by Audrey Faye
I could see the question rise in Rosie’s eyes—and then I could see her figure out the answer for herself. Yes, we’d cracked some of the cop’s code. And no, we weren’t going to tell her or anyone else on the right side of innocence how it worked.
“Um.” Lelo stuck one finger up in the air, an innocent, mild-mannered geek about to interrupt. “Exactly how many reviews are we talking about here?”
“1,321.” Carly dusted her fingers on her shirt front. “According to my analysis, those are the important ones. Be glad that we don’t have to rewrite all nine thousand of them.”
The kid rolled her eyes. “Thanks bunches.”
My partner has a pretty good eye roll of her own. “He averages 354 words a review.”
Lelo’s eyes popped as she did the math. “The heck. What’s he doing, auditioning for the New York Times food critic job?”
More like pointing several hundred people at drug deals and transaction points, but we didn’t want Rosie or Lelo sniffing any more in that territory. As best as Carly could figure, the shithead cop was keeping half the state’s drug trade clear of a pesky meeting with local law enforcement. A job for which he was likely very well paid—and one where screwing up was likely to get him in a heaping ton of hot water with some very murky dudes.
We hoped.
“We can’t do it here.” Lelo hopped off the bed and beelined for the pile of black in the corner that I assumed was her clothes. “We need a hideout. You all pack, and I’ll find us one.”
I started to object—and then I thought it through. We were sitting ducks here, and anything that made the innocents in our midst safer was fine by me. “Carly gets veto over whatever you pick.” I held up a hand to stall protests. “For safety reasons. She’s got a lot more practice at being untraceable than you do.”
Lelo’s eyes gleamed. “I can learn.”
That was exactly what I was afraid of.
“A safe house is a good idea.” Rosie hadn’t moved off the bed yet. “And the four of us aren’t the only ones who need to go there.”
That stopped the rest of us cold in our tracks.
It was Carly who figured it out first. “Shelley. We need to get her out of the way.”
Dammit—how had I missed that? You don’t toss a hornet’s nest into a paint shaker and then leave things behind for them to sting.
Rosie nodded. “She could help write reviews.”
My insides curdled. We were assassins, not residential summer camp.
Lelo looked at me, her face lighting with a slow grin. “It’s either that or Jane has to type 331 reviews.”
“That’s a lot of work. Probably her brain will melt.” Rosie contemplated her bright blue fingernails. “Or she’ll actually learn how to use a computer, and then Carly will make her answer assassin emails for the rest of her natural life.”
The kid chortled.
I needed to get Carly to give me some knife lessons, preferably before these two got any smarter.
“Relax.” Lelo’s eyes were more sympathetic than the rest of her. “We bust Shelley out, she helps me bake, we maybe let her write a few reviews.”
“Yeah.” Rosie was still watching from her seat on the bed. “Let her take a few swings of her own at the asshole.”
Carly shrugged and looked over at me.
I got out half a nod, and then my brain froze because it had just figured out who had to go bust Shelley out. We couldn’t send Carly—it would put the rest of the job she had to do at risk. And there was no way I was letting Rosie or Lelo within five square miles of all the levels of danger an asshole cop represented. Which left me as the designated knight in shining armor, one fair maiden waiting to be rescued.
I scowled at my own idiot imagery. We didn’t rescue maidens—we helped them land punches, or rather, Carly did. I just held her jacket and sourced decent burger joints. I stared at a random stain in the carpet, trying to figure out how I rode into Dodge and got Shelley the heck out of the way long enough for us to thoroughly mess up Rick’s life. “Anybody got a handy teleporter beam?”
“Oh, brother.” Lelo shook her head and gave me one of those looks moms give their cute, dumb toddlers. “You don’t watch nearly enough dorky TV.”
I raised an eyebrow. I’d spent most of my last three years living in cheesy motel rooms—I’d take that bet.
-o0o-
I looked up as a shadow slid into the chair beside me. It wasn’t Rosie I expected to see. The sexy gypsy had light footsteps tonight.
She held out a glass of something tall and cool. “Mint tea?”
This assassin thing was beginning to resemble a chapter of Gone With the Wind. “Sure. Are Lelo and Carly all tucked into bed?”
Rosie chuckled quietly into the night. “Are you our den mother?”
Something like that. If Carly wasn’t in bed, she was getting into trouble, possibly with a sixteen-year-old sidekick in tow. I took a sip of the tea, which clearly had something in it a lot stronger than mint. “It’s easier when I only have one person to keep track of.”
“Yeah.” My visitor paused, the air gathering around the question she hadn’t quite asked yet.
Hermits are good at patience, especially when there are frogs croaking in some unlikely urban pond nearby and the tea is going down smooth and cool.
“I don’t want this to sound critical,” said Rosie finally. “It’s not meant to be, but there’s something I need to ask.”
There were a whole lot of questions inside those lines. “Okay.”
“So we write a thousand bogus reviews and post them and scramble whatever secret messages they contain.”
“Yeah.”
An indrawn breath. A steadying. “And then what happens?”
Depended how you saw things. “I’d say that Rick gets what’s coming to him.”
A head nodding slowly in the shadows. “No argument there.”
But she had one somewhere, and it was making the back of my neck itch.
“These are bad guys he’s hooked up with, J. I don’t know how bad, but I assume we’re not talking the kind of people who will send Rick a text and ask him pretty please not to fuck up like that in the future.”
Shit. “Probably not.” I didn’t ask if she had a problem with that—clearly, she did. All I needed to know was what kind of problem.
Rosie turned to me, eyes fierce. “Then why the hell did you involve Lelo in this? You think she deserves to figure out she was responsible for some guy ending up in the river in concrete shoes?”
I had no idea if they used concrete anymore. I put down my tea and sighed, a kind of peace offering and a capitulation. Time to give one gypsy with really clear eyesight a view into the bowels of the Lesbian Assassins. “We’re not going to let it get that far.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“We’re going to get the fake reviews ready.” I held up one finger and then joined it with a second. “Then several fax machines at law enforcement offices in this state are going to get a message suggesting that Rick might have some things to say that they’ll be interested in hearing.” I paused, and finally held up a third finger. “And Carly’s going to have a sit-down with Rick and suggest that he might want to answer their questions. Or the new reviews will post.”
Rosie’s eyebrows flew ten feet into the sky. “She’s going to what?”
That was the part of the plan I pretty much hated, but I couldn’t see any way around it. We were going to keep that part as careful as we knew how, but at the end of the day, assassins don’t play in the shallow end. “He might ignore an email or a text, and those are traceable.”
Rosie tucked her chin onto her knee. “Carly could make a text look like it had come from Santa Claus on vacation in Nigeria.”
Probably. I squirmed. “The timing on this is important. If it gets stuck in his spam filters or something, things could go really wrong.”
“Texts don’t have spam filters.” Wise eyes watched mine—and then their owner finally s
miled, a little sadly at the edges. “Carly wants to see it. The moment when he knows he’s toast.”
I squirmed some more—this wasn’t my conversation to be having. “Maybe.” One woman who had been thoroughly screwed, standing witness for another one.
Rosie finally shrugged, uneasy but accepting, at least for now. “He’ll sing like a jaybird.”
Presumably. “He’ll be a very valuable witness—the feds and the drug enforcement guys can squabble over him.” He’d be alive, off Lelo’s conscience, and all kinds of far away from Danno’s sister.
Rosie shook her head. “And you were going to tell us this part when, exactly?”
I shrugged, helpless against the competing tides of pissed-off friendship and plausible deniability. Carly committed crimes every day, and I helped her, but damned if we were making anyone else accessories to our dirtier deeds. “We were hoping you’d be distracted by the fun and romance of it all and not ask.”
She stared at me for a moment and then snorted. “Right. Because we’re idiots.”
Not at all. “Think about why we did this, Rosie. Think hard, and find a reason that’s different than us just needing a moment in our secret clubhouse.”
She looked at me for a long time, eyes considering.
I let her think.
Finally, she nodded. “Okay. It might work for Lelo. And for Shelley and Danno—they just want this to all go away, and they’re not going to look at a miracle too closely.”
That was the hope.
Rosie leaned back in her chair and propped barefoot toes up on a handy rock. I joined her, deeply glad this conversation seemed to have found its end. And nearly missed the question tossed lightly into the dark.
“So, how many assholes do you leave alive?”
I counted to ten, and then to a hundred, but it didn’t make any difference to the tug-of-war in my gut. “Some.”
It was as much of the truth as I knew how to tell.
14
Our van wasn’t used to this much cargo.
Lelo sat in the back left, sound asleep, her legs folded up on a Rubbermaid container that smelled like baked goods. Guardian of the scones. I’d tucked into the back with her, ostensibly so we could work on some of the props for our Shelley extraction plan.
It kept us both clear of the weird energy in the front seat. Rosie was exuding something fierce and mysterious this morning, and it was making Carly jittery.
Lelo had decided that if we were taking on the cops, we needed a better hideout than a roadside motel. I’d have voted for an obscure cabin in the woods, but she’d arranged some kind of house swap with a bohemian artist type and his walk-up warehouse apartment.
One that didn’t run to ovens, apparently. Or possibly beds—the details had been scarce. All I knew was that there was lots of space, fantastic WiFi, and Carly-approved lack of traceability on how this had all been set up.
Lelo had worked hard all morning and then conked the moment the wheels started rolling, secure for the moment in her place on the team.
I sat on my end of the backseat, miraculous mug of java in my hand, fretting about how many more dents she would add to the sturdy armor of my soul. Lelo had more than a hint of Carly’s need to tilt at windmills in the name of justice and righteousness, which was exactly what I didn’t need. Two reckless warriors to duct tape to the van instead of one.
My dents bear mute witness. Sometimes when you charge at windmills, the windmills win. And if anyone was getting new dents, it shouldn’t be the skinny kid or the sexy gypsy who dared to care about a prickly assassin duo. This wasn’t another Lennotsville, where we’d let amateurs and little old ladies do our work for us, and this wasn’t Chadwick Berrington, local boy with an overblown ego and a straying dick. It was a bad cop who played in the real muck of the world.
Even assassins get to protect their friends. I leaned back, feeling more solid than I had since I’d climbed into the backseat. Carly would do her job and I would do mine, and we’d get this assignment done.
And then I heard Rosie’s voice from two days back, whispering in my ear. Maybe she doesn’t change. Maybe you do.
And on its heels, coffee-induced insight. The kind that took my self-righteous pat on the back and set it on fire.
We’d run into a bad guy, and I’d kicked into gear and done what I do best, sorting out the holes in our plan and how to fill them. But I’d done my usual—I’d used Carly-shaped filler. And that was going to put my partner in harm’s way, just like usual.
Just like she wanted.
Maybe she doesn’t change. Maybe you do.
The screamingly obvious had finally reached up and bitten me. It wasn’t my partner who needed to take the risk this time. Usually, Carly’s the right one to put out there. She’s got the threats, the toughness, the skill with a blade—all the honed edges I’m missing. But this time those would work against her. They’d make her memorable.
Me, on the other hand, I’m as boring as three-week-old snow piled at the side of the road.
I cleared my throat and tossed a casual sentence the way of my partner. “I’ll do it, C. Once we get Shelley out, I’ll go pay Rick a visit.”
“Will not.” Carly swatted away the possibility without even bothering to sound a little worried first.
And that got my dander up. “I’m the right person to go. Nobody will remember me after—they never do. You’ll have your face up on every cop computer in the country inside of a week.” Wanted: Hot Chick, Armed & Dangerous.
“No.” Carly pulled the van over to the side of the road and turned to face me, eyes totally mystified. “That stuff is my job. You’re the planner, and this is a damn good plan.”
It was a better one now. “It’s my turn.”
“Since when? That part’s always my job.”
I’d expected the fierceness, even the hint of anger. But I hadn’t expected the confused hurt. “Usually, yeah.” I reached forward and touched my partner’s arm awkwardly, wanting to soothe and having no idea how to do it. “But you’ll probably punch him in the nose or something.”
I saw humor hit her eyes, but it didn’t chase the hurt away. And then she slammed down her armor. “I can take care of myself.”
Like hell she could. I opened my mouth to say so, and then one of those guardian angels that keeps friends and sisters and lovers from killing each other whapped me on the skull with something heavy and pointed. There’s shit you just don’t say, because some things just can’t be walked back. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to make the dark flecks behind my eyes behave.
Her face had nearly reached boiling point. “He’s just another dickwad who needs to know that the power isn’t all his anymore. And I’m the one who gets to threaten the dickwads.”
“Not this time.” In three years, I’ve learned to stand my ground. And I was done being a coward by default.
“C.” Rosie’s voice was quiet—and somehow demanded that we all look. She paused a good long moment and then grinned at Carly. “Don’t you want to see what Jane looks like when she’s decided to be dangerous?”
My partner rose up ramrod straight in her seat, ready to fight a new enemy—and then floated back down, her face lighting up as she landed. The sexy gypsy had managed to find the pin to the grenade. Carly stared at Rosie for a minute and then twisted to look at me again, fury trading places with unholy glee. “Yeah. Heck, yeah.”
I’d have sold my soul ten times over for my crab shell and enough time to slide into it. But I was pretty sure I’d find a certain florist standing in its big, new picture window, waving her friendly hammer.
I was being renovated—and this time, I was going to let her. Because it would keep someone I loved like a sister safe.
Rosie’s left cheek dimpled as she offered me an unrepentant smirk. “Want a getaway driver?”
Hell, no. Sexy gypsies weren’t remotely hard to remember either. “I have a bus ticket.” One getaway, non-memorable hermit style.
15
The plan to liberate Shelley had been concocted from some mix of comic books and old TV reruns, and it had taken every drop of sanity I had left to get rid of the two or three craziest bits. Which hadn’t exactly left me with your garden-variety taxi pickup.
I adjusted the tassels on my very sparkly uniform, the one that, along with a whole boatload of socks stuffed in my chest and about a pound of makeup hanging off my eyelids, apparently made me look like your average cruise ship director. Why that was appropriate for this gig hadn’t ever been answered, but I had to agree with one thing—I didn’t look remotely like me. And that mattered, since Rick was going to see me again in a couple of days.
If I was very lucky, Shelley wasn’t home, or she was under the influence of some mind-altering substance. I tried not to hunch over as I climbed out of the limo in front of her address. It was your entirely standard bungalow—either Rick wasn’t getting rich doing this gig, or he was smart enough not to blow it on a Hollywood mansion.
I turned into the walkway of the house that only distinguished itself from its neighbors with a small pot of purple flowers sitting on the concrete excuse for a porch. And let out a grateful breath as the front door opened and a woman with Danno’s face came out.
“Good morning.” She looked friendly enough, but understandably confused.
Time to pretend I knew what I was doing. “You must be Shelley Ferrillo.” I waved a gleaming green folder and a bouquet of Rowena’s best flowers at her. “I’ve come to pick you up for your Tranquility spa experience. Sorry I’m a few minutes late. We’re so very excited to have you as our guest for the weekend.” I wanted her to hurry the hell up and get out of here with me.
“My what?” She shook her head, clearing invisible cobwebs. “I don’t have any spa thing booked.”