I Sprang From The Couch
before anything broke- She laughed. “Ole!”
- get yourself another lawyer
- do any of these words embarrass you?
- self-inflicted gunshot
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I sprang from the couch to confront the ninja, except that with my hands tied I wallowed and flopped gracelessly into a kneeling position beside the couch. Cursing the overly tight polyester slacks I wore, I clambered to my feet.
My wrists suddenly separated as the curly ribbons floated away like confetti. The ninja’s blade was now aimed at my crotch. She laughed. “Ole!”
“Tessa?” I asked. She pulled off her mask and shook out her glorious red hair.
“The one and only,” she said with a wink, making me wonder if she knew about her robot doppelgänger. “You did great, by the way. Dr Stiletto never suspected a thing. Now the sanitation guild will be freed from her influence and the conspiracy will collapse.” She frowned at me. “Do any of these words embarrass you?”
I shook my head, wondering what expression I wore on my face. I was shocked and confused, but not embarrassed. Gesturing to Minka’s head, I asked, “Won’t you have to get yourself another lawyer?” Decapitating a hypnotist was probably a felony in a bucolic town like Ipswich.
Tessa laughed again, a sound I relished despite the gruesome circumstances. “Who needs lawyers when you’ve got the cops and the press in your corner? The headlines will all say Stiletto died of self-inflicted gunshot therapy.”
My mind chafed against the inside of my skull. One conspiracy might be about to crumble, but it sounded like Tessa was involved in another. The strain on my mental gears increased when it dawned on me that she must have been part of it for as long as I’d known her. What was her real reason for saving me? My thoughts accelerated, playing back all my memories of Tessa and trying to cross-reference them with the interwoven intrigues that always seemed to surround us. It was too much to take in, overloading my mental hardware. I stopped trying to think about it before anything broke.