Lesbian Assassins Read online

  LESBIAN ASSASSINS

  © AUDREY FAYE 2014

  FIREWEED PUBLISHING LTD

  CHAPTER 1

  My partner was getting damn good at this—and the guy with a knife at his throat and his knees wallowing in a puddle of nasty alleyway gunk knew it.

  He stared at me, his face wearing the terrified confusion of a pair of Y-chromosomes who couldn’t believe a hot chick in sexy heels had his life in her hands.

  He should have thought of that before he followed Carly around the corner of Bregman’s Pub.

  I shrugged. My job was to be the straight man. Or straight woman in a flannel shirt, which most of these idiots seemed to think was more or less the same thing. “We need to talk to you.”

  “The fuck? You have my wallet—what else do you want?” His eyes were bulging now. I hoped Carly backed off a little—the last drunk guy she’d waved a knife at had shit his pants. Not that this alley was going to be winning an olfactory award anytime soon. I was going to be smelling eau de dead cat for days.

  My partner grinned at me from behind his left ear. “We don’t want your money, asshat. We’re here to talk about Melinda.”

  The blank look in his eyes had hot grease spewing in my belly. “Your wife? The woman you punch in the face on a regular basis?” Especially after a night at Bregman’s Pub.

  Confusion was ebbing now—and a slimy alcoholic bravado sliding into its place instead. “She’s clumsy. And a fat dump of a liar.”

  “Huh.” Carly jerked the knife at his throat. “I think I feel a bit of clumsy coming on myself.”

  I imagined eating his bowels for breakfast. “And I’m an excellent liar.”

  Terror stampeded back into the schmuck’s eyes. “What do you want?”

  I gave him points for smart. Most dumb-ass husbands kept lying at this point. “You have two choices. You can go back and treat Melinda like a goddess and be a decent father to your kids and never lay your fists on anyone breathing ever again.” I waited for the eye bulge. I loved the eye bulge. “Or you can run. We’ll give you an hour to clear out of town—” I did some quick mental math, “—and three to be across state lines.”

  “Seriously?” Carly had a great pouty face, which fortunately the loser in the puddle couldn’t see. “How come he gets two choices?”

  Because we weren’t convinced he was irredeemable. Some guys only got a one-way escort out of the state. I kept my eyes on the dickwad under her knife. “Because he has two kids, and a wife who, for some reason, still loves his sorry ass.”

  The idiot guy stiffened, face full of insult. “I’ve never hit my kids. Not once.”

  Because his wife put herself in the way of his fists. Carly’s fingers tightened on the knife. “Just Melinda, huh?”

  The dickwad somehow managed to shrug his shoulders. “I treat her okay.”

  “No, shithead.” I got up close, right in his face. Close enough to smell the terror and teeth that hadn’t been brushed for three days, worse even than the dead-cat smell seeping up his jeans. “You treat her like crap, and it ends now. Your opinion doesn’t matter anymore. Hers does. If she’s not happy, feeling respected and all that jazz, if you so much as sneeze wrong on your kids, we fulfill our contract.”

  His eyes nearly crossed, trying to watch both me and Carly’s knife hand at the same time. “What fucking contract?”

  I shrugged open my flannel shirt and stepped back so he could read the really big letters on my t-shirt.

  “Lesbian Assassins?” His eyes went way past bulging. “You’re going to kill me?”

  “Five-year contract. With terms.” Carly gave the knife a good wiggle and then slid out to the side.

  I knew she wanted to see his face. Needed to. I think most guys are idiots. Carly hates their guts. She’s got reasons.

  He stared at her t-shirt, same logo as mine. “You’re freaking assassins?”

  I aimed my best feral grin at him again and waited for his brain to catch all the way up.

  “Shit.” He lurched to his feet and then slid down a concrete wall, face turning pasty. “Melinda hired you to off me?”

  We didn’t answer. We didn’t need to. Which is good, because explaining women who still love guys they mostly want dead makes for long, confusing conversations. I kept quiet and watched our current asshole instead—and convinced myself that I saw the thing in his eyes I needed to see. Somewhere under all the idiot-dickwad-asshat crap lived a guy who maybe still loved his wife. We’d seen that make a difference before. Maybe it would again.

  Carly ran a finger along her blade and spoke very quietly. “You ever hit her again, we’ll know.”

  His head nodded slowly, a confused gyration between yes and no.

  Yeah. A smart dickwad, at least on the scale of the men we deal with. One who realized that the power of his fists had just been trumped.

  There are lots of people who think these guys can’t change, that respect and decency can’t be created overnight. They haven’t spent three minutes with us in an alleyway. “We’ll talk to Melinda. And we’ll be watching, so don’t even think about trying to get her to lie for you.”

  The gyration was steadying. One idiot, getting the message loud and clear.

  And one who hadn’t chosen to leave town. Some did. Maybe he’d actually pull this one out.

  If he didn’t—we’d be back.

  ~o~0~o~

  I added more hot water to the tub. Dead cat had washed off sometime during my fifteen-minute hot shower, but even an entire little hotel bottle of bubble bath later, I could still smell the asshole’s teeth.

  Maybe we should have added dental hygiene to his required list of good behavior.

  I swished the bubbles into random hills, knowing I washed off more than the alley stink. Stepping into our hardcore assassin personas had different effects on me and Carly. She’d be zinging for hours yet. I was exhausted—and trying to soak myself back into the skin of the quiet, reclusive woman in flannel.

  I was also trying not to think too hard about Melinda and her two scruffy-headed kids. It was tempting to hope. Her husband was absolutely an asshole, but he hadn’t slid all the way down into alcoholic yet. He hadn’t touched his two boys, and he went through stretches, one just a few months ago, where he acted like a decent guy. Maybe with the right incentive, he’d manage to be that guy more often.

  I grimaced at my misshapen little bubble mountains. In three years, I’d lost my rose-colored glasses. On the really good days, the edge of Carly’s knife changed lives, but we wouldn’t know for a long time yet if this had been one of those days.

  I sank down a little further into the bubbles and cocked an ear in my partner’s direction. I could hear the mad typing of her fingers on her laptop keyboard—zinging energy making itself useful. “You hacking the CIA or sending cute cat pictures to your sister?” With Carly, either was totally possible.

  “Neither. Answering our email.”

  The virtual face of the Lesbian Assassins. I was glad we had one—I hated email and Facebook and pretty much anything else that expected me to be social on a moment’s notice. “Anything interesting?”

  “The guy in Austin’s threatening to go to the cops.”

  I shrugged that one off. No one ever did. If you deserved to be at the end of Carly’s knife, cops were not your friends.

  “And a couple more nominees for slimecrawler of the year.”

  We were getting more of those lately. Once upon a time we’d had to seek out our assignments, but that rarely happened anymore. Either our underground cult status was getting bigger, or people were getting better at finding us. Maybe both. I leaned my head a little more toward the open door. Carly and I had a lot of bathtub-to-laptop conversations. “Anything urgent?”

>   “One cheating dirtbag, one who hasn’t sent child support in a year.”

  We’d fix the child-support thing first. “Has he got the money?” Some didn’t.

  “Yup.” I could hear the satisfaction in Carly’s voice. “Scumbucket dad’s salary almost doubled six months ago. Bet he didn’t mention that to his ex. I’ll transfer what he owes, set up automatic payments, and then send him a text.”

  I grinned. The texts had been my idea. It was amazing how many cheapskates started toeing the line when they got a text from a knife-toting lesbian who also appeared to have access to their bank accounts.

  Our version of Robin Hood, I guess. “Where’s that other guy? The cheater?”

  “Poughkeepsie.”

  My geography had gotten a whole lot better in the last few years. I closed my eyes briefly, trying to remember where we were now. Middle of Ohio. “That’s not too far. You verifying?” We’d learned—not all sob stories were actually true, and you can find out anything on the Internet, particularly if you have world-class hacking skills.

  “He checks into a hotel every Tuesday and Friday at lunchtime. An expensive one.” She snorted. “And orders champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries.”

  That sounded classier than the usual bang-by-the-hour joint—and it was pretty solid evidence, by our standards. But this, too, could probably be handled without a trip to the fine town of Poughkeepsie. Assuming it was worth making the effort. “First timer?” We needed some idea of whether he could walk the straight and narrow line of monogamy.

  “Hmmm. Don’t think so.” Carly’s voice had gone mumbly and distant. “He’s got a couple of forum IDs. I’m digging for the ones he doesn’t want me to know about.”

  I scooped bubbles onto the tops of my knees and watched them spill over. As a kid, I’d entertained myself this way for hours. These days, it was a good way to kill time while my partner broke the laws of several countries and found out what we needed to know.

  “Ha. Gotcha, asshole.”

  The Internet has lots of skeevy corners. I watched my knee bubbles slide and waited to find out which ones our strawberries-and-champagne dude spent his time in.

  “Yeesh—I must have missed some bank accounts. He’s got profiles on three dating sites. Really active ones. Let’s see.” The sound of eyes speed-reading lots of data. “According to date reviews, we have opera and banging, romantic-terrace lunch and banging, tennis and banging, and shoe shopping and banging. All in the last month. Sounds like he’s pretty good at the banging part.”

  God. “He’s hopeless.”

  “Yeah.” A pause, followed by a quiet sigh. “I’ll send her screen shots.”

  Some guys weren’t worth wasting a knife on, and we’d learned that it was a lot better for everyone involved just to say so right up front. Better a broken heart now than ten more years of trying to be married to this wormdung. But I knew that delivering that message was one of Carly’s least-favorite parts of the job. “I can do it.” I was capable of composing a basic email, barely—and it would save my partner’s heart some bruising.

  “’Kay, thanks. I’ll stick the stuff in your folder.”

  I smiled at my bubbles. I’d started helping Carly out the day we’d met, but it had taken the better part of two years for her to get comfortable with it.

  “Aww.” Now came hints of the marshmallow insides that very few people outside of this hotel room ever saw. “We got an email from Stacey. Pictures of Talia’s birthday party—the kid looks really happy. So does her mom.”

  That dirtbag hadn’t been given a stick-around choice. “Good.” Talia had been an adorable, squishy-cheeked toddler with a broken arm and haunted eyes. And a mom who had gone into hiding in her sister’s basement a year ago and sent us an email with a picture of a positive pregnancy test and one word. Help.

  We’d busted the transmission on our VW van getting that one done. “How’s the new baby?”

  “Stacey says she’s getting no sleep, and it’s a good thing Benji’s really cute because otherwise she’d sell him on Craigslist.” More smiles in Carly’s voice. “And Talia thinks he’s the best toy ever.”

  She might change her mind when he started crawling. But somewhere under the bubbles, my heart warmed anyhow. We didn’t save them all—just a few. But I treasured every last victory. Maybe Benji would grow up to be one of the good guys. “We should celebrate.”

  “’Kay.” Her blonde head poked around the bathroom door. “Sushi?”

  A hotel room most nights and raw fish for dinner. We’d come up in the world. A lot. “How about a crappy burger for old time’s sake?”

  She tried her pouty face again.

  I rolled my eyes and tossed some lavender-scented bubbles at her disappearing head. “Fine, but you have to find the sushi joint. I want one where the dude making the rolls can at least find Japan on a map.” If I had to eat raw fish, I wanted it somewhere on the authentic end of the scale.

  “Mmm. Remember that place in Washington, D.C.?”

  Oh, yeah. Some big do-gooder blogger had mentioned us in a post and launched us from two nobodies in a VW van to indie cult status. We’d sold four thousand t-shirts in less than four hours.

  And then we’d gone out and eaten some of the best raw fish I’d ever met.

  By the time we’d made it back to our van, we had several thousand more t-shirt orders and enough emails to keep fifty assassins working for weeks. Fortunately, Carly had figured out really quickly that plenty of dirtbags saw the light with just a quick text or two—kind of the assassin equivalent of “Don’t make me get up off this couch and come in there.”

  And fortunately for my sanity, it had quieted back down in a couple of weeks.

  On the Internet, fame rarely lasts even fifteen minutes.

  CHAPTER 2

  Only Carly could find a sushi joint that doubled as a country-and-western bar, complete with dudes in snakeskin boots, tight jeans, and beer-swilling attitudes.

  The kind of place I fit right in until you drop chopsticks into the mix.

  The person herding patrons to their seats headed our way, firing Carly a cheery grin as he arrived. “Cool shirt. Awesome name for a band.”

  We’d heard that one before. And just like always, it aimed a sneaky barb under my ribs at the heart I mostly claimed to no longer have. I clamped down—I wasn’t missing the music, dammit. Not tonight. I’d listen to the lost-my-horse-truck-and-girl trio playing in the corner, eat my sushi, and remember what I was now.

  Well, what I am now is fairly complicated. But songwriter isn’t on the list.

  Carly was making the kind of small talk she’s really good at. Pretty much nobody tries to chat me up these days. I don’t know if it’s the flannel shirt, the permanent scowl, or the bombshell company I keep, but I’ll take it—I hate small talk.

  We got ushered into a quiet booth in the back, close to the trio, who were pretty good if you ignored the crappy equipment they played on. The skinny man on guitar had some moves. The guy on bass was mostly earnest, but their lead singer had a nice voice and knew how to use it.

  I’d known how to use mine, once.

  A warm hand settled on top of mine. Carly, following my thoughts better than she usually did. “We can go somewhere else if you want. Or get piss drunk and sing backup.”

  I was very sure I didn’t want to tie one on over fake crab rolls and edamame beans. And even more sure nobody wanted to hear my partner-in-crime sing. “Nah, it’s okay.” I ducked the sympathy in her eyes. I didn’t always—not anymore—but tonight wasn’t a time for remembering. “Let’s order and figure out if we’re headed to Poughkeepsie next or what.”

  That distracted her like I knew it would. Figuring out how to use our time and road miles efficiently is one of Carly’s prime motivations in life. I’m pretty sure that if she dies, she’ll come back as the mother of all daytimers, or whatever the computer version of those are called nowadays. She loves an obnoxiously detailed plan like nobody else I know.
Almost never bothers to stick with them, but that’s a different story.

  Some therapist on a couch would have a field day with both of us. Which will happen long after Carly reincarnates as a daytimer.

  I used to sing about my feelings. Now I just stuff them in a bottle somewhere and pretend they don’t exist. The people who think that can’t be done clearly need a bigger bottle or a badass cork.

  The trio had moved on to something croony and sad. I ignored the words—the guitar riffs were plenty hard on my mongo corked bottle. I’ve always been a sucker for a really melancholy minor third.

  Carly was still watching me over the edge of what passed for a menu in this joint. Pretending not to, because she respects privacy better than most. But she’s also got a really soft heart underneath the knives and other deadly hardware, and she loves the hell out of me, for reasons that have never been entirely clear. “I’m okay. You want California rolls, or should we be brave and try the chef’s special?”

  She glanced over at the bar that did sushi and beer duty. The dude with the big knife had on a cowboy hat, but he didn’t look Texan. She grinned and called out something in garbled Japanese.

  He looked up, eyes flaring in astonishment as he realized who had spoken, and fired off a rapid list of sounds I assumed was a question.

  Carly shrugged apologetically, eyes twinkling. “Sorry—I only know how to say a couple of things, and the rest of them are mostly swear words. Can you work up two of the specials for us? Or anything else good?”

  Now what came back was pure Southern twang. “Can do, cutie. You like eel?”

  Only about three people in the world had ever called my partner “cutie” and lived. I was pretty sure this guy was going to be the fourth, though. I watched as Carly danced over to the bar to flirt us into a really good dinner, every eye in the bar following her. They always did, no matter how big the print on her t-shirt was.

  The ones who could read cast eyes my direction and then clearly discarded the possibility that the sexy hot chick warmed my bed. Which she didn’t, at least not in the way they imagined. I did my job and scowled at them all. If I didn’t, some idiot would try to hit on Carly sooner or later, and the sushi guy had really big knives in easy reach. There was just no way that would end well.