by Harper Lin
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me, making pistols out of his hands.
“Wrongo, my sexy senior citizen. You’re never too old to pop your clutch and roll. Do you drive stick?”
Liz sputtered.
“One should never leave one’s transmission on automatic, young man,” I replied.
“Old school. I like your style. Come this way, my gray-haired goddess, and I will put you in the driver’s seat, Hot Rod style.”
I thought Liz was going to have a conniption. You’d think having a hobby that involved getting naked with a large crowd of strangers would make her a bit more blasé. She handled the gunfight better than this.
Hot Rod showed us around a variety of fine machines, us trailing him, taking care not to get in one another’s view.
At last I settled on a Lamborghini. Well, settled isn’t the right word. One doesn’t “settle” on a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar car.
I rented it for three days at a rather steep price, most of it insurance, and settled into the ergonomic driver’s seat.
Hot Rod stood to one side. He gave me a smoldering look. Decades shed off my age in an instant.
“You look like you’re fast. Are you fast, girl?”
I tried to give him a sultry smile. It’s been a while since I tried that on someone.
“I can be as fast as you want me to be, Hot Rod.”
He pumped a fist in the air. “Make that hot rod hot, baby!”
I hit the gas, tore out of the lot, and screeched down the highway access road, shooting up the on-ramp and into the fast lane, making a hundred in two point six seconds.
Liz looked back at the sign for the rental agency, which featured (what else?) a photo of Hot Rod.
“That’s the Cheerville I know,” she said.
“Big time,” I replied.
“I don’t think that hardware store is going to stay in business for long.”
“Maybe as a novelty.”
“No one is going to recognize us in this. It’s flashy and everyone will stare, but no one will think it’s us in here. Good idea getting tinted windows.”
“One can’t be too careful with hired assassins.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Little old me? Nonsense.”
As we shot down the highway at one hundred ten miles per hour toward the Home Is Where the Heart Is development on the north side of town, wondering what we’d find once we got there, Liz asked the other big question looming in my mind.
And like the first question, I had no answer for her.
EIGHT
“So if this wedding actually does come off, who are you going to bring?” Liz asked.
Liz had told me that since not many of her or her husband’s people would be able to make it, I could bring two friends rather than the usual one.
“I really have no idea,” I admitted. “Maybe I should bring Hot Rod.”
“Keep dreaming. No, seriously.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Martin, my grandson. I already mentioned it to him. He’s fourteen. Will there be other kids there?”
“Rick has a couple of nephews about that age who are coming. They can sit in the back row, texting and gaming.”
“Texting and gaming through your big day?”
“Better than groaning and moaning. And they’ll like the tanks and all the food. But don’t you want to bring Octavian?”
I winced. My boyfriend would be the obvious choice. Sociable and pleasant, he would be great company for me and all the other guests, but it felt a bit awkward asking him. We’d been dating for more than a year now and getting closer. We even went on a cruise together. I cared for him. No, cross that out. I loved him.
And that made me feel terribly guilty. James and I had discussed the possibility of our deaths on numerous occasions. It’s only natural when you get shot at for a living. We had promised each other that if one of us got killed, the other would go on with their life, that we wouldn’t get stuck in mourning and end up lonely.
We promised that and meant it. But promising and doing can be two different things.
Especially when James didn’t die in the field, but from natural causes shortly after both of us retired.
It felt like such a cheat and made it doubly hard to go on with my life.
If James had died in the field, I would have been devastated, of course, but I would have been mentally prepared. I would have grieved, bucked up, and soldiered on.
But finishing all the missions, surviving all the ambushes, dodging all the bullets (at least most of them), only to have James die in a hospital bed, that really blindsided me. When we retired, we both let out a big sigh of relief and looked forward to many long, uneventful years together.
It didn’t turn out that way.
So now here I was, a widow solving murders in a sleepy town with a ridiculously high death rate, trying to sort out my feelings about Octavian. Finding him was a godsend, but the whole thing was tinged with guilt about James, a guilt my wonderful dead husband wouldn’t want me to feel.
And yet I did feel it.
Taking him to a wedding would make me feel it more. And it might send a signal I didn’t want to send.
Or at least I didn’t think I wanted to send. Or didn’t want to admit to myself I wanted to send. Or didn’t want that signal rejected, whether or not I wanted to send it or not.
That last bit was definitely true. I wasn’t sure about the rest.
Firstly, we had to stay alive until Liz’s wedding day. If these mystery men managed to kill us, my confusion over wedding plans would quickly become irrelevant.
And thanks to the ultra-expensive machine I was driving, we were already coming up on the Home Is Where the Heart Is development.
I eased off the gas, put it in lower gear, and growled down the off-ramp. All thoughts about James and Octavian and what to do with the remaining years of my life got set aside. We had a mission to accomplish. That had to be the focus.
Home Is Where the Heart Is was a small development about a mile away from the freeway, tucked in a forested area a little outside of town. A planned community, it had a single road accessing it, which passed under an arch with a big beating heart at the top. How they got a five-foot-wide heart to beat, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to keep Liz’s and my hearts beating. There were a couple of guys living here who felt otherwise. Maybe more.
The road took us into a little maze of lanes lined with identical little houses with postage-stamp yards and little fenced-in back gardens. I’d heard that these houses could be rented by the day, week, or month, and were popular with visiting businesspeople and new arrivals. Many of Frederick’s clients stayed here as they set up their new homes.
Being the middle of a weekday, it was pretty quiet. Few cars were in the driveways, and we saw only a young woman pushing a stroller and an older man washing his car. Good. Fewer people to get caught in any potential crossfire.
“How are we going to find them?” Liz asked. “All these houses look the same.”
“No idea. I doubt they’re making their fertilizer bomb on their front lawn.”
“We should have asked what kind of vehicle they were driving. Keep an eye out for out-of-town plates.”
“These are short-term rentals. Lots of people are going to have out-of-town plates.”
“Good point.” She scanned the street as we drove slowly along, the powerful engine rumbling in protest at being so underused.
We did a loop and started to come back along the same way. That made me nervous. While we were anonymous, we were conspicuous. These guys might get edgy if they noticed the same car kept circling around.
“There!” I cried, pointing.
I hadn’t noticed the first time around, but there was a bit of fertilizer spilled on one of the empty driveways. One of the bags must have burst when they took it out of their car.
“Sloppy,” Liz said.
I nodded. Very sloppy. I cou
ldn’t understand these guys. They had some good gear and intel—a silencer, knowledge of our movements, the know-how to make a fertilizer bomb—and yet they were amateurish at the same time. Trying to attack us with a hammer. Renting a boat where the police would know where to look. Not cleaning up after themselves.
It didn’t make any sense.
“We should go check out their house while they’re not around,” Liz said.
“Assuming they’re not around. There’s at least two of them.”
I got to the end of the street and turned, the house disappearing from sight.
“True. And they might come back at any minute,” Liz said, her hand straying to the holster under her vest.
“Of course, we could call the Cheerville Police Department and let the authorities handle it,” I said.
We looked at each other for a moment then burst out laughing.
“Yeah, bad idea,” I admitted. “They’d only muck it up. Besides, Police Chief Grimal would ask questions we couldn’t answer.”
“We could tell him, but then we’d have to kill him.”
Hmm. There’s a thought.
“Let’s ditch this rolling call for attention and walk over there,” I said.
“All right.”
We headed back out the gate and drove a couple hundred yards until a turn in the road hid the car from view of the development entrance, and I parked on the shoulder.
We got out and started walking away from the car as quickly as possible, both of us knowing without having to mention it that we had to disassociate ourselves from the car, otherwise it would be useless as camouflage later on.
“Hey!” came a call behind us.
So much for that plan.
We turned and saw a boy of about twelve cycling toward us.
“Is that your Lambo?” he asked.
“A friend’s,” I replied.
“It’s cool.”
“Thank you. Shouldn’t you be in school?”
The boy shrugged. “I’m having a sick day. Can you give me a ride?”
“Didn’t your parents tell you not to accept rides from strangers?”
He gave me a look like I was an idiot. “That’s for strange men. Women aren’t dangerous.”
Liz and I burst out laughing for the second time in five minutes. She really was great company.
“Go on home before I call the truant officer,” I told him.
His look went from disdainful to confused. “What’s a truant officer?”
“I don’t think they have them anymore,” Liz said.
“That explains a lot,” I replied.
We kept walking. The kid followed us on his bike. “Can I have a ride? Please? I won’t tell anyone.”
“Do you live here?” I asked, pointing to the development we were planning on sneaking around in if we could get rid of our pesky little follower.
“No.”
“Maybe you should go home then.”
“Why? It’s boring at home. Where are you going?”
“To, um, visit some friends.”
“Why don’t you drive there?”
I turned on him. He stopped.
“If I give you five dollars, will you go away?”
His face brightened. “Sure!”
I paid him off, and he cycled away, no doubt to the nearest dispensary of refined sugar.
“I hope you don’t do that with your grandson,” Liz said.
“My grandson is much better behaved. He doesn’t interfere when my life is on the line.”
We passed through the gate, the giant heart thudding above us. I wondered if the people in the nearest houses lost sleep with that thing.
Walking along the sidewalk in full view of the street and houses made me feel terribly exposed, but I didn’t see any other option. I supposed we could have hopped over the fences of several backyards to come up on them from behind, but that would have made us even more conspicuous, and I wasn’t up to it anymore. My back was holding out thanks to Bubba Chong, and I didn’t want to risk messing it up again.
The woman with the stroller passed us on the other side of the street. Luckily, she was chattering away with her baby and didn’t take any notice of us.
As we passed her, Liz said in a low voice, “Besides my pistol, I have a pen knife. I can probably pop the door open. Most residential doors are pretty weak, and with the right twist you can rip right through the doorjamb.”
My, my, she was full of interesting information. Of course, I knew that, too, but I was a former CIA agent.
“I have a set of lock picks in my purse,” I told her.
“How interesting. I never got to learn how to use those. My work was a bit more… assertive.”
“You got quite assertive in my living room. Thank you for saving me and my acupuncturist.”
“Thank you for saving me while I was saving you. Here we are.”
The best way to remain unnoticed is to act like you belong someplace. Liz had obviously learned the same thing because we didn’t skip a beat as we walked right up to the front door. There was a heart-shaped welcome mat, of course.
“If one of them is here, we’re in big trouble,” I said.
“No, he’s in trouble. Give me your purse. I’ll pretend to search through it for the keys and shield your hands from view as you pick the lock.”
“Spoken like a true pro.”
“I was only a forward observer.”
“And I was a kindergarten teacher.”
As Liz shielded me with her body and fumbled around my purse like she was looking for keys, I got to work on the top and bottom locks. They were a common type of lock, and it took less than three minutes.
I was slipping. I used to be able to do that in under one minute. I guess I was out of practice. Picking locks on the doors of hired assassins was not how I had planned to spend my retirement, but I couldn’t complain. It’s a good way to keep the brain sharp.
The door opened, and my heart did a little flippy-flop as I wondered if I’d get a bullet in the next instant.
I did not. We faced a hallway leading to the kitchen in back. Stairs led up to the second floor. To the right, an open doorway led to a living room.
Quickly we shut the door behind us and drew our guns. Just because we didn’t get plugged the instant we crossed the threshold didn’t mean there wasn’t a bad guy lurking in here somewhere.
We checked out the living room and saw a furnished-yet-sparse room like most rental properties seemed to have. In the half light of the sunlight shining through the drawn white curtains, we saw nothing of note there except a welcome letter and a half-empty gift basket of fruit and chocolates. I picked up the letter.
“Welcome to Home Is Where the Heart Is! We provide the best short-term accommodation Cheerville has to offer! If there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, call us toll-free at 1-800-55HEART.”
The date on the letter was from three days before.
So they’d been here awhile, scouting out the situation. They obviously hadn’t known where Liz lived at first, or they would have hit her at a better time than when they did. The question remained—how did they know she’d be at the lake at that particular time?
And how had they found my house? They must have trailed me, and we didn’t notice.
That was no small feat. I’m trained to spot things like that. So we were dealing with professionals.
Professionals who came only partially equipped and occasionally made basic mistakes. It didn’t make any sense.
Liz was already moving past the sofa and coffee table through a doorway, leading with her gun. I followed.
We found ourselves in the dining room and with plenty of interesting things to see.
But just at that moment, the honk of a car horn outside made us jump.
NINE
Liz and I froze, ears cocked for any sound from within the house. The honk repeated. Was one of the hitmen summoning another one who was here in the house? M
aybe alerting him to our presence?
A pro wouldn’t do that. He’d sneak up on us. But these guys didn’t always act like pros.
That made them unpredictable and potentially more dangerous.
No sounds came from within the house. Did that mean no one else was here, or he was sneaking up on us?
We tiptoed back into the living room.
The car horn honked again, just outside the house. I gritted my teeth.
Liz moved to the doorway, whipping low around the corner to cover the stairway and hall to the kitchen. Her every movement showed her to be a pro. I eased over to the window. The curtain was drawn just past the edge of the glass, and by angling my head I could see through a thin slice of the window.
I couldn’t see much, just the front of a car on the street. It was stopped in the middle of the narrow lane.
There was another honk, followed by a shout.
“Move!”
“No, you move!”
“You’re on the wrong side of the street!”
“No, you’re on the wrong side of the street!”
Two horns honked at once.
I opened the curtain a little.
Two cars were stopped facing one another a couple of feet apart. They were both in the middle of the street. Both drivers were leaning out of their windows, shouting at each other.
“You’re in the wrong lane!”
“No, you’re in the wrong lane!”
Shaking my head, I dropped the curtain back into place and signaled to Liz, who joined me.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Cheerville.”
She shrugged, and we moved back to the dining room to look at what had caught our attention before we got distracted by the two idiots outside.
The dining room table was covered with gear—a soldering iron, bits of wire, metal shavings, several empty boxes of nails, and clumps of fertilizer.
While we had suspected they were building a bomb when we heard about their purchases at Cheerville Hardware, seeing the actual evidence gave me the chills. I glanced at Liz. She looked pale. Imagine planning for your wedding and discovering that someone wants to blow it up!
The honking outside continued. She frowned.
