Guns and Roses (51 page)

“So when you walked her home, you got sick. You were in the bathroom, you saw Tank—”

“I was heading to the bathroom when he came out of one of the rooms. Didn’t even close the door and followed me to the bathroom. I knew I was busted, but all I cared about was getting the puke off my shirt. We’re at the sink and I’m trying to clean myself up, and—did anyone tell you what he calls me? The nickname he got everyone to use over at the house?”

Joe noted the use of present tense, didn’t bother to correct him. “No.”

“
Abdul
. He thinks it’s hilarious. Or sometimes camel fucker. So I’m standing there trying to decide if I should even bother rinsing my shirt or if I should just throw it in the trash, and Tank’s watching me, laughing at me, and then he’s all, “
Hey, I think I’m gonna spend some time with her,”
and I knew exactly who he meant.”

“Janice?” Trina said.

Robby’s jaw hardened and he stared off in the direction of frat row. “The girls come in these little groups and they think that’ll keep them safe,” he said softly. “But then… you know. Shit happens.”

“So you…”

But Robby refused to say anything more.

Until Trina took a shot at him again later in the day, after he’d had a few hours to think. They sat in the same interview room where Joe had talked to Gia. Joe watched through the glass, marveling at how long Trina could go without blinking. Sometimes her voice went so soft that Joe couldn’t make out her words—but he could hear Robby just fine.

“I had that bottle opener in my pocket. I just, you know, it’s like it was in my hand before I thought about it. After, I wiped it off on my shirt.”

“And the blood in Gia’s room?” Trina asked. “Let me guess. You already had your shirt in your hand, and you used it to swab up some of the blood. You were nervous; you dropped the bottle opener. And then you went to her room. No one was up at that hour, no one saw you.”

“I knew she’d be passed out. That’s how it always happens. And the door was open.” He paused. “I didn’t really think it through. I didn’t want her to get in trouble. I just—you know—I just didn’t want anyone to think of me.”

“A little late for that, I think,” Trina said.

~*~

Fisch handled Frank Hanover. Now that Robby had been charged and Gia cleared, Hanover had his lawyers whipped into a frenzy. Joe didn’t envy the chief.

Fisch was going to do the press conference solo, too, which meant Joe was off the hook until tomorrow.

Gia was going to be released into an in-patient center back in L.A., some sort of self-injury treatment program. Tank’s parents had already made a statement to the press, challenging the allegations that their son had possessed narcotics.

Rain was forecast, so Joe took an umbrella with him when he went to buy his afternoon coffee. The wind sent a plastic bag skittering along the curb in front of the diner. Joe sat on the bench with his hands wrapped around the steaming cup.

After a while, he got out his phone. He dialed Holly and his pulse quickened when, after several rings, her voice invited him to leave a message.

“It seems to me that my mother might owe you some babysitting,” he said. “I’d like to take you out.”

He hung up, grinning. Maybe she’d wear that green sweater. Hell, maybe she’d be covered with paste and glitter. He wouldn’t mind.

*****

SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD

Sophie Littlefield’s first novel,
A Bad Day for Sorry
, won an Anthony Award and RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. She writes the post-apocalyptic Aftertime series as well as paranormal fiction for young adults. Sophie grew up in rural Missouri and makes her home in northern California. Visit her at
www.sophielittlefield.com
.

Josie Brown

T
HE
H
OUSEWIFE
A
SSASSIN’S
B
LOODY
V
ALENTINE

Valentine’s Day, 2:14 pm

Isla María Madre rises higher and steeper from the turquoise Pacific Ocean than her sister islands, María Magdalena and María Cleofas.

Am I the only one who finds irony in the fact that Mexico’s notorious prison was built on an archipelago named after the three saintly women who attended the Resurrection?

That’s okay. My mission is a resurrection, too, of sorts:

When I leave, I’m taking the prison’s biggest bad-ass with me.

That would be Hector Negrón de la Moraga, who runs the
Diablo Blanco
drug cartel out of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. This Forbes 100 billionaire’s cash flows in from the tons of methamphetamine he smuggles stateside. His drug mules are many of the American socialite junkies who hang at his Cabo San Lucas nightclubs and resorts.

But because the gangbangers known as
Los Corazónes Rojos
are jonesing to take over his territory and have put a price on his head, the first six months of his prison sentence have been spent in solitary confinement.

No wonder he felt it was time to cut a deal with the United States. Spill his guts, as it were.

Before they are spilled for him, all over the prison yard.

He got the Feds’ attention by explaining that he launders his dirty drug money through a blind corporation: a real estate company which builds Mexico’s many gated communities and private stucco palaces. Not only does he know where his rivals live, he’s also got the floor plans of all their estates.

Including the security codes.

Even more important is the fact that he built the villa used as the south-of-the-border headquarters for the most heavily funded terrorist organization in the world:

The Quorum.

The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan want to put the Quorum out of business, once and for all. But some crooked Mexican politicos have halted Hector’s extradition. Their allegiance is with
Los Corazónes Rojos
, which has a hit out on him.

That’s where I come in.

My employer—Acme Industries, a black ops agency, which buries all skeletons that the CIA deems worthy of ghost protocol—has been hired to pull off his prison break. In return for pointing out the Quorum’s safe house and providing us with its floor plan and security system data, the Feds will let him live stateside, where he’ll be put in the DOJ’s Witness Protection program.

Hector’s financial portfolio may be humongous, but his physique is petite, which is why his nickname is El Chihuahua. Here’s hoping he lives down to it, since smuggling him off the island won’t be easy under any circumstances.

Now that the prison is within sight, the tug’s low, sad bellow puts all hands on deck. The Mexican flag flaps loudly on the stern pole. I presume no masts are half-raised inside the prison, either.

Certainly not El Chihuahua’s, now that his paid-by-the-hour
puta
is here.

That would be me.

The other women standing with me on the tugboat’s deck—all wives, girlfriends and whores on their way to their monthly conjugal visits with the murderers, thieves, and drug dealers who live within the prison’s walls—adjust their lips upward into smiles, while tugging the necklines of their too-snug blouses even lower.

In lockup, orifices may be readily available, but bountiful cleavage is not.

My breasts are already propelled high, front and center. My skirt is short and tight, whereas my high heels are long, pointy and packed for a punch: one is tipped with a knockout drug, the other with a serrated blade.

So yeah, I guess I’m ready, too.

There are at least forty guards on the grounds, and another six in the turrets of the towers topping this castle-like compound. Their whistles and catcalls can be heard loud and clear as we women maneuver our way up the chipped stone steps leading to the prison’s two-story solid steel gates.

Being manhandled (ostensibly for hidden weapons or breakout tools) has many of the ladies wincing. But those who, like me, are looking for an extra half-hour with their menfolk smile and purr a few promises they hope will be forgotten when it’s time to leave this hellhole.

The metal detector beeps when I saunter through. The guard on duty smells as if he’s taken a hit off every bottle of tequila that’s been smuggled in today. He presumes it is the thick-ribbed bracelet on my arm that set it off. All the same, he fondles my breasts between his rough palms, as if they’re a pair of ripe melons.

Tit for tit, I pinch his breast harder than he tweaked mine.

“
Usted me está haciendo caer en amor con usted
,” he says, with a smirk.

Why am I not surprised that he actually likes a little rough play?

“What a douche,” my team leader, Jack Craig, mutters into my tiny diamond stud earpiece. He witnesses that bit of womanhandling through my contact lenses, which are really digital mini-cams. Obviously, he doesn’t like what he sees.

No boyfriend would, right?

“Seriously, Donna, you have my permission to kill him, now, if you want.” By his tone, I know Jack means it.

“
Mas tarde, mi amor,”
I murmur. Then I lick my lips, knowing that the guard will hear my soft taunt as a come-on.

Later my love…

First things first.

My act is working. The guard is too distracted to notice all the toys, which will get my ass, and my asset, off this godforsaken island. In my clutch bag are my ID (a Mexican driver’s license that identifies me as “Lucinda Gutiérrez”, a nondescript lipstick, a seemingly innocent compact, a change purse that holds a few coins, and a rosary with a small metal cross.

Here’s the plan: Once we’re alone in one of the prison’s flimsy straw love shacks, I’ll clue Hector in on the fact that nookie is out, but a run for the gate is in. Unfortunately, that should keep the smirk on his face. Then I’ll slap one of my tiny, but strong, neo-magnetic earrings onto the shack’s center pole before shooting the other earring—attached to the zip line hidden in my rosary—out the shack’s window with my lipstick case, which is really a miniature missile launcher. The missile’s GPS system will lead it to a three-person submarine anchored about thirty feet below high tide and about two hundred feet offshore where Jack is waiting for us. Once the zip line’s magnet has locked onto the exterior antechamber of the sub, we’ll roll off this hot hunk of rock using my GPS-driven ribbed bracelet as a pulley.

Since subs are the new vehicle of choice for running drugs between Mexico and the U.S., El Chihuahua should feel right at home.

Besides, prison has given him time to get used to tight quarters.

Between the sub’s cloaking system and a submersion depth of sixty feet, we will be able to maneuver past any Mexican patrol boats. At a cruising speed of eighty nautical miles per hour, we should surface at the dock of our safe house in the posh tourist enclave Cabo San Lucas in three hours, tops. There, we’ll debrief El Chihuahua as to the whereabouts of the Quorum’s villa and get the necessary entry data.

After turning Hector over to his Witness Protection detail, Jack and I will break into the villa, download all files on the master computer’s hard drive onto a flash drive and then plant a worm that will allow us to monitor all data going in and out of it.

So that, finally, Acme will learn who is funding the Quorum and break it up, once and for all.

Five years ago, the Quorum took my husband, Carl, away from me and our children.

Time to get even.

And not a minute too soon. It’s Valentine’s Day. My aunt Phyllis is watching my three children—ten-year-old Jeff, his twelve-year-old sister, Mary; and kindergartner Trisha—so that Jack and I can have a romantic getaway.

Jack isn’t their dad, but he’s the only father they know.

If I have my way, it will stay that way.

Happily. And
ever after.

We’ve dodged a hell of a lot of bullets together. Both literally and figuratively.

I lost Carl to the Quorum. I won’t lose Jack, too.

In fact, something tells me that Jack is proposing tonight.

If he does, I have no idea how I’ll answer him. My hesitation has nothing to do with what I know about Carl’s fate, and the role the Quorum played in it.

Maybe I’m afraid of tempting fate twice.