a call, but that was the only number I kept stored in that phone. Too dangerous to store all my contacts in my public “office.”

  Speed dialing number one, I listened as the phone rang once, twice—pickup. Fitch was in? Hmm…her afternoons were usually spent out on deck, tending her plants.

  “Fitch. Speak—Jamie?”

  Fitch had caller ID. But the surprise in her voice didn’t immediately register with me.

  “Fitch, something is wrong.”

  “You’re alive! I mean…you’re alive?”

  What?

  That rise in her voice—Fitch was surprised I was alive. Then she’d quickly covered with the same words, but as a question.

  Sunday bloody Sunday.

  I clicked off the phone and stomped my boots onto the floor, catching my forehead in my hands. “What the bloody—?”

  Had Fitch ratted me to someone? Who? And why? Is that why I’d just run across Paris with bound hands and fleeing bullets?

  Springing up from the chaise longue, I paced a portion of floor not covered by cushy pillows or car parts. The phone rang. I cast the sparkling crystal device an evil glare. No need to check caller ID. It would be Fitch.

  We had been straight with each other for years. I knew Kennedy Fitch, and could read her face like a book. Not that I saw her face all too often, but her voice was like a face. She always answered her calls with a silly mother-like opening, “How y’all doing, dearie?”

  That is, when she knew I was calling.

  You’re alive? Fitch had been surprised to hear from me, no doubt about it.

  The phone quit ringing. I stared at it, expecting it to start up again. If Fitch had sold me out, I needed to get the hell out of Dodge.

  Dashing to the bedroom, I grabbed a small black canvas duffel bag that I used as a purse, stuffed more cash inside—heck, all of it—my passport, an extra T-shirt, blue jeans…hell, I shoved in the entire contents on top of the tool chest, which included gum, lipstick, iPod, some snapshots, and assorted clips and rubber binders. I tossed in my handy multitool that featured a dozen tools, plus a can opener—never leave home without it. And…

  I turned and eyed the bed. Plunging my
hand under the mattress produced a 10mm Glock automatic. The only gun I owned. I checked the magazine; ten rounds. I emptied it into my palm and tossed the bullets into an inside pocket in the duffel. The gun was huge, and not easy to conceal under clothing. But if faced with the barrel of a gun, I have no problem evening up the playing field. I should have had it earlier, but like I said, I’d begun driving the straight and narrow. I hadn’t anticipated problems with clients.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Grabbing my sunglasses dangling from the frame of my bed and hooking the canvas duffel over my shoulder, I ran from the apartment.

  Chapter 6

  An open-air café stood across from my apartment building, right next to yet another flower shop. I nodded to Emery as I exited and slid the sunglasses over my ears. The lenses were tinted violet and made the world a bit easier to handle.

  My iPod was hooked at my hip, and the earplugs hung about my neck. I love music, but rarely listened to it when I was not driving. (Which was only about thirty percent of the time.) But I did use the device to store addresses and phone numbers, and as a backup hard drive—I kept important information from my laptop on it. It was very close to being my lifeline, the little white plastic music box, but I would never allow myself to depend on technology to such an extreme, and so had backups should I ever lose the nifty device.

  I walked across the street, my strides long, and kept right on walking past the café. I knew that I should stick around and see who might come snooping, but the risks were too great. I hadn’t a clue who might be on my tail. Likely, they would know me before I could pick them out. Unless, of course, they subscribed to Thug Wear Daily; then it would be easy.

  Another option reared up in my thoughts and intrigued me the way a bungee jump from a skyscraper did. I had never bungee jumped, but the idea of free falling thrilled me. So it was an easy option to take.

  Club DV8 was a good fifteen minutes from here—by car. I gave myself an hour on foot. Hell, what was I thinking?