Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

He mouthed a string of swear words, while taking care not to move. There was nothing unsteady about the way she held the weapon. Abel wouldn’t lower the window between them until they got to the rendezvous point, so he’d have to talk her out of this himself.

“He’s not worth it, Cloris.” He turned his eyeballs her way, trying to pierce the darkness to gauge her attitude. No sign of tears, plenty of grim determination. Damn.

“You think I don’t know that? I raised you. Remember? Who taught you to run numbers? How to shoot straight? Wasn’t your working mama. I was your stay-at-home aunt.”

“Oh, yeah.” He had forgotten, but now he was remembering a lot of things. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take care of him myself. And to make sure you and your boys stay out of it,” she said as he felt something land in his lap, “put these on.”

Remaining still, Dante felt around, then held up something metal and cold.

“What the hell?” He had to look at her, even if she shot him between the eyes. “Where you been shopping?”

Headlights flashed in the darkness. The window between the front and back rolled down. Cain turned to speak and found himself nose to nose with a gun.

With an efficiency that did him proud and made him want to kill her, Cloris disarmed them, tossing their guns and the car keys into the dark grass. Then she wove the bondage handcuffs, with its long chain and multiple bracelets, through the steering wheel, around the open window frames and the men, leaving them thoroughly trussed to the car and each other.

“Don’t do this, Cloris,” he warned her. “I make a bad enemy.”

“Put a sock in it, young man,” she told him, then reached in and flashed the headlights at the car that had flashed them. “I can still whup your ass and don’t you forget it!”

The car pulled alongside and a door opened. When the overhead light came on he saw— double...no, triple...no, quadruple?—before the door closed Cloris inside and pulled away.

“What the—? Hey! Come back! Damn! Did you have to leave the window down?” He slapped at the mosquito. Then another. Then he just flailed as every mosquito in a mile radius scented fresh blood and buzzed in for the feast.

Following the instructions in the latest note from Maxwell, Luci took a circuitous route to City Park and the so-called Dueling Oaks, where the exchange of aunts-for-dollars was supposed to take place. She’d studied the map long enough to know he was trying to confuse her with all the twists and turns, discounting the fact that twists and turns de-confused a Seymour. A more direct route would have left her feeling hopelessly lost.

Is there such a word as de-confused? She drove past Storyland Playland, then turned right on Victory Drive. Not in the real world, but in the Seymour Zone, no question, she decided.

There were streetlights, but not close together, so she was glad that the headlights of Delaney’s car cut two tunnels of light into a road lined with moss-draped oaks. As directed, she stopped the car where it intersected the circular road that ran in front of the art museum and killed the motor, but not the headlights.

It was a cheerful, friendly spot in daylight, but the night left deep, sinister shadows where accomplices, or even the ghosts of fallen duelists, could lie in wait.

One thing for sure, she was feeling alive right now. Almost too alive for comfort. Like Data on his first outing with his emotion chip. Or Spock when he got zapped by the joy flower. On the upside, her senses were stretched out and at full alert, sorting through the night sounds like a high-octane computer.

“He’s late,” she murmured, noting the time.

“He’s probably watching to make sure you’re alone,” Mickey’s voice was soft, but full of reassurance to her ears.

“Good thing you guys have friends in black,” she said.

“There’s a car directly across from you, Luci.” This from Delaney.

As if it had heard him, its headlights came on, nearly blinding her. She put a hand up to shield her eyes, opened the door and scrambled out, her footsteps sounding loud in the silence as she stepped on gravel.

A door creaked on the other car, illuminating the interior too fast for her to count heads or even see heads. He was too far away. Someone got out and stepped up to the edge of the headlights.

“You got my money?” Arthur Maxwell called.

“You got my aunts?” she countered, careful to stay out of the light, too.

Mickey, dressed in the latest in SWAT gear, lifted his night vision goggles and peered around the tree trunk he was using for cover. Luci was a shadowy figure on the other side of Delaney’s car. Across from her he could see the headlights of Maxwell’s car, but he was lost in the shadow behind the light.

“Can you see the old ladies yet?” he whispered into his mike.

“Not yet. Had to take off the goggles because of the light.”

Mickey stepped back into cover and put his goggles back on, scanning the shadows. Something, a flicker of movement, caught his eye, but when he looked that direction, there was nothing. “We the only ones out here?”

“That was the deal,” Delaney said. “Why?”

“Guess I saw a cat or something moving.”

“Let’s try to keep our focus on the human predator? Captain’s gonna fry our asses if we blow this.”

Mickey gave a soft snort. “He’s gonna fry us anyway. We should have told him—”

“Too late now.”

“Could you two shut up?” Luci’s voice was soft and insistent. “I’m trying to hear what the bozo is saying.” Then like stereo, he heard her in the earpiece and for real call out, “I’m not showing you a single bill until I see my aunts are all right!”

“Okay, okay.” Maxwell sounded grumpy and frustrated, like someone whose nerves had been stretched raw by too much time in the Seymour