Bubblegum Blonde (22 page)

I sat down facing the post and scooted as far away as I could. Once my arms were extended before me and the rope was pulled tight, I stretched my leg out behind me. My toe barely reached the handle of the nightstand. With the toe of my shoe I attempted to pull the handle. The drawer slipped out a measly inch. It was times like these when I wished I'd been blessed with a little more height. Five measly feet didn't get you far in times like these.

"What are you doing?" Jason asked from his prone position on the floor.

"She's looking for something to cut the ropes with and free us, genius." Silas answered Jason's question, then started doing the same thing I was only on the other nightstand.

His drawer, however, came out on the first try thanks to his long, muscular legs.

I admit I stopped and watched him work.

"Oh, God…" Jason groaned in my direction. "We're about to die, and you're ogling Mr. GQ? Really, Barb?"

Silas grinned at me and flexed his abs.

I'd come to the conclusion that we were both crazy because I simply smiled and shrugged then went back to work on getting the drawer open.

I gave the drawer one last yank, if you could call it that, with the toe of my Chuck Taylor sneaker. The drawer finally fell out and hit the floor.

"Did you find anything useful?" Silas asked.

I blew out a sigh and rooted around the contents of the drawer with my foot. "I got a mini bottle of Jack, some lube, and a copy of
Busty MILF's IV.
" I raised an eyebrow with surprise. "Huh, I guess that DVD
was
hers." I shrugged the best I could. "Go figure."

Silas laughed. "Lydia was bisexual. Our little secret. Not that it matters now."

"That's all well and good," I said, "but there's nothing in here that we can use to cut these ropes."

"That's good, because we wouldn't want you to get free now, would we?"

The three of us froze in place as the same handsome face I'd seen peeking at Silas and me over the balcony the day before stared at us from the now-open bedroom door.

"Max?" Silas frowned. "What's going on? Untie us."

Max shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't do that.

"Why the hell not?" Silas asked.

"Yeah, why the hell not?" I mean, I was really lost on this one. Why would a gigolo I'd never met want to kill me, Jason, or his friend for that matter?

Max stepped deeper into the room and kicked the door shut behind him. His closely cropped hair was slightly damp. He wore a pair of faded old jeans, a T-shirt, and boots. He was pretty hot, for a psycho that is.

"Because, pretty lady"—his Latino accent was thick as he spoke to me—"you're poking your nose into my business, and I can't let you continue down that road. Too many bumps, if you know what I mean."

"I really don't." I shook my head.

"That makes two of us," Silas agreed. "Why are we here?"

"Does this have something to do with Lydia?" I asked.

Max stared at me with an unreadable expression.

I instantly knew why we were tied up in the room. "You killed Lydia, didn't you?"

Max sighed dramatically. "Lydia killed herself by hooking up with him." Max pointed at Jason where he lay on the floor.

"What? I don't get it, Max. Why?" Silas asked.

"Lydia and I started this business together." Max leaned his back against the door "I was her first hire. Then you came along, then the others." He shrugged. "I was fine with her sleeping with the three of you. It was business. She needed to know that you were good at what you do. You had your one time then moved on. Then he came along." Max reached out and kicked Jason square in the face.

I cringed at the sound of his nose snapping beneath Max's heel. The sound was sickening, and my already queasy stomach roiled in protest. I took a deep breath and gathered my composure.

Jason went out like a light. Blood pooled from his surely broken nose beneath his face on the carpet.

"You and Lydia were having an affair?" I asked.

"Correct again, pretty lady." He looked at me.

Despite the pain in my head, I rolled my eyes. He seriously needed to stop with the
pretty lady
business. It was getting old real fast.

"We never stopped," he continued. "Lydia and I had something special…or so I thought. Then she took up with this maggot and told me we needed to scale our relationship back to strictly professional."

"What about her husband?"

Call me strange, but I thought Max would be a little more upset by the fact that Lydia wouldn't leave her husband rather than her taking on another lover.

"She told me she was going to leave him, but after she started sleeping with that," he nodded in Jason's direction, "I think she tossed that idea aside, like she did me. With him, she could keep her husband and live the best of both worlds. Have her cake and eat it too, I guess you would say."

The look in his eyes darkened as he glared down at Jason's prone form.

"But why kill us?" I tried to keep him talking. "I understand Jason, but why me? Why Silas?"

"Because you were getting too close. If I let you continue poking around you'd discover that I'd killed Lydia, and I couldn't allow that."

"But how? How did you know I was getting too close?"

Max smiled. "Melba."

"Melba?"

"That's right. She called me right after you paid her a visit about the receipts. She told me there was a private investigator asking questions about Lydia."

"I take it that Melba is one of your clients. Why else would she tell you about my visit? Did she know you killed Lydia?"

"No." Max shook his head. "She was only afraid that we'd be found out, and this place would be shut down. If that happened, where would she get her Friday night tumble between the sheets?"

I struggled to stifle a shudder as the image of Melba tumbling around between the sheets slithered unwelcome through my mind.

That was definitely an image I'd never be able to forget.

"As for Silas"—he sighed—"well, he sealed his fate when he visited your office. I knew he would offer any assistance that he could to help you catch Lydia's killer. He might not have been intimate with her, but they were still friends."

"How'd you get us here without someone seeing you?"

My neighbors were old and crotchety, but I was sure they would've seen the problem with someone shoving a limp body into a car and reported it.

"Silas was easy, as he was already here. You and that one"—he kicked Jason again—"were a little trickier. I snuck into your house, cracked you on the head, and then gave you a little something to keep you unconscious on the ride here. Your neighborhood is quiet, and it was dark. No one saw me toss your little behind into the backseat. It was really quite easy." He shrugged.

"Max, buddy, you've gone insane," Silas said and shook his head. "You're going to kill us? Then what? How do you plan on getting away with it?"

Max laughed. "The same way I got away with killing Lydia. I'll pin it on this guy." He walked over and kicked Jason with the toe of his shoe. "I'll say he broke in, killed the two of you while you were…indisposed." He waggled his eyebrows. "I'll say that I heard the gunshots, came running in, and saw him with a gun and your bodies dead on the bed. I'll say he attacked me, and I shot him in self-defense during the struggle."

He had everything all figured out while I was still struggling with the fact that he was doing all of this because the married woman he was having an affair with broke up with him. People were crazy.

"Wait," I said. "Why kill Lydia? Why didn't you just kill Jason?"

Max arched an eyebrow. "That was the original plan. I was going to overdose him with the drug that I gave you all to get you here. I told Lydia my plan. I admit it wasn't the brightest idea, and I'm not even sure why I told her what I'd planned to do. She asked me to come over so we could talk. She said she wanted to be with me, so I paid Lydia a visit at her home in the city. When I got there, she invited me into the bedroom."

His expression darkened. "When I moved in to kiss her, she pulled a gun on me. She thought she could threaten me, and I would back off. I knew then that she never cared about me. Things got out of hand, and I killed her."

He stared off into space for a few seconds.

He was crazy. Or as Kelly would say, his cheese had officially slid off his cracker.

He snapped back to reality and clapped his hands together.

"So, let's get this show on the road before he wakes up." Max pulled a gun from the waist of his jeans and aimed it at Silas. "I can't shoot you where you sit, or the cops will know what really happened, so this is what we're going to do. I'm going to cut you loose from the post, and you're going to hop on the bed, and you're not going to cause a fuss, or I'll blow your head off and tell the cops you tried to fight with Jason too, but he killed you before I could intervene. Understand?"

"Yeah, I get it."

"You just sit there and be a good girl." Max winked at me. "I'll get to you in a minute."

Even in the process of murder the guy couldn't turn off his gigolo charm.

I rolled my eyes.

Max held the gun on Silas as he approached him, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife. He opened the blade and sliced through the rope securing Silas to the bedpost. Max then slid the knife back into his front pocket.

Instead of Silas being a good boy as Max had instructed, he drew back as far as he could and hammered Max in the side of the head with his fist.

Seriously, who thought obviously naughty Silas was capable of being a good boy?

Max dropped the knife but kept a firm grip on the gun as he stumbled and fell to the floor. Before he could get his bearings, Silas was on him, holding the arm gripping the gun to the floor. Max fought back, striking Silas in the head with his one free fist.

Silas pounded Max's hand holding the gun on the floor. The pistol finally flew from Max's hands and landed next to Jason's limp body. I stretched as far as I could but still couldn't reach the gun.

Max flipped over onto Silas and started punching him in the head and face, but Silas wasn't a slouch and was giving Max a run for his money.

Jason was as useless as ever, still knocked out cold from Max's boot to the face. I looked around frantically in search of anything that could help me free myself and help Silas. My gaze landed on Lydia's porn DVD.

I stretched my leg out again and pulled the DVD to me with the toe of my shoe. I tried to pry open the case with my feet. After what felt like forever, the plastic case finally popped open. I stomped on the DVD until it broke it in half. I used my feet to scoot a broken piece up to the post then wiggled my bound hands down toward the floor as far as I could.

I worked the broken piece of DVD up the bedpost with my foot. I almost wept with joy when the shard reached my fingertips, and I was able to grip it in my hands.

There was no time to waste. I glanced to where Max and Silas were still pummeling each other, but Max had gotten in a hard shot to the side of Silas's head, and he looked like he was seconds away from going unconscious.

I sawed at the ropes binding my hands with the flimsy plastic. I was halfway through the rope when I saw Max kick Silas to the side and scramble for the gun.

A shot ripped through the air at the same time the DVD sawed through the last thread of rope around my wrists. I saw the bullet rip through Silas's shoulder. The force of the bullet hitting him flung him backward. He fell, hitting his head against the window frame on his way down.

He was out cold, and I was now on my own.

I sprang to my feet and pounced on Max. He was still on his knees, so I kicked him in the face as hard as I could. The gun flew out of his hands and landed beside Silas. I did what I knew would immobilize him. I kicked him as hard as I could in his well-paid man-bits. He squealed and rolled up into a tight ball.

I lunged for the gun. He saw what I was doing and jumped to his feet. I grabbed the gun and turned just as he leaped to throw himself on top of me.

I fired.

His body flung to the side and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

And suddenly everything was still.

I felt my heart beating in my chest, could almost hear it as I stared at the man I was certain I'd just killed. I'd never killed anyone before, only maimed. It was a strange, empty feeling. In that moment I thought about Tyler.

His job was much harder than I ever realized.

I got to my feet slowly and made my way over to Silas. I ripped off a piece of my T-shirt and tied it around his bleeding shoulder the best I could, then turned his head toward me and tapped his cheek. He blinked up at me.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so. Are you?"

I blew out a breath. "Yeah. I think so."

"Max?"

"Max is dead."

"I hate it," he said groggily, "but there was no other choice." He winced when he tried to shrug. "How's Jason?"

"I have no idea. I checked on you first," I admitted and immediately regretted it.

"You like me, don't you?" Silas grinned, then chuckled when I rolled my eyes and pushed his head gently to the side.

I stood and made my way over to Jason. I made quick work of untying his hands and feet then rolled him onto his back as gently as I could. He stirred and then cupped a hand over his nose and mouth. "Son-of-a…"

"Yeah, I know it hurts, but you're alive, so suck it up." I smiled down at him.

Jason looked up at me and groaned. "As gentle as ever, Barb."

"We need to call the police." Silas sat up and leaned himself against the wall.

I nodded. "I'll do it."

I crawled over to Max and shoved my hand into his pocket. I found his and my cell phones. I powered mine on and pressed the speed-dial button to call Tyler.

The door to the bedroom burst open, and Tyler barged into the room like a madman, gun drawn and at the ready.

Silas, Jason, and I looked at each other, then at him with bored expressions.

"You're a little late, big guy." I pocketed my phone, stood, stepped over Jason, and made my way over to him.