Lesbian Assassins 4 Read online

  “Whatever.” She reached out. “My turn to drive—hand over the keys.”

  I considered, and decided I didn’t want lobster chowder that badly. “I have a few hours left in me.”

  “Jane.” She stopped and planted her feet, fists on hips. “I’ve been driving since the day I turned sixteen and not a single person has died yet. Quit being a wimp.”

  I was born a wimp. “It’s been a slow, easy day so far—can’t we keep it that way?”

  “Nope.” She reached into the pocket of my flannel shirt and snagged the keys, grinning. “I haven’t gotten to scare one single person yet today. Time to change that.”

  I so wished she wouldn’t try to do it with three thousand pounds of metal on wheels. “There has to be somebody nearby you can threaten to stab instead.”

  She glanced back at me, amused. “You volunteering?”

  It might be worth it. “There are innocents on these roads. Kids who plant bluebells and buy shiny balloons.”

  “I promise not to squish any small children.” She grinned and reached into her pocket for her beeping phone. “Assassin’s honor.”

  One glance at her screen and all good humor fled. I stood, stomach filled with dread, as she clicked and read for a very long time.

  When she finally looked up, her eyes were assassin grim. “Let’s go.”

  Not until she told me what had been on that screen. “What’s wrong?”

  She took a long, deep breath before she told me. “Turking’s back.”

  -o0o-

  “Just drive.”

  I drove. And for an hour, I said nothing. There are all kinds of katas in this world, and a lot of mine play out in the seat of a VW van.

  I knew where we were headed, and I knew why. East—toward big cities and the kind of Internet pipelines where Carly could hunt and have her trail deeply, thoroughly covered.

  You didn’t stalk Turking from a cow pasture or a motel at the side of the road. Not if you were my partner, anyhow—you stalked him on your turf. I glanced at a road sign as we passed. New York City in four hours. Five if we hit midnight traffic. I took a quick look at my partner, trying to gauge if she was ready to talk yet. And decided there was no real way to know until I tried. “What did the message say?”

  Carly was watching the same road signs I was. “To contact him. He left a number.”

  That was his standard M.O. It would be an untraceable burner cell. “I can talk to him this time.”

  “No.”

  I didn’t need to see her eyes to know the look in them.

  And I didn’t want her to look in mine and see the fear. James Turking is the scariest man I know—possibly the scariest human being. He isn’t one of those guys who does damage with his fists. He’s far too law abiding and lily white for that. He uses his words, and he uses them in this polite tone of voice that sounds almost reasonable until you realize he’s a psychopathic bastard who can convince almost anyone to stick their head in a blender and like it.

  His wife, Viv, got blenderized for fifteen long, awful years. Brainwashed at the hands of a master. The day we’d rescued her, she’d been down on her hands and knees measuring the blades of the grass she’d just cut, trying to meet his impossible standards.

  Two hours after her fourth miscarriage in two years.

  Getting her away from him had been one of our finest hours. Keeping her away did more to put us at risk than everything else we did combined.

  He hated us, because we broke the rules, because we won—and because we haven’t started measuring blades of grass.

  It was eight months since we’d heard from him last. I hated that he’d found us again—nobody reached Carly’s personal cell without her explicit permission. Not unless they could play the dark areas of the Internet better than my partner. Which was one of the many, many reasons I feared James Turking. This made the fourth time he’d beaten Carly’s electronic defenses.

  I could feel my hands trying to shake on the steering wheel. I remembered our last encounter with Turking all too well. He’d threatened Carly, just like he always does. He’s never been smart enough to threaten me. He knows I’m not nearly as dangerous as she is—and somehow, he’s never figured out just how much she loves me.

  I shivered, the cold reaching up through my gut and wrapping icy fingers around my heart. We needed to get to New York. So we could hide.

  And so Carly could hunt.

  -o0o-

  Carly looked at me, her finger hovering on the button on her phone. “Ready?”

  No, but I nodded anyhow. We needed to know if he had anything on Viv.

  She rang the number Turking had left, the loud rings echoing in the anonymous motel room where we’d chosen to make our first stand.

  “It’s about time you called.” He sounded displeased.

  “We don’t answer to you.” My partner sounded like polar-ice floes. “What do you want?”

  He paused a beat. “Oh, I think that message needs delivering in person.”

  I’d braced myself for exactly that demand—it always came—and still, it made me tremble. Psychopaths can smell fear, they feed on it. I’d never been able to hide mine well enough to keep him off the scent.

  We both stayed silent. Responding was playing his game.

  “I’ll be waiting at the Hudson Public Links clubhouse.” His words sounded clipped, annoyed. “10am tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

  If we were, it would be on purpose.

  “We might be able to work that in.” Carly sounded like she was buffing her fingernails.

  “See that you do.” Definitely annoyed. “Oh, and leave the knives at home. They frown on weapons at the golf course.”

  It was a precisely delivered, surgically aimed blow. One intended to maim my partner’s self-confidence, and to remind her just how useless her knives were with this man.

  You can’t scare a psychopath. They’re born without the genes for fear.

  I closed my eyes and sent up a ferocious prayer that she would remember just how many other weapons she had.

  “Oh, I don’t need knives, James.” My partner paused a beat of her own. “Even without them, I’ve always been too much for you to handle.”

  I cringed. She was drawing fire to herself—and I had no idea how to stop her.

  “We’ll see about that tomorrow.” The voice on the phone sounded far too sure of himself. “And Carly, darling? Be sure to read the dress code. They frown on a woman who displays her wares too freely.”

  I tried not to puke. That was the lowest of blows, from a man who knew every damn button to push.

  My partner only chuckled, low and sexy and mildly amused. “They let you in, James—their standards can’t be that high.”

  She pushed the button to hang up. Sat there just long enough for me to see her hands begin to shake. And then reached for her laptop.

  I exhaled, knowing the next steps of my life had just been cast in concrete. Tomorrow morning at ten sharp, we would be at Hudson Public Links, wearing whatever the fuck you wore to a golf course.

  Between now and then, Carly was going to crawl as far into Turking’s darkness as she could get. My job would be to sit vigil.

  And to make sure she came back out again.

  5

  Show time.

  I eyed Carly as we strolled up to the clubhouse door, remembering our first alleyway visit with the man who thought turning women into cowering cardboard cutouts was a fun game. Turking’s the kind of guy who should have been locked up eons ago—but he knows how to slink around inside the law well enough not to get caught.

  This would be the fourth time we’d met with him face-to-face since we set his wife free. And unless something had changed dramatically in the life of one scurvy asshole, it would be the fourth time we’d take whatever crap he threw at us in order to keep her free.

  All this to protect a woman who still had days when she wanted to go back to the soul-obliterating man we’d rescued her from. Fortunately, thos
e days were a lot fewer now. Slowly, surely, Vivian Turking healed. And every day that she did, my partner would put herself in the line of fire, because Turking was a man who still needed to hurt someone.

  He would never know what it cost Carly to let his blows land—but I did.

  Not that she would ever let it show. I looked over at her mile-high turquoise boots, butter-yellow dress, upswept hair, and a trench coat that could have walked off the streets of Paris and matched the boots. The dress code of the Hudson Public Links was probably rolling over in its grave, but Carly knew something James Turking didn’t.

  Beautiful women got in anywhere they wanted.

  She looked over at me and grinned. “Nice outfit.”

  Not all of us carried an entire department store’s worth of clothes in our road gear. I’d dug out a pair of serviceable khakis, a really ugly green shirt with a collar, and simple black windbreaker. “I’m just wallpaper.” I pulled open the door so she could make an appropriately spectacular entrance. We wanted Turking looking—the more drumbeats of this particular conversation we could dictate, the better.

  My partner surveyed the room, a black-and-white film star looking for her mark.

  Half the guys in the clubhouse would have happily volunteered.

  I stood a couple of feet behind her, well aware nobody would notice me. Measuring our audience. Looking for the man we’d come to see.

  He sat at a high bar table in the middle of the room, posture casual, a glass of what could only be whiskey in front of him. Eyes started turning his way as Carly strolled across the floor.

  He got up from his chair as we approached. A gentleman greeting his guests. Only his eyes made it a lie. “Ladies. Perhaps you’d like to take a stroll—there are some nice paths by the fairways.”

  He would want an audience—but not one with ears.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Carly was all elegant poise and velvet steel as she slid onto one of the bar-height chairs. She touched a turquoise-leather-clad calf. “These boots aren’t made for hiking. I believe I’ll just sit here with my drink and listen to whatever it is you have to say.”

  I took a seat, unnoticed by absolutely everyone.

  They were like two ferocious, deadly, smiling rattlesnakes. But I was horribly afraid his venom outmatched hers—it always had. My partner was far more than his match in guts, but there was no way for her to counter his total lack of humanity. James Turking didn’t have a conscience—and that made him the most dangerous creature I knew.

  I ignored the byplay as the two of them sized each other up, words flowing above and around and under my ball of fear. My only job was to try to hide it from the man sitting three feet from my left hand, looking smugger than I’d ever seen him.

  A little more verbal sparring as the combatants judged the lay of today’s land. Finally Carly glanced my way. “You bored yet, Jane?”

  There were a lot of names for the congealed sludge in my belly—bored wasn’t one of them. “Sure. Are we done listening to this asshole?”

  He looked over, as if noticing me for the first time. “I’m surprised she’s still with you.”

  I had no illusions he was talking to me.

  Carly’s hands stilled under the table. “Some of us manage to keep our associates for longer than a few months.”

  Carefully chosen words. Dimming my importance, my value. Poking at the rattlesnake who never stayed in one place more than a year—not since we’d spirited Viv away, anyhow. Turking was very good at first impressions, but it had been his wife who kept things from unraveling after that. I liked to think that people knew what pure evil smelled like, and eventually got smart enough to back away.

  Turking took a sip of his whiskey. “I notice that you’ve acquired a new associate.”

  The dread that had been freely circulating in my ribs iced over. Carly’s casual, slightly amused countenance didn’t change at all—but her eyes did.

  He watched the two of us, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips.

  “We work with lots of people.” My partner shrugged. “Most of them are very temporary.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d tired of Jane.” Turking carefully set down his glass. “I will say, though, I didn’t realize you had a taste for girls. Barely sixteen, isn’t she?”

  I didn’t see Carly move, not even a blur. I only saw her arrive. Her and the six-inch blade that hovered three hairs from piercing his heart.

  Telling Turking everything he needed to know. He was inches from being a dead man—and Lelo mattered.

  Because somehow, some awful terrible way, he had found the gaping vulnerability that we had let grow in the armor of who we were.

  He looked down at the knife in his ribs and smiled. “Lose it, sweetheart. We both know you won’t use it.”

  I wasn’t nearly as convinced of that as he was. Not this time.

  “There are a hundred people watching, and all of them have cell phones.” He sipped his whiskey again. “Put the knife away and I’ll tell you how I found your sidekick.”

  I willed Carly to listen. Turking wanted a victory, and this was one we could give him. We needed to keep him talking.

  Her eyes flashed, diamond hard—and then she smiled and laid the knife on the table in front of him. “How’d you find her?”

  His lips twitched slightly upward. “The Internet is a big place. And she’s not as careful as you are.”

  Carly was shaking her head. “No. You didn’t get to her online. I’d know.”

  “I’m better than you think I am.” He raised an eyebrow. “She matters to you, does she?”

  “Not really.” My partner shrugged an elegant, careless shoulder. “But mistakes matter. If she made one, I need to deal with her.”

  I willed my face to support her brilliant defense. Turking didn’t give a damn about anyone else who breathed—but he was an insane perfectionist. Carly had just thrown him a line he would find very easy to swallow.

  Lelo didn’t matter—just whatever screw-up she’d made.

  He studied my partner’s eyes for a while. “She has a chatty friend in Colorado. Goes by the name of Danno.”

  My brain filled with lethal, stabbing icicles.

  Carly raised a cool eyebrow. “You talked to an actual human being, James? I’m impressed.”

  I was anything but. It was a serious leveling up in Turking’s usual behavior, and a very dangerous one. We had helped a lot of people over the years. This was the first time he’d ever considered any of them useful. We’d relied on his utter contempt of women to keep us safe—and forgotten that sometimes we helped people with Y chromosomes too.

  I swallowed. The stakes had just changed, and for the infinitely worse. He had leverage now—we’d finally fucked up and given him some.

  Which meant we were in deep trouble. We would never give him Viv, not while we were alive and kicking. I leaned forward. “She’ll never be yours again, Turking. Not now, not ever.”

  He looked at me, tossed back the rest of his whiskey, and grinned. “Vivian? Who wants her? She’s probably a washed-up old hag by now anyhow.”

  I could feel my poker face utterly failing me.

  Carly kicked my shins under the table, hard, and ran a finger around the rim of Turking’s glass. “Then what exactly is it that you want?”

  “Oh, something far easier for you to give.” He waved his fingers, manor-born to peon, at the server. “A drink for the pretty lady. Nothing for the ugly one.”

  “Certainly, sir.” The peon backed away, eyes wide.

  Things were far too serious to stuff his whiskey up his nose, but every molecule of me wanted to. Which meant he was playing me like a freaking violin.

  Turking leaned against the back of his chair, pleasure in every movement. “I realized I’ve been making an error in judgment all these years.”

  Something stunk to high heaven. Psychopaths never think they’re wrong. This was headed somewhere far nastier than our heads in a blender. “More than on
e, I’d say.”

  He flicked off my feeble parry. “I had assumed that you would eventually see reason—that you understood enlightened self-interest, just like all evolved human beings.”

  Carly raised a bored eyebrow. “You’ve been doing too many crossword puzzles, James.”

  I did plenty of crossword puzzles. “You thought we would hand over Vivian to save our own hides.”

  “I did.” He inclined his head. “In that, I now believe I was mistaken.”

  There was no way this boded well, not with Lelo’s name hanging in the air over our heads. I didn’t wait for him to pull the pin out of that particular grenade. It’s not the noisy part of the rattlesnake that matters. “What do you want, Turking?”

  He looked at me like he’d found a used condom in his whiskey. “I was getting to that.”

  I didn’t have the patience to share his air very much longer. “Get there faster.”

  “Such impatience, Jane.” He tossed back the rest of the contents of his glass. “I imagine you’ll have to develop some soon. All that extra time you’ll have on your hands.”

  He’d lost me—and that was very bad. I looked at my partner and shrugged. “He making any sense to you?”

  She sipped the red, frothy thing the peon server had slid her way before he bolted. “Nope.”

  “It’s very simple, ladies.” A knot in Turking’s cheek jumped. “I want you to retire.”

  6

  Carly kept up her sedate pace as we walked away from the clubhouse, skirting outdoor tables, golf bags, and obsequious waters as we went. I walked beside her, every inch of me shaking and determined not to let Turking see.

  Which all changed the second we rounded the bend of dense trees that separated the clubhouse from the parking lot beyond. I grabbed her arm. “He’s never been a physical threat.” In fifteen years, not once had he laid a hand on Viv. It wasn’t how his particular breed of psychopath worked.

  Or at least, that was the feverish prayer I was sending up to whoever might be listening.