Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) (25 page)

“The camera only shows a hand, no faces through the tinted windows. I’ll discount that one. I backed up the transaction list to a USB drive,” he said cluelessly.
“It will keep. Interesting the amount of money that goes through that little branch bank.”

“I don’t advise taking up bank robbery,” I warned dryly. “I suppose there’s no chance you’ll give me the information in advance,” I proposed, since he didn’t seem to be focusing on me and my problems. “It’s in the interest of justice for those kids who got run over.”

Boris was just registering my suggestion when Milo leaped, growling, to a chair, then onto one of the tables, and glared at the door.

“What’s wrong with your cat?” Boris asked.

“Don’t know, but maybe you and Sarah want to go in back—now.” I started gathering up the money and tucking it into my bag as the other two scarpered. I didn’t have my handcuffs anymore, and the memory of why had the hackles on the back of my neck rising.

Goons, being goons, probably didn’t take lightly to having their expensive Escalades and surveillance equipment stolen, if they’d guessed I’d done the job.

The front door slammed open before I had time to lock the bag and grab Milo. Holding up nasty-looking guns with long barrels, two hulking suits in black entered, swinging their weapons back and forth to intimidate an audience of me and cat.

Bullies endangering friends, pets, and my place of employment guaranteed the Red Haze of Fury wiping out logic cells and casting me into motion. I had time to hurl a bottle of vodka and duck before Milo performed his Mighty Cat act and leaped for the Asian guy, who had the ugliest mug.

The vodka bottle clipped the crew-cut skull of the blond goon, and he swore as it broke and filled the air with alcohol fumes. I tamped down thoughts of fire as quickly as they occurred, as a precaution. I really didn’t want to burn down my workplace. I tucked my reading glasses safely on a shelf and tensed, waiting for their next move.

Ugly Mug screamed as cat claws gouged his jaw and Milo took a bite of something tender.

A shot hit the row of tumblers hanging above my head and glass shattered around me.

“Mary Justine Clancy, you’re under arrest—come out now and no one will get hurt!” shouted the one
not
screaming like a little girl.

Like I was handing myself over to just anyone who shot at me! “Badges, gentlemen,” I called saccharinely. “Lay them on the counter.”

Okay, mocking them was asking for trouble, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t make a run for it without Milo. Heck, I couldn’t leave at all without risking being shot. It wasn’t as if Chesty’s had any walls to hide behind. The bar formed a low, open island in the middle of the room. I might have vaulted over the back counter and dashed across the stage, except I figured these guns were big enough to hit a target across half the state.

I couldn’t see Milo from beneath the bar, but I could hear him growling and Ugly Mug cursing, probably trying to pry cat claws out of skin. Cats don’t come when called, so there wasn’t any reason to reveal my anxiety for him. The thugs would just use
Milo against me. I’d learned a lot about bullies in my growing-up years.

Two more shots rang out and more glass rained down. As if that was a signal, the door from the kitchen hall slammed open, and a parade of people straggled out, hands over their heads. Boris was first, wearing a terrified chimp around his neck. The kitchen staff followed. I glanced in incredulity at the horde of black-suited men holding vicious-looking weapons shooing them forward.

“For me, boys?” I cried in incredulity. “Gee, you shouldn’t have.”

If this was Max’s family at work, then I seriously believed they’d killed him. These goons looked like mafia. They’d had plenty of opportunity to take me out, but I was beginning to suspect they wanted me for other reasons and needed me alive. I didn’t want to find out why.

I checked, but Andre wasn’t among their captives. Just the meek, mild, and terrified. Jerkwads, threatening the innocent. Justice juice rampaged through my veins, obliterating any last semblance of logic.

“They haven’t shown any badges!” I shouted, just to make everything clear. I wanted witnesses that I really wasn’t under arrest.

The red rage was escalating, but I was beginning to recognize that anger was a trigger for weirdness, and I was determined to keep it in check. I didn’t want any more people dying on my watch, so I rose from behind the bar, hands on top of my head.

Visualizing tornadoes and exploding tires wouldn’t help me this time. I located Milo, who I swear had grown to twice his size and was trying to rip off Ugly’s ear. The moron was batting around his gun, unable to maintain a good grip on both cat and weapon. He’d kill us all if he had the safety off.

“Milo!” I shouted. “You’ll get us killed. Jump down from there.”

He howled a mighty howl and instead of doing as told, leaped to the head of Blondie. The cat’s newly gained bulk nearly knocked the thug over. Startled, Blondie shot off a round that took out a dangling ceiling light.

Fine, if no one was coming out of this alive, I could channel Dean Martin in
Rio Bravo
. I liked a good joke as well as anyone.

“Duck, everybody,” I yelled, vaulting over the bar and swinging my spike heels high and wide at the same time. Damned good thing I was wearing leather and spandex. My shoe connected with the wrist of the blond brute, the one wearing vodka perfume and a cat hat. He lost his grip on his weapon and it spun across tables and underneath a booth. Milo leaped back to Ugly Mug, tackling his gun arm this time—my cat learned quickly.

I was counting on the thugs in back not daring to aim at me for fear of taking out their partners. Stupid, maybe, but what did I know about gangsters?

Instead of intelligently grabbing my ankle when I lunged, my victim grabbed his bruised arm in insulting
disbelief. Obviously, he hadn’t paid attention in tae kwon do. That mistake gave me time to regain my footing and practice a little kickboxing.

While he was whining, I swung and nailed his balls with the spike of my shoe. He crumpled in half while the kitchen staff squealed and more shots whizzed over my head, nearly giving me heart failure. Milo had Ugly’s arm ripped to the bone and wasn’t letting go no matter how much the guy jiggled and screamed. I
know
my cute kitty had reached bobcat size to perform this miracle.

With gunfire ringing in my ears, I wasn’t precisely calm or thinking clearly. I just wanted to keep anyone from getting killed. Insanely, while rolling under a booth table so I’d have my back to the wall, I envisioned a downpour sweeping the shooters off their feet.

To my utter astonishment, the sprinkler system not only kicked in but burst pipes in its eagerness to flood the place.
Freaking awesome! Saturn, be my daddy if this is what you can do
.

Figuring I had only this one chance at seizing the moment, I rolled out from behind my table shield, grabbed a chair, and ran like a berserker at the perps holding my friends hostage. At the same time, the front door slammed open again, and I heard an official-sounding shout—something about halting in the name of the law.

Schwartz
. Three cheers for the marshal, but I wasn’t placing any bets on the cavalry arriving.

I didn’t hesitate but swiped the lemon knife from
the counter as I raced past the bar. Against guns, it wasn’t much, but I could hope the flood would dampen their weapons. Not that I know anything about guns except what I’d seen in cowboy movies. I had a notion these were slightly different from old-fashioned Colts.

White-coated cooks knew to fear knife-wielding crazies. They scrambled out of my way, hats flying. The chimp squealed and leaped to the head of one of the jerkwads with guns. He swung his weapon high in shock when Sarah’s foot-paw-toes-whatever wrenched his necktie, and she plastered her belly on his face. His high-pitched scream of terror was nerve-wracking.

“
Don’t kill him, Sarah!
” I shouted senselessly.

She wrapped her paws around the goon’s neck and started shaking his head loose. So much for obedience, but I didn’t have time to bring her down. I went after a black dude with a gun at Boris’s temple. The Geek had lost his Coke-bottle glasses and twitched nervously while the guy holding him debated a course of action. With Milo eating one of the goon’s pals, Blondie rolling on the floor with spiked balls, a third being smothered by a chimp, and Schwartz coming at them in uniform, gun upraised, through a drenching downpour, Boris’s captor had cause to worry about his health. I doubt my paring knife figured into the equation, but unlike murderous Sarah, I made it a point to halt short of decapitating anyone.

Into the deluge roared Andre, bursting out of the kitchen carrying what appeared to be an assault weapon very much like the ones the troops carried
in Iraq. His roar alone was sufficient to cause Boris to drop in a dead faint, dragging his captor halfway down with him.

After that, life got a little confusing. Andre rattled off a round to prove he meant business. Boris’s goon dodged, dropped the Geek’s deadweight, and leaped behind me, out of the way of my paring knife and assault chair. Grabbing me by the neck, he jerked my head back and no doubt thought he’d use me as a shield to make his escape.

Andre laughed. With good reason, I suppose.

My captor wasn’t tall and I was wearing five-inch heels. I stood on my toes and slammed my head back, breaking cartilage. Blood spurted. Not caring that the hold on my neck was already loosened, I jammed my iron-spiked heel down on his arch, missing leather and connecting directly with all those sweet little bones that hurt like hell when crushed.

Action was happening elsewhere but I could only be in one place at a time. Milo screeched his earsplitting howl. Sarah’s victim slumped to the floor with her paws around his throat. Andre shouted something about me halting the water as he whacked a spare thug with the length of his barrel. By not using bullets, he presumably protected his building from further collateral damage. His weapon had practically taken out walls once already.

I liked my image of black suits washing away in a flood, but sprinkler systems had limitations, and most of the villains were either on the run or ready for an ambulance. I’d have to work out the logic of
my visionary processes some other time. Swinging around, I let off steaming anger juice by grabbing the dude who had tried to hold me hostage and kneeing him while envisioning dryness. By damn, it worked, too. The pipes stopped raining water down on us.

I think it took a moment or two before the adrenaline-high crowd realized we were winning. Jimmy Jones grabbed a butcher knife and chased one of the suits out the back door. Schwartz collared Blondie and Ugly Mug. Sarah’s victim looked kind of blue and wasn’t going anywhere. If she’d spoken the truth earlier, she might be up for another infernal award.

Andre had his automatic pointed in the face of the guy who’d dared to grab me. The rest had split.

With the sprinklers off, we wiped our faces and looked around at the damage in awe.

Ernesto stepped out of his office, white-faced, phone to his ear. “I called the cops.”

Andre reached out and dragged me back to earth before I could fly through the air and rip off the cowardly bastard’s face.

W
hile Schwartz and the walrus-mustached Officer Leibowitz handcuffed two hulking, silent, and injured suits, medics bandaged the arm of a third and carried off a fourth on a stretcher with a sheet across his face. None of us had a good idea how many had escaped. More men in blue warily entered, and Ernesto set his kitchen staff to cleaning up. Sarah in either form had disappeared. And so had my cash deposit.

Swearing, I hunted all around the bar, but my bag and all its contents were gone.
Again
. Should I find
this dipshit thief, I’d personally wring his wretched neck. Maybe I’d ask for better eyesight as my reward for sending him to hell. That seemed fitting. X-ray vision, maybe.

“Clancy! Into my office,” Andre shouted above the uproar.

“You don’t have an office,” I said sourly, gathering Milo into my arms and hugging him. He was kitty-size again, but I knew what I’d seen. He was a mutant, just like me.

I was a mutant.
I could drench villains with sprinkler systems and blow up their tires—in the Zone, anyway. I wondered if I could only assault bad guys or if anyone could suffer from my temper. I shivered in my wet shirt and wanted to crawl in a hole. Andre’s summons did not register in my new misery. He was looking unusually faded, anyway. I figured he wouldn’t kill me anytime soon.

The cops were looking for bullet holes in the ceiling to explain the sprinkler system failure. I didn’t disillusion them, although I could have pointed out that bullet-shot sprinklers didn’t usually turn themselves off. Water was mysteriously dissipating, but the Zone could have been thirsty for all I knew.

Boris the Geek sat up, looking sheepish. One of the crew had found his glasses, and I handed him a bar towel to dry them off. He tested them, then dug into his pocket to produce a thumb drive. “Maybe you better keep this. I’ll take payment whenever you have it. What’s with the chimp girl?”