Don't ask how I came to be speeding down a lone desert highway in a stolen Chevy pick-up wearing nothing but
a string bikini made of smuggled diamonds. I was an accidental stooge, a witness beyond protection, an assisted
blonde not smart enough to end up knowing too much on my own.
Even in all that
darkness, anybody else would have seen the roadblock coming for miles. As I navigated a sharp curve through some drinkwater border town, a squad car appeared directly in my path. I squealed on the brakes,
sending my gun flying out of reach -- and my head smashing against the
wheel.
"Hands
where I can see them,"
the captain ordered as I looked up and shook it
off. Recovered from
the gunshot wound I'd accidentally inflicted, he stood at my window in full dress uniform with a black
stripe across his badge -- as though he'd prepared for my funeral.
"That's very optimistic of you," I said.
"Get
out of the truck." He kicked open the door with his weapon trained on me, and I slipped out with my
hands up -- standing before him sparkling like a life-sized chandelier.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
Rings twinkled on every finger and toe, my ankles manacled by fiery gemstones with a matching collar gripping my neck.
"My future," I said.
"Unfortunately, you were never in it, you lying, cheating, married, scumbag politician.
I'll bet you're a closet Republican, you two-timing flip-flopper," I
tossed in. "How dare you say you love me and then just throw me to the
wolves?" As if on cue, another one howled at the glowing moon. "That's a
coyote, drama queen," he said. "Hands against the vehicle and spread
'em.
He
turned me around, tickling my back with the cold butt of his service
revolver. "Is it really necessary to strip search a girl in a rope
bikini?" He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. "Enough talking. You and I have done way too much of that." He reached an arm around to yank back my
hips, my hands clinging to the driver's side door through the open
window. I could see my loaded gun splayed out on the floorboard. "Wait. Maybe we can make an arrangement."
"Grow up, princess. It's not the diamonds I'm after." He whisked a switchblade from his pocket to slash
off my bikini with two quick cuts, scattering them all to the ground like a sprinkle of rain. I screamed, but he put
one hand over my mouth, reaching the other around my sparkling throat. "Don't make this hard," he said, releasing the hand on my neck to brush over my breasts. "Not unless you like it like that." My nipples
grew hard in his teasing fingers, as he gyrated against me from behind.
His hand moved down, tracing my ribcage, my belly, each of my quivering
hipbones -- igniting a series of tiny shock waves. He paused between my
legs, unleashing a wave of slippery heat. "Who's the liar now?"
"Still
you," I said. "You can't rape a girl saying yes." I bit his finger and
he let go of my mouth to better hear me moan. "Wait." I
maneuvered around, opening the door of the pick-up to lie across the
bench. "At least look at me after all this time." I laid back with my legs over his shoulders,
throwing my arms over my head to finally invite him deep inside me. Feeling the
outline of my gun in an outstretched hand, though, I had a sudden change of heart about who got to run things and how. Guns will do that to a girl. I picked it up and jammed it into his
forehead -- cocking the trigger. He paused to catch his breath. "You sure you want to shoot me right now?"
"It was fun while it lasted, sir, but you never want to get between a girl and her bling." I pulled the trigger. BOOM.
It
wasn't loud enough to jolt me out of my sleep, unfortunately, because
Rita's pain-in-the-ass ghost was sitting next to me in my sweltering
little Mexican prison cell, rolling her eyes. "You call that a sex
dream?" she said. "You didn't even cum." I was too out of it to argue
with her, and really, what was the point of waking up and smelling the
cafe con leche?
I looked out a tiny window to the swaying coconut palms lining the
distant coastline. "Maybe he'll come get me for real," I said.
"Think he goes for the type of girl who can't do her own dirty
work?" she asked, popping a ripe, juicy berry in her mouth from a row she had lined
up in front of her, each more perfect than the next. "I mean, look at what he married.
'Please.
I insist you call me A.K.,' she imitated in that sweet, disarming voice
my would be lover's crack profiler wife had used to introduce herself.
I
bolted upright. "You knew A.K.?" She threw her head back and laughed,
gesturing to the bag Special Agent Knowles had covertly passed to
me -- complete with that loaded gun concealed in
an unassuming toothbrush.
It finally hit me that someone very highly skilled had to have equipped Rita with
that crazy spy stuff Atti and I found in her cosmetics bag. "Rita, you poor dead bitch," I whispered. "You were working for the FBI."
"My future," I said. "Unfortunately, you were never in it, you lying, cheating, married, scumbag politician.
I'll bet you're a closet Republican, you two-timing flip-flopper," I
tossed in. "How dare you say you love me and then just throw me to the
wolves?" As if on cue, another one howled at the glowing moon. "That's a
coyote, drama queen," he said. "Hands against the vehicle and spread
'em.
