The Dame Did It Read online

  Killingsworth crossed around to the driver’s side of the Mustang and opened the door for Blackheart. “He’s a good storyteller, but I prefer my cash cold and hard—not pie in the sky.”

  “You’re a smart cookie, Killingsworth.” Once Hardwick saw Blackheart emerge from the Mustang he picked up his phone.

  Killingsworth’s eyes narrowed behind the screen of her sunglasses. “Who you calling, Hardwick?”

  “You want your money, right?”

  “You know it,” replied Killingsworth.

  “You have a reputation as a woman of your word, Killingsworth, but I understand that there have been imposters who used your name in the past. So, I thought it wise to keep the money separately, until I could confirm that you had Blackheart.”

  “Just how far away is my hundred grand?” asked Killingsworth.

  Hardwick spoke a few terse words into his phone and broke the connection. “It will be here in two minutes. Why don’t you send Blackheart over here to keep me company, in the meantime?”

  Killingsworth stood a step behind Blackheart, now, just a shadow in his hulking frame. “When hell freezes over, Hardwick. You’ll get Blackheart the instant I get my hundred large, and not a moment before that.”

  Hardwick shrugged. “Have it your way, Killingsworth. I’m just trying to expedite the process.”

  Killingsworth was armed with the pistol she had stolen from the prison guard, as well as two Colt .45’s which were tucked behind her vest in the small of her back. It made for uncomfortable driving, but she hadn’t dared remove them with Blackheart grasping at any possible means of escape.

  “I’ve behaved myself,” muttered Blackheart. “Can I get that key now?”

  “After I get my payment,” said Killingworth, “and not a moment before.”

  Blackheart bit at his lower lip. “That’s Eddie Gaines, over there with the UZI. He’s cozy with a stacked bomb-maker named Frampton. Never see ’em apart.”

  “Gia Frampton?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s her name.”

  “So why bring her up, Big Boy? You trying to make me jealous?”

  “Nah, it’s just that I’ve literally never seen one of them without seeing the other one. We called ’em the Siamese Twins.”

  “I worked with Gia on a job about three years ago,” said Killingsworth. “She keeps a brace of grenades under her jacket.”

  “You and her on good terms?” asked Blackheart. “Because she could be sitting in the grass with a sniper rifle—assuming they decided they don’t want to pay you the rest of your fee.”

  Killingsworth considered this. Hardwick did have a reputation for frugality, and she wouldn’t put it past him to try and stiff her on her completion fee. Still, helpful as Blackheart was being, he was probably playing on her paranoia in the hopes that she might smell a rat and break her contract with Hardwick. “Gia’s good with a pistol, but explosives are her thing—not rifles.”

  “Okay,” said Blackheart, but he obviously remained unconvinced. “But would she pull the trigger on you… if the price was right?”

  “We’re on good terms… but if the price was right I might pull the trigger on her. There’s no reason to think that she would hesitate to do the same thing.”

  “That’s where you and me are different,” said Blackheart. “I’ve got my friends’ backs… thick and thin.”

  Killingsworth’s response was dry. “That’s where you and I are different, Big Boy. My philosophy is that business comes first.”

  Blackheart glanced back at his blonde-haired rescuer and captor. “Why does business come first?”

  “Because you can’t rely on friends.”

  “Sure you can,” said Blackheart.

  “Aren’t you the one that was spending time in the pen because you caught your best friend messing with your girl?” Killingworth reminded him.

  Blackheart scowled. Obviously, the betrayal still stung him. “That’s an exception… a deviation.”

  “It’s the norm,” said Killingsworth. “People can’t be trusted, so use them for what you need, but don’t get too attached.”

  “You live a sad life,” said Blackheart.

  Killingsworth pressed her lips into a thin smile. “Oh, I don’t know. It has its moments.”

  They could hear the sound of an engine coming down the rutted dirt road, and in a few moments a dark gray Mercedes emerged from behind the screen of high, yellow grass. It stopped about twenty yards behind the Mustang, and Killingsworth couldn’t help but notice that it blocked off her escape route. She scanned the grasses, but could see no sign of any one hidden for an ambush. However, the grass was thick and plentiful, and it would be next to impossible to detect a well-camouflaged sniper.

  Killingsworth called to Hardwick. “If I smell anything fishy, the first thing I’ll do is put a bullet through your eye. If I happen to miss—which doesn’t happen very often—I’ll put a bullet through Blackheart’s skull, and you’ll never find what you’re looking for.”

  Hardwick didn’t seem in the least concerned by Killingsworth’s threats, but he had always been a cool, unflappable, customer. “You do know that Blackheart’s a sociopath, don’t you Killingsworth? He enjoys messing with people’s heads… and he’s very good at it. He’s probably got you convinced that he’s got some secret stash of drugs or a lottery skim and I just want him for the information. The truth is much simpler.”

  “Oh,” responded Killingsworth, her eye upon the Mercedes which had yet to disgorge any of its passengers. “What’s that?”

  “The truth is that I find his ability to sow distrust and suspicion very useful, and I have some work for him.”

  “I don’t care what you do with him,” said Killingworth. “Make good on your end of the deal, and you can have him. Good riddance to you all.”

  Hardwick got on his cellphone and a moment later, the front passenger door of the Mercedes opened up. Gia Frampton stepped out, long auburn hair flowing over the collar of a stylish Gavord-Sabatini trench coat that was open far enough to reveal a voluptuous figure which was covered in a gray ribbed turtleneck sweater, and a faded pair of denim gauchos. She carried a stuffed leather satchel, which she opened up as she drew nearer to Killingworth, the better to display the stacks of hundred dollar bills contained within.

  Gia’s green eyes darted to and fro. “Monica? Hardwick didn’t tell me you were working this job.”

  Killingsworth plucked off the top stack of bills and rifled through them. They looked, felt, and smelled real, but the bills at the top would be. “What did Hardwick tell you, Gia?”

  Gia hesitated.

  “Tell me or I’ll shoot the man with the UZI.”

  Gia cursed under her breath and shot a hard glance at Blackheart. “He told you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” said Killingsworth. “Siamese twins and all that. Give me the scoop and I promise that I won’t kill hi—”

  “What’s the hold-up, Killingsworth?” shouted Hardwick. “Send over Blackheart or I’ll have Gaines ventilate you both!”

  Gia looked directly into Killingsworth’s eyes, though she could catch just a glimpse of them moving behind her sunglasses. “Whatever you do, don’t leave this field with the satchel.” She turned around, trench coat flapping around her knees as she retreated to the Mercedes.

  “What about me?” said Blackheart. “Hardwick screwed you over. Your contract’s null and void. You don’t have to turn me over.”

  “If I want to walk out of here alive, I do,” said Killingsworth. She pressed the security guard’s pistol against Blackheart’s spine as she leaned down and unlocked the shackles on his feet. Then she uncuffed his hands. Blackheart groaned and brought his arms around, rubbing at his wrists. “Thanks, Blondie.”

  She jabbed the pistol into his back. “Don’t thank me, Big Boy. Get over there and make your case with Hardwick. Maybe you can be useful enough that he’ll keep you alive.”

  Blackheart began walking across the field. “See ya,
Blondie. It’s been fun.”

  “It’s been fun.” Before Blackheart could reach Hardwick, Killingsworth tossed the satchel into the driver’s seat, climbed into her Mustang, and spun it in a tight one-hundred-eighty degrees, throwing up clods of turf. The road was blocked so she sent the Mustang plowing through the high grass to the left, jouncing over the furrows until the car slewed back onto the roadway, past the Mercedes.

  Killingworth kept going until she was out of sight, but before she left the field she pulled the Mustang to a halt and dumped out the contents of the satchel on the passenger seat next to her. She took the top two bundles—the ones she had examined at the scene of the exchange—and shoved these into the pockets of her jacket. Quickly, she flipped through the other bundles and found that they were fronted by a few real bills, but the others were poor counterfeits. Killingsworth had handled more than her fair share of counterfeit bills. The texture of the paper was wrong and the coloration slightly off. She briefly held up one of the bills to the sunlight that poured through the windshield and noted that the security strip on the left side of the bill was printed on. The C-note was probably one of the hundreds of thousands of counterfeits printed by the prolific Freddy Gomez who, for a couple of years had worked under the auspices of the Mexican crime cartel La Familia Michoacana which had, oddly enough, started out as a vigilante group to defend the Mexican citizenry against crime cartels just like the one that it had become.

  Killingsworth discarded the counterfeit bills and hefted the empty satchel, which seemed just a bit heavier that it should have been. Considering Gia Frampton’s expertise and her warning, there was likely an explosive sewn into the lining, so Killingsworth left the satchel in the car and abandoned her Mustang, fleeing into the surrounding grasslands.

  It was only a few moments before the plastic explosive in the satchel blew, the Mustang erupting into a great ball of flame that tossed glass shards and quarter panels into the air. The driver’s side door caromed over the top of Killingworth’s head, and she was pelted by a rain of tempered glass.

  “Kiss that security deposit goodbye,” muttered Killingsworth, amid a rain of fluttering counterfeit C-notes. Granted, she could have just tossed the satchel out the window and drove off with the twenty-thousand of non-counterfeit funds which she had tucked into the pockets of her jacket, but she wanted Hardwick to think he had killed her—and she wanted to make a point to anyone who thought it might be a good idea to cross Monica Killingsworth.

  Sure enough, it wasn’t but a couple of minutes before the Ford extended cab came barreling up and executed a sliding stop behind the Mustang. Eddie Gaines was riding in the bed of the truck and now he stood, resting his UZI machine pistol on the top of the cab as he, for good measure, emptied a magazine of bullets into the scorched and flaming hulk of the Mustang.

  Eddie Gaines posed some problem to Killingsworth, because she had promised Gia that she wouldn’t hurt Gaines, yet it was obvious that Gaines had no such compunctions about harming her.

  The tinted driver’s window of the massive Ford truck dropped and now Killingsworth had a view of the driver, a broad-nosed fellow with slicked-back hair, who retrieved a pistol off the dash. “Save a little bit of her for me, Eddie!”

  Gaines laughed. “I’m sure she’s dead by now, Clinton, but go ahead and take a look.”

  Clinton climbed down from the driver’s seat, his snakeskin boots finally touching down on the rutted path. Killingsworth could hear the sound of the Mercedes’ engine coming up the road, and she knew if she waited much longer she would have more of Hardwick’s gunmen to contend with. She fired the security guard’s pistol and her first shot missed, shattering the rear view mirror next to Clinton’s head. Killingworth adjusted her aim and before Clinton realized what was going on he caught a piece of lead in the gray matter behind his forehead. He pitched backward against the step-up into the truck and lay there, his head cocked sideways and a trail of crimson oozing from the bullet wound.

  The door of the truck was still open, and Killingsworth could see Hardwick on the passenger side of the truck, yanking a pistol from his waistband holster even while he attempted to open his locked door and bail out the far side. Killingworth didn’t give him a chance. She emptied the security guard’s pistol into the cabin, riddling Hardwick, and then she ran hard through the fields, closing the distance between her and Gaines.

  Gaines was reaching for another magazine of nine millimeter ammunition for his UZI, and was about to pop it into place when Killingsworth opened fire with one of her dragon engraved Colt .45 pistols. Gaines was holding the UZI in place, so he could jam the fresh magazine home, but Killingsworth hit it three times, knocking the UZI from Gaines grip, and sending him diving for cover, over the side of the truck bed, as a ricocheting bullet grazed his cheek.

  “Keep going, Gaines!” hollered Killingsworth. “Next time I won’t be so generous.”

  Gaines took Killingsworth’s advice and high-tailed it into the surrounding field.

  Without slackening her pace, Killingsworth leaped to the step on which Clinton’s dead body still leaned and climbed into the driver’s seat. Hardwick’s bullet-perforated form leaned against the far door, his fingers still on the handle. She found Blackheart lying on the bench seat in the back of the extended cab, zip ties around his ankles and wrists.

  “Blondie! Thank God you’re still alive!”

  “So you’ve become religious on me,” said Killingsworth as she leaned over Hardwick’s dead body and finished pulling the handle, so that Hardwick’s weight opened the door and he tumbled awkwardly into the field.

  “Well, you know, when you stare death in the face, you start thinking about what might be coming after.”

  Killingsworth looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Mercedes pulling into sight. “After what?”

  Blackheart struggled into a sitting position. “After this life.”

  “I’ve already burned those bridges.” Killingsworth gunned the engine of the truck and it went lurching away, leaving the bodies of Clinton and Hardwick in its wake. She pulled up her skirt, exposing a slender dagger sheathed on her thigh beneath. “Give me your wrists.”

  Blackheart obligingly held out his hands and Killingsworth deftly sliced the zip tie. “This is the second time today that you pulled my fat out of the fire.”

  “Well, truth be told, your fat wouldn’t be in the fire if I hadn’t turned you over to Hardwick.”

  “But a deal’s a deal, right?” said Hardwick.

  “Yep,” said Killingsworth, but her eyes were on the Mercedes that was pulling up behind. It stopped briefly, disgorging Gia Frampton, who leaned over Hardwick’s broken and bullet-riddled body and checked for a pulse.

  “Is he alive?” called the Mercedes’ driver, in quivering baritone.

  Frampton felt no pulse whatsoever. “Barely. I’ll take care of him. Go and get Killingsworth before she gets away!”

  The tires of the Mercedes spun up clods of earth and it slewed down the road after the truck. The rear window of the Mercedes opened up and a gunman with dark sunglasses and a shaggy blond mane leaned out the back. He wasted no time opening up with a Mini-Mac Machine pistol. The Ingram-11 wasn’t particularly accurate and the sideways motion of the Mercedes exacerbated the situation, however the machine pistol put out an astounding nineteen rounds a second. This made for about a second-a-half of sustained fire before the straight magazine of short rounds was emptied. Unfortunately for the shaggy gunman, most of these rounds went wild as the Mercedes’ tail-end whipped back onto the road. A few rounds punctured the rear window of the fleeing Ford’s cab and shattered it. Then the shaggy gunman pulled his body inside the Mercedes to load up another clip.

  Killingsworth handed Blackheart her knife. “Cut your ankles free.”

  He shook off a cascade of tempered glass shards as he leaned over and cut the last zip tie. Killingsworth floored the gas pedal. The Ford had a huge engine under its hood, plenty of power, but the Mercedes’ engine h
ad plenty of power and wasn’t so monstrous that it couldn’t easily overtake the larger vehicle. Now that Frampton had exited the Mercedes, Killingsworth figured she was free to fire upon the vehicle. Frampton had been nice enough to warn her about the bomb in the satchel and so Killingworth felt it was only professional courtesy to return the favor, and avoid shooting in her direction.

  The Mercedes was coming up fast and it would only be a matter of moments before the bushy-haired gunman popped out and unleashed another magazine of 9mm short rounds at the truck. Killingsworth had been lucky the first time, but she doubted her luck would hold out a second time. “How’s your shooting, Big Boy?”

  “Adequate,” said Blackheart.

  Killingsworth handed him back one of her dragon-engraved .45s. “It had better be. The second that machine gunner pops out of that window, you pop him.”

  Blackheart hesitated. “You’re trusting me with your gun, Blondie?”

  Killingsworth could see the dilapidated grain silo that marked the end of the road. “I’ve got another one.”

  He took the pistol and pulled back the slide, jacking the first round into the chamber so that the Colt was ready to fire. “Yeah, but it wasn’t so long ago you delivered me to Hardwick. They were playing it cool, but they were going to shoot me once I gave up the whereabouts of the cash.”

  “That was the old deal,” said Killingsworth. “We’ve got a new deal, right?”

  “You know it, Blondie.” Blackheart fired off a quartet of rounds as the Ingram 11, arms, and bushy hair of the machine gunner appeared outside the Mercedes’ window. One round punctured the roof of the Mercedes, two put holes in the rear quarter panel, and another went through the open window, passing a fraction of an inch past the gunner’s head, through his bushy hair, and putting a hole in the rear window.

  Bushy Hair fired an unaimed burst of a half dozen rounds, which clipped through the high grass, and scrambled back inside the Mercedes, hoping to find some cover.

  “Nice job,” said Killingsworth. “Now put a couple rounds through the windshield. Make it the driver’s side.”