by Lynn, JB
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
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Praise for JB Lynn’s Novels
"If you love series such as Evanovich's Plum and Bond's Body Movers, you'll love Confessions of A Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman."
– A Chick Who Reads
“…laugh out loud hilarious and totally engaging novel.”
– Night Owl Reviews
“JB Lynn knows how to entertain readers. I can’t wait to see what she has in store for Maggie next!”
– Romance Novel News
“Ms. Lynn writes stories that flow well, make you care about her characters, and make you want to read more. It’s a winning combination for a book.”
– Long and Short Reviews
“…Lynn similarly and masterfully joins the genres of suspense and romance with a tale that is sure to please fans of both. Readers will be anxiously awaiting the next book in this series.”
– LIBRARY JOURNAL
OTHER TITLES BY JB LYNN
CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN
FURTHER CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN
THE FIRST VICTIM
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Baum
Cover by Hot Damn Designs
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www.jblynn.com
Acknowledgements
I’m a lucky gal.
I’m lucky to have readers who’ve embraced my work and are rooting for Maggie.
I’m lucky that my critique partner, Cynthia Valero, suggested/nudged/pushed/insisted that I write books with “that voice.”
I’m lucky that my agent, Victoria Marini and my Avon Impulse editor, Lucia Macro, took a chance on Maggie’s potential with Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman.
I’m lucky that another critique partner, Jennifer Colgan, suggested this “lucky” title. Thanks, Jen!
I’m lucky that the amazing Kate Perry encouraged me to take this grand plunge.
I’m lucky that I have some of the best pals (in and out of the biz) anyone could ask for. You’ve helped and encouraged me along the way and I appreciate each and every one of you… even those of you I don’t pay.
I’m lucky that all these years later Doug is still my best friend (despite the fact I forget to treat him that way when I’m on deadline).
Lastly, I’m lucky that YOU have found this story. Enjoy!
You know it's going to be a bad day when all that stands between you and a pot of gold is an angry Irishman.
My name is Maggie Lee. Somehow, I've become a hitwoman. According to my pet lizard, Godzilla (he prefers to be called God for short), I’m a terribly klutzy assassin. He's told me many times when he’s taking a break from obsessing over Wheel of Fortune (which he is terribly inept at).
But as much as I have screwed up in my role as a contract killer, I seem to be an even worse thief.
Which is how I found myself facing down the angry Irishman.
Maybe I should start from the beginning....
Chapter One
I hate my job. My real job where I answer phones and take claims at Insuring the Future. I hate my boss, Harry, who constantly reeks of pepperoni and who, up until recently, hit on me incessantly. Which brings me to the one thing I don't hate about work, my friend Armani Vasquez.
Armani somehow managed to threaten Harry into leaving me alone, which would be enough reason to like her, but she's also smart, funny, and a fairly accurate psychic... if only we could figure out what her predictions mean before they happen.
If she wasn't constantly urging me to let my "inner-Chiquita out and have some fun" and if she didn't have such weird food habits, we'd be best pals.
Still, I sit with her at lunch where she offers to share her crazy culinary creations and she spouts her predictions. On this particular day, she was eating a liverwurst and grape jelly sandwich, which not only looked disgusting, but smelled like something straight out of a garbage dumpster.
"Want some?" she asked, waving it at me.
I swallowed the urge to retch and held up my classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a defense. "I'm good."
"I brought you something," she said, using her good hand to reach into her Hello Kitty lunch tote. Her other hand, along with one leg, were crushed in a tragic Zamboni accident that she could have avoided if she'd just paid more attention to her premonition of Vanilla Ice crooning "Ice, Ice, baby." Like I said, tragic.
The mouthful of PB&J I was trying to swallow lodged itself in my throat as I braced myself for whatever horrid concoction she planned on force-feeding me.
But she didn't pull out food. She pulled out a red rabbit's foot on a keychain, a horseshoe caked with dirt, and a hard-looking triangular thing.
"For you," she said with a smile.
"Why?" I asked, not really wanting to know.
Every time Armani makes a prediction about my future, my life gets even crazier than usual. Considering I go around killing people for money in order to pay for my hospitalized niece's care and that I have actual conversations with my lizard and my dog, Doomsday or DeeDee as she now prefers to be called, when my life gets "crazier," you know I'm in trouble.
"I had a dream about you." Armani flipped her beautiful, black hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial to signal her satisfaction.
I waited, knowing from experience there was no way to rush her through her dramatic reveal.
"It was a very clear dream," she elaborated.
Her dreams are never clear. I know this better than she does. For example, she once told me to "meet the man" and I ended up going out with a guy I probably should’ve stayed away from.
"Lucky," she proclaimed seriously.
"Lucky?" I'm the unluckiest person I know. If you knew my family history, you'd know that's true.
"Lucky."
I eyed the stuff on the table. "Okay, I get the rabbit's foot and the horseshoe, but what's with that?” I nodded to the pointy triangle thing.
"It's a shark's tooth."
"A shark's tooth? Is that supposed to be lucky?"
Armani nodded emphatically. "They're supposed to have protective and healing powers."
"Maybe I should give it to Katie," I mused aloud. My little niece was badly injured in a terrible car crash months ago. An accident that Armani sort of, kind of predicted... even though she didn't know it at the time.
The accident killed my sister Theresa and her husband, Dirk the Jerk, leaving Katie an
orphan and me her legal guardian. The doctors keep assuring me that Katie’s making progress, but she could use some turbo-boosted healing powers about now.
The crash also left me with the ability to talk to animals. Not as much fun as you'd think—lizards complain a lot.
Ignoring me, Armani continued, "You should wear it as a necklace. It's said to bring good luck."
I wrinkled my nose. "You couldn't have gotten me a four-leaf clover? You had to get me two pieces of dead animals?" I eyed the horseshoe suspiciously. "And how do they get the shoe off the horse? When they're processing it at the glue factory?"
"They don't use horses to make glue," Armani corrected, but then hastily added, “I don’t think."
"Hello, ladies." Harry, our boss, the one who stinks of pepperoni, stepped up behind me. "Just wanted to remind you we've got a meeting this afternoon."
"Got the four email reminders about it," Armani said, biting into her oozing liverwurst and jelly sandwich.
Chastised, Harry hung his head. "There’ll be cookies."
"What did you do to the poor man?" I asked, watching Harry scurry away.
"Don't feel sorry for him, Chiquita," she warned. "You should toughen up. Stop feeling sorry for everyone. Be a badass."
If only she knew how much of a badass I truly am... albeit a bumbling badass.
"So I brought you these things," she said, waving her smelly sandwich over the collection of good luck charms, "but 'lucky' could mean other things."
"Like what?"
"Like maybe you should buy a lottery ticket or something."
I rolled my eyes. She was sounding nuttier than my mom who resides in a mental institution.
"Or maybe," she said, pausing breathlessly for dramatic effect, "just maybe you're going to get lucky." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
I laughed. Not just a chuckle, but a real guffaw, one loud enough to draw the attention of some of the Insuring the Future drones at nearby tables.
Normally my luck with men was nothing to write home about. Lately, it had been downright abysmal. The only man in my life at the moment that I'm even remotely interested in is Patrick Mulligan, who happens to already have two families (he had two wives, but now he's down to one) not to mention the fact that he’s my murder mentor. I'm sure that with all the rules he's always spouting that getting involved with the guy who trains you to kill people is probably pretty high on his list of “don'ts” along with Rule One: "Don't get caught” and Rule Three: "Don't get emotionally involved."
"Hey, you never know," Armani chided.
For a split second I panicked that I'd said that last bit aloud, but then I realized she was responding to my scoffing at her suggestion.
"That hero cop liked you," she said. "I could tell."
Sometimes she's a little too psychically sensitive for my comfort. Besides being my murder mentor, Patrick Mulligan also happens to be a highly decorated police officer. He's the only person I know with a life that's more messed up than mine.
Instead of responding to my lunch-mate, I scooped up all the treasures she'd brought me. "Thanks for these."
"You deserve some good luck, Maggie."
I looked up and was surprised to see her staring at me worriedly.
"I'm fine," I assured her.
"You don't have to be psychic to know that's far from the truth,” she muttered.
Armani was right, but I'd never admit that to her. I'm far from fine. I'm stressed out and I'm tired. Very, very tired.
For a couple of months, I'd been heading straight from work to the hospital to visit Katie, but that got to be exhausting. Now I go to visit on a rotating schedule with my aunts. Aunt Loretta visits on Mondays after she's been to the beauty parlor. Aunt Leslie goes on Tuesdays after her N.A. meeting. I go on Wednesdays and Fridays after work and on Saturday mornings before I get busy running errands. Aunt Susan goes on Fridays when she's done working. Two or more aunts go on Sundays.
That way Katie gets a visitor every day, but I'm not running myself quite as ragged. The schedule was Aunt Leslie's idea. She's actually come up with some pretty impressive ones since she got herself off drugs after hitting bottom on my doorstep a few months ago.
On the way home, I stopped at the convenience store to buy some milk and a Lean Cuisine. While I was there, I bought a lottery ticket. I didn't think Armani's prediction was right, but I'd have been a fool to ignore her completely.
The second I walked into my apartment, Doomsday (a.k.a. DeeDee), an eighty-pound Doberman Pinscher who sounds like a blonde bimbo, greeted me with, "Gotta! Gotta! Gotta!"
Grabbing her leash, I took her on a quick walk before her bladder burst.
Once she'd done her immediate business and was entertaining herself by sniffing every blade of grass that popped through the cracks in the asphalt of the parking lot of the apartment complex, I asked, "How was your day?"
"Hungry," she whined pitifully.
"You act like you're never fed," I grumbled, rubbing the spot between her ears. She sat down and leaned her full bodyweight against me, so that I wouldn't stop petting her.
Her eyes drifted closed in delight. "All day God eat."
Since Godzilla is an anole lizard who prefers to dine on live crickets (he once went on a hunger strike when I deigned to give him freeze-dried bugs), I tend to dump his jumping and chirping buffet into his terrarium when I leave for work so I'm spared witnessing the carnage he wreaks.
"Hungry DeeDee." The dog sighed.
Her starvation pleas once convinced me to leave a heaping bowlful of food out for her when I left for work. I learned my lesson when I returned home, exhausted after a hospital visit, to find a pile of vomit in the center of the living room. Armani wasn't so far off when she suggested I should stop feeling sorry for everyone.
My cellphone buzzed. I had to stop petting the dog to pull the phone from my pocket.
She tilted her head back and whined.
"Hello?" I answered, not recognizing the number.
"Hey, Mags."
My heartbeat did that funny little stuttering thing it does every time Patrick Mulligan calls. I did my best to sound normal. "Hi, Patrick."
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Hungry!" Doomsday barked.
Sometimes I forget how acute her sense of hearing is.
Jumping up, she put her front paws on my shoulders so she could get closer to the phone. "Hungry!" she barked again.
Patrick chuckled. "I think she recognizes my voice."
"Guess so," I murmured.
"So?" he asked again. "Hungry?"
I thought of my Lean Cuisine defrosting on my kitchen counter. "Sure."
"Bring the dog in so she doesn't make a scene."
"Are you watching me?" Turning, I scanned the parking lot. I couldn't see him. That came as no surprise since there’s no way I’d ever be able to recognize his car. I've never seen him driving the same vehicle more than once.
"Inside, Mags," he said softly.
DeeDee didn't need to be told twice. She raced toward my apartment, dragging me along behind her. Considering that I was pretty sure Patrick was watching, I did my best not to let the dog knock me on my ass.
"Company's coming," I told God as I rushed into my apartment, ran into my bedroom, and turned the volume of the television down. I leave the TV on for him, otherwise he claims I'm trying to bore him to death.
"Change the channel," he ordered lazily. "It's almost time for Wheel."
For a while, when I first got into the assassination biz, all he watched were true crime shows. But now that he’d attended his first wedding, he seemed to have developed an obsession with nuptial-related programming, but his love of Wheel of Fortune still trumps them all.
I changed the station for him, closed my bedroom door behind me (no need to let Patrick see I'd set up my lizard in front of a game show), and hurried back out of the living room, just in time to see something red dangling from Doomsday's mouth.
"Give me that!" I
screamed, lunging for her.
For a big animal, she's pretty spry.
She took off for the kitchen before I could grab her.
"Spit it out!" I yelled. "Don't eat it!"
I thought I had her cornered beneath the kitchen table, but she knocked a chair out of her way to make her escape.
"It's not food, you imbecile!" I shrieked. "Don't bite it! Don't chew it! Don't you dare swallow it!"
She scrambled over the couch in the living room, knocking a table lamp to the floor with a resounding crash.
"Drop it!" I shouted.
God yelled from the next room. "You're interrupting my viewing pleasure with that racket." In case you don't know, Godzilla sounds a lot like Professor Snape from the Harry Potter movies, meaning he sounds like a superior, snarky prick.
"Shut up!" I yelled back just as I leapt at the big, black body trying to squeeze past me.
Tackling Doomsday to the ground, I tried to pry her jaws open like I was some kind of alligator wrestler you'd see at Gatorland in Florida. "Give it back!" I demanded breathlessly. "Give. It. Back."
"Give what back, Mags?"
Doomsday and I both looked up to see Patrick standing in the living room, watching us, amusement sparkling in his eyes.
"PAPIP!" Doomsday yelped joyfully. She meant to say “Patrick!” but her mouth was full.
She scrambled out of my grasp and loped toward him, turning back to spit out the bedraggled, chewed, no-longer-red, saliva-soaked rabbit's foot.
"How's my girl?" Patrick asked warmly, bending down to pat the dog's side.
I did my best to ignore the jealousy that ate at me whenever I witnessed his fondness for the mutt. My murder mentor’s got a soft spot for her since she'd helped save his life once.
