by Audrey Faye
Rhonda didn’t say a word as we quick-marched her into the diner, waved at the no-nonsense waitress we’d chatted with earlier, and guided our captive to a table with four plates of the daily special already waiting. Even the sight of Rodney didn’t burst Rhonda’s ghastly, unnatural calm.
She was like a stoned goat on her way to the sacrificial pyre.
I pushed her down in the chair farthest from our glaring accountant—he wasn’t in the best of moods this morning.
Carly stabbed a piece of bacon with a fork and held it out. “Eat. And start pretending you have a spine.”
That got a small flinch. I chose to see it as progress. “We’re here about Judi.”
Her eyes registered surprise. “You need Judi’s help?”
“No.” I was suddenly angry as hell. “We’re going to stop her. You get to decide which side of right and wrong you want to be on.”
Rhonda’s lips got all wobbly. “Why? We help people.”
My partner leaned forward, eyes hard. “She’s scum who takes advantage of weak women, and you open the door for her to do it. You take money from people who are desperate.”
“We solve their problems.” Rhonda’s chin lifted, and her eyes finally came to life. “We have a right to make a living, just like you do.”
We made our money selling t-shirts, and that freaking bloody well made us different. “You solve a few. You mess up a lot more.”
She scowled, but underneath the paper-thin layer of bravado, I could see the scared woman who knew we talked more truth than bullshit and didn’t have any idea what to do about it. I waved a hand at our fuming accountant. “This guy here? Remember him?”
Rhonda stared at him like a prisoner waiting for the executioner’s gun.
I was hating every moment of this, but I knew it mattered. She needed to feel like shit for the right reasons so that maybe she could stop feeling like shit for the wrong ones. “He mentors kids at his local middle school while his wife has affairs and steals his money and gets idiots like you and Judi to try to deal with her little husband problem.”
Rhonda’s eyes were as big as plates. “That’s not true. He hits her. Every Friday night when he comes home drunk.”
“Never.” Rodney leaned forward, voice low and hard. “I’ve used my fists plenty, but never on a woman. Not ever.”
Her shoulders cowered in around her heart. “That’s what they all say.” It came out as the barest whisper—and I had some idea how much courage it had taken her to say it.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Carly quietly. “And you know it, or he’d have used his fists on both you and Judi by now and I wouldn’t have done a damn thing to stop him.”
Fortunately, Rhonda wasn’t looking at my partner’s really bad poker face. I let her keep going with her bad-cop routine—it wasn’t working yet, but it hadn’t utterly failed, either.
Carly pushed a picture across the table. “This is where his wife was last Friday night. She messaged you online about an hour later and told you about all the bruises and the cracked ribs.”
She’d angled the sexy shot carefully away from the accountant, but pain flashed in his eyes anyhow. My gut clenched in sympathy—some of us don’t need to see to remember.
Rhonda looked at the picture for a long, sad, terrible time. I waited, watching the tears hit the table and wanting to be anywhere else.
And then Rhonda’s fingers clutched the tablecloth and she somehow managed to look up—straight at the world’s most uncomfortable accountant. “I’m so sorry.”
Three words of pure magic and unfathomable bravery.
“You got kids?” asked Rodney gruffly.
She flinched and looked down at the table again, hands shaking. “No.”
His voice gentled. “Parents? Anyone to be proud of you?”
“A sister.” Rhonda talked to the stained tablecloth. “Haven’t seen her in a long time.”
A woman on the run. I looked over at my partner—it was time.
Carly leaned in. “I know where Anthony is.”
Rhonda turned a nasty puke gray. “You can’t tell him where I am.”
“I could.” My partner wasn’t entirely done being pissed off yet. “But I didn’t, because I have friends who make me want to be a better person when I look in the mirror in the morning.”
Rhonda stared.
Carly dropped the hammer. “The sheriff picked him up last night. There are outstanding warrants for his arrest in three states—he’ll be locked up for a long time.”
And if the sheriff didn’t do his job right, there was a bounty hunter friend of ours with enough data to track Anthony to wherever he went to ground. The dude’s ass was cooked.
Rhonda was still the color of a corpse. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because they’re really bad negotiators,” said Rodney dryly. “They waste all their best ammo before they even try to make a deal.”
He had a point—except he didn’t understand what our best ammo truly was.
Carly rapped her fist on the table in front of Rhonda. “We got rid of your demon ex, so you can stop cowering in some horrible apartment in the pits of gray hell. Now you need to smarten up and stop helping Judi be a shitbucket.”
Rhonda looked down at the table again, eyes bleak and confused. “We help some of those women.”
“Not enough.” My partner wasn’t leaving any wiggle room. “She doesn’t give a damn about any of them, including you, and you’re not ready to help anyone else.”
If readiness was a job requirement, both of us were in deep trouble.
Our captive took a deep, shaky breath. “That crap apartment is all I can afford. Judi gives me money.”
“She won’t be anymore.” Carly put a world of threat into those four words.
Rhonda paled. “Then what will I do?”
Rodney snorted. “Get a job.”
Her hands twisted helplessly on the table. “Doing what?” Her lips were back to quavering. “I don’t know how to do anything useful.”
“What kind of stuff do you like to do?”
She shrugged, a woman about to go under the currents of hopeless. “I like cats. And numbers.”
Dammit, we weren’t freaking job counselors. I started to say so—and then I took a good look at our street-smart accountant.
Rodney scowled and stabbed his eggs viciously. “What kind of numbers?”
Rhonda’s chin lifted a little higher at his tone. “I wanted to be a math teacher.”
A long pause. “My company has this program.” He sounded thoroughly aggrieved. “Put in forty hours a week on the grunt work and you can attend their accounting training classes in the evenings for free. The pay’s shit, and the work’s boring as hell.” He looked down at his fork, embarrassed and pissed and ready to deck anyone who so much as breathed his direction. “It’s how I got started. I can hook you up with the woman who runs the program. She’s a total hard-ass, and if you can’t add she’ll eat you for breakfast.”
Rhonda looked terrified, but her spine snapped straight. “I can add.”
He handed her a card. “Be at that address at 8am on Monday. Ask for me at the security desk downstairs. If you’re late, no deal. If you’re dressed like a slob, no deal. If you piss me off or act like a wimp, no deal.”
She stared at the card.
I shook my head, bemused. That had been a well-practiced set of threats—the man had done this before.
Rodney glared at Rhonda one more time and hooked a shoulder toward the door. “Now get lost. Go fix your life, because starting Monday, you won’t have any time to do it.”
I grinned as she hopped up double-speed and left. Good thing our plans were flexible. Rhonda wasn’t going to need our version of ass-kicking. A certain accountant had that totally covered.
Epilogue
I looked at the text on my phone and smiled.
Rodney had sent a photo. Rhonda, sitting at a desk, dressed nicely and looking absolutely terrified
. And a short caption. Apparently she can add.
For us, it was a case ending well. For Rhonda, it was just maybe the beginnings of a life.
I reached out of my bubble bath, opened the bathroom door, and craned my head out toward the bed where my partner was working. She’d probably seen it already.
Carly looked up and banged her laptop lid shut.
Whoa. “Something super-secret going on that I need to know about?”
“I was Googling places to stay.” My partner looked totally embarrassed.
I had no idea what was going on. “That sounds good.” After cute, shabby farmhouses, our usual dingy motels weren’t feeling very comfortable anymore.
Carly took a deep breath. “The kind of places people stay when they go on vacation.”
My eyebrows shot up my forehead.
She gave me a look I totally couldn’t fathom. “Just a weekend, maybe. With Rosie.” A long pause. “You could come if you want, and the kid too.”
I’m a hermit crab from Vermont, but I’m not entirely an idiot. “Actually, Lelo and I were talking about the two of us going to Philly next weekend. She knows a thrift store that specializes in flannel shirts.” I knew a great little jazz bar in Philly, too. People visit gravestones sometimes—it didn’t have to mean anything.
Carly’s head tilted back down to her laptop screen—but not before I saw her tremulous smile.
I tucked back into the bathroom with one of my own. It seemed like life was happening to a couple of assassins, whether we were ready for it or not.
Thank you
I appreciate you reading!
As you might have guessed, there are more Lesbian Assassins books coming. Next up, the guy maybe our assassins can’t handle…
To ride in the back seat the next time Carly and Jane (and yes, possibly Lelo and Rosie too!) hit the road, head to audreyfayewrites.com and sign up for my New Releases email list. You can also find me on Facebook. And if you’ve been kind enough to write my assassins a review, please read this note :).
May there always be teal boots on your feet and a story in your hands,
Audrey
