“Think again, Cop Boy. Larry’s got more ‘family’ than Giant Stadium has seats. And they won’t be too happy with me—they aren’t already. Then there are all of good old Dad’s zillion ‘business associates.’ Think they’ll like visiting Dad at the pokey? Not hardly.”
“What makes you think we won’t get them all?”
“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said—”
A loud, appreciative wolf whistle cut her off and jerked him back to reality. “Come on. Get in the car. Before the next obnoxious idiot shoots a bullet instead of a whistle out his window.”
She didn’t budge. “Um…there’s just one teeny, tiny, teensy-weensy problem here.”
Yeah, her. “What’s the problem now?”
“That’s your assigned car, not mine. Do you figure you’ll telepathetically drive mine back to the apartment?”
This was pathetic, all right. “Woman, you could drive a man right into a loony bin.” He ran a hand through his hair. “No, I can’t drive both cars back, nor can I come back by myself later. Go ahead. Drive yourself.”
He looked around for his car’s clone, but didn’t see it anywhere. “So what’d you do with it?”
“I parked it out back, in the salon’s lot. What’d you want me to do with it? Stick it in my pocket?”
Nothing fit in the pocket of her slim linen pants. “All right, Carlie. I’ll walk you back to the car.”
They began the trudge back toward Nail It. Dan looked up at the marquee, and shook his head. How much more ridiculous could a place get than to advertise its work with a gargantuan neon fingernail decorated with a hammer and—yes, of course—a nail, the pointed steel kind?
“While we’re at it,” Carlie said as they reached the parking lot, “how about a better set of wheels? I mean, really. It barely moves. Do I look like I want to be a moving target in a poky-slow car?”
Against his better judgment, Dan looked at his gorgeous charge. From the top of her fabulous lioness’s mane, to the satiny cream skin over model’s features, to a curvy, feminine figure encased in the latest light green silk and old-gold linen, and all the way down to the feet in strappy, high-heeled green leather sandals—toenails coated with chipped polish—Carlotta Papparelli, mobster’s widow, looked nothing like any target he’d ever seen.
And yet, at the same time, beautiful as she was, she was a target.
“Get real,” he said. “A peacock car would be like waving a red cape at an angry bull. You need to blend in. That’s the reason for the plain agency car, since there’s not a lot we can do about you—unless you’re ready for plastic surgery and a hair makeover.”
She rolled her eyes—again. She was quite proficient at it, too. “Get over it, Danny Boy. I’m a blonde, not a boring bland, bland, bland, like the car.”
That’s for sure, that trouble-making corner of his head retorted. “Let’s get something straight. You’re no boring bland but a bottle blonde—”
“Ouch! That’s not nice—”
“Neither are the guys after you.” Would she ever get it? He went on as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “And in the second place, no one calls me Danny Boy and lives.”
“Wow! I never thought I’d ever see it—didn’t know you even had it. A sense of humor, that is. Is it an FBI requirement to be grim, gloomy and glum—eeeeek!”
She could’ve busted a window—maybe she did, but Dan didn’t bother to check. He grabbed the shaking woman and shielded her body with his. That’s how he approached the beige car.
He realized this might be Carlie’s wake-up call. The formerly boring midsize model now sported a particularly realistic portrait of a massive rodent, and in case the observer didn’t quite get the message, under the critter, it read RAT.
Dan pulled out his gun, held it in front as he approached the graffitied vehicle then gestured for Carlie to stay where she stood. When he circled the car, he noted an even more grisly message across the back window. The artist had detailed a skull and crossbones severed from a stick-figure skeleton. Again, the creative creep had titled his work RAT.
“Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! Gross!”
Dan turned and saw Carlie’s face glued to the passenger side window—the woman didn’t listen worth a dime. Before he could yell at her—again—she resumed her wail.
“Yuck! There’s a big, fat, repulsive rat in the front seat. Oh, would you look at that?” She looked at Dan and pointed. “Did you know their tails were that long? And hairless?”
“Yes—”
“And what’s all that white fuzz all over the place—oh, that is so sick.” She shuddered. “It’s built itself a nest.”
Dan shrugged. “Rats need homes. What can you do?”
“You are crazy.” She headed back toward the front of the nail salon. “I’ll have you know, Super-Duper Agent Daniel Maddox, that’s no longer my car. As of right now. We can go back to yours, and you can have your pals from the Bureau pick up the rodent palace. I’m outta here.”
Dan ran to her side, slid the gun back into the holster under his jacket, and reality slipped away. Slipped away? Yeah, right. It was zipping down the sanity highway, but what could he do? He’d been saddled with a beautiful but crazy witness.
She beat him to the car and stood at the passenger door. She crossed her arms. She tapped the toe of her stiletto-heeled sandal, as if she’d been there forever.
He unlocked the door. “Get in.”
“Yes, Mr. Gracious.”
Okay. It wasn’t the nicest thing he’d ever done. But he was frustrated, they hadn’t taught him how to deal with this kind of witness at Bureau training, much less law school, and she took too much pleasure driving him nuts. He slammed the door shut the minute her rear hit the seat.
And he had to keep her alive long enough to get convictions on her family and their dubious friends? He shook his head, rounded the vehicle, sat behind the wheel and peeled away, all without another word.
While he drove in silent mode, he continued to fume. Now he had to call Eliza, his supervising Special Agent. Not something a man—anyone—in his right mind would want to do. But from where he stood, he had no choice.
To be more accurate, Carlie had left him no choice. He didn’t know if he could keep her alive much longer. She refused to cooperate.
The next light turned against him. He sat and watched seconds crawl by. At his side, Carlie began to hum.
Dan hated humming.
And everyone had always called him laid-back. He scoffed. They oughta see the man he’d become post-Carlotta Papparelli.
She slanted him a look.
He ignored it.
The light turned green, so he drove on toward the safe house the Bureau had set up for Carlie in a massive, Lego block–type apartment complex.
Moments later he heard the faint whee-uhn, whee-uhn, whee-uhn of an emergency vehicle approaching from behind. He glanced in his rear-view mirror. The cherry light on the roof of the squad car strobed closer by the second. Dan pulled over to the shoulder.
“I hope no one’s hurt,” Carlie murmured.
Dan glanced her way. She’d closed her eyes, clasped her hands in her lap. Her expression, for once, was serious, intent. Somehow he knew she’d begun to pray.
Who for? The unknown—and only possibly injured—party?