by Audrey Faye
Lesbian Assassins 2
Audrey Faye
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Thank You
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Audrey Faye
www.audreyfayewrites.com
Dedication
To those who graze widely
and are willing to try anything once.
1
In three years of working together, Carly and I have pretty much gotten scaring people down to a science. Some folks, you threaten with subtle gestures and hidden knowledge. Some, you intimidate with persistence. The rest, you wave a really big knife at.
Unfortunately, none of that seemed to be working on the two people in front of us—and that had two assassins ready to head for the hills with their tails between their legs.
“I’m coming, and you can’t stop me.” Lelo’s eyebrows knotted in mutiny.
I could feel her determination—and a lot of murkier, more dangerous things that had grown up as we camped out in her apartment for the last week, celebrating one asshat’s demise and fighting the inertia of cheese scones, their really appealing cook, and the sexy gypsy florist who was Lelo’s closest friend.
Right now, Rosie was lined up two feet behind Lelo’s left shoulder, holding her metaphorical cape.
Given that Carly’s ears were about to leak steam, that meant it was my job to be the last bastion of sanity in the assassin universe. You think I’d be smart enough not to bother anymore, but you’d be wrong. When you’re a middle-aged woman in flannel, sometimes the only thing you have going for you is the thickness of your skull. I took a deep breath and watched three heads swivel my way. I eyed Lelo and tried to get this drama back on solid ground. “We can’t stop you from leaving town, but we can keep you out of our van.” I was pretty sure we could, at least.
Lelo’s eyebrows nearly strangled each other. “Like hell you can.”
Google could probably find her a dozen ways to pick a car-door lock. “I’m big enough to pick you up and duct tape you to your couch.”
Carly flashed me a look of surprise—usually she was in charge of the threats.
Lelo looked momentarily amused. “Rosie tried once. I’m squirmier than I look.”
It was deeply disturbing to me that I wanted to hear the rest of that story. “Our work is no place for a kid.” Not even a wildly independent, proto-adult one.
“I’m sixteen.”
In the dark corners of the world we played in, that counted as way too young. And more than that, even with all she’d been through, Lelo still had a shiny soul. Not for the words to every song in the universe would I let what we did sandpaper her.
Rosie’s face still hadn’t moved a millimeter off neutral. She had lots of good sense, so maybe she wasn’t here as Lelo’s loyal minion, but I wished she’d make her position clearer. The kid in black respected the hell out of her, and after the last couple of weeks, I’d pretty much come around to the same place.
Carly took one ominous step closer to the door. “Let’s go.”
Lelo’s face was nowhere near neutral. “You gave me a t-shirt.”
Carly scowled. “That was a good-bye t-shirt, skinny girl. Not a promise.”
“That’s what you thought.”
I heard the words, laced with bravado and pissy attitude—and I heard what Lelo didn’t say, what she maybe wouldn’t know how to say for years yet. The aching plea of a shiny soul who wanted to matter.
I had no words to tell her that she already did.
My partner’s hands clenched into fists. Whatever she pretended to tune out, she’d heard the plea too.
None of which made installing Lelo in the backseat of our van a millimeter more possible.
“I want to go.” Defiant, needy words now, from an observant teenager who had seen Carly’s fists, and probably some of what hid under my flannel, too. “I want to help.”
“I know.” The words leaked out without my permission, and without any idea of what I was going to say next. “But you can’t. Not like this, anyway. Not yet.” It takes pain to get to a place where the work we do is what your soul truly wants—and I knew Carly and I would both walk hot coals every morning before breakfast if the universe would spare Lelo that kind of crap.
Which is the kind of totally misguided savior complex you get when it says “assassin” on your t-shirt. Lelo would find her own ways to screw up, and if she didn’t, life would probably thwack her anyhow.
Our line of work is also fairly hard on optimism.
Rosie’s eyes were on mine now. I looked down first—I almost always do. I’d run out of words for the skinny kid in black. All I had now was uncomfortable sorrow.
“You do help.” Carly laid a hand on Lelo’s arm. “You remind us there’s part of the world that’s sane and normal and worth fighting for.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “We’ll come back for a visit.”
My exhale sounded ten times louder than normal. My partner never opened herself up like that. And somewhere in her words, she was making a promise on my behalf, too—one that I couldn’t find the gumption or the desire to contradict.
Lelo stared at Carly’s hand for a moment, and when she looked back up, her face had gentled. “You’ll probably die without someone to cook for you.”
My partner grinned. “Tell me about it.”
Rosie’s eyes were losing their detachment. I smiled as I saw the answer she’d been keeping under cover—she didn’t think Lelo belonged in the back of an assassin van either. And then I gulped as I saw what lay even deeper.
A sexy gypsy’s small, silent wish that we would stay. And a threat if we didn’t come back. The quiet signposts of friendship.
“We’re not going that far.” The words popped out before my brain could think better of it. “Maybe we could swing back for a weekend soon.” My voice was darn near wobbling, dammit. I called on twenty years of standing up in front of a crowd and getting the job done no matter what. “We’ll play some poker, get some cooking lessons for Carly.”
“Hey.” My partner’s protest wasn’t entirely faked. “You learn how to cook. I have knives to sharpen.”
I grabbed her lifeline in desperate gratitude. “The knives are already sharp.”
“Great.” Rosie’s eyes were twinkling now. “More time for poker.”
Not unless Carly and I could find ourselves a poker coach. Smart assassins are either born with a strong sense of self-preservation or develop one in a hell of a hurry. Sitting down at Rosie’s card table was kind of like standing on the train tracks in Grand Central Station and hoping not to turn into brain splatter.
We were smarter than that.
Maybe.
-o0o-
“So.” Carly laid her head back against the driver’s headrest and picked up speed a little as we crossed the state lines, leaving Lennotsville thoroughly behind us. “Burger?”
I always wanted a burger. Which made the tangled threads of friendship and life purpose and hermitude doing an uncomfortable dance in my belly even less welcome than usual. No matter what we’d said to Lelo and Rosie, some of Lennotsville had managed to climb into the van with us anyhow. I slid around in my seat, trying to cast off weight I didn’t want to acknow
ledge in the first place.
A tablet thunked into my hands. “Want to check our email?”
“Sure.” I was not the tech team. “Right after I remove my eyeballs with chopsticks.”
Carly snorted. “You do it sometimes. When you’re looking for a distraction.” She side-eyed me as she shifted into the left lane to pass a dawdly late-night trucker. “Like now, for instance. Besides, I haven’t checked for days—we probably have a billion messages.”
Ye gods and little fishes. Carly never let email slide. I tapped at the icons on the tablet that sometimes miraculously produced our inbox. We badly needed to get back in our groove—which didn’t include cheese-scone-eating vacations.
116 messages didn’t sound so bad. Then I took a closer look and realized how many of them were from Lelo. “Does the kid never sleep?”
“What’d she send?”
I scanned the subject lines. “Recipes. Assassin jokes. Something about a Hattori knife for sale on eBay?”
“Aww.” Something in Carly’s voice curled up like a contented kitten. “I was talking about those with Rosie a couple of days ago. Nice used ones are really hard to find—is it in good shape?”
Darned if I knew. I tapped into the knife email. “She thinks so. Seller has solid reviews, the blade has been properly oiled and stored so you won’t whine, and there’s a video of the seller’s daughter using it in a kata so you can get a sense of the balance.” Dammit—now my voice sounded goopy too. The kid had done a whole lot more on this than send a link.
“Use my account to—” Carly stopped and flashed me a grin. “Never mind. You’ll probably turn into hermit shrapnel if I make you shop online. Ask Lelo to buy it and send me a PayPal invoice. We’ll pick it up the next time we’re in town.”
So much said in those simple logistics. Love for me, and sneaking bits of the same thing for a sixteen-year-old kid with a big heart and a need to belong. And the first step on making good on our big new promise.
We would be back.
We would, I knew that as surely as I knew my next shirt would be flannel. Which meant that I had a couple of weeks to think about why the idea of friends and homemade cheese scones scared me so much. And why I was running more scared from that idea than my partner, who ran scared from everything that didn’t involve a knife.
That thought made me sigh more than a little. It’s never fun to be reminded that you’re the biggest coward in five states—or at least in a certain travel-worn van.
Carly reached into the side pocket beside her and held out a bag. “Kale chip?”
I felt the uncomfortable ropes in my belly start up their dance again. “When did Lelo hide those in here?”
“Pretty sure Rosie did the hiding. There’s cheesecake in the back too.” My partner held up a ripply green chip, contemplative. “Cows eat grass and we eat cow, so maybe this is kind of like eating cow.”
I was pretty sure there was a logic flaw in there somewhere. “Great. Stop at the next pasture you see. We’ll feed the kale chips to the cows and go eat a burger.” I could feel a stupid grin sneaking onto my face. “And then we can tell Lelo we ate her chips.”
Carly’s eyes were on the road, but her cheek twitched, amused. “If we do that, she’ll send us more.”
She might. And the fact that both of us would provide her with a mailing address made me as uncomfortable as hell—and fed the warm, sunny spot somewhere under my ribs.
The one I totally hadn’t given permission to exist.
2
“This is the weirdest idea ever.” Carly marched off the gravel path onto a patch of grass mostly masquerading as dirt. “Why can’t we just eat our burgers in the van, or at a table like civilized people?”
The diners in the truck stop we’d just left would probably consider being called civilized an insult. “Fresh air is good for us.”
“Yes, Mom.”
I was pretty sure that Carly’s high-rise-dwelling mother wasn’t the kind to throw impromptu burger picnics on the side of some nameless trickle of river. “Hang on, and I’ll spread out the blanket.”
She touched the ground dubiously with a finger. “It’s wet.”
Probably not a good time to mention worms and other denizens of the dirty deep. Carly had a native New Yorker’s suspicion of anything that hadn’t ridden the subway at least once. “It’s a nice view to go with our onion rings.” The grease was already filling the small clearing with glorious odors. There’s no better smell on Earth than freshly fried onion rings.
“You shouldn’t have eaten all those kale chips last night.” Carly took her end of the blanket, eyeing the grass with distaste. “It did something weird to your brain chemistry.”
Quite possibly. Human beings aren’t supposed to chew on ruffly green stuff—if that isn’t one of the commandments, it should be. I slid out of my boots and took a seat on one end of the blanket, feeling my knees complain about the lack of a chair. “You want the cheeseburger or the fried chicken?”
“Chicken.” My partner’s legs pretzeled with way more grace than mine. “I’m going to have a wet butt after this.”
Anything for a decent distraction. If this didn’t work, next I’d try pushing her into the babbling brook. Which might get me stabbed, but it would be better than driving the next five hundred miles with nothing better to think about than the lyrics to a song I damn well didn’t have any intention of writing. Road miles didn’t get to lean on my songwriting muse—that was a commandment that outranked even the eating of kale.
My muse was locked up, serving life without parole.
Carly reached into the bag of grease. “The picnic was your idea. You don’t get to sit here and do your silent, broody thing.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“Whatever.” She handed me an onion ring the size of a small child. “You’re scowling, which either means you have a brain tumor, or something stupid is bothering you.”
I knew my partner. She’d way rather I had a brain tumor—that could be handled with a knife. And it would probably manage to distract both of us from the moisture rapidly seeping through our picnic blanket. I reached for another onion ring. Burgers could be eaten while driving. I like to commune with my onions.
Carly’s phone started singing a few tinny bars of song. My brain filled in the lyrics and did the translation. Text from a friendly contact. Those from foes and unknowns had different ringtones. My phone only makes Darth Vader sounds, which probably tells you everything you need to know about me and the number of friends I have.
Carly munched on a fried chicken leg, reading what was apparently a fairly interesting message. She tapped at more things on her phone, eyebrows crawling higher the whole time.
My curiosity was getting the better of me. “Someone who needs our help?” Not likely—they never had Carly’s cell number—but I didn’t have a whole lot of better guesses. “Hot date?” Even less likely.
“No, a message from Dee—remember her?”
I don’t have Carly’s brain for details, but I did remember Dee. Hard to forget a woman as wide as she is tall, with a generosity to match. She’d been one of our very first cases, way back in the infancy of our partnership. Now she ran an online forum for women trying to get child support from the absentee fathers of their children. Her techniques and advice were damn good, but sometimes she sent an assignment our way, and if Dee couldn’t handle it, it was likely to be hot. “She’s got something for us?” It was probably wrong to feel this excited.
“Sort of.” Carly’s fingers were still working her screen. “A friendly heads up.”
That didn’t smell like a case. “Everything still okay with her and the kids?”
“Yeah. This is something she noticed on her forum.” My partner’s face was a study in contrasts—admiration doing wild battle with the need to kill someone dead.
If it was distraction I wanted, I had a feeling that a really big juicy one had just landed, along with a side helping of be-careful-what-yo
u-wish-for. I took a bite of my burger and leaned in, trying to read Carly’s phone upside down.
“Look.” She swiveled it around my direction. “Check this out—it’s the online profile of one of her newest users.”
The avatar filling most of the screen was eye-catching. Sparkly, stylized letters on a background of black. Someone had decent design skills. “It’s cute.”
Carly rolled her eyes. “Read it.”
I worked out the glittery letters. LAIT. My brain struggled to pull up my cereal-box languages. “Isn’t that French for ‘milk’?”
More eye rolling, the kind that would land her baby blues in the onion-ring bag if she kept it up. “No. It’s English.” She tapped her finger a little farther down the screen.
I read the four words underneath the logo. And gaped.
LAIT. Lesbian Assassin in Training.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Onion rings were congealing in some cold corner of my stomach. “How much trouble has she gotten into?”
“No idea.” Carly stood, scooping up the takeout bag on her way. “I need my laptop, a decent WiFi connection, and a pair of brass knuckles. Possibly not in that order.”
Those would probably work. But as I folded up the soggy blanket and tucked it under my arm, an uncomfortable idea edged its way in. My partner could track down Lelo’s online shenanigans, probably in less time than it had taken the kid to create them. And then she could go intimidate the snot out of the skinny girl in black and I would hold her coat, because the world we lived in had no room for starry-eyed apprentices.
That’s what we would do if we were thinking like assassins.
The uneasy feeling in my gut said that maybe we needed to think like friends instead. I reached out a hand for Carly’s arm. “Maybe we should just call Lelo.”
Scowl. “I can’t use brass knuckles over the phone.” Her eyes brightened. “Skype, maybe…”
