Big Guns Out of Uniform

by Nicole Camden

  “Fine,” Kyle said angrily. “I’ll just book the flight when we land in Nashville and head out then.”

  Retter shook his head. “Are you insane? Joe will fire you for this.”

  “Then let him.”

  Retter’s face hardened. “Think about this for a minute, Kyle. You’ll lose everything. Is she worth it?”

  He didn’t even have to hesitate. “She’s worth everything in the world to me.”

  To his surprise, Retter stepped back and smiled.

  Three seconds later the rear emergency door was ripped off the airplane and a smoking canister was thrown into the aisle.

  Before Kyle could reach for his weapon, a small commando dressed all in black tripped through the doorway, carrying an M-16.

  She paused at the opening and stared agape at the plane. “Wow, this is really nice.”

  Kyle smiled the instant he recognized that less-than-fierce voice. Not to mention he’d know that body anywhere, even when it was decked out in ill-fitting fatigues and her face was covered in black paint.

  It was Marianne.

  And she was joined by another commando he recognized as Dieter, also dressed in full commando gear. “Terrorists,” Dieter whispered to her loudly, “hostage, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, gripping her weapon and looking fierce, or at least as fierce as a high school teacher could look. “Don’t anyone…” She started coughing from the smoke as she moved through it.

  Dieter pounded her lightly on the back and nudged her out of it. “It’s okay. Breathe deeply.”

  Marianne coughed a few more times and nodded. “Don’t…” She coughed more.

  “She says don’t move,” Dieter finished for her.

  She started toward Kyle, only to be stopped the instant her gun got wedged between the two seats on opposite ends of the row. She whoofed as it caught against her middle.

  “That thing’s not loaded, is it?” Kyle asked Retter.

  “Hell, no. I told you I spent the day with her. Last thing I want is to be shot dead by friendly fire.”

  Dieter helped her get unhooked.

  Retter held his hands up.

  “You!” Marianne said, waving Retter aside with her gun. “Stay out of my way or I’ll blow your head off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Retter moved toward Reno.

  Marianne took another step forward with her gun a little higher this time. “I’m Ren Winterbourne, Secret Agent, and…um…um…um…” She paused, thinking. “Wait a second…I’m Ren Winterbourne, Secret Agent, and…”

  “And I’m here for the hostage!” Reno shouted out.

  Kyle turned to see Reno in the cockpit with a copy of the book for Marianne’s fantasy.

  Marianne took a step toward him, but Dieter caught her and showed her how to walk down the aisle without catching the gun on the seats.

  “Move, you scum,” Reno prompted again.

  Kyle stared at Marianne as she came even with him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Hey,” Reno said, raising his voice. “Move, you scum. This is the part where you make the terrorists get down on the ground and tie them up.”

  “Bullshit,” Retter said. “This is the part where she shoots the pilot.”

  “Nein,” Dieter joined in, moving past them toward the other two. He pulled a copy of the book out of his back pocket and opened it up to a bookmarked page. “She makes you get down, Retter, and eat the floor. It says so right here. You must get down.”

  “Yeah and this is the part where you get sent back to Pakistan, Adolph. I’m not kissing dirt for nobody.”

  “I am not Adolph, I am Dieter.”

  Kyle was only vaguely aware of the others arguing about the book. His attention was solely on the woman before him.

  “Were you really going to fly to Peoria?” she asked him.

  “Well, yeah. I thought that’s where you were. Aislinn told me you were on Wulfgar’s plane.”

  She smiled. “I am, kind of. We both are.”

  Kyle glanced around the luxurious jet. He hadn’t noticed just how nice it was earlier. It should have dawned on him the minute he entered it.

  But then Marianne always had a way of distracting him.

  “You know,” she said quietly, “I always wanted to be the heroine in the book.”

  “Funny, I only want the woman who is reading the book.”

  She smiled up at him and his groin jerked.

  “So how does the story end?” he asked her.

  “You kiss her, sheez!” the guys said in unison.

  “Didn’t he read the book?” Dieter asked. “It says right here—”

  “Shut up, Dieter,” Retter snapped. “I think we should leave them alone.”

  Laughing, Marianne stepped into his arms and held him tight. “It ends like all good romances do. We live happily ever after.”

  Let’s Talk

  About Sex

  Liz Carlyle

  Chapter One

  “Hi, this is Let’s Talk About Sex!” The polished, professional voice oozed out over the airwaves. “Our next caller is Brian from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Brian, you’re on the air with Dr. Delia Sydney.”

  Inside the glass-walled sound booth, Delia listened through her headphones to Brian’s loud, ragged breathing. “Um, yeah,” he finally said, huffing the words into his telephone. “Um, is this Dr. Delia?”

  “Good afternoon, Brian,” said Delia smoothly. “You’re our next caller. Did you have a question or a comment?”

  “Uh, well, yeah.” Brian from Murfreesboro was definitely struggling. “I, like, had this question. I w-wanted to ask, um, about guys. When they, you know, are j-jerking—”

  “Ah, I see,” Delia gently interjected. “A question about masturbation?”

  “Yeah, that.” Brian exhaled too loudly into his telephone again. “Well, uh, anyways, my, um, my uncle told me something one time. About—er, about it. He said if you did it, you know, a lot, that it could make you go, like, blind or something.”

  “Well, that’s a common old wives’ tale,” said Delia, speaking calmly into her microphone. “But there’s no truth to it, Brian. I expect your uncle was just teasing.”

  “Um…Dr. Delia, are you sure?”

  Delia paused for a split second. “Is masturbation a problem for you, Brian?” she asked coolly. “What I mean is, do you feel guilty about doing it? Because you shouldn’t, you know. It is a perfectly natural thing for a healthy young man to do in private. And it isn’t anyone else’s business.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t do it,” said Brian, his voice leaping an octave. “I was, like, you know, just wondering if my uncle was lying. That’s all.”

  “I see.” Delia’s patience slipped a notch. “Brian, has your uncle gone blind?”

  “Um…nope.”

  “Then he’s lying.”

  “Oh.”

  Through the glass wall, she watched Frank grin and jerk a finger across his throat. Time to wrap. Delia pushed her chair back and signaled her sound engineer to disconnect Brian. “And that’s all the time we have today for Let’s Talk About Sex,” she purred into her microphone. “This is Dr. Delia Sydney inviting you to join us on Friday, when my special guest will be sex therapist Dr. Jeffrey Bozner, discussing his newest book, Healthy Sex, Healthy Marriage. Thanks for tuning in.”

  Through the glass Delia watched her engineer punch a button and toss his headphones. The theme song for All Things Considered trumpeted in her ear. Delia yanked off her headset and shook the kinks out of her hair just as Frank came around the glass partition, making an obscene jerk-off gesture. “Jeez, what a bunch of losers!” His cultivated announcer’s voice had vanished. “Where’re those sexually frustrated housewives when I need a little thrill, Doc?”

  “Frank, you’re pathetic.” Delia stood and shoved her chair under the desk. “Where’s Becky Jo?”

  Just then, Delia’s assistant came streaking into the sound booth, her wild red hair flying out behind her. �
�Jeff Bozner’s secretary just canceled,” said Becky Jo breathlessly. “He’s on his way to the hospital. Looks like those triplets are going to put in an early appearance.”

  “Dang,” said Delia.

  “And Dr. Despiza called this morning. The department chair says one of you has to take on another Deviance and Development class for spring semester.” Becky Jo paused to laugh. “He says he tossed a coin, and you lost.”

  Delia resorted to cussing. “Well, shit.”

  “Yeah, well, keep shitting, honey, ’cause it gets worse.”

  Delia groaned. “Like how?”

  Becky Jo snapped her gum. “Perkins just arrived from New York to see you. It’s about your contract, and Delia darlin’, he’s got that tight, poker-assed look on his face again.”

  Frank shoved his face between them. “Aw, my heart bleeds for you, Doc,” he said, far too cheerfully. “Well, gotta jet, girls. I’m late for a scorching hot lunch date.”

  “Where?” shot Becky Jo. “Down at the Fuzzy Beaver Club?”

  “Yeah, you’re a laugh a minute, Becky Jo,” said Frank, slipping out the door.

  “But what about my syndication?” wailed Delia, oblivious. “We’re in eight of the top markets now. My God, today we had a caller from Kalamazoo!”

  Becky Jo pursed her lips. “Perkins doesn’t give a rat’s ass, Delia, I’m telling you. You won’t get another nickel out of that cheapskate until your listener numbers firm up—and then only if you pitch a fit.”

  “But how much longer will that take?”

  “You’ll have to ask Perkins.” Becky Jo laid a cool hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, hon.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Delia closed her eyes and watched her new S80 sedan disappear into the dreamland whence it had come. Black. It was going to have been black. With a turbocharged engine, dynamic stability control, and seventeen-inch aluminum alloy wheels. A symbol of her thrilling new non-station-

  wagon lifestyle.

  Oh, hell, who was she kidding? Her new lifestyle was a fantasy. She barely had time for what was left of her old one. But she needed a new car badly. In the last three months she’d been stranded on the I-40 median about a dozen times, and her old station wagon was belching smoke like a Blackhawk with its tail shot off.

  Somehow the image of war steeled her. For once in her life, Delia wasn’t giving up without a fight. Today she would fire her first salvo in what was doubtless destined to be a long and tiresome battle. But Perkins was up against a desperate woman.

  “Becky Jo,” she said, jerking up her briefcase and heading for the door. “I am woman, hear me roar. And this woman has got to have a new car.”

  Fleetingly, Becky Jo hesitated. “Well, alrighty, then!” she finally said. “You go, girl.”

  OF COURSE, her meeting with the weasely Perkins was less than satisfactory. The show was too new, he’d whined. They were still building listeners and assessing programming options. More money was out of the question just now. Perhaps they’d talk further in a couple of months?

  Under her breath Delia said screw it, and left early. So it was not quite five in the afternoon when she coaxed her antique Volvo station wagon down Westwind Drive, the street that skirted the edge of exclusive Hidden Lakes Estates. Through the canopy of trees blazing red and gold, the Carolina sun dappled and shifted across her dashboard. In Durham the weather was still glorious, though the calendar said October. At the security gate she turned right, waved to the uniformed guard, and eased forward to let the scanner read the bar code on her back window. The gate buzzed up, the guard saluted, and Delia rolled through.

  The first half-mile of Greenway Circle snaked between a row of five-bedroom architectural monstrosities and the subdivision’s golf course. Delia shoved the wagon into second and chugged along at the mandatory fifteen miles per hour. Here in exclusive Hidden Lakes, it was considered a gross act of ill breeding to speed near the greens, thereby endangering the lives of the club’s well-heeled, well-insured members. A humiliating letter from the Hidden Lakes Homeowners’ Association was reportedly the penalty, but Delia had always harbored the sneaking suspicion that the association probably just burnt a cross made of old three-woods on your lawn.

  Near the twelfth hole a trio of thin blondes lingered around a sand trap, their cute, clubby clothes simply screaming Talbot’s. At the sound of Delia’s old car rumbling past, the trio turned and gave her one of those long, old-Carolina-money looks, as if doubting she belonged. Or was she just imagining it? The women had already turned back to their sand trap.

  But she didn’t belong, did she? Fate, in the maddening form of her ex-husband Neville, had dropped her into the middle of Hidden Lakes, then abandoned her, leaving her to feel like an alien whose spaceship had crashed into some foreign landscape. Delia lifted her chin and drove on, swearing for about the twelfth time that next month she would put the damned house up for sale. She would get the carpets cleaned, the windows washed, the closets emptied; all those chores she hadn’t been able to find time for this past year were now essential to make the house look pristine and virginal for its next happy mortgage holder. And oh, what a mortgage it was. Neville might have been a brilliant plastic surgeon, but he’d apparently flunked Math 101.

  At the foot of her steep driveway, Delia noticed a Southern Power and Light truck parked a few yards up the street. Ignoring it, she jerked open the mailbox, fished out another pile of bills, and tried not to cry. Then she shoved the gearshift into first, tapped the gas, and prayed the station wagon wouldn’t stall out. It didn’t. She nosed gently over the hill, hit the garage remote, and…nothing. Delia cranked down her window, leaned out to listen, and punched it again. Nothing. Well, just an awful, impotent grinding noise. Damn. First the car, now the garage?

  Delia jerked the remote off her visor and started to hurl it into the rhododendron. Just then, deep in the backyard, something caught her eye. A big, bright orange Husqvarna chain saw. Her elderly neighbor, Bud Basham, stood on the rock outcropping above her flower beds, brandishing the thing like a lunatic. Two SP&L utility workers, one male, one female, stood in Delia’s backyard, their hands on their hips, shouting up at Bud.

  The first worker held a ten-foot pole pruner, the second a clipboard. Behind them stood a broad-shouldered man in a blue blazer, his feet spread wide, his expression of exasperation plain even fifty yards away. He was waving his hands and telling them to calm down and shut the hell up. Bud, who’d never been the passive type, responded by raising his arms high above his head and revving the chain saw for all she was worth. The Husqvarna roared and popped like a nest of angry hornets.

  Curious, Delia cut the ignition. Unfortunately, the old Volvo chose that moment to backfire. The explosion ricocheted off the garage door like a shotgun blast, and all hell erupted. The woman from SP&L screamed and hit the deck. As if acting on instinct, Mr. Blue Blazer hurled his body protectively over hers. Bud dropped the chain saw, sending it clattering and sputtering down the rocks. The second utility worker chucked his pruner and bolted for cover. Then realization hit, and everyone froze, as if some sitcom director had just yelled “Cut!”

  Wincing, Delia shoved open her car door with a rusty creak and crawled halfway out. By the time she opened her eyes, Mr. Blue Blazer was already up and helping the utility worker to her feet. “Sorry!” shouted Delia into the backyard. “Bad timing.”

  The running utility worker stopped short, his face flushed with embarrassment. Delia slammed the car door and strode past him. Then she saw it. Her lush row of pine trees was now little more than a line of stumps. Heaps of green foliage lay along the back edge of her property, and the tang of evergreen was sharp in her nostrils. Horrified, Delia just kept walking, right past the indignant Mr. Blue Blazer, all the way to the property line.

  Delia pressed her hand to her chest. “My trees!” she cried. “Good Lord, what happened to my trees?”

  “I tried to tell ’em, Delia!” crowed Bud Basham, the wattle at his neck quivering with indignation as h
e clambered down after his saw. “Told ’em you’d be mad as hell! And I told ’em they weren’t coming up here! I saw that young whippersnapper there take his pruner to my junipers—and by gum, I put a stop to it!”

  The female utility worker stepped forward. “Your trees were in the subdivision’s greenspace, ma’am,” she said, still dusting grass off her uniform. “SP&L has a right-of-way through there, and we’re clearing trees back off the power lines. We have to, ma’am. It’s a new company policy.”

  Delia turned and looked at her incredulously. “Clearing back?” she cried. “But they…they’ve been murdered!”

  The woman shrugged, but her expression was not unsympathetic. “They’ve decided it’s cheaper to cut them down, ma’am, than to trim them back every year,” she said gently. “Folks threw such fits after losing power during the ice storm last year, SP&L has no choice. It’s the new policy, just started this week.”

  Delia had been lecturing on the West Coast during last winter’s ice storm, but she still recalled hearing of the horror her neighbors had suffered. Heavy trees had torn down utility lines across the state, and in Durham, many had gone a week without electricity or heat. Candles, propane, and bottled water vanished from store shelves. SP&L had been overwhelmed. People had been outraged.

  “I see,” murmured Delia, looking at Mr. Blue Blazer, whose expression had gone from exasperated to truly pissed. Boldly she thrust out her hand. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” she said sweetly. “Delia Sydney. Sorry about the car. I think it needs a tune-up.”

  “Yeah, or euthanasia,” he suggested in a slow, Deep South drawl. Lazily he lifted one hand to push a shock of dark hair off his face. It was then that Delia noticed the gun, a big chunk of lethal-looking black steel, poking out of a shoulder holster beneath his coat.

  “You planning to shoot it and put me out of my misery?” she asked, lifting one brow. “Or do you carry that just for looks?”