Donna Joy Usher - Chanel 02 - Goons 'n' Roses (13 page)

I could see Mickey and Riley out of the corner of my eye as they came around the corner. Off to our left a woman was pointing a burly-looking security guard in our direction, and for one horrible moment I thought we might have misinterpreted the invitation to have a seat with Hugh, but he walked straight past us towards Mickey and Riley.

‘I’m sorry, Sirs,’ he said, ‘but you need to either pay the entrance fee, or depart the premises.’

‘They’re not here anyway,’ Riley said, shaking his head. ‘Don’t know how they snuck past us.’

They followed the guard to the exit and left the museum. We stayed where we were, just in case it was a ruse to flush us out.

‘Ummm, like, do you mind if we have a go or what?’

I looked over at a couple of teenagers standing near the bunny ears.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but can you take our photo first?’

We waited another ten minutes before we left the museum, and then we walked quickly, continuously checking over our shoulders. Mickey and Riley were nowhere to be seen.

‘Let’s get a cab,’ I said. ‘Hopefully Mum and Trent will be home and we can move hotels or something. This is starting to get ridiculous.’

There was a cab waiting out the front with its engine running. Martine and I jumped in the back and I said, ‘The Luxor please.’

I heard the locks click and then the driver turned to smile at us. It was Mickey. The front passenger door opened and Riley hopped in. He pointed a gun at us and said, ‘Hellooo girls.’

***

‘Ah, this is just fucking terrific. We’ve been captured by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.’ I did up my seatbelt and then slumped back into the cab seat.

Riley looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Ahh, just wondering… which one of us is Tweedle Dum?’

‘You are,’ I said.

‘Why does he get to be Tweedle Dee?’

‘Well, out of the two of you, he is
obviously
the leader.’

Mickey let out a low laugh. He had the car heading south on Las Vegas Boulevard. ‘Of course if Tommy Tiger were here
he’d
be Tweedle Dee. Where is Tommy by the way?’

Mickey and Riley exchanged a glance.

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me something bad happened to Tommy.’

I’m not sure what was getting into me. I can only assume I was on a chocolate-fuelled sugar high. Well that, and the fact that my fear button had been pressed so many times over the last few days that it appeared to have become defunct.

The boys exchanged another look.

‘Something bad did happen? Oh no, Martine. Did you hear? Something bad happened to Tommy.’

‘Of dear,’ she said, ‘couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.’ Since she didn’t give me a what-the-fuck-are-you-on look, I was guessing her sugar was also doing loop-the-loops in her blood stream.

‘It wasn’t…’ I paused for effect and took in a sharp breath. ‘Oh no. It wasn’t Boris was it?’

Both Mickey and Riley turned to look at me. This meant that only Martine and I saw the giant, shaggy orangutan as it launched itself off the top of a street sign towards our cab.

We both let out pre-emptive screams and then a second later the beast thumped onto the bonnet, denting the metal and causing a large crack to snake up the windscreen.

Mickey and Riley whipped their heads back to the front just in time to see the ape aim a gun at Mickey.

‘Fuck,’ Mickey yelled as he ducked behind the steering wheel. The vehicle careened off course, heading for the side of the road.

The orangutan turned his gun on Riley, and as Riley ducked, it pulled the trigger. A little flag with writing on it popped out of the end of the barrel. It said ‘Bang.’

The ape jumped clear mere seconds before the cab crashed into a fire hydrant on the side of the road. Metal screamed and glass exploded into a million tiny missiles. I felt them spear into my skin and clatter down onto the seat around me.

Martine and I were looking straight ahead, so we got the best of it. We lurched forward into our seatbelts before being tossed back into our seats.

Mickey and Riley though, well, they were slumped sideways when it happened. Plus, they weren’t wearing their seatbelts, so they slammed into the dash of the car. And then the airbags deployed smashing them back into their seats. I almost felt sorry for them. That was
really
going to hurt later.

But the fun wasn’t over. The fire hydrant creaked and groaned and then toppled onto its side, releasing a giant fountain of water into the air. It cascaded down over the car.

‘Oops,’ I said. ‘I hope you boys didn’t steal this cab.’

They stopped massaging their necks and looked at each other. A few rubber-necking pedestrians had already stopped to gawk at the car. It wouldn’t be long before the cops were there and that wasn’t going to be good at all.

‘You,’ Mickey said, turning to stare at me. ‘You… you…’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Spit it out.’

‘You’re just like your mother,’ he said, and then he pushed open the driver’s side door and batted at the airbag while he struggled to slither out of the car.

‘I’m taking that one as a compliment,’ I said to Martine.

Riley shoved his door open, groaning as he exited the car.

‘You might want to get some Epsom Salts,’ I yelled after him.

‘Should we escape now or later?’ Martine asked me. We could hear the sounds of sirens in the distance.

‘Now.’ I
really
didn’t want to talk to the cops.

We undid our belts, and tried to open our doors, but they were still locked. Martine crawled between the seats to the front and shoved at the passenger side airbag. I saw a long orange arm push the bag out of the way and grip the back of Martine’s blouse, and then she was gone; yanked out of the vehicle as if she were a rag doll.

I heard her let out a shriek of rage and I scrambled through to the front and dived out the door into a pile of water, grazing my elbow and knee on the hard bitumen of the road. I stared up at Martine and then blinked a few times, not able to believe what I was seeing.

Water poured down over Martine and the orangutan as they wrestled with Martine’s wig. They pulled it to-and-fro and even though the giant ape was less than half Martine’s height his long arms gave him a leverage she couldn’t match.

The orangutan ripped a clump of curly hair out of the wig, and Martine screamed as if in pain. ‘No… you… don’t,’ she grunted from between clenched teeth.

I pulled the chocolate croissant out of my bag and waved it at the orangutan. ‘Here boy,’ I said. He was standing upright and he was obviously, impressively, a male.

He stopped actively pulling on the wig and turned in my direction. I pushed my dripping hair out of my eyes with my spare hand and tried not to think about the eyeful the onlookers were getting through my wet, white t-shirt.

The ape looked at me with his buttery-brown eyes and then blew a raspberry. I waved the croissant and said, ‘You know you want it.’

He let go of the wig with one hand and held his free arm out towards me, the palm of his hand facing up.

‘Uhahhh,’ I said, shaking my head. I held the croissant up to my nose and smelt it. Even though it was sopping wet it still smelt divine. He tilted his head to the side and then blew another raspberry, his long lips fluttering around the sound.

‘Yummy.’ I acted as if I were going to take a bite and the orangutan let go of the wig with his other hand and waddled over to me. He stopped in front of me with his hand outstretched.

‘Don’t let him get your hair,’ Martine said as she jammed her wig back onto her head.

I placed the croissant onto his outstretched palm, and, resisting the urge to stroke his fur, backed slowly away.

‘Come on,’ I said to Martine. The sirens were getting
really
close.

The crowd’s attention was fixated on the orangutan as he gingerly ate his croissant. We melted through them, stopping for a second to make sure no-one had noticed our departure, and then we started the long walk back to the hotel.

We looked quite the sight when we entered The Luxor. Sopping wet, dotted with Band-Aids we had picked up at a pharmacy, and carrying our shoes. All of a sudden my arm wasn’t the worst part of me.

I stopped at the reception desk. ‘Any messages for room 10223?’ I asked.

The clerk checked on the computer. ‘No,’ she said. She looked again and then said, ‘Oh Miss Smith. I’ve been meaning to ask you, your mother came in yesterday and asked for a key to your room. I rang your room and your mobile but you weren’t answering and then I noted on your file that you had given permission for her to have a key when you checked in, so I gave her one. I hope that was okay?’

Mum had gotten a key to my room yesterday?

‘What time was that?’ I asked.

She looked at the computer again. ‘Eleven-thirty in the morning.’

While I was with Big H. ‘Can you remember what she looked like?’

‘She matched the photo on her file, except for one thing. She’d changed her hair to blonde.’

‘That’s her,’ I said.

The clerk smiled in relief and I thanked her and continued to the lift.

We knocked on Mum and Trent’s door and when there was no answer, used the spare key to gain access. There was nobody there. I looked around to see if there were any sign she had been back, but there was none.

‘Perhaps she’s in
your
room,’ Martine said.

I unlocked my room and pushed the door open slowly, sighing in relief when there were no dead bodies lying on my bed. There was also no sign of Mum or Trent. I pulled out Mum’s phone and tried to ring Trent. No answer.

I only had fifteen minutes before I had to meet Billy. Just enough time to get changed, but not enough time to dry my hair.

Phooey
.

I was classing this one as a date, because I didn’t have any ulterior motives left, so I had wanted to spend some time on my appearance. It looked like I was going to have to go with the girl-next-door look… again.

We were going on the bike so I chose a pair of denim shorts and a bright-orange t-shirt. I also wore a matching set of frilly underwear and push-up bra. I didn’t know if I’d need them but I was working on the theory that I’d rather be prepared than embarrassed.

I pulled my hair back in a low bun, suitable to prevent helmet-head, and went down to meet him.

He was out the front, leaning against his motorbike, looking delicious. I felt my heart do a thumping, skipping rhythm when I saw him, and I could feel myself blushing.

‘Fun morning shopping?’ he asked, looking at my Snoopy Band-Aid covered arms with his eyebrows raised.

‘Fire sale at Macy’s,’ I said. ‘Some of those women are plain nasty.’

He shook his head and then offered me his jacket. I slipped into it. It was still warm from his body and I could feel my blush deepening.

We rode through the streets of Las Vegas, finally stopping in front of a quaint restaurant that had a row of tables lined up neatly on the footpath. The red and white striped blinds matched the tablecloths, giving the place a festive feel.

‘I hope you like Italian,’ Billy said.

We walked in the door and a plump, Italian Momma threw her arms in the air and started babbling at Billy. She kissed him on both cheeks and pulled him into an embrace.

He laughed and spoke to her in what appeared to be fluent Italian. Then he turned towards me and, taking my arm, pulled me forwards.

‘Chanel,’ he said to the Momma as he pointed at me. ‘This is Maria,’ Billy told me.

‘Very nice to meet you,’ I said to Maria.

She nodded her head and held her arms out to me, pulling me into a hard embrace and kissing me on the cheeks. Then she took us back outside, showing us to a table that overlooked a window box flowing with brightly coloured flowers.

I looked at the flowers and wrinkled my nose.

‘Don’t you like geraniums?’ Billy asked.

‘Oh no, I love them. They’re such cheery looking flowers. It’s just that flowers tend to make me sneeze.’

‘Well then, you had better sit this side.’ He pulled the chair furthest away from the geraniums out for me and I slid into it, reaching out a hand for the menu.

‘Don’t even look at the menu,’ Billy said. ‘You have to have the lasagne.’

I started laughing. ‘I would have ordered that anyway. I
always
get the lasagne.’

Maria brought us out a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glass. Billy spoke to her briefly and she disappeared back inside, whether to place our order or give us some privacy, I wasn’t sure.

‘Does she speak any English?’ I asked.

‘A little. She understands it better than she speaks it.’

‘Hasn’t she been here long?’

He laughed lightly and then took a sip of his wine. ‘Hmm, that’s good,’ he said, holding his glass up to the light. ‘She’s been here for over forty years.’

‘And she never learnt to speak English?’

‘There’s a large Italian contingent in Las Vegas. She doesn’t really mix outside that group.’

I drank some of the wine and settled back into my seat. We were in the shade and I was the perfect temperature in my shorts. Billy must have been really hot in his jeans.

Of course, thinking about him in his jeans did funny squirmy things to my belly, and that made me blush again.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, making me blush even harder.

‘Oh, I was thinking how nice the weather was.’

‘You blush when you think about the weather?’

‘Always.’

He smirked and I was pretty sure he knew I wasn’t thinking about the weather. I was thinking about something else just as hot and just as nice as the weather.

The arrival of our lasagne saved me from further scrutiny.

It could have been the company, it might have been the location, it was possible it was because it was the first time since I had gotten there that I wasn’t worrying about Mum, but that lasagne was the best lasagne I had ever had.

We followed the lasagne with gelato and by the time I was finished I was contemplating undoing the top button of my pants. But I didn’t think it would improve my chances of seeing a certain type of action later on that afternoon, so I put up with the discomfort instead.

‘I want to have a word with Giuseppe,’ Billy said, standing.

‘Is that the chef?’

‘Yep.’

‘Can you please tell him that
that
was the best lasagne of my life.’

He smiled his adorable, crooked smile. ‘I’m going to order a coffee as well. Do you want one?’

‘Thanks.’

He watched me for a moment longer – the look on his face said he liked what he was seeing – and then he headed into the restaurant. The afternoon sun had been creeping along the footpath and had finally reached our table. I stuck my legs out and closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the warmth on my skin and the memory of his gaze.

I murmured in annoyance as the warmth disappeared. Stupid clouds. Where had they come from? I hadn’t seen one cloud since we had gotten here. I opened my eyes to see whether it was a little fluffy cloud that would soon be gone, or a big, I’m-going-to-ruin-your-afternoon cloud.

It was definitely an I’m-going-to-ruin-your-afternoon cloud. Just not the type I had expected.

Boris stood there, casting a long shadow over me. He was showing his pointy teeth off in a full smile. Vladimir was standing next to him, but Dmitrij was nowhere to be seen. Possibly with the car then.

I was surprised at how calm I felt as I tabulated the information and made decisions based on the facts at hand. I didn’t know how long Billy was going to be talking and anyway, I really didn’t want to drag him into this.

‘Look out,’ I screamed, ducking and pointing past Boris’s shoulder.

My ruse worked, and they both swivelled, their hands going to their belts. I jumped up and, praying Maria would forgive me, smashed my chair over the back of Boris’s head. Then I took off, running down the road.

I used the very powerful knowledge I had gained from watching copious action movies and I dodged and weaved as I ran. The first bullet whizzed past my head and slammed through the window of a car ahead and to my right.

Fuck. I couldn’t believe they were shooting at me. I mean even on the job back in Sydney I’d never been shot at. I swerved to the right between a couple of the parked cars and continued running with the line of vehicles between them and me. Of course that was only going to work until they ventured onto the road, but it bought me a little time to work out what the fuck to do.

My lungs were starting to burn and I could hear my breath coming in harsh gasps
.
I really had to start some sort of fitness campaign when I got home. Being continuously chased had more than highlighted how unfit I had become.

I heard a gun bark again and ducked while I ran. The bullet ripped a small piece of tarmac out of the road a few metres in front of me.

Holy shit.
That had been close.

A second gun joined the first and then there was a roar of a motorbike. Billy screeched to a halt beside me and yelled, ‘Get on.’

I didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing the helmet from his outstretched hand, I vaulted onto the back of the bike. I wedged the helmet onto my head, threw my arms around his waist and leant down as low as I could. My weight hadn’t fully settled before the bike was leaping forwards. I heard a gun fire again and almost instantaneously felt a stinging on my right arm.

‘Shit,’ I said, looking down. A bullet had nicked the side of my arm.

‘You all right?’ Billy’s voice came from within the helmet.

‘Yep. You?’

‘I’ll be better when I’ve had a coffee.’

I started to laugh and then I couldn’t stop. I clung onto him as tears ran down my face.

‘Are you crying?’ he asked.

I shook my head, and then realised he couldn’t see me. ‘No.’ I gasped for air. ‘I’m laughing.’

He glanced back over his shoulder at my face and then shook his head and said, ‘You’re unbelievable.’

I looked back over my shoulder at the traffic, as I did up the helmet. A black SUV pulled out and dodged around a slower moving vehicle. I tapped Billy on the shoulder and said, ‘I think we’ve got company.’

He adjusted his side mirror and peered into it for a second. ‘Black SUV a few vehicles back?’

‘That’s the one.’

He swore and kicked the bike up a gear, darting out and around the car in front. The driver we cut off leaned on his horn and yelled a few choice words at us. I was tempted to give him the finger, but I figured one vehicle trying to kill us was enough.

Billy took a hard right, accelerating as soon as we were around the corner. The black SUV followed and suddenly there were no vehicles between us and them. I saw the passenger side windows being rolled down and I knew that within seconds bullets would be raining down upon us.

I bashed on Billy’s shoulder trying to warn him and he shouted, ‘Hang on.’ I clung to him with both arms while he executed a sharp right turn into an alley. I was hoping he knew where he was going. The last thing we needed right now was to get caught on a dead-end street.

The alley was wide enough for the car to follow, but it gained us another few seconds breathing space. Billy was weaving the bike from side-to-side when we heard a gun fire behind us.

I shrieked and ducked down, making myself as small a target as possible on the back of the bike. Even though I didn’t know if it would stop a bullet, I was glad I had on the helmet.

The bike roared out of the end of the alley and swung left across a line of traffic. Tyres screeched and horns blasted and I could see faces – some horrified, some angry – staring out at us through the different windscreens. The back of the bike skidded from underneath us and I envisioned us sliding down the road with the bike on top.
That
was going to hurt. I heard the throttle growl and the end suddenly kicked back in beneath us. Then we were flying away from the oncoming cars.

‘Holy shit,’ I said, staring back at the mayhem behind us. The black SUV was caught in the end of the alley waiting for the traffic jam we had created to clear. If we were lucky, we would be out of sight by the time they were free.

We rode for a few more minutes, Billy taking seemingly random turns. I lay my head on his back and took some deep breaths trying to quieten my poor heart. It had done more beating over the past couple of days than it normally did in a month.

A few moments later I realised that my fingers were digging into Billy’s stomach muscles. And I found myself noting that those muscles were rock hard. I released my grip and trailed a hand up the length of his abdomen and back down.

He turned his head and met my eyes for the briefest moment. I could see the same look on his face that I was sure was on mine. Desire. We had all this adrenaline racing around in our blood stream and it seemed the emergency was over. It would be a sin to waste all that adrenaline.

I moved my hands up so that they were sitting over his chest, just to be sure that his pectoral muscles were as hard as his abs. They were. Then I slid my fingers back down to the band of his jeans.

Things were about to get
really
interesting when there was a blast of a horn. A car charged out of a side street narrowly missing the back of the bike. It was the black SUV. I could see Boris in the front passenger seat. He was grinning maliciously.

Billy leant forwards and dug around in the bike tank-bag. ‘You’re going to have to take them out,’ he said.

‘What?’

He pulled a Glock 22 out of the bag and passed it back to me. ‘Have you ever fired a gun?’

‘Not in anger,’ I lied.

‘Just point and shoot.’

That was easy for him to say. I couldn’t hit an object when both it and I were stationary. Now he wanted me to take out a moving vehicle from the back of a weaving bike. Geez Louise.

‘I’m going to lure them onto an empty street,’ he said.

Empty street? Good plan. At least there was less chance of me hitting an innocent.

He overtook a few more cars and then turned left into a side street. The black SUV turned about a hundred metres behind us.

‘Now,’ Billy yelled.