by Audrey Faye
Mrs. Beauchamp, whoever she was, had not risen from her hospital bed to send Chad flowers. Especially not these flowers. They were very orange and a little bit dangerous.
“No, but we should send her some.” For the first time since they’d arrived, Chad’s attention was totally focused on Ally. “Maybe some nice daisies—you could come help me pick out the perfect arrangement.”
He was nearly twitching. I watched his eyes and felt understanding flow in, just like the lines of a song that had finally come together. He wanted this out of the coffee-shop limelight and onto safer ground—before people starting putting together balcony arias and flower deliveries and sexy new arrivals in town.
Which was a smart move, except for the fact that the man clearly thought Rosie was his pet florist, tame and harmless. Anyone who thinks that about a six-foot-tall woman with skull earrings is a gold-plated numbskull. Never mind the assassin and the emancipated kid in black currently hanging out on the back porch. I hoped Chad headed that way—it would be an interesting visit.
And then I saw his eyes relax and felt my imagined tableau in Rosie’s shop go up in a poof of smoke. Ally’s gaze had shifted, caught by a very cute baby just waking up in his car seat beside a table to their left. I missed the words she murmured as she stood, but the body language was clear enough. As was the energy shift in The Cuppa as two dozen eyes watched Ally pick up an adorable cherub and light the both of them up in laughter.
Ally had moved on from flowers and sexy strangers and the possibility that Chad Berrington had done something naughty, and she was pulling the whole town with her. A possible shifting of the sands under his feet trumped by cute babies and the eyes of a woman who wanted one of her own.
Rosie was slowly backing her way toward the door, and I could see the same weary resignation in her eyes that I felt in my ribs. Chad wasn’t the only battle we were going to have to fight to win this one. We might have to wave knives at motherhood and apple pie, too.
Not exactly a recipe for career success.
I picked up my cup of coffee, no longer comforted by its predictable, cozy warmth, and wondered how we changed the rules enough to knock Chad Berrington off his comfortable, holier-than-thou pedestal.
Wondered, as I looked at the happy laughter in Ally’s eyes, whether we should.
CHAPTER 11
I opened Lelo’s door expecting Rosie. What I got instead was the man of the hour, eyes full of smoky-brown threat. He read my t-shirt, gave my stance the once-over, and let his look bleed into something closer to boredom. “Good name for a band.”
I was used to being dismissed—normally, I cultivated it. Today it made me want to hammer his brains to his testicles. “We don’t sing.”
“Not everyone’s got talent.” He brushed past me, eyes on the duo standing in the living room.
“Scum alert,” said Lelo dryly. “Run now, while you still can. Good afternoon, Chadwick.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to, brat.” His eyes moved off Lelo and included me and Carly in his general disdain. “But nobody will believe you, whatever it is.”
“They might.” The kid was doing a pretty good job of bravado on demand. “You’re not as pure and holy as my sister thinks you are.”
“So you’ve tried to tell her.” He smirked, a nasty man who knew he walked on solid ground. “And every time you do, you make her sad and she comes and cuddles in my arms and talks about how hard it was for you growing up and how it’s not your fault that you have a suspicious heart.”
Carly and I flinched in tandem. Those were the kind of words that flayed.
Lelo only raised an eyebrow. “Had your mean Wheaties for breakfast, did you?”
“Every morning. And then we sit and pick out things for our wedding registry.”
I tried to imagine a lifetime of being married to this asshole. He might not use his fists, but he would pound the light out of Ally Kramer as surely as if he did.
“I’ll buy the hammer. And the drill.” The color was rising in Lelo’s cheeks. “And teach Ally how to use them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Successful people always have enemies. Allison knows that. She won’t let anyone take me down—not even you, squirt.”
“So you think.” Lelo’s voice was quiet—and deadly.
His face got a fierce look that I assumed he practiced in the mirror after watching The Godfather. “Don’t mess with me, brat. You or your lesbian bodyguards. It ends now.”
Carly had picked up a bread knife from the table and was hefting it with menace. “Why, Jane, I do believe that was a threat.”
For a moment, Chad was almost smart enough to take her seriously. Then the sense of immunity he’d worn his whole life kicked in, and he flashed her a frat-boy grin. “You don’t scare me, sweetheart, but thanks for the flowers. If you go for chocolates next, I like the ones with nuts in them.”
I was already on the move, putting my flannel-clad bulk between my partner and the guy with a death wish. Lelo glued herself to my side, but she was still throwing taunts. “Not every woman think’s you’re hot stuff, Chadwick.”
I was more succinct. “You’re not welcome here. Get lost.”
He left. But not before he flashed Carly one last smile.
I slammed the door behind him. He’d accomplished at least one thing with his little visit. I wasn’t on the fence about whether this shithead needed reforming. Not anymore.
But I had my work cut out if I didn’t want that reform to happen at the end of a bread knife.
~o~0~o~
“They’re so freaking blind.” Lelo walked back in her front door, Rosie hot on her heels. She’d left two minutes after Chad—apparently in search of reinforcements. She took one quick, frustrated turn around her compact apartment and then looked over at Carly, mutiny storming in her eyes. “The coffee shop is already spinning things, blaming it all on you, even though he’s the asshat who sent you flowers. He never gets blamed. Like it’s your fault you look good in a skirt.”
I felt the landmines click under our feet. Shit, shit, shit.
“We have an idea.” Lelo clearly hadn’t heard the clicks. “If they’re going to believe that crap anyhow, maybe we should use it. See what happens if you walk your sexy self into The Cuppa and the grocery store and his hotel all day long and he can’t keep his eyes where they belong.”
Carly’s voice was scary neutral. “You want me to hit on the slimebucket?”
“Yeah.” Rosie looked pretty juiced by the nascent plan. “He can’t hide his stripes forever.”
There was no good way for me to jump in and say this was a bad idea. Especially when, at a bunch of levels, it was a really good one. If you didn’t know Carly’s history. If you didn’t know what happened the last time a slimebucket thought she might be parading her sexy self for his benefit. But in three years, I’d learned that there’s a difference between protecting and shielding, and Carly wouldn’t thank me for my feeble attempts at either.
“And don’t worry.” Rosie rolled right through the silence, either misreading it or missing it entirely. Not much about our gypsy florist was subtle. She made flirty eyes at Carly. “When it’s time for the charade to end, I’ll swoop in and rescue you.”
Miraculously, that got Carly’s lips twitching. “How about we do the rescue part first?”
“Chad might find that fascinating,” offered Lelo dryly.
The kid was way too old for sixteen. “Let’s go with the nice, straightforward plan, huh, folks? Research and reconnaissance.” Rosie had to live in this town after we left, and I had no intention of putting unarmed accomplices in the line of fire. They could be the bench research team, especially since it didn’t look like we had much choice.
Carly scowled, ignoring me, and still way too close to combusting for my comfort. “It’d be easier to wave a knife at him.”
Rosie grinned. “There are all kinds of power, girl. And you have this one in spades, so why not use it?”
Rosie di
dn’t know the “why-not” answer—but I did. Carly had been born with lots of tools, and she’d spent a lot of time and energy in the last few years building more. Knives, acting lessons, martial arts, underground hacker challenges—every bit of it designed to make her better at what we did.
Lots of people in our line of work would have used Carly’s sex appeal to the max. She knew how to do it. But generally, the only person who got hit with the Hot Chick persona, at least on purpose, was me. Hot Chick might sweep into a casino in a slinky dress, but that was as far as she ever took it. And even that made me feel like I had a flame torch pointed at my eyebrows. Too close to dangerous lines.
I could see her watching me, evaluating, the silent conversation happening underneath Rosie’s flashy one. And then I saw my partner decide.
She would go for it. For better or for worse.
I couldn’t let that happen. “How about we keep that for plan B, okay?” Plan A involved skirting loosely with the law, but it would probably keep Carly in one piece. “This is the day and age of the Internet, and all bad behavior can eventually be found there.” It was one of our mantras, and this case, I was gambling on finding Chad’s badness sooner rather than later. Hopefully Rosie and Lelo were a lot better with a computer than I was.
Lelo scowled. “That doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun.”
That was the whole point. I opened my mouth to make the case for boring, plodding casework—and then the dots in my head started connecting like fireflies on speed. “Shit.”
My partner stopped her pacing. “I know that look. What’d we miss?”
In my past life, there had been songs that came together one painful line at a time—and ones that spewed out verses like waterfalls. I held up my hand, trying to put words to this particular waterfall. “We know there’s little stuff. The flower shop purchases. The people he ignores, and some of them don’t like him very much.” And then the trump card—I’d missed its significance until just now. “And he was scared when Rosie plunked down the flowers. Scared enough that he came to find both of us.” No way roses made him that nervous.
Carly raised an eyebrow. “So, what—he’s a dickwad who’s not entirely stupid?”
“Maybe he’s a dickwad scared of what we might find. What’s the one message he really came here to deliver?”
“That he’s a slimebucket?” I could hear her brain walking mentally backward through the conversation. “No, wait.” Her eyes lit up. “That nobody will believe us.”
“Exactly.” The dots were glowing neon now. “But he never tried to claim innocence.” I looked over at Lelo and Rosie. “He does all the stuff with the flowers and things to whitewash his rep, right? Clean guy, no dirt to be found.” I paused for effect, the crescendo of silence in my little song. “I think it’s time we stopped believing him.”
Rosie caught on first, but the kid wasn’t far behind.
I pointed their hunting-dog noses before they came up with other ideas. “Research, people.” An assassin’s most deadly weapon was information.
Lelo was already reaching for her laptop. “I can help with that. What are we looking for?”
Good. If her eyes were on her own computer screen, they wouldn’t be paying too much attention to the goings-on over on Carly’s.
Rosie grinned, settling where she could watch over Lelo’s shoulder. “Sins. The bigger, the better.”
Carly was diving into her own tech hardware. “Start with sex and money.”
“Or maybe something illegal.” Lelo looked hopeful. “No way he’s into drugs in this town without anyone knowing, but maybe he goes to Philly a lot or something.”
Carly shook her head. “That would have showed up in his money trail. There’s nothing there.”
Two sets of big eyes stared at her.
Shit. Oh shit oh crap. We were so used to working alone.
It was Rosie who spoke first. Carefully. “Do we want to know how you know that?”
I let out the acrid breath I’d been holding. “No. Just know that she’s good enough to have found the trail if there was one.” If Lelo hadn’t known my computer skills were subzero, I would have tried to take credit. I was bone scared that we’d let something like that slide into the open so easily.
Liking people was really dangerous business.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Lelo quietly, looking straight at me. “You know we’re not gonna say anything.”
It had been hard enough for me and Carly to learn to trust each other. Years of hard.
It was my partner who finally broke the stillness. One small, almost half-hearted shrug and a little nod.
With that, a research platoon was born. And something more intangible, too—and maybe a lot more important.
~o~0~o~
I’d managed to walk down the street in the dim-dark of late sunset without kicking any lampposts in frustration, but it was a close call.
We had nothing. Four hours of work by three computer geeks and a competent coffee fetcher, and we had nothing. Connect-the-dots had failed me.
Chadwick Berrington really was a poop that hadn’t happened yet.
I’d come out here to try to shed my guilt—I’d been so damn sure. The pieces had fit together like finely calibrated gears. I’d forgotten that sometimes, things look pretty and right and true even when they aren’t. You’d think that by now, I’d be old enough that I wouldn’t have to swim in that toilet bowl again, but memories can be tricky things and so can a songwriter’s ego, even if she’s retired.
I’d been wrong. Chad knew how to flex his asshole muscles—but so far, he hadn’t done anything memorable enough to cause scandal. And without one, Lennotsville was going to let him keep sitting in the favored-son slot without asking a whole lot of questions. I couldn’t blame the people who lived here. We human beings like our heroes, and we know that it’s generally better not to look at them too closely.
We’d looked—and we still had bubkes.
I was out here because I was worried about what that meant for Lelo, who had worked tirelessly hunting down all the mentions of him in every corner of the Internet—and gotten grim and quiet as we’d kept coming up empty.
I was worried about what it meant for me and the layers of jaded armor piling up on my shoulders.
But mostly, I was worried about Carly. I’d managed to unpeel her fingers from the bread knife long enough to track Chad Berrington into the nether regions of cyberspace. But I’d connected the dots wrong, and I knew the way my partner’s mind worked. I’d seen her come to a boil again as four hours of work had turned up nothing more damaging than a slew of unpaid parking tickets and a couple of STDs treated at an anonymous clinic in Philly.
And I hadn’t been able to say a word, none of the ones that would have mattered, anyhow—there had been no way to make our resident audience disappear. No way to say that Chad wasn’t really the one she wanted to hurt, he just happened to be the one available.
I hit the end of the street and turned around, heading back for the questionable comfort of Lelo’s four walls. I’d left her and Rosie to babysit Carly, and that probably wasn’t a fair assignment.
I’d made it two steps when my phone beeped. I knew what the text would say even before I read it.
She’s gone.
CHAPTER 12
It wasn’t the first time I’d stayed up all night, waiting in vain for my partner to come home. And it hadn’t left me any less cranky than the previous times.
Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to find Carly once morning arrived. The town only had one hunting shop, and a woman at the counter in high heels was causing visible ripples in the fabric of the Lennotsville universe.
I walked down the street toward the shop, following the gravitational pull. It wasn’t the first time my partner had caused such distortions in the force. It wasn’t even the first time she’d done it while on a shopping expedition.
Women shop for all the wrong reasons. Me, I look for flannel and invisibil
ity. Some women look for an end to boredom or a beginning to liking the person they see in the mirror. I don’t guess they find what they really want hanging from a rack much more often than I do.
Carly—she looks for power.
We do this assassin gig for different reasons, Carly and me.
Three years ago when she found me, I was readying to disappear from the world. Not in any kind of slit-my-wrists-in-a-bathtub way, because that’s pure selfish nonsense. But I come from a part of the country that has enough hermits in the woods to know that you can become a ghost while you’re still good, solid flesh and blood. I’d been working my way into joining them, learning the body language of hiding out in plain sight and ignoring the vast hole of empty in my middle where a singer-songwriter had once lived. And then a brazen hothead with pleading eyes and a knife had walked into my quiet middle of nowhere and turned my life upside down.
I was still mostly a ghost, despite the dumb rules Carly had imposed on my social life. But I was a ghost with a purpose, one who could crawl under the covers most nights and know I’d made a difference, even if it was just keeping my brazen-hothead partner safe to fight another day.
But Carly? She does this because the day she picked up a knife, she took back her power. And every time she picks one up again, you can see it riding in her veins.
In the life version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, “assassin” trumps pretty much everything.
And that’s what this case threatened.
Chadwick Berrington was leaching her power in a dozen insidious ways, with the politics and pettiness of a small town layered on top. I could slide into invisibility here. She was way too damn beautiful for that to be easy.
Me, I was mostly just a social worker with some unusual methods. Carly’s our warrior, our fighter.
And the warrior was feeling weak.
I arrived at the hunting shop and caught a good look at my partner through the window, all glinting edge and brittle bravado. And then I dug around in my dusty internal closet for the guts I occasionally still find myself able to use and prepared to do what was necessary to help her feel strong again.