Think Before You Speak (28 page)

“Because you never asked.”

While the two bickered it out, I cautiously
glanced around the room for a weapon – anything I could use to
distract Bonnie from Clyde long enough to disarm the wayward
sidekick.

“No contracts have been signed. It’s all been
talk and negotiation at this point,” Reggie said, his voice oozing
into the placating tone he used on clients. “If you’ve got the
money, you’d be the perfect candidate to take over the
business.”

“That’s the problem,” Han whined. “I don’t
have the money.”

Reggie gave me a desperate look that said
I’m out of ideas, what about you
?

Keep Han talking
my eyes returned, but
Reggie apparently didn’t get that subliminal message. The silence
stretched toward discomforting proportions. Some people just didn’t
respond well under pressure.

Thank God I wasn’t one of them.

“So Han,” I started. “How did you find out
about Reggie’s plans? His past and all that?”

“Yes,” Reggie said, picking up on my train of
thought. “I’d kept that information a closely guarded secret from
everyone.”

I shook my head. “Not everyone.”

Reggie’s head jerked toward me so fast, I
thought a concussive whiplash would take him down sooner than a
gunshot wound. “What do you mean,
not everyone
?”

“Well, I was gonna tell you tonight that
Switch has known for years.”

Reggie’s voice pitched up about two octaves.
“You talked directly to
him
?”

“
Went
to see him actually,” I
admitted. “He’s got a great place, though it doesn’t really fit the
gangster image, but he mentioned he’d bought it for his
mother.”

“Really? Where’s he living?”

“You know that old fashioned Victorian
development on the edge of…”

“Enough!” Han interrupted, shoving the gun
out at arm’s length.

Reggie and I both raised our hands at the
same time as if we were surrendering the Alamo, Reggie’s blue-faced
TAG Heuer directly in my line of sight. I’d never noticed the
slight violet tinge in the color.

Then it dawned on me with a zing to my brain
instead of my nether regions – my rainbow-hued Sig Sauer wasn’t
tucked away in the closet. The other night Zeke had slipped it into
the top drawer of the kitchen island just around the corner from
where I stood.

Now if only Reggie could gather his wits and
keep Han occupied.

Han took up the spill-thy-guts mantle again
as if we were the confessors of the Inquisition. “All I ever really
wanted was for us to be a team. To be partners in every sense of
the word.”

“But you were,” Reggie coaxed and cooed. “You
were like a partner to me.”

“Not in the way it mattered.”

Were those tears in Han’s eyes? I didn’t
spend too much time worrying about ‘em. My focus was on the gun’s
movement as I took a shuffled step to the left while Han remained
focused on Reggie. Then another tiny slide and step.

“Han,” Reggie continued in a soothing voice.
“I’ve told you before. With disease and the AIDS scare, I chose
celibacy years ago.”

“But that didn’t mean we couldn’t…”

“Mixing business with pleasure is never a
good idea. It would’ve been unfair to you.”

Where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah –
the bar.

“But other couples have made it work,” Han
whined.

The gun in the assistant’s quivering hands
drooped a little more with each shuffle of my feet until the
counter corner poked into my back. Reggie and I had both lowered
our hands, his to his sides and mine to the cold, smooth cement
countertop as I edged around the corner to give space to the love
triangle confession. Or maybe this was more a circle. Seems Han had
spent his life spinning on the hamster wheel to nowhere.

Kinda like me and bartending. Maybe Zeke and
Bobby were right and it was time to reconsider my career options –
or lack thereof.

Reggie continued, “But now you can own the
business outright.”

“I can’t. All my money went to that crooked
private investigator.”

A private investigator? So that’s how
Reggie’s secret had been discovered. But then where’d the PI get
his information? Perhaps he was plugged into Switch and Company
too.

“I know,” Reggie said brightening. “I’ll sell
it to you on contract. You can make a payment from profits every
month.”

“What about the money in the PO box?” I piped
up, then bit my tongue when Han’s eyes narrowed and the gun
targeted my way. I was getting pretty damn tired of spending the
summer with weapons trained at my head.

“I can’t get it,” Han admitted. “For some
reason, my key doesn’t work. They must’ve mixed up the keys
somehow.”

“Yeah.” I snorted, channeling the sperm
donor. “Government, right? Can’t do anything without screwing it
up.” Someone get me a shower and industrial-strength disinfectant
to clean my mouth – stat.

Han nodded. “And I couldn’t ask one of the
workers to open it for me because they’d see what was in there.
It’s
technically
illegal for cash to go through the postal
system.”

And it was
definitely
illegal to
blackmail someone too – and hold them at gunpoint – but I didn’t
think debating technicalities would help the current situation. I
bit down a little harder on my tongue to ensure the thought stayed
firmly lodged in my brain without spilling out of my disease-ridden
mouth.

The brand new cell phone in my purse buzzed
shortly before the report of Han’s weapon silenced it. Everyone
jumped. Han’s hands shook even more as we stared at the smoking
hole in the leather, bits of floating paper accompanying a spit,
signaling a second death not only for the animal that gave its hide
to Coach, but for my checkbook and cell phone as well.

Good thing I’d spent money on the phone
warranty this time. It better the hell cover gunshot wounds.

My purse wasn’t the only thing smoking. It
appeared the bullet had made a through-and-through and come to rest
inside a sofa pillow.

Han glanced at me and broke the silence. “I
can fix that.”

“Hey,” Reggie interrupted, pulling attention
his way. “The key you sent
me
for the postal box
worked.”

“Do you have it with you?” Han asked.

“It’s at home,” Reggie admitted. “But we can
go over to my house together and get it. That way we can discuss
the terms of the sale on our way over and then pick up the cash
that way.”

His assistant actually seemed to consider it
until another knock reverberated against the door, sending Han into
a pirouette rivaling a prima donna and blasting a second bullet
through my thick and heavy door. The resultant cry revealed Han’s
bullet had wounded something more than an inanimate object this
time.

It was all the distraction I needed.

In the confusion after the first gun report,
I’d successfully slid around the corner to open the applicable
cabinet drawer. My Sig gleamed under the pendant lights. With the
second shot, I grabbed my weapon, flicked off the safety, and
sighted the shooter in one smooth motion.

“Duck!” I yelled to Reggie as Han swung
around toward me.

I didn’t think about pillows, sofas, or what
Mom would say about what we’d done to the new décor. My only
concerns were for my friend, my kitty, and my own sorry carcass as
my finger flexed around metal, and I squeezed the trigger.

I’d gone and gotten someone shot – again.

Jimmy-the-Super lay sprawled and bleeding on
the hallway floor, clutching his healing arm from the
previous
gunshot wound and cussing a streak so blue from the
new
gunshot wound it’d make a blue-stater blush. The
profanity-laced tirade continued for a full ten minutes until the
police descended on my apartment like it was the last donut shop in
Dallas.

At least this time Jimmy was conscious for
the aftermath, until he was whisked away in an ambulance. I think
it’d take more than a plate of barely edible cookies before Jimmy
would forgive me again, you think?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

But at least he was still alive and cussing –
unlike Han.

Taking a life isn’t something to laugh about
or consider lightly. Fact of the matter, I’d aimed for Han’s
shoulder – and instead got him right between the eyes. Zeke’s
warning about firing under extreme duress echoed through my gray
matter a little too late for Han. Guess that meant it was time to
start hitting the shooting range again.

Numbness settled in my brain, and unlike the
rest of the body, I doubted it would send out little pinprick
signals when feeling returned. With my thoughts so dull, I had to
be in somewhat of a state of shock. At the moment, I was too busy
near the second ambulance to consider what I’d feel come morning. I
couldn’t even remember walking down from my apartment after they’d
carted Jimmy away – or what had happened with my gun.

The blue and red strobe effect of the police
lights might’ve helped scramble my senses as well. How many times
in as many months had the police shown up at my apartment to handle
a dead body? Two? First Amy. Then Bud. No, Han made it three.

Like my mom always said,
Lord have
mercy,
I’m going to need therapy when I wake up from this
nightmare.
I didn’t have much time to ponder the implications
of what had happened when a familiar face rounded the rear fender
of the ambulance where I perched on the bumper.

“Aw shit. Is that you again, Nancy Drew?”

“Aw shit,” I quipped in response. “Is that
you, Sherlock?”

“Let’s get this over with,” Duncan said,
sitting on the bumper beside me. “Who shot the vic?”

“Actually, I’m the vic here.”

“Come again?”

“Han pushed his way into my apartment and
started waving his gun around like a maniac,” I said with a flutter
of my hands. “He shot my purse, my phone, a perfectly good pillow,
and somehow managed to puncture that ridiculous door to shoot Jimmy
in the same arm as last time. I only acted in self-defense.”

The detective flipped over a fresh page in
his notebook and furiously jotted. “So you admit you shot the
vic?”

“In self-defense after he shot Jimmy,” I
reiterated.

“I’m gonna need to swipe your hands for
GSR.”

“What’s GSR?”

“It’s a fancy acronym real investigators use
for
gunshot residue
.”

“Oh.”

He pulled out a vial and swiped my trembling
hands with a moist Q-tip before dropping it into a bag, sealing and
writing on it, then passing the bag off to another tech like a
scene out of a crime show. The reality of the situation leaked into
my dulled brain like awakening in a fog from a bad dream – or in
this case a real-life nightmare. With awakening came freaked-out
concern.

“Where’s Reggie?” I asked, standing and
throwing off the blanket to search the area. A chill washed over me
like it was twenty degrees instead of a hundred and twenty.

“Relax,” Duncan said, pressing me to sit.
“Mr. von Braun is in the building superintendent’s apartment.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Gave his statement. I just need
to finish getting yours.”

His statement? What all would Reggie have
said? If I mentioned the blackmail, that would open up a whole
other can of worms and cause any number of headaches. All this had
started because of those stupid blackmail letters. But wait – the
blackmail letters had come about because Reggie had mentioned his
plans to sell the decorating business and retire. Hmm. The gears in
my brain started spinning again.

Bad sign, I know.

To protect my friend, I didn’t mention the
blackmail and instead kept my answers to Duncan’s questions short
and to the point. Focused on what had started this whole fiasco –
Reggie’s plans to sell the business to someone else. Then there was
that whole unrequited love angle Han had confessed. I knew
firsthand how those pesky feelings could make one a little
crazy.

Or a lot.

“Vickie!”

Speak of the devil. How was it that those
closest to me always had a front-row seat to my mental musings?
Duncan waved Zeke over, who reached us in three strides.

“Don’t say another word without a lawyer,”
Zeke instructed as he wrapped his warm arms around me and shot
Duncan a glare sure to burn a hole in his retinas. Couldn’t blame
him, after Duncan had played Zeke earlier that summer by trying to
pin Amy’s death on me.

“You sound like my parents,” I grumbled into
his chest.

“Take it easy, Ranger Taylor,” Duncan said.
“From the looks of things and the matching testimonies, it’ll be
classified as self-defense.” Duncan checked his notes one more time
before closing the pad and slipping it into his jacket pocket.
“We’ll be confiscating the Sig for ballistics.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” I
said.

“I’m serious, Vic,” Zeke said. “No more
talking.”

“That’s okay,” Duncan said. “I’m done
here.”

“Can I go back inside?” I asked.

Duncan gave me the once over. “If you need to
grab something, Ranger Taylor here will escort you. But you’ll have
to stay somewhere else for the next few nights until we can clear
the scene and close the case. And you might want to call in a
cleaning crew.”

Uh-oh. Bloodstain on the carpet where Han had
fallen. I didn’t think I could look. Oh man, what was Mom gonna say
after her extensive and very expensive renovations?

“Hey…um…Zeke?” I stammered.

“Yes, you can stay with me as long as you
need,” Zeke said as he led me between police vehicles toward the
front door of the building.

“Appreciate it, but that wasn’t what I was
gonna ask.”

“You want me to go upstairs and get your
stuff?”

I nodded. “And don’t forget Slinky. He’s
probably hiding on my bed under a mountain of pillows.”