by Audrey Faye
Lesbian Assassins 4
Audrey Faye
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Thank You
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Audrey Faye
www.audreyfayewrites.com
Dedication
To my readers.
For giving Carly and Jane a chance.
1
“Four minutes. Get ready, Jane.”
I put my face in my hands and groaned. “Shut up, Lelo.”
The kid snickered from her avid perch on the other end of the backseat. “Not a chance.”
I hadn’t figured so. In four minutes, I was about to lose the most mortifying bet of my life, and there were three people in this van who were awaiting that moment with unholy glee.
I could only be grateful that we weren’t headed for Times Square. Yet.
I looked at the back of my partner’s head and made one last, futile plea. “Don’t you want to feel the wind of the open road? The joy of blasting past a speed limit sign and totally ignoring it?”
Carly’s grin in the rearview mirror had more teeth than your average shark. “Oh, yeah. In four minutes, baby.”
Anyone still in this van when the four minutes were up was a flaming idiot. “Remember the transmission and have pity.” It was old and on its last legs, or it had been six months ago when my partner used to drive our poor van like a Lamborghini.
“Transmissions can be replaced.”
“Not here,” said Rosie dryly, glancing out the window.
I looked out at the fields of cows that were about to witness my moment of high ignominy. We were in the middle of nowhere on our way to some picnic spot Lelo had dredged up. “If I lose this bet, I think I should have to pay up on the spot.”
Lelo raised an eyebrow. “We’re a long way from Manhattan.”
I was never setting foot on the eastern seaboard again. “Isn’t me dancing naked good enough?” I was pretty sure cows couldn’t die of fright—the populace of New York City’s busiest plaza was a different matter entirely.
“Not a chance,” the three of them answered in unison.
I was damned. I tossed the bag of kale chips at Lelo and reached for my secret chocolate stash. If I was about to die, it was time to eat the really good stuff.
Rosie reached back from the shotgun seat. “Share that and I’ll dance with you.”
Times Square would never be the same.
“No way.” Carly glared at the sexy gypsy.
Rosie palmed the chocolate and grinned at my partner. “Don’t you want to see me naked?”
Lelo laughed and choked on a kale chip. I whacked between her shoulder blades and rolled my eyes, pretty sure that variety of naked had already happened. Carly was too damn happy lately—and too weirdly shy when our bodacious florist was around.
My partner looked over her shoulder at the kid with the timer app.
“Ninety seconds.” Lelo had mostly finished choking on her kale.
I knew just how long and how short ninety seconds could be. Two verses of a song. Abject terror in an alleyway. Enough time to break a heart. I reached down to check my seatbelt and then stopped—dying was probably an acceptable way to welch on a bet.
I listened with half an ear as Lelo counted down to the arbitrary line in the sand that approximated the moment six months ago when I’d lost my mind, and wondered exactly why I was letting myself be backed into this particular corner. Because if I was going to be honest before I died, I’d climbed into the van today of my own free will. I’d have done it for Carly no matter what—partnership came with rules. But two-thirds of the people who were about to gloat were not my partner.
Lelo made it to the last ten seconds. As she counted them out, sounding amused and entirely unconcerned, I realized the key salient fact had somehow not occurred to the team’s newest recruits.
Carly’s foot was still on the gas pedal.
I reached for handholds—and listened as the gates of hell clanged open.
-o0o-
It was a really nice picnic spot. Not that I had much experience with eating on grassy knolls overlooking pretty valleys, but the leaves down below us were dressing themselves in the colors of fall and the sun was shining on our shoulders, promising that the warmth of summer wasn’t quite done yet.
Rosie picked up a red maple leaf and twiddled it idly in her fingers. “I could use some of these in fall bouquets.”
I grinned at her still pink cheeks. “Your hands will have to stop shaking first.”
She shook her head, amused and rueful. “You survived two-and-a-half years of that?”
I looked over my shoulder at the demon woman who had covered the last forty miles of the drive in about six minutes. “She was a little on the zippy side today.”
The gypsy’s laughter rolled full-bodied down into the valley.
Lelo came to stand between us, one arm companionably slung over each of our shoulders, and eyed Rosie. “You have something we can put in the tuna salad so she naps on the way home, right?”
“Nope. I left all my belladonna at home.”
“Then you have to get the keys.” The kid lowered her voice to a whisper—a slightly desperate one. “I’m pretty sure they’re in her bra.”
I shook my head at her cute, naive hope. “It doesn’t matter where they are. She’s got knives.” And for the purposes of being able to stomp on the gas pedal of our van for the rest of the day with unfettered abandon, I was pretty sure my partner would use them. “I’m riding a cow back to Lennotsville.”
Rosie grinned. “Calling shotgun on the cow.”
“You can all stop talking about me now and come eat the swanky stuff with toothpicks in it.” Carly was chewing between words. “The basil cheese balls are really good.”
Lelo was sneaking way too much green stuff into us these days. I turned to browse the appetizers. Time to load up—getting back to Lelo’s apartment by cow might take a while.
The kid reached around me for something orange and crunchy and cast a casual glance my partner’s way. “I’ll make you cheese balls for the next decade if you let me drive home. I need the practice.”
Carly grinned. “You can drive next week. I need the wheel in my hands to fully savor my victory.”
She was enjoying this way too much. “Lelo’s a minor. The cops will probably go way harder on you if they pull you over with her in the backseat.”
The kid, who normally fiercely resisted anyone labeling her as such, nodded solemnly. “Especially if I’m whimpering.”
She might not have to entirely fake that part.
Rosie swallowed whatever she’d been munching. “I hear that people who drive like sane human beings have better sex.”
I wasn’t entirely sure if that was random factoid or threat. Possibly both.
Carly raised a wry eyebrow. “Says the woman who used to run a biker bar?”
Rosie grinned. “I’ve mellowed in my old age.”
She definitely hadn’t reached for handholds nearly as fast as the rest of us when my partner had let out a Viking war cry and floored it. I didn’t know the whole story of our sexy gypsy’s past, or possibly even most of it, but it had left her a pretty tough cookie underneath the curl and bounce
.
I tossed Carly one of her favorite stuffed hot peppers. “Have mercy, okay? At least enough that I don’t have to puke up my very good lunch here.”
Because it was a pretty amazing spread. A half-dozen kinds of appetizers, all of them well beyond my culinary skills, fried chicken that was making me weep from the smell alone, and crusty buns still warm enough to melt butter.
My partner followed my eyes and then looked over at Lelo. “Thanks. This looks awesome.”
The kid’s cheeks got a little pink. “No big. I tried out a couple of new things, so they might not be that good.”
She still didn’t truly understand how low our standards were. “Dibs on all the leftovers.” Road food didn’t seem nearly so appetizing these days.
Rosie chuckled and reached for the chicken. “Not gonna be any.”
“I have some stuff back at my place for you guys to take.” Lelo dipped a small cracker in pink sauce. “But no dancing until we’re back on the road with you, okay?” She sounded almost plaintive.
Carly raised an eyebrow. “You want me to wait a whole week for Jane to pay up?”
The kid had a client project and Rosie had a flower shop to run, so Carly and I were being cut loose for a week. We’d be hitting the road in the morning, a quick out and back to do maintenance on some of our old assignments. Refresher courses for assholes with short memories.
We’d made ironclad promises to be back in time for Friday poker night. And were dragging our feet something fierce on the way out of town, which is pretty much how this picnic had happened.
Rosie looked over at me and held out a drumstick. “Any requests for your care packages?”
I was stoned on fried chicken fumes. “What?”
She grinned. “The ones we’ll need to bring you in jail after you get arrested for public display of your very fine wares.”
Gods. “I’ll dance at four in the morning—nobody will see me.”
Carly snorted. “New York never sleeps, babe.”
No, but it had some really foul weather. Sleet storms. Fog. “I get to pick my time.” The bet had been long on chutzpah and short on details.
My partner shrugged and picked up a dainty cucumber sandwich. “I have an alternative, if you want one.”
My brain kicked out of fried chicken land, hard. Her tone was utterly casual—which meant she’d somehow come up with something worse than jiggling nudity under the Big Apple. I eyed her with the same kind of caution I give to crocodiles and drunken truckers bearing roses. “Probably not.”
She gave a light shrug. “This one wouldn’t even get you arrested.”
I kept resolutely eating my drumstick. After three years, I knew that my partner was at her most dangerous when she didn’t appear to give a shit. “I’ll dance. You name the date.” Jail could be cozy. Three meals a day and perks for good behavior.
Rosie and Lelo were attentively watching Carly now too.
She picked up a basil cheese ball. “One song. Your choice, at least twenty people listening.”
I squinted—that didn’t sound nearly as awful as I was expecting. “I already did that once.” An evening a few people at an Italian restaurant might even remember.
She looked at me straight on, eyes full of gentle friendship and hot dare. “One of your songs, J.”
The bottom fell out of my world, clanging hard on wherever trap doors go to die. I sat there, feeling the great, gaping abyss under the feeble layer of picnic blanket, and clutched the drumstick like it might tow me to safety.
Carly’s eyes never left my face. “You could do it,” she said quietly.
Every fiber of my being disagreed with her.
Rosie and Lelo were like two of those performance statues—frozen people who only moved if you watched them for an hour.
Carly held my gaze for what felt like forever, three years of history living in that sharp blue stare. And then she popped a cheese ball in her mouth and winked. “Consider it. You have at least a week to decide.”
Our two sidekicks scrambled for anything edible, returning noise and motion to planet Earth.
I sat very still, letting the oxygen slowly leak back into my crab shell. I wasn’t fooled one iota by the hard shift back to casual—this bet had just monumentally leveled up. And I finally knew why my partner had driven like a little old lady for six months. Times Square never would have been a big enough incentive.
But love was.
2
I looked at the three bags piled high on the bed and shook my head. There was more involved in packing these days—it wasn’t a knapsack tossed into the backseat anymore. A whole lot of my stuff had somehow migrated out of the van and into Lelo’s spare bedroom.
“You know you can leave some of that here, right?” Lelo walked into the room bearing a plate of muffins in one hand and her laptop in the other.
I ignored the tug and wiggle in my belly—they pointed at things that were complicated, and tonight, I needed simple. “Still working?” The kid had been baking up a storm all evening, and maintaining a couple of Carly’s online personas. Which basically meant logging in and traveling the Internet while being as confusing as possible.
“Yeah.” She cleared a spot at the top of the bed and balanced the plate of muffins on top of one of my bags. “I’m researching vibrators and living rooftops.”
I blinked, even as I rescued the muffins from their precarious perch. They were blueberry, and if I didn’t eat them all in the next hour, Carly would. “What’s a living rooftop?”
“One where you put dirt and stuff on the roof of a building and grow a garden or grass.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “It helps keep the people inside using their vibrators nice and cool.”
I rolled my eyes and kept packing even as I felt my stomach settle. Friends sometimes come in strange, skinny little packages.
Lelo munched companionably on a blueberry muffin and typed one-handed at something on her screen. I appreciated the silence—there were several elephants in the building tonight, and I wanted to let all of them lie low. The kid understood that better than most.
The two who would have been more likely to push were off somewhere with each other. A gypsy and an assassin, not quite sure who they were for each other yet.
I grumbled at myself for thinking about elephants and reached for a pair of socks, already meticulously matched and folded. Not my doing—but I’d found ways to thank the laundry fairy. “I fixed the drippy shower faucet.”
Lelo looked up and smiled. “Hey, thanks. That’s been bugging me for months.”
It had taken a washer, some lubricant, and about thirty seconds. “No problem. Thanks for washing my socks.” The moment of roommate domesticity squirmed around in my soul a bit, but it didn’t feel as strange as it had a few weeks back. Things had definitely changed. It was going to feel weird to be just two on the road in the morning. A not entirely welcome reminder that Rosie and Lelo had lives that didn’t always revolve around us.
A small, suspicious voice in the back of my sock drawer wondered whether they were doing it to make a point.
Which is the kind of paranoid cave you crawl into when your partner and best friend has issued a picnic-blanket dare that rocks the very foundations of your soul. Carly had definitely been trying to make a point.
And I wasn’t going to think about that, dammit. I’d sung in the restaurant, lasted one song, and then my muse had fled for parts unknown, chased by the flannel-clad Valkyries with pickaxes who guard my heart and keep it safe.
And that hadn’t been one of my songs.
Which didn’t even matter, because I didn’t have songs anymore. Those died the day Johnny broke the heart that knew how to write them.
The little voice whispered that I still had the red dress.
I did. And the foolish shoes and the dried petals of a flower that reminded me that old and dried-up wasn’t the same as dead. All of which Lelo was going to figure out if she looked in the bag under her elbow. I picked up
the plate of muffins, in full elephant-avoidance mode. “Come on, let’s go make some hot chocolate to go with these.” They were still warm and deserved my full attention, which wasn’t going to happen if my mind got stuck in the grooves of old hurt and things long gone.
Lelo looked up from her laptop and shrugged agreeably. “Okay. Maybe Rosie and Carly will be back soon.”
I hoped not. I zipped the last bag shut and backed out of the small room that looked a little forlorn without all my stuff in it.
And refused to acknowledge the jumbled song lines trying to break through.
-o0o-
Sometimes the song demons just won’t die. I looked at the glowing blue numbers on my ancient traveling alarm clock and sighed. My muse had always liked the dark hours.
I slid my feet down over the edge of the bed and felt around for my slippers. They were fluffy, two sizes too big, and at least as old and disreputable as the alarm clock. Fall had landed here in Lennotsville, and the nights were no longer warm.
My muse wanted to head up to the rooftop deck. The rest of me thought that was a bad idea, but maybe if I indulged her that far, she’d shut up with the song lyrics and let me go back to sleep. Because at the moment, every time I got anywhere near nodding off, my control slipped enough to let a line or two free.
I padded down the hall, the scuffle of my slippers overloud in the quiet apartment. Two mugs and a plate, empty of anything but a few crumbs, sat in the moonlight streaming in the kitchen window, remnants of the pre-bed snack that had failed horribly in its dreamland mission.
My muse hummed a few notes.
I shook my head, watching the moonbeams through the window. There was just no turning her off tonight. Everything was leaning on her, from Lelo washing my socks to the walk home with a jug of milk where everyone I met knew my name. Ordinary moments were always my muse’s favorite food, and there was too damn much of that kind of fodder these days. I pushed up the window sash, wincing at the creaking. Next time I was back, I’d see what I could do about that.