Neklan stepped from behind Napoleon and fired off another shot. “Not until I kill every last one of you.” He stumbled backward, tripping over a wax pharaoh and falling just as he fired his weapon. A massive mirror hanging above the room shattered into a thousand pieces as the bullet struck it, sending shards of glass raining down over the entire room. Kate hid under Dracula until the onslaught was over and then pushed him aside. She walked over to Neklan. He was lying on his back, impaled by a giant, ragged shard. Next to him was the wax replica of an Egyptian king he had stumbled over. Nick and Jake rushed into the room and stood next to Kate.
Nick looked down at Neklan and the wax dummy, then over at Kate. “You should just go ahead and say it,” he said to her.
Kate squelched a grimace. “Give my regards to King Tut, asshole?”
Cosmo hobbled into the room and joined them by Neklan’s body. “Welcome to the Thunderdome. Two men enter, one man leaves?”
“Both good. But not perfect,” Nick said.
Jake removed a cigar from his front shirt pocket, put it in his mouth, and smiled at each of them. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
26
Twenty-four hours later, Kate opened her apartment door, relieved to find it professionally cleaned and no sign of naked hippies except a single watercolor painting on the wall, presumably left as payment. Nick had predictably disappeared as soon as the plane landed. True to his word, all the scammed money had been deposited into the FBI accounts, which Jessup had informed her might just barely cover all the damages and lawsuits from the past week. Olga was sitting in a prison hospital, recuperating from her injuries and awaiting her arraignment, eager to help dismantle what remained of Neklan’s operation in exchange for anything less than life in a maximum-security penitentiary.
Kate walked into her bedroom, dead tired, and found Nick sitting on her bed, watching an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show on her television. “Jinkies. How many times do I have to tell you . . . boundaries.”
“Give me a break. I just lost two hundred million dollars.”
Kate crawled onto the bed with Nick. “That must be pretty tough for a reformed smuggler like you to handle.”
“Not really. Mr. Freezy arrives in Los Angeles later this week, compliments of Uncle Sam and one of Cosmo’s vouchers. Fortunes come and fortunes go, but haunted ice cream trucks don’t come along every day.” He flashed her a crooked grin. “Why don’t you check your closet? I may have left a souvenir from Hawaii there for you too.”
Kate opened her closet. Her FBI windbreaker was still relegated to the back, but there, in the very front, was a giant four-foot-long and one-foot-wide Toblerone. A red satin ribbon was wrapped around it with a card attached addressed to “The Snuggler.”
“Is that big enough?” Nick asked. “Does it meet your expectations?”
“It surpasses my expectations. Best bet ever.”
“I’m not conceding that I lost the bet, but I was pretty sure you would expect a Toblerone when the case was wrapped up.”
“It’s a tradition,” Kate said.
“There’s something else in the closet,” Nick said.
A freshly laundered pair of denim overalls hung behind the Toblerone. Kate took them off the hanger, disappeared into the bathroom, and returned wearing nothing else. “Is this what you had in mind?”
Nick drew Kate close. “You know that one-time, maybe two-time thing we talked about back in Hawaii?”
Kate pressed herself against Nick. “Yeah.”
“Well, get ready. The Big Show is about to start, and I hear it might last all night.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Janet Evanovich is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series, the Fox and O’Hare series, the Lizzy and Diesel series, the Knight and Moon series, the Alexandra Barnaby novels, and a Troublemaker graphic novel.
Evanovich.com
Facebook.com/JanetEvanovich
@JanetEvanovich
@JanetEvanovich
Peter Evanovich is Janet’s son. He has been an important part of the Evanovich writing team since the beginning of the Plum series.
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The Big Kahuna Page 23