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

I followed his lead and saw the green minivan careening towards us, an assault weapon poking out the window.

Good thing his reflexes were faster than mine. I was still registering shock, when he shoved me to the pavement behind the Mercedes. Seconds later the shooting started. For a brief eternity, my face was pushed into cold concrete with Kel’s body covering mine while all hell broke loose above us. As abruptly as it started, the shooting stopped. The diminishing shriek of tires faded into cries of fear and outrage.

The air was filled with the acrid smell of cordite. Over Kel’s shoulder I saw shattered glass and twisted metal where Rosemary’s car used to be.

“You should have let them shoot me,” I told him.

Sirens drowned out people noise. Kel helped me up, brushed the glass off my clothes and hair, had someone bring me a chair and a glass of water. I sat and sipped, once more surrounded by policemen and flashing lights. That it was happening in the bright light of midday didn’t make it feel any more real than the last time.

I let it all pass over and around me as I stared at the car’s remains, only half listening as Kel talked to Willis about the shooting.

“So, Miss Stanley,” I looked up into Dillon’s sardonic face, “what you gonna do for your next trick?”

I looked at Rosemary’s car. “Disappear?”

Four hours, six feet of mug books, and one police artist later, I think everyone wished I had disappeared.

“How’s this, Miss Stanley?” the artist asked for the umpteenth time.

I looked at the much erased sketch for a moment, then at the tired artist. “It’s very nice.”

“But does it look like the man you saw?” If he’d been six instead of twenty-six, I’d have said he was whining.

Behind him Willis was banging his head lightly, rhythmically, against the wall. Kel was stretched out in a chair, his hands clasped behind his head as he studied the ceiling. Dillon paced between us like a caged lion.

“No…”

Their frustrated sighs almost blew me out the door. I had to do something before they turned ugly. I took the sketch book and pencil.

“May I?” Without waiting for his answer, I flipped to a clean page and started to fill it with broad strokes. It was easy. The round-headed man’s visage was burned in my memory. Maybe sketching him would exorcise it.

“You—you’re—you can—why?” the artist sputtered.

I looked up. “They all knew I could.”

There was this pregnant pause, then the three of them sputtered out a defensive chorus, “She draws cockroaches—not people—”

“There.” I made a couple of minute adjustments, gave a final shudder, and handed the pad back to its frustrated owner. “That’s him.”

They all huddled over the sketch.

“It’s a caricature,” Willis said.

I wondered how many of my tax dollars had gone into training him?

“A damn good one,” Kel murmured, giving me a quick, tired smile that made up for everything.

“A caricature, but still recognizable,” Dillon said, something that was almost pleasure forming on his face. “In fact, I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

“I don’t know,” Willis said. “Maybe we ought to wait, try to get a better picture to put on the wire.”

“Better than what? We’ll have him in custody inside thirty- six hours.” Dillon headed for the door with the sketch in hand.

I faded gratefully into the woodwork as they launched into law enforcement mode. With my eyes closed, my thoughts drifted, unfocused, unstructured, something hovering at the back of my mind. Something important, waiting patiently for recognition—

—don’t want anyone else to know you saw him—

—police stations are notoriously leaky places—

I felt a chill spreading through me despite the over-heated room. I was too tired to think straight. I shouldn’t go there.

—Kel saved my life—

—he couldn’t—

—not and kiss like that—

—but how did the round-headed man know—

—Kel. Kel was the only one who knew—

No, he couldn’t, wouldn’t—a pounding in my temples kept time with the insistent, unanswerable question, if not Kel, then who?

Who else had known where we were, where we were going? He got shot at, too, I wailed inside my head. Bad guys turn on each other, my head shot back. I had to get out of here. I needed time, space to think, away from him. I needed facts, not feelings to tell me whether Kel wanted to kiss me—or kill me. I needed—my mother.

That’s how desperate I was.

At the end of the narrow hall, I spotted an exit sign and headed for it. No one noticed. Outside it was cold and gray, like I felt inside. Rosemary had taken my car. Hers was a skeleton of its former self. A bus paused at a corner, people filing on. I could do that and did, dropping into a seat just before my legs gave out.

The bus jerked forward as Kel burst out the door. I cowered in my seat, not daring to look back until we turned the corner and he was lost to sight.

If I cried on the way home, it was no one’s business but mine.

13

Rosemary didn’t kill me when I walked through the door. I think she thought I was already dead. Or maybe our mother standing there crimped her style.

“My car?” Rosemary asked.

I burst into tears. My mother rose to the occasion, folding me into her arms despite the grit and grime of being drive-by shot at. I was too tired to cry long. My mother mopped me up, question marks becoming prominent in her fine eyes when Rosemary brought me the telephone.

“Bel?” Kel’s voice in my ear was as heady as a New Orleans pastry. “You made it home, then?”

Tiny tentacles of warmth began to dispel the chill in my bones at the relief in his voice.

“Why did you run out on me?”

“You seemed busy…and I was really tired.” Questions tried to break through exhaustion. Questions I couldn’t ask. My mother was standing there. Besides, I might not like the answers.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

For involving me in a life threatening situation or