The Miss Fortune Series: Nearly Departed (Kindle Worlds Novella) (10 page)

I nodded.

Ida Belle
touched my shoulder. “Let’s hold off on calling your guy till morning. There
has to be something we can do. Maybe after a little sleep we’ll come up with a
different solution.” She stood, looking down at me. “I’ll stay up and keep
watch. You can relieve me in a couple of hours, then Gertie will relieve you.”

I agreed.
But I knew no amount of sleep would change the situation. Once I made that call
to Harrison he would send an extraction team. I would be taken away from the
people I now thought of as family.

Tonight
could very well be my last night in Sinful, Louisiana.

Carter’s breath danced across my
cheek as he exhaled slowly. The warmth of his body adding to the hot summer breeze
that tiptoed across our bodies. Snug in the backyard hammock.

He stared
into my eyes. His lips parted.

And then he
meowed.

Meowed?

He lifted
his head and leaned into me, smearing a sandpaper kiss across my forehead.

Sandpaper?

“Oh crap.
This is a dream, isn’t it?”

He nodded
and meowed again.

“You’re
Merlin, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

I sighed.
And the dream was going so good. “What do you want?”

“I’m
hungry,” he said, in Carter’s voice. “And this might be the last morning you
feed me.”

“I know,
but… Can’t you go outside and eat a mouse or something so I can continue this
dream with Carter? It might be the last time we make out.”

He leaned
in to kiss me again, only this time he licked my cheek. A big, sandpapery lick.

“Feed me,”
he said. “Now.” Then he meowed again.

“Okay,
okay, I’m waking up.”

My eyes
shot open. I was lying on the sofa, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Merlin sat
perched on my chest, staring into my face. His eyes not near as sexy as
Carter’s.

Real sleep hadn’t
come until about five in the morning, after I handed off my watch shift to
Gertie an hour earlier. Most of my dreams from then on consisted of gigantic
skin tags, exploding caskets and Russian hitmen. Merlin just had to wake me
during my make-out dream with Carter.

I smelled
bacon. “Come on, let’s both go get some food,” I said, nudging Merlin off my
chest and onto the floor. “Who’s making bacon?” I called out.

Ida Belle
popped her head in from the kitchen. “I am. Want some?”

“Sure.
Might be my last bacon from Sinful.” I pulled myself up from the sofa and
stretched, then shuffled into the kitchen, Merlin running along beside me.

Something
struck me as odd. First, Ida Belle was cooking and not Gertie, who wasn’t even
in the kitchen. And then there was the white-frosted, two-layer cake that sat
on the counter with a small sliver cut out.

“Maybe
Merlin and I should skip breakfast and go straight for dessert.” I grabbed
Merlin’s bag of kibble and poured a generous amount in his bowl that sat on the
floor.

“Ally
brought it by,” Ida Belle said. “It’s Celia’s birthday today, so Celia hired
her to cater a birthday lunch on the lawn outside City Hall. This was one of
her test cakes.”

“Celia’s
going to pay her? I hope she has the money deposited in her account before
handing the cake over to Celia.”

Mention of
Ally made me sad. We had a girls’ night out scheduled for this Saturday. What
would I tell her when I canceled? Who was I kidding? I couldn’t tell her a
thing. They’d extract me and that was it. I probably wouldn’t even be able to
say goodbye. Not even to Carter.

“It’s
actually the city of Sinful paying for it,” Ida Belle said. “Celia invited all
the business leaders and even persuaded the director of that movie, along with
his location scout, to attend. She’s hoping he’ll give Sinful one more chance. She’s
calling it the
Happy Birthday Mayor Celia,
See what Sinful has to
offer
party.”

“Well, if
they want to shoot a film starring a bunch of crazy extras, then they’re in the
right place.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s after eleven? I slept that late?
Why didn’t anyone wake me?”

“Gertie and
I figured you could use the sleep. You didn’t even hear Ally come by with the
cake.”

“So where’s
Gertie?”

“She forgot
to bring along her thyroid medicine and vitamins, so she went home to get
them.”

I cast a
worried glance at Ida Belle.

“She promised
to text when she got there and text every ten minutes until she left.”

“It
shouldn’t take her ten minutes to run inside and get her medication and
vitamins.”

“She’s got
her Glock at the ready.”

“One little
old lady and a Glock are no match for a Russian hitman. What if he followed
her? He might want to use her to flush me out.”

I grabbed
for the keys to my Jeep from the counter.

“What are
you doing?”

“Going to
get her. You don’t know what these people are capable of.”

Ida Belle
touched my shoulder. “Look, I’ve been thinking. None of this is making sense. I
just don’t see a Russian hitman fitting into this picture.”

“Jo-Jo said
the guy sounded Russian.”

“Jo-Jo once
ran his shorts up the flagpole on Main.”

“So?”

“While he
was still in them.” Ida Belle took my keys and placed them back on the counter.
“My point is, Jo-Jo wouldn’t know a New York accent from a Russian accent.”

“Okay, say
this isn’t a hitman out to get me. Someone’s still trying to get at one of us.
Gertie shouldn’t be out on her own.”

Ida Belle
sighed and set her spatula down on the spoon rest. “You know, we’ve faced
threats before. I can’t tell you how many times over the years we’ve butted
heads with some pretty unsavory characters. Death threats come with the
territory.”

I glared at
Ida Belle. “This wasn’t a threat. The bomb was attempted murder. And last night
some guy was poking around my house at midnight. And he could have sounded
Russian.”

Ida Belle’s
phone buzzed from inside her pants pocket. She pulled it out and checked it.
“Dear Lord.”

“What?” My pulse
shot up. I reached for the Jeep keys again.

She held up
her hand to calm me. “It’s Gertie. Jo-Jo was walking through the neighborhood
and spotted her as she was going inside her house. They’re on their way over
here so he can borrow the boat and take a quick ride down the bayou.”

“A boat
ride?”

Ida Belle
put her phone back in her pocket. “He did help us out last night.”

“So what.
He’s still creepy.”

“Oh, come
on, you never had a crush on a teacher?”

“Yeah, but
I never looked him up as an adult.”

“This is a
small town. Former students always drop by to say ‘hi’ to Gertie.”

“Fine.” I
plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “She can have a little boat ride
with him.”

“Well,
thank you, Boss of Us.” Ida Belle slapped a couple pieces of bacon on a plate,
along with a scoop of scrambled eggs and hash browns, and slammed the plate
down on the table in front of me. She yanked out one of the chairs and sat.

I picked up
a fork. But I had no appetite. I laid the fork down. “I’m sorry. I’m just a
little on edge.”

“Me too,”
Ida Belle said. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Me neither.
But if Jo-Jo’s right—”

“He’s not.”

“I can’t
chance it and risk anyone else getting hurt. I have to call for an extraction,
and you know it. The three of us are the best when it comes to the local
yahoos. But when it comes to an international arms dealer…”

Ida Belle
sighed. She reached over and touched my hand. “Can we at least have one last
boat ride together? We’ll take Jo-Jo out, get rid of him, then the three of us
will go out for a spin.”

“Okay. And
then I’ll make the call.”

We heard a
knock at the front door.

“It’s me,
Gertie.”

Ida Belle
and I sprang up and ran into the living room. I flung open the door.

“It’s about
time.”

“Who died
and made you queen?” Gertie said.

“Not funny,
in light of—” I stopped in mid-sentence as Jo-Jo stepped inside.

“Is it
okay?” he asked Gertie.

“Of course
it’s okay,” she said to him. “You helped us out last night. The least we can do
is let you ride the boat before you leave town.”

“I live in
Los Angeles now,” Jo-Jo said. “We don’t have a bayou over there. I kinda miss
it.”

I knew the
feeling. I was going to miss it myself. “I’ll get the keys to the boat.”

The four of
us headed out the back door and into the bright sun. Jo-Jo whistled when he
spotted it, an airboat that was a gift from a couple of local mobsters we had
helped out. “She’s a beaut.” He took his baseball cap, which hung out of his
back pocket, and placed it on his head.

I saw it
first. Then Ida Belle.

We both
stared at his baseball cap—a maroon Sinful Sluggers one to be exact. The same
cap the guy sitting on the park bench, the guy we originally suspected of being
the bomber, wore.

“Something wrong?”
Gertie asked. She followed my gaze to Jo-Jo. Her eyes widened.

“What y’all
staring at me for?” Jo-Jo asked.

“Where’d
you get the cap, Jo-Jo?” Gertie asked.

“My cap? I
played on the Swamp Bar team when I used to live here.” He smiled in a maniacal
sort of way. “You probably never went to none of my games, though, did you?”

Gertie
shook her head. “Sorry. No I didn’t.”

Quickly his
smile morphed to a pout. Like a little kid, he stuck his hands in his pockets.
It was then I noticed outlines of something in both pockets. One definitely was
a cell phone, the other one a lump of some kind.

His eyes
narrowed into slits. “Well, if you had you would have seen I was one of their
star catchers.”

I looked
over at Ida Belle, moving my hand to my waistband and hoping she understood my
unspoken question. I had left my Glock upstairs, not intending to go out
anywhere this morning. I was hoping she had hers. But she shook her head. That
left Gertie. But her weapons were in her purse.

“I’m sure
you were the star, Jo-Jo,” Gertie said. “You were good at everything you did.”

I knew she
was lying. From what I heard, Jo-Jo would have to go to night school in order
to advance to half-wit.

“Really?”
Jo-Jo asked, his voice rising. “That’s not what you said when you was my
teacher.”

“Let’s cut
the BS. What’s going on, Jo-Jo?” I asked.

Ida Belle
slowly moved a few inches away from me to the right. I knew what she was planning.
She wanted to move around Jo-Jo so he would be in the middle of a circle, and
not facing the three of us. It would be easier to take him down if we had him
circled.

“You didn’t
have a crush on Gertie, did you, son?” Ida Belle asked.

“And you
didn’t catch some Russian trying to break into my house, did you?” The idiot
probably cut himself trying to jimmy the lock with his knife.

At the same
time, Gertie kept her eyes on Jo-Jo, while her fingers worked the clasp of her
purse. She also inched her way to the left.

Jo-Jo’s lips
formed a straight line on his reddening face. “She said I would never count for
much. Remember when I made that volcano for the science fair and it didn’t go
off and you made fun of me? And you wouldn’t let me in the smarty pants rocket
club because you said I wasn’t cut out for science. Well, guess what? You was
wrong! Turns out, I learned from that stupid volcano. And now, I’m pretty good
making something explode.”

“Jo-Jo,
that wasn’t me,” Gertie said. “I never had anything to do with the rocket
club.”

“Of course
that was you. You was my science teacher. You was the head of the rocket club.
I could show you the exact page in the yearbook and show you your name as the
science teacher.”

“I taught
English,” Gertie said, unclasping her purse.

“English?”

Gertie
nodded as she stuck her hand inside. “Bertie Hebert taught science. No
relation. I’m Gertie Hebert. I’m the one who said you couldn’t read.”

Jo-Jo’s
face fell. “Ahh, hell! It’s those damn Bs and Gs again.”

Gertie
grimaced. I could see her hand fishing around inside her messy purse for her Glock.
“Yeah, you always had a problem with those two. Not to mention your Ms and Ns.
And Os and As.”

“No wonder
you didn’t look anything like what I remembered. I just thought it was because
you was old. But now I’m startin’ to remember you. You was always the one
harping at me to proofread my work.”

Ida Belle
scooted a little more to the right. I noticed his eyes following her. “I’d stop
if I was you,” he said to Ida Belle. His eyes shifted to Gertie. “And I would
drop the purse.”

“I’d like a
breath mint, if you don’t mind,” Gertie said.

“I do
mind,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets, revealing a cell phone in
one hand and a lump of what appeared to be explosive connected to another phone
in his other hand. “Trigger,” he said, holding up his cell phone, “and bomb,”
he said, holding up the explosive. “Drop the purse now. And if anybody moves,
we’re all going to the great beyond together.”