Undercover In High Heels

“You know, you’re awfully picky for a woman on the run.”

“Shut up!” Isabel shoved the gun in my face again.

The chances of my peeing my pants just rose astronomically. I clamped my mouth shut.

Isabel looked over my shoulder and apparently found a vehicle to her liking. Her face broke into a grin. “Now that’s more like it.” She tightened her grip on my arm and dragged me with her, weaving through the rows of parked cars toward a big black Escalade in the corner. She peeked in the driver’s-side window. The valet had left the keys in the ignition. “Chumps, ” she said, through a big creepy smile.

She was jiggling the door handle when the emergency exit flew open again and Ramirez’s voice rang out across the parking lot.

“Isabel!”

Without skipping a beat, she spun around, raised her arm, and fired in the direction of his voice. A bullet shattered the passenger-side window of the VW.

“Shit, ” I heard Ramirez cry as Isabel popped off three more rounds in the direction of the midget car. “Maddie?” he called.

“I’m okay, ” I replied. “She just really hates that car.”

“Shut up!” Isabel screamed. “What are you, stupid? What don’t you understand about ‘shut up’?”

I clamped my lips together and did a zipping-them-up-and-throwing-away-the-key thing.

“Isabel, let’s talk about this. We can work something out, ” Ramirez said from behind the VW. I vaguely heard the sound of sirens in the distance.

Isabel must have heard them too, because her only response was to blow out the VW’s back windows. Clearly Isabel wasn’t in the mood to talk.

But there was one good thing about the crazy lady shooting at my boyfriend: the gun wasn’t pointed at me anymore.

I took a deep breath and, with my one good heel, stomped down on her bare foot as hard as I could.

“Sonofabitch!” she cried. It stunned her just enough for her to loosen the grip on my arm. That was all I needed. I turned and ran as hard as I could on one broken heel in the opposite direction, diving behind a Ford Festiva just as I heard a bullet rip into its tires.

“You blonde bitch!” Isabel howled, sending a wild spray of bullets across the parking lot.

I ducked, covering my head and praying the Festiva wasn’t as cheaply made as it looked. If only I’d ducked behind a Hummer instead.

“Maddie?” Ramirez cried again from the other side of the lot. But I was honestly too paralyzed with fear to respond. I just sat there, my arms wrapped around my head, my knees tucked to my chest, my heart beating faster than when Dana made me crank the Stair-Master up to six.

The gunfire paused for a second, then was immediately followed by the sound of tires squealing. I peeked my head up over the shot-out window of the Festiva just in time to see Isabel’s wild hair flying through the driver’s-side window of the Escalade as it screamed out of the lot.

“Maddie?” Broken glass crunched under Ramirez’s feet as he sprinted across the lot to where I was still doing a fetal position.

“I’m okay.” Sort of. I looked down. In my dive for cover, I’d skinned both my knees. My big toe on my right foot was bleeding, turning my Passionate Pink pedicure into something out of a horror movie, and my Nina pumps would never be the same again. But, on the upside, I hadn’t wet my pants.

“Are you sure?” Ramirez asked, suddenly at my side. He lifted me up and ran his hands quickly over my arms and legs. Too quickly, if you asked me. I wouldn’t have minded if he lingered just a little longer in the thigh region. Yep, I had it so bad for Ramirez that even gunfire didn’t deter those overactive little hormones of mine. Geez, maybe I should accompany Dana to her next SA meeting.

“I’m fine, really, ” I said, shaking off the inappropriate thoughts.

Satisfied, he stood back and looked at me. The concern in his dark eyes slowly faded into annoyance-and not the kind of annoyance you feel when telemarketers call at dinnertime, but the kind where your insecure friend spurs an insane Amazon woman to take her hostage, which results in your getting shot at. Yep, that was the level of annoyance making the little blue vein in his neck start to bulge and his jaw set harder than the granite Clinique counters.

I bit my lip and shuffled my heel-less shoe. I looked down at his beer-stained shirt. “Um…sorry about the Budweiser.”

He just shook his head and muttered another, “Jesus, ” under his breath.

Two hours later the Cabana Club parking lot was still swarming with police officers, and Ramirez was still giving me the evil eye. Which, as I sat on the tailgate of an ambulance wrapped in an ugly green blanket waiting for paramedics to give me the all-clear to go home, was kind of unfair. I mean, it wasn’t like I meant to get taken hostage. And it wasn’t as if I were the one who’d shot at him. In fact, if I’d had my way, we’d be at my place, sprawled across my futon going for round two of “or something” by now. So, really, this was all Ramirez’s fault. (What can I say? Twelve years of Catholic school had taught me how to reassign guilt with the best of them.)

“Ohmigod, honey, check out the cop at three o’clock, ” Dana said, standing beside me. After the club had cleared out the panic-stricken singles, Dana had found me in the parking lot watching uniformed officers drape crime-scene tape around the remnants of the VW. I was grateful for the hand to hold, since it was clear from the whole evil-eye thing that Ramirez and I wouldn’t be holding hands anytime soon. But the sight of so many men in uniform was almost too much for Miss Sexual Sobriety.

I turned my head to the left.

“No, ” Dana said, pointing to the right. “I said three o’clock.”

“Why didn’t you just say, ‘right, ’ then?” I mumbled, eyeing the object of Dana’s ogling. A tall, slim guy with a big nose and dark hair, dressed in uniform blues, slouched near the rear entrance, questioning the Olsen twin.

“He is delish!” Dana made the kind of yummy sound in her throat that I usually reserved for the tiramisu at Gianni’s.

“I thought you were off men?”

“Uh-huh. Oh!” she gasped. “Maddie, eleven o’clock. Blond, blue eyes, and biceps to die for!” She was practically licking her chops.

“Dana, how long has it been since you’ve had sex?”

She sighed, watching Mr. Biceps sweep shards of glass into an evidence baggie. “Way too long.” She tilted her head as he leaned over the VW, showing off glutes that, I’ll admit, had even me staring. “Since Monday. Four whole days.”

Oh, brother.

“If I make it a week, I get a chip.”

“You do realize I’ve had hangnails that have lasted longer than a week?”

Dana ignored me. “Uh-oh. Bad news at four o’clock.”

I turned my head to the left.

“No.” Dana grabbed my chin and tilted my head right. “Four o’clock.”

Uh-oh was right. Ramirez was picking his way over the broken glass, evidence cones, and shot-out car parts, headed right toward us. And by the rigid set of his shoulders, this was not going to be a friendly sort of chat.

“Um, maybe I’ll just…um…” Dana trailed off, wisely giving Bad Cop a wide berth as she joined the rest of the looky-loos behind the yellow crime-scene tape.

Ramirez barely acknowledged her as she passed, his eyes boring in on me, his arms crossed over his chest. He stopped in front of me, shaking his head, his unreadable Bad Cop face reminding me of the one my Irish Catholic grandmother had used when she’d interrogated my five-year-old self about which “creative” little girl had drawn all over her kitchen walls with a Crayola.

He didn’t say anything, just gave me that hard stare. I bit my lip, vowing not to be the one who spoke first. Okay, so I’d kind of mucked up his evening, but he’d started it by going out with Crazy Chick in the first place.

I crossed my own arms over my own chest, narrowed my eyes at him, and prepared to wait him out.

We stood like that for a full five seconds.