Page 48 of Beachcomber Danger

Chapter 14

Still carrying her shoes, Shana approached the store from the back. She stopped behind the dumpster to surveil the place for a few minutes. The only light came from the glow of the nightlights she knew Sassy used. After an eternal five-minute wait without seeing any movement, she crept toward the back door. She suspected if Preston and Emeline had taken Sassy here, they might be in the basement.

Shana pulled the gun from her purse when she got to the door. The key was still under the mat where Sassy always left it. Not very original for a junior detective. That the key was still there meant it was possible Shana’s hunch was wrong. Maybe no one was here, but she had to check.

She unlocked the door and entered into a small back mudroom. In the dim light, she waited, motionless, for her eyes to adjust. The door to the basement was to her right a few steps ahead. It stood ajar, showing a three-inch crack of blackness. Listening hard, she heard nothing.

Walking past the door, breathing steady in spite of the piston thump of her heart, she pressed forward into the kitchen. Still holding her Glock at her side and her shoes in the other hand, she circled around the pristine space. The kitchen appeared to be more spacious than the shop out front. Smiling to herself, she pushed through the swinging door into the shop.

Before she had a chance to look around the shop, the door slammed open behind her and a dark shadow with a raised arm swung down and hit her in the head as she turned, uselessly discharging her gun. Pain fired like white hot stars in her head and she felt herself falling, but she never felt herself hit the floor.

*****

Shame and relief simultaneously penetrated the pain in her head as soon as Shana opened her eyes. Sassy watched her from a few feet away, concern mingling with anger in the girl’s eyes. She was bound and sitting on the floor with duct tape across her mouth. When Shana went to move, she discovered she was duct-taped to a chair. Struggling to clear her head of the pain and fog from the crack against her skull, it took her another beat to realize her mouth was free and that she’d been positioned in the center of the small space under the hissing fluorescent light fixture.

Feeling like she was a character in a noir interrogation scene, she looked around. No one there.

“Apparently, they plan to question me later,” she said to Sassy using her best defiant voice. As if it was the most absurd notion in the world.

Sassy made some noise from behind her taped mouth. Shana had no idea how long she’d been out cold, but a sense of urgency drove her.

“I’m awake,” she called out. “You can come and talk to me now.” She watched Sassy’s face. “Don’t worry. They’ll find us.” Shana had said it in a quiet voice, but she’d been heard.

“Oh, we’re counting on it,” a male voice from behind Shana spoke. She squelched the instinctive flinch. The man had stealth skills, she handed him that.

A man dressed in black with unruly dark hair and sharp coal-colored eyes stepped in front of her, his back to Sassy. He folded his arms and pretended to study her. Shana felt the dried blood on her cheek, the thudding ache in her temple, and knew she must look less than threatening. She was barefoot and realized he hadn’t bothered to bind her feet. She kept them still.

That was his mistake number one. She focused on the man and finding mistake number two.

“Shana George, I presume,” he finally said.

She said nothing.

“Who hired you?”

This was it. Time to sell her act as assassin for hire. She stonewalled.

The man moved fast and smacked her across the other side of her face, catching her in the temple with his ring. He was fast enough that she had no time to react. Or it could have been that the previous knock to her head had slowed her down.

The fresh smack moved her head back and she felt the sting of a cut, felt the immediate warm trickle of blood. Behind the man, who must be Preston, she watched Sassy cover her taped mouth with her hands.

What the hell?

Shana could have sworn the girl’s hands had been bound. Hoping she’d kept the surprise from her face, Shana closed her eyes only half pretending to wince in pain. The other half was real. When she opened her eyes again the man’s nasty contorted face filled her vision.

“Answer me.” He spoke in a conversational tone in spite of his mean look. Shana would bet he was the kind of assassin who didn’t normally do up close and personal work.

“You already know who hired us—why are you asking me? We’re the insurance policy. Did you think you were it? This is too important a job.”

“How much are you getting paid?” He stood and folded his arms.

“To kill you or the President?”

Preston moved in and raised a hand to strike her again, but a woman’s voice stopped him.

“She’s lying.” Emeline spoke as she stepped from behind Shana to stand next to Preston. The woman was tall and muscular and dressed all in black down to her thick leather motorcycle boots. Shana could see how Ronnie might have mistaken her for a man. She wore her hair in a slicked-back ponytail now, but with a black hood, she might have passed.

“But she brings up a good point about being our insurance policy,” Emeline continued. “She might make a good fall guy—her and her partner.”