by JB Lynn
Then I tripped.
I went sprawling, losing my gun as I landed on my hands and knees. As I fell, I realized that what I’d stumbled over was Patrick—more specifically, his body laid out across the doorway.
This did not bode well for our plan.
Neither did the fact that I’d lost my gun. I scanned the kitchen floor for it. The damn thing had skittered halfway across the room. As I crawled toward it, my ribcage was thunked.
Okay, I wasn’t really thunked, I was kicked, but the sound that was made as Gary the Gun’s foot connected with my side made a definite thunking sound. And it definitely hurt. A lot.
I lay on my opposite side trying to catch my breath, but I couldn’t because it hurt to breathe. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gary scoop up my gun.
This plan was definitely not working out.
Chapter Forty-Two
“YOU SHOULD HAVE just paid up,” he said, walking toward me, the weapon dangling casually from his fingers.
As God had told me, he was naked except for a chef’s hat which was perched on his head at a rakish angle. And as God had warned, Gary was . . . tumescent. I averted my eyes.
Struggling into a sitting position, I stole a quick look at Patrick’s still form. I couldn’t tell whether he was breathing. “Why’d you tell Delveccio you killed his son-in-law?”
“Because that job should have been mine!”
“I wasn’t trying to horn in on your territory. He offered me the job. I didn’t ask for it.” As I spoke, I slowly got to my feet. I surveyed the area. I was nearest the pantry. The knives were on the counter on the opposite side of the room. There was no way to reach them. He’d shoot me first.
“And now that idiot,” he waved the Magnum toward Patrick, “he decided what? That he was going to play hero and help out the pathetic girl? Talk some sense into me? Get me to give up those pictures of you? Was that the plan? For the two of you losers to try to make a deal with me?”
He didn’t know we were there to kill him. That had to work in my favor. I just wasn’t sure how.
“Well I’ve got news for you, I don’t deal.”
“Okay, I can see we made a mistake.” I inched toward Patrick. If I could just figure out if he was still alive . . .
Gary waved the gun at me. I inched back in the opposite direction.
“You’re not going to deal, I get that now. But here’s the thing. If you don’t let us go, how are you going to get the money?”
“Delveccio will pay up.”
“The blackmail money, the extra hundred-twenty grand I’m supposed to give you.”
“You’ve got it?”
“I’m getting it. It’s not like I brought it with me.”
“Okay, just to show you what a nice guy I am, I’m gonna let you go.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“But your partner, he ain’t getting so lucky. This ginger’s been a thorn in my side for way too long.” He kicked Patrick’s side for emphasis.
Groaning, Patrick instinctively tried to roll away.
I took this as a good sign.
At least he wasn’t dead.
Yet.
“How do you expect me to get the money without his help?” I asked, unwilling to leave my murder mentor behind. I finally understood the honor among thieves crap Delveccio and my dad talked about. “We both walk out of here, or you don’t get a dime.”
“Or you both end up dead.” To illustrate his point, Gary advanced on me, the gun leveled at my face.
I backed away, until my butt connected with the butcher block island in the center of the room. Gary kept coming, jamming the barrel of the gun under my chin. The metal was cold. His breath was garlicky.
I leaned backward, trying to get away from both. I put my hands behind me, trying to balance on the cutting surface, and felt something cool and slimy. It felt suspiciously like flesh.
At that moment I was pretty sure skipping breakfast had been a good idea, otherwise I’d have started spewing like a Las Vegas fountain.
“You interrupted my cooking time,” Gary told me. “It’s my chance to relax, my one pleasure.”
“What about all those crappy paintings you’ve got?”
Grabbing my chin with his free hand, he pulled my face toward his. “They’re art!”
“Those are prints.”
“Art!”
“They’re not even serigraphs.”
“I collect art and I cook. I am a Renaissance man!”
“No, you’re a short, ugly dude with really bad breath.” Yes, I actually was stupid enough to say that out loud.
Just for that he kissed me. It was about as repulsive as licking the brush I use to scrub my toilet bowl.
I’d like to say that I remembered Patrick’s self-defense lesson about going for the Eyes, Nose, Throat, and Groin. I didn’t. I froze. Terror and revulsion acted as paralytic agents, rendering me helpless against Gary’s assault. Trying to reach my tonsils with his tongue, the evidence of his . . . tumescence rubbing against me, Gary apparently decided that my paralyzed state was his chance to get lucky.
“Don’t just stand there!” God shrieked. “Do something.”
It took me a second to realize that he was perched between Doomsday’s ears and they were watching us from the doorway.
“Hit him!” God coached.
“Teeth the guy! Teeth the guy!” Doomsday urged.
The Doberman’s barking caught Gary’s attention and he half-turned his head to yell at the dog. “Shut up, you worthless mutt!”
I took the opportunity to knee the bastard in the balls.
Surprised, and bent over with pain, he released me.
Unfortunately he didn’t let go of the Magnum. Waving it in my general direction, he squeezed off a round.
For the record, in case you couldn’t guess, being the person shot at is infinitely worse than being the one doing the shooting.
I dove behind the butcher block island for cover.
“Use the torch!” God yelled. He’d crossed the room and was standing on the counter by the stove pointing to a small butane torch. The kind that is used for melting sugar on top of crème brulee. Apparently the Renaissance Man had a bit of a sweet tooth.
“What the hell is that?”
Apparently Gary had taken note of the little lizard gesticulating wildly on his countertop. He took a shot at God too.
The lizard took a header off the counter, joining me behind the relative protection of the island. “I told you this plan was a bad idea!”
“It wasn’t my plan,” I muttered.
“I don’t care whose plan it was. You’re dead. Do you hear me, you’re both dead.” As though to illustrate his point, Gary stalked over toward Patrick, brandishing the gun.
With no other weapons in sight, I made a mad grab for the torch.
He laughed when he saw me snatch it up. “That thing isn’t going to help you. You’d need a flamethrower to take me down.”
I threw it at him. It bounced off his gun arm. Encouraged, I grabbed the next thing my hand hit and chucked that at him too. The jar of mint jelly caught him squarely in the gut. (Aunt Susan was right, my job as a newspaper delivery girl had taught me something!) The glass crashed to the floor and shattered, sending minty green goop everywhere.
The next thing I found was a large can that had to weigh about eight pounds. That wasn’t good for throwing, so I left it. Instead I went for a roll of aluminum foil.
When I raised my arm to throw it, Gary roared, “Enough!”
He aimed the gun at me and took a step forward.
Right onto the broken glass.
“Dammit!” He looked down at his now bleeding foot.
I charged like a bull at a waving cape, intent on taking him down.
Somehow I managed to tackle the naked man. We rolled around amid the glass and jelly, each intent on dominating the other.
“Hit him!” God yelled.
“Teeth the guy!” Doomsday urge
d.
Superior strength and a lifetime of experience were on Gary’s side. Within moments, he had gained the upper-hand.
“Help! Help!” I cried desperately.
And help arrived.
Patrick dragged him off of me. The two men fell backward to the floor. I made a grab for the gun while Patrick struggled to subdue the smaller man who was thrashing about like an animal caught in a net.
Gary squeezed the trigger and a bullet cut through my hair, missing my ear by inches and momentarily deafening me.
Briefly deprived of one of my senses, my others became more acute. I could suddenly smell garlic, mint, and . . . gas.
Chapter Forty-Three
“GAS! I SMELL gas!” I panted, struggling to keep the barrel of the gun pointing away from my head. Now I knew what Armani’s predicted explosion was. It wasn’t a gunshot, it was a gas explosion!
“I smell it too!” God shouted.
“Teeth the guy!” Doomsday urged.
And I finally understood what she meant. I bit Gary’s wrist as hard as I could. It was a disturbing sensation to sink my teeth into this soft skin, feeling his malleable tendons shifting beneath the onslaught.
Howling, he released his hold on the gun. Grabbing it, I crawled a few paces away from the two grappling men, just in time to see Gary ram his elbow backward into Patrick’s head, causing his skull to bounce off the tile floor. The hollow thud it made caused me to cry out.
Patrick went limp.
“Don’t move,” I warned Gary.
Ignoring me, he got to his feet, his chest puffed with his perceived victory.
Unlike with Cifelli, I had no hesitation about ending this man’s life. I squeezed the trigger.
And nothing happened.
Not a damn thing.
I squeezed it again. Still nothing. The damn thing had jammed.
Realizing I was helpless, Gary made his move.
He was almost on top of me when 70 pounds of growling Doberman got between us.
“Run!” Doomsday told me.
I scrambled away. God was beckoning for me to join him behind the butcher block island.
I heard Gary scream, “You stupid mutt!”
Then there was a sickening thunk and the dog let out a pained whine that lanced my heart.
I looked back to see Doomsday cowering on the floor, Gary looming over her.
“Bad dog!” He screamed, looking like more of a rabid animal than she. He kicked her again. Her pained yelp bounced off the kitchen walls.
I had to do something. Desperately I scanned the kitchen for a weapon.
Gary reached into the pantry and pulled out a big long gun. I’m not expert, but I was pretty sure it was a shotgun. The man kept a shotgun in his kitchen cabinet.
“Meet the guy,” Doomsday whimpered, her big brown eyes pleading with me. “Meet the guy.”
I turned to God for a translation, but all he could do was shrug.
Gary kicked her a third time.
“Meet the guy,” she begged in an agonized moan.
As her owner aimed the weapon at the poor dog’s head, God made his move.
“Leave her alone, you coward!” He roared . . . vocalized . . . chirped as he charged straight at the naked man’s toes.
“Meet the guy.”
And suddenly I understood what she meant, what Armani’s premonition had meant, and how it was a matter of life or death. Damn those pesky homonyms!
With God providing a distraction (Gary was trying to stomp him to death) I grabbed the hunk of flesh on the butcher block. The leg of lamb, with the bone still in, weighed a good eight pounds.
Swinging it like a baseball bat, I connected with Gary’s shoulder. Stumbling, he tried to bring the shotgun up at me.
Doomsday “teethed the guy” clamping onto his ankle and dragging him down to the ground. The shotgun went off.
Gary tried to fire the remaining round at me. I swung the meat at his arm. The shot went wide, but there was a deafening boom.
For a third time I swung as hard as I could at his ugly face and was rewarded with the sickening sound of his neck snapping.
He fell to the floor, his head flopped at an unnatural angle to his body. His eyes were open, but as empty as a doll’s.
“Dead is dead,” I muttered.
“Fire! Fire!” God shouted, pointing at the opposite side of the room.
I turned. Sure enough the kitchen was going up in flames. From the location of the fire, I guessed that Gary’s last wild shot had hit the heavy can on the counter, and that must have been filled with something flammable.
“Oh crap.”
“That’s an understatement.” God muttered.
Kneeling beside Doomsday, I stroked her soft head.
“Are you okay?”
She licked my hand.
“Can you get up, Sweetheart?”
“Take now home you?”
“She wants to know if we’ll take her home.”
I nodded.
She got to her feet.
I swallowed the painful lump that rose in my throat. If I’d been able to cry, I’m sure I would have shed a tear or two when I saw that she was going to make it.
“You have to get out of here,” I told her as the little lizard scrambled up her leg and perched himself between her ears. “Go with God.”
Turning away from them, I ran over to where Patrick lay. “Patrick? Patrick, we have to get out of here.”
His eyes fluttered open, the blue-green as empty as a tranquil sea.
The kitchen was getting hotter. The flames crackled.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
His eyes drifted back closed. He wasn’t going to get out of here under his power. It was going to be up to me.
I crouched down, slid my hands under his arms, and pulled.
Can I just say that I now understand the meaning of the phrase dead weight? I could barely slide him across the kitchen tiles. He weighed a ton. The fire was getting closer, the ceiling above was starting to crumble.
It was hard to breathe.
“Help me let.”
I was startled to find that the animals hadn’t left the kitchen. They were standing beside me.
“She wants you to let her help you,” God told me. “I think that’s a good plan. Otherwise we’re all going to roast.”
“How?”
“Pull him I.”
“She says she’ll pull him. She’ll take one arm you take the other. C’mon hurry up. Give her one of his arms.”
“Try not to hurt him,” I said, giving one of Patrick’s arms to the Doberman.
She grabbed onto his sweatshirt sleeve and started tugging as she walked backward. I pulled on his other arm. Together we dragged him out of the kitchen.
“This way to the door,” God directed, leading the way.
A noise that sounded like popping corn on steroids reached our ears.
“Bullets!” God and I said simultaneously.
“Who knows what else he has in there.” God sounded panicked. “The place could go up any second. Hurry! Hurry!”
I happened to agree with him that we were on the verge of being blown to smithereens, so I redoubled my efforts. The dog and I dragged poor Patrick through the rooms of the house, bouncing him over doorsills, getting him caught up on corners, and smashing him into furniture along the way.
I wasn’t sure if we were saving or killing him.
Finally we reached the door and hauled him outside.
“Go get the car!” God ordered.
“He’s too close to the house.”
“Move myself I can.” Doomsday assured me.
“Someone’s going to call the fire department and then the police will be here,” God reminded me.
He was right.
I took off running.
“Come back!” God yelled.
I stopped in my tracks. “You just told me to go!”
“You forgot the keys, you ninny!”
&
nbsp; He was right. I jogged back.
“This pocket! This pocket!” God jumped up and down on Patrick’s right hip.
I pulled out the keys and stumbled away again.
It felt like an eternity had passed as I ran to the car and drove it to Gary’s place.
By the time I got back to the house, black smoke was filling the air. As she’d promised, Doomsday had somehow managed to get the redheaded man to the curb.
I had no idea how to get him into the car.
“Patrick, wake up!” I begged, slapping his face like they do on TV all the time. It didn’t work.
“Hit no!” Doomsday nudged me out of the way and began slathering him with big, wet doggie kisses.
They did the trick.
Patrick stirred.
“Wake up, Patrick. Come on, I need you to open your eyes.”
He blinked, struggling to focus.
“Help me get you into the car.”
“Wha— Wha—”
I thought I heard the wail of sirens in the distance.
“We have to get out of here now.” I half-lifted, half-dragged him into the backseat of the car. Doomsday hopped into the front.
“Not the driver’s seat!” I told her.
Obediently she moved over to the passenger’s side. “Wind.”
“She wants you to open the window,” God supplied from the backseat, where he’d curled up on Patrick’s chest.
I opened the window for the dog. She stuck her head out. I drove away.
“Mags?”
“Yes, Patrick?”
“Did you bring your lizard to a hit?”
“Yes, Patrick.”
“Oh.”
Behind us, Gary the Gun’s house blew up.
Chapter Forty-Four
PATRICK INSISTED HE didn’t need to see a doctor. I told him he’d been knocked unconscious twice. God helpfully mentioned he might have brain damage. I told him to shut up.
Patrick thought I was telling him to shut up. I couldn’t exactly tell him I was talking to the vocalizing lizard, so the topic of conversation got dropped.
We went our separate ways at the mall. Patrick drove off to return the mysterious sedan. I left the Doberman and the gecko in my car—yes, all the windows were cracked, and no, it wasn’t too hot for them—and went to complete my alibi. If anyone asked, I’d say I spent the day at the mall. I had my lip gloss receipt to prove when I’d gotten there, and now I went in to buy live crickets for you-know-who.
