They buried me today and I had the balls to show up. Here I was, on a sunny day in May, shaking my head along with a hundred other people, wondering how someone so young and vibrant could—poof—be gone. I hid in plain sight, loitering on the edge of the crowd. A shit-brown wig in place of my usual chemical blond, matching contacts to camouflage my signature green eyes, and sunglasses plucked from the seventies ensured my face wouldn’t catch the attention of the masses. A theater-quality padded suit added forty pounds to my athletic frame and clothes I wouldn’t be caught dead in completed the illusion. The people who claimed to be closest to me would see what I wanted them to see, another mourner, lamenting the waste of a good life.
Sunny day in May—yeah, I’ve always had trouble with funerals being on sunny days. I firmly believe in mourning and expect nature to get on board with it. A funeral wasn’t a funeral if the day wasn’t gray with clouds so heavy water leaked like tears. Any temperature that didn’t chill through skin and muscle down to the bone was an affront to the guest of honor. Stark silence needed to be center stage, the absence of natural sound, the absence of life, then fill it with the guttural cry of a bagpipe.
Yeah…that’s not what I got. I got the Disney version.
Excerpt #1 Death by Selfie Stick
“You’re mine, bitch.”
“In your dreams, loverboy.” I snatched a thin, metal wand from a retreating woman, holding it overhead as Tall, Blond, and Obvious bore down at me. The selfie stick bent, the plastic end snapped off, giving me up without so much as a sorry. Still, it was enough to deflect the blow and give me the moment I needed to retaliate. I pressed forward, creating space to work. He had the advantages of height, weight, and reach.
Me? I was meaner.
He came at me again, telegraphing his over-the-shoulder swing. I blocked it and buried the jagged edge of the selfie stick in his soft belly. He shouted in surprise as much as pain, his weight coming down over me. With a lowered shoulder, I let his momentum take me back. Then I used it against him, lifting him enough that gravity carried him over the short wall behind me.
The crowd screamed.
The body landed.
Game over.
I looked over the wall. TBO’s body laid across the headstones of a small cemetery, the selfie stick protruding from his belly, his neck broken. And he was still wearing Bennie’s backpack.
I hope she didn’t have anything illegal in it.
I turned back to the crowd. Dozens of wide eyes stared with a mix of intrigue and horror, waiting to see what I would do next. I swiped another selfie stick, broke it over my knee, and tossed it at the owner’s feet. “No selfie sticks!”
Whistles cut through the crowd’s murmurs. The calvary was coming. What felt like forever was only a few minutes. “Get Hanna to a bench before she passes out.” Some people just don’t have the constitution for the messy parts of this business. Uniformed guards flooded the area. Looked like I was going to find out how good the cover Ian created was.
“On your knees. Hands where I can see them.”
Yeah, like I hadn’t heard that line before.
Excerpt #2 Better than a hero’s welcome
“Not her. She’s one of the good guys.” Bennie had an ice pack pressed to her head and her own Scottish escorts at either elbow. The two guards led her to the front of our little scene. “She went after the man who attacked me and stole my bag.” The blue-haired pixie came to my defense, towering over me as I knelt on the cobblestones.
“She saved my life.” The former hostage pushed away from her daughter to wrap a claiming arm around my shoulder. Her chin was up, challenging authority. “She’s a hero.”
Yeah, I liked the way that sounded.
“A hero, is she?” The guy with the disbelieving intonation wore a name tag that read J. Stewart and a mustache worthy of a hall of fame.
“She pinned that animal to the ground until I could pull my mother away. She’s more than a hero,” the daughter said, “she’s a…she’s a..”
Wait for it…
“…a heroine.”
Ah. Well. I could work with that. Yeah. I could work with that. A hero elevated to the ineth-degree.
Excerpt #3 In Italy, it’s cannoli. In the highlands…
Finally, Irish appeared. He prowled down the street like he’d chew up and spit out any car stupid enough to get in his way.
“And that’s when I shot the lying dog!” My companion roared with laughter. I joined in, changing my pitch. His laughter subsided. He used his napkin to mop up his tears. “Me wife nearly killed me. Turns out, she was fond of that particular brother. Speaking of brothers…”
His monologue provided the perfect cover. He was loud and brash and everyone looked our way. Irish saw me, but then he didn’t see me. He saw a couple when he was hunting a single. Once Irish gave up on us, I went into the restaurant, using the bathroom to shed my wig and my plus-one. I stepped into the evening sun to find Irish planted in the middle of the sidewalk, staring intently across the canal.
This was one of those moments that made for an awesome line. I had five steps to figure one out.
What’s a guy like you doing in a nice town like this? No. Boring.
Leave the haggis, take the cannoli. Uh-huh.
I poked my fingers in his back, “Hand over the cookies and nobody gets hurt.”
He spun, capturing my wrist in his free hand with a hard slap, holding my fingers safely away from his body.
I smiled into his pissed-off blue eyes. “It’s alright. They’re not loaded.”
Excerpt #4 Babble Subscription
The man in the middle cleared the doorway and began swearing. When I sound like that, I’m swearing, but as it was in German again, I may be making an ass out of you and me. He crossed the room quickly, going to one knee next to Hanna. He peeled the tape from Hanna’s mouth. His manner was gentle, his tone aggressive. Leo’s name was prominent in the rant. Allow me to interpret by inference. “What the fuck, Leo? You’re an asshole for tying up my sister and cutting off all her goldilocks.” One of the men handed him scissors, and Hanna was free.
“Hanna’s a bitch,” Leo said, emphatically pointing to said bitch. “Tying her up was the only way to stop her traitorous ways.”
Hanna surged to her feet, rubbing her wrists. “You are a toad, Leo, a first-class douche bag and cut-rate mastermind. Karl, you could find a better number two recruiting from the International Association of Passivists.”
Leo stepped in front of Karl. He and Hanna were going at it, shouting so fast I couldn’t keep up the translation. They were pointing, wildly gesticulating, doing everything short of touching each other.
Karl looked like he had a migraine. He was trapped between the two, metaphorically speaking, hand to the bridge of his nose. Under six foot, Karl was solidly built, especially around the beltline. For a man who built his reputation blowing up soft targets, he didn’t have a big stage presence. He looked like a banker, a businessman.
Him I could work with.
“English!” The noise stopped as though a switch had been pressed. “As entertaining as this is, it’s losing something in translation.” I trained the gun on one of the packages of fresh meat. The one on the left looked like he had a hair-trigger. “Keep them holstered.”
Karl glanced to the men standing around him. With a small wave of his hand, they subsided. “I am Karl Becker. You are?”
“Diamond. It’s about time you showed up. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to wrap up this party without meeting the guest of honor.”
Thanks for letting me and Diamond stop by. I love playing in the wonderful world of words.
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