The Dame Did It (3 page)

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 had 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.”

Before Killingsworth had finished speaking,
Blackheart put three bullets into the windshield. Immediately, the
Mercedes swerved to one side and plowed into the field, where it
hit a rut, and went airborne even as it tilted crazily to one side.
The Mercedes furrowed through the high grass and came to a jolting
stop, upended on one side. The driver lay with a broken collarbone
and shattered arm on the passenger door, while Bushy Hair—thrown
into a similar position in the backseat—found that he was
relatively intact except for a couple of bumps and bruises.
Clutching his Ingram 11 he climbed halfway out the open window on
the opposite side of the car and emptied the rest of his magazine
at the receding form of the gigantic truck.

Bullets rattled against the bumper and
pocked the bed of the truck, while Blackheart emptied his pistol in
the direction of the Mercedes. But the range was long and he failed
to come anywhere close to hitting Bushy Hair. Killingsworth brought
the truck to an abrupt stop, opened the driver’s door and climbed
out and onto the blood-spattered step. Bushy Hair dropped the empty
magazine out of his Ingram 11 and fumbled for a third, fully loaded
magazine.

Killingsworth leaned against the shattered
stub of the driver’s rear view mirror and drew a careful bead on
the distant bushy-haired machine-gunnist. She used both hands to
support the pistol and squeezed the trigger twice. The first bullet
struck the gunnist in the left shoulder and the second caught him
through the gap between his second and third ribs, so that he
dropped his Ingram and slumped over the upright door, choking on
his own blood as it filled up his lungs.

The blonde assassin climbed back into the
truck and sent it rolling toward the skeleton of the grain
silo.

Blackheart climbed into the front seat.
“That was quite a shot, Blondie—but why? By the time he reloaded we
would have been long gone, and it’s not like he could have caught
us with the Mercedes upended like that.”

“It’s bad policy to leave your enemies
alive,” said KIllingsworth.

“What about Frampton and Gaines? You let
them live.”

“That’s because we had a—”

“A deal?” interrupted Blackheart.

“Gia warned me and asked me not to hurt
Gaines.” Killingworth stopped in the shadow of the the silo. “If we
didn’t have an explicit deal, it was at least professional
courtesy. And next time we meet, they won’t necessarily be
enemies.”

“Maybe,” said Blackheart dubiously, “but I
was lying on the bench in the backseat when a couple bullets hit
Gaines’ machine gun. Frampton will have a hard time convincing her
boyfriend that you weren’t trying to kill him.”

Killingsworth cast a sidelong glance at her
handsome companion. “Where are we going, Big Boy?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve got a deal. We split Frankie
G’s cash fifty-fifty, remember? Where did you stash the money?”

“Yeah, that could be a bit of a problem,”
said Blackheart.

Killingsworth smiled. “I get paid to resolve
problems.”

“Not every problem can be resolved with a
bullet,” said Blackheart.

“You’d be surprised,” replied
Killingsworth.

“The feds were following me and I didn’t
have time to stash the money anywhere good, so I stuffed it in with
a package of clothing that Charise asked me to send her.”

“Charise? Is this the woman who cheated on
you with your best friend?”

“Yeah, that Charise,” admitted
Blackheart.

“And you agreed to send her clothes? Why
didn’t you make a big pile and have a bonfire?”

Blackheart shrugged his broad shoulders. “I
felt bad about hitting her.”

“You are a sucker, aren’t you, Big Boy? You
remember the address?”

“She’s staying at Finn’s place outside of
Lexington.”

“Finn is your best friend?”

Blackheart cracked his knuckles, and the
scars on his fist were visible. “Not anymore, he ain’t.”

* * *

They parked the truck with the shattered rear window
at the rear of the lot, and thirteen thousand bought them a used
Corvette from Honest Sam’s in Central City which, at nearly five
thousand residents, boasted the largest population of any city in
Muhlenberg County. Despite the claims of the peeling reader board
over the used car lot, Sam was far from honest, and fenced stolen
property, moved small quantities of illegal drugs and large
quantities of black market liquor, and anyone who lived within the
region knew that the prices on those cars were too high and that
Sam was as crooked as a Kentucky back country road. What most of
them didn’t know is how he managed to stay in business when the
same cars stayed on the lot month after month.

Sam, however, recognized the sort of
customer that he shouldn’t cheat, so when Killingworth and
Blackheart made him a generous offer, he sold them one of the few
cars on his lot which was actually in good running condition.