Killer in High Heels

for that matter, where here even was. Had I passed out? Fainted? Had one too many dessert-themed shots again?

I looked down at my bound feet, clad in five-inch patent leather platforms. Then in a flash it all came back to me. The Drag Queen Chic look, the Men in Black, the warehouse in the desert.

The ground meeting my face.

Someone had whacked me on the head! I hated it when people did that. Just when I’d thought everything had gone so well, too. I’d passed as Larry, the Marsuccis had their money-everyone should have been happy. I just hoped Felix had gotten a shot of the creep who’d hit me.

Felix!

My only hope. He must have seen the whole thing. Maybe he followed me. Maybe he was, at this very moment, corralling the troops to break in and rescue me…

A fantasy that was cut short as I heard a groan from the other side of the room.

“Uhn. Bloody ’ell.”

Great. So much for my rescue.

“Is that you?” I asked, squinting through the darkness.

“Maddie?”

“Yeah. What happened?”

He groaned again and I heard movement, then another “bloody hell,” as he realized that, like me, he was bound. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember, I was popping off a shot of those Italian blokes taking your bag and now here I am.” He paused, groaning again. “With a hell of a headache.”

On the upside, at least he had gotten the shots of the Marsuccis.

“Where’s your camera now?” I asked.

He groaned again, this one louder and sadder. “No clue.”

So much for the upside.

I leaned my head back (carefully, to avoid the goose egg) and felt tears prick the backs of my eyes. Ramirez was right. I was an idiot for not staying in L.A. when I had the chance. Mobsters, goons, Mafiosos-what did I know about these kind of people? Nothing. Less than nothing. Negative nothing. So nothing that I’d flubbed the one chance of proving Monaldo’s connection to the Mob and gotten myself and Felix both kidnapped in the process. Not only that, but I had a feeling that when whoever was responsible for the goose eggs came back, they weren’t just going to cut our bonds and let us go. I had a feeling my last moments on earth were going to be dressed as a fifty- something drag queen.

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,