“Stryker crushed her mouth with brutal strength, and she moaned in surrender. He would give her the tongue-lashing of her life before unlimbering his fourteen-inch . . .”
This time it was his basilisk that gave a soundless blurp of disgust.
Rigo stiffened his knees, sending a thought at the usually-silent basilisk, My mate is in there. Think of it this way. This is no worse than cleaning up after a sick horse.
He pushed the door open. A circle of faces turned his way, then Joey smiled and gestured toward an empty seat next to him.
The reader, a paunchy man wearing a fedora, sent Rigo a sour look. Rigo crossed the room as quietly as he could, as the man harrumphed loudly and rattled his pages.
Rigo murmured, “Sorry for the interruption,” and took the seat Joey indicated.
The reader harrumphed again, then resumed reading.
Rigo forced his attention on the words, though he could feel Godiva’s presence on the other side of the room. He tried a smile her way, to be met with a nuclear-powered laser glare.
Well, he hadn’t expected this to be easy.
Chapter 5
GODIVA
The unctuous skunk had dared to show up here!
Jen and Nikos, sitting across from Godiva, had to be innocent of any conspiracy. Godiva knew that Nikos had had something or other to do somewhere else until that afternoon, and Jen had gone with him. Godiva sidled scowls at the other two of the Gang of Four, who sat at either side of her, their spouses on their other sides. All four were politely listening to Bill Champlain’s preposterous claptrap.
Which turncoat had blabbed about the writers’ group to The Enemy?
Godiva’s gaze traveled past Doris and stopped at Joey Hu. AHAH! Of course he was the traitor. Kindly, well-meaning Joey, who wanted everybody to get along. Ordinarily Godiva was all for people getting along, but that meant they had to be people first, not slimy, slithering serpents masquerading as men.
Joey sat there looking the very picture of innocence. All right, you, Godiva thought at him. Just you wait. Next book, you’re going to be the villain, and after your nefarious deeds you will croak by an especially spectacular and messy method.
Godiva sighed, mentally running through possible plot twists and motivations for murder most foul, but none of them were truly Joey. No one would buy a murder mystery in which the villain niced the victims to death. Okay, so Joey wouldn’t be a villain, but she would get him somehow, she promised herself.
And at least while thinking about it she’d been successful in missing most of Bill’s story . . . until Bill shattered her ruminations by raising his voice.
“ . . . it’s the POTUS, Wilhelm! He wants to talk to YOU!”
Stryker assessed the deployment of the Secret Service men with a second’s glance. He could probably take out half, more if he didn’t have to dodge bullets from the snipers on the roof.
“Tell him I run alone,” Stryker grated.
On second thought, if he didn’t deal with this international crisis about to turn into all-out war, who would? He was the only one who had tangled with all the major players and survived to tell the tale.
Besides, as a good American, he owed it to his country . . .
Godiva sneaked a peek at Rigo to see his reaction, catching a grimace of total disbelief. And when Stryker in the next sentence turned to the adoring ex-assassin with the watermelon boobs, Godiva chuckled evilly as Rigo’s jaw dropped slightly, the wide eyes of disbelief quickly smoothing into polite endurance.
Heh, heh, for the first time in her life Godiva relished every word of Bill’s ludicrous drivel, mentally aiming it all at that pestiferous blister Rigo El Caballero. Take that!
Then it hit her that Rigo was taking it, but unlike Bill’s buddy Steven over there, he clearly was not enjoying it any more than she. How dare he have any taste? Outright villains didn’t have taste. That was part of their villainy!
For the first time since the nasty discovery of Rigo in the bakery, Godiva wondered if Rigo had read any of her own books. That gave her a weird feeling, as if he’d been peering through her windows. Then she rallied when she recollected that the villains of the first, oh, five or six of her books were all variations of Rigo, bwa ha ha, every one of them sleazy assclowns who got their exercise practicing seduction and abandonment the way anyone else practiced yoga. She wondered if he’d recognized himself in any of them.
&n
bsp; Bill reached the last page of his chapter, his voice rising to a screechy caricature of a woman whining.
“ . . . his fat slob of an ex-wife Cindy shrieked at the judge, ‘What do you mean you’re throwing my lawsuit out?’