Maggie Lee (Book 11): The Hitwoman Hires a Manny

by Lynn, JB

  Glancing back toward Angel’s truck, I flashed him a thumbs-up, so he’d think I had everything under control.

  I stood at the backdoor for what felt like forever, but was really only a few minutes.

  I stood at the back door for what felt like forever, but was really only a few minutes.

  The door flew open and Templeton stumbled out.

  “You got him,” the man in the badly tailored suit snarled before slamming the door again.

  Templeton scowled at me. “How dare you? I had a full house.”

  “I have a full house of people looking for you,” I snapped. “That’s how I dared. Don’t you know Loretta’s worried sick about you?”

  Templeton hung his head.

  Angel eased his truck up to us. “Everything going okay?”

  “I’m going to ride home with him.”

  Neither man looked happy about that declaration, but neither protested.

  Templeton and I got into his car, which smelled like cigars and the pine air freshener, which dangled in the window.

  “Is Griswald angry?” Templeton asked as he eased out of the parking space.

  “I didn’t see him.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d heard him yelling, but I hadn’t seen the marshal.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm anyone. I just…sometimes I just need a break,” Templeton confessed as he drove in the direction of the B&B. “Every once in a while, your family can be a bit much.”

  “Once in a while? Try every day,” I replied, watching Angel’s truck in the rearview mirror.

  “So you’re not angry?”

  I shook my head. “I can sympathize. I moved out because they made me nuts.”

  “Loretta would never move out,” Templeton said sadly.

  “Maybe you just need to find some more hobbies that get you out of the house,” I suggested. “Legal hobbies,” I stressed as we stopped at a red light.

  A muscle car of some kind, with tinted windows and custom paint job, pulled up beside us, revving its engine.

  I ignored it, but Templeton didn’t.

  “Young punks these days,” he complained, looking over at the driver. “No respect.”

  “Don’t--” I warned, glancing over. “Just let them floor it when the light turns green, and stay out of their way.”

  As I spoke, the window of the muscle car lowered.

  “No!” Templeton gasped.

  That made me look over. I spotted Rivgali’s demonic grin an instant before I registered he was pointing a gun in our direction.

  Templeton didn’t wait for the light to turn green. He floored it immediately, sending us straight into the intersection, forcing cars who had the right-of-way to hit their brakes.

  We left both Rivgali and Angel behind as Templeton drove like a racecar driver down quiet suburban streets.

  “Hold on!” I shouted to God, grabbing my seatbelt with one hand, and the overhead handle with the other, as we careened around a corner on just two tires.

  My stomach churned, my heart pounded, and my entire body was suddenly drenched in panic sweat.

  I’m pretty sure I whimpered as Templeton punched the accelerator the second all four tires were back on the ground.

  “Slow down,” I begged, feeling like I was stuck on a ride at a demented theme park.

  Focusing on his driving, he ignored me. I couldn’t blame him once a quick glance in the mirror revealed that we still had Rivgali on our tail.

  “What’s happening?” God screamed, panic making him even squeakier than usual.

  “Bad guy. Gun,” I gasped, too afraid to breathe.

  Templeton jerked the wheel to the right, causing the car to go up on the sidewalk, as he narrowly missed hitting a parked furniture delivery truck.

  Rivgali stayed with us.

  Angel was nowhere in sight.

  God grunted in pain as my seatbelt jerked when Templeton slammed on the brakes to avoid missing a turn.

  At that point I wasn’t sure if Templeton or Rivgali would be responsible for my untimely death. All I knew was that it sucked that I was going to die on the very day I’d finally brought Katie home to start her new life.

  I practically put my feet through the floor as I tried to stop the car as we went into a sideways skid. It didn’t matter that I had no brakes, I was going to make the horrible feeling stop.

  But then Templeton pulled out of the skid and I started thinking less about the next two seconds of my life and more about the next two minutes.

  “Where are you going?” I shouted as the car bounced wildly through a pothole-ridden side road.

  “I don’t know!” Templeton screamed.

  “Game,” God screeched.

  I pried my fingers from my seatbelt so that I could pluck away my shirt collar and look at him. “What?”

  “Go back to the poker game,” he gasped, fighting a losing battle, trying not to get squished by breasts as the car bucked and bounced.

  “Go back to the poker game,” I repeated for Templeton’s benefit.

  He ignored me.

  “Go back to the game,” I insisted.

  “What good will that do?”

  “Do you know somewhere else where there are armed men willing to use their impressive guns?”

  Templeton shrugged. “Okay. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Except our lives,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me.

  We zigzagged through the streets, ignoring all traffic laws, and having a lot of near misses. Despite Templeton’s best efforts, Rivgali stuck with us.

  Somehow we managed to not attract the attention of a single police officer. I fervently hoped to hear the wail of a siren and the flash of lights, but we weren’t that lucky.

  I opened the glove box and rummaged through it. There wasn’t much in there besides a map, a half-empty box of tissues and half a dozen of Loretta’s thigh-high stockings. “Do you have a gun?”

  “Why would I have a gun?” Templeton asked.

  “I dunno. Maybe because someone is trying to kill you?”

  “Violence never solves anything.”

  “But it ends a lot of arguments,” I muttered.

  Hitting a particularly nasty bump, my forehead slammed against the dashboard. “Ow!”

  Ignoring my pain, I pulled the old map out and began to unfold it.

  “I know where I’m going,” Templeton shouted, proving his point, by taking another hairpin turn.

  Ignoring him, I rolled down my window.

  “What are you doing?” the man and lizard asked simultaneously.

  “I’m going to try to blind him.”

  “With a map?” Templeton asked incredulously.

  “Maybe it’ll stick to his windshield.”

  “That only happens in cartoons,” God said.

  But I still leaned out of the car with the oversized piece of paper and let it go.

  It never even touched the other guy’s car as it flew off.

  I sank back into my seat, defeated.

  “Close the window,” God begged.

  I did, just as the car was given a giant push. I grabbed for the handle above the door, desperate to stop my forward motion, but the car of course kept moving.

  Twisting in my seat, I looked back and realized that Rivgali had rammed us.

  “Hold on,” Templeton warned. “He’s going to hit us again.”

  I grabbed the handle with both hands, just at the moment of impact.

  Our car shuddered violently forward.

  “We’re almost there,” Templeton grunted.

  Spotting the restaurant ahead of us, I realized he was right.

  “Blow the horn,” I urged. “Let them know we’re coming.”

  We hurtled toward the building, horn blaring, hoping that the criminal elements would emerge in time to save us.

  “I’ll ram their cars,” Templeton announced. “It’ll hurt, but the airbags should save us.”

  “Should?” I squeaked.

  Realizing that the
impact from the airbag could kill God, I stripped off my shirt.

  Templeton glanced at me, but focused on driving.

  “What are you doing?” God asked.

  “Saving your life,” I gasped, as Rivgali rammed us again.

  Grabbing the tissue box, I held it up to my chest. “Jump.”

  The lizard didn’t need to be told twice. He leapt into the box. I stuffed the stockings on top of him.

  With only a few hundred yards to go before we reached the restaurant, I wrapped the box in my shirt. As we bounced over the curb, horn blaring, I stuffed the box in the glove compartment and slammed it shut.

  “Brace yourself,” Templeton shouted, gunning the engine and heading for the middle of the group of expensive cars.

  “I’m sorry, Katie,” I whispered.

  Then we crashed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’d like to say that after the crash I was able to get out of the car and got the upper hand with Rivgali, but that’s not what happened.

  The truth is, the airbags knocked me out cold.

  And all I could hear for what seemed like eternity was the Itsy Bitsy Spider song playing on an endless loop.

  That was the song that I’d been singing with Katie in the other car crash. The one that had hurt her, and killed her parents, and allowed me to hear animals talk.

  Every time I hear that song I’m filled with an overwhelming sense that life isn’t fair. It’s epically unfair to some, like that poor spider. He keeps on going up the waterspout. I mean what’s the good of the sun coming out if you’re just going to get knocked down again.

  Which is why I was crying when he started talking to me.

  “Maggie,” a familiar voice called from a great distance.

  I could barely hear him over the “washed the spider out” bit.

  “Can you hear me, Maggie?”

  His voice was closer this time. Louder. Stronger.

  “You’ve been in an accident, but you’re going to be okay. I just need you to open your eyes. Can you do that for me, terosa mia? Can you open your eyes?”

  The more Angel talked, the quieter the Itsy Bitsy song played.

  I struggled to do as he asked.

  His worried face was only inches from mine when I finally did it. “Good girl.”

  A dark cloud made everything look smoky. I fought against it, instinctively knowing that if I didn’t, I’d lose consciousness again.

  “Ambulance is on the way,” an unseen, unfamiliar voice announced.

  Angel took my hand. “You’re a little banged up, but you’re going to be okay.”

  “Templeton?” I asked. I tried to turn my head in the driver’s direction, but Angel pressed gently against my forehead, pinning me in place.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered. “You could be injured. Safest course of action is to just stay still.”

  “But Templeton?” I asked weakly, the darkness threatening again.

  “Still kicking,” the older man wheezed from beside me.

  I fought against the darkness knowing that there was something else I had to remember. Something else I had to do.

  “God!” I yelled, trying to sit up.

  Angel pinned me to my seat. “What did I say about not moving?” His tone was unyielding.

  “But I put him in the glove compartment.”

  “And as soon as the EMTs have gotten you out of the car, I’ll look for him,” Angel promised as though it was perfectly normal for someone to have stuffed their pet lizard into a glove box.

  “God?” I called. “God, can you hear me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  And my heart broke all over again. Just like it had when Theresa died.

  I didn’t fight the darkness anymore. I let it swallow me whole.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I woke up again, I was in a hospital.

  Susan sat beside me just like she had after the last car accident. She looked tired as she stared, entranced by whatever monitor I was hooked up to.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to get her attention.

  She smiled when she saw I was watching her. “You’re up.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to hold this vigil at my bedside twice,” I said.

  She shook her head, but didn’t speak as two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. After a moment, she brushed them away and said with forced cheerfulness, “Templeton’s going to be just fine too.”

  I nodded.

  I didn’t ask her about God.

  I already knew.

  He would have answered me if he could have. His silence told me everything I needed to know.

  “Leslie’s in with Loretta,” Susan continued. “Marlene and Doc stayed with Katie. I’m so glad our Marlene found such a nice boy. It’s funny how life can work out, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “And Angel?”

  “I’m here,” he answered immediately.

  When he spoke I realized he’d positioned himself in the doorway. Now he moved into my line of sight. Tension hunched his shoulders.

  Knowing that it was because he had to deliver bad news to me, I tried to lighten his load. “He didn’t make it.”

  “Who?” Susan demanded, alarmed. “Who didn’t make it?”

  “Godzilla.”

  Angel shook his head. “Actually, your plan worked perfectly. There’s not a bruise on the little guy.” With that he grabbed the plastic bedpan at the foot of the bed and tilted it so that I could see its contents.

  God waved hello with his tail.

  “Hey you,” I said affectionately.

  He squeaked.

  I blinked rapidly, unable to process what had just happened. An uncomfortable pressure began to build in my chest. “What?”

  He squeaked some more.

  He sounded like…a lizard.

  Balling my hands into fists, I closed my eyes, trying to wish it away, hoping this was a bad dream. My chest ached.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” Susan asked worriedly.

  I didn’t answer her.

  I couldn’t tell her.

  The pain throbbed.

  I’d just lost the ability to communicate with my best friend.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The third time I woke up, I was in the basement of the B&B. This time it was DeeDee who was watching me intently.

  Given a clean bill of health, a prescription for painkillers, and orders to take it easy for a couple of days, I’d been sent home.

  It was there I learned that Rivgali had been, as hoped, killed by some of the muscle working security at the poker game when he’d drawn his weapon, intent on finishing off Templeton.

  Of course, Templeton and I didn’t discuss that had been the plan all along. When asked, we both told the most natural lie: we figured that Angel would have called the police and that the cops would have gone to our last known location. Considering that was exactly what Angel and the cops had done, it was a thoroughly believable story.

  Though, when I risked a glance in Marshal Griswald’s direction, I might have seen doubt in his expression.

  We all ate the leftover party food and then, exhausted by the day’s events, went to bed with Leslie offering to spend Katie’s first night home with her.

  I’d only slept two hours, per doctor’s orders in case I had a concussion, when I woke up and found DeeDee watching me.

  I couldn’t hear her either. Or Piss.

  I couldn’t hear any of my animal companions.

  I was “normal” again. I’d explained it to them, but because they couldn’t respond I wasn’t sure they understood.

  I hoped that the fact DeeDee had licked my hand afterward had meant they did, but it was disconcerting not to know for sure.

  “What’s one plus seven?” a voice asked.

  I looked over to where Angel was laid out on a makeshift bed on the floor. “I hired you to take care of Katie, not me.”