Lesbian Assassins 2

by Audrey Faye

  You don’t want to know the answer to the last one.

  That had been in the days of research via slow paper and the word-of-mouth version of the Pony Express, but I was pretty sure the basic propensity of a fiction writer to research really dumb shit hadn’t changed much. It gave Carly cover to Google pretty much anything she wanted.

  However, flaky authors didn’t know squat about hacking websites, and I knew that once Carly reached the limits of legal search, she’d be antsy to cross into the zones of gray and shades much darker. I’d made peace with that idea eons ago, but this time around, I was uncomfortably aware that there were other denizens who traveled in the virtual dark. The bad guys had some pretty good hackers on their side too, and a bad cop could be hooked up with almost anyone.

  I also knew that possibility would draw Carly in like moth to flame. A wounded light, always needing one more dance with the dark. I closed my eyes and decided it was time to get a read on how far she’d already fallen in. “This isn’t something we should touch. Cops with dangerous friends are way out of our league.”

  “Really?” Her eyes shot dark fire. “He’s got a woman who wants out, and she’s probably scared shitless of him and his friends. Whose league is he in, exactly?”

  We’d walked these grooves innumerable times before, and I hated every last visit. Carly and I worked in that nebulous land where people go when they’re out of options. Most decent people don’t reach out to assassins until they’ve exhausted all of the garden-variety possibilities. If we walked away from Danno’s sister, odds were that she was pretty much screwed. Especially if her boyfriend stopped believing that a home-cooked meal was worth keeping her around for. She almost certainly knew too much to be allowed to walk away quietly.

  I felt the part of my gut that had been kicked hardest by Johnny clenching in protest. People weren’t disposable, no matter what some asshole with a badge and a gun might eventually think. It wasn’t okay to take twenty years of history and relegate it to the garbage pile.

  Across the room, Carly cleared her throat.

  Shit. I hunched down in my flannel shirt—emergency cloaking device. It had been a long time since I’d gotten that lost in my own baggage. Mostly I manage to keep the suitcase duct-taped shut these days. There’s just no point looking at ugly and sad, especially the kind that can’t be fixed.

  Danno’s sister needed to fall into that category. “We’re not heroes.”

  “I know.” Dark eyes were pinned to mine, seeing through the flannel to the crumpled, dusty vacancy Johnny had left inside my ribs. “We’re just two women who know what it is to need one.”

  It was lines like that which had cemented our sisterhood. And lines like that which headed us straight into black holes of trouble.

  -o0o-

  It was hard to sneak up on my partner, except for when she was doing the katas that were her core martial arts practice.

  I’d seen her move through the flowing, ritualized combat sequences before—many, many times before. In the early dawn light of a seedy campground, in the cramped space between two beds in a motel room, in dark alleyways, and in bright fields of wildflowers. Today, she danced on an innocuous square of cement behind our motel.

  And as always, it pulled at the heartstrings I tried so very hard not to have.

  She was beautiful, in the way of things feral and wild. Carly insisted that the katas taught control and discipline, turned honed reactions into instinct. And maybe they did—she surely had some very fine instincts. But when she moved, arms slicing downward in front of plunging knees and fierce feet, it wasn’t control I saw.

  It was hurt. Pain, tightly compressed by the path she insisted on walking until her soul shone diamond bright.

  Carly uses her katas to stay in the light.

  She was speeding up now, arms slashing, breathing sharp and audible. Trying to find her balance again—and for Carly, that mostly involved a knife blade, even if it was an imaginary one.

  She moved like a slicing whirlwind, feet blurs on the ground and in the air, hands wielding a not-entirely-imaginary sword—and sent a message with every move. I might be reasonably content in my newfound baby zebra skin, but my partner needed something to do. Something worthy of her walk through the hurt and the fire toward the light.

  And she had a cop in her sights.

  I closed my eyes, very real fear roiling in my gut. I’d wished for a case to send us back to the safe ground of scumbug dads and trembling guys in alleyways. I knew how to keep Carly safe in those lands. I had no idea how to keep the cop with a gun away from my partner and her diamond-bright heart.

  I considered kidnapping, knife theft, and van breakdown, not necessarily in that order. And then I heard a creaky, cinnamon-bun-fueled voice in my gut wondering if there might be another way. A quiet, insidious whisper that thought I might do better with reinforcements instead.

  7

  There is nothing worse than the bright light of day for making the dumb ideas of the night before seem even dumber. I snuck a peek out the motel room curtains for the third time in ten minutes, hoping like hell that Carly was as oblivious as she seemed.

  And also hoping like hell she wasn’t. Being furious with me would be a far sight safer than following a cop through the online levels of purgatory and hell.

  Not that she knew what to be mad at me for yet.

  “You can stop looking out the window.” Carly’s eyes didn’t budge from her screen. “Mrs. Beauchamp’s car makes enough noise to hear them coming from three miles away.”

  Damn. I lowered myself to the bed, not sure whether to apologize or double down.

  “They’d better not be bringing kale chips.”

  I studied the face I knew better than my own, at least these days. A little sharp around the edges, but that could be for me or for the guy she was shadowing on her screen. “You’re not mad?”

  “Nope.” Her eyes glinted and then looked back down. “I don’t get mad. I get even.”

  That sounded almost as dire as a car full of kale chips. “It was a dumb idea. We can go eat pancakes drowning in fake maple syrup and then send them back home.”

  “Right.” Carly still hadn’t looked up at me, but her voice was dry as dust. “That’ll work.”

  I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the lack of a knife in her hand. “You aren’t mad.” Not a question this time—just deep puzzlement.

  “I was.” Blue eyes looked up at me now, and I could finally see everything that lived there. “I spent about five minutes in the bathroom this morning contemplating what kind of origami I could do with your guts after I left the rest of you in the middle of a cow field somewhere.”

  Leaving me with the cows was really low. “Cows are vegetarians.”

  “I know.” She flashed me a cheerful grin. “But they’re also pretty dumb. I’d sprinkle you with some kale chips—I figure that gives me a fifty-fifty chance they’d chew on your liver.”

  This was probably the most bizarre conversation I’d ever had before my requisite third cup of coffee. I was, however, awake enough to be more than a little worried about the future of my guts. Carly’s temper usually ran clean and hot, but occasionally it flowed underground for a while first. I eyed her carefully, looking for any signs of subterranean lava tubes.

  “I’m not angry,” she said quietly. “Not once I realized why you did it.”

  I’d done it to get some help stopping a freight train from impaling herself on the end of a dirty cop’s gun. There was no way she was in agreement with that kind of motivation. I stared, nonplussed. “Why do you think I did it?”

  “Haven’t figured it out yet, huh?” Carly’s eyes were back to glinting. “Better drink some more coffee. Things are about to get complicated around here, and we need your brain working at top speed.”

  I should have stuck with the cannibal cows. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good.” Satisfaction, punctuated by fast typing on a keyboard. “One down, two to go
.”

  -o0o-

  The next time I had the urge to call other actual human beings and encourage them to interfere in my life, I was going to throw myself on one of Carly’s knives instead.

  Rosie raised an eyebrow my direction. Apparently, she could smell my seismic discomfort.

  They’d showed up innocently enough, bearing cheese scones and smiles and no signs of having driven half the night. Which had lasted approximately long enough for Carly to inhale all the scones, and then Lelo had sat down on the bed across from my partner and laid down her metaphorical cards.

  She hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t needed to.

  “Those were good,” said Carly, licking her fingers. “Long way to drive to deliver them, though.”

  Right. That was going to fool exactly nobody.

  The sexy gypsy leaning on the wall cleared her throat quietly. “We thought we’d tag along with you for a few days.”

  That wasn’t the help I’d wanted. Not exactly, anyhow. “What about your flower shop?” I’d put in my phone call to Rosie as part of some deranged fantasy that Carly could maybe be held in check by a visit from someone who outweighed her and grew poisonous flowers in her back yard. I hadn’t been looking for company on the road.

  “Danielle is holding down the fort.”

  Lelo grinned. “She’s Mrs. Beauchamp’s granddaughter. We’re pretty sure bad taste is genetic.”

  I tried not to laugh. Mrs. Beauchamp had helped us deal with the jerk trying to marry Lelo’s sister, and she’d done it in eye-searing fashion.

  Rosie rolled her eyes. “Danielle’s good with customers and smart enough not to mess with Maurice.”

  “Everyone’s smart enough not to mess with Maurice.”

  Truth. Rosie’s cat was a temperamental old coot with a beady eye and a really big soft spot for scratches under his chin. If I’d figured that out in four days, I was pretty sure half the town knew.

  I’d also figured out that Lelo and Rosie were trying to distract us—and that had been far too effective in the past to let them continue. “We’re assassins, not a band. No groupies.”

  “Temporary groupies.” Rosie shrugged and lolled against her wall, the poster child of casual. “A few days. We’ll feed you, take all your money at the poker table, and then head back home once you’re broke and begging for mercy.”

  Somewhere in a rogue corner of my hermit shell, that actually sounded tempting. “I’m smart enough never to play poker with you again.”

  She glanced my way. “I brought cheesecake.”

  “No way.” Carly’s voice from my left was short, hard, and left exactly zero wiggle room. Assassin in full regalia. “We’re going to check out a bad cop. No tourists.”

  Whatever had bloomed to life under my flannel died a fast, nasty death. There are good reasons people in our line of work don’t have friends.

  “I know.” It was the first time Rosie had looked my partner’s direction. “But Colorado’s two days away, especially if we take the scenic route. And we swear not to help in any way unless you give us explicit permission.” She was eyeing Lelo as she spoke.

  The teenager nodded solemnly.

  Carly looked like a grizzly bear had offered her cuddles.

  “We get it,” said Lelo quietly. “You guys do big, important work, and you work alone. We just thought maybe you could use some company for a couple of days.”

  Comprehension landed. They weren’t trying to help the work—they were trying to help the two patched-up human beings who did the work.

  And we had no idea what to do with that kind of offer.

  Lelo sat down on the bed beside Carly and bumped her shoulder companionably. “Don’t worry. We’ll play strip poker so you don’t go broke or anything. And I’ll let you do all the laundry.”

  “Not a chance. No laundry, no cooking. Those are my terms. Oh, and you guys get gone when we tell you to.” She looked over at Rosie, eyes serious. “For real this time.”

  There were things that passed in the look between them that had nothing to do with whatever was going to happen two days from now.

  Lelo cleared her throat and dug in her backpack. “Kale chips?”

  Three groans let loose in unison.

  She grinned and pulled out a bag of something that wasn’t remotely green. “Cardamom shortbread?”

  I didn’t beat the two-hundred-pound florist or the steely assassin to the cookies. But I did catch the quick, happy sigh that Lelo let loose right before lesbian cookie Armageddon landed. And I knew what it meant.

  They weren’t here just for us.

  8

  Carly and I had a way we approached potential assignments. Research, noodling time, plotting—we had it down to a science. It slowed things down, let us think, let us be smart. In cases like this, it occasionally gave me enough time to convince Carly to walk away.

  Instead, today we had a picnic table in a bustling, sunny park, enough spy gadgets to keep our conversation private from a herd of spies, and a couple of sidekicks who were going to throw an elephant’s worth of wrinkles into business as usual.

  “We’re not touching it,” said Carly, talking to the most eager set of eyes at the table. “He’s a cop. We’re all staying far, far away from this.”

  I wasn’t convinced that’s what she planned to do, but at least she was trying to keep the innocents out of the way. It was a start.

  Lelo nodded, face sharp and contrite. “I’m really sorry I missed that.” Her eyes clouded some. “Danno didn’t tell me.”

  “He probably had his reasons.” I hoped. He’d dumped out a heck of a lot of his sister’s life story to a random person on the Internet. I was highly skeptical about the man’s judgment, and I wanted to kick him into the next state for making the kid feel like shit, even though he was Exhibit A for why she shouldn’t be involved.

  “He said he didn’t want to scare me away before I’d heard the whole story.” Lelo’s eyes were fighting the need to condemn Danno’s cowardice.

  I felt the supernova somewhere in my gut—and I was still too slow. Carly sat bolt upright, imminent death in her eyes. “You contacted him again?”

  “Yeah. After Jane called us. Before we started driving.” Lelo shrugged, every cell of her body curling up defensively. “He lied to me.”

  He’d done a lot worse than that, but it wasn’t time to step in front of Carly’s sword. Yet.

  My partner’s glare could have cowed a whole herd of Montana bikers. “I told you to stay the hell away from him.”

  The kid’s shrug was defiant this time. “I do what I want. You’re not my mother.”

  Sudden, ugly lightning sizzled in the pretty summer day.

  Rosie’s cheeks didn’t look any less green than mine felt. And then Lelo deflated, shoulders hunching under sad, apologetic eyes. “Shit. Sorry.” She slid two inches away from Carly on the picnic bench, sorrow oozing from every pore. “That was total bullshit, and I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

  I closed my eyes, squeezing back the ache. Carly had waited five years to hear someone say that and mean it. And somehow, it had come from a skinny girl with her heart on her sleeve and the kind of honesty that life beats out of most of us.

  One who had no idea what she’d just tapped into.

  The four of us sat in the pregnant silence of an important moment that hadn’t quite found itself yet. My partner’s eyes were frozen, stuck in the tangle of hurt and caring and a need to lash out that had just been flattened by a simple apology. Rosie’s face was poker-player neutral—but her fingers had crunched a handful of her skirt into tight wrinkles.

  Me, I was looking for the nearest solitary mountaintop. Or for a guitar. It’s moments like this that break songwriters—and moments like this that make them again.

  Finally, in a quiet whoosh of air, Carly set time back in motion. “It’s okay.” Two words of wide-open forgiveness. “I say lots of stupid stuff, but I’m not nearly so good at fixing it after.”

>   Rosie’s fingers let go of her crumpled skirt, and all of us studiously avoided watching Lelo as her eyes flooded with bright tears.

  “Tell me what he said,” said Carly gently, and then her fingers reached out to tip up Lelo’s chin. “And then don’t ever contact him again. Ever.”

  The kid nodded, really slowly. One teenager’s solemn-high promise. And then she started reciting Danno’s desperate, apologetic plea.

  I didn’t listen to the words—I watched Carly’s eyes. They would tell me how close she was to jumping in front of a cop’s gun. At my side, I could feel a gypsy florist steadily watching me. I had no idea why—her instincts were at least as good as mine.

  Carly listened to the last of the winding story and then leaned one elbow on the table in a casual, easy slouch. “No way.”

  Lelo’s face screwed up with uneasy courage. “Why not?”

  I took this one. “We don’t take on cops. Jail’s not all that convenient.”

  Carly snorted, but held her silence.

  Lelo was watching me now. “Look, I know you bend the rules, okay? But I also know you don’t do that all the time. Be creative, just like you were with Chad. That was totally legal.”

  Taking guys down without breaking any laws wasn’t our style, especially when it earned us inconvenient sidekicks with two-hundred-pound guard dogs. And we were damn lucky our last stunt had worked. “Chad was a guy who sent flowers to little old ladies. This is a guy who carries a gun, knows how to use it, and has a pile of friends who know how to shoot if he misses.”

  I saw Lelo open her mouth to protest. And then I saw her realize who the wall of cops would be shooting at—saw her touch the burden I carried every day. If anyone ever fired at us because of what we did, it would be Carly who took the hit.