A Read online

  Guilt hit me full force. How could I have been so wrong about him? He’d saved my life. I should have known there was no way he could ever have hurt Angel. “Thank you. I thought I was a gonner.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He attempted a little half smile. It was pretty feeble, truth be told, but I was glad he was even attempting.

  “Let’s go home,” I said, the fatigue I’d been fending off suddenly getting the better of me.

  He nodded, taking my hand in his. It was warm, soft. Comforting.

  “How about my apartment?” I offered.

  Blake nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m never going back to my place again.”

  I didn’t blame him. “Well, in that case, I hope Rufus likes cats.”

  He grinned at me, this one closer to genuine, even showing a little dimple, as he gently brushed a kiss along my lips. “He’ll learn to love them.”

  Chapter Nine

  I sat forward in my cubicle, leaning my elbows on my desk as I moved my mouse to the “next” link and clicked through to the rest of the Yahoo News story about the death of Alec Davis.

  It had been one month exactly since the attack. I couldn’t say I’d really gotten over it, but the bruises around my neck had almost faded. A good thing too, as I’d just about run out of turtlenecks to wear to work. Yeah, I was back at OmniWeb. After my agent tried to kill me, I figured my modeling days were over. While it had been nice to play the center of attention for awhile, Kya Star was no more. Because, honestly, there really hadn’t been anything all that wrong with Kya Bader to begin with. Sure, she’d had ample practice at being a doormat in her lifetime, but that didn’t mean I had to throw her out entirely. She had a lot of good qualities too. And the moment I’d seen death hovering on my horizon, I’d made a promise to myself to discover them all.

  The news page loaded, Alec’s Redford good looks filling the screen. I tried to ignore them, instead focusing on the print beside it.

  According to the reporter, the police’s first order of business had been to go over every inch of records at Parker Models. The conclusion: Alec had been skimming funds. As soon as the detectives confronted the receptionist, Julie, she’d broken down and admitted to everything. Alec had had her draw up two copies of contracts for every model – one with the real amount they were being paid, one with a fake number that left Alec with a commission bordering on 75%. Apparently once his own modeling jobs dried up, he hadn’t been content with a mere 15% of the profits. He’d had the models sign the fake ones, then transposed their signatures onto the real documents before sending them in to his accounts. Poor R.J. had been clueless about the whole operation running right under his nose.

  But Angel hadn’t.

  Apparently, Angel, having been an accounting major, had noticed discrepancies and caught on to the scheme. According to Julie, she’d had a heated argument with Alec just days before her death, but she claimed she had no knowledge of what happened next. The police speculated that Angel confronted him and he’d killed her to keep her quiet.

  That’s when I’d popped on the scene, asking questions about Angel and making Alec nervous that the whole thing would be dragged up again. But what had tipped him over the edge was that R.J. had told him I had proof of her killer. (Little did he know it was in the form of creepy visions – hardly admissible in court.) Alec had freaked, following me to Blake’s, where he’d waited for the right opportunity. Clever me, I’d walked right into it.

  Blake had eventually been cleared of any wrongdoing in Alec’s death, though, according to his tox screen, he’d ingested large amounts of sleeping pills. After going over Blake’s place, police found the half empty bottle of wine he’d drunk that night, laced with enough drugs to put an elephant out. Blake admitted Alec had given it to him before leaving the set that day.

  The police surmised that Alec must have used a similar M.O. in Angel’s murder, first making sure Blake was knocked out, then killing Angel. Though, the reporter finished by saying that whether Alec lured Angel outside or it had been pure opportunity to find her at the pool, we’d probably never know.

  I bit my lip as I stared at the screen. Well, maybe some of us would never know…

  Ever since Alec’s death the dreams, visions, whatever-they’d-been had stopped. I’d like to think it was because Angel was at peace now, but I wasn’t about to try to analyze it. I’d come to terms with the fact that what happened to me didn’t make a whole lot of sense. In fact, it was bordering on Montel episode weird. But Alec was gone, Angel’s murder was solved, and my life was back to its normal routine of cubicles, web layouts, and cat fur on my black sweaters.

  So, I wasn’t complaining.

  “Kya?”

  I snapped my head up, quickly closing the news window as Danielle ducked her head around my cube.

  “Oh hey, Danielle. You scared me, I thought you were Peterman.”

  “Yeah, you’re on his shit list for taking three weeks vacation in a row.”

  I shrugged. “I was due.”

  “Hey, Maxie and I are cutting out early to go to Club Ecstasy. You wanna join us again?” She poked me in the arm. “I know how much fun you had last time.”

  “Oh, uh, sorry, not tonight”

  “Ah, come on, Kya, you’ve got to learn to live a little, girl.”

  I grinned. “Actually I’ve already got plans.”

  Danielle cocked her head to the side, fingering a corkscrew curl. “Oh yeah? With who, your cat?”

  I should have been offended, but instead, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. “Nope.” I nodded behind her. “With him.”

  Danielle spun around just in time to see Blake walk off the elevator.

  Okay, so maybe there was one thing about Kya Star’s life that I wasn’t totally ready to give up. Could you blame me?

  After Kojak and Dragnet had cleared Blake of all charges, he’d gone back to his place only briefly to pack up a few things and collect Rufus from the neighbors before moving in with me. I’ll admit, it was an adjustment for both Tabby and me to not only have a man, but also a ninety-five pound Saint Bernard, suddenly in our space. But so far we were adjusting nicely. Okay, maybe Tabby was a little more reluctant than I was, but the first morning I’d woken up in Blake’s arms, I’d known there was no other place I’d rather be.

  “Ready, gorgeous?” he asked as he approached my cube, giving a cursory glace to Danielle who looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head.

  “Ready.” I flipped off my monitor and grabbed my purse from the floor beside my tower.

  “See you tomorrow, Danielle,” I called, waving over my shoulder at her.

  She did a feeble little wave back, shaking her head in disbelief as a smile crept across her face. I knew I was going to have to give her mega details tomorrow in the break room.

  “So, what do you feel like doing tonight? Movie? Dinner?” Blake asked, taking my hand in his.

  “Hmmm…” I bit my lip. “Or, we could spend the night in?”

  He grinned down at me, showing off both dimples. “Oh yeah? And, just what did you have in mind?”

  “My shaman kicking your elf hunter’s butt. He is so weak.”

  Blake threw his head back and laughed as he hit the elevator button. “Hey, that elf hunter saved your pretty little shaman behind last week, if I recall. Remember that troll? With the rampant crossbow?”

  “Damn. You got me. I guess I owe you then, huh?”

  He nodded. “Big time.”

  “Okay, tell you what? We’ll order in Chinese, lock the animals in the bathroom, turn down the lights, and I’ll let you play with my spells.”

  “Your spells, huh? Hmm…” he said, getting a wicked gleam in his eyes. He leaned in and grazed his lips along the nape of my neck. “It’s a deal.”

  I giggled and went warm all over.

  Blake squeezed my hand as the elevator doors slid open and I stepped one shiny red patent-leather heel over the threshold of the elevator.

  Oh
, yeah.

  I guess there was one other tiny part of Kya Star’s life I was keeping, too. What can I say? They were hot shoes.

  * * * * *

  CONFESSIONS OF A BOMBSHELL BANDIT

  * * * * *

  All I ever wanted was a little freedom. They say money can't buy everything, but that's not entirely true. Money buys you freedom. Freedom from worry, freedom to retire, freedom from the mortgage monster. Freedom to pick up and fly off to the Bahamas, should you get the tropical urge. Or, in my case, freedom to park your car on the street without worry that the repo man will tow it away by morning.

  My best friend, Quinn, majored in psychology at UCLA and she says my obsession with this whole money-equals-freedom thing probably stemmed from a deep rooted issue in my childhood. She could be right. When I was four years old my father went to prison for holding up a convenience store in North Hollywood. He robbed the Indian clerk at gunpoint and left with thirty-two dollars and sixty-one cents before his Volkswagen Beetle sputtered and died two blocks away. He got five years for armed robbery.

  While inside, he got into a fight with another inmate over the Sunday mystery meat and stabbed him with a plastic spork. They added another five years to his sentence. While he was serving those out, a riot broke out in my father’s cell block, which ended up with a guard getting killed and everyone in cell block D got another four years.

  By the time I was eighteen and finally leaving my mother’s cigarette-stained doublewide on the college scholarship I’d worked my butt off for, my father was doing his last six months in San Quentin. That is until he was caught smuggling contraband bubble gum into the yard and held over for another eighteen months. Which quickly stretched into three years when he refused to do the mandatory ten minutes of jumping jacks per day, resulting in an altercation with an overweight guard who couldn’t do a jumping jack to save his life.

  So you see, the price of my father's freedom was thirty-two dollars and sixty one cents.

  As for me, my trappings are less penitentiary but no less constraining. I thought a college education would buy me some freedom. Nope. Just student loans. Quinn, who rides public transportation – an almost unheard of phenomenon here in Los Angeles – says that having a car gives me freedom. Nope. Just a car payment that I can't afford, gas prices that go up every three seconds, and a game of cat and mouse with a repo guy who looks like Harvey Keitel in coveralls. And Lynette, my co-worker with a mortgage, an out-of-work husband, and two kids in diapers, says that being a single twenty-something renting a one bedroom apartment in Chatsworth should be all the freedom any woman needs. To me it just means having to cash in my meager paycheck the first of the month, signing 90% over to the apartment manager, Mr. Chen, and spending the remaining 10% on lots of Top Ramen for one. Not my idea of footloose and fancy free.

  Then again, neither was an eight by nine cell, which is why I made Quinn go over our plan one more time.

  “You’re going to leave the car idling, then we loop around on Pico and take La Cienega straight down to the ten. No stopping.”

  Quinn nodded, her eyes shinning as her hot pink bangs bobbed up and down in the seat beside me.

  “Here, Carrie.” Lynette reached her arm between the console and handed me a .22. I checked the chamber. Fully loaded.

  Lynnie handed another gun to Quinn, who twirled hers like a wild west sharpshooter, almost dropping it on the upholstered seat of Lynnie's mini van.

  “Ready, ladies?” Quinn asked.

  Lynnie and I nodded as one.

  Quinn pulled her Marilyn Monroe mask on. Lynette and I followed suit, becoming Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield. My vision instantly blurred as I tried to see out the tiny plastic eye holes.

  “Just like we rehearsed,” Quinn instructed. “They’ll be so distracted, they won’t even know what hit them.”

  “Right,” I said. Lynette nodded.

  Then we all stripped down to the matching black and pink polka dotted bikinis we’d purchased at Wal-Mart the day before. We tore open the mini van doors, streaking across the parking lot of the Los Angeles Mutual Bank on Fairfax and Pico, guns drawn.

  Quinn was the first to hit the front doors. She plowed in, her gun stuck out in front of her like an Al Pacino movie.

  “Everybody on the ground, hands behind you heads! Nobody moves, and nobody gets hurt. I’m fucking serious!” She waved her gun in the direction of a guy in a Jerry Garcia tie and Dockers who was making a move for his cell phone. He froze, dropping to the floor along with the other people in line on their lunch break.

  Lynette came in a close second behind Quinn, aiming her gun at the security guard by the door who looked like he’d just started shaving yesterday. His wide eyed gaze bounced between Lynette's boobs, barely contained by the triangles of polka dotted fabric, and her gun, leveled at his chest, not sure if he should be scared or turned on.

  I came in behind Lynette, making my way across the floor of stunned people to the third teller window on the left. I set my plastic, flowered beach tote on the counter and pulled it open.

  The man behind the counter stared at me, his jaw stuck in the open position, eyes looking from the tote to my generous size C chest, the one thing I’d been happy to inherit from my mother.

  “Hi, there” I said. “Empty the drawer into my bag, don’t even think of pushing your panic button, and keep your hands where I can see them. And,” I added as an afterthought, “stop staring at my tits.”

  Score one for the Bombshell Bandits.

  * * *

  We were making good time, the warm desert sun beating down on my face as the wind flipped my loose hair back over my shoulders. Not that we had a schedule. Not that we were really going anywhere in particular. The man in the seat beside me held the tiniest hint of half smile on his face as he looked at me across the console.

  "So," he said, his eyes laughing, "you're telling me that you just woke up one day and decided to start robbing banks?"

  I bit my lower lip and looked out the front windshield, watching the barren landscape fly by us. "Well, no. That's not exactly how it happened."

  I could feel him watching me, his eyes intent as his hands gripped the steering wheel of his black jeep. The top was down, warm, dry air swirling around us as the speedometer registered ninety. "So?" he asked.

  "So what?"

  "So, spill it. What made you turn to a life of crime?" I could hear the hint of humor in his voice again.

  "It's a long story," I answered truthfully.

  He grinned at me, gesturing to the wide open stretch of road ahead of us. "We've got all the time in the world, baby."

  I couldn't help it. I felt the corners of my mouth curve up. We did, didn't we? "You really want to know?"

  His eyes crinkled. "I want to know everything."

  I took a deep breath. "Okay. You asked for it."

  * * *

  Banks have always been some of my favorite places. I love the hushed tones, the calm in the air, the smell of crisp dollar bills being counted out in neat little piles. In a world where everything is debit cards, travelers checks, and automatic transfers, real money is hard to come by. Unless you're in a bank.

  Between a father in prison and a mother in a doublewide, cash was scarce growing up. And what we did have didn't take more than an empty Folgers can to hold. I was seven the first time I went into a bank. My great aunt Harriet had choked on a Dorito while watching Judge Judy and died at the ripe old age of 94, leaving my mother her collection of glass rodeo clown figurines and four hundred dollars in the form of a check from her estate attorney. I remember standing in line with my mother waiting to cash her check and staring at the wall of brochures that touted the bank's services. Retirement plans. College loans. Home loans. 'Finance your next vacation with a second mortgage' the brochure advised, showing a picture of two happy people, hand in hand on a white, sandy beach that belonged in a Corona ad. I decided then and there that banks were the places where dreams were made.

 
It's not surprising that as soon as I graduated from college I took a job at Los Angeles Mutual Bank, home of the famous L.A. 'Moo' dancing cow ads. And I would have probably been content for many years with my just-getting-by life there, too, if it hadn't been for Mr. Leeman.

  "So," the woman across from me said, leveling her even gaze at me above stylish wire rimmed frames. "What exactly is the issue you have with Mr. Leeman?"

  I looked down at my hands, twisting themselves together to gather courage. "He's inappropriate."

  The woman, district manager for L.A. Mu, raised an eyebrow at me. "Inappropriate how?" she asked "Please elaborate?"

  I took a deep breath. "He calls me 'muffin.'"

  "Muffin?"

  I nodded. "And 'sugar cakes' and 'honey buns' and sometimes even 'dumpling pie.'"

  The district manager pursed her lips, but it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

  So, I plowed ahead.

  "And it's not even that he just calls me these degrading things, but he does it to my chest. He always talks to my chest."

  The DM looked down at my chest. Luckily, I'd had the forethought to dress in a high necked sweater.

  "Now, I've always been a sticks-and-stones kind of girl," I continued. "So, I've tried to shrug it off. But, last Monday he…" I paused. I did another deep breath. "He touched me."

  This got the DM's attention. "Touched you?" she asked leaning forward, her pen hovering expectantly over her clipboard.

  I nodded again. "Yes. He…" I paused, trying to think of a genteel way to say this. Then gave up. There was nothing genteel about it. "He grabbed my ass."

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "I see. She scribbled something on the clipboard.