by Audrey Faye
Thought could never end.
I like my endings happy and forever.
I tugged on my covers, trying to make my nest a little less lumpy and pondering the foolishness of hoping for things from the future that very rarely arrived.
My partner was smarter that way—she was kicking and fussing at the moment, but that was because things were making her uncomfortable in the now. Carly lived and breathed the present moment. She had good reasons for staying the heck out of the past, but it seemed to keep her from falling into the future, too. That was my own lonely hell.
Not for the first time, I considered just how much I’d learned from her and how much further I had to go. Johnny had ended, singing had ended, and someday, the assassin duo that was the core of who I was would end too. And yet, I couldn’t name anything in my life that had given me more pleasure, more meaning, or more richness than those three.
I shook my head and dumped it face-first into my pillow. It was a surefire bet that I needed to be asleep when I’d somehow managed to land my skunk asshat ex-husband on the good end of the scales in my life. I closed my eyes, determined to will myself into either sleep or a really good nocturnal daydream involving two sexy men and a vat of chocolate.
Salty island breezes had just began to waft over the three of us when reality yanked me rudely back out again. I sighed and waved good-bye to the hunky twins. If the cursing from upstairs hadn’t bid them to go, the thudding on the stairs would have. Clearly, Lelo fully intended to wake up all three of us and the dead, too. Lights flicked on overhead, a sleepy house waking up fast. I rubbed my eyes and prepared for invasion.
Lelo stumbled into the living room, momentarily chastened by the dark. “Sorry, J. Time to rock and roll—Judi’s leveled up.”
Gamer talk. I scrunched my eyes into some semblance of focus. “In the middle of the night?”
“It’s 5am.”
Same difference. “What the heck are they doing at this hour?”
“They’re taking some creep down. That accountant, I think. Rhonda must have insomnia or something—she’s always posting in the middle of the night.”
Ghosts of Johnny slunk off into the darkness. I hoped my hunky twins punched him in the nose. “Start at the beginning, Lelo. With really small words.”
Carly flicked on a light switch behind the kid, phone in her hand. “Judi’s back in town, they’re launching a major op, and idiot Rhonda laid the whole thing out in a forum post she put up two minutes ago.”
That was at least eleven kinds of dumb. “What are they planning?”
Rosie was reading over my partner’s shoulder. “Some crazy-shit thing about luring him into an alley. With knives.”
The kind of crazy-shit thing we do several times a month. The sort of stunt people talk about, no matter how much time and effort we put into persuading them not to.
The stuff that creates urban legends and spawns copycats.
I yanked on my pants. “Do we know where this is going down?”
Lelo had already assembled two laptops, a tablet, and a phone, and commandeered my makeshift bed. “Nope. You two drive. I’ll dig.”
Rosie dropped onto the couch beside her. “Give me something to do.”
I breathed a sigh of relief—we weren’t going to have to talk them into staying put.
I zipped up my pants, grabbed my bag, and headed after my partner. I hadn’t missed the gypsy’s sharp gaze at Carly’s disappearing back. I just didn’t have time to do anything about it.
13
Carly threw the van in reverse about a nanosecond after I got my butt in the passenger-side door. “Get Lelo on the line and then turn on your bluetooth.”
I knew how to do that—barely. It was how we streamed our music. I jumped as I tapped a few buttons and the teenager’s greeting popped out on the van speakers. Voodoo. Fast voodoo.
“Lelo.” Carly’s voice was grim. “I left my gray phone there. Find it and look for the app titled Judi.”
I could almost hear the kid’s eyes popping. “Got it. Will it explode if I put in the wrong password?”
“Yes.” My partner merged onto the interstate and reeled off a string of numbers—and then more to get through the next layers of security.
“Through.” Lelo was breathing hard. “And I have the app. What does it do?”
“If Judi has her phone with her, it lets us listen in to whatever they’re saying.”
“You bugged her phone? You are so cool. How’d you set that up?”
Carly pulled out left to pass a slow-moving truck. “Don’t ask. Just see if you can hear anything.”
A few loud thumps through our speakers and then a bunch of garbled static. A moment later, the static went dead. “Sorry.” Lelo sounded contrite. “I’ve got her phone feed on my ear buds now. Sound quality sucks, but I can hear them. I’m going to pass you over to Rosie so she can coordinate while I listen.”
We had a command center.
“Where are you guys?” The sexy gypsy was all business.
I peered out the window, trying to see street signs.
“Tracker app,” said Carly succinctly.
“Got you,” replied Rosie moments later.
I gave up—I was obsolete.
“They’re almost there.” We could hear a very tense Lelo in the background. “Too much background noise—I can’t make out most of what they’re saying.”
The heat in the van ratcheted up a dozen degrees.
“You’re about ten blocks from where the accountant lives.” Rosie was clearly doing more than relaying information.
Lelo again. “They turned onto some street called Lincoln.”
Carly growled. “Where the fuck is Lincoln?”
We were navigating blind in a town we didn’t know worth crap. I yanked open the paper map—no point using tools I entirely sucked at.
“Take any left you see, and you’ll hit Lincoln in two blocks.” Rosie’s voice was as calm and cool as a frog pond in early spring. “It has three alleys running left off the north end. The southern-most one is closest to where the guy lives, but it has garages in back of the houses.”
Those kinds of alleys generally had kids’ bikes and people walking their dogs. “Are any of them dead ends?”
“No.” Rosie’s voice trailed off. “Ah. But there’s one over here that is. C, take your next left on Maple, right on Remington, left on Fifth.”
Carly yanked the steering wheel left. “On it.”
“Alley halfway up your first block on Fifth. Ends in a fence just before the railway tracks.”
Dead end, grime, and cover noise. If they had any brains at all, that would be it. I grabbed for the door handle as Carly careened us around the second turn. “Any other possibilities, Rosie?”
“Looking.”
“They’re parked.” Lelo’s voice shrilled up an octave. “And they can see him coming.”
This was spiraling out of control too damn fast. “Maybe we shouldn’t be rushing headlong into this.” God only knows we bled too.
“They’re going to pull knives they don’t know how to use on some guy who’s a foot taller and fifty pounds bigger than either of them,” said Carly flatly. “What the hell do you think will happen if we aren’t there to stop it?”
Blood. The only question would be whose.
Carly spun into the third turn and I spotted a shiny black truck parked at an alleyway entrance. “We’ve got them.”
We skidded to a halt close enough to scare the shit out of their truck’s rear bumper and then both of us hit the ground running.
-o0o-
Carly thundered into the alleyway and I drew on everything I had to stay hot on her heels. I could hear my tortured breath wheezing out my throat—she might do things to keep herself in this kind of shape, but I sure the heck didn’t.
I registered a splash as my left foot made a really unfortunate landing and then I was too busy trying to screech to a halt to worry about my foot anymore. Carly had stop
ped dead, arms winging out behind her in some futile attempt to catch me before I splatted against her back.
I had several pithy curses lined up—and then I saw what she was looking at.
We’d expected to see someone waving a knife. We hadn’t expected it to be the accountant.
Judi stood frozen, her back to us, a blade on the ground in front of her feet and abject fear in every line of her body. Rhonda cowered against a brick wall a few feet behind her, lips saying something that could only be prayers.
Two women in deep over their heads—with Lesbian Assassins proudly displayed on their chests.
The accountant, whose face I could see really clearly, had a small knife in his right hand and a look in his eyes that said this wasn’t nearly his first alleyway.
“Stay here.” My partner’s hand slid into her pocket.
Not a chance. I looked around for anything that might serve as a weapon, or at least a distraction. Nothing but soggy cardboard, and Carly was already on the move.
I stepped forward in her shadow, watching the accountant’s eyes.
The moment he saw my partner, Judi and Rhonda ceased to exist. He juggled his hand slightly, testing the weight of the blade in his hand. “Get the fuck out—this is none of your business.”
He had no idea how wrong he was.
“I decide what’s my business.” Carly was moving forward again, feet gliding with the grace of a very dangerous snake. She spared a brief glance at Judi. “Leave. Now.”
His eyes didn’t waver.
Mine never left his, even as I gave Judi’s arm a yank and sent her tumbling into Rhonda. I hoped they had enough brains between them to run like hell—I had more important things to do. I’d spotted a rock on the ground about three feet to the side of Carly’s left foot.
My partner uses weapons that involve skill. I need the kind that don’t require anything more than a couple of seasons as a Little League shortstop. The rock and a bloodcurdling scream or two, and maybe I could buy Carly the opening she needed. Because she was going to need one—it was pretty clear this accountant had the kind of past to know that backing down in a dark alley is a fast track to ending up dead.
My partner doesn’t have that kind of past, or she didn’t until five years ago. But she never backs down either.
I inched closer to the rock.
“Move again,” said the accountant calmly, “and I slice something that matters.”
“No,” replied Carly with the same iced calm. “You don’t. She’s mine.”
It didn’t matter whose I was—his words had very effectively glued my feet to the ground.
He nodded at the two women stumbling their way out of the far end of the alley. “They yours too?”
Carly snorted. “Not hardly.”
His eyes hardened. “Then get out of my way, because nobody pulls a knife on me and walks away.”
She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “Leave them alone.”
His eyes hardened. “They are yours.”
Slowly, my partner reached down for the knife Judi had left on the ground and wrapped her fingers around the handle. Still down in a crouch, she did the same juggle as the accountant had done with his weapon. Weighing the knife—and sending a message.
His lips curled in a sneer. “Piece of crap.”
Carly shrugged almost cheerfully. “Yeah, it is. They don’t know shit about knives.” Her eyes flashed assassin steel. “I do.”
I held my breath. My partner was walking a delicate, volatile tightrope. The only sure way out of this in one piece was for it to never get started. And the only way that was going to happen was for a street-smart accountant to decide he had enough respect for the hot chick holding the knife to walk away.
If he didn’t, we were in a world of trouble. Carly, for all her knife skills and katas and whirling feet, isn’t a street fighter.
Slowly, carefully, my partner backed up, herding me behind her. The accountant matched us, step for step.
I didn’t breathe, not even when I stepped my right foot into the same damn puddle my left had met on the way in.
Ten feet from the mouth of the alley, two knives went very slowly into two pockets. That made me feel marginally better. The accountant took two more steps to draw even with us. He rolled forward on the balls of his feet and the tiny bit of air I’d managed to suck into my lungs vanished again. Fire flashed in Carly’s eyes—a warning and a message.
Flint and steel and one terrified ball of flannel-clad tinder.
And then the accountant nodded once and walked away.
Carly watched his retreating back for an entire block—and then she turned and sprinted past the van.
I chased after her, my brain still gibbering in leftover fear. “Where the hell are you going?”
She didn’t even slow down. “To use my knives on the idiot women wearing our t-shirts. Here.” She tossed the keys over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you back at the farmhouse.”
There was no point trying to keep up. I watched her run headlong into the first rays of dawn and sent up the fervent wish that she knew what she was doing—and that the knife in her pocket was a good one.
14
If we had to wait any longer, I was going to kill my partner dead. I looked over at Rosie. “You’re still tracking her?”
“Yup.” The sexy gypsy hadn’t looked up in two hours. “She’s almost back.”
Bless my partner’s addiction to her cell phone. When we hit the alleyway she’d shoved it into her pocket, along with her favorite knife. Rosie had been following her ever since.
Sound preceded Carly’s arrival. Squealing tires, a door slammed with about ten times the necessary force, and footsteps that sounded like she had concrete in her Army boots.
Lelo winced. “That doesn’t sound good.”
I withheld judgment. With Carly, you never knew.
She yanked open the back screen door, marched over to the kitchen table where we were all seated, and threw a big handful of tattered white material down on the cracked Arborite.
I stared—I’d never seen one of our t-shirts stabbed to death. “Was there a body inside it when you did that?”
Her eyes glittered with something that might be amusement. “Yes.”
I wondered which one of them she’d terrorized. My vote was for Judi. “Did you explain the new laws of the land while you were at it, or did you just make t-shirt spaghetti?”
Rosie picked up a slice of fabric and grimaced. “They probably weren’t listening all that well.”
Carly’s eyes still rode something hot and fierce and unruly. “I’d be happy to give them a repeat lesson.”
“That’s not going to stop them,” said Rosie quietly. “It might stop Rhonda, but not Judi.”
I wondered, belatedly, why our sexy gypsy knew so much about people who connived and cheated and laid waste to other people’s lives.
“I know.” Something in my partner’s eyes when she looked at Rosie had me catching my breath. “But I figured it was a good start. Now the four of us can take her down the right way.”
She expanded her look to include me and Lelo. “Sorry I ran off like a hotshot. I came back so we can finish this together.”
It was as gracious an apology as I’d ever heard, from a woman who was much better at them than she thought.
Lelo straightened up, eyes bright. “I think we should work it like they do. Send someone in to be all sympathetic and tell them the way it has to be, and then Carly can be the hammer again if we need her.”
Carly lived to be the hammer.
“That would be fun.” Rosie’s smile for her young friend was totally genuine. “But I think your best idea was when you talked about shutting down their ads. Scammers need an audience. Take that away and Judi’s just a woman with mean eyes talking to herself in the dark.”
I liked the way our gypsy’s mind worked.
“Okay.” Lelo nodded thoughtfully. “So we shut down her ads, that’s easy�
��I already did most of the legwork on that. And we maybe put together a little sheet on our lovely Judi, one with Google links and stuff. It doesn’t need to convince the cops, just real people. We send it to the forum admins where she might show up so they know to be on the lookout.”
The gypsy approved. “And we monitor her email, intercept anyone who contacts her.”
A few small laws broken. No big deal. “What if she doesn’t use email?”
The three of them rolled their eyes in unison.
Sigh. There had to be at least one bad guy left who didn’t operate online.
Carly slid into a chair. “I can put some sniffers on her iP addresses, just in case she gets smart and tries something stealth. And we can cut her website off from the world.” She shrugged. “I don’t think we need to worry about Rhonda.”
It grated to agree, but she was right. Rhonda was just sad and pathetic. She scared me because there were days not too far in my past when I might have looked in the mirror and seen her face. But I couldn’t see how she would do any harm, left to her own devices out there in the universe.
Judi was a different story, but the plan was a good one. It might not get rid of her entirely, but it would take out all her teeth. And if she stepped wrong during the rest of her natural life, Carly would know.
It would do. I gritted my teeth and offered up my minimal skills for the good of the group. “I could do some searches or something.”
“No.” Lelo looked moderately horrified at the thought. “You stare off into space like you usually do and pluck smart ideas out of nowhere.”
In other words, hands off the tech. I sighed and watched the three of them jump into action.
It was smart strategy, excellent connect-the-dots work. And it was boring as hell.
I struggled to wrestle my weird demon back into its cage. Usually, I was the one trying to rein things in and keep the tornado that is Carly focused on getting the job done without wiping out half of Kansas while she was at it.
