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Lisa Livia frowned. “So you have Shane and Carpenter hanging Brenda’s black shutters.”
“It’s like the HGTV Hit Squad,” Agnes said.
“Designed to Kill,” Lisa Livia said.
Shane turned around and yelled, “Is this where you want it?” Agnes gave him two thumbs up.
Lisa Livia shook her head. “I hope he’s getting a lot of sex for this.”
“Not anymore,” Agnes said. “But he had some good times before. And you’ll like this part: He paid for everything with the money he took from the two guys who came out here to kill me. So whoever hired them just redid the outside of my house. It even paid for the paint.”
“Do we know who that is?” Lisa Livia asked. “Some woman, Shane said.”
“Brenda.” Lisa Livia looked up at the windows. “Damn fine shutters.”
“Wait till you see the carriage lights,” Agnes said.
Carpenter smiled down at them and waved with his free hand, the other one supporting about twenty pounds of shutter.
Lisa Livia smiled and waved back, trying not to wince from her hangover. “They used to be grim killers who moved silently through the night, answering to no one. Now they’re checking with you for proper shutter placement.”
“I like to think of it as, ‘Do a window treatment, save a life,’” Agnes said, and went closer to tell them how great the shutters looked.
Three hours later, after the shutters were up, and after a di
“Waiting for something?” she said, setting the coffee and booze down in front of him.
“Yep.”
“Want some coffee while you wait?”
“Yep.”
“Talkative devil.” Agnes poured two cups of coffee and then offered him the bourbon bottle, but he kept his eyes on the road, so she poured that, too. “Got plans for after you’re finished road watching?”
“Yep.”
Agnes nodded. “Anything I should know about?”
“Sex with you.”
Agnes nodded again. “Okay, I know I said this yesterday and then, you know, changed my mind, but I really think since we don’t have a future together, that us sleeping together…”
He didn’t seem to be paying attention, still listening for something, so she gave up and sipped her coffee, staring out at the ruined bridge, and after a minute he said, “You okay?”
She shook her head. “She killed him, Shane.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to get away with it.”
“No.”
“How are you going to stop her?”
He turned to look at her, his eyes flat, and she remembered what he did for a living.
“You can’t kill her,” Agnes said. “No.”
Agnes nodded, relieved. “Then what?”
He turned back to the road. “Something will come up.”
“Just like that.”
“She’ll make it happen.”
“Why?”
“Her type always does.” He went still, the way Rhett went still when he heard something she couldn’t hear, the way Rhett was going still now, and Agnes listened, but there wasn’t anything.
She sighed. “Okay, listen, what I was trying to tell you is, as much as I have enjoyed getting naked with you, I really need something permanent and solid in my life. And no offense and please don’t kill me for saying this, but somebody who shoots people for a living probably isn’t going to blink about cheating on his girlfriend. I’d rather be alone than lied to again.” That sounded pathetic, so she shut up, but it was true.
“Agnes, I eliminate only the targets I’m assigned,” Shane said.
“Yes, but compared to that, cheating doesn’t seem that bad, right? I mean, you shoot somebody in the morning, a little nookie on the side must seem like jaywalking. I need to be with somebody who understands that love is serious business, that I am serious business, someone who will stay forever, someone who won’t betray me and then come around with a ‘Hey, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again’ the next day and think that makes everything just dandy. I’ve got a hole in my heart here. I’m not taking any more chances.”
His eyes were still on the road, and she stumbled on, trying to make him understand.
“Look, I just ca
Something rumbled down the road, and Rhett barked as Agnes turned to look. A big-ass truck came into view carrying what looked like a big-ass tank except there was no turret on top, just a scissors-shaped thing, all of it painted army green.
Agnes looked at Shane, not concerned, because he was there, but definitely puzzled. “Are we being invaded?”
“No,” Shane said. “You’re being invaded. Later. By me.” He stood up as the truck stopped and then backed up in line with the ruined bridge.
“What is that?” Agnes said, postponing for the moment her exasperation because he wasn’t listening to her.
“It’s an AVLB,” Shane said, as the tank rumbled off the flatbed it had been on.
“Of course it is.”
“An armored vehicle launched bridge. The army uses them to put in bridges during an attack. Watch and learn.”
“A bridge?” Agnes lost her breath. “That’s a bridge? Why is the army giving you a bridge?”
“The army isn’t giving it to me. It’s more of a loaner. To get us through the wedding. Then we’ll work on something more permanent.”
Us. We. “We will?” Agnes said faintly.
The tank moved up to the edge of the cut, making more racket than Cerise and Hot Pink multiplied by twelve. Black smoke puffed out into the darkening evening sky as Rhett howled and the flamingos honked, and Agnes cringed at the way the tracks tore up the gravel roadway but it wasn’t the time to point that out. She was getting a bridge. She squinted, trying to understand how she was getting a bridge as the folded-over sections on top of the tank body slowly began to extend upward into the air.
Carpenter and Lisa Livia came out onto the porch.
“I was going to complain about the noise,” Lisa Livia said, still looking fragile but much better than she had before, “but now I’m just impressed. Leave it to the army to mechanize an erection.”
“Laugh now, fu
“And that bridge can hold over sixty tons,” Carpenter said.
“So it’s a strong erection,” Lisa Livia said, looking at Carpenter.
“Oh, yes,” Carpenter said, standing more erect himself.
“Do you mind?” Agnes said, watching the miracle of her bridge literally unfold. “I’m having a moment here.”
The road sections reached their apex and began to go down, the hydraulic arm in the center scissoring them apart. Within a couple of minutes, the near end touched down and the far end was in place; then the tank driver disco
Rhett settled down, secure in the knowledge that he’d driven off the invaders.
“Wow,” Agnes said, looking at her bridge.
“Was it good for you?” Lisa Livia said. “It was good for me.”