“Really? I’m going to count to three, then I’m going to pull this trigger. Hope you packed swim trunks because you’re going somewhere hot.”
“Don’t be—”
“One …”
“Are you fucking insane?”
Two …”
The woman calmly pulled back the hammer.
“Alright. Alright. Alright.” Steven was cowering now. “Look, it was just a little something to relax you.”
“Relax me?”
“Yeah, I – I have money.”
“No kidding.”
“That part. I can get you that part we discussed. A better part. I do it all the time.”
“Oh really?”
“I mean …” Reed looked like a drowning man.
The woman in the mask calmly held out her drink to him. “Drink it.”
“No, please, I …”
“One of two things is going to happen here, sweetheart. Either you drink up – not spilling one drop – or I shoot you in the head and leave a note, so the cops test it when they find your body.”
“You’re not serious.”
The woman laughed. “Do I not look serious?”
His voice came out as a whine. “But you’ll, you’ll do something terrible to me.”
She took a step forward. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to shoot you in the balls and let you bleed out slow. It’ll be the irony of your last statement that kills you.”
Reed drank the drink and, feebly protesting the whole time, passed out after about two minutes. The woman slapped him in the face to confirm he was out cold for the benefit of the camera. Then, she put her hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. Steven Reed didn’t smoke. It contained half a dozen tablets. The woman held them up to the camera so her audience could see them clearly, then she crushed them on the coffee table under the heel of her shoe.
With that, she walked off screen.
She returned a moment later, having apparently reconsidered her exit. She delivered an emphatic kick to Reed’s nether region and then she was gone for good. Tatiana never met the girl. Never found out who she was. She disappeared.
Ten minutes later Abigail Reed screeched up to the house in her Porsche, nearly taking out the front wall in her haste. On the feed, Tatiana and Dionne watched as she rushed inside, berating her husband while desperately searching for the hidden camera.
“I don’t understand,” said Tatiana. “How did she …?”
“Oh,” said Dionne with a broad smile. “Didn’t I mention? There’s a special screening this evening of the latest summer blockbuster at a certain director’s house. All the biggest names in the industry are there. Inexplicably, the live feed we just watched got patched in over it. Even Hollywood can’t ignore that.”
Six months later Tatiana had joined the Sisters. Her speciality was being the woman you never saw coming. The one you looked right past.
Tatiana had been following the orders Dionne had given her and watching the Clown Town casino for a few hours. She didn’t understand how any of this related to the plan to bust the guy out of prison and use him as a bargaining chip to get Bernadette and Assumpta back, but honestly, she didn’t care. Dionne was on a very, very short list of people that Tatiana trusted. She didn’t question what she was asked to do.
Finally, the man she had been told to look for appeared. Forties, attractive, killer smile. He was standing in the lobby chatting to a short woman running a merchandising stall. The picture Tatiana had been shown was of a younger version of him, but the guy had aged well. She walked up and handed him the envelope she had been given.
“Mr Draper.”
He looked confused.
Before he could ask any questions, Tatiana turned on her heel and was out of the casino and hailing a cab.
Who said there were no good roles for women over forty any more?
Chapter Ten
Arthur Faser was a man always up for learning something new about himself. Like, for example, it turned out that if he spent a week in a state of constant terror – chained to a succession of hairy-assed bikers while he pretended to be formulating a plan out of thin air to break their buddy out of prison – then, despite all the noise, heat and dust, he could still conk out in the sidecar of a motorbike being driven by an insane nun. Yes, she had already tear-gassed and electrocuted him, but, on the other hand, she had stated up front that it was against her odd take on religion to kill people. When your life had gone as monumentally off the rails as Arthur’s had, there was a certain comfort to be found in that.
He came to as the bike pulled in to a massive outbuilding two storeys high, and parked up beside a Winnebago. Other vehicles lurked in the shadows, tucked away under protective sheets.
Arthur yawned and looked around him. “Where are we?”
Joy gave a hacking cough. “You could call it our temporary nunnery.”
He nodded towards the docking station for the cuffs. “May I?”
“Sure.”
Arthur disconnected himself then climbed awkwardly out of the sidecar and stretched his stiffened limbs. “How long were we driving for?”
“Long enough.”
Arthur held up the cuffs. “I don’t suppose we can take these off now?”
“Why? Do you need to go tinkle again?”
Arthur wisely decided not to press the matter. Joy led him out of the garage and pressed a button on the wall to close the gate. The pair stood in the moonlight and looked at the two-storey ranch-style property that stretched out before them.
“Holy shit, this is your nunnery? Are you, like, one of those religions that takes millions off the grandmas of America?”
He’d meant it as a joke. One quick look at Joy’s face confirmed that it had not landed.
“As I said before, we’re not your typical order. By the way, in case you’re thinking of doing anything clever, know that those cuffs are only the start of why an approach like that will leave you looking stupid and feeling more sore than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking
