Drop Dead, Gorgeous! Read online

  “I’m sorry,” she said at once. “That’s pretty bad.”

  “Well.” He sounded slightly embarrassed. “I just wanted to say.”

  “I’m glad you said. I guess you miss them. You haven’t seen them in all this time—”

  “I went undercover to get away from them.”

  “I can relate. I don’t miss mine.”

  “Liar,” he said, and she bit her lip to stop the tears.

  Chapter 32

  “All that I thought was good and decent has been perverted,” she commented, watching him crack the lock to the Funhouse.

  “You have to admit, it’s a real good idea. Who’d ever look here for the Snakepit?”

  “I was talking about sex in the Reptile House, but breaking into the Funhouse to check on the bad guys is right up there.”

  “It’s one of the few hot spots I didn’t blow up,” he said, as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. “I just want to check on their progress, scope the rest of the park.”

  “It seems like we’ve been in this place for hours.”

  “We have.”

  “That explains it, then.”

  She followed him inside, and when the door clanked shut behind them, he did something to the metal box in the entryway and suddenly the place was flooded with light.

  She saw a petite blonde staring at her and almost screeched. Then realized there were twenty petite blondes, and twenty Kevins.

  “Fucking Funhouse mirrors,” she muttered.

  “That’s no way for a lady to talk,” he teased.

  “I’m on the ragged edge, here. The fun drained out of this little party about half an hour ago.”

  He didn’t reply (what was there to say?), so she followed him through the mirrors, past the zigzag walls, and ducked as they went into a tunnel painted in wavy pastel shades.

  “I’ve mentioned the general perversion of innocence, right?” she asked, more to hear herself talk than anything else. It was creepy in here, and that was a fact.

  He didn’t answer, perhaps sensing that she was talking to herself rather than him. He stepped up a small set of wiggling stairs, hit a spot on the wall, and flipped the wooden strongman cutout around, revealing a small bank of cameras and several switches.

  “It’s safe to have the lights on?”

  “No windows leading to the outside,” he replied absently, squinting at the cameras. “Six of one, half-dozen of th’other if the lights are on or off.”

  “Oh.”

  He blinked and said, surprised, “It doesn’t look like anybody’s looking for us.”

  “Maybe they’re all in the main building. Having an evil conference, or whatever.”

  “Maybe.” He clearly had his doubts. “There’s a routine patrol on the south end—we can avoid them easily enough. But the guards are missing from the north gate.”

  “Trap?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You said you were keeping them busy. Maybe they’re trying to get things built back up.”

  “Yeah, there’s only a couple dozen of us. Kinda what I was counting on. It just seems a little too neat, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but you’ve been one step ahead of them so far.”

  “Yup, I s’pose. Nothing to brag on for me, though—they aren’t used to any kind of resistance, never mind one of their own causing trouble. Charmer keeps everybody in line.”

  “I’m sure.” She added, “And you were never one of them.”

  That seemed to please him; at least, he smiled. “Let’s make tracks sooner rather than later.”

  She followed him back through the silly tunnel and the maze of mirrors (she saw her messy hair and dirty blouse, times twenty). Kevin was practically bouncing along, pulling her by the hand and humming some song under his breath. After a minute, she placed it: “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

  “We can move a lot faster now,” he said, immensely cheered. “We’ll be past the border by sunup.”

  “Iowa: land of evil splinter cells. Who would have thought I’d be so glad to see the rural border metropolis of Albert Lea?”

  “This whole day’s been ‘who would have thought.’”

  “You have a point there, dearest.”

  He snorted. “Dearest.”

  “Dearest darling? Honey? Sweetie-pie? Darling? Sugar-lump? Noogums?”

  “Never, ever that last one.”

  “Okay, fair enough.”

  He popped the lights back off and they emerged into the cool summer dark. Hand in hand, they moved past the Iowan Tourism building, the 4-H barns, the show rings, the agriculture building, the—

  “Wait,” Kevin said, at almost the exact same time that a brittle voice came from the shadows of the Swine Barn.

  “You didn’t really think you had gotten away from me, did you?”

  Chapter 33

  Kevin already had his gun out and Jenny was groping herself to find a weapon, any weapon—maybe she could pull a button off her blouse and sharpen it? Throw her shoe? Fart?

  “Better not, Charmer. It’s just easier to let us go.”

  “Easier than what?”

  “Than getting shot.”

  “You’re assuming I don’t have ten people pointing guns at you right now.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m assuming that.”

  Charmer stepped out where they could see her. “For the record, I have been tracking you since your escape from the cell.”

  “All part of your sinister plan, huh?” Jenny asked.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you just—let it all happen?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “All right then, how did you get in front of us?”

  “I took a Jeep, idiot.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you want to know how I knew where you were going?”

  Jenny set her mind to it and figured it out, her heart—galloping briskly in her chest from the fright—starting to slow a bit. “I assume you have some secret minicams that Kevin couldn’t get to, or didn’t blow up.”

  Charmer looked disappointed. “Well, yes.”

  Kevin holstered his gun. Charmer seemed indifferent, but Jenny relaxed a little. Apparently there would be no shooting. That was fine. It had been a long damn day and she wasn’t in the mood to dodge bullets. Though she wouldn’t mind seeing Charmer dodge a few.

  “So what happens now?” he asked.

  “You kidnap me, use me for safe passage out of the grounds, and bring me back to O.S.I.”

  Jenny looked at Kevin, who was looking at her. They both looked at Charmer, who was shifting her weight from foot to foot as she waited for their answer. She’d changed from her severe suit to black pants and a black turtleneck. Black tennis shoes. Her hair was pulled back, making her narrow face seem almost skull-like in the gloom.

  “You want to be kidnapped?” Jenny finally asked.

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “But—you want to go with us?”

  “You want to get home without being perforated by various rifles?”

  “But—why?”

  “Change of scenery?” Charmer suggested.

  “Come on, Charmer. What are you really up to?”

  “What?” She managed to sound wounded and almost—but not quite—innocent. “I can’t keep secret tabs on you as you betray me and escape, follow you and give myself up, without you making a big thing about it?”

  “Cripes,” Kevin muttered. He turned to Jenny. “You realize it’s some sort of elaborate trick.”

  “I assumed,” she replied.

  “So we take her with us or we don’t.”

  “I’m really curious about what happens next,” she admitted. “So let’s take her.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Charmer said.

  “Shut up. She could see that things have gone bad. She’s crazy, but not dumb.”

  “You’re half right,” Charmer said cheerfully.

  They ignored her. “You
’re saying,” Kevin said, “this might be her way out—leave somebody else holding the bag while she beats feet for the hills?”

  “I would never.”

  “Shut up.”

  “She’s let us get this far,” Jenny said.

  “Yup, she did.”

  “The operative word,” Charmer couldn’t resist saying, “being let.”

  “You said yourself this was all a little too easy. Let’s just cuff her, bring her along, and see what she’s up to.”

  “I can hear everything, you know.”

  “Shut up,” they said in unison.

  Chapter 34

  The walk to the exit was smooth sailing. Charmer plodded along behind them, still sulking after Kevin had frisked her. The moon was out. There was a light breeze in the air, and since all the animals were gone, the breeze was actually pleasant.

  “You snuck all the way out here and couldn’t have brought your Jeep?” Jenny asked at one point.

  “And have Stone panic and shoot out the tires when I got too close? I can’t handle that kind of stress at my age.”

  “You’re about my age,” Kevin commented.

  “Well, then, maybe you shouldn’t try to handle that level of stress, either,” Charmer said cheerfully. “How are you driving back to O.S.I.?”

  “Uh—”

  “We’re not walking all the way to Minneapolis?” she asked sharply.

  “Look, this is freaking me out a little. You’re supposed to be shooting at us or giving orders to someone to shoot at us or watching us leave on a monitor and cursing us.”

  “Or muddling around in the chaos of blown-up circuitry and such in the main building, shouting useless orders as we make our escape,” Jenny added.

  “Right,” Kevin said. “Not hopping along for the ride and asking what the plan is.”

  “I told you,” she said, sounding wounded. “You’re kidnapping me. None of this is my idea.”

  “You’re really nuts,” Jenny said. “Or you’re a psychopathic liar. Either way: bad guy.”

  “Nuts is in the eye of the beholder. And you didn’t answer my question. How are we getting to Minneapolis?”

  “I’ll cross that bridge later.”

  Jenny thought about it. He’d either made plans to rendezvous with someone, stashed a car, or had plans to steal one.

  The first choice was unlikely, as he couldn’t have known when he’d escape. The second option was also unlikely, as a member of the Snakepit could have found the empty vehicle and asked embarrassing questions. So it was probably the third. She hoped he had a plan to avoid incarceration for grand theft auto.

  “Fine,” Charmer was pouting, “don’t tell me.”

  “I won’t,” he replied, sounding aggrieved. She couldn’t blame him. The whole thing was beyond bizarre.

  “Gates,” Charmer said. “Sadly, the men who usually guard this entrance were diverted.”

  “That is sad. What are you up to? Are you a double agent, too?”

  “A traitor to my team, you mean?”

  “Double agent,” Kevin said sharply.

  “You promised to obey my orders and fulfill any needs the organization needed,” Charmer reminded him. “Which was a lie. What’s worse, showing up planning to lie and desert, or changing your mind halfway, and then deserting?”

  “Oh, knock it off,” Jenny snapped. “You’re running an insane asylum whose residents run around destroying and hijacking and raping, so don’t go all wounded and sanctimonious. Let’s get one thing straight: Kevin and I are the good guys. You’re the bad guy.”

  “Semantics,” she sniffed.

  The gate was unlocked, just adding to the general surreal situation. There was a hybrid SUV idling in the distance, and as they stepped into the pool of light cast by the lone streetlight, the vehicle revved up, screeched in reverse, and shuddered to a stop four feet from Kevin.

  The window slid down and Jenny was shocked to see Dmitri in the driver’s seat, Caitlyn waving at them from the passenger side. “What are you waiting for?” she cried. “Hop in, dopes!”

  They hopped. There was plenty of room in the back for the three of them to sit abreast.

  “Did you know we can home in on your cell phone signal, even when it’s off?” Dmitri asked in a ‘did you know it might not rain tomorrow’ tone of voice.

  Jenny laughed. “I knew I hung around you guys for a reason.”

  “So,” Caitlyn said brightly. Jenny noticed that in the day she’d been gone, her friend had dyed her hair from dark red to platinum. “Who’s your little friend?”

  Chapter 35

  “This is extremely weird,” Caitlyn said, running her ID through the box and waiting for the elevator. “We send Jenn and Kevin off to the Pit to get intel, Jenny poses as someone with access to info they want, and now you bring back someone for us to interrogate.”

  “Is that your job?” Charmer asked with poisonous sweetness. “To recap?”

  Dmitri smothered a laugh, earning a withering look from his wife. “What’s interesting is the lady seems to be telling the truth. Her vitals are like rocks.”

  “You must be one of the cyborgs,” Charmer said. “We’ve been looking for you—even a photo of you—for years.”

  “Please,” Dmitri said, courteously allowing her to precede him into the elevator. “I prefer the term nano-enhanced.”

  “Whatever you’re up to, Charmer, the jig’s about up,” Jenny said. “Don’t you want to tell us before we drag it out of you?”

  “No.”

  “No Dr. Loman in this place,” Kevin added as the doors slid shut and the elevator slid smoothly upward. “But we can still be persuasive.”

  Charmer paused in the hallway, making them all wait for her. “Sidewinder—can I still call you Sidewinder?—you haven’t persuaded me of a damn thing in four years. Including what you’ve always been up to.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything in response. His face turned gray, and Jenny and everyone else understood why from the start: his mission four years ago had been for nothing, since he had never fooled the people he thought he had fooled.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “Guess I’m not the smart one in the family after all.”

  She felt her cheeks flush as Charmer turned to her.

  “And you. What’s your story? Newly recruited into the O.S.I., a fresh, young piece of ass who desires adventure, a Jennifer Garner wannabe? Obviously you’re not a run-of-the-mill secretary.”

  Jenny slapped the bitch. She couldn’t help herself—Charmer had hurt Kevin, and made him waste four years of his life. It was almost shameful, how good it felt. Charmer’s head shot to the side and Jenny’s palm went numb. She didn’t care if her hand fell off. Nothing had ever felt so good. “No secretary is run-of-the-mill, you whore!”

  “Ladies, ladies,” Dmitri said with a small smile. Jenn noticed he made no move to stop her, though he could have, easily. All of them could have stopped her, for that matter.

  Even Charmer, which was something to think about.

  “Last chance to talk, Charmer,” Caitlyn said as the doors opened, revealing the executive floor.

  “For what? Don’t talk to me, you bleached freak.”

  “Hey!” Caitlyn said sharply. “I am not bleached. The color you see is a sampling of high-quality highlights and a mixture of—”

  “And she’s not a freak, either,” Jenny said loyally.

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Dmitri said, his mouth gone thin with dislike. “What a pity to be relieved of your company, Charmer.”

  “What’s it like being a zombie run by machines?” Charmer asked with what appeared to be honest curiosity. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

  “I bet all the boys were crazy about you in school,” Caitlyn said. “With your split ends that matched your personality, and all that.”

  Charmer opened her mouth to respond, but closed it as Dmitri waved his palm in front of the sensory device on the wall and the door slid open, r
evealing a small front office, which was empty.

  As if there had been a truce, the five of them silently walked through the small office and into the larger executive suite. Kevin still looked like he might throw up, and his hand was straying dangerously close to his sidearm, but he seemed to be keeping a lid on things, for which Jenny was grateful, and admiring.

  The Boss was waiting for them. When he saw Charmer his eyes narrowed and his grip tightened on the coffee cup, but he said nothing.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “It’s great to see you again, you fucking asshole from hell.”

  Chapter 36

  Father issues! Jenny couldn’t get over it. It was an hour later, she was in Kevin’s safe house, it was all over, and she still couldn’t get over it.

  The Snakepit had been a sort of twisted therapy of sorts, the Charmer had revealed to them in the brief moments she had before The Boss had shooed the rest of them out of his office. Jenny couldn’t catch the exact details—but it didn’t matter.

  Whether she was trying to prove something to herself, or to him, or just following a conscience gone insane in an attempt to heal herself from some slight in her youth, she had caused untold devastation through her misapplied genius.

  And now she had come home, when it all fell apart. Just like so many children do, when things go wrong and they have nowhere else to turn.

  Jenny stopped her furious pacing in the cramped living room and turned to Kevin. “I just can’t believe it!”

  “Sweetie, I know. You’ve been saying.” Kevin was sprawled on the couch, watching her with a grin.

  “Why would she come back home? Why would she think she could come back? It’s ridiculous! She’ll be in jail the rest of her life, and her father will still hate her! The hell?”

  “It’s a mystery, all right,” he agreed.

  She whirled on him. “Isn’t this bugging the hell out of you?”

  “Honey, I’m just glad to be out.” He swung his booted feet up onto the ready-to-crack coffee table. “The tech weenies are going over the discs I took out, we’re out. And I’m glad you’re okay. The rest is just—shit.”