Flamingo Fugitive (Supernatural Bounty Hunters 5) (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Francine huddled in the bushes.  She’d considered just marching up to Michael’s house and banging on the door, but his wife and kids were there – she didn’t want to make a scene in front of them.  Or enrage his wife who was also a hyena and looked like she could happily take a bite out of a down on her luck flamingo.

Instead, she had called Michael and asked him to meet her.  Boy had he been unhappy to hear from her.  But when she threatened actually to march up to his door, he agreed that he would meet her at the end of the garden.

Why was she hiding in the bushes?
  A couple of dog walkers had already walked past and eyed her curiously, and she didn’t want anyone to call the cops about a weird woman loitering in a nice neighborhood.

She heard some voices from the house.

“Just putting the garbage out, darling,” called Michael. 
The pervert
.

Francine heard his swift footsteps as he walked towards her.  “You can come out,” he whispered.

She stood up to find him glaring at her.  “Well, what do you want?  Haven’t you caused enough damage?”

“Me?” she almost growled. 
Flamingos weren’t very good at growling
.  “None of this would have happened if you had just kept your hands to yourself.”

Michael’s upper lip curled.  “Please, as if you didn’t know why you were coming to my house.”

“For an audition!”

He arched a supercilious eyebrow.  “Surely at your age…”

“No, I’ve never had to get a part that way before!” she denied, hotly. 
She really never had
.  She thought the idea of a ‘casting couch’ was just an outdated myth.  She’d been leered at, but she’d certainly not had any offers in that department.  Made her feel a little unwanted if truth be told.

“Well, given your age you may have to start,” he said nastily.  “You’re at a tricky time in your life, you can no longer be a young woman, but you’re not old enough for hag yet.”

“Boy, those are my choices, huh?”

“What do you want?  I’m supposed to be playing Twister with my family.”

Time to get down to brass tacks.  “You need to tell the cops that I wasn’t trying to murder you.”

He rubbed the back of his head and looked at her, awkwardly.  “Then what am I supposed to tell my wife?”

“The truth, of course!”

“Yeah, that’s not going to go down well.  I had to tell her that you wanted to sleep with me and when I said no you stabbed me and attacked our car.”

Her flamingo gasped, and Francine almost stopped breathing.  “You didn’t
have
to say that!”

“Well, I had to say something and how would it look if I changed my story now?”

“I don’t care how it will look – you’re ruining my life!”  He didn’t look overly convinced by this reason.  “Besides if this whole dumb thing does get to court, what do you think I’ll say?  Your wife will hear every detail of what happened that night.  Don’t you think she might have a few doubts about your story.”

“I was planning on asking the prosecutor to be lenient.  I was going to say that you had some kind of deranged hero worship of me, and that you should get a plea deal and community service.  At least you would have if you’d turned up for court.”  He frowned at her in disapproval.

“Hero worship?” she repeated, faintly.  “Are you kidding me?  And I am not doing community service.  You need to end this.”

“Or I’ll take my chances in court.  I can be very persuasive when I want to be.  I’m successful and well known and have a beautiful family.  You have
nothing
.  I could say that you’re grasping at straws to try and get money out of me – I can make my wife believe you made the whole thing up.  Or…”  He paused and seemed to be thinking.  It was hard to tell with the glowing hyena eyes.

Francine fidgeted.  “Or what?”

“Or if you do something for me, maybe I can make this go away.”

Her blood turned icy cold.  Oh lord, here it comes.  “Like what?”  This was it, he was going to get her to sleep with him - he was going to turn her into a whore!  What was it going to be?  A blowjob? 
Ten blowjobs!
  Was he going to blackmail her into sex for the rest of his life?

He glanced back at the house before looking at her again.  “I need you to kill someone.”

Francine blinked at him.  Perhaps she was hallucinating.  “I’m sorry, what now?”

He groaned and repeated the words. 
Yep, he wasn’t kidding
.

“Kill someone?  You’re not serious.”

“Deadly.”

She pinched her hand in the hope that she was hallucinating and had just fallen asleep in the bush.  Sadly, that didn’t seem to be the case.  “But… why?”

“None of your business.  If you do it, I’ll convince the cops that this whole thing between you and me was all a mistake.  You’ll get off with nothing – and I’ll pay your legal fees.  Hell, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars, too to make sure you haven’t lost out on any earnings.”

“Ten thousand?” 
That sounded like a lot of shoes
.  Her animal huffed.  “No, I can’t kill anyone.”

“She’s an old woman with no family and no friends – no one will miss her.”

“That’s not the point!  If you want her dead, why don’t you do it?”  She ignored the wince as she said that.  It kind of sounded like she was encouraging him.

“I can’t.”

“But I… I can’t do that.”

He smiled, nastily.  “Do you know that in general people who are convicted of murder spend ten years in jail, and some get life.”

Francine bit her lip.  This conversation was running away from her.  “But…”

“She’s an old woman near the end of her life, ten years of your life for hers – that’s not nothing.”

“But…”

“I need this done, and if you don’t do it, I’ll make sure you spend a very long time in jail.”

“But…”

“Now, we can’t be seen talking.”  He fished in his pocket and produced a cell phone.  “Here, take this.  It’s a burner cell; I keep it around just in case.”

The nasty part of her, the part still functioning, thought that he had it in case he wanted to make calls that he didn’t want his wife to know about.

“I’ll call it tomorrow with more instructions.”

Dazedly, she took it.  “But…”

“Don’t worry,” he said in an ingratiating tone.  “This way we both get what we want.”  Then he smiled, creepily.  “Maybe I will give you a part in my new movie after all.”  He spun around and hurried to the house.

What the hell just happened? 
She looked to her bird, but she didn’t seem to have a better grasp of the situation either.

Francine disentangled herself from the bush and started walking down the street, staring at the phone.  She sniffled and pushed it into her pocket.  What had she got herself into?

She only managed a few steps before big, meaty hands clamped around her.

“You’re not getting away again, feathers.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Stone was unnerved.  He had plucked her off the street and carried her all the way back to the ancient truck he had been forced to borrow from his dad.

His dad had been trying to call him for a few days and –
gawd
– he wanted to talk.  He agreed to lend him the truck because Stone promised to stop by and have a talk as soon as he could –
ugh
.

He could have asked a friend for help.  He could have called the bail bond office; after all, Mia had been trying to call him.  The little rabbit seemed eager to find out where he was exactly with Francine – but he was too embarrassed to tell her.

It was bad enough when he had to beg Zara to do a tracing spell on Francine two times; he was lucky he had the feather otherwise it wouldn’t have worked.  The feather was something that had previously belonged to Francine and had touched her recently – if it hadn’t the spell wouldn’t have worked.

Zara had almost laughed herself silly when he had to admit that Francine kept getting away from him.  Even more so when he admitted he
might just sort of maybe
have feelings for the flamingo.

He wasn’t open to ridicule yet.  Or at least he wasn’t open to
more
ridicule yet.  He didn’t know how he felt about Francine.  He found her attractive.  He enjoyed being with her.  His heart sped up whenever he saw her.  And he would massacre any man who ever tried to get near her and would not allow her to be with another man.

Hmmm, but what could all that mean?

Francine was like a sack of potatoes in his arms as he handcuffed her inside the truck – yeah, he’d finally learnt his lesson.  An attractive sack, a beautiful sack, but she had about as much life in her as a sack.

Stone cupped her face, and she gave him such a forlorn look that his rhino roared at him to do something.  “Feathers, are you sick?”

“Yes, sick to my stomach,” she muttered.

He hesitated.  He should take her to the cops.  Her situation was only going to get worse the longer she was considered a fugitive, but he couldn’t take her like this.  He had envisioned taking her back to the cops and then finding out just what was going on.  But maybe he was doing this the wrong way.

Stone closed the door and jogged around the truck.

“Taking me to the cops,” she said, morosely.

“Not right now.”

Her eyes flickered with interest.  And then he said something he had never said to a woman before in his life.  “Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk.”

*

Stone unlocked the handcuffs.  He was about to take them off completely then thought better of it.  He slapped the other on his wrist, so they were cuffed together.  A spark of annoyance crossed her face, and he grinned as he felt her slowly warming up to her usual self. 
Plus his rhino seemed to get a thrill out of the cuffs.

He led her into the house.

“Where are we?” she asked, suspiciously.

Stone clasped her hand.  “Somewhere safe.  But it’s late, so we need to be quiet.”

He found the back door key – hidden in the plant pot with the dead plant - and let himself in.  His dad wasn’t much of a gardener, and someone would have to be crazy to try and steal from a rhino shifter.  He was about to offer her something to eat when he heard some feminine giggles and deep male rumbles coming from the living room.

“Dad?” he called, worriedly.

He heard some loud exclamations of ‘shit’ from his dad and then some more feminine giggles.  He switched the light on and found his dad rushing into the kitchen.  His was about the same size of Stone, even in muscles.  Ronald Stone had spent his life in construction and was built like a bulldozer.  However at this moment he was looking a tad on the disheveled side.  His shirt was inside out, and his naturally ruddy cheeks were beet red.  He was also followed by his dad’s next-door neighbor, Magda.  She matched his dad in disheveledness.  To Stone’s shock who had never seen her in anything but housecoats, she was wearing a tight black dress, that were it not so large might have been referred to as a little black dress.  Magda wasn’t naturally slinky or thin; she was a hippo shifter.  She was round on top and round on the bottom with a nipped in waist.  She actually had a shape a lot like Francine's, but on a larger scale, what with her being over six feet without heels. 

Her cheeks were also dark red, but she managed to recover quicker than his dad who was opening his mouth like a goldfish.  “Ronny, so nice to see you.”  She walked over and placed a kiss on his cheek while asking if he was eating right and telling him that he looked too thin. 
She always did that
.  Magda had six kids and seemed to be determined to adopt and mother even more.

“Ronny?” whispered Francine with a raised eyebrow. 

Yes, he was called Ronald Stone Jr. which is why he went by Stone.

“Yeah, ah…”

His dad cleared his throat.  “Everything okay, m’boy?”   Since Stone could remember, his dad had called him ‘m’boy’.

Stone looked at his dad and Magda, who were panting as if they’d just run a marathon.  To his horror, his dad’s zipper was down.  His rhino actually started laughing.  “Uhh, yeah…”

His dad looked at Francine.  In a daze, Stone introduced them.  Francine tried to raise her hand to shake, and they noticed the handcuffs.

“It’s a long story,” said Stone. 
It was his turn to be embarrassed
. 

Magda looked at Francine wonderingly.  “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Francine looked surprised.  “Well…”

Magda thought about it and clicked her fingers.  “Weren’t you in the Draco Dinner Theatre’s production of The Invisible Man?”

Francine’s cheeks flushed lightly, but a smile played on her lips.  “Oh, yeah…”

The hippo shifter nodded.  “It was… interesting.  You were wonderful; I liked the way you kept going when that waiter walked up on stage to get to that woman who needed salt.  And also when the strings broke, and the invisible man’s glasses were dangling and flying around the stage.  You were very professional.”

She giggled.  “Thank you.”

Magda smoothed down her hair.  “I really should be getting back to my kids, I have a sixteen-year-old who can figure out the locks on the adult channels.”  Ronald nodded at her, and she blushed.  “It was lovely to see you, Ronny, and so nice to meet your girlfriend.”

“I’ll walk you out,” said Ronald.  “Back in a minute, m’boy.”

They left through the back door, whispering softly.  Magda had been his dad’s neighbor for over six years.  She moved into the house next door after her mate ran off to Canada with a goose shifter.  She was a sweet, matronly lady, and Stone knew that she did a lot of cooking for his dad while he fixed things around her house. 
They were the perfect neighbors
.

“Was that your dad’s girlfriend?” asked Francine, giving an experimental tug on the handcuffs.

“Nah, that’s his next door neighbor.”

“Who he makes out with,” she said, saucily.

“They weren’t making out, they were… I don’t know; maybe she lost her contact or something.”

Francine let out a delicate snort.  “Was she looking for it in your dad’s mouth while he took off his pants?”

Stone frowned as his dad came barreling through the door.  “Don’t just stand there m’boy, let the lady sit down.  Would you like a drink m’dear?”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind using the bathroom.”

“Upstairs, first on the left.”

Francine raised her hand and waggled it around, giving Stone a pointed look.

Ronald grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator.  “Do I want to know why you’re attached at the wrist?”

“It’s ah, a long story,” repeated Stone, lamely.

Francine cleared her throat.  “You need to let me out of these.”

His rhino shook his head vehemently.  “You’ll run off.”

“If you need to handcuff a woman m’boy, you’re not doing it right.”

Stone inwardly fumed, and his rhino harrumphed.  Like he needed advice from his gruff father about getting women.  “Fine.”  He led her up to the bathroom and took the cuffs off.  He wagged his fingers at her like she was an errant schoolchild.  “You run off again, and I will find you.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”  She pouted, sadly.

Stone groaned, and he softened.  She could knee him in the crotch a thousand times, and he bet he couldn’t stay mad at her for longer than thirty seconds.  “Just… I’ll be downstairs.”

He walked downstairs, slowly and found his dad pottering in the kitchen.  It was always a strange sight for him – his father in the kitchen.  He didn’t belong there, anymore than a wild otter did.  After his mom left, the oven was used so little that his dad started storing tools in it.  That changed when Magda arrived.  He needed the oven to heat up the meals she made him.

“Pretty girl,” commented Ronald in a neutral but clearly interested voice.

Hell yes, she was!
  His rhino roared in agreement.  Prettiest girl in the world as far as he was concerned.  He could wax lyrical all night about her, but instead he said, “Yeah.”

“Flamingo?”

“Uh huh.”  Stone pulled a beer from the refrigerator.

Ronald narrowed his eyes.  “You aren’t forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, are you?”

Stone pondered that question.  Technically he was because she had made it clear she didn’t want to go back to the cops.  But then, what skip did?  “Probably not in the way you’re thinking.  What were you doing with Magda?”

His dad actually smirked.  “I’m not explaining the facts of life at this late stage, m’boy.”

“But since when…”

Ronald gave him a patient look.  “For quite a while now.  Why do you think she cooks all my meals?”

“Because she’s a nice person?  Because you fix her shower when it goes on the fritz?”

“No, m’boy.”

“But she’s been making you meals for years!”  Stone shook his head at the image of his dad making out with Magda. 
Parents shouldn’t be allowed to do that kind of thing
. 

“Yeah well, we didn’t want to rush things.  Neither one of has had a good mating the first time round, and Magda’s kids are still young – we didn’t want to confuse them.  Her youngest was just a month old when she moved here.” 

His dad’s face twitched in anger.  Yeah, he recalled that Magda’s ex-mate had always been a sore subject for his dad.  When his dad got drunk he even wanted to chase after him and beat him up for leaving Magda.  His dad always told him that Magda was a wonderful woman, and any man would be lucky to have her. 
Perhaps, in retrospect, Stone should have seen the signs
.

“What was all that about bitches be crazy?”

“Yeah well, that’s all about your mother.  I’ve been trying to get your mom to give me a divorce for years.  She finally said yes, and a few days ago I asked Magda to mate with me, and she said yes.”  His dad lit up like a Christmas tree.

“But…”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to call you to let you know.”

“But all these years, you’ve been telling me that matings are for chumps!”  It was one of the reasons he had refrained from entering into any kind of serious relationship with a woman. 

Ronald shrugged as he pulled out a leftover casserole from the refrigerator and half an apple pie.  “Do you think Francine would like some casserole and apple pie?”

“I… have no idea,” he admitted.

“What kind of foods does she like?”

“I don’t know.”  He felt a twinge at the fact that he really knew nothing about her.  His rhino grumbled. 
He should really rectify that
.

Ronald raised an eyebrow.  “Well I can smell her all over you, so you can’t tell me that there’s nothing going on between you two.”

“It’s… complicated.  She’s kind of my girlfriend," - even if she wouldn't admit to it at that moment in time, "but I also have to take her to prison.  She’s not dangerous – well, probably not to anyone but me.” 

He didn’t like to admit about being kneed in his special area.  It had hurt more than he could have possibly thought.  Weren’t flamingos supposed to be soft and dainty? 
Must be her cow blood
.  But then it’s that blood that gave her all her delicious curves.  Wouldn’t want those to go anywhere.

“It’s just nice to meet one of your ladies.  I thought I’d die before that happened.”

“Well, I only brought her here because I thought you’d be in bed.”

“I’m not that old,” chuckled Ronald.

“Clearly, if what I heard between you and Magda is anything to go by.”  Stone gave him an accusing look.  He didn’t mind her meeting his dad – his rhino actually thought it was a good thing.  But he didn’t want to answer questions about the handcuffs.  He considered just saying they were into kinky shit, but Magda would probably give him an earful.  Or worse, what if she asked to borrow the cuffs to use on his dad. 
Ugh, horrible mental image
.