Claire McNab: Wombat Strategy

"Rich, think this through. If you stop now, it isn't too serious. If you really hurt me, you're in big trouble."

Rich chuckled-not a nice sound. "Sweetheart," he said, "I've done two. Three won't make any difference."

"Randy Romaine's dead?"

"Romaine was a disaster from the get-go. I paid him to take disks of Perkins's sessions, but he got creative and took some of Bart Toller's too. Then the bastard thought he'd go into business for himself, so he swiped Lorelei Stevens's file. He was getting to be a real liability, and he knew far too much about me." I ducked as Rich again jabbed at my face. "Like you," he said.

"And you killed Jarrod Perkins?"

"You want the details?" He showed his teeth in a smile that gave me the willies. This bloke was having fun.

I nodded.

"It wasn't difficult. I waited until his assistant left, then walked in on Perkins getting dressed. I gave him one last chance to cut me into the deal he had for Primitive Obsessions. I was more than generous, since it was my story and my script. The prick laughed at me. So I mentioned the disks and told him I was also asking for a substantial up-front payment. He told me to go to hell and lunged for the gun he kept in his bedside table. No trouble to take it from him."

I tightened my grip on the stool. I'd only have one chance…

"It was fun," said Rich, "watching him beg for his life. He didn't think I had the guts to go through with it. Like you, he thought he'd play along and get away with it."

"And afterward you swiped all the scripts that were on his desk."

"Of course. If the cops didn't buy his death as suicide, then the missing scripts would throw suspicion on all the poor suckers he's recently stolen script ideas from."

Rich made a wide, graceful arc with the knife, slashing across the top of my other breast. I gasped and looked down at the line of red, which widened as I stared. "Such a pity," he said. "Some sexual deviant breaks in and hacks you to pieces. No one will be all that surprised. Bad things happen all the time in this town."

I like to think Julia Roberts came back into the kitchen to help me, although I have to admit her primary purpose may have been her dinner. Whatever Julia's motive, her timing was excellent. I had a firm one-handed grip on the kitchen stool behind me. When Rich, seeing the cat, made a sound of disgust and went to deliver a second kick, two things happened: Julia Roberts skipped out of the way with great agility, clearly having learned from experience, and I swung the kitchen stool at Rich's head as hard as I could.

When it connected there was a satisfying thwack! Rich went down on one knee. Then he was up again, swearing, his knife flashing like a deadly extension of his hand. I took another swing, but he deflected it with an upraised arm then wrenched the stool from me.

Blood was pouring down his face. "I'll kill you, you fucking bitch."

He was staggering, dazed but still terribly dangerous. He slashed at me and I leapt backward to avoid the blade. If I could make the door and escape…but he was blocking the way.

I made a silent apology to Fran, picked up my prized pottery teapot with both hands, and brought it down on his head.

The teapot shattered. Rich fell with a crash to the floor at my feet, lying motionless in a pool of tea and tea leaves.

The police, sirens wailing, arrived the same time as the paramedics. Then Ariana. Then Bob Verritt. Then Harriet.

I'd been perfectly calm up until then, but this was like my family arriving to support me. This thought made me sniffle a bit, but fortunately no one knew why.

I blew my nose and answered the cops' questions as best I could, until I was drooping with the combination of shock and lack of food. That reminded me of poor Julia Roberts, who had never got her chicken dinner. Bob grinned at me and said he'd take care of it.

Rich had been carried out on a stretcher, alive and swearing and accompanied by a cop.

While Ariana and Bob dealt with the situation, Harriet took me to the nearest emergency hospital, where we waited for hours until a harried young doctor had time to dress my wounds.

It was daylight by the time Harriet drove me back. Ariana was the only one there. "I'll look after her," she said to Harriet. "You go on home."

"I'm fine," I said, once we were inside. "I'm starving, though. Lunch was the last meal I ate."

"I'll scramble you some eggs. Can you face being in the kitchen?"

"No worries." Even so, I peered around the door before I entered. I thought there might be police tape, but everything had been cleaned up. There was no blood on the floor, no tea or shards of pottery. I looked mournfully at the spot on the counter where I'd kept my teapot.

"Fran will buy you a new one," said Ariana.

"It won't be as good," I said. "They never are."

She was smiling when the building shuddered. "Whoa," she said. "Earthquake. Get in the doorway. It's the safest place."

Oh, jeez! This was much worse than the tremors I'd felt at Chantelle's. It was as if some gigantic animal had the building in its jaws and was shaking it violently.

It was almost impossible to stand. Ariana and I clung together while the ground bucked and groaned and rolled beneath our feet.

The sounds of the earth tearing itself apart faded, and the shaking stopped. I was suddenly conscious of Ariana's arms around me. Of mine around her. Our first embrace? Maybe our last. The shaking was beginning again.

"Oh, no," I said. "One's enough."

Rending sounds, a deep roar bursting from the depths. The earth in pain. I looked into Ariana's blue, blue eyes. "Could be curtains," I said, thinking I might die in her arms.

She smiled. "Not likely, Kylie."

The grinding, the rolling, the terrifying instability slowly faded. There were a few final tremors, then everything was unnervingly quiet.

I could hear my own breathing, fast and furious.

"Don't be frightened," said Ariana.

"It's not fear," I said.

She gave me a long blue stare.

And then she kissed me.

Claire McNab is the author of the Detective Inspector Carol Ashton and the Undercover Agent Denise Cleever series. Like the star of her new series, Kylie Kendall, Claire left her native Australia to live in Los Angeles…a city she still finds quite astonishing.