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

faded fast. I signed steadily for a small eternity and finally the line decreased to a small trickle, then stopped altogether. I stretched my tired hand and gave Marion a piteous look.

“Can I take a break?”

“Fifteen more minutes. How bad can it be?”

Before I could tell her, the table shook as a pile of books were dropped in front of me. I let my gaze rise up the stack of books to a large woman with a gold front tooth.

“Oh, Miss Stanley! I can’t tell you how excited I am to meet you! My class just loves your books!”

“I’m glad.” If they liked them so much, why was she returning them?

“I told them I just knew you’d autograph their books for them. I had them put a little slip inside with their name and the inscription they’d like. If you don’t mind?”

“Of course she doesn’t mind.” Marion gave me a ‘you’d-better-not-mind’ look.

“Of course I don’t mind.” I opened the first book and picked up the white slip tucked inside. “To Michael, my main man. From your hot, hot mama. Uh, what grade is it you teach?”

“Remedial high school students.”

I turned to give Marion a look that would have killed her on the spot if she hadn’t taken the opportunity to slip away.

Smart lady.

I was on the way back from my long delayed bathroom break when I saw the round-headed man standing next to the sand sculpture, pretending to read some fliers while he cast furtive looks around. He was older than he’d looked in the dark, probably in his late forties or early fifties, and wearing a western-cut polyester suit that highlighted his figure flaws, particularly the place where stomach spill hid his belt. His pointed feet were shoved into cowboy boots and turned out, remarkably like the cartoon character I’d sketched him as. Only he wasn’t a cartoon.

He was a killer.

And he was looking for me.

He looked up and found me. He started toward me when something low and gray, hit him dead center. Cowboy, and the spy protecting me, sprawled into the sand sculpture. Grappling awkwardly, the two men, one round, and one straight, rolled through a sand child before crashing to the floor. A cascade of sand followed them down as a week’s worth of sculpting dissolved under the hands of startled workers.

Above their grunts and groans and the gasps of onlookers, I heard the shrill wail of whistles. Two security guards rushed onto the scene and pushed their way through the crowd that formed around the struggling figures.

For a minute it was a game of Twister without the mat as the guards tried to drag my suit off the round-headed man. All of them were slipping and sliding on the sand. None of them looked like they were enjoying it.

Then the four men broke apart. The round-headed man was free and furious. He shook sand from his scant hair and glared around. In a classic case of clueless, the two guards jumped my suit.

I didn’t wait to see anymore. I took off, running right out of my high heeled shoes. My heavy purse banged rhythmically against my side as I scampered between exhibits and people. I contemplated off-loading it, but it was the only thing I had that remotely resembled a weapon. Besides, inside it was a driver’s license picture that was actually decent. They’d have to pry that from my cold, dead fingers.

I dashed and dodged, riding a wave of panic that swept away any rational thought. When I saw the double doors to one side, I made a sharp right, slid across the cement floor and crashed into them. Jerked one open and slid through.

I knew right away I’d made a bad choice, but my body was still running ahead of my brain. It just kept fleeing down the hallway, leaving behind the safety of bright lights and the comforting sounds of potential eye witnesses.

There was no cover in the hallway, so I picked up the pace a bit, went round a corner and almost launched myself down a stairway. Only by grabbing the iron rail as I went by, did I change a header down the stairs into a body slam into a brick wall.

This gave my brain a minute to catch up with my body.

The stairs marched down into a murky, half lit world rumbling with the muted sound of machinery. My body started to listen to my brain screaming caution, until my ears heard the door open and the distinctive snap of cowboy boots on cement.

Instinct took over again.

My stocking feet were soundless against the steps, my brain screaming at me to run, as I plunged recklessly down into the bowels of the physical plant. A brief landing at the bottom, a skid, then I was running down a dark passage like a Gothic heroine, my purse and braid streaming behind. On either side rose huge, dark shapes, groaning monster inhabitants of this nether world.

I kept turning down passages, always choosing the darker, until I ran out of steam and passages and into a brick wall. My chest heaved with fright and the need for air. I slid to the floor with my back against the wall. As my breathing gradually evened out, I realized the thump, thump, thump I thought was my heart was actually cowboy boots against the cement floor coming directly toward me.

14

I pressed into the small space under a kind of boiler as a scream tried to crawl up and out my throat. Fear put a choke hold on said throat when a dark figure paused, the roundness of his head clearly visible against the dim overhead bulb.

He waited, his head bent in a listening attitude while light found and lit a dull gleam in the weapon he carried. I closed my eyes, so he wouldn’t see my whites and shoot. That’s when I heard more footsteps.

Rescue or an accomplice?

I peeked. The round-headed man tensed, reached up and loosened the bulb overhead,