Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,51

taken my advice, rolled onto his back, and planted his hands on his wound. “Won’t it be easier if Vic and I are gone before they show up?”

Leticia thought if over for a second, then said, “What’s your offer?”

“I take Vic and go, and you and I will see each other back at the hotel.”

“Can you guarantee that she won’t tell anyone about us?”

“Yes.”

“Then come get her.”

“I’ll be coming with a gun in my hand. I’d better not see one in anybody else’s. If I do, I’m going to shoot, and I’ll start with you.”

She laughed. “You’re sexy when you talk all rough and tough. No weapons in anyone’s hand, I promise. Just a couple friends standing by to make sure you don’t put me out of the tournament.” She hung up.

I cracked open the door to the stairwell. No bullets blazed up at me, so I crept on down.

By the time I got there, the door to a stockroom was open, and so was the one leading out into the public part of Rhonda’s store. I crossed the stockroom glancing this way and that, waiting for someone to pop out from behind the stacks of cardboard cartons. Nobody did. I started through the other door.

That was when I realized it might have been a whole lot smarter to demand that Leticia send Vic up the stairs to me. But I was stressed, and that can screw with your judgment. Or maybe Leticia had slipped a little persuasive magic past my guard. Either way, it was too late now.

The back of Rhonda’s store was an open area with long newspaper-covered tables where people could sit and do crafts. Painted plaster molds hung all around the walls. Most were religious—praying hands, Bibles open to the first verse of the Twenty-Third Psalm, the Virgin Mary—and painted sloppily in the bright crayon-box colors a little kid would pick. Rhonda made those herself while inhaling one Virginia Slim after another, trusting God to protect her from the Florida Clean Air Act. As a result, the smell in the air was a mix of cigarettes, paint, and potpourri.

Rhonda was sitting in her usual spot. She didn’t look good. Pushing three hundred pounds, with a brassy, spiky, brittle dye job that was usually black at the roots, and paint stains all over her meaty hands and smock, she never did. But now she was trembling, and her round face was sweaty and green, like she might throw up. She looked at me like she wasn’t a hundred percent sure who I was.

Raul was standing near her, and Leticia and two sopranos were along the walls. There could be a dozen more hiding in the aisles between the tall racks of arts-and-crafts supplies. I just had to hope not. Vic sat handcuffed to a wooden chair. Her face lit up when I came in.

Leticia waved a hand at her. “You see, she’s all right.”

“Get the cuffs off her,” I said, aiming the Smith and Wesson at Leticia. Then I noticed a faint whine in the air. Maybe something in the AC, or noise outside on the street.

One of the sopranos pulled a key out of his pocket and dropped to one knee beside Vic. The whine kept whining.

I glanced at Raul. “Pablo’s shot in the stomach. You should help him.”

The eyes widened in Raul’s ugly, pimple-dotted face. He turned toward the stockroom door.

“Please wait,” Leticia said. “I need you here just a tiny bit longer.”

“Right,” said Raul. “Sorry.” He turned back around.

“You can let him go,” I told Leticia. “I really don’t want to kill you.”

She shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

I realized the soprano in charge of getting the cuffs off Vic was taking his time about it. I started to tell him to hurry up, and then, although that little background noise still seemed as faint as ever, it suddenly spooked me in a way it hadn’t before.

I visualized the Thunderbird. The sound jumped, except that really, it had been loud all along. It was just that magic had kept me from hearing it that way.

There was another soprano near me, and he was singing up a storm. I spotted him out of the corner of my eye at the same instant that I really heard him. I felt the charge of mojo in his voice, too, like an itch inside my ears.

I guessed his song hadn’t made him extremely invisible. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed to creep up on my flank. But it got the