by Gina LaManna
“Are you saying that if something happened to me, you’d go after my killer?”
I covered my ears with my hands. “Don’t say things like that.”
“That might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”
“You’re just trying to suck up because I’m wearing this old thing.”
“What inspired you to wear that on the night your cousin is sleeping in the next room?”
“Our door locks.”
“Have I mentioned that you’re a genius?” Anthony’s eyes were fixed on the place where lace met skin on my chest. “You’re also beautiful.”
“Keep going.”
“Hot. Gorgeous. Sexy,” he said, sounding a little more desperate each time. “Throw me a bone, Lace. You know I think you’re incredible in all ways. So incredible I can’t wait to marry you twice in one year.”
I leaned up and gave him a kiss on the lips. “Okay, you’re pretty good at this sweet-talking business. Are you ready to hear my plan?”
“Plan?” he echoed as I brought my fingers to his chest, unfastened a few buttons, and then let them slide down to his waistband. “What’s the plan?”
“Go take a nice shower and relax.” I snapped his waistband, smiled at the forlorn look on his face. “While you do that, I’ll be waiting right here, thinking of you.”
“Shower?”
“That way.” I turned Anthony’s shoulders to face the bathroom. “March.”
“Shower,” he murmured, then marched. When he reached the bathroom door, he gave one last, longing glance over his shoulder. “Please don’t move one single inch.”
“I promise. I’ll be right here.”
Chapter 17
My spy moves weren’t as rusty as I’d thought.
My plan had consisted of three steps. Steps one and two (one—distract Anthony, and two—explain myself) had gone off without a hitch. Step three (move on before he thinks too hard about any of it) was now well underway.
The shower clicked on, and I fell back onto the bed thinking this whole plan wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe I needed to bring out this fabulous nighty more often. If it could take his mind off finding my cousin on the couch without pants, it just might work miracles.
I let my eyes close, thinking I might rest for just a minute while Anthony was occupied. I was just on the verge of falling asleep when there was a boom from the living room, and then a crash.
“Clay!” I hollered. “Control Bobert!”
When there was no answer, I sat up and listened. Nothing but silence.
“Clay?”
I climbed out of bed, listening for a response, for anything at all, but everything was quiet.
Until a creak. The faintest creak, but one I was familiar with because it was the sound of my front door opening. I crept toward the doorway to my bedroom, wondering if Clay had taken our miniature argument to heart.
I hadn’t meant for him to actually leave. Then again, if he hadn’t left...that wouldn’t be great. Because it would only mean that someone else had entered.
As I finished speaking, I opened the door to the bedroom, curling a sheet from the Lacey burrito tighter against me.
As the door eased open, I discovered Bobert asleep next to the TV. My eyes then landed on Clay, who lay on the couch. He, too, was sound asleep.
I crumpled toward the ground, my gaze sliding toward the front entrance. If both Clay and Bobert were asleep, that meant we had a guest.
A flash of movement near the front door confirmed my suspicions. Tall and beefy, our guest looked like one of The Zebra’s herd. His dark sunglasses, dark hat, dark clothes, obscured too much of his figure, however, to tell for certain if he’d been one of the men from the bowling alley.
It was then that the man caught sight of me.
At once, everything happened.
“Clay!” I yelled. My instincts told me to lock myself in the bedroom, but I couldn’t turn away from my cousin. He was a sitting duck, or a sleeping duck, as the case may be. The intruder moved toward him as I screamed at him again. “Clay, move!”
When he blinked, groggily, I sighed, then shot across the room, slamming the bedroom door behind me in hopes that it’d alert Anthony.
“Whaaa—” Clay offered a sleepy groan as I skidded across the floor, a whizzing sound just missing my ear.
“Intruder,” I gasped as my body thunked against the base of the couch. “Wake up and move.”
The crunch of the bullet hitting the wall behind us finally drove some sense into him. By my sheer lack of grace, the bullet had zoomed right over my head and landed just over the television.
The next second, a pounding bass thumped from the bathroom. Anthony had turned my shower radio on, probably trying to tune out the noise from the living room. No doubt, he assumed the crashes were due to Bobert bumbling his way around.
If only I had my phone, or some other way to contact Anthony. Unfortunately, the only way to the bathroom was through the living room and past the man holding the gun. My chances as a lingerie-clad fake spy didn’t look great.
“Why is he here?” Clay nodded toward the man. “Who...what?”
“Now’s not the time to talk, Clay. We need to get Anthony.”
“Anthony?”
“In the bedroom.” Peeking over the couch, I caught a glimpse of the intruder bent behind the couch opposite us. I pushed Clay, wiggling further away from him as quietly as possible. I mouthed for him to keep quiet.
As we moved, so did our guest. We inched further, he inched closer. We’d begun an awkward little dance.
I nudged Clay with my elbow. “I’m going to run across the room. Distract him.”
“We can handle it ourselves.” Clay hissed. “We have Bobert.”
Footsteps neared, stopping our conversation short. The intruder moved quietly for a man of his stature, as if sneaking was his chosen profession. But we scooted along the floor quietly, too, keeping just far enough ahead to remain out of sight.
“I have a plan,” I murmured. “Send Bobert across the room first. This guy is not expecting a robot—hopefully it’ll distract him for as long as it takes me to get into the bedroom.”
“What about me?”
“Control Bobert!”
Clay glanced at Bobert, who’d been put to sleep—or something similar—near the television. In the darkened room, he merely looked like a lamp, or a shiny hat rack.
“Fine,” Clay agreed. “But if Bobert gets hurt, his medical bills are on you.”
“Go!”
Clay bit his tongue, reaching in his pocket for his phone. He covered the screen’s glow with his shirt, then punched a few buttons on it. I held my breath as the robot whirred to life, quietly, but not silent.
The twitch in movement caught the intruder’s eye.
Clay moved his fingers more quickly, flying over the keyboard.
Bobert jerked to life, thudding with the effort of his first few steps. The intruder raised his gun and fired another shot that lodged into the wall over Bobert’s head. The robot reacted, dodging to the side and crashing into the television. Both Bobert and the TV shattered to the floor, the noise loud enough to probably wake Nora and Carlos.
I didn’t watch the aftershock. I was too busy speed-crawling my way behind the couches toward the bedroom. I paused as the zing of another bullet sounded, and then the crunch of it lodging into something that wasn’t wall.
Electricity sizzled and a hiss of sparks shot into the sky. Bob the Robot let out a strangled cry amid some weird buzzing and beeping noises, then collapsed face first to the floor.
Next came the human cry. A strangled, bloodcurdling sound that came from Clay as he reached forward, fumbling for the robot. I glanced between Clay and the bedroom doorway. I was closer to the bedroom, but Clay had seemingly forgotten all about the idea of staying hidden.
The intruder raised his gun, pointing at the pair on the ground, and I tore my longing glance away from the bedroom door and shouted across th
e room instead. “Don’t you dare!” I stood, drawing the shooter’s attention away from Clay. “If you shoot that robot, he’ll explode.”
“Lies.”
“Who are you?” I backed toward the far wall, the man matching my footsteps one by one. I hadn’t recognized his voice, but then again, The Zebra’s henchmen hadn’t spoken much during the game. “Why are you here?”
“The Zebra has business with you,” he said. “I’m here to give you a ride to see him.”
“A ride? Then why are you trying to kill me?”
“I wasn’t aiming at you,” he said. “You are moving too fast. Cooperate, and I’ll stop shooting.”
A burst of flames from the opposite side of the room and a wheeze as Bob crumpled further to the ground drew our attention. A flame shot from the robot’s chest, fizzled out, then vanished.
“I suggest you leave, and we’ll forget this ever happened,” I said, gesturing to the front door right behind him. “Otherwise that thing is going to explode, and we’ll all die. This way, at least you have a chance.”
“But—”
A small plume of fire shot from Bob’s chest. He was really a great side-kick.
“Uh, Lacey?” Clay hiccupped. “We have to get out of here.”
“It’s okay, Clay, our friend was leaving. Right?”
“No, Lacey...” Clay stood, holding Bob’s hand in his. “He’s really going to blow. There’s a self-destruct feature, and—”
“Clay!” I shrieked. “I was bluffing!”
“I thought you knew,” he said. “If we don’t get him out of here, you won’t have much of a living room.”
“Is he serious?” The intruder looked between us. “He sounds serious.”
“Move.” Clay picked up Bobert, then began a mad rush straight toward The Zebra’s henchman.
Apparently, this was proof enough for our guest because he turned and hoofed it. I followed close behind because the likelihood of Clay needing backup was next to one hundred percent.
I shouted for Anthony, but it was drowned out by Clay yelling louder for me to shut the front door to the house. I made it onto the front steps, yanked the door shut, and turned just in time to find Clay hoovering over the edge of Anthony’s brand new pond.
“I can’t do it!” Clay yelled. “I can’t do it.”
I wrestled Bob out of Clay’s arms, the robot landing on the ground between us. My cousin and I shared a long glance over the robot’s head before I reached out and gave the hunk of metal a hefty shove with my foot. Bobert slid into the cute little pond Anthony had been working on for months.
As Bobert hit the water with a splash, I reached for Clay’s arm and tugged him back. “Let him go,” I said. “It’s over.”
Clay couldn’t seem to move. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he watched as his beloved robot sank, one bubble at a time, until he hit the bottom. Moonlight glinted off the surface, and it wasn’t until the bubbles started coming up faster, more urgently, that I finally tore him away.
We dove out of the way as tendrils of fire licked the surface, the ground shaking with the vibration of whatever bomb had been wired into Bobert’s features. The eruption shot high, almost beautiful as it lit the night sky with an orange-ish bloom.
Waves of heat rocketed over us, tiny flecks of water and bits of debris swirling through the air, landing like falling stars around us. We waited it out, my hand wrapped around Clay’s, until silence resumed. Save for the occasional glub of a bubble under the surface, everything went still. Finally, I breathed again.
We pulled ourselves to a sitting position, both of us sucking in a deep gulp of air.
I took one look at Clay, and my eyes shot open. “Clay, you’re—”
“Covered in soot!” he finished, pointing at me. “Your entire head is black!”
“I can barely see you,” I said. “It’s so dark. Open your eyes.”
He did, and two white eyeballs seemed to float in the sky. “Your eyebrows...” Clay peered closer at me. “Where did they go?”
I pulled myself to my feet, feeling for my eyebrows. With each second that passed without my finding them, my heart beat faster. “What did you do?! I can’t have missing eyebrows for my wedding!”
A throat cleared from the front door, and at once, Clay and I hopped in line like children before an angry—a very angry—schoolteacher.
“Dare I ask what happened here?” Anthony gestured toward the front lawn. “And why my pond is destroyed?”
“Lacey’s fault,” Clay said. “She poked The Zebra into acting.”
“Clay wired the bomb into his robot,” I said. “And he didn’t tell me about it.”
“I wish I thought you were lying,” Anthony said. “And Lacey? Your dress is toast.”
I looked down, and sure enough, the lingerie was crumbling like dust. I’d lost the sheet a while ago, which meant that I was mostly naked, covered in soot, and missing two crucial pieces of my face.
I launched myself toward Anthony, ducked under his arms, and hurtled straight to the shower. After all, there wasn’t much for me to explain. I’d brought this on myself—Anthony had asked me not to look for trouble. I’d found it, and it had followed me home.
If only I hadn’t been so nosy. So curious. I was supposed to be giving up crime and everything that entailed for the next three weeks, and that had massively backfired. In addition to the bomb, the intruder, and the missing eyebrows, we now lacked a TV set, a pond, and walls free from bullets.
When I reached the bathroom, I flicked the light on and took one look at my eyebrows. Then, I promptly threw up. Another look at my dirt-stained face, and I crawled whimpering into the shower. Soot pooled at my feet, and as the water swirled down the drain, I finally cried.
Chapter 18
The next morning I woke slowly, deliberately, forcing my eyes open. They’d been very nearly glued shut the night before from a combination of soot and tears. The combination was stronger than cement.
To make matters worse, the faint smell of cooked hair lingered, despite a full hour in the shower and more wash, rinse, and repeat cycles than I cared to admit.
I didn’t need to glance behind me to feel Anthony’s hulking form there. Normally, he wasn’t a touchy feely sort of sleeper, but last night had brought out a whole new side of him, and he’d spent the night with his tree-trunk of an arm sprawled over my shoulders.
I scooted toward the edge of the bed. If I could just slide far enough out from under his grasp, I could put one toe on the ground and silently ease my way out of bed. The smell of burning hair was making me sick, and I had a feeling a glance at my eyebrows in the light of day wouldn’t exactly help things, either.
Another half inch. Baby steps.
On the third squiggle toward the edge, Anthony mumbled something unintelligibly. On the fourth, his arm cinched tighter, yet still, he didn’t wake.
Two more inches to go...
I was there. My foot touched ground. I’d made it.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I took one step toward the bathroom when, out of nowhere, that tree-trunk arm reached out, and one of Anthony’s fingers hooked on the edge of my shorts.
Thankfully, they were elastic, so I bounced back toward bed.
“Nope,” Anthony said. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight, you’re wrong.”
“I need to use the restroom!”
“You’ve climbed out of bathroom windows before.”
This was true, so unfortunately, I didn’t have much of an argument. Instead, I stuck with the obvious. “I’m not going to climb out the window. If I were going to leave, I’d go through the front door. It’s my house, after all.”
“Our house, sugar,” Anthony corrected. “And I’m not taking any chances.”
“Well, then, how do you suggest we do this?”
“Promise me you’re not going to sneak out.”
“I won’t sneak out. I promise.”
Anthony rolled onto his back and sta
red at the ceiling, his finger sliding around the waist of my shorts. “Or you could just stay in bed.”
I lifted his finger and set his hand back on his chest. My gaze lingered for a moment because it really was a beautiful chest.
“I have to check the damage of my eyebrows,” I sighed. “It’s a huge priority right now.”
“Your eyebrows take priority over me?” Anthony mumbled. “I need things, too.”
“Two days before our wedding? I’m sorry, my eyebrows take first priority.”
I stomped off toward the bathroom, calling an apology over my shoulder. After all, it wasn’t his fault Clay had wired the robot to blow to bits when the thing kicked the bucket. It also wasn’t Anthony’s fault The Zebra knew who I was and where we lived. Pretty much it was all my fault, and I was feeling grumpy about it.
My eyebrows were just as bad as I remembered them. Patchy, somewhat discolored, just like the tips of my hair. It was like a perm gone horribly wrong—minus any of the curls. Just the burning and chemicals.
“This isn’t fair!” I yelled to Anthony. “A woman is supposed to look beautiful on her wedding day.”
“You did,” Anthony called back. “I think we even have a picture.”
“Hilarious. You’re really funny. We’ll have even more pictures of this one, though, and guess who won’t be there?”
“Beckett?”
“Well, him too.”
“Who else?”
“My eyebrows.”
“Lacey, you look gorgeous.” Anthony rose from bed, looking lean and strong in his black boxer briefs. He strode across the room, stretching lazily as his chest rippled with the effort. “I mean it. You’re the most beautiful woman on earth.”
Even I couldn’t stay mad at my eyebrows while he was standing in such close proximity to my side. I sunk into his arms as he tested out a hug. When I didn’t bite, he slid in closer, nuzzling me from behind. When that went well, he peppered a few kisses against the tender area just below my ear.
