He hung up, grinning. Maybe she’d wear that green sweater. Hell, maybe she’d be covered with paste and glitter. He wouldn’t mind.
*****
SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD
Sophie Littlefield’s first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, won an Anthony Award and RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. She writes the post-apocalyptic Aftertime series as well as paranormal fiction for young adults. Sophie grew up in rural Missouri and makes her home in northern California. Visit her at www.sophielittlefield.com.
Josie Brown
THE HOUSEWIFE ASSASSIN’S BLOODY VALENTINE
Valentine’s Day, 2:14 pm
Isla María Madre rises higher and steeper from the turquoise Pacific Ocean than her sister islands, María Magdalena and María Cleofas.
Am I the only one who finds irony in the fact that Mexico’s notorious prison was built on an archipelago named after the three saintly women who attended the Resurrection?
That’s okay. My mission is a resurrection, too, of sorts:
When I leave, I’m taking the prison’s biggest bad-ass with me.
That would be Hector Negrón de la Moraga, who runs the Diablo Blanco drug cartel out of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. This Forbes 100 billionaire’s cash flows in from the tons of methamphetamine he smuggles stateside. His drug mules are many of the American socialite junkies who hang at his Cabo San Lucas nightclubs and resorts.
But because the gangbangers known as Los Corazónes Rojos are jonesing to take over his territory and have put a price on his head, the first six months of his prison sentence have been spent in solitary confinement.
No wonder he felt it was time to cut a deal with the United States. Spill his guts, as it were.
Before they are spilled for him, all over the prison yard.
He got the Feds’ attention by explaining that he launders his dirty drug money through a blind corporation: a real estate company which builds Mexico’s many gated communities and private stucco palaces. Not only does he know where his rivals live, he’s also got the floor plans of all their estates.
Including the security codes.
Even more important is the fact that he built the villa used as the south-of-the-border headquarters for the most heavily funded terrorist organization in the world:
The Quorum.
The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan want to put the Quorum out of business, once and for all. But some crooked Mexican politicos have halted Hector’s extradition. Their allegiance is with Los Corazónes Rojos, which has a hit out on him.
That’s where I come in.
My employer—Acme Industries, a black ops agency, which buries all skeletons that the CIA deems worthy of ghost protocol—has been hired to pull off his prison break. In return for pointing out the Quorum’s safe house and providing us with its floor plan and security system data, the Feds will let him live stateside, where he’ll be put in the DOJ’s Witness Protection program.
Hector’s financial portfolio may be humongous, but his physique is petite, which is why his nickname is El Chihuahua. Here’s hoping he lives down to it, since smuggling him off the island won’t be easy under any circumstances.
Now that the prison is within sight, the tug’s low, sad bellow puts all hands on deck. The Mexican flag flaps loudly on the stern pole. I presume no masts are half-raised inside the prison, either.
Certainly not El Chihuahua’s, now that his paid-by-the-hour puta is here.
That would be me.
The other women standing with me on the tugboat’s deck—all wives, girlfriends and whores on their way to their monthly conjugal visits with the murderers, thieves, and drug dealers who live within the prison’s walls—adjust their lips upward into smiles, while tugging the necklines of their too-snug blouses even lower.
In lockup, orifices may be readily available, but bountiful cleavage is not.
My breasts are already propelled high, front and center. My skirt is short and tight, whereas my high heels are long, pointy and packed for a punch: one is tipped with a knockout drug, the other with a serrated blade.
So yeah, I guess I’m ready, too.
There are at least forty guards on the grounds, and another six in the turrets of the towers topping this castle-like compound. Their whistles and catcalls can be heard loud and clear as we women maneuver our way up the chipped stone steps leading to the prison’s two-story solid steel gates.
Being manhandled (ostensibly for hidden weapons or breakout tools) has many of the ladies wincing. But those who, like me, are looking for an extra half-hour with their menfolk smile and purr a few promises they hope will be forgotten when it’s time to leave this hellhole.
The metal detector beeps when I saunter through. The guard on duty smells as if he’s taken a hit off every bottle of tequila that’s been smuggled in today. He presumes it is the thick-ribbed bracelet on my arm that set it off. All the same, he fondles my breasts between his rough palms, as if they’re a pair of ripe melons.
Tit for tit, I pinch his breast harder than he tweaked mine.
“Usted me está haciendo caer en amor con usted,” he says, with a smirk.
Why am I not surprised that he actually likes a little rough play?
“What a douche,” my team leader, Jack Craig, mutters into my tiny diamond stud earpiece. He witnesses that bit of womanhandling through my contact lenses, which are really digital mini-cams. Obviously, he doesn’t like what he sees.
No boyfriend would, right?
“Seriously, Donna, you have my permission to kill him, now, if you want.” By his tone, I know Jack means it.
“Mas tarde, mi amor,” I murmur. Then I lick my lips, knowing that the guard will hear my soft taunt as a come-on.
Later my love…
First things first.
My act is working. The guard is too distracted to notice all the toys, which will get my ass, and my asset, off this godforsaken island. In my clutch bag are my ID (a Mexican driver’s license that identifies me as “Lucinda Gutiérrez”, a nondescript lipstick, a seemingly innocent compact, a change purse that holds a few coins, and a rosary with a small metal cross.
Here’s the plan: Once we’re alone in one of the prison’s flimsy straw love shacks, I’ll clue Hector in on the fact that nookie is out, but a run for the gate is in. Unfortunately, that should keep the smirk on his face. Then I’ll slap one of my tiny, but strong, neo-magnetic earrings onto the shack’s center pole before shooting the other earring—attached to the zip line hidden in my rosary—out the shack’s window with my lipstick case, which is really a miniature missile launcher. The missile’s GPS system will lead it to a three-person submarine anchored about thirty feet below high tide and about two hundred feet offshore where Jack is waiting for us. Once the zip line’s magnet has locked onto the exterior antechamber of the sub, we’ll roll off this hot hunk of rock using my GPS-driven ribbed bracelet as a pulley.
Since subs are the new vehicle of choice for running drugs between Mexico and the U.S., El Chihuahua should feel right at home.
Besides, prison has given him time to get used to tight quarters.
Between the sub’s cloaking system and a submersion depth of sixty feet, we will be able to maneuver past any Mexican patrol boats. At a cruising speed of eighty nautical miles per hour, we should surface at the dock of our safe house in the posh tourist enclave Cabo San Lucas in three hours, tops. There, we’ll debrief El Chihuahua as to the whereabouts of the Quorum’s villa and get the necessary entry data.
After turning Hector over to his Witness Protection detail, Jack and I will break into the villa, download all files on the master computer’s hard drive onto a flash drive and then plant a worm that will allow us to monitor all data going in and out of it.
So that, finally, Acme will learn who is funding the Quorum and break it up, once and for all.
Five years ago, the Quorum took my husband, Carl, away from me and our children.
Time to get even.
And not a minute too soon. It’s Valentine’s Day. My aunt Phyllis is watching my three children—ten-year-old Jeff, his twelve-year-old sister, Mary; and kindergartner Trisha—so that Jack and I can have a romantic getaway.
Jack isn’t their dad, but he’s the only father they know.
If I have my way, it will stay that way.
Happily. And ever after.
We’ve dodged a hell of a lot of bullets together. Both literally and figuratively.
I lost Carl to the Quorum. I won’t lose Jack, too.
In fact, something tells me that Jack is proposing tonight.
If he does, I have no idea how I’ll answer him. My hesitation has nothing to do with what I know about Carl’s fate, and the role the Quorum played in it.
Maybe I’m afraid of tempting fate twice.
Granted, our version of hearts and flowers is a bit skewed from the norm. More like guns and roses.
My slow stroll through the prison courtyard is serenaded by the jeers and come-ons of the prisoners who, for this month anyway, are unlucky in love. “Siéntate en mi cara, perra…” and “Quiero que me chupe…” are the two most common ones shouted so often, and by so many that, to my ear, they sound like a mantra.
I ignore them, and I certainly won’t translate them now for you.
I’m too much of a lady for that.
Hector’s lawyer has arranged for his client to be assigned the last love shack on the left. I’m sure Hector is in there now, waiting for me. It’s perfectly situated for this mission because it is the closest one to the island’s north shore, where the submarine is anchored.
I’ve almost reached the shack when a guard prods my backside with his semi-automatic rifle. “No no no, puta! Para ahi! El Chihuahua se encuentra en la torre, allí.”
Ah, hell. Turns out that our little tryst has been moved to another location.
He’s pointing to the rickety stairwell that leads to the top of the tower, which, unlike the shack, is made of solid rock. It’s too narrow to hold more than one room at the very top, which has only one high, tiny window barred with wrought iron.
As if that matters. If we’re in there, the zip line will never reach its final destination: the sub.
“Plan B?” I whisper, just loud enough for Jack to hear me. The wooden staircases are steep, and rickety.
“Dollface, there is no Plan B. Frankly if it was up to me, you’d take a shiv to the slime bucket and waltz out of there. But orders are orders.” I hear Jack clicking away on his netbook as he tries to figure another way out for all of us.
Including the odious Hector.
There is just one outdoor landing before the ground floor: on the fourth flight of stairs. I try to keep my head up so that Jack’s reconnaissance is easier, but it’s difficult because my heels are getting caught on every other step. To hell with that. As I bend down to slip out of them, the guard bringing up my rear murmurs, “Culo lindo, pero sus piernas son tan flácidas.”
Should I be flattered he says my ass is cute—or pissed because he thinks my thighs are flabby?
“Hey, what did I tell you? Just twenty minutes on an elliptical would do wonders for you,” Jack says. “No more of that tiny jiggle of cottage cheese on your upper thighs—”
In any language, the extension of my middle finger tells both of them what I think of their opinions.
2:46 pm
We are in the tower’s turret, seven flights up.
“Llamamos a esta suite la luna de miel,” the guard says with a snicker.
Yeah, right. Some honeymoon suite.
I’m the first to arrive. I scan the room so that Jack can also see what we’ve got to work with—
Which ain’t much. The room is tiny, and its window, high above my head, is too small to squeeze through, even if it weren’t railed.
There is a double bed on one side, and a dresser on another.
“Jeez! Slim pickings,” he mutters. “Okay here’s what I figure: first, when the guard leaves, give him a sweet kiss goodnight.”
That’s code for knocking him out. My lipstick has a top coat of Rohypnol, which should do the trick.
“The lock is old and easy to pick,” Jack continues. “By the time you do, I’m guessing your physical trainer there will be asleep in the chair outside the door. You can take his semiautomatic. You shouldn’t meet anyone else on the stairwell on your way down. From that fourth story landing, you’ll have just enough line and gravitational pull to make the jump.”
Jack’s tell is the small cough he gives after this lie.
Hearing it now, I realize that my chances of getting El Chihuahua out of here will be slim at best.
I finger the rosary, just in case—
Until I slice off the tip of my nail on the zip line. Ay, caramba!
Jack is not done making my day. “By the way, the mirror over the dresser is also a webcam, so give me about two minutes of steady bump and grind. I’ll put it on a loop, then hack into the feed with it. The boys won’t even realize that the show is a repeat.”
Just great. I don’t look forward to feeling El Chihuahua’s paws all over me, but I’ll get over it.
What a girl won’t do for her country…
3:01 pm
El Chihuahua is thin, short, bald, and has bulging eyes.
Now his nickname makes sense.
Above his orange jumpsuit, there isn’t an inch of his body that isn’t covered with tattoos. Odd words and long lines of numbers run in and around his neck, and over and around his scalp.
Freaky.
Scary.
The way he licks his lips as he looks me up and down, you’d think I was a pork chop.
I try not to shudder as I tantalize him with a long lingering kiss.
While he and the guard exchange smirks, I apply some “lipstick.” Then I slip my hand into the guard’s, and walk him to the door. “Adios, amigo,” I whisper, before fluttering my lashes and laying on a kiss he won’t forget…
When he wakes up, that is.
He stumbles out, too woozy to lock the door behind him.
Great. That gives me one less thing to worry about.
Okay, show time. Smile pretty for the cameras…
My leading man thinks that the simper on my face and the sweet nothings I whisper in his ear are meant for him. In fact, I’m playing to the camera.
In no time at all El Chihuahua has grown by leaps and bounds.
One part of him, anyway.
It takes Hector only a few seconds before he’s out of his orange jumpsuit. It’s not just his head and his neck that’s inked, but every part of his body, like some sort of Sudoku manifesto.
Weird.
The buttons on my blouse are too delicate for his stubby fingers, so he just rips them off. After a few moments of letting him paw at my breasts, I pull him with me onto the floor, below the webcam’s lens—
And in a nanosecond I’ve got the zip line to his neck. I only have to yank it once to get his attention. When he feels my heel on his rotator cuff, his groans are loud and steady.
The boys on the monitor can’t see anything, but what they hear sounds like a man in ecstasy. Perfect.
After three minutes of this, I hear Jack mutter, “Cut…” Then a moment later. “And print.”
The loop is engaged. Show’s over. About damn time…
I twist Hector’s arm behind his back and yank him onto his feet. But before he can scream out in pain, I hiss, “I’m your ride out of here, asshole, so behave yourself, or I’ll leave you to Los Corazónes Rojos’ hit squad. They can’t wait to cut out your heart and keep it as a souvenir.”
He grins up at me. “Don’t like to mix business with pleasure, eh, bitch? What a shame.” He eyes me longingly.
He has only the faintest trace of an accent. Heck, the guy graduated cum laude from Wharton School of Business, so that’s to be expected. I shake my head in wonder. “Why am I not surprised that you’ve got a lot of friends in high places? Funny, t
hough, none of them have cared enough about you to get you out of this joint.”
He shrugs. “Until now. What do you want so badly, that you’re willing to do me the favor?”
“You built the Quorum’s safe house. You’re going to tell me where it is and give me the floor plan. In return, you’ll be freed—on U.S. soil and put into Witness Protection.”
His smirk is back. He thinks a moment, then taps the side of his head. “No problem. It’s all here.”
Satisfied, I release my grip.
Big mistake. He grabs my breasts for a quick feel, then crams his tongue down my throat—
And promptly passes out.
My lipstick is El Chihuahua’s kiss of sleep.
“Aw, heck,” Jack mutters in my ear. “Well now, this ought to be fun. I guess you’re going to have to carry him out.”
“In heels? And on that staircase? You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I were, babe. It’s either that, or hard time for you in Santa Martha Acatitla. We’ll get a few conjugal visits, but…well, let’s just say it ain’t the One & Only Palmilla Resort, if you catch my drift—which, by the way, is where I made our post-mission Valentine’s Day reservation. Just imagine: our very own villa, with an ocean view and an infinity pool. Oh, and get this! The soaking tub in the bathroom has a roof that opens to the stars. Cool, huh? Love those fluffy bathrobes. Hey, what say we get his and hers massages while we’re there? Better yet, we’ll role-play. I’ll be Hans the Austrian masseuse, pleasuring the bored British duchess. Then you can be Inga, the Swedish bombshell… Damn, girl, I’m getting horny just thinking about it. Look, the quicker we blow this joint, the sooner I get to admire you in your new thong bikini—”
After what he just said about my having cottage cheese thighs, he’ll be lucky to get me out of that fluffy bathrobe.
But then, I remember that naughty smile of Jack’s when he teases me, like now.
And the way in which his pale, green eyes darken when he’s worried about me. Not to mention how great it will feel when his long, strong arms pull me close to his broad chest.
Guns and Roses Page 37
