Lesbian Assassins 2

by Audrey Faye

  One sixteen-year-old, suddenly aware of why this was the big leagues.

  Lelo was silent, her eyes focused on something that wasn’t on the same plane of reality as our table. And then she offered up three quiet words. “He needs help.”

  There is nothing harder in the universe than to look into eyes that need you and tell them no. And in the end, Carly and I weren’t much better at it than anyone else. My partner shrugged, restless. “What about his sister—what does she really want?”

  “Shelley wants him dead.” Lelo’s eyes held the tortured concern of an unvanquished heart trying to change a futile world. “But Danno’s worried that would blow back on his sister.”

  A reasonable concern, and I liked Danno better for being able to see it.

  “You’re smart and careful and brave.” Lelo looked at my partner, her eyes drenched in something that had grown, full-rooted, from what had happened in the last three minutes. “You put yourself out there every day so you can help people.”

  That didn’t mean we were going to let a ninety-pound teenager do the same thing—or use hero worship to push Carly there. But it wasn’t my turn to speak. This moment was for Lelo and Carly and some bond that even a hermit could see growing limbs and leaves.

  My partner was letting someone else matter. I wouldn’t have gotten in the way of that for ten lifetimes of sanity.

  I could feel Rosie watching too, the two of us quiet witnesses as one prickly, knife-prone, temperamental assassin and a kid with a sharp tongue and a gooey heart walked themselves into the miracle of sisterhood.

  I’d waited three years to see Carly let love sneak in her doors, and if Lelo could call that into being, I’d sing backup with every damn last breath I had. Even if it made my job a hundred times harder.

  And then I’d get to work cleaning up the mess that was coming for us next, because sisterhood has rules, and they aren’t remotely rational or reasonable or all that amenable to changing their minds. I knew what it was to have Carly’s knives on my side, forever and always. Lelo was about to learn the same thing, and I hoped like hell she had the wisdom to wield her power carefully.

  Because I could feel the same answer beating a quiet rhythm in my own ribs as the one stalking the depths of Carly’s eyes. We were taking the assignment.

  My job was to make sure we took it very damn carefully.

  And that, in the end, was evidently why I’d called in reinforcements. Not to stop us, but to help me keep Carly safe.

  Which, apparently, she’d known long before I did.

  -o0o-

  “That was so good.” Lelo pushed back from the little round table at the Italian trattoria where we’d decided to snag dinner, and let out a belch loud enough to be heard in the next county.

  If I’d eaten half as much food as our toothpick sidekick, I’d be moaning in the corner of some ER somewhere. Even the good Italian grandmother serving us had been impressed.

  Carly examined the dregs of her tiramisu bowl and sighed happily. Then she grinned over at Rosie, who had been merrily eye-flirting with the guitar player wandering the tables singing lusty, slightly-off-key ballads. “He’s going to ask you to have his babies any minute.”

  Rosie laughed. “If he was forty years younger, I might take him up on it. Check out those eyelashes.”

  That had us all looking. And making faces—the guy singing was totally bald, and if he had eyelashes, none of us could see them.

  However, all the looks had apparently captured the attention of our erstwhile guitar player. He wandered toward our corner of the outdoor patio, switching to something lazy and slow as he walked. I felt my songwriter soul stirring. The man couldn’t quite hold a tune anymore, but his fingers could still move. That kind of dance on the strings has always been one of my weaknesses.

  He arrived in our corner, and I had to give him credit for good marketing skills. He flashed a smile at the beauty and youth at the table and then made his way over to me, fingers still smoothly picking a lush accompaniment to the notes he couldn’t quite hit.

  He followed the line of my gaze. And then smiled, one musician to another, and changed to an old Sinatra song that anyone with ears would know. “You’ll sing with me, yes?”

  The happiness leaked out of my ribcage in one short, sharp exhale.

  I could see the table reacting. Carly was ready to stab someone, Lelo looked utterly confused, and Rosie’s eyes got all sharp and pointy.

  The old man looked sad for a moment, and then he reached down and patted my hand. “One day. You come back and sing with me one day.”

  Kindness stabbed through the little air I had left.

  Then he turned to Rosie’s sharp eyes and started the lead-in bars to Sinatra again. She grinned and stood up, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and picked up the words in a rich, deep contralto that lacked some in training, but knew how to tell a story with notes anyhow.

  Lelo started drumming a beat on the table, a kid happy that the grownups had somehow disarmed the sudden earthquake. Carly’s fingers loosened on her butter knife and her eyes swung back and forth between Rosie and me, unsure where she was needed most.

  I felt cool night air sliding in over the lump in my throat and tried to pick up the pieces I’d somehow just let shatter all over a really nice dinner. One where I’d been sitting with actual friends and eating good food and really enjoying myself.

  In the four years since Johnny blew my life and my music apart, a lot had happened. But not once had I had this many people who cared about me.

  And not once had anyone ever asked me to sing.

  9

  “We’re going where?” I could feel myself backing into a wall, terrified by the gleam in Rosie’s eyes.

  “Flower shopping.” She waved a casual hand in the direction of the two heads bent over laptops on the bed. “They’re not going to come up for air until dinnertime, and I need more stock for my shop.”

  The last time I’d been in Rosie’s store, you could hardly find her cat for all the merchandise. “You don’t need my help with that.”

  “Nope. Don’t.” She grinned and picked up a huge purple bag. “But everyone should meet Rowena at least once in their life.”

  I added Rowena, whoever she was, to my list of terrifying people. “You can take the van keys and go. I’ll find lunch or something.” Burger hunting was a specialty of mine.

  “Chicken.” Carly didn’t even look up from her laptop.

  I wasn’t sure if that was a lunch order or a dare.

  “First flowers, then lunch.” Rosie was herding me, and doing a damn good job of it. “Rowena’s son married a woman who runs an Ethiopian food cart. We’ll stop by on our way back.”

  Burgers were definitely not Ethiopian. And Rosie had clearly practiced her herding on fire lizards or something—a mere assassin, and a feeble one at that, wasn’t even making her work hard. I hopped meekly into the passenger seat of the van, pretty sure I’d just taken one of those steps down a road I would later regret and not at all sure what to do about it. Two hundred pounds of gypsy can be pretty convincing.

  Rosie climbed into the driver’s side and held out her hand for the keys. “It won’t kill you. Rowena’s a peach.”

  That’s what I was afraid of—more people I might actually like. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You are.” We pulled out of the motel parking lot, my driver awfully sure of where she was going for someone who supposedly never left Lennotsville.

  I watched out the side window, wondering if this qualified as kidnapping.

  “We didn’t just come for Carly, you know.”

  I blinked. Rosie was assessing the vistas in her rearview mirror, but I was pretty sure it had been her talking and not my fevered imagination. “What?”

  She looked over at me and smiled, with one of those wise looks in her eyes that saw all the way through my flannel and then some. “We came for you, too. Carly maybe needs some help holding her reins steady. You need someone to c
ut you loose and flap a blanket across your behind.”

  Terrific. I rolled my eyes and looked back out the window. “It would take more than a blanket.” My inertia has some pretty solid roots.

  “I know.” Rosie grinned. “That’s why we’re going to see Rowena.”

  “I could just stay in the van.”

  “You won’t.”

  “You seem pretty damn sure of yourself.”

  “You’ve been on the road with Carly for what, three years?” Rosie glanced my way for confirmation, but she seemed pretty sure of her story. “Nobody survives a tornado like her without some guts and a crazy streak, even if it’s really well disguised.”

  I didn’t have a response to that, smart or otherwise. I’ve never been exactly sure why Carly and I work so well, and looking at myself in the mirror didn’t tend to make the mysteries of life any clearer.

  “Don’t worry.” There were currents of understanding flowing under the sexy gypsy’s amusement. “I’ll make sure you don’t leave with any flowers.”

  That didn’t seem like a particularly hard job. “I only like the kinds that grow wild in meadows.”

  Rosie chuckled. “I said something like that once.”

  I was afraid to ask. “And then what happened?”

  She grinned and stomped on the gas pedal. “I met Rowena.”

  -o0o-

  “This one’s gorgeous—it smells like pure sin, if you ask me.”

  The tiny old lady holding out the purple flower didn’t look capable of pure sin. Rowena was sunshine in a bottle, beaming at us as she steamrolled Rosie into buying fifteen kinds of budding things for her shop. The two-hundred-pound woman who’d dragged me here wasn’t protesting overmuch. “Ro runs the best wholesale nursery in five states.”

  Rowena sniffed.

  “Sorry.” Rosie grinned. “The best one on planet Earth, and probably several galaxies beyond that, too.”

  “Better. That will get you my best price on these lovelies.”

  The purple flowers were pretty. I took a careful step backward, trying to stay out of the way of tiny demon flower sellers and their buxom clients. The two of them were deep into another bed of flowers now, these a darker shade of purple with happy yellow centers.

  I’d backed my way into a cluster of something fragrant, and my fingers trailed over their vivacious red petals. I’d had a dress that color once, back when I wanted the universe to notice me at least some of the time.

  “Those are sexy,” said Rowena, with a glint in her eye that didn’t look at all hypothetical. “A sprig of those will brighten up almost any arrangement, and they’re utterly romantic all on their own.”

  Rosie waggled her eyebrows at me. “Hot date, Jane?”

  Not in the past decade and not in the next one either. “I bet Mrs. Beauchamp would adore them.”

  “She would, but she’s not the one who should wear them.” Rosie’s eyes were bright with merriment as she reached out a hand for my shaggy waves. “They’d look great tucked in your hair.”

  “Oh, yes.” A wizened hand joined the head patting. “Just a nice clip of them right here. They’d totally bring out the gorgeous brown of your eyes.”

  I had no idea what to do with the gaggle of hands in my hair. “If I’m ever going to the prom, I’ll be sure to let the two of you know.”

  Rowena’s laughter jiggled my head. “A lady has to put on a hot dress and a sexy do every so often or she might as well be dead.”

  Great. “Sign me up for a casket, then.”

  “Tsk, tsk.” Tiny demon eyes looked over at sexy gypsy ones. “You need to fix that, Rosie dear. This one’s not nearly old enough or ugly enough to be allowed to give up.”

  Rosie laughed. “You don’t think anyone’s old enough or ugly enough.”

  “True.” Rowena shifted her focus back to me. “Pick a red dress, one that matches the flowers and shows a little skin. Some pretty shoes, too.”

  Over my dead, flower-composted body. “I’ll stick with my flannel, thanks.”

  A surprisingly tough hand patted my cheek. “No, you won’t. You like my sexy flowers, and that tells me that your heart has more room for romance than you think.”

  Romance was at least three major steps past a little red dress. “No dresses, no shoes, no red flowers, no guys.” Not necessarily in that order.

  “Oh, honey.” Rowena’s laugh hit gravely tones now, a sound that somehow matched the red blooms in her hand. “It’s not some boy you need to romance. It’s yourself.”

  “No.” I backed away from the red flowers like they held some kind of alluring, nasty poison. Maybe they did. “I tried that once.”

  “The hell you did,” said Rowena sharply. “I know how to read the stories of a flower petal, and yours are all closed up and hiding in bright daylight.”

  I was damn tired of being compared to things that cowered. “I used to sing. In slinky red dresses on barstools all over this country, romancing me and anyone else who wanted to listen.” I could feel the fury billowing through my lungs, demanding air. “If I’m all closed up now like some chicken-assed flower bloom, maybe I’ve got reasons.”

  Two sets of eyes watched me, full of empathy and curiosity and something that almost looked like pleasure at a job well done.

  And that just pissed me off more. I wasn’t anybody’s project.

  I let the last of my temper tantrum loose at Rosie in one foul look. “I’ll be waiting in the van.” If she was lucky. If I could find the keys, she had the kind of walk ahead of her that might wilt even sexy gypsies.

  -o0o-

  “You okay?”

  I jumped eighty-seven feet and then squinted at the shadows, wondering how my partner managed to hide her blonde self so well. Probably more of a comment on my night vision than her stealth. “Dunno.” It was a more honest answer than I usually gave. “I will be.”

  “Rosie said she made you mad.”

  Something like that. “She tried the same stunt with flowers that you tried with bikinis.” And that some old guy with a guitar had tried with his music. I didn’t need any new doors and windows in my crab shell, dammit.

  “She’s feisty, that one.”

  I glanced over at my partner. “You sound like you approve.” Which was irritating on principle. I wasn’t a risk taker, and for the last three years, that had worked just fine. I had no idea why the entire universe was suddenly conspiring to try to change me.

  She shrugged. “You’re always telling me to keep my eyes open for the good stuff.”

  I scowled. There should be a law about having your own advice used against you. “You and Lelo find anything?”

  She shrugged and let me change the subject. “Bits and pieces. We’re being pretty careful.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Both of you?”

  “Yeah.” She met my eyes straight on, as earnest and as serious as Carly ever got. “I know he’s a cop, J. One who wears flannel on the weekends when he hangs out at his hunting shack.” She gave me a bit of a sideways grin. “And I know better than to make any of you crazy people in flannel mad.”

  I felt my unwilling amusement rise to the surface—and with it, the first helping of sanity I’d felt in hours. “I might have overreacted a little.” They probably figured, given that I’d been out here for a solid half-dozen hours, stewing in my own juices.

  My partner was smart enough to know when to leave me well enough alone.

  “Rosie doesn’t know,” said Carly quietly.

  I knew that. And I knew that the woman who had come out to find me in the dark was all too aware of why I’d spooked at the idea of a red dress and giving my heart a little time in the sun. “They’re good people.” And they were.

  They just weren’t us.

  10

  I climbed out of the van, heartily glad to be back to business as usual. No more red flowers or gypsies playing psychologist. It was Carly and me on our own, doing the standard steps of assassin due diligence. In this case, it meant check
ing out the source for ourselves. Rosie was off distracting Lelo—something about finding decent cream cheese in this town—and we were paying Danno a visit.

  I looked over at my partner and sighed. If she didn’t dial down the steel, Danno was going to piss himself at the first sight of her, and I knew all too well how hard it was to get good information out of a guy standing in his own pee. In the name of avoiding that in the first three seconds, I stepped in front of her and knocked on the door.

  The man who answered looked like your average, ordinary, thirty-something guy. Scruffy hair, the beginnings of love handles, friendly eyes.

  I hoped he wasn’t an asshole.

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Can I help you?”

  “You paged us.” Carly’s voice gave nothing away. “Lesbian assassins, at your service.”

  Danno’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of us. He finally raised a finger to scratch his nose. “You’re not who I imagined.”

  Assassins usually aren’t. Same goes for the bad guys. I nodded toward the pictures on the wall behind him. “That’s your sister?” She looked happy, and so did the nondescript, smiling man who had his arm around her waist or over her shoulder or touching her cheek.

  “Yeah.” In one word, Danno’s voice turned to ice. “And just so you don’t have to ask, I leave the photos up because I have no idea what Rick would do if he came over one day and they were gone, but I don’t want to find out.”

  Fear can slime so many things.

  Carly had neatly herded both of us into the living room and out of sight of nosy neighbors, all while never taking her eyes off Danno. “So. Why’d you contact us?”

  His eyebrows flew up. “One of you is Lelo? She sounded really young.”

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “People can be anything they want to be online.” Carly’s eyes were molten steel. “And if you ever contact that alias in future, you’ll wish you’d taken a picture of your balls and put them up on your wall, because you’ll never see them again.”