Dela looked sad. “I’m afraid we have no choice, Dak. But I promise you we will change these rules. Unfortunately, you’ll be dead, but the amendments will benefit your son.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that makes me feel much better.”
Lou turned away from me. “So, how do we finish it?”
Troy pointed at Leonie. “First, Dak has to finish the job he started. Then we take care of him and Paris.”
They were going to make me kill Leonie? Bullshit on that! I wasn’t about to do it. It’s like that old saw you see in movies where the bad guys make the good guy dig his own grave? And he does it, thinking he’s buying himself some time, but in the end, he’s dead and he’s done their back-breaking work for them. No way.
“Ha!” I shouted. “I’m not going to do it. You can’t make me kill her.” What were they going to do? Give me a gun? I’d take them out before they could react.
“Oh, you’ll do it all right.” Lou and Troy came down to where I was and untied one of my hands. They took a rod as long as my arm and attached it to a slot in the chair, then secured my arm to the rod. Lou took his Glock and ejected the magazine – meaning there was only one bullet left in the gun. He placed the gun in my hand while Troy used duct tape to secure it. My arm, and hand with a gun in it, like it or not, were pointed straight at Leonie.
“Well, I’m not pulling the trigger,” I said defiantly. How could they make me do that?
Lou laughed. “It’s remote controlled, boy. I’ll actually deploy the trigger. You’ll be holding the gun that kills your girlfriend. It’s genius, really.”
I was starting to sweat. At any moment, that sadist could push a button that would blow a large hole in Leonie’s head. And I had no control over it.
“NO!” Paris cried, “Don’t make him do it! Don’t you people have hearts?” Atta boy. Still my wingman – till the bitter end.
I figured I had only one chance. It wouldn’t save any of us, but it would make it so I didn’t blow my lover’s brains out. There was only a split second to act before they figured out what I was doing. I took a deep breath and threw my weight to my right as hard and fast as possible.
It worked. I tipped over. Lou must’ve pressed the button, because the gun went off as I fell, missing Leonie by inches. My triumph was short-lived, as I now realized I was stuck, on the floor, tied to a chair with my arm duct-taped to a rod.
Of course, this wouldn’t stop them from killing us. But if they had their heart set on me killing Leonie, it would buy us a few moments while they set me up and loaded the gun again.
“I love you, Leonie,” I called out from my awkward position on the floor. I just didn’t want her to die without hearing that.
“I love you too, Dak,” Leonie said quietly.
“Come on, people!” Paris called out from somewhere behind me. “They’re married! Can’t you cut them some slack?” I thought that if I ever got out of this, I’d do something really nice for Paris. Maybe buy him a book on how to make Harvey Wallbangers, or the entire set of Rat Pack movies. Something like that.
A loud bang came from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see what happened, so I focused on Leonie’s face, which happened to be looking at me.
“We would’ve had a great life together,” I said to her.
Leonie smiled. “I know.”
Behind me I could hear voices but I was too caught up in her. She looked beautiful. Glowing, actually. Like an angel. A gorgeous angel. The Madonna, actually.
“Dak,” she began.
“You don’t have to say it.” I wanted to make this as easy as possible for her. She didn’t have to prove herself to me.
“I really need to tell you something,” she persisted.
“Leonie, it’s okay. I understand, or know, or whatever. There’s nothing you could say that would affect how I feel for you at this very moment.”
“I’m pregnant.” Leonie said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tommy: Roy, have you got the hammer?
Roy: Always got the hammer, Tommy.
- Death to Smoochy
I was filled with a feeling I’d never had before. For the first time in my life, I was so, mind-numbingly happy, I forgot all about where we were. Hell, I didn’t mind that the very expensive condoms I kept in my nightstand had failed. In fact, I was happy they had, for the second time in my life. Louis was going to have a baby brother or sister! He’d love that.
“That’s enough!” I heard my mother’s voice scream behind me. “I’ve had it with you, Mother!” She sounded angrier than I’d ever heard her before.
Someone was lifting me and my chair upright. Paris and his dad, Uncle Pete, were untying me. I looked to my right and saw Mom’s cousins Cali and Montana untying Leonie. On the dais, Lou’s kids, York and Georgia had guns trained on the Council, while Troy and Florence’s kids Burma and Asia were glowering.
“No one. . .and I mean no one,” Mom shouted, “pulls a gun on my unborn grandchild!”
I watched in amazement as her brother and cousins nodded. This was a Bombay coup d’etat!
“Consider yourselves in retirement,” Burma’s crisp English accent admonished.
The five members of the Council faced the greater number of their own children. All eight of them. Without a word, they handed their pistols over to York and Georgia. In a split second, a new Council had taken over. It was an amazing thing to behold.
“How did you know?” I asked Mom after she spent several minutes fawning all over Leonie.
She turned to look at me with surprise, “Missi called. She told me what happened in Vegas.”
Missi popped up beside her, causing me to jump backwards. “After you left, Lulu told me the whole Council was in Vegas. That was more than I thought you could handle.”
I saw Mom’s eyebrows go up at the mention of Lulu, but to her credit, she didn’t ask.
“So I called your mom and mine and Operation Nursing Home commenced earlier than planned.”
“Operation Nursing Home?” Paris asked.
“We’ve been planning to take over the Council for the past few years now,” Mom explained. “We knew none of them would ever let go. So Pete and the cousins and I decided it was time for a regime change. We’ve been wanting to make some changes for a long time.”
Leonie slumped into my arms. Apparently she’d had her fill of Bombay Family fun for the day. Paris and I took one of the jeeps and drove to the airstrip on the island, and in a few hours the three of us were on our private jet en route to home.
We weren’t sure if it was safe for Leonie at her house, so we checked her into a suite at the Downtown Marriott, and Paris and I headed to my condo to pick up a few things.
We got to my place to find the door wide open. I didn’t leave it unlocked, let alone standing ajar. Quietly, we slipped inside and locked the door behind us. Voices came from the hallway. It sounded like two men. I reached inside my coat closet and pulled out the hidden shotgun and handgun I kept there.
I pointed to Paris, silently telling him to take one side of the hallway. He nodded and we crept toward my bedroom. After making eye contact for a second, we burst into the room, guns blazing (which looked really cool, I’d bet).
Neil and Anders grinned sheepishly from their places on the floor. They were wrist deep in my underwear drawer and the whole image was something I wanted desperately to forget.
“What the hell?” I said, keeping the shotgun trained on Anders’ midsection.
“Doc Savages, I presume?” I asked in my best James Bond voice.
“Heh, heh,” Neil laughed nervously. “Well, you see. . .” He looked at Anders, who conveniently shrugged.
Turned out our friends, the Mossad and CIA operatives, were looking for Paris’s blackmail photos of them. They were both up for promotions, and Paris’s threats of the photos were more than they could bear. So, they hired a couple of real low-lifes to break into my place, using my old obsession as a taunt to throw me off track.
And while I was relieved to hear that Doc Savage was no longer a threat, we still were pissed off at our old college buddies.
So it was little more than twenty four hours later, that Neil and Anders found themselves naked, bound and gagged in an S&M den in Paraguay, under the not-so-tender ministrations of a 300 pound trannie dominatrix named Earl.
You just couldn’t put a price on the digital photos Earl sent back. Oh, we would never send them to their office. Of course, they wouldn’t know that.
EPILOGUE
Hellboy: “I wish I could do something about this. But I can’t. But I can promise you two things.
One: I’ll always look this good. Two: I’ll never give up on you. . .ever.”
- Hellboy
“Just sign here, Mrs. Bombay,” Eli Morgan said, pointing his knock-off Mont Blanc pen at a dotted line.
Leonie looked at me for a moment. Was she hesitating?
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, “if you’re not ready.”
She looked at the now frowning Mr. Morgan, then down at her round tummy.
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“I mean,” I took a deep breath and repeated what I’d told her in private a half hour ago, “we could find a way of tying the two family businesses together.”
Leonie laughed and shook her head. “Yeah. Like that would work.”
She went ahead and signed her name, then handed the forms over to the confused banker. Selling Crummy’s had been her idea. I thought maybe we could tie in the funeral home with the assassination business, but we never did figure out how. Oh well.
“And what business are you in, Mr. Bombay?” Morgan frowned at me again.
“Oh,” I said with a grin at my wife, “I’m in marketing.”
Nine months later, Leonie gave birth to a perfect little girl we named Sofia. You might think we were breaking the rules of place names in the Bombay Family, but just look at a map of Bulgaria.
Louis was thrilled with the new house we bought just down the street from Gin and Diego. The condo association had kind of frowned on the fact I’d had break-ins. Go figure.
At any rate, the kids needed a house. Louis loved his new bedroom, backyard and chemistry lab in the basement. He was doing great in school, and even won the Boy Scouts’ pine wood derby. The judges suspected something was up (and they were right), but couldn’t prove anything. I’ll never tell.
Leonie lives in semi-retirement. She helps me with the occasional assignment, just to keep her skills from getting rusty. Her specialty? Well, she came up with this method of embalming someone while they’re still alive. I think there might be some issues with her childhood there, but she seems happy.
As for the Bombays, well, we’re still doing business as usual, with a few changes. The new and improved Council relaxed a lot of the stricter rules from the past, making us all sleep a little bit better at night. And the number of jobs was limited to two per year, and not within the same six months of each other. Of course, there might be circumstances in the future that would take exception to this, but you’ll have that.
The new Council kept a lot of the same traditions, but seemed to have a softer approach to things. And it all seemed to be working out pretty smoothly.
What happened to the old Council members? Oh, they’re still around. Just retired. Mom, Pete and the others put them in a nice little maximum-security nursing home in Greenland, where the staff consists of large, non-English speaking, angry Inuit women. I heard that Lou tried to escape last month after turning his wooden ice cream spoon into a shiv. He spent a month in solitary, sharing a locked room with an incontinent, retired Sumo wrestler who liked to give “big hugs.”
And me? Do I miss the old days of the freewheeling Dakster? Not at all. My small but lethal family is enough to keep me on my toes for the rest of my life. And in this family, you never know how long that may be.
* * * * *
STAND BY YOUR HITMAN
by
LESLIE LANGTRY
* * * * *
ebook Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Leslie Langtry
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked... in the head... with an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does. It never happens. It's a dumb question... skip it.”
- Rex Kramer, Airplane
I stared at the letter in my hand. I was making the same face I made a few moments earlier when checking my phone messages. It’s not a pretty face. You wouldn’t like it.
Dear Ms. Bombay,
Your application has been accepted. We are thrilled to have you as a contestant in the new television programme, Survival! We received thousands of applications for the show, but quite frankly, your video blew everyone away here at CAB network. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defuse an explosive device so quickly. You are exactly what we are looking for. In a few days, you should receive a complete package in the mail with all of the information you will need. I look forward to meeting you next month.
Sincerely,
Bob Toole
Executive Producer, CAB
Well, that wasn’t right. I never applied to be on Survivor. True, it was one of my favorite shows. But I think I’d remember submitting an application. It’s not like I go around videotaping myself defusing bombs every day. Okay, there was that once but I just wanted to see what it looked like in third person. It was my little egoist guilty pleasure. No one knew I had it. Or at least, I thought no one knew.
So, maybe that’s what Bob is talking about. Hmmmm. If I didn’t send it in, who did?
“Mom!” The unanimous shout came from my two teenaged sons, Montgomery and Jacks
on Bombay. My name is Mississippi Bombay, but I prefer Missi.
“In here,” I responded suspiciously. Did they do this?
Monty and Jack popped their heads into the doorway simultaneously. Fraternal twins, you’d never look at them and even think they were related. Monty was tall and gangly, with dark hair and green eyes. Jack was short and stocky with a shock of unruly red hair and freckles. In spite of their physical differences, the boys shared one, obnoxious personality.
“Do I need to ask?” I waved the letter at them.
Monty snatched it out of my hands and began to read. “Cool! Mom, this rocks!”
Jack grabbed it from his brother and scanned the page. “Ohmygod!” He shouted it as one word. “How cool are you? Why didn’t you tell us?”
From the looks on their faces, I surmised they didn’t do it.
“So you had nothing to do with this?” I had to ask just to make sure. I haven’t survived this long as a single mother of twin boys without confirming everything. Usually twice.
They shook their heads. “We would’ve if we thought you were interested,” Monty started.
“But we never dreamed you’d want to go on the show!” Jack finished.
I swiped the letter from Jack and put in on the table, “Well, it’s obviously just a joke, so we’ll forget about it.” I now had other ideas. After all, I came from a family of assassins. A prankster or two in the gene pool was to be expected.
You heard me right. Assassins. The Bombay Family had a monopoly on the biz since Ancient Greece. Every blooded member of the family begins training at the age of five and works until, well, forever. My grandma was just forced into an early retirement or she’d still be taking on contracts. Not that she needed to. She was on the Council. That’s the geriatric crew who runs the operations, dishes out assignments, and kills off renegade family members. That’s right. This family business isn’t exactly optional. And if you screw up or screw over the family, the Council will take you out.
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