Lesbian Assassins 4

by Audrey Faye

  “No. I fell apart somewhere in the middle of the second one. Figured you’d be pissed if I cut off something important, so I stopped.”

  We were so damn scared. “I’d have been pissed.”

  That got me the ghost of a smile.

  I wrapped my arms around my own knees. “Want to talk about it?”

  She lifted a pathetic, wry eyebrow. “Is the answer to that ever yes?”

  Probably not.

  We sat together in the dark for a while, mired in the kind of black goo that you only find on rooftops and in very personal hells. And finally Carly tipped her forehead down to her knees and pulled me into hers. “Maybe we quit, J.”

  In the incandescent, awful second after she said those words, I knew two things. One—she was more scared than I’d even begun to understand. And two—I’d been using her for cover. If she could never quit, I didn’t need to consider it.

  I was considering it now, and the panic rising in my lungs was more than enough to drown in. “We can’t. People rely on us.” People who had already been chewed up and spit out by the world once.

  “I know.” Her forehead was still drilled into her knees. “But he’s looking at Lelo, Jane. Lelo.” The last word was barely whispered.

  The little sister we all adored.

  I scrambled for a foothold on the precipice. “Then we need to make him stop looking.”

  “Really?” She looked up now, eyes bright with agony. “And how exactly do we do that? We’ve never been able to touch him. Not once, and we’ve thrown everything we’ve got at him.”

  I knew she was right—I’d said pretty much the same thing to Rosie. But something was kindling in my gut. Something darker and heavier and fiercer than anything that had ever lived under my flannel before. Assassin Jane was the woman I’d rebuilt from Johnny’s ashes. Be damned if I was going to let any other man set me on fire. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Carly leaned her head back against cracked cement. “We’ve said that before.”

  “Things are different now.” I dug for my best evidence—we both needed to hear it. “His ego’s gotten bigger.”

  “And you think that’s helpful?”

  “It might be.”

  “Aren’t you the sunshiny optimist.”

  The kindling in my gut lit—with a big, freaking flame torch. “He’s got Lelo in his sights. You can sit there sounding like the handmaiden of doom, or you can get off your ass and come downstairs and help me and Rosie figure out what to do.”

  Carly stared at me, mouth open, eyes blinking in slow motion. “Wow. Who shoved dynamite up your butt?”

  I had no idea—but it wasn’t James Turking.

  This was a fire he was damn well going to regret.

  8

  I’d lit the fire, but I had no idea how to keep stoking it. I set three mugs of hot chocolate on the table, warm ones this time, and tried to figure out how to keep kicking this thing back on track.

  Because failure just wasn’t a choice.

  My partner took a mug and wrapped her hands around it, cuddling it like a refugee dragged in out of the cold. I pulled back a chair with far more noise than necessary and sat down. Her passivity was scaring me shitless.

  “So.” Rosie cast a quick glance at the top of Carly’s head and reached for the last mug. “How do we take care of this shithead?”

  There was only one answer I knew—and it was one that made my insides shrivel. “We need to get into his head. Beat him at his own game.”

  She sent me a careful look. “You’ll have tried that already.”

  I had, more times than I cared to remember. “Not very successfully. He’s a sick bastard, and whatever makes him tick is a long way from human.” He didn’t truly make sense to me—he never had.

  “It’s like having sex with nuclear waste,” said Carly flatly, eyes still on her mug. “And we can only do that so often before we get radiation sickness.”

  That was a really nasty mental image. “Did you have to bring Turking and sex up in the same conversation?”

  She looked up and managed a feeble grin. “Sorry.”

  Rosie reached into her pocket and handed me a slightly squished candy bar. “Here. I’m all out of brain bleach, so apply chocolate.”

  I already was—and we couldn’t fight Turking from a diabetic coma. “I might have reached my chocolate limit.”

  Both of them gave me the serious side-eye.

  I reached for the candy, chopped it in half with Lelo’s best kitchen knife, and handed them each a piece. “Eat, and then it’s time to get serious.”

  Carly scowled. “Who made you the boss?”

  Rosie elbowed her. “We did. And the kid’s in captivity until we get this thing done.”

  “Your friends can’t handle a ninety-pound prisoner?”

  “It’s not them I’m worried about.”

  “Shit.” Carly’s eyes dropped closed. “I’m sorry, I’m being a total jerk. I bet Lelo’s hating every minute of this, and I’m wasting time feeling sorry for myself.” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. “I’m done now. Let’s get this bastard.”

  I didn’t miss the quavers in her voice—or the hand that reached gently for her fingers.

  “First things first.” Rosie drained her mug. “Is Turking’s wife safe?”

  “Yes. And no longer his wife.” The paperwork had been handled by some anonymous lawyer in a nation state none of us could find on a map. “Her family has money, so they’ve added layers to our protection.” Lots of them. And a whole bunch of therapy, but according to her sister, none of that had helped Viv nearly as much as the battered families we sometimes sent to stay with her for a while. She was getting back on her feet the way many of us did—by helping someone else get on theirs.

  “Good.” Rosie was looking fiercer by the second. “Then there are basically two ways we can shut the bastard down. Can we get dirt on him?”

  Carly had tried. “There’s nothing. He prides himself on staying clean, all pristine and legal. It’s part of why we piss him off—we don’t play fair.”

  “Threatening Lelo is fair?”

  It was like trying to explain a Japanese tea ceremony to Klingons. “By his warped set of rules, yes. She’s associated with us, so that makes her dirty. And he doesn’t think of it as threatening her—he’s just protecting humanity by taking care of some of its warts.”

  Rosie blinked very slowly. “He is one very screwed-up asshole.”

  She had no idea. “Trust me—that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Fine.” The sexy gypsy leaned forward, eyes gleaming warrior bright. “If we can’t get dirt on him, how do we scare him?”

  I shook my head, hating the only answer I had. This was old ground for us, but it didn’t get any less painful to walk.

  “We don’t know. He laughed at my knives.” My partner’s eyes were bleak. Remembering.

  I’d had nightmares about that laugh for months. Turking shrugging off Carly’s power like it was weightless.

  Hands were reaching for each other under the table again. Rosie leaned her shoulder into Carly’s. “So we set some big-ass bikers on him. Or truckers.”

  My partner’s spine snapped straight. “I don’t need a bunch of men fighting my battles for me.”

  “No shit,” said Rosie dryly. “And I know plenty of big-ass girl bikers, for what it’s worth. But clearly this asshole has issues with women, so maybe in this particular case, sending some guys might mess with his head more effectively.”

  No, it would only get some big guys with good hearts charged with assault. “He doesn’t scare—not with violence or threats of it. He expects the system to protect him, and he comes across as a nice, clean white-collar guy so the cops find him all too credible.” So Viv had learned over the course of fifteen hellacious years.

  Rosie frowned. “Everybody scares.”

  Most of what we did for a living hinged on that truth. “Not him. He’s a psychopath—his
brain is wired differently. If he can be scared, we haven’t found the button to push yet.”

  “Okay.” She got up to pace, her brain making nearly audible grinding noises. “Can we shut him down? Slap a tracker on his ass? He’s doing most of this shit online, right—can he be shadowed?”

  That was a foreign country to me, so I got up and refilled our mugs.

  “No.” Carly was shaking her head, fingers drumming a cranky cadence on the tabletop. “He’s a very paranoid asshole. I’ve tried all that. He aliases, changes profiles, cloaks. I could stick, but it would take all my time.”

  That had always been part of our Turking problem—he had twenty-four hours a day to devote to this. We didn’t.

  Rosie cast a careful look at the woman beside her. “Sounds like he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Yeah. He’s good in the dark corners of the Internet. Not quite as good as I am, but close.” Carly sighed. “I can keep me and Jane safe and keep an eye on his whereabouts. But lately, we’ve associated with a lot of people who aren’t nearly as good as he is, and there’s no way to lock everybody down.”

  “Forums have crap security.” Rosie looked shamefaced. “I should have thought of that before the kid and I ran all over the Internet spouting off about you guys.”

  My partner was already shaking her head. “Wasn’t anything you did.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Carly slammed her hands down on the table. “If you don’t believe me on this, you give him points. Don’t fucking give him points. It’s not your fault he went after Lelo.”

  “It’s not yours either.” The sexy gypsy gave as good as she got. “You’re sitting here thinking that Lelo’s in danger because you dared to have a tiny bit of a life, and that’s giving him points too.”

  Even I felt the edge of that dagger, and it hadn’t been stabbed at me.

  Carly opened her mouth, lava ready to spew—and then her phone beeped. She spun around, grabbing for it. “That’s Turking.”

  I didn’t ask how she knew.

  I just prayed that we were ready to take another punch.

  -o0o-

  “It’s a link.” Carly reached for her laptop, hands totally steady. “I’ll pull it up here so we can all see it.”

  Even I knew better than to open random links. “What if it’s got one of those viruses or something?”

  Rosie touched a hand to my shoulder as we crowded in behind my partner’s chair. “She’ll check that.”

  Of course she would. “Sorry, I’m being stupid.”

  The gypsy grimaced. “It’s going around today.”

  It surely was.

  “Hmmm.” I could hear the frown in Carly’s voice, and the cyanide-laced suspicion. “It’s some kind of map.”

  Rosie’s fingers clamped on my shoulders. “To Lelo?”

  “No.” My partner’s head was already shaking. “The file’s a week old. Whatever it is, he had it planned before he approached us.”

  That fit his profile. The man was a psychopathic chess player.

  “There’s a second file too—a spreadsheet, I think.”

  I wanted to yank them both out of her computer and feed them to the maws of hell. “How long before you can open them?”

  “Ten seconds. Putting them in a sandbox.”

  I presumed that was a good thing.

  Rosie counted grimly under her breath beside me.

  Carly clicked several times in rapid succession. “Yeah. A map and a spreadsheet.”

  I could see that much. “What the hell is that—driving directions?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No. Locations. Dates.”

  “Where you’ve been.” Rosie’s voice was diamond hard.

  “Some of it. He’s missing a bunch.” Carly pointed at the screen. “And these two here are wrong.”

  Wrong didn’t matter. Enough of it was right to make me want to take a week of long, hot showers.

  And the spreadsheet was worse. Names, all carefully notated. Online contacts. Aliases of a couple of Carly’s hacker friends. Men who had been on the business end of her knife—and matched locations on the travel map. A casino owner who thought the pretty lady in blue was scamming his patrons. A guy whose bank account had mysteriously lost $50,000 right after he got a text from the Lesbian Assassins, and who didn’t think that was coincidence.

  Turking had found a lot more than Danno.

  “He’s tracking us.” My partner was slow-bubbling menace.

  Worse. He was constructing a picture of our lives. Blurry yet, and wrong in some important places. But none of that mattered. It was way, way more than he’d ever had before. “It’s enough to shut us down.”

  Rosie squinted. “No way. None of that stuff is all that damning.” Her hands were moving sharply, frustrated. “So what, you hang out with a few shady characters and some casino guy thinks you might be running a scam? That’s not even true.”

  It didn’t matter. “It’s enough to get somebody looking.”

  I could see her get it. “And if someone looked…”

  They’d find. I nodded. “Yeah. We can’t work in that kind of daylight.” Carly would last about ten minutes in the sun if the cops ever took a really good look.

  “We could,” said my partner flatly. “But it would make us crazy.”

  She hadn’t read the list of felony crimes lately. There’s just no way to do what we do and not commit some of them—especially if you’re the one of us who is good with knives and the gray areas of the Internet.

  Rosie’s face was ominous. “He’s not just threatening Lelo anymore.”

  I’d never expected him to keep it that small. “It’s how he works. Drip torture.” Apparently he’d just turned up the taps. “And it’s always Carly he goes after.”

  My partner’s eyes glinted. “That’s because he’s never been smart enough to go after you.”

  “He doesn’t think I’m a risk.”

  “No,” said Rosie slowly. “He thinks this whole house of cards rises and falls on the chick with the knives.”

  “He’s wrong about that.” Carly’s words snapped into the air.

  “Of course he is.” The sexy gypsy looked almost pleased. “And that’s a miscalculation. He makes mistakes.”

  Not enough of them. “I’ve never been able to figure out a way to use that.” Never found a way to make myself dangerous enough to matter.

  “There’s always a first time,” said Rosie. Her words were soft—but I wouldn’t have messed with her for all the flannel in Vermont.

  “You guys think.” Carly was back on her laptop. “I’ve got holes to plug.”

  She’d already tried that. Many times. “I thought we’d done all the plugging there is.”

  “Everything I know how to do.” She didn’t bother to look up, fingers flying across the keyboard. “But I’ve got friends.”

  That was progress—of a sort. Three years ago she’d been at least as much of a lone wolf as Turking. These days she sometimes remembered that allies were a competitive advantage. Especially allies who knew how to slither around the dark parts of the Internet. But it still jackhammered my ribs to pull anyone else into this. “He’s scary shit, C. We need to keep everyone he hasn’t found the hell away from him.”

  This time, she looked up. “I’m only involving my really scary friends.”

  “I’ve got some of those too.” Rosie pulled out her phone. “What do you need?”

  I closed my eyes, feeling like the world’s most useless appendage.

  All my scary friends were right here in this room.

  9

  It was hell watching my partner do all the heavy lifting—but this time, I wasn’t watching alone. The sexy gypsy and I were sitting vigil together. Carly had been locked to her laptop for three hours now.

  Rosie looked up from the doodling she’d been doing on a random scrap of paper. “Tell me about Turking’s wife.”

  I stared at her. “Viv? Why?”

  She shrugged. �
��Because my usual rabbit holes aren’t digging up anything good, so I’m trying some weird ones.”

  We didn’t have a whole lot to lose—and apparently, we had a lot of time to kill. “Gorgeous, wealthy family, on the fast track to partner in one of the big law firms before she met him.”

  She nodded like I’d confirmed something important. “He covets power. Control over women with power. That’s why he focuses on Carly and ignores you.”

  He wasn’t wrong. “She’s the dangerous one.”

  Rosie snorted. “That’s fine as marketing spin, but it’s total bullshit in real life, and when your brain is in gear, you know it.”

  “Really?” I was suddenly as pissy as a cat in a thunderstorm. “I’m sitting here quaking while Carly tries to cover our tracks. I can’t do shit on a computer, I barely know which end of a knife to hold, and most people find me about as scary as your average librarian.”

  Rosie raised an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

  I scowled in reply.

  She scowled right back. “What did Carly do before you met her?”

  “What?” The sudden turn made my brain hurt.

  “If she’s the one with all the skills, she didn’t really need you, right? She had her knives, her computer, her bad-ass self.”

  I could see the crab trap—I just couldn’t see how to avoid it.

  “She told me the story about how you met. She thinks you saved her life.”

  Not exactly. “She saved mine.”

  “That too. But you helped her figure out how to aim, how to make a difference.” Rosie put a none-to-gentle hand on my shoulder. “Pro tip from a retired bartender—it’s not the weapon that’s dangerous. It’s the guy who knows how to use it.”

  “She’s a lot more than a weapon.”

  “Of course. And you’re a lot more than the person aiming her. But if I were in a dark alley with the two of you, it isn’t you I’d be turning my back on.”

  That was insane. “What do you think I’m going to do, strangle you with my flannel shirt?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes were dark and ferocious. “But I know that Turking has turned his back on you. It’s time to figure out what to do with that.”