She grabbed the microphone from the DJ and shouted, ‘Let ‘em hear it folks! Now the next performance is outside! A very special performer has created a fabulous treat for us all. Outside. Just find the nearest door and head for it. The performance begins in just one minute. Get outside and away from the building. Any open street will do. The farther you are, the better you can see. Outside. Outside. Outside.” She sounded like a carny barker now and rolled with it. “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Outside in one minute the performance begins!”
The DJ finally wrestled the microphone back but Kissy flipped open her knife and cut the cord. She pulled out Avi’s badge again and held it in the little guy’s face. “You really want to get my attention?”
He grabbed a backpack and was out of the booth and out of the door in seconds.
Kissy looked out over the crowd streaming out the doors. She saw Avi rousting people out the front door. She saw the other members of his singing group doing the same on all the edges of the crowd. Tim was holding a gun on a bartender in a kilt at the far end of the room. He rousted the Scotsman and several other terrified partiers over to the front door.
Everything looked like it was going well and she was wondering what she could do to help when she glanced over at the open door they’d come out of moments before and saw the fireball far back in the workroom. Without thinking, she burst from the booth. Bodies parted like water before her as she melted through the last of the exiting crowd. She raced for the steel door praying anyone exiting that way had gotten out. Then she ran her body full on into the door and slammed it shut. Her hands burned on the metal but she was pulled away instantly, thrown towards the corner of the room and covered with two heavy bodies and a blanket.
Nineteen
After the explosion that blew out the door. After the fire rolled through the room. After all the lights and windows burst and glass rained down. The three pushed off their woolen cover, sat up, and gazed around. They were the only ones in the room.
Avi turned to Tim. “Where’d you get the fire blanket?”
Kissy answered, “He stole it off a bartender.”
Tim nodded. “Yes sir. I’m a thief.”
“And a killer, according to Vanessa.” Avi looked outside where they could hear chaos.
“And a lover,” Tim said quietly, looking down at Kissy who gazed at Avi.
“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked Avi.
Avi turned. He caught Tim’s love-smitten gaze the instant before it disappeared. He looked over at the space where the door to the back room had been and considered. Finally he turned back to Kissy’s smudged and worried face.
“He was a bad guy. You probably saved lives by killing him.”
Tim smirked. “Having a change of heart, officer?”
Avi turned an earnest expression on Tim. “I believe in the law, sir. But we don’t have unlimited resources. Better our prosecutors spend their time trying to catch Vanessa rather than prosecuting Kissy.”
“I don’t think they have the resources to catch Vanessa,” Tim laughed. “Would you care to help me catch her?”
Kissy pushed herself up out of the mix and helped Avi stand. “Avi has been strung up, sliced up, and blown up. Plus I have splinters in my butt. We’re going to the hospital.”
Again, Avi saw a sad expression brush across Tim’s face.
“Well, I didn’t mean right now,” Tim said, standing himself. “I’ll call you. Give you the heads up on any bad guys who need a proper arrest.”
Avi shook his head, rubbing his numb hands again. “I’m a beat cop. The detectives don’t take tips from beat cops.”
“Then you give me a call when you find someone your law and order can’t take care of.” Tim held out a card. “I’m just trying to say thank you. I owe you, man.”
Avi took the card and tried to tuck it into his back pocket. It fell from his fingers. Kissy picked it up and tucked it in his pocket for him. Tim watched her hand linger on Avi’s ass.
“Come on, Kissy. Let’s get you home.” He held out a hand.
Kissy glared at him. “I’m taking Avi to the hospital, Tim.”
“What kind of date are you?” Tim looked shocked. “Not even a good night kiss?”
“You want a good night kiss?” she asked. “Okay.”
Kissy turned and pulled Avi’s face down to hers. She looked deeply into his eyes and with a slight smile, she kissed him. It only took Avi a moment to forget about his numb hands and cold arms. He wrapped them around the woman and lifted her off the ground, kissing back with warm lips.
As her feet left the ground, Kissy threw her head back and laughed. Then she kissed him again. He tasted like cinnamon.
The End
Gin
Killer on Call
book two
by
Gwendolyn Druyor
KillerOnCall.com
Copyright © 2015 by Gwendolyn Druyor
One
“Don’t touch that!” Kissy slapped Tim’s hand away from the kill switch that would fry the entire surveillance room and rolled it back into its little cubbyhole.
The slim, blond pretty boy sat spinning in a rolling chair in front of the long console while she stood to type faster.
“What’s it do?” He laughed, “It looks like it belongs in a cockpit.”
Kissy stopped restacking the video backup file structure to glare at him. “It tells Big Brother we’ve been fucking around with his cameras.”
Tim smiled at her and held his hands up in surrender, his gray eyes sparkling with excitement. “Well, we don’t want that.”
Tim was her best friend’s big brother. He’d only been a year ahead of them in high school until he’d gone missing. He’d sent the occasional postcards to his sister once Julia was out of their parents’ house. And about a month earlier he’d shown up at Julia’s apartment after she broke her leg. He said he’d been in the Merchant Marine. Kissy knew better.
She pushed a dark brown flyaway hair behind her ear and scrubbed her face with both hands before turning back to her work. She needed to stop listening to Tim. He’d been the one to encourage her to play with computers in high school. When he’d disappeared she’d ramped up her hacking to find him.
Finally she’d quit that life and settled down to live in the real world. Then he came back. And here she was messing with her boss’ semi-legal surveillance system. She wasn’t exactly hacking but it probably wasn’t legal and her boss definitely wouldn’t like it. And her boss’ friend, the chief of police. Because she’d listened to Tim, again.
He stood suddenly, putting a hand on her lower back. “Are you done?”
“Almost.” She closed out the file. “I just need to double check. . .”
“I trust you.” He took off his nerdy mustard yellow sports coat and threw it over the console. “Close out!”
“What?” Kissy looked over at him as he mussed his already messy white-blond hair.
Tim leaned forward and punched the escape key. His pants fell to his ankles and he reached out to entwine his fingers in her hair. He pulled her into a kiss and she fell into the chair on top of him, kissing back despite the denials in her head, despite the little voice reminding her that she was dating Avi.
Her skirt was short and when he grabbed her ass to pull her more firmly onto his lap, his fingers got caught under the elastic hem of her bikini briefs. She tried to catch her breath, tried to push away, but his lips were heavenly. His tongue tasted of cherries and he held her so firmly. She felt her hands reaching up and tangling in his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt.
Then she heard the door open.
Two
Kissy burst out of The Freckled Dog’s swinging kitchen doors. She stood for a moment, looking around the restaurant. A very young crowd this evening. Lots of teenagers for a school night. She made her way to the bar, smiling at a regular who glanced up from his medical books to nod at her.
“Hi Kissy.”
“Eyes on the prize, D
avis.”
He smiled, showing off perfect teeth that positively gleamed against his dark skin, and went back to studying.
Kissy smoothed her offensively short black skirt and glanced down approvingly at the results of her new push up bra. Black boots, black skirt, black low-cut top, and a sparkly red bra. It was only a Tuesday but if she didn’t make good tips it wouldn’t be for lack of effort.
“Coming in!” She yelled to alert Jessica, the afternoon bartender and Kissy’s trainer, then grabbed the brass rail and swung under the bar. It was a screwed up way to get to her work station. But the oaken bar was fully circular and it took both ladies to lift the section that let someone walk in like a normal human. So they deferred to more gymnastic entrances.
“Kissy-face!” Jessica hollered from the front curve of the bar. She turned sharply and flipped her ponytail of tight curls over a shoulder. Jessica was Irish on both sides. She claimed bartending was the only career her upbringing had prepared her to pursue. She’d had to choose between drinking and serving and serving seemed to provide better long range opportunities. The indoor, primarily nighttime job hadn’t done much for her pasty white complexion but having been blessed with perfect skin from her Filipino father, Kissy was no one to judge.
Jessica held a finger up to an old guy in a suit who was trying to get her attention. She strode over to Kissy in three steps, grabbing a bottle and glasses from the inner bar on her way. She slapped the pair of black shot glasses on the bar and sloshed some liquid into both.
Kissy peered quickly around the patrons at the bar, looking for Uncle Vodka, the regular with a lisp. Not seeing him, she hollered back at her trainer, “Dethika!”
They each grabbed one of the shots and together threw them back.
“Welcome to Tuesdays!” Jessica gave her a one arm hug and hip bump and cleared the glasses.
The drink was from their special bottle of Patrón. Special because it was filled with raspberry iced tea.
“You’re sure Dick doesn’t mind this?” Kissy held up her glass.
“The boss knows we’re just pretending.” Jessica reassured her. “He thinks if the barflies see us drinking, they’ll drink more. Plus, the fool thinks we’re the good girls! That’s why he trusts us behind the bar.”
Kissy started bartending at The Freckled Dog after she was nearly shot, stabbed, and blown up thanks to her new downstairs neighbor Tim. Her administrative assistant job just wasn’t exciting enough anymore. Bartending was hard work but she got to meet people and delve into what made them tick. Computers didn’t have the same pow. It was just numbers once you figured it all. Plus Dick was going to let her play her guitar on the patio occasionally and keep any tips she made.
Jessica grabbed a bottle of gin and stepped over to the waiting suit, a forty-something white guy with thinning brown hair. He flashed Chiclet teeth and chatted with the bartender, a gleam in his eye as she mixed his gin and tonic. He sat with his back to the glass garage door that fronted the restaurant.
Kissy surveyed the other customers at the bar as she tied on a short red apron and filled the pockets with her tablet, napkins, and mace. Right beside her a couple were eating and playing separately on their smartphones. Kissy refilled the wife’s water. The husband looked up to say thank you. Along the back curve of the bar three young guys drank morosely. Two of them were drinking beers and talking football. The third was by himself, head on a swivel, clocking all the ladies in the place. Kissy shook her head. Six o’clock on a Tuesday was not the time to pick up chicks.
Even though he had a whiskey in front of him the kid didn’t look old enough to be drinking. He was trying to grow in a sad little brown goatee and had the look of a beaten dog who was sure he was in trouble for something. But he had a blue coaster under his glass which meant Jessica had carded him.
Kissy glanced down at the monitor just above the speed rail holding all her most often used bottles. The restaurant had been outfitted with state of the art surveillance cameras which recorded audio and video. The installation included a few monitors installed around the circular bar so that the bartenders really could have eyes in the back of their heads. The screen Kissy was looking at showed the curve of the bar behind her. A couple of ladies, an empty seat, and the scrawny forty-something still chatting up Jessica.
The monitors also had a side window that showed what the folks in front of her had ordered and the status of their bill. The loner with the sad goatee was paying as he went. The older boys drinking beers were running a combined tab.
Kissy glanced back up when she saw Whiskey sip his drink and grimace.
She grabbed a towel and wiped the bar in front of the kid. “Can I get you a beer to wash that down?”
“No, I’m good.” He pasted on what she thought was meant to be a charming smile. “Thanks, gorgeous.”
Kissy did not roll her eyes. She glanced at the green bottle on the inner bar and then poured a glass of water. She set the water in front of Whiskey and grabbed a teaspoon from the coffee service area. “Here. I always find a couple teaspoons of water really opens up the Glenfiddich. Don’t you?”
She demonstrated how to add just a bit of water. Winking at him, she kept wiping the bar and moving around the circle. Next customer was Sad Sally, sipping her glass of house Chardonnay. Sally didn’t like to be social so Kissy passed quickly by, clearing some lime rinds and crumpled napkins from the prep area past Sally before she looked up to see the jerk who was cluttering her workspace.
Tim looked up with a confident grin that fled from his face when he caught Kissy’s eyes
Three
Avi double checked the lock on the administration office doors. Confident they were secure, he was about to walk away when he noticed the sign on the door still read “Come in. How can we help?” He looked around the empty lobby, wondering if it would matter with so few students in the school. At five o’clock, the only students still around were in the theater or on a playing field of some sort. In twelve hours Officer Mike Mangler would check the high school buildings and unlock the administration doors. Any student overachieving enough to be in the school between now and then would surely be smart enough to know the administration offices were closed despite the sign.
But he couldn’t walk away. Shaking his head at himself, Avi pulled the keys from his uniform pocket. He ducked inside. At six foot four, it was instinct for Avi to duck through any doorway. After flipping the sign, he locked the doors and jiggled them to check the latch. He headed past the trophy cases filled with shining cups and medals and the green and gold banners showing school pride. Stepping outside, he jiggled each of the five front doors to be sure they were each locked except for the one on the far end.
Avi paused in front of one of the doors. The theater kids had taped rows of twisted black crepe paper on the inside of two of the doors and put up posters on the other three advertising the first show of the year, Proof. The black backed doors made great mirrors. Avi used it to straighten his dark blue uniform shirt. His belt was so weighed down with equipment it never sat even on his hips. He ran a hand over his close cropped black hair, smiling. Kissy wanted him to grow it out long enough for a few curls she could run her fingers through. He’d had an afro in college once his mother couldn’t make him cut it. But now that he had to wear his uniform hat every day, shorter was better. Still, he liked the idea of Kissy going a little fifty shades on him.
Of course it was all dependent on getting to spend more time with her. They’d been on three dates in a month. She was working late hours at The Freckled Dog. She generally started working just when he was getting off his shift since he was working early hours as the Topside High School Liaison Officer overseeing the private security guards and generally being available to the staff and students. While The Dog was a cop bar and it was natural for him to stop by after work, he wanted to see more of Kissy privately. It was really the only thing he minded about the punishment. And Avi had no illusions about the posting. Being assigned to the hi
gh school was most definitely intended as a punishment.
He’d been involved when the rave warehouse had blown up. It had nearly decimated distribution of the often lethal new club drug, Exstabee by destroying the sole manufacturing facility. But a man had died and the fire department had worked all night to contain the fire to that single building. So, barring any clear explanation from Avi as to why he was at an illegal rave, he was given the worst job on the roster.
The truth was that Avi’s brother had been killed by the drug and Avi had used his acapella group, the GinNtonix to get into the rave to collect evidence on the distributer. What he didn’t tell the investigating detectives or his commanding officer was that he’d been assaulted by the drug dealers and saved by a contract killer named Tim. One of the drug dealers, Vanessa, had turned on the other and only got away because she blew up her manufacturing center and distribution hub which happened to be the same warehouse the rave was being thrown in. The underground party had been filled with people and Avi was more concerned with getting them out than with catching Vanessa.
Avi took his posting with grace. He accepted the punishment and made sure he showed the brass at the station that he was doing his best despite the ignominy of the job. In truth, he liked patrolling Topside High. Most of the kids were cool once you let them know you weren’t looking to bust them for any little infraction. He felt like he could actually be helpful in the school. When you walked a beat in the adult world, you were surrounded with distrust and fear. Many of these kids actually believed his mantra that he was a peace officer. And they’d come to him for help.
He hadn’t won over the entire school yet. But the music nerds had been his with one song. At the opening assembly of the year, he’d gotten the principal to let him sing the National Anthem. Even the kids who always rolled their eyes as they stood with hand over heart were floored by his smooth basso voice. Music just had a way of winning hearts, even teenaged ones.
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 5
