Road to Matchmaker_Matchmaker Mysteries Series Prequel

by Elise Sax

  I struggled to sit up and scooted away from him as fast as I could, but he scooted after me, waving his tied wrists. “But what if you kill me, or I think I’m someone even wimpier than me afterward?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “It’s possible! There are people who are wimpier than me. Lots of them.” It was a total lie. I was the gold-medalist of wimpiness. I was the Nobel Prize of wimpiness. After watching The Wizard of Oz, I had nightmares for a week, and that was just last month. It took three nurses to hold me down to give me a flu shot. I was the wimp of wimpdom.

  “We need Harriet Hard and quick,” Jordan said, his fists getting close to my head. “She would know how to get out of here. She would save us from the thumb-hanging.”

  “Thumb hanging? That doesn’t sound good,” I whined, scooting away from him.

  “We need Harriet now. We have to escape. I’m going to punch you in the head to get her back. It won’t hurt. I promise.”

  Jordan was a nice guy, and he didn’t seem like a liar, but I was reasonably certain that getting punched in the head would hurt. “I don’t think it works that way. I’ve gotten a lot of bumps on my head in the past, but this was the first time I turned into Harriet Hard.”

  “Maybe you’re psychotic or something,” he said scooting toward me with his fists in position. “Maybe you’re Sybil, and you have multiple personalities. Bring out the Harriet personality! Don’t stick me with the wimp! I don’t want to die!”

  “I don’t want to die, either. And getting punched in the head could kill me. I’m not Sybil. The Harriet Hard thing was a one-shot deal, Jordan. I promise.”

  But I wasn’t sure about what I was saying. I had hit my head, and I had turned into Harriet Hard. Then, I hit my head, again, and I turned back into me. Maybe Jordan had a point.

  He let his arms drop. “Okay. So, we’re going to die. My head is going to be in the pantry, next to the persimmons, and the rest of me will be fed to the mutant killer dogs that guard the property.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Maybe we can reason with them,” I said. “Explain the whole Harriet Hard thing to them.”

  “They don’t strike me as the reasonable type. You went on and on about his boss. I don’t think he liked that. Holy shit. Do you hear that?”

  I heard it. Dominguez was coming with his goons, and they were talking about the details of our torture and murder. “Jordan, I don’t want my head to wind up in a crate in the pantry,” I whined.

  “Be Harriet Hard. Please,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and wished that I was Harriet Hard, but when I opened them again, I was still Gladie Burger.

  But I wanted to survive.

  I looked around the room. It was the man cave of an incredibly rich man. There were plenty of electronics, but no weapons.

  But there were floor-to-ceiling windows. “Help me up,” I told Jordan.

  Luckily, our wrists were zip-tied in front of our bodies instead of behind our backs. We tried the windows, but they were all locked. “The end table looks heavy,” I said. Without another word, as if we could read each other’s minds, we grabbed either side of the table and hurled it through the window. The sound was deafening. We didn’t look back when we jumped through the broken window, which was a good thing because the door to the man cave opened the moment the glass broke, and I didn’t want to see our killers come after us.

  We fell about ten feet to the ground below. My high heels snapped in two on impact, but somehow, I stayed upright and started running away from the mansion.

  “We are so going to die,” I cried. The compound was huge, situated on acres of land, but it didn’t take long to see the wall that marked the boundary of the property. We ran faster toward it.

  “They’re chasing us!” Jordan yelled.

  It was harder than I expected to run with my hands tied and my heels broken, but it was amazing how my survival instincts kicked in and gave me cardio superpowers. We got near to the wall when we saw the mutant killer watch dogs coming straight for us.

  “Dogs!” I shouted as a warning to Jordan.

  “Not dogs. Men. They’re standing up.”

  I squinted. It was the middle of the night, but with the lights from the house and the moon above, I could make out the figures. They were tall and hairy, like dogs on their hind legs. And hopping.

  Hopping, stand-up, mutant killer attack dogs.

  “They’re hopping, stand-up dogs,” I announced to Jordan.

  “What’s a hopping, stand-up dog?”

  We didn’t have long to wait to find out. They were coming right for us, and we were going right for them. It was either that or turn around onto the path of the goons who were chasing us with their guns.

  We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between goons with guns and hopping, stand-up mutant attack dogs.

  “If I get out of this alive, I’m never going to read another book ever again!” I shouted and kept running.

  Hop, hop, hop, the dogs came for us. Just as they were about ten feet away, I realized that they weren’t dogs at all. Jordan figured it out at the same time.

  “Kangaroos!” Jordan cried, relieved. “They’re just kangaroos. The drug lord has some kind of freaky zoo. That’s all. Come on! Nobody’s scared of a kangaroo. They’re harmless.”

  Funny how irony invades a conversation. In my experience, “famous last words” should have been added to most statements. And this wasn’t any different. No, nobody was scared of kangaroos. They had pockets in their bellies. They had cute noses. They hopped. They were from Australia. Why would anyone be scared of a kangaroo?

  But we were about to find out that these weren’t ordinary kangaroos. Dominguez had crazy, killer kangaroos.

  The worst kind of kangaroos.

  A couple went after Jordan, a couple went after me, and luckily, the rest went after the goons. They were equal opportunity, crazy, killer kangaroos. They didn’t care who they attacked. I ducked and weaved, but no matter how awesome I was in spin classes, I was no match for a large marsupial. Neither was Jordan. The two kangaroos pounded him.

  The goons ran for their lives back to the house. We were home free! We just had to avoid the kangaroos and make it over the wall to freedom. Easy peasy.

  Ouch!

  Sonofabitch!

  One of the killer kangaroos made contact with my back. It was like it knew karate or kung fu. And it was strong. I flew forward a few steps but managed not to fall. Jordan was getting pounded. We were only a few feet from the wall. I ran to Jordan and tried to help him up. I grabbed his hand and pulled.

  That’s when one of the killer kangaroos caught me at the back of my head, and everything went dark.

  Again.

  Damn it.

  Harriet Hard had had a long day. Saving the world was difficult, even for her. But now the world was saved, and it was time to go home. No, she wasn’t going to her villa in Italy or her chalet in Switzerland. She wasn’t in the mood for her brownstone in Manhattan or her plantation in Louisiana. She was going home to Grandma’s house. Home. It was a Victorian house made of wood, but it was really made of heart and love.

  She drove her Ferrari on the windy road that led up the mountains to the small town where her grandmother lived. She took the curves easily at a breakneck speed, her driving skills the envy of every race car driver in the world.

  Harriet parked in her grandmother’s driveway and got out of her car. Her grandmother opened the door to the house and stepped out.

  “Dolly, I made up your room. There’s fried chicken in the kitchen waiting for you.”

  Harriet walked inside. “My arch-nemesis turned into my lover and back to my arch-nemesis,” she told her grandmother. “I saved the world, but I’m not sure I saved myself.”

  Her grandmother put her hand on Harriet’s cheek. “You have the gift, bubbeleh. Your place is here. You’re home.”

  “But I have to travel the world and diffuse bombs.”

 
; “You have the gift. Your place is here. You’re home. Home…home…home…”

  “Gladie, you’re not dead, are you?”

  “I’m saving the world with fried chicken,” I moaned and slowly became aware of my surroundings.

  I was lying flat on my back on the sidewalk, and Jordan was leaning over me. A streetlight gave me a good look at his face, which was a picture of concern and a bruised, swollen eye.

  “Are you Harriet, again?”

  “I thought I was, but I guess I was dreaming,” I said. The dream had been very real, and it left me with a lot of food for thought. It had been like my grandmother had really been talking to me. And she was inviting me home. I hadn’t had a real home since I was a little girl, before my father died. But that had been a long time ago, and I had been running away and trying to return home at the same time, ever since.

  Wow, there was nothing like being attacked by a killer kangaroo to have a life-changing insight.

  “Where am I?” I asked Jordan.

  “On the other side of the wall. The kangaroos got tired of karate chopping us and hopped away. I lifted you up over the wall. I haven’t heard from Dominguez or his men. I guess they gave up on us.”

  Jordan helped me up. I checked my body for injuries, but somehow, I had made it out of the drug lord’s den in one piece. We were still zip-tied, but Jordan said he had scissors in his car.

  “How did you get me over the wall?”

  “I told you that I’m buff for an accountant.”

  While I had been Harriet, I had hidden Jordan’s keys behind the little door to the gas tank. We fished them out and opened the car. Jordan cut my ties, and I cut his. This time, he drove.

  “I’m sorry about tonight. About everything,” I told him, as we drove away from the fancy neighborhood.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You thought you were Harriet Hard.”

  “I’m never going to read a book again. Books are dangerous. They make you think you’re someone you’re not. They give you ideas. Dangerous ideas.”

  “I don’t think it was the book’s fault. I think your brain got confused.”

  I looked in the side-view mirror for any sign of Dominguez or his men, but it was the middle of the night and the roads were empty except for Jordan’s car. It looked like we had gotten away scot free. Dominguez didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would let his would-be victims dangle in the wind with the possibility of them reporting about kidnapping and severed heads to the police.

  “Why aren’t they following us?” I asked Jordan.

  “They don’t know where we are. They don’t know what car I have. They had gotten busy with the kangaroos, and now they’re looking for Harriet Hard. Luckily, you’re not Harriet Hard anymore. So, they’ll never find us. We can go back to our normal lives.”

  I was surprised to realize that I was disappointed to go back to my normal life. My life wasn’t anything resembling normal, but it wasn’t anything resembling exciting or fulfilling, either. Becoming Harriet Hard was the first fun I had had since I could remember.

  “That’s good,” I lied.

  “Yeah, good,” Jordan said, his voice drifting off.

  “I mean, you’re getting married, and you’re going to be a CPA. A house in Brentwood. That should be nice.”

  “Bel Air,” he corrected. “I guess that’s good.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “I’ll spend my life crunching numbers so that rich guys can evade paying taxes. Chained to a desk all day, every day, to come back to a house that’s mortgaged to the hilt.”

  “To a woman you love,” I added, putting a good spin on it.

  “Yeah…love…” he said, his voice drifting off again.

  Harriet Hard wasn’t real, but she had left us a mirror to reflect our lives back to us. And what we saw wasn’t good. I was doomed to return to one temp job after another, to one bad date to another. Never enough money to pay my meager bills. No goals, no missions, no hope.

  But at least I didn’t have a pointy woman bossing me around. That would have been the camel that broke my hairy back.

  “I’ll be working so hard that I’ll never have time to make boeuf bourguignon or a soufflé. Those are very time-consuming meals to prepare,” Jordan continued. He was deep in thought, and it seemed like he was talking to himself, not to me. “I’ll never have time to learn to make good mole. Never. I was going to go down to Mexico to learn it from a hundred-and-five-year-old lady. Now, I’ll be too busy figuring out deductions for business yacht trips to ever cook again.”

  Never cooking again sounded great to me. My cooking skills ended at toast and a half-decent cup of coffee. “Maybe she’ll let you cook a soufflé once in a while,” I said, trying to cheer him up.

  Jordan barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? If she lets me make her a ham and cheese sandwich, I’ll be lucky.”

  I didn’t have a response to that. Jordan was in a bad place. He was doomed to accounting and a woman who wouldn’t let him sauté. He couldn’t find a way out.

  It was a bad sign when you wished you were still zip-tied in a drug lord’s compound, waiting to be dismembered.

  I got three hours of sleep before I had to get up to go to work at the bookstore. Jordan and I had agreed to pretend the night hadn’t happened and not to tell another living soul about Harriet Hard and Dominguez. Besides the restaurant’s runaway cook, there were no real witnesses to my alter ego who also knew me as Gladie Burger.

  So, we were going on as if nothing had happened.

  I dressed in a skirt and a blouse and took the bus to the bookstore, since I couldn’t find my keys or my purse. My boss Francine met me at the door.

  “You!” she growled and stomped her foot. “You! You! You!”

  It wasn’t the first time a boss had had that reaction to me.

  “Good morning, Francine. How are you?”

  “You destroyed my shop! It’s like a bomb went off in here. And you left the door unlocked.”

  “I what?” I asked, but the memories flooded back to me. The bookcases. The books. I pushed Francine aside and walked inside. I had to see the scene of the crime. The birthplace of Harriet Hard.

  It was worse than I had imagined. Francine had been right. It looked like a bomb had gone off. All the bookcases except for the ones along the walls had fallen over. There were books everywhere, like someone had left the lid off of a book popcorn popper. My organization was shot to hell. Romance, mystery, and science fiction were all mixed together in no order whatsoever. All my hard work was ruined. I found my purse at the bottom of a pile, and I slipped it over my shoulder.

  “I never should have hired you,” Francine screeched. “I could tell you were no good, and it was obvious that you’re not a reader.”

  “I’ve read two books this week!” I screeched back. It was the truth, but she was right. I had read two books, but I wasn’t a reader. I didn’t know anything about books.

  But I knew what was going to happen next. It had happened a million times. I was going to get fired.

  Sacked. Laid off. Axed. Canned.

  “You’re…” Francine started, while I looked at my nails. Her voice rose, and I knew she wanted to yell “fired” to really hit home the message.

  It was a shame because I had enjoyed the job, and I had started to read. But never again. I was reasonably sure I had run out of decent jobs, and no way was I ever going to get involved with a book series again. Harriet Hard could go straight to hell, as far as I was concerned.

  Francine didn’t shout “fired,” however, because she was interrupted. Several men walked into the small shop. A tall man entered first. He was well-dressed in a beautiful, gray suit and an overcoat, which was strange because it was a warm, Southern Californian day. He was blond and probably in his sixties, and he seemed extremely pleased to see me.

  Behind him were two men, each about a head shorter than the first man and both dressed in baggy, black suits. One of them held tight to Jordan, one hand clen
ched around his arm, and the other hand holding a knife to his throat.

  “Harriet Hard, I presume,” the man in the overcoat said, looking at me.

  CHAPTER 6

  “What’s going on here?” Francine demanded.

  “I hear that you’ve been looking for me, Ms. Hard,” the man in the overcoat said, ignoring Francine and looking right at me. I shuddered. He gave me the creeps. Jordan was staring at me, too. He was worried, and there was something else in his expression. Guilt that he had led them to me?

  “May I help you? This is my establishment,” Francine continued, valiantly trying to control the situation.

  The man in the overcoat signaled one of the men, and he grabbed Francine’s arm. “Don’t hurt her,” I urged.

  The man looked at his boss, and the boss nodded. “Just make sure she won’t cause any trouble.”

  “What does that mean?” Francine asked, panic invading her voice. They didn’t answer her. The man lifted her up, tucked her away in the supply closet, and barred the door.

  I had to think quick to get us out of the jam. And by jam, I meant getting murdered. I willed my brain to think like Harriet Hard or like anyone who was half-competent. But nothing came to me. My brain refused to cooperate. Instead of working out a strategy to survive, I only managed to drum up fear, anxiety, and dread.

  “I’m not Harriet Hard,” I told the man.

  He shot a look at Jordan, and Jordan shrugged. “I hear that you’ve been looking for me,” the man said.

  “Dominguez’s boss,” I breathed. Somehow as Harriet Hard, I had stumbled on the truth about the so-called biggest drug lord on the planet: he had a boss.

  “Drew Forest. Nice to meet you.”

  “He’s the local assemblyman,” Jordan squeaked.

  Holy cow. It was a conspiracy with a drug lord and a politician. It was like a really good movie with bad guys and knives and killer kangaroos.

  But as much as I loved those kinds of movies, I didn’t want to live in one. It was scary, and I didn’t do scary very well.