by Jenny Penn
That was all it was called. It didn’t even have a real name, but most the people who went to The Bar would be just as likely to shoot a person as to answer them if asked for their names. It was that kind of hellhole and no place for a woman, especially not one barely dressed.
“Shit!” Jason spat and slammed on the gas, certain this was about to get real nasty, real quick.
Chapter Three
Maryanne entered the dive bar without a single concern for her safety. There wasn’t a man in there she couldn’t take down. Hell, she could have taken several of them at a time, but hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. After all, she wasn’t there to cause any problems. She was just there to drag Roscoe B. Goode’s ass back to jail.
Besides, she knew the owner and bartender, Pat Goodwin. They went way back. He was actually the one she’d called before heading over. Pat had been more helpful than usual, assuring her that ol’ Roscoe B. was indeed trying to drink his troubles away. How fortunate was that?
Maryanne was used to good fortune, just as she was to taking her time with things, which was just why she didn’t head straight for Roscoe but paused by the bar to flirt for a moment with Pat.
“Hey there, sexy. You look like you got a bar full of lonely men today.”
Pat grunted at that, casting a look around the shadowy room at all the loners who lingered about the place. The Bar was known for more than its dirt floor and its cheap booze. It also had a reputation for catering to a clientele that frightened most respectable people. They steered clear of the place, but not Maryanne.
She’d actually helped Pat physically build this bar and always considered it a suitable place to grab a quick burger and a pint of beer. Then again, that was because most of the locals knew her well enough not to fuck with her. Roscoe, though, wasn’t most locals.
He was new to town, and she could feel him eyeing her like the rabid little puppy he was. Maryanne didn’t need to lure him in. He’d come voluntarily. That was just why she settled down on the stool across from Pat and made herself comfortable as Pat finally answered her.
“No more than usual.” Pat set the glass he’d been wiping dry down and gave Maryanne a pointed look. “So you want the usual? Double bacon cheeseburger with extra fries?”
“Hmmm.” Maryanne pretended to consider that as she swung her hips, spinning her stool top to the side and allowing her to cast a smile down at Roscoe where he sat hunched over a beer, watching her out the corner of his eye. “I don’t know. I think I might be feeling hungry for something a little meatier.”
That drew Roscoe’s attention, but before he could make his move, Jason and Collin stomped into the bar. They made a dramatic enough entrance to fill the whole place with tension in an instant. Everybody and everything seemed to freeze for a second, and then Roscoe was running. Jason and Collin flew past Maryanne as they gave chase. She didn’t follow but sighed and turned back to shake her head at Pat.
“Why do men always do things the hard way?”
Pat smirked at that question and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because women drive us to it?”
“I got a response for that,” Maryanne informed him as she slid off her stool. “But I’ll have to get back to you on it because I’ve got to go make sure those two idiots don’t hurt themselves.”
“Since when do you care?” Pat scowled and paused in wiping down the glasses to give Maryanne a curious look.
“Since I got put in charge of them.” And God help her now because she had a feeling she was going to spend the rest of her days trying to keep those two out of trouble.
Maryanne headed out the front door, intent on doing her job. Just as she suspected he would, Roscoe came flying around the side of the building and right into the leg she stuck out. He tripped right over her foot, sprawling onto the ground in a hard crash that stunned him long enough for Maryanne to put the heel of her shoe right against the vein pounding in his neck.
“I kick, you die. So you want to stay still, sucker,” Maryanne informed him as Jason and Collin came careening around the building.
They almost fell over each other and Roscoe as they came to a stumbling halt. It was almost comical, and she damn near laughed as they took in the sight of her standing over Roscoe. Maryanne knew just what kinds of thoughts were running through Jason’s and Collin’s minds. Of course, she wouldn’t be her if she didn’t rub the moment in.
“You two are slow.” Maryanne shook her head sadly at them. “We’re going to have to work on that.”
* * * *
“We’re going to have to work on that.” Collin repeated that line over and over again in a high-pitched whine as he sulked in the corner of Maryanne’s porch.
He was still fuming over the cheap shots she’d taken as she’d cuffed and dragged Roscoe off. The woman really needed a paddling. God but his palm itched to give her one, but Collin wasn’t that stupid. Maryanne was a seriously dangerous woman, and a man would have to have a cock made of iron to risk letting her anywhere near it.
Collin might have a nice-sized dick that liked to stay as hard as wood around the woman, but wood could be broken. That was just why he kept himself zipped in her presence. While he might be intimidated into keeping his pants on, Collin wasn’t about to be turned into a complete pussy.
Maryanne wanted to join the boys club. Well then, she would have to live through her welcoming. That thought put a smile on his face as he watched Jason work at wiring up Maryanne’s front door with an alarm that would leave her deaf when she got home. Tex and the rest of them were taking her out for drinks and keeping her busy so that Jason and Collin could have their fun.
They’d sunk pretty low to have it. Already they’d gone into her house and wrapped her toilet with plastic wrap, loosened all her salt shaker caps, squeezed out her toothpaste and replaced it with denture cream, and then, of course, they’d glued all her cupboard doors shut with an industrial adhesive that assured she wouldn’t get them open any time soon. To cap it off, they were rigging her door with a fire alarm that would blare out the second she opened it.
“You about done?” Collin asked his cousin as Jason finished up wiring the alarm.
“Yep.” Jason nodded without glancing over at Collin. “You got the camera set up?”
“Yep,” Collin shot back, mimicking his cousin and drawing a quick smile in his direction. “It’s all ready to catch everything.”
By “everything,” he meant they and their cousins would all be drinking a beer, toasting and laughing, as they watched Maryanne’s reaction on the live feed video he’d set up using a small surveillance camera in the corner of her porch. This was going to be so much fun.
“Good.” Jason shut the door and shot Collin a grin. “Because I’m all set, too. Now let’s get the hell out of here and go text Tex.”
A half-hour later, Collin and Jason’s living room was overflowing with cousins as the men gathered around the big screen to watch as Maryanne’s headlights finally appeared on it. Instantly the room quieted down, the air growing tenser as she parked and got out. Collin had the camera on a remote control, and its view swiveled to watch her mount the front stairs.
She was fiddling in her purse, pulling out her keys and then…the woman paused to stare at her door. After a second, she began looking around, and Collin had sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that only grew worse as she all but gazed right into the camera. Maryanne smiled and waved, sauntering right up to the camera to speak directly into it.
“You left tool marks on the lock when you picked it. I guess that’s just another thing we’re going to have to work on, right, boys?” Maryanne winked as the room went wild with laughter.
Jason flushed bright red as the men started picking on him. He didn’t defend himself, but Collin could see him beginning to fume with a dangerous glower that could only mean trouble. Trouble, that was just what they were in now as Maryanne pulled down the little camera and carted it off toward the door.
She allowed them to wa
tch as she jimmied a knife between the frame and the heavy wood, cutting right through all the wires Jason had spent nearly a half-hour doing up. Then she opened the door, and the siren didn’t make a peep. Maryanne did as she held up the camera to talk back into it.
“So, I’m assuming, you being the lame juveniles that you are, that you have more idiotic surprises for me. Let’s see if I can’t figure them all out, huh?” Maryanne rotated the camera to track her motions as she headed down the hall to the bedroom. “Now, I’m figuring you skipped the guest room and went straight for mine.”
The men all fell silent again as they watched her open the door and flick on a light to reveal a rather pink and very girly room for a woman as hard as Maryanne. What the others couldn’t tell from the camera was how good that room had actually smelled, all fresh and fragrant with the hint of flowers. It just didn’t seem right that a woman as dangerous as Maryanne should smell so sweet.
“Okay, let’s check the bed,” she announced off screen as the image moved over toward the floral bedspread that covered the perfectly made bed.
Her hand appeared to flip the comforter back and reveal the plastic snakes Collin had left in the center of the mattress. That got a laugh, at least from Maryanne, who turned the camera back on herself. She shook her head as she smirked.
“Fake snakes? Really? What’s wrong? Afraid of the live ones? Pathetic.”
“Good God.” Tex laughed as he glanced over at Collin. “That woman’s got your number.”
“And what about the closet?” Maryanne continued on, unaware that she had more than just Jason’s and Collin’s avid attention as she headed over to the folding doors. “I’m thinking a skeleton…Ah!”
She let out a fake scream followed by a laugh as she pulled the doors back and allowed the whole group to see the ghost Collin had hung in there. It was not much more than a white sheet with a stuffed, rounded head hanging from a noose.
“That scared me so bad I almost peed myself,” Maryanne informed them dryly, turning the camera back on herself. “And speaking of pee, something tells me…yep, plastic wrap on the toilet seat. You have to be a real idiot to fall for that one, guys. After all, it reflects light.”
Maryanne proved that point by turning the camera around to reveal the bathroom and the reflection of the overhead light bouncing off the sheets of plastic. She continued on from there, uncovering every single prank they had played as she continued a non-stop commentary that assured them she wasn’t impressed with their efforts.
When she got to the kitchen and the sealed cupboard doors, it was the only prank she didn’t make some snarky comment about. Instead, Maryanne sighed and glanced into the camera.
“If you ruined my cabinets, I’m going to make you pay to replace them,” Maryanne informed them tiredly. “After all, I know where you live.”
With that, the camera feed went dead, and the room went wild. Everybody was amused. Everybody that was but Justin and Collin, who glowered in the corner, eating the shit their cousins heaped on them as they had their laugh. There was nothing they could say back.
Nothing they could say, but they could walk away. That was just what Collin did, turning to head into the kitchen. He needed junk food. Junk food would make everything better. With that thought in mind, he wrenched open a cupboard door and reached for a bag of cookies. Only his fingers brushed over something slimy and cool instead of the plastic he’d been reaching for. Then the damn thing slithered, startling Collin into stumbling backward with a shout.
He tripped over his own feet and landed on his ass as almost everybody came running. That was where he sat, right there on the floor as Tex looked down at him in concern.
“You all right, man?”
No. He wasn’t.
“What the hell happened?” Jason demanded to know. “You see a roach or something.”
Collin closed his eyes and breathed deeply, not wanting to answer but knowing there was no escaping an explanation. So he offered it up, despite knowing he was about to become the biggest joke of the night.
“Collin?” Tex pressed.
“There’s a snake in the cupboard.”
“What?” Jason glanced at the cupboards and started stepping over Collin to get his own look. “No way…oh shit! There is a snake in there. A real one.”
That announcement was greeted with another blast of laughter from their cousins, which was almost instantly drowned out by the siren that went off as Jason opened the next cupboard door. The sound was deafening, painfully so, and caused the whole group of men to start and rush away. Everybody that was but Collin, who just sat there fuming.
Maryanne wanted war. Then war was what she would get.
Chapter Four
It was all-out war for the next three weeks, but Maryanne didn’t mind. She was having fun. Mostly because she was winning. Then again, Jason and Collin were sort of pulling their punches, and she couldn’t help but wonder why. It made her a little uneasy because she could all but feel their frustration beginning to mount to epic proportions.
When they blew…Maryanne didn’t know what would happen.
“I don’t know why we’re sitting here,” Jason grumbled in the seat beside her as he shifted his weight around. “It’s a waste of fucking time. We could just go in there and grab Franklin and be in bed at a decent hour.”
“But who really wants to live decently?” Maryanne shot back, not about to explain for the millionth time that this was the smarter move.
Franklin Chase had taken to living with a girlfriend who had kids. No matter how well planned, breaking in and taking him by force would put those kids into danger. That was not how she did things. Instead, she’d parked her car down the street from the girlfriend’s house and was waiting for Franklin to leave. They’d take him by surprise and without endangering any civilians unnecessarily.
“Certainty not you,” Jason muttered, shooting her a dirty look from the passenger seat. “If you want to sit out here all night, that’s your business. I don’t know why you need to make me stay up with you.”
“For the enjoyable company, of course,” Maryanne responded, matching his frown with her smile. “After all, I do love these late-night chats of ours.”
Jason snorted at that. “You’re a bitch.”
“And you’re a whiny cry-baby,” Maryanne shot back, not about to admit that insult actually hurt. She figured hers did, too, from the way he sulked back into his corner.
Maryanne let him stew, turning her attention back to the house down the road. It was lit by a streetlamp that cast an ominous glow over its brick façade. The yard didn’t help. Long left to neglect, the grass was patchy and brown and the shrubs overgrown. They cast sinister-looking shadows up against the house, and Maryanne studied them, imagining all sorts of shapes hidden within them.
Then they shifted, and her attention snapped from her night dreams and back to the moment as her gaze narrowed on the motion. The shadows shifted again as, this time, the movement took on a defined shape. It was a man, and she could guess who.
“What the fuck?” Maryanne snapped as she reached for her door handle.
“What?” Jason perked up, glancing around, as if looking for an answer.
Maryanne didn’t answer him. She knew what the hell was going on, just as she knew there would be no reaching the house in time to stop Collin from breaking into it. That didn’t keep her from rushing down the street, but as Maryanne guessed, she was too late.
Collin made it through the window, and it didn’t take but thirty seconds before the house was flooding with lights and screams. By the time Maryanne made it to the driveway, Collin and Tex were dragging a bedraggled Franklin out the door while his girlfriend screamed and tried to clutch onto him. Behind the woman, Maryanne could see the stunned and horrified faces of three young girls.
She felt sickened to the very pit of her soul in that moment.
Struck dumb and frozen still, Maryanne couldn’t help but notice Collin’s and Tex’s victori
ous grins, but she was too overwhelmed in that moment to put them in their place. Instead, she just stood there as they passed by Maryanne, not even bothering to hear their smug comments. All she could do was stare and watch as the girlfriend quickly retreated to round up her daughters.
The youngest one had started to cry.
* * * *
Jason grinned and laughed, enjoying the banter as Collin and Tex recounted their evening adventure to the rest of their cousins. They’d all packed into the small kitchen at the bond’s office and were toasting to another successful mission. Actually, they’d accomplished two missions tonight.
They’d gotten their man and totally screwed Maryanne in the process.
Jason didn’t know which one was better. Actually, that wasn’t true. There had been nothing like the look on her face as she’d stood there in the driveway stunned stupid. She’d looked beyond outraged. She’d looked downright furious, trembling and unable to speak. It had been a glorious moment.
One he couldn’t wait to rub in, but of course, Maryanne hadn’t put in an appearance yet. Time wasn’t going to save her, though. Whether tonight or tomorrow, Jason and Collin planned on getting in their gloats. The only way the woman could avoid what she had coming to her was to quit. That would be the best revenge of all time, and a dream come true.
Of course, he’d also been sort of disappointed. He hadn’t expected Maryanne to back down. She was cute and hard as nails. That was what made defeating her so much damn fun. Jason smiled at that thought, glancing up as Collin tried to describe the look on Maryanne’s face as she’d stood there stupefied in the driveway.
His comments got a round of laughs that died out quickly, as the woman in question finally appeared in the doorway, and looming behind her was Big Bob. He didn’t look pleased, but he wasn’t shaking. Not the way Maryanne was as she stepped into the room, ignoring all of the smirking looks tracking her progress as she came right up face-to-chest with Collin.