Kiss Of The Blue Dragon. Julie Beard

subway tunnels that had become a city for the poor.

      A number of homeless Chicagoans who preferred to brave the elements in order to enjoy the light of day remained above ground. Calling them “free-rangers” sounded like something happy, like free-range chickens.

      The reflection of the homeless lady approaching with her rusty grocery cart full of bags, empty cans and trash became clearer. Her dirty gray hair looked like a Brillo pad, her nose looked borrowed from the Wicked Witch of the East from the classic The Wizard of Oz, and her teeth were MIA. Maybe a methop junkie whose brain had turned to mush. They were usually harmless.

      She pushed her cart past the edge of the building and smiled at us as she passed. I was just about to relax when I saw something round and hard poking out of the many tattered layers of her clothing.

      No time to curse. I shot my leg out at a ninety-degree arc, ramming the toe of my boot into the soft part of her temple with a sickening thud. The free ranger-who-was-not flew backward and landed in an awkward, still heap. Knocked out cold. Mike would be proud.

      “Damn I’m good.” I straightened my collar and glanced at Marco, who looked down at the unconscious body in horror.

      “I ought to book you for that.” He ground the words through clenched teeth and bent to help the prone figure, until I grabbed his upper arm.

      “Don’t be such a patsy,” I whispered. “This is a setup.”

      He glanced around and saw what I had—an ominously deserted street. It was as if someone had shut down traffic for a parade. The Sgarristas probably had. But for just one assassination? They must have really wanted us dead.

      “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I don’t know why the R.M.O. sent this guy to kill us, but this isn’t the place to debate the issue.”

      I quickly squatted and pulled out the weapon I’d seen, which was still hidden in the assassin’s clothes, and held it up for him to see.

      His face sobered. “You were right. I didn’t see the gun.”

      “Hell, yes, I was right. Don’t worry about it. You have to spend some time on the streets before you notice these things.” I handed him the Uzi-size weapon and felt for a pulse in the assassin’s neck, which was partially covered with his latex mask. “This guy will be coming to soon.”

      “How do you know it’s a guy?”

      I grinned at him over my shoulder. “There’s only one sure way to find out.”

      I tucked my fingers under the edge of the latex and pulled the mask off, revealing the sweating, unconscious face of a dark-haired, twenty-something guy whose ancestors definitely once vacationed on the Baltic Sea.

      “You were right again,” Marco acknowledged.

      “I usually am. Don’t ask me why.”

      “How did you know this guy was waiting for us?”

      “I really don’t know. I’ve always had great intuition but this was…this was too weird.”

      He nodded, but hardly looked convinced. He turned his professional scrutiny to the contraption in his hands. “What do you think this is?”

      “I don’t know, but I feel a lot safer knowing it’s in our hands and not his.”

      I stood and he handed it over for my examination. It was surprisingly light. There was a trigger, but that was the only conventional technology on the foot-and-a-half-long contraption. The nose ballooned like a flamethrower, but I was sure it shot out something far more subtle and dangerous. Something inside of it glowed unnaturally. All ruminations came to a screeching halt when Marco stiffened and pointed down the empty street.

      “Baker.”

      “I see her.” A figure stood staring at us five hundred yards down the road. This time it really was a woman. I could tell by the natural flow of her long black hair, the knockout body in black tights, the cocky, somehow sexy stance. “If this is Tweedle Dee, there’s Tweedle Dumb. Though I have a feeling she’s anything but.”

      My supposition proved all too true. While she distracted us, the Sgarrista on the ground grabbed a knife and lunged toward me. Damn. I had been so entranced with the first weapon I hadn’t searched for another. Marco turned and socked the guy hard in the jaw. I was impressed. But the Sgarrista barely moved. Oh, great! Jaws of steel.

      The assassin kicked his leg out and rammed me against the brick wall. I groaned, half expecting to hear the crack of bones. He grabbed Marco by the collar and had the knife to his throat so fast I couldn’t react in any other way. I aimed the mysterious weapon and pulled the trigger. I didn’t even hesitate.

      What happened next was amazing. I’ve never killed anyone, but in this case, I had no choice but to use the assassin’s own weapon against him.

      Some sort of glowing laser beam soundlessly emitted from the snout. The Sgarrista watched with intense horror as it apparently penetrated his bulletproof vest. He scrambled backward as if it were a giant, creepy spider crawling up his chest. Then he dropped his knife and his shoulders slumped in complete defeat. I turned the weapon to the James Bond chick who watched the whole thing from down the street. She took one look at it, turned and ran.

      The assassin then got up from the sidewalk. He wasn’t hurt. But somehow his face already looked dead. Despair welled in his black eyes. Even though there was no visible penetration of his flesh, he looked as if I’d just dealt him a mortal blow. He held out his hands. “Arrest me.”

      Marco and I exchanged looks. What did he know about this weapon that we didn’t? As Marco pulled a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket, he said, “Why are you making this so easy?”

      The sweating, bruised young man replied, “Because I’m dead already. You have a gun? Shoot me, please. It will be faster.”

      “I’d shoot if I had my weapon,” Marco muttered out of the side of his mouth. Then he marched forward, spun the assassin around and cuffed him. “Killing you would be too compassionate. You’re going to have to endure overnight lodging courtesy of the county of Cook.”

      “Govno,” the gunman cursed in Russian.

      “Just think of the jail as a bed-and-breakfast on a budget.”

      I chuckled in spite of the circumstances. Marco shot me a smile, which I returned, then I frowned. It was time to start figuring out why the R.M.O. had tried to kill us. More important, I needed to know when the next attempt on our lives would be since they weren’t easily discouraged.

      Chapter 7

      The Long, Hot Night

      Marco called into headquarters on his lapel phone. He got no answers as to why his backup had disappeared, but a squad car arrived quickly and took the R.M.O. assassin downtown. The APB on Lola had turned up nothing. And DNA results indicated the headless body was a Polish cleaning lady who took care of Lola’s apartment in exchange for future predictions. By the looks of the apartment, Lola and her cleaning lady had ripped each other off.

      When Marco offered to give me a lift home, I made no attempt to decline. Granted, a niggling voice inside my head warned me that his insidious masculinity and good looks were a lethal combination. Therefore, I definitely should have returned the way I’d arrived, via public transportation. But I was dog-tired and didn’t want to fight a crowd. Besides, when you almost bite the bullet with someone, you want to talk about it over a couple of beers.

      Marco took me back to my place in his old hydrogen-powered SUV. Because my back was sore from our scuffle outside Lola’s apartment, he took Lake Shore Drive. The land lanes on LSD were well paved, unlike the grid of neglected city streets. Just before we arrived in front of my two-flat, Marco received bad news. The backup he’d been counting on had gone missing under suspicious circumstances.

      In the brooding silence, as cars whizzed by on the curved ribbons of pavement, I felt his sense of