The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky

by Deborah Coonts

  One of its black lacquer walls is covered with a torturer’s treasure trove of paddles, whips, and chains. Backlit shelves cover another wall. One is filled with dummy heads wearing an assortment of ball gags and submission masks. Another shelf displays dildos of various shapes and sizes standing at attention.

  In a corner of the room, a standing closet holds various costumes as well as colorful leather or rubber catsuits, crotchless pants, and barely-there restraints.

  Spanking benches, hard chairs, and various torture contraptions are filtered throughout the room. There are also a couple of cages. One hangs from the ceiling.

  Incredulous, Jack swings it gently. “Do you mean to tell me that Ryan approved this—this porn star’s playpen as our official London black site?”

  “Well…no, not exactly,” Dominic shrugs. “This is a private space for the few guests I have who enjoy this sort of thing. Truth be told, Acme’s rental is…well, it’s in there.” He points to a door on the back wall. Because it is also lacquered black and has no molding around it, I hadn’t noticed it before.

  He takes an old rusty iron key from the hook beside the door. “Follow me.”

  His tone seems to plea for us to do anything but that.

  This second room is much larger. I’d guess it runs nearly the length of the mansion. There are no windows and it smells dank. The floor, hard-packed and dusty, slants slightly toward the middle of the room where five drains have been placed every thirty feet or so. Red streaks angle diagonally toward them, giving the effect of rays emanating from the sun. A bucket holding towels is stained a ruby hue.

  It reeks of death.

  One of the roughhewn stone walls is lined with wooden shelves that hold various tools: hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, hatchets, knives, machetes, chainsaws, hoses, and scissors. On another wall, collars, neck high, are bolted above chains of varying lengths.

  Jack wanders over to the tool wall. After scanning his choices, he picks up a hammer to measure its heft before setting it down again. The next thing that catches his eye is a handheld pipe vise.

  “Yeah, I think this will do—for starters, anyway,” he murmurs. “Donna, tell Abu to bring the guest star through Door Number Two.”

  Hearing this, Dominic drops onto a backless bench and buries his head in his hands.

  Jack sighs as he drops the vise on the table. “Okay, listen: we’ll start in your playpen first. But if she doesn’t give up the ghost, I’ll grab a few toys from Acme’s side of the dungeon. Got it?”

  Dominic nods miserably.

  For once, I feel sorry for him and Lucky too.

  17

  Lucky

  The open-handed slap across my cheek slammed my head to the left. The backhand from the other side launched it back to the right. I could taste blood as my lip swelled. I let my head hang, my chin on my chest, as I worked to unscramble the thoughts pinging around my empty skull.

  Where was I? I moved—only millimeters to hide my returning faculties. Okay, someone had secured me to a chair, my hands tied behind me. My feet were free—an oversight I intended to punish him with…I knew it was a man. Large hand, controlled strength that left my cheeks stinging.

  Okay, I was tied to a chair. But where? How had I gotten here? Last I remembered I was in a room at the club. There was red wine…bodacious red wine.

  Dominic.

  “No more.” A female voice. “I think she’s coming around.”

  Cold water hit me full face. I gasped against the cold. Slapping me I could forgive. But making me redo my hair? Unforgivable.

  I blinked against the water dripping from tendrils of hair glued to my forehead.

  As suspected a man came into view, but not the one I expected. This one had brown curls, a cleft in his chin, and green eyes, I thought, but with the light shining from behind him and toward me in the best Hollywood interrogation manner, it was hard to tell.

  I had walked into some British spy farce. That was the only explanation. Every man I’d met since arriving seemed to be trying to get in touch with his inner international spy. Not attractive. Not even on the nice specimen of the Y-chromosome set standing in front of me, his hand raised ready to strike again.

  Rope burned against my skin as I moved my wrists and worked my hands. “I’m not sure I can feel my hands.” I raised my head high and my gaze steady as it locked with his.

  Green Eyes seemed unconcerned, but he dropped his hand.

  Even though I couldn’t see her, I knew a woman was there. I’d heard her, and, despite my scrambled brains, I hadn’t imagined it. That made two against my one—odds I could live with. But there was someone else skulking in the shadows behind the light. I’d caught his stench.

  Squinting against the light, I took stock of my surroundings. Glossy black walls. Enough bondage toys to stock a Great Expectations megastore. But what Green Eyes held in his hand wasn’t the usual slap-and-tickle trinket but hardware meant to maim.

  One thing I knew: if I screamed, no one would hear me. “So, whose little pleasure palace is this?”

  “One of our colleague’s family home.”

  Dominic.

  At least he was consistent. But this latest revelation made my skin crawl.

  I’d deal with him later. Right now, Green Eyes needed to be taught some manners.

  “Hitting a woman while she’s tied to a chair is hardly noble. Untie me and we’ll let the best man win.” I squinted one eye to bring him into focus.

  He gave me a slow grin. “Playing fair isn’t on my longevity plan. And, from what I’ve seen, it isn’t a tool in your box either.”

  A tool in my box? He sounded American. Surely he knew better.

  Cotton lined my mouth, but it couldn’t hide a metallic taste. A headache pulsed in my left temple. Dizziness still lingered. I tried to move my feet but could only slide them a few inches.

  I’d been roofied.

  But I’d opened the wine and chosen my glass. “How’d you do it?” I asked the darkness.

  “Syringe through the cork.” The melodious tones of Dominic Fleming. Yep, I’d been right about the stench.

  “You’re a dead man.”

  “Lucky, I swear, I drugged you under grave duress. I have the utmost respect for you.”

  “High praise coming from a guy who has to roofie his conquests. You’re still a dead man.”

  Green Eyes seemed to relish that idea.

  “Same price for two, big guy.”

  “You’ll have to go through me first.” A woman shouldered in between us. Dark hair, intense, the woman’s shoulders bowed a bit under the weight of worry, but a murderous look sharpened her features.

  “Ah, the killer with nice taste in handbags.” She didn’t look like your normal killer, whatever that was. Ordinary, leapt to mind. The housewife next door. Women sporting the same look flooded through my hotels on a regular basis, bored despite the teenagers and requisite domesticated animals and husband, and now looking for adventure. Some found what they were looking for. Sometimes it killed them. “Why’d you do it? She was just a kid.” I tugged at the ropes binding my wrists, ignoring the sting of raw flesh.

  “Me?” Anger radiated off the woman and punched up the color in her cheeks. “She was dead when I got there.”

  Green Eyes stepped to the side. Nothing like a guy who deferred to a lady. He left me toe-to toe with the mystery woman, who loomed over me. “You killed her.” The woman poked my shoulder.

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. And didn’t want to. It helped to control my anger. “I arrived in the Royal Suite after you left—I passed you at the elevator. You said she was dead when you found her. And you think I killed her? An already dead girl? To me, the facts support the theory that you killed her.” When I’d found Aziza she wasn’t fresh dead, but I went with what I could bullshit. Government types in the business of killing would see through me. Hired assassins, perhaps not.

  “Her body had time to cool a few degrees before I found her.”

/>   I lean forward against my restraints. “Your word against mine.”

  “Don’t be so smug. You don’t even know what’s going down at your club right under your nose.” The woman vibrated with anger.

  Dominic cleared his throat—a nervous habit.

  “You won’t rattle me, if that’s what you’re trying to do.” A bluff, but not a big one. The lady was totally pissing me off. Anger focused me.

  “Two of your desk clerks are sleeping with the members and trying to shake them down.” She sounded triumphant. “Right, Dominic?”

  Silence. But I could put the pieces together. He was such a cliché.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.” I worked to blink slowly, to appear unruffled. However, inside I was aching to wring a few necks.

  “You had Aziza killed. Somebody like you wouldn’t get her own hands dirty.”

  Somebody like me. Before this encounter I would’ve agreed with her. Now, as I contemplated homicide…her homicide…I was pretty sure getting my hands dirty would be worth the jail time. “Did she have something to do with the shakedown?”

  “We haven’t connected all the dots yet.”

  Simple answer: we don’t know.

  “How did she die?” My question seemed to throw her off.

  “Heart attack.”

  I felt my eyebrows shoot toward my hairline. “She was all of what—twenty-three?”

  “Heart condition.” Donna eyed me intently.

  I thought for a moment. The two marks on the back of her neck—I’d seen those before. “Taser?”

  “Bad combination. But you would have known that, wouldn’t you? Since it was in her employment records.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Anger flared anew and I struggled against the ropes, rubbing my wrists raw. If I could just get my hands free I’d show them I was more than willing to kill when the situation dictated.

  But, considering my current situation, today was a day to choose my battles wisely. I let it go. “Why would I kill Aziza? On my own property, no less? Other than angling for the top prize in this year’s Stupidest Criminal.” This show was getting old. If I could only get a hand loose. I worked my hand, but the rope only cut deeper.

  “She was on to you. You were desperate.”

  “On to me?” My voice sounded shrill, even to me.

  “Yep, the same reason you had Nigel killed.”

  “Whaaaat?” That knocked the stuffing out of me. “I didn’t like the guy—much too priggish for me—but I can’t see killing someone for being irritating.” I angled a look up at the woman. “Although, I’m coming around. Want to tell me why you think I’m killing off my staff?”

  The unmistakable ringtone of my phone split the tension. Green Eyes pulled it from his pocket, gave me a hard stare, then answered it. “Yo.”

  The thing was password protected and locked up tight absent the right word or my thumbprint. At my questioning look, he put his index finger over the microphone. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to lift a thumbprint.”

  “Who are you people? And why’d you steal my phone?” I said it loud enough for the person on the other end to have heard, but Green Eyes still covered the mic.

  “Don’t.” His voice had a cruel edge to it.

  No one answered my question as all eyes focused on the cute dude with my phone.

  “Who is this?” The unmistakable irritation of only one person echoed through the line loud enough for all to hear.

  Mona.

  “Jean-Charles? Is that you? Where’s Lucky?”

  “She’s tied up.” Green Eyes clearly enjoyed this. “Who is this?”

  “What?” Mona spluttered. The gravest sin imaginable to my mother was that someone wouldn’t know her. “What do you mean ‘who is this?’ This is her mother. Where is Jean-Charles?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you.”

  “You put Lucky on right this minute!”

  Green Eyes hung up.

  I winced. Second gravest sin. “Not a good idea. That will piss her off. When she’s pissed, she won’t stop until she gets even.”

  The poor man ignored me. My phone rang again. This time he didn’t even get a word in before my mother started. “Young man, your impertinence is a personal affront. Your mother would be disappointed. You put my daughter on the line right now!”

  He hung up again.

  The phone sang out again.

  Dominic still lurked in the shadows. “You opened this can of worms, Old Boy.”

  Green Eyes smiled. “The caller ID came up as TERRORIST. Hard to resist.”

  The mystery woman, who had been watching this with amusement, weighed in. “We have her phone. Even though Tech Ops has masked the signal, it’s still an open lead to us. Let Lucky mollify her mother, then she’s off our backs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “My phone is a one-stop mayhem shop? If that were true, I really would be too stupid to live.”

  “You’re laundering money through your casinos for various terrorist cells,” Mystery Woman said. “I’d say that qualifies.”

  “What?” I spit the word at her. “I have billions of dollars’ worth of properties around the world that are very good at converting money into entertainment for gamblers and profit for me. If there is even a whiff of money laundering, they’ll jerk my gaming license so fast I won’t have time to clear the tables and drain the slot machines. Do you have any idea what is at stake? If I’m laundering money, I really would be too stupid to live.” I didn’t even ask them if they had proof. They didn’t. This was a fishing expedition.

  “I think she’s legit.” Dominic, the lone voice of reason and my champion. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “You’re the good cop hiding in the shadows and Green Eyes here is the bad cop? Don’t waste your time. I’ve played this game many times before, although I’ve never been the rube the cops were trying to break. It’s interesting, but you’re not very good at it.”

  A tic worked in Green Eye’s cheek as my phone rang again. His gaze shifted to me. “Is your mother always like this?”

  I shrugged.

  “Jesus, I get the whole ‘Terrorist ‘caller ID thing.”

  “Yes, I console myself with the thought that she is penance for past bad deeds. Although, if I’d been that bad, I wish I could remember all the fun of it. Seems a bit harsh without that bit of quid-pro-quo. She’s relentless; she won’t stop.”

  “That maternal apple didn’t fall far,” Green Eyes said to the woman.

  Normally any comparison to Mona filled me with indignation. Today, not so much.

  “Take the call,” Green Eyes said to me. “Play it straight.”

  I wanted to ask ‘or what?’ but at this point it didn’t matter. No way in hell would Mona ride to my rescue. Why couldn’t it be Detective Romeo, the ace-up-my-sleeve at the Metropolitan Police Department in Vegas, calling me about something grisly?

  Green Eyes slid his finger across to answer the call, then held the phone to my ear.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Lucky!” Mona adopted her how-could-you tone. “Who was that horrible man? Where are you? What are you doing? When are you going to Paris? You don’t want to let that fabulous French chef wiggle off the hook now, do you? At your age, you don’t have many options. You know what they say, a woman approaching forty has less chance of finding a husband than being struck by lightning.”

  For a moment I was at a loss, stripped bare like a mannequin in a department store window. “Thank you for that.” I was years away from forty, but now was not the time to pick that bone. “I’d misplaced my phone. The man was returning it. I’m a bit busy right now. Can I call you back?”

  “When are you going to Paris?”

  “Mother, I can’t talk.”

  “Well, you can listen then. It’s very important.”

  We often had radically differing opinions as to what constituted “important” but I’d rather face a firing squad than take the fall
out from ignoring the huff in her voice. “Make it quick.”

  “Okay,” she puffed as if she was plumping verbal pillows then settling in for the story. “About the names for the twins.”

  “Seriously?” The squeak in my voice could shatter crystal.

  “Lucky, this is very important. I’m setting the whole tone for my daughters’ lives here. Their names could make or break them.”

  Overstating but she had a point, and I was its poster child. Naming me Lucky made me anything but. “Give them to me.”

  “Sugar and Spice,” she announced with a triumphant gloat.

  There was a collective sigh on my end from all of us in the room.

  “Didn’t they sing with Beyoncé?” Stupid, but that was the only thing that leapt to mind.

  “No.” Her gloat melted into a whine.

  “I’d avoid pop culture references, if I were you, Mother. Too much baggage for two beautiful, vibrant young ladies to shoulder.” I should know. My name always conjured Lucky Luciano. Not exactly the image my mother intended. Although perpetually well-intentioned, Mona almost always fell short in the execution.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  A sigh—her version of a verbal foot stomp—then the line went dead.

  Green Eyes retracted the phone. “I get the terrorist thing now.”

  “Mona is an iceberg. What you see is dwarfed by what she’s hiding.” That shut him up for a moment, which I seized. “Who the hell are you people and what could you possibly want from me? And, for the record, you catch more flies with honey.”

  “My sentiments exactly.” Dominic, who had stepped out of the shadows, glared at Green Eyes.

  Looks passed between the three of them. An unspoken consensus was reached.

  “Okay, if you’re innocent, why didn’t you sound the alarm and call the police when you found Aziza’s body?” Mystery Woman asked.

  “Her uncle, a prominent sheik, was due to arrive any minute. My staff would have escorted him to the Royal Suite. I needed to divert him. I never thought anyone would tamper with the crime scene.” I leveled a gaze at her. “You took the body and cleaned the room, didn’t you?”