Read Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels) for Free Online

we’re going to have to explain the missing toe.”
    “Yeah, and the giant boner. I don’t mind so much takingresponsibility for the toe, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with the boner.”
    His cell phone was lying on the coffee table. I dialed 911, gave a phony name, reported a shooting, and gave the address.
    “Uh-oh,” Lula said. “Mr. Big got his eyes open.”
    Brown blinked up at Lula. “What happened?”
    “You fainted.”
    “My foot hurts.”
    “You must have stubbed your toe on the way down,” Lula said. “That’s why you should be wearing shoes.”
    “Now I remember,” he said. “I didn’t stub my toe. You fuckin’ shot me.”
    Lula stuffed her hands on her hips. “You said I was fat. I got a mind to shoot you again.”
    Brown catapulted himself off the floor and lunged at Lula. “Arrrrgh!”
    I grabbed Lula by the back of her shirt and yanked her to the door. “Go! Run!”
    “Outta my way,” Lula said, rushing past me. “He got crazy eyes.”
    Between the missing toe and the male enhancement issue, after the initial lunge Brown wasn’t able to move all that fast. Lula and I thundered down the stairs, chugged across the parking lot, threw ourselves into the car, and took off.
    Lula was breathing heavy. “Do you think he’ll tell the police on me?”
    “No. Brown doesn’t want to have anything to do with the police. By the time the police get to his apartment he’ll be long gone.” Good for Lula, I thought, checking the pimple out in the rearview mirror, but not so good for Vinnie.
    “You keep lookin’ at your pimple and we’re gonna have an accident,” Lula said.
    “Now that I know it’s there I can’t get it out of my mind.”
    “At least you don’t have a vampire hickey on your neck. I got a date with a hunk of lovin’ tonight. He might be Mr. Wonderful.”
    “Maybe you could put a scarf around your neck.”
    “What happens when hunk of lovin’ undresses me?”
    “Maybe you could decorate it to look like a tattoo gone bad.”

EIGHT
     
    TO GET BACK to the bonds office from Merlin Brown’s apartment, I had to drive down Stark, past the junkyard, and cut through the combat zone. This was a mixture of graffiti-covered, rat-infested, three-story brick rooming houses, garbage-strewn empty lots, and sketchy businesses operating out of barred storefronts and back alleys. It was shocking to think anyone lived in this destroyed neighborhood, and even more shocking to know some of them were good, decent people. They were victims of time and circumstance, struggling not to succumb to the wreckage around them.
    It was less shocking to know that most of the residents were drugged out deadbeats, crackhead hookers, dope dealers, gangbangers, and homicidal maniacs. If I had to go after an FTA on this part of Stark, I usually asked Ranger for help.
    Ranger was a bounty hunter working for Vinnie when I first met him. He has his own security firm now, but he still does the occasional felon apprehension. He’s my mentor, my friend, and my onetime lover. He’s the guy I go to when I need professional help. I’m all in favor of women holding their own in the workplace, but I don’t have a death wish. Ranger is a far better bounty hunter than I could ever hope to be. And if I was being honest about it, sometimes I went to Ranger just because I liked working with him.
    “You going back to the office?” Lula asked.
    “Yeah. I thought I’d check in and then head home.”
    “I got a plan,” Lula said. “I’m going to the mall, and I’m gonna get a feather boa to match this new sparkly outfit I was gonna wear tonight. A feather boa will dress it up better than a scarf. And then I can get undressed all except for the boa. I could work the boa into my whole routine of seduction, and my neck’ll be covered.”
    “You have a routine of seduction?”
    “Yeah, well you know I was a professional, and I still got moves.”
    I didn’t want to think too hard about Lula and her moves. On