Chapter 1
“I’m aiming
right between your eyes, asshole!”
Niki cocked
the hammer on her .38 Special and took a deep breath as she zeroed in on her
target. Once certain her feet were firmly planted and her gun was pointed right
where she wanted, she squeezed the trigger releasing the bullet.
“I hope you
die you son-of-a-bitch!” she wailed as she pulled the trigger.
“Calm down,
sweetie!” Rico said, stepping back to face Niki. “This is only target practice.”
He leaned toward his own firing lane and frowned. “I didn’t hit my smiley face
once. I told you it would not be good for me to shoot a gun.”
“Rico, it’s
been thirty years since you accidentally killed that bird. You should forgive
yourself and get over it.”
“That’s the
last memory I have of being with my father,” he said. “My mom never let me see
him again after that. Sophia said he was a bad influence. She hates guns—and
loves birds.”
Niki Brooks
and her sidekick, Enrique Rivera Rodriquez Gonzales, aka Rico, had just finished
their last shooting lesson included in the “Buy Four Get Four Free” discount
program offered at the country’s largest indoor shooting range, Scottsdale Gun
Club.
“It was
nice of them to let me take the Ladies of Liberty lessons with you even though
I’m not a lady,” Rico said.
“Well, you
kinda’ are,” Niki said.
“Still, I
think it will be best for me to use brawn and brains, not bullets, in our new
PI business.”
Thinking of
her own slim five foot, seven inch frame, Niki knew she would have to rely on
Rico if an altercation ever did become physical. “I will have to look to you
for the brawn, we both have brains and hopefully, neither of us will have to
use bullets,” she answered. “Lorna claims Russell doesn’t even know how to
shoot a water pistol at the carnival. Let’s hope she’s right.”
Niki’s good
friend and former call girl employee, Lorna Simms, was missing and Niki was
certain Lorna’s ex-husband, Russell, had taken her. Niki and her right-hand gay
man, Rico, were planning to find her.
For a
Latin, Rico was a brawny man: six feet, two inches tall and fifty inches in
girth. His chiseled muscle weighed in at roughly two hundred pounds. You
wouldn’t know he was gay by looking at him, but the minute he opened his mouth
to speak, all bets were off.
Niki turned
back to her target and released three more bullets—boom! boom! boom!—before
removing her ear covers and laying her gun down on the counter. She pushed her
cinnamon curls off her forehead and removed her clear plastic eye protectors.
As she
pressed the button to retrieve her target sheet, the Range Master, who looked
like he had just walked off the set of Sons of Anarchy, walked by. “I’m not
sure we’ve ever had someone so enthusiastic about shooting practice before. I
could hear you over the gunfire.”
“I need to
find the loser who has kidnapped my friend,” Niki said. “And when I do, I need
to be prepared.”
“But if you
kill him, will you find your friend?” he asked.
Niki took
the target sheet from its hanger and nodded her head in pleasure. “Not too bad,
huh?” She was not expecting a response from anyone; she was simply admiring her
own work. Then she addressed the manager’s comments. “No,” she answered. “I
guess killing Russell first would reduce my chances of finding Lorna since he’s
the only lead we have.”
The manager
smiled. “Let me know if you need any more ammo.”
Niki
motioned for Rico to join her outside the range. He removed his protective gear
and followed behind her.
“I feel
like I’ve had enough self-defense training,” she said as they entered into the
main room of the gun club.
“For the
day?” Rico asked.
“No,
forever. And for today. I couldn’t handle being next to that cannon the guy in
the wheelchair was shooting. I jumped three feet every time that thing went
off.”
“I know,”
Rico agreed. “When would a gun like that ever be necessary? The barrel on that
thing was a foot long. And his hygiene. Did you see the hair growing down the
back of his neck?”
“Eeewww,”
Niki sighed. “No, and I’m glad you didn’t point that out earlier.”
She turned
to see the man in the wheelchair coming out of the gun range just as Rico
turned his back toward him. “U-S-G-A,” Rico muttered.
“What?”
Niki was confused. She turned to Rico and repeated her question. “What did you
say?”
“I was
speaking to him,” Rico whispered, nodding toward the man. “Well, not to him
directly.”
Niki waited
until she was certain the man with the cannon was out of earshot. “And what is
U-S-G-A? Is that text abbreviations again? You know I don’t speak text.”
“Come on
honey, everyone speaks text. Get with the current century. U-S-G-A.”
“Under-Siege-Get-Away?”
“No! No!
You-Stink-Go-Away!” Rico slapped Niki on the shoulder. “I couldn’t smell him in
there with all the gun smoke his cannon was leaving behind but out here, it’s
pretty obvious he doesn’t bathe very often.”
Completely
ignoring Rico’s comments about the man’s lack of hygiene, Niki went back to the
text abbreviation. “How did you expect me—or anyone—to know what that stood
for? I don’t think that’s one people use very often, at least not adult
people.” Niki grabbed Rico’s elbow, pulling him toward the gun display area.
“No more text speak. I have to choose what firearm I want in case of a
potential altercation with Russell. David suggested I look at a semi-automatic and
promised he’ll clean it for me. He was a sharp shooter in the Army, you know.”
Niki had
been married to David Brooks for over twenty-five years. They had met at a gas station on her lunch break and
said “I Do” just six months later. Her friends and family had told her she was
nuts but she knew he was The One. And she had been right. David had been a
wonderfully supportive husband, probably more supportive than she deserved.
They shared two beautiful daughters, Grace and Lilly, and one large dog, a
one-hundred-pound Labradoodle named Hudson. Although David was leery of Niki’s
plans to play PI with Rico to try to find their friend Lorna, he had agreed not
to stop her. This latest planned adventure was tame compared to what David had
put up with in the past.
Niki saw
the man in the wheelchair heading back their way and nodded to Rico, who took a
deep breath and held it while the man rolled by. “I do know that,” Rico said as
he expelled his breath after the man had passed. “Why isn’t he here? I thought
he was going to check out the guns with you.”
“He’s in
Tucson opening his new mortgage office so this is a perfect time for you and me
to go look for Russell and Lorna. He’s going to be gone at least a couple weeks
and of course, the girls have their own lives now so they won’t miss me.”
As young
adults, Grace and Lilly were old enough to fend for themselves. Niki knew she
and David had given them the proper foundation to make good decisions on their
own. Each lived in their own condo in Tempe while attending college but Lilly
had agreed to stay at Niki’s to take care of Hudson while both Niki and David
were gone.
“How
exciting for David,” Rico acknowledged, “but let’s get back to you. You do
realize that as a convicted felon you can’t buy a gun, right?”
“I don’t plan to buy it.”
“That means
I’m buying it, doesn’t it?”
“I thought
that was a given,” Niki said. “Let’s pick out something now so we can start our
search as soon as possible. We need to get this show on the road.” They stopped
at the front desk to turn in their rentals. Niki pulled Rico through the lobby
which led to the retail gun shop in an adjoining building. There were rows and
rows of slanted plastic shelving affixed to the back wall. Each shelf held
eight to ten guns. Niki had no idea where to start.
A hairy
young man, maybe in his mid-thirties, followed them into the room. “Can I help
you choose a gun?” he asked. His head sported a mop of dark curls and his chin
and cheeks were covered to match. He was dressed head-to-toe in mismatched
camo.
Apparently
resigned to the fact that he would purchase a gun in his name for Niki’s use,
Rico immediately spotted something he liked. “Honey,” he said, “look at this
darling pink thing!” Rico was waving a neon pink revolver in Niki’s face. “You
could add bling down the handle. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?” He was showcasing
the gun like Vanna White showcases letters.
Niki
noticed the gun shop employee rolling his eyes.
“No,”
Niki shook her head. “I’m not a girlie girl, Rico. You know that.”
“What
are you looking for?” the employee asked.
“I’m
not sure,” Niki said. “My friend here is the one looking.” She pulled Rico to
her side, forcing him to put down the pink gun.
Rico
looked the employee up and down. “Are you one of those survival guys?” he
asked.
The
man seemed perplexed.
“You
know, one of those guys you see on reality TV who goes out into the woods with
a jackknife and some rope and builds a shopping mall?”
“Dude.”
The man’s voice was stern. “Are you here to buy a gun or just to piss me off?”
Niki
immediately jumped in. “That Smith & Wesson looks good.” She pointed to a
.45 Smith & Wesson, noticing on the label that it was a semi-automatic
model. David had said semi-automatics were slimmer, lighter and easier to
conceal. They also held more rounds of ammunition. He said if she were ever to
find herself in a compromising position, she would not want to depend on only
one shot to stop her assailant, advising one should always fire at least three
rounds, just to be sure.
“What
was that all about?” Niki asked as they made their way to her car. “You could
have gotten us killed!”
“I
think you’re exaggerating,” he said. “Besides, I meant it as a compliment. He
reminded me of Grizzly Adams and I found him oddly attractive.”
“If
that’s your idea of flirting, you need to go back to junior high.”
They
got settled into Niki’s Escalade for the ten-minute drive to Rico’s bungalow.
Niki lowered the thermostat on the
driver’s side to seventy-two. The air in August in Phoenix felt like car
exhaust.
“What about the police looking for
Russell after his hit-and-run?” she asked, enjoying the cool air directly on
her face. “Have you gotten an update on that?”
“Last I heard they had zero leads on
where Russell may have gone and no one on the victim’s side is raising a stink
so the cops don’t seem to be motivated.”
“You know he was either going to or
coming from Lorna’s apartment the night he hit that poor man and since no one
has heard from Lorna since that night—”
“That’s not exactly true,” Rico
said, interrupting Niki.
“Wait. What do you mean? Has Lorna
contacted someone?” Niki had been ‘away’ at the Phoenix Women’s Correctional
Facility for the previous ninety days doing time for a slight misunderstanding
with the authorities—something about a money laundering felony connected to her
call girl business—so she wasn’t yet fully up-to-date on the situation
involving Lorna’s disappearance.
“They’ve dropped her missing person’s
case, Nik.”
“WHAT?” Niki was stunned. She pulled
the Escalade over to the side of the road and stopped so she could fully focus
on the conversation. “They have to know that Russell took her. It’s been three
months and no one has heard from her.”
“They don’t consider Lorna
‘missing’.”
“When did they decide that? That day
we met them at her apartment they encouraged us to file a missing person’s
report because they said it appeared there may have been foul play.”
“A few
weeks after you went . . . away . . . they called me to say they were dropping
the case. They had not been able to find any other information to lead them to
believe she was taken against her will. I heard then that even her parents don’t
believe she’s been kidnapped.”
“Unbelievable.”
Niki pushed her curls off her face. She was beginning to sweat, even with the
air conditioning on.
“Detective Rosco called me
yesterday. Apparently her parents produced a letter from her saying she left
with Russell on her own. I didn’t want to tell you before your gun lessons were
over as I knew you would take off without being properly trained.”
“Rico, you know that can’t be true!
Russell forced her to send that letter! She would have never gotten back with
him, especially knowing that he’s wanted in Phoenix for a hit-and-run. Now more
than ever I know he’s behind this. We have to find her on our own then.” Niki
turned the thermostat even lower due to her body temperature rising even
higher. “Now I’m trained and tomorrow I will be armed . . . and dangerous. He’s
going to be sorry he messed with one of my girls.” She checked over her left
shoulder to make sure she could safely pull back into the traffic and put the
Escalade in ‘drive’.
“Niki, sweetie,” Rico said sternly,
leaning toward her to pat her knee. “I understand your momma bear instincts
when it comes to Lorna, but you’re not her madam anymore and going after her
crazy ex-husband half-cocked—pun intended—is not smart. We need help to handle
this. But we have to be careful. We don’t have our PI license yet so if we get
into trouble, we’re in B-I-G trouble.” Rico curled his lip. “I was spelling. That
wasn’t a text acronym.”
“In the past few years I’ve
transitioned from a real estate broker to a call girl madam and now it’s time
for me to begin again . . . again,” Niki said. “We all knew the madam thing was
not a long-term plan. Maybe our thrift store shopping skills will make us great
at hunting for missing people too.”
“One can only hope,” Rico sighed.
“As our new employer, we’ve promised
VeVe we will find her best friend. And Lorna means so much more to all of us
now. I realize they aren’t ‘my girls’ anymore but all the girls who worked for
me have become my friends. VeVe is willing to pay us and since the cops aren’t
doing anything, we are Lorna’s only hope.”
“Yes, I agree. But can I say one
more thing?”
“If I said no, would that stop you?”
Rico sighed. “I don’t think it’s
wise to take a gun along.”
“I’m not planning to use it but I am
going to carry a weapon for protection. We have no idea of what—or who—we may
run into.”
“Yes, I understand you have the
right to bear arms, but because you’re a convicted felon, for you that means
wearing a sleeveless top. Get it? B-a-r-e arms?”
“Yeah. I get it.” Niki did not find
Rico’s humor amusing. “Then let’s hope if we get into an altercation with
Russell, you’ll be able to use your brawn to take him down and it won’t be
necessary for me to draw my weapon.”
“I don’t like that idea either,”
Rico said.
“I didn’t think you would.”
Despite turning down the
temperature, Niki continued to sweat and grabbed a Starbucks napkin from the
driver’s door pocket to swipe across her forehead. Reality had set in. “Holy
crap, Rico. I thought we would be able to work with the police to find Lorna
but now we’re going to be on our own to get to her back before Russell does
something really stupid.”
“Let’s hope it’s not already too
late,” Rico sighed. “And let’s try hard not to do something stupid ourselves.”
“We have to remain positive,” Niki
urged. “I’ve watched CSI—Miami and Las Vegas, Law & Order, and Castle for
years. I’m sure I’ve learned something that will come in handy.”
