Maggie Lee (Book 22): The Hitwoman Goes To Prison Read online

  The Hitwoman Goes to Prison

  Book 22

  JB Lynn

  Copyright © Jennifer Baum THE HITWOMAN GOES TO PRISON

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted by US copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, or organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The Hitwoman Goes To Prison is intended for 18+ older and for mature audiences only.

  © 2019 Jennifer Baum

  Cover designer: Hot Damn Designs

  Editor: Parisa Zolfaghari

  Proofreader: Proof Before You Publish

  Formatting: Leiha Mann

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Author’s Note

  Also by JB Lynn

  About JB Lynn

  1

  You just know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake up knowing you’re going to prison. Not that I was going to prison, but I was visiting a prison. Unfortunately, this was not my first time.

  My name is Maggie Lee, and the reason I was going to prison, this time, was to interview a witness. That might make it sound like I’m in law enforcement, or even a law-abiding citizen, but the truth is, I’m actually a criminal myself. I mean, in my own defense, I only kill bad people, but I have killed a few of them.

  Anyway, the reason I was going to prison was because I was trying to figure out how to get Boy’s mother out of one.

  “Gotta! Gotta!” my Doberman pinscher, DeeDee, panted.

  I rolled out of bed, a little stiff because I’d been in a fight over a heart on a hospital rooftop the night before, and shuffled over to the door. Life had been a lot easier when I lived in the basement of the Bed & Breakfast and had just been able to let her outside. Now that I was living at my grandfather Herschel’s home, I had to actually walk down a hallway to reach a door. This may not sound like a hardship to most people, but you don’t know my family, and you don’t know the dangers walking down a hallway can entail, when you might actually bump into one of them.

  “Gotta!” DeeDee panted again, trying to get me to move faster.

  I raised a finger to my lips. “Shh,” I warned. “I don’t want anyone to hear us.”

  She flattened her ears against her head but remained silent as she led the way to the door.

  I opened it and let her outside. “Stay out of trouble.”

  She raced away, not replying.

  Sighing heavily, I closed the door and began the slow shuffle back to my room.

  “Morning, chica,” a woman said cheerfully.

  Grudgingly, I raised my eyes to find Armani Vasquez, my best friend, was leaning in the hallway, arms crossed over her chest, watching my pathetic progress.

  I told myself it could have been worse. I could have run into one of my aunts. That always starts the day off on a bad foot.

  “Templeton is making pancakes,” Armani told me. “Come join us.”

  Grunting something unintelligible, I nodded and disappeared into my room. I closed my door behind me and leaned against it, then let out a shaky sigh.

  “Are you okay, Sugar?” Piss, my one-eyed cat, asked worriedly. She wrapped herself around my ankles and purred.

  I scooped her up and held her close, appreciating the comfort that she offered.

  “I have to go to prison today,” I reminded her.

  “Me too! Me too! Me too!” a tiny voice squeaked from near the bed.

  I walked over and looked down at the empty tissue box that housed Benny, a white mouse. “Sorry, Benny. I can’t take anybody with me. Not even God.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to have gone anyway,” a superior English voice announced.

  I glanced over at the glass fishbowl, which was a temporary housing unit for the anole lizard, known as Godzilla, God for short. “It’s not my fault I can’t take you,” I reminded him. “We can’t have someone finding you on a security pat down.”

  “It might bruise,” Piss hissed softly, making fun of the lizard’s sensitive skin.

  “We can’t risk it,” I repeated.

  “We could wait in the car,” Piss offered, kneading my chest softly with her front paws.

  “And how am I supposed to explain that to Zeke?” I asked.

  “You don’t have anything to explain to Zeke,” God said testily. “He has his own explaining to do.”

  Before we could get into that argument, there was a soft knock on the door. “Maggie?”

  Still clutching Piss to myself, I opened the door and peeked out. Armani held out a cup of coffee for me. “You look like you need this.”

  Greedily, I practically snatched it out of her hand. “I do. Thank you. Just let me change, I’ll be right out.”

  Nodding, she turned and limped back toward the kitchen.

  Closing the door, I set the cat down on the bed and sipped the strong brew gratefully.

  “Nothing good can come from this prison visit,” God predicted.

  I wasn’t inclined to argue with him, but I didn’t respond. I quickly changed clothes, the animals all watching me.

  I looked at Piss. “Do you want to get outside?”

  “I want to see if Templeton will give me some cream.”

  Chuckling, I opened the door a crack and allowed her to escape. I looked back at the lizard and mouse. “I’ll try not to be gone too long.”

  “It won’t matter to us,” God said, turning his back on me and facing the wall.

  “Careful. Careful. Careful,” Benny urged.

  “I will be,” I promised him.

  Not that that was going to do me any good.

  2

  When I reached the kitchen, I found Templeton standing over the stove, and Armani sitting at the table. Considering he was supposed to be giving her a cooking lesson, I wasn’t sure that either one of them understood the concept.

  “Good morning,” Templeton said with a smile.

  “Morning,” I grunted back. It was good to see him looking a little more relaxed than he had lately. “How’s your head?”<
br />
  He reached up and touched the bandage splayed across his forehead, the result of a picture frame clocking him. “Hard to crack this old noggin,” he said with a wink.

  “Over here, chica,” Armani ordered.

  She’d started calling me that a long time ago, when we worked together at Insuring the Future. It might sound like an endearment, but really, it’s a reminder that it took her the longest time to learn my actual name.

  Before I obeyed her, I filled my half empty coffee cup with more of my favorite brew. She held out a Scrabble box in my direction.

  “Don’t you think you should get something that’s a little more portable to carry them around in?” I asked, settling into the seat opposite her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Templeton start to flip pancakes.

  “Quit stalling.” Armani gave the box a vigorous shake for good luck, took off the lid, and held it out for me. “Pick.”

  Knowing it wasn’t worth arguing with her, I picked out seven tiles. Armani is many things, but her psychic powers are not something that I scoff at anymore. More often than not, her prediction from her Scrabble tiles comes true in one way or another. I laid the tiles out on the table face up and put them in alphabetical order. AADILMT. We both stared at them for a moment. “DIAL MAT,” Armani declared.

  I considered that for a long moment. “Like the touch pad of a cell phone?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  We both studied them, and she began to move the tiles around, trying to find another combination of letters that made sense. “MAD TAIL,” she cried out victoriously.

  Over at the stove, Templeton chuckled. “Well, there’s no shortage of angry butts around here.”

  Armani smirked.

  I just shook my head and groaned.

  “I AM AT DL,” Armani announced after having shuffled the tiles around a bit more.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, taking a sip of my coffee. It was too early and I had not consumed enough caffeine to be working on this puzzle.

  “DL is disabled list in baseball,” Templeton offered.

  Considering he didn’t strike me as a sports fan, I assumed he knew that because of his gambling predilections.

  None of the messages made a hell of a lot of sense to me, but they often didn’t until the moment I needed them.

  I picked up the tiles and dumped them back into the box, placing the lid back on carefully.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Templeton announced. He slid steaming plates of pancakes in front of Armani and myself.

  Armani smiled like a little kid. “Bunny pancakes!”

  I noticed Templeton had not made mine into bunnies, they were just round, bordering on heart-shaped. I gave him an inquiring look.

  “You have enough animals in your life,” he told me with a wink.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered.

  “So, we need to talk about your color scheme,” Armani said, picking up a pancake with her fingers, dipping it into the dollop of catsup Templeton had artfully placed on her plate, and biting off an ear.

  Shaking my head, I reached for the syrup and slowly drizzled it on my stack. “Not today.”

  “If not today, when?” Armani asked.

  I shrugged. “Some day when I’m not quite so busy.”

  Armani bit the other ear off her pancake and asked with her mouth full, in a way that Aunt Susan would have had a complete meltdown over, “What are you doing?”

  Pretending to concentrate on cutting up my food, I took my time answering. “I just have somebody I need to go visit.”

  “Your mom?”

  I sensed Templeton turn toward me at the mention of my mother, his fiancée’s sister.

  “Not today,” I told them both.

  Armani pursed her lips but kept her disappointment to herself.

  “These are really good, Templeton,” I said, eager to change the subject.

  He glanced over at my plate. “You haven’t even tasted them yet.”

  “But I can tell they’re light and fluffy,” I told him. “Trust me, growing up in my house, where the pancakes resembled lead balloons, light and fluffy means they’re good.”

  He chuckled. “I did have Susan’s pancakes once,” he admitted. “To be honest, that’s why I took over the duty. She’s a good cook, but pancakes have to be coaxed, not berated, into submission.”

  “Can I come along?” Armani asked.

  I stuck a mouthful of pancake onto my tongue and made a show of chewing it completely and swallowing it before answering her. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I lifted my cup and took a long gulp, buying myself some time. Sometimes, I missed having God stuck in my bra. He was always good at coming up with quick responses to these types of uncomfortable questions.

  I thought back to what my murder mentor, Patrick Mulligan, had once told me. It’s easier to keep track of the truth than a lie.

  I put my cup down, looked Armani in the eye, and told her the truth. “I’m going out with Zeke.”

  She cocked her head to the side, surprised. “But what about Angel?”

  “I’m done helping him,” I said.

  “I think you’d have more fun with Angel,” Armani argued.

  I shook my head. Angel and I weren’t in a great place after his questionable dealings with his old Navy comrades, but I couldn’t tell her that. “Don’t worry,” I said instead. “I’m sure Zeke and I will get into enough trouble ourselves.”

  3

  Despite Armani’s protests, I walked out of the house and surveyed the farm when I was done with breakfast. It was still quiet, since Aunt Leslie, Aunt Loretta, my sister Marlene, and Herschel had not yet made an appearance.

  DeeDee raced over to me the moment I stepped out, Herschel’s little dog Zippy nipping at her heels. The Doberman appeared terrified despite the fact she would be able to dispense with the smaller dog with a single chomp and shake of her jaws. When Zippy saw me, he skidded to a stop and growled at me as DeeDee hid behind me.

  I frowned. Usually animals like me, but I hadn’t found a way to connect with my grandfather’s canine companion. That bothered me more than I wanted to admit. After all, don’t we all want to be liked?

  “Good morning, Zippy,” I tried with a smile.

  His response was to lick his privates.

  So much for my efforts.

  “Now go?” DeeDee asked.

  I gave the Doberman a pat on the head. “Yes. I have to go now. But I’ll be back.”

  “Soon?” she whined pitifully.

  “As soon as I can.” I gave the little white dog beside her a hard look. “And you,” I said sternly, “you try to refrain from stealing anything.”

  Zippy’s reaction was to lift his leg and pee on the ground at my feet.

  Fighting the urge to tell him what a rude little jerk he was, I stalked away, leaving them behind. I understood why my pets did not like Herschel’s dog.

  Everyone else seemed to get along, my lizard, cat, mouse, and dog, seemed to like Herschel’s donkey, Irma, and Percy the blind peacock well enough. It was just Zippy and his attitude that seemed to irritate everyone.

  I mused about what to do about that as I walked to the end of the driveway, putting as much distance between myself and the house as quickly as possible. Zeke was waiting in an unfamiliar car. I got into the passenger side, closed the door, and stared straight ahead.

  “Good morning, Maggie,” he said.

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t even look at him.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “You stole a heart,” I reminded him. That wasn’t the sort of thing I could forgive or forget that easily.

  “I did my job, Maggie,” he told me. “I wasn’t stealing the heart.”

  “You took something that didn’t belong to you when nobody was looking.”

  He shook his head and began to drive. “I think you forget that the people that I stole the heart from were literally stealin
g the heart.”

  “Aha!” I shouted, turning to face him. “So you admit that you stole it.”

  “Could you please not shout while I’m driving,” he said testily.

  Since he had my attention, he pointed to the stereo system of the car, reminding me that every vehicle he seemed to drive was bugged and somebody else was listening in to our conversation. “I didn’t admit to anything,” he said. “Are you ready for this meeting of yours at the prison?”

  I shrugged and turned away from him. “As ready as I can be.”

  “I read the file.”

  I glanced over at him, surprised. “I thought you didn’t know what was going on.”

  “Change of plans,” he told me. “Apparently, they don’t think that you’re equipped to do this job on your own.”

  I frowned at him. “I can do it.”

  He shook his head. “Like it or not, I’m your partner on this.”

  “How can you be my partner if I can’t even trust you?”

  “Geez, Maggie,” he groaned. “I didn’t steal the heart from you.”

  “Actually,” I reminded him, “before you, I was the last person holding the heart.”

  “Actually,” he mocked, “you never held the heart. You held the cooler that held the heart.”

  “The point is—” I began.

  “The point is,” Zeke said, raising his voice, “that a human heart would have gone to waste and two people would have been dead instead of one if I hadn’t done what I had done.” He spoke with the conviction of someone who believed his righteous beliefs.