Gemma Halliday: Killer in High Heels

But do you want to know what the worst part was? The worst part was I was going to die without ever having sex with Ramirez! This thought was so depressing that tears escaped my eyes, rolling down my cheeks in big fat droplets.

“Are you crying?” Felix asked from across the room.

“N-n-n-no,” I sobbed.

He shifted on the floor. “Er…there, there. It’s going to be all right,” he said awkwardly.

“N-n-no it’s not!” I wailed. “You’re just saying that to m-m-make me feel better.”

“It’s not really working very well, is it?”

I sniffed, doing a sob slash hiccup thing. “We’re going to die and it’s all my fault!”

“No, no,” Felix said. He shimmied across the floor like an inverted inchworm until he was sitting beside me. “Look, this is as much my fault as it is yours. I should have been watching you better. I was too focused on my lens to notice anything else. It’s my fault we’re here.”

I sniffed again. “You’re right. It’s your fault.”

“Well, you didn’t have to agree with me quite so quickly.”

I looked up to find Felix doing one of his self-deprecating grins again. Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe the impending death, but it seemed just a fraction more charming this time.

“So,” he said quickly, “any guesses where we are?”

I looked around the room again. “A storeroom of some sort.”

“The warehouse?”

I shook my head. Then regretted it as the pounding between my ears went into double time. “I don’t think so.” My eyes had adjusted to the windowless room and I could make out faint writing on the side of one of the cardboard boxes nearest me. Budweiser.

“The club!” I cried. “We’re at the Victoria.”

Felix nodded beside me, putting it together at the same time. “Someone must have followed us from here. They must have seen you drop me off.”

“Monaldo.” I felt my previous tears quickly turning into anger. That guy was really starting to piss me off. First he gets me arrested, then whacks me over the head. Who did he think he was? I was suddenly wishing Mom had stunned him a little harder when she had the chance.

I was about to let out a string of curses aimed at the creepy little weasel, when the sounds of someone outside the room froze me in place. Felix heard it too, going stiff beside me as our eyes riveted to the door on the far side of the room.

“If this is the end,” Felix whispered beside me, “I’m sorry I pasted your head on Pamela Anderson’s body.”

“And I’m sorry I broke your nose,” I whispered back.

“Apology accepted.”

I held my breath as the door swung open, the sudden light from the hallway momentarily blinding me. I blinked, squinting at the huge form silhouetted in the doorway.

The door slammed shut behind him and overhead fluorescent lights flickered to life. Again I felt my pupils contracting harshly as I blinked at the man, now bathed in greenish flickering light. Unibrow. And he wasn’t happy. The hairy caterpillar hovered over his eyes in a menacing line as his beady eyes bore into me. Only that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was the gun he had pointed at my V-neck top.

I bit my lip, for once willing myself not to open my big mouth as Unibrow’s threatening gaze bounced between Felix and me.

But, apparently Felix felt no such compunction.

“Where’s my camera?” he demanded.

Unibrow narrowed his eyes at him. “We don’t like people that takes pictures.”

“I’m a member of the press,” Felix retaliated. “You can’t hold me here. I demand our release immediately.”

His eyes narrowed further. “We ain’t too fond of press either.”

Since Felix was only serving to piss off the man with the gun, I jumped in with a different tactic. “Please, please, please let us go?” I pleaded, throwing on the best innocent little girl face I could while being bound hand and foot amidst cases of longnecks. “Look, we don’t know anything. And we won’t tell anyone anything. Because we don’t know anything. Where are we? I don’t know. Who are you?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. See, I’m just a dumb blonde. I couldn’t give a description of anyone or anything to anybody.”

If it wasn’t effective at least my speech had entertainment value. Unibrow laughed, letting out a quick, dry cough. “I don’t think so. Monaldo was very specific about what to do with you.”

I gulped. “Um, so what are you going to do with us?” I squeaked out. Even though the gun leveled at my chest gave me a pretty good idea.

“Don’t worry,” he said, a twisted smile distorting his ugly features. “We’ll take care of you.”

Oh lordy. There was that phrase again.

“Like you took care of Bob Hostetler?” Felix piped up beside me.

Unibrow’s caterpillar hunkered down in a frown again. “Shut up!” he growled.

I nudged Felix in the ribs. Why was he dead set on antagonizing the man with the gun? Ix-nay on the urder-may.

“Or what about Hank?” Felix asked, not giving in. Even under threat of.38 special in the schnoz, he was all reporter.

“I didn’t do nothing to Hank,” Unibrow protested.

Felix smirked. “That, my hulking friend, is a double negative. You didn’t do nothing implies that nothing was not done, which means that the opposite of nothing, which is something, was, in fact, done by you. So, in essence, you just admitted that you did do something to Hank. Something quite nasty, I’d venture to guess.”

Unibrow hunched his caterpillar down in a perplexed stare. “Huh?”

“You see, it’s really a quite simple rule of grammar-”

“Shut up!” Unibrow growled again, shoving the tip of his gun against the white bandage covering Felix’s nose.

Felix snapped his mouth shut with a click.

“I’ve had enough of you,” Unibrow said, his voice low and scarier than a Wes Craven villain.

I heard my breath come out in deep ragged gasps as I held myself rigid against the wall. I heard the gun cock, the chamber loading. Oh god, he was going to shoot Felix!

Then, as if to prove me wrong, he added, “But ladies first.” He swung the barrel of the gun to the right, catching me squarely in the chest.

Oh god, he was going to shoot me!

I closed my eyes, feeling hot tears run down my cheeks again. Images of Mom, Faux Dad, Larry, and, oddly enough, Ramirez flickered through my head at lightning speed as I silently said a prayer to the saint of hopeless causes. Saint Jude. Funny that I should remember that now. But I did, with crystal clarity. I prayed with all the desperation of a woman who hadn’t been to Sunday mass in years, promising to give money to the poor, to volunteer with sick children, to stop having unholy thoughts every time I watched Ramirez walk across the room in his butt-hugging jeans. Anything! As long as the next sound I heard wasn’t the shout of a gun redecorating the sparse walls with my innards.

I waited, my breath hitched in my throat, my eyes clamped shut, my lips pursed into a thin white line.

Only the gun didn’t click. Instead, I heard the sound of glass breaking just outside the door.

I popped my eyes open. Unibrow had heard it too. He froze, his entire pea brain focused on listening to the commotion outside the door. Which was growing. Something thudded against the wall and I heard voices, all yelling incoherently. Unibrow took a step toward the door. Then paused, looking back at Felix and me, his one eyebrow hunching down in concentration. Apparently it was a big decision-shoot the blonde first or go break up the bar fight?

Luckily, Unibrow was not the sharpest stiletto on the rack and chose option number two. Two lumbering strides and he was at the door, hand on knob. Only he never quite got the opportunity to turn it as the door came bursting off its hinges, slamming toward Unibrow like a battering ram was on the other side. Unibrow stumbled back before regaining his grip on the gun. He may have been slow witted, but years of Mafia experience had made him quick on the draw. Before I could yell out a shout of warning to our would-be rescuers, he had his hands around the trigger and was squeezing off shots that cracked against the doorjamb, sending splinters of wood flying into the air. Crack, crack, crack. He got off three shots in a row, before one really loud bang echoed from the doorway and Unibrow fell backwards, a bright red stain spreading across his chest.