Tim’s breath caught in his throat. He looked over at the bloody, wet, motionless Avi and then at Kissy’s lifeless body. A single tear rolled unbidden down his cheek as he allowed himself to chuckle darkly. “I poisoned the entire bottle with belladonna before we even came up with our plan.”
Vanessa gasped. She leapt to the couch arm so she could wrap one small hand around the front of his throat and squeeze his carotid arteries, “You have the antidote. Where is it?”
“Are you threatening to kill me if I don’t tell you?” Tim laughed, a bit manically.
Vanessa held up her other hand. Sparks surged between the shiny metal spikes on the end of Kissy’s stun gun. “I’m threatening pain,” she purred.
She replaced the hand on his throat with the spikes and shocked him. He squeezed his lips shut. She jammed the gun against his already bleeding nipple and activated it. His body jerked harder with this longer shock.
“Tell me,” she hissed, “or we start playing lower.”
She held the gun down at his nuts.
“Promise you won’t hurt her,” he begged. “I’ll tell you. Just promise you won’t hurt Kissy.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened as though he’d wounded her, insulted her honor. But she didn’t move the stun gun. “Well, if that’s all. Of course. If you tell me where the antidote is, I won’t touch another hair on her head. But if you don’t,” she sparked the gun so close that he could feel the electricity tingling his sensitive bits.
“The bag!” he screamed, shame at his own weakness straining his voice. “In the black pouch in my satchel.”
Vanessa shoved his body out her way and danced over to the bag laying amongst the pile of clothes she’d dumped on the kitchen floor. She dragged the bag over to where he could see her pull out his pouch of poisons and unzip it. He expected her to ask which of the eight prepared syringes she should use. But she didn’t. He’d underestimated her. She quickly found the syringe labeled pilocarpine and without any kind of alcohol swab prep, she squeezed her fist a few times and jabbed the needle into a big blue vein inside her left elbow.
The syringe bounced off the carpet as Vanessa sauntered back over to where Tim was gently swaying from his rope. She reached up to caress his cheek, drawing her soft fingers along his bloody jaw line and wiping the path of the tear with her thumb. “You really aren’t very good at this, KC.”
Tim grunted when she swiped her dragon-lady nails across his chest raking bloody divots in the flesh. He screamed when she jabbed the stun gun at his crotch but her slashing had sent his body spinning and she shocked his ass instead. His body stiffened at the jolt though she didn’t stay to do much damage.
The bitch stomped over to Kissy and slammed one spiked stiletto down beside his friend’s head.
“Of course I’m still going to kill her.”
Fifteen
Tim struggled to get himself moving again. He threw his pain wracked body into the small momentum he had, squeezing his freezing abs to raise his legs, using them as would a little girl on a playground swing. He threw his feet towards the two women and away again. He had to gain a wider arc. He could kick Vanessa in the head if she stayed where she was. If she stood up straight. If he didn’t pass out from pain.
Of course she didn’t stand or stay. She bent lower over Kissy and licked her cheek. She pushed the spikes of the gun into the wet and dragged them from Kissy’s face to her feet. Vanessa crouched over Kissy, whispering too softly for Tim to hear.
Tim stole a breath from his efforts to interrupt her, “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”
She stood from her crouch and screamed, “I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU!”
Tim barely had time to wonder who she was talking to since both other occupants of the room were unconscious.
Then all hell broke loose.
Tim saw the dog door low on the wall beyond his Murphy closet slam open as Killer squeezed through and leapt at the woman threatening his favorite human.
At the same moment Kissy rolled backwards and kicked forward, striking Vanessa’s shins, knocking her feet from under her.
In Tim’s peripheral vision, Avi burst from his seat, the ropes falling away about him. He dove across the floor to the pair, the chair dragging along behind him, still tied to one arm. Avi grabbed it and with both hands raised his anchor. He swung it at Vanessa. The metal legs connected hard and sent her flying across the room. She struck Tim’s body and sent his measured swing into wildly twirling chaos.
The three attackers did not assume that she was down for the count and none of them spared a thought for Tim. The mutt, the girl, and the cop all scrambled after the bitch.
Tim struggled to make sense of the wild images flashing around him. His head pounded from the blow Vanessa had delivered to knock him out. His nerves still vibrated from the shock of the stun gun. He couldn’t feel his hands. His shoulders screamed. His heart raced, whether from the beating or the belladonna. And he hung swinging like a cat toy from the ceiling of his long-awaiting loft. But he heard screams and barks and fighting.
After an eternity Tim felt strong arms still him and his feet were directed to a chair slid beneath him. He breathed and focused his dizzy eyes.
Vanessa lie bound with the very ropes she’d used on Avi. Her hands were tied behind her and as Tim watched, Kissy fed the end of the rope through the ratchet pulley on the wall just as she released the rope that had held him. His arms fell. He had no muscle strength to lower them carefully. But Avi was there and he kept Tim from tumbling off the chair. With one arm, he helped Tim to lower himself and sit on the same red vinyl covered kitchen chair Avi himself had been trapped in.
So Tim thought.
He looked up at the giant. “I thought you were unconscious.”
“Nah,” Avi replied. “I was just resting.”
“And you,” Tim turned to accuse Kissy. “I thought you were dead.”
“Nah,” Kissy replied. “I was keeping her turned away from Avi.”
“And you,” Tim glared at Killer.
The dog’s jaw dropped from a snarl into a goofy grin. With his giant puppy paws flailing everywhere, he bounded over to lick Tim’s face and then joyfully scampered back over to resume his vicious, growling watch over Vanessa.
Tim sighed.
“Could someone maybe untie me?” he asked. “Or give me the antidote?”
Sixteen
Kissy double checked the knots holding Vanessa tight. Then she jogged into the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the block on the counter. On her way over to where Avi was trying to untie Tim one-handed, she knelt and carefully picked up the syringe that Vanessa had tossed. It was empty.
Kissy looked warily over at Tim. “She used it all.”
Tim didn’t look good. He still had the four-pack abs and his thick hair. But he slumped in the chair. His flawless skin was tinged gray except for his hands which had turned blue. And worse than all of that, worse than the blood caking in his hair, on his face, along his stomach and dripping down his chest, the amused sparkle she was used to finding in his eyes in any situation was gone. His insouciant energy seemed drained from him.
She tapped a paradiddle on his knee to get his attention. When he opened his eyes she showed him the syringe and then set to work, sawing at the rope around his wrists with a bread knife.
“She injected all of the serum, Tim.”
“No worries, Sheila,” he sighed in his Red Logan accent.
The last strand the rope broke so suddenly that Kissy almost smacked herself in the face with the knife. Tim’s hands fell to the sides of the chair. He twitched his shoulders to fling one dangling hand into his lap.
An ugly laugh reminded her of the still living bitch tied up behind her.
“It’s okay if there isn’t any antidote left for him. He’d rather die than live if you don’t love him.” Vanessa cackled from her awkward seat against the wall. “Oh, but you heard all that. Didn’t you?”
Kissy avoided looking either Tim or
Avi in the eyes. She reached back and sawed the rope holding Avi to the chair. “Got it.” She set Tim’s other hand in his lap. It was freezing cold. She shot a glance at Avi who was unraveling the rope from his wrist. “Can you get some blood flowing to his hands?”
Avi knelt at Tim’s side while Kissy bent to sever the rope around Tim’s ankles. When that was accomplished, she dropped the knife and used Tim’s knees to help herself stand and get his attention again. “Tim, where’s the real antidote?”
He tilted his head to examine the carving in Avi’s skull. “Hm?”
Kissy held up the empty syringe. “The antidote. Where’d you put the pilocarpine syringe?”
Tim blinked. He shook his head and then his shoulders. He flexed the fingers of the hand Avi was massaging and made a weak fist.
“Hi.” Kissy smiled at him, glad to see him returning to the land of the living.
He smiled back. A spark lit his eyes and he took a deep breath. “My pants.”
She waggled an eyebrow at him. “Don’t get dressed on my account.”
“The pilo is hidden in my waistband.”
Kissy hustled away to the kitchen.
She took pleased note of the confusion in Vanessa’s eyes as Avi asked, “So you made the switch?”
Tim’s old egotistical laugh filled her heart with joy. “Did you doubt me?”
She heard Vanessa ask, “What switch?”
The cargo pants were crumpled on the ground along with his black tee shirt and boots. One of a pair of lime green socks had landed in Killer’s water bowl. She’d seen his belt back in the main room and reminded herself to check his back for stripes when they got around to first aid. Kissy threw the shirt over her shoulder and tucked the boots under her arm. She started to feel around the waistband as she joined the boys where they were comparing which of them had been hurt worse for the cause.
“WHAT SWITCH?” Vanessa demanded.
Tim finished allowing that Avi had probably had to suffer more kisses before he deigned to glance Vanessa’s way. “The belladonna for the pilocarpine.”
Vanessa’s voice could have frozen fire. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you have any clothes that would fit me?” Avi wiped away a tear of blood that trickled from his head down one ear after he stretched a crick out of his neck. He looked back at the open door to the bathroom. “I think mine are all wet.” As an afterthought, he added, “The prosecco wasn’t actually poisoned.”
“If you are speaking to me,” Vanessa barked, “then look at me.”
Kissy was shocked into looking at their prisoner. Apparently the other two were as well. After a glance with raised eyebrows, they all broke down in giggles.
Avi winced and grabbed at his ribs. “I think she punched me.”
Tim gestured with a half-useless hand at his bloody chest and both men laughed some more. Taking a deep breath, Tim offered, “Throw your clothes in the dryer. But grab a towel if you’re gonna throw your shorts in too. Please.”
Kissy pulled the real pilocarpine syringe from the hidden pocket in the waistband of Tim’s pants and handed it to him while her boyfriend wandered back to the bathroom, chafing his wrists.
“Hey!” Avi found the dryer. “This is a nice place.”
“Thanks.” Tim flicked the cover off of the needle and shot the real antidote into his vein. He caught Kissy’s eyes. “And thanks.”
“No problem.”
“If I’m not dying,” Vanessa spoke more loudly than necessary to get their attention. Kissy noted that she chose to interrupt just as she and Tim were sharing a moment. “If you didn’t poison me, could you please tell me what you are planning to do?”
Kissy tilted her head at Tim. “You want to take this?”
“No.” He shook his head to back up his denial. “You pretended to be unconscious so I had to do all the talking. It’s your—”
“And you said some very interesting things,” she reminded him.
Kissy let her private thoughts creep into the slight grin on her face. Tim’s eyes lit up with questions and his jaw dropped to ask them, but before he could say anything, she turned away.
Seventeen
Tim wasn’t entirely present as Kissy paid Vanessa back for her earlier lecturing. His body battled with ten kinds of pain but that wasn’t what distracted him. His heart, though literally fighting off the poison and rushing blood to his many wounds, burst with hope. Kissy knew he loved her and she was intrigued. He braced himself on his elbow to pluck his pants up from where she’d dropped them and struggled into them just to give himself something physical to do to get his mind off a subject he couldn’t settle right now.
“We did poison you,” Kissy told Vanessa. “But not with the belladonna in your extabee. Though Avi really wanted to frame your drug for your death.”
“I really did,” Avi called from the bathroom doorway.
“But the KC pointed out that you’d probably have the antidote to belladonna, atropine, scopolamine, whatever you want to call it.”
“Deadly Nightshade?” Avi offered.
Tim muttered, “C17H23NO3.” He half stood and yanked his shirt off Kissy’s shoulder.
“So we poisoned you with tetr— a different drug,” Kissy substituted.
Vanessa laughed prettily. “Your lovesick puppy has two poisons raging through his system and you only give him one antidote. Lovely.”
Kissy set Tim’s boots down by his chair and strode into the kitchen. Tim could hear her running the tap. She came out of the kitchen with a full glass of water. He held a hand out, grateful. But Kissy crossed directly to Vanessa and dumped the entire glass on their target’s head. The woman screamed. Killer barked and leaped in a loop. Kissy paused to scratch behind his ears. While he and Vanessa settled, Kissy went back into the kitchen and filled the glass again. Vanessa glared but kept her mouth shut when Kissy returned.
“Stop being a bitch and just fucking listen.” Kissy told her calmly.
She brought the glass to Tim and made sure his hands were working well enough to hold it before she crouched at his feet. She picked up the antidote syringe as well as the one labeled pilocarpine. “You poisoned yourself.” She held out the syringe from Tim’s satchel. “This is mislabeled. We mislabeled it.” She turned her head to peer at Vanessa, waiting for the penny to drop. “Get it?”
There was silence in the loft but for the bass from the club below and the quiet hum and rattle of Avi’s clothes tumbling in the dryer.
In the instant after Vanessa understood Tim could see about ten thoughts flash through her eyes in rapid succession. When she spoke, she managed to keep most of the panic out of her voice. “I already told you if you kill me, you’ll never be able to save your precious Julia.”
Tim stood at that but Kissy cut him off.
“Horse shit. Julia was letting you groom her to be your partner so she could get enough evidence to turn you in to Avi. And you were buying it. Remember, you just told the KC she was gonna be your partner. You didn’t do anything to her. So shut up.” Kissy stormed away to the front door. At a look from Avi, she turned and added with a smile, “and die.”
She dropped the empty syringes into the waste bin by the key table. Tim wanted to go to her and he could see that Avi did as well. But to do so might weaken her in Vanessa’s eyes. So he crossed to where his belt had fallen across the couch. There was blood on the leather but he didn’t wipe it off. He pulled it through his belt loops as Kissy got her breath under control.
He glanced over at Vanessa and saw plans and schemes again racing through her brain. Her eyes darted about the room. Tim didn’t look away when her gaze landed on him. He calmly, if slowly due to his slowly thawing hands, continued to loop his belt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kissy unbolt the front door. Vanessa must have see the movement too.
“You can’t let me die,” she sneered. “You’re a cop.”
Kissy turned. She ambled back over to Tim before she responded, disdain drippi
ng from her tone. “No,” she clarified, “I’m not. That was his badge clipped to my stocking in the warehouse.” She jerked a thumb at Avi.
“Yeah. I’m a cop.” Avi’s deep bass voice rumbled from where he still leaned in the bathroom doorway. “But you killed my brother. You strapped a bomb on my girlfriend. And you blew up my car.”
“Don’t forget my bombs at the warehouse, the projects, and the gazebo,” Vanessa contributed.
Avi raised his eyebrows. “I was thinking three strikes was enough.”
Tim studied Vanessa. There was something in her face, a twitch of glee even as she sat there trussed up with an unknown poison running through her veins. He pulled his belt tight and slipped the loose end through a loop, thinking. Suddenly the penny dropped for him. Despite their careful plans. Despite the cameras and alarms, Vanessa had done it.
“You set a bomb in my club, didn’t you?”
Vanessa slowly raised her head to look at Tim, her face a mask of innocent confusion. And then the smile turned up one corner of her mouth.
Kissy dropped to the chair. “Oh fuck.”
Eighteen
Avi dove into the bathroom and grabbed his mildly less drenched clothes out of the dryer. He tossed his blazer aside and struggled into his jeans. They were still wet but they were warm wet. Tim began negotiating.
“Vanessa. You’re tied up. You’re gonna be blown up when the bomb goes off.”
Kissy stood from the chair Avi could do with never seeing again and jogged over to grab Tim’s magic satchel from the floor. “Just leave her. We need to clear the club, fast.”
“No,” Tim drawled. “I don’t think so.”
Avi joined them in the main room as he pulled on his white undershirt. He’d tossed the button down back into the dryer. Vanessa had been grinning as she watched Kissy’s rush. At Tim’s words, her smile faded.
“She was planning a long night of fun with me until you interrupted us.”
Avi made note of the pronoun. Tim was teaming himself up with Vanessa, subtly creating a connection that would appeal to her ego.
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 39
