Geek Mafia, Rick Dakan [books that read to you .TXT] 📗

the floor a few feet away and crawled towards them, the stun gun still in her hand. 

As Raff squirmed beneath him, Paul fought to pin the taller, stronger man to the ground. Raff managed to twist onto his back, freeing his good arm to swing at Paul with the baton. The blow glanced off his shoulder, but still hurt like a motherfucker. Now sitting astride Raff’s torso, he grabbed at the baton arm with both hands. 

Chloe looked for an opening, still amazed that Raff hadn’t felt anything from the stun gun. As Paul grabbed Raff’s arm, she saw a layer of black rubber beneath Raff’s shirt – he was wearing a wetsuit. He really did know all Chloe’s favorite tricks. She smiled and jabbed the stun gun into his neck. Raff instantly stopped resisting and started convulsing in pain. 

Paul didn’t have a chance to catch his breath before a booming thud came from the front door. Bee kept her eyes on her laptop. He and Chloe both turned to see what the noise was when the door flew open with a splintering thud. In the doorway stood the PI, his gun pointed right at Paul.

“Hands up!” the PI shouted. “Drop everything, get off him right now or I’ll shoot.”

Before Chloe and Paul could move, the front of the PI’s head exploded with a wet plop. Blood and brains and skull fragments sprayed across the room and the man fell forward onto what was left of his face.

Bee finally looked up from her laptop screen.

CHAPTER 43

Paul and Chloe looked over at Bee, shocked and horrified at what they’d just seen happen. Raff moaned underneath Paul, still unaware of what had befallen his comrade. 

 

“What…?” Paul tried to say, although it came out more like “Wuuuuh”

“Did you hack their gun camera, Bee?” said Chloe, her voice somewhere between awe and skepticism. 

Tears started to stream down Bee’s face. She couldn’t speak, but after a moment she shook her head vigorously no. 

“Then why did they…” Suddenly realization dawned on Chloe. “That was never their camera, was it?”

Bee just shook her head again. No.

“You set this whole thing up?”

A tearful affirmative nod from Bee.

“Who were you planning to shoot?”

Bee struggled for words, but Chloe voiced her thoughts for her. “You were going to kill whoever destroyed your family, weren’t you?”

Bee nodded, openly sobbing now. 

“You did good, Bee” Chloe assure her with a calm voice. “You got the guy who screwed us all over. And if you hadn’t, he probably would’ve shot us.” Chloe’s voice was comforting, almost motherly. “You did good, honey. But maybe you better shut that gun down now, just in case, ok?” Bee nodded again through her tears, grateful for both the approval and for being given a task to perform. She started typing on her laptop again. 

Turning to Paul, Chloe said, “Shut the door and help me get him tied up, quick.”

His shoulder still aching from the baton strike, Paul moaned as he got to his feet. The dead body of the PI still blocked the doorway. After a moment’s inaction he grabbed the man’s legs and pulled them through the door and then closed it behind him. He glanced outside but there was no one else out there, at least not that he could see.

Paul was surprised that he dealt with the dead body as easily as he did. He would have thought the mere sight of it would have made him helpless with disgust and horror. But since less than a minute earlier he’d been 99.9% sure that the man was going to shoot him dead, all he really felt was relief. He dimly imagined that the shock and alarm would set in pretty much any minute now.

“Wha happ nnn?” Raff asked from the floor. Chloe was busy tying him up with a power cord she’d pulled free from a lamp. “Owww!” he shouted, as Chloe yanked his broken arm behind his back and tied his wrists together. She stuffed a towel into his mouth to shut him up and got up off the floor with a wince of pain.

“Ok, the gun’s shut down,” Bee said in a soft, timid voice.

“Great,” Chloe said. “Now I need you to start packing up. Pack all of this stuff up as fast as you can.” She ripped another cord free from the room’s other lamp. Now the only light came from the open bathroom door. “Paul, was there anyone else out there?”

“Not that I saw,” he said. 

“Good,” she again bent over Raff, this time tying his legs together at the ankles. “I need you to take a towel, wet it down, and wipe every surface of the room for fingerprints. Everything, ok?”

Paul nodded and set to work. Bee was cramming her electronics into three big nylon bags and a milk crate. Testing her knots to make sure Raff was secure; Chloe took his baton, her stun gun, and the dead man’s pistol and stuffed them in her shoulder bag. Then she helped Bee pack.

“What name did you check in under?” she asked Bee.

“Suzy Wu,” she said. Chloe’s steady direction and the professional tone in her voice had gone a long way to calming Bee down. Paul found her to be a source of strength for himself as well, and wondered if it was this quality in particular that made her such a strong leader.

“Paid cash?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah, but secured with a false credit card.”

“Ok,” Chloe said. “I’m going to step out and take a look around real quick. Make sure Raff’s other friends aren’t out there too. Then we’re going to get out of here and not look back, ok?”

“Ok,” said Bee. “But I didn’t see any other cars pull up when Raff got here.”

“I’ve still got to check it out.” She went to the window and pulled aside a corner of curtain to peer out into the parking lot. After about a minute of careful watching she let the curtain fall back, stepped over the dead body, and opened the door just enough for her to squeeze out.

Paul and Bee both carried out their assignments in silence. Finished, they stared awkwardly at each other. Raff seemed unconscious on the floor, but Paul decided he was probably faking it. Now that he’d finished wiping the room down he was afraid to touch anything. Bee poked and prodded her pile of equipment, but it was all as packed as it was going to get.

“I really meant what I said,” Paul finally announced, breaking the oppressive silence. Bee just looked at him with a sad, curious look on her face.

“I know Raff and I said the same thing – that the crew was a family for us. But for me it really was true. It is true, and I know it’s probably even truer for you. I know that I’m really still kind of an outsider but…” He paused, realizing that he was starting to babble. “I just wanted you to know. And thank you. Thank you for saving my life.” He gestured towards the dead body. Neither of them wanted to look at it. Finally he concluded with, “And whatever happens next, I want the three of us to do it together, to stay together, to be a family.”

Bee stared at him and started to turn watery. No, Paul realized. It was he himself who was tearing up now, turning everything in the dim room blurry with tears. Bee jumped up with surprising speed and clasped her small arms around Paul, holding him tight. He hugged her close. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you…”

“No, thank you…” Paul replied and gave her an affectionate kiss on the top of her head. 

They stood like that for a few minutes, just comforting one another. Finally Chloe returned, slipping in quietly through the door. “What’s this? I’m gone ten minutes and you’re already with another woman?” They just smiled and held their arms out for her to join the hug.

“Yeah, yeah, ok.” She gave them a perfunctory squeeze and then pulled away. “We all love each other. Blah, blah, blah. But we’re not quiet finished here. We’ve still got that to deal with,” she said, pointing to Raff.

“Why can’t we leave him here like that?” Paul asked.

“Maybe we can,” said Chloe, “But I need to talk to him first.”

“About what?” 

“We need to sort some things out,” she said. She dug the stun gun out of her bag and then crouched down beside Raff before pulling the towel from his mouth. He opened his eyes then, giving up all pretense of being unconscious.

“Hey Chloe,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” she said. “I’m afraid your friend over there got his head blown off.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Raff craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his dead mentor. “I have to admit, I’m kind of pissed about that.”

“Well, he did shoot my friend first.”

“I guess that’s true,” Raff said. “Although that wouldn’t have happened if…”

“Let’s cut the blame game Raff. We both know the score at this point and we both know who did what to who.”

“To whom,” he corrected.

“Whatever. Now we have to figure out what to do next.”

“I figure you probably won’t kill me, so that means you’re going to leave me here, tied up, for the maid service to find.”

“That’s an option,” Chloe said.

“Is there another option?” Raff asked.

“There is. We can cart your tied ass out of here and drop you off somewhere non-corpse adjacent, so at least you won’t have to deal with the cops.”

“Sounds good to me. What do you want in return?”

“Your promise that this over between us now. We each go our separate ways and never look back. No grudges, no vendettas.”

“I can live with that,” Raff said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Forty-seven thousand, two hundred and eleven dollars and eighteen cents.”

“Oh…” Raff said. “You know about that, huh?”

“Know about you skimming money off the top of every job you ever helped the crew pull off? Yeah, I know all about that.”

Raff laid his head back and looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s see, we add my forty-seven thousand to the seventy-seven thousand you skimmed and you’ve got close to 120k, right?”

Chloe laughed. “I guess we both know a lot about each other, huh?”

“I guess so,” he agreed. “You know, I’m really going to miss you, Chloe.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you fucked me over.”

“I did,” he said, “But I decided I’d miss that money more.”

“And now you get neither.”

“But at least I get to be tied up in a ditch instead of in a room with a rotting corpse,” he concluded.

“Way to look on the bright side,” Chloe said. “Gimme the account number, password, and routing info for the money and there’s a lovely ditch in your future.”

“How can I refuse?” he said with a sigh.

“I can’t believe we’re letting him go,” Paul said as he pulled their car out of the motel parking lot. There’d been a particularly anxious moment when Bee clambered up on the roof of the gas station and retrieved her remote controlled rifle, but no cars had passed by during that time. Now Bee’s car was right behind theirs. 

“We’re going to dump him penniless in a ditch, for God’s sake,” Chloe said. “That’s punishment enough.”

“Ok, ok,” Paul said. “He only ruined my life. No big deal…”

“Did you always whine