I studied the door before battering it several times with the board. It was solid, probably metal cored, with an impenetrable lock outside. Its ramshackle appearance was a ruse to make tourgoers believe they were entering an authentically decrepit adventure. The lock was probably designed to keep the street riffraff from using the tour sights as a flophouse and urinal.
“Hand me my cell phone, honey. It’s time we broke cover.” I turned on the phone and dialed Fitch.
“Finally, Devy. I’ve been waiting all night, and my back’s killing me.” I could tell Fitch was happier to hear from me than she was cranky.
“We need a pickup. The Underground Tour entrance near First and Occidental. Know it?”
“Know it? I’m three minutes away.”
“How?” Here came another Fitch-as-genius story.
“Deduction. You weren’t at Tranquility. I hacked the phones at your security company. Those boys were freakin’out. They thought you’d been burglarized, maybe kidnapped, and they’d be liable. All your doors were unlocked, lights on, and your car was vandalized. Like mine.”
Tom Dwight probably did that when he couldn’t hit us with bullets, I thought. Malicious bastard.
“So they eventually tracked you to some pilot named Haney. For a security company, they sure have woefully unsecure cell phones.”
“I’ll be sure to put that in their annual customer satisfaction survey.”
“Right. Anyhow, old Haney said he dropped you two off at south Lake Union. Brilliant call hiring a pilot, by the way. Old Haney said you girls were talking about getting to a bank. That’s when I had to get in my car.”
“Why is that?”
“You weren’t at your condo, and I was sure Laura’s place wasn’t safe. So you had to be roaming around downtown somewhere. The clubs were closing by the time I got there. First thing I saw scouting Pioneer Square were the two fuckhead Nazis I ran into out on Lopez. The ones who harassed me and axed my Jag’s passenger seat. Um, I think your car got the same treatment. Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter. So where are you now?”
A screaming metallic crash shook the door. I dropped the phone. I hurled myself against the wall and got ready to plant that board right into the face of a skinhead. Ripping metal screeched outside the door. It flew open. The black silhouette was holding a huge double-bladed axe. I swung the board with every ounce of my strength, but he jerked his head back. A complete miss.
“Jeezus H. Kee-riste, Rosten, it’s me. Told ya I was good with an axe.” Fitch stepped into the murky security light and held up the axe. “I hacked those locks clean off the door.”
“Goddamn, you have no idea how close you came to losing your brains. You should have identified yourself.” My chest was heaving from the adrenaline and the effort of swinging the board. Laura sat there with her mouth half-open, glancing between the two of us.
“Laura, honey, meet Fitch. Fitch, this is Laura Bishop.” I sounded more grudging than I should have. But Fitch had scared me. She probably got a thrill out of it too. Sadists are difficult friends sometimes.
Laura and Fitch shook hands like they were at a networking meet and greet, then they took measure of each other. Both of them nodded at the same time, and I knew a fresh alliance was born.
“Okay, ladies, my newly repaired car is outside for your rescue convenience. Let’s go before the camo-boys come after us.” Fitch turned and swaggered out the door but stopped a few feet out. She turned to us, her eyes hard, and put her index finger to her lips. Then she motioned for us to follow her. I peeked out the door and saw the two goons standing at the far end of the alley, trying to figure out who we were.
Fitch made hurry-up motions, so I pulled Laura into the alley with me. The car was idling about twenty feet away. We made a desperate dash and hauled ourselves in. Fitch was in the driver’s seat while Laura and I sprawled in the plush backseat.
The skinheads were running into the headlight beams. I don’t think the boys were very bright. They showed no caution. Fitch hammered her accelerator and plowed into them. Their bodies thunked onto the hood and one rolled over the roof. I looked back to see both men writhing around in the oily muck that covered the pavement.
Fitch drove to the end of the alley and into the empty street, where she turned her Jaguar around and reentered the alley. Both men were lying together on the left side, their legs protruding into the center. It was the easiest thing. Fitch calmly drove over all four legs and smirked as the skinheads screamed.
“Dev, I think you should call the police on our two boys back there. Too bad we don’t know where Dwight is,” Fitch said.
“We know where he is. The police are going to get their murderers in a one-stop shop today. Such a bargain.” I felt Laura tremble next to me. I held and soothed her while she soaked my shirt with her tears. I knew it would be a long time before Laura wouldn’t cry every time she remembered this one insane week.
My beautiful Laura and her beautiful heart.
Chapter Fifteen
The Talmud reminds us that if we save one person, it’s as if we have saved the world.
My Laura saved the world several times that day in October. More innocent people would have died, many more.
Later that morning, Laura appeared in front of the press. The conference was held in the boardroom of my bank. Laura’s attorney stood nearby, as did several security guards who worked for the bank.
Fitch had fashioned a slide show with the photos I’d taken of Laura’s scrapbook. With each slide, Laura related her history with Elizabeth Stratton. When she revealed that she and Elizabeth had been lovers, the press murmured. But when she exposed that Stratton had had an abortion at a clinic that was now destroyed, the room exploded. In those few minutes, the Malignity was stalled in its plans for Stratton and Greenfield.
The power structure behind Elizabeth Stratton was cruel and ruthless. There was nothing religious about Elizabeth Stratton and Jerry Greenfield. They were tools of the Malignity. A bloodline bred for despotic power.
But as any parent can attest, children don’t become the people parents plan them to be. Stratton’s ability to feel love was not in the Malignity’s plans for her. Her love for Laura was her weakness in the eyes of the Malignity and all its henchmen.
After authorities verified the bombers of the abortion clinic were attached to the Stratton campaign, they redirected their investigation into the murders at Smith Tower. They were not able to make a strong enough connection between the two events, but enough circumstantial evidence gave the starry-eyed Stratton minions pause. Most Strattonites dropped their support for Senator Stratton, waking up as if they had been in an extended opium dream.
Elizabeth Stratton retired from the public eye. She cited the desire to spend time praying and meditating. Oy.
Elizabeth’s husband, Jerry Greenfield, was charged with all kinds of conspiracies and began mounting endless legal resistance to the inevitable, but he continued to preach to a greatly diminished but still wild-eyed flock.
Tom Dwight didn’t die. He was sent to a maximum-security federal penitentiary for the criminally insane where he sits all day drooling. His two buddies hobble their way to their prison showers and look over their shoulders.
Laura is healing. Her law practice thrives, but she takes only cases that can help the vulnerable. She is a hero to most people, but she still gets death threats from disappointed Strattonites. She will need a bodyguard indefinitely.
I get to cook for her every evening. When she comes home after work, the peace and comfort we feel together is a balm to both of us. My immune system has never been stronger.
And the Malignity? It’s still around. We all grapple with it every day to keep it from overwhelming us. We see it when people spit hate at others for being different. We see it in grim countries that torture their women and children. We see it in the raving killer who guns down innocent people going about their business. It’s the eternal human struggle. My work as a meddler isn’t
over. I expect to hear from Pento any time now.
About the Author
Kristin Marra spent the first thirty-five years of her life in Montana, where she never learned to love snow. Conceding defeat, she moved to Seattle and freely admits she adores the clouds and gloom. As far as Kristin is concerned, overcast days encourage delightfully obscene hours of reading and more hours for writing. Besides books, cooking, and movies, Kristin enjoys sharing adventures with her beloved partner Judith, world-class daughter Rachel, and loyal dog Spud. Kristin is currently working on the sequel to her first novel, Wind and Bones. She is happily employed in the education field.
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Darkness Embraced by Winter Pennington. Surrounded by harsh vampire politics and secret ambitions, Epiphany learns that an old enemy is plotting treason against the woman she once loved, and to save all she holds dear, she must embrace and form an alliance with the dark. (978-1-60282-221-4)
78 Keys by Kristin Marra. When the cosmic powers choose Devorah Rosten to be their next gladiator, she must use her unique skills to try to save her lover, herself, and even humankind. (978-1-60282-222-1)
Playing Passion’s Game by Lesley Davis. Trent Williams’s only passion in life is gaming—until Juliet Sullivan makes her realize that love can be a whole different game to play. (978-1-60282-223-8)
Retirement Plan by Martha Miller. A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible. (978-1- 60282-224-5)
Who Dat Whodunnit by Greg Herren. Popular New Orleans detective Scotty Bradley investigates the murder of a dethroned beauty queen to clear the name of his pro football–playing cousin. (978-1-60282- 225-2)
The Company He Keeps by Dale Chase. A riotously erotic collection of stories set in the sexually repressed and therefore sexually rampant Victorian era. (978-1-60282-226-9)
Cursebusters! by Julie Smith. Budding-psychic Reeno is the most accomplished teenage burglar in California, but one tiny screw-up and poof!—she’s sentenced to Bad Girl School. And that isn’t even her worst problem. Her sister Haley’s dying of an illness no one can diagnose, and now she can’t even help. (978-1-60282-559-8)
True Confessions by PJ Trebelhorn. Lynn Patrick finally has a chance with the only woman she’s ever loved, her lifelong friend Jessica Greenfield, but Jessie is still tormented by an abusive past. (978-1- 60282-216-0)
Jane Doe by Lisa Girolami. On a getaway trip to Las Vegas, Emily Carver gambles on a chance for true love and discovers that sometimes in order to find yourself, you have to start from scratch. (978-1-60282- 217-7)
Ghosts of Winter by Rebecca S. Buck. Can Ros Wynne, who has lost everything she thought defined her, find her true life—and her true love—surrounded by the lingering history of the once-grand Winter Manor? (978-1-60282-219-1)
Who I Am by M.L. Rice. Devin Kelly’s senior year is a disaster. She’s in a new school in a new town, and the school bully is making her life miserable—but then she meets his sister Melanie and realizes her feelings for her are more than platonic. (978-1-60282-231-3)
Call Me Softly by D. Jackson Leigh. Polo pony trainer Swain Butler finds that neither her heart nor her secret are safe when beautiful British heiress Lillie Wetherington arrives to bury her grandmother, Swain’s employer. (978-1-60282-215-3)
Split by Mel Bossa. Weeks before Derek O’Reilly’s engagement party, a chance meeting with Nick Lund, his teenage first love, catapults him into the past, where he relives that powerful relationship revealing what he and Nick were, still are, and might yet be to each other. (978- 1-60282-220-7)
Blood Hunt by LL Raand. In the second Midnight Hunters Novel, Detective Jody Gates, heir to a powerful Vampire clan, forges an uneasy alliance with Sylvan, the Wolf Were Alpha, to battle a shadow army of humans and rogue Weres, while fighting her growing hunger for human reporter Becca Land. (978-1-60282-209-2)
Loving Liz by Bobbi Marolt. When theater actor Marty Jamison turns diva and Liz Chandler walks out on her, Marty must confront a cheating lover from the past to understand why life is crumbling around her. (978-1-60282-210-8)
Kiss the Rain by Larkin Rose. How will successful fashion designer Eve Harris react when she discovers the new woman in her life, Jodi, and her secret fantasy phone date, Lexi, are one and the same? (978- 1-60282-211-5)
Sarah, Son of God by Justine Saracen. In a story within a story within a story, a transgendered beauty takes us through Stonewall-rioting New York, Venice under the Inquisition, and Nero’s Rome. (978-1- 60282-212-2)
Sleeping Angel by Greg Herren. Eric Matthews survives a terrible car accident only to find out everyone in town thinks he’s a murderer—and he has to clear his name even though he has no memories of what happened. (978-1-60282-214-6)
Dying to Live by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou. British socialite Zoe Anderson-Howe’s pampered life is abruptly shattered when she’s taken hostage by FARC guerrillas while on a business trip to Bogota, and Elite Operative Fletch must rescue her to complete her own harrowing mission. (978-1-60282-200-9)
Indigo Moon by Gill McKnight. Werewolves Hope Glassy and Godfrey Meyers are on a mercy mission to save their friend Isabelle after she is attacked by a rogue werewolf—but does Isabelle want to be saved from the sexy wolf who claimed her as a mate? (978-1-60282-201-6)
Parties in Congress by Colette Moody. Bijal Rao, Indian-American moderate Independent, gets the break of her career when she’s hired to work on the congressional campaign of Janet Denton—until she meets her remarkably attractive and charismatic opponent, Colleen O’Bannon. (978-1-60282-202-3)
The Collectors by Leslie Gowan. Laura owns what might be the world’s most extensive collection of BDSM lesbian erotica, but that’s as close as she’s gotten to the world of her fantasies. Until, that is, her friend Adele introduces her to Adele’s mistress Jeanne—art collector, heiress, and experienced dominant. With Jeanne’s first command, Laura’s life changes forever. (978-1-60282-208-5)
Breathless, edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman. Bold Strokes Books romance authors give readers a glimpse into the lives of favorite couples celebrating special moments “after the honeymoon ends.” Enjoy a new look at lesbians in love or revisit favorite characters from some of BSB’s best-selling romances. (978-1-60282-207-8)
Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
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
About the Author
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
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
About the Author
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
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78 Keys Page 20
