Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

my brows questioningly, then looked away. There was nothing he could do to me now. Not with the world watching. The real problem was, what could I do about what I knew?

Drum did this riff, startling me out of my thoughts. I hadn’t played a note for a whole verse and no one had noticed. Dang Flynn and his plots. I turned to glare at him. Only he wasn’t there to glare at. Where did he go?

I looked right.

I looked left.

I should have watched my back.

Someone grabbed my legs and tipped me off the back of the platform. My wounded arm scraped the side and I was out before my head hit the grass.

Millions of kids were having recess inside my head. Jumping. Running. Screaming.

No. That wasn’t right. I didn’t teach young minds, I twisted them with my roach.

Headache. Not kid-ache. Ouch, arm hurt, too.

I opened my eyes. Dark. Could see grass. Why was grass up my nose. Tried to push it away. Arms weren’t working.

Where—oh yeah. Bless the USA. I could hear him singing somewhere off to my right. Couldn’t have been out long.

Out? Why was I lying in the grass and not playing?

Various gears in my head turned, inviting more children to rampage through my head, but eventually bringing up a memory of getting grabbed.

Thwacked arm. Bright lights. No light.

I sent the brain kiddies home, but could do nothing about the headache they left. The grass was another story. I went to brush it away and realized I was handcuffed. Again. At least my hands were cuffed in front. I used my elbows and lifted my head. The light wasn’t good, but I seemed to be lying between the two wheels right under the pig.

I didn’t need to know the science of recoil to find this disturbing, not after what I’d observed on the tube.

I inched sideways, in the direction of the stand and bleachers, but froze when I sensed, rather than saw stealthy movement. Dark, menacing silhouettes against darker shadow moved in and out of my limited view. Once I saw eye whites, more than once the gleam of moonlight off a weapon briefly highlighting malevolent silhouettes.

Terrorists.

I was a prisoner of terrorists.

Talk about defying the odds. Did this mean my chances of getting married had just gone up? Or down? Would I live long enough to find out?

Above the rising crescendo of Greenwood blessing the USA, I heard Flynn’s agitated voice.

“You can’t do this, Dag!”

“I think you’ll find I can.” The cool contempt in Dag’s voice sent a chill down my prone spine. “What do I care about one tin pot president when there’s twenty million dollars on the table?”

“This isn’t about money! It was never about the money! You can’t kill the president now, while there’s a war on!”

“Lighten up, old man. You can bet that whatever Cabinet member stayed home tonight won’t mind waking up president of this great land.”

It didn’t make me happy to have my suspicions confirmed, though it was nice to know I hadn’t completely misjudged Flynn. He wasn’t a total villain, just the parent of one. And what was Muir in all this?

As if he’d caught my thought, Flynn asked Dag, “Is your brother in it with you?”

Dag gave a bitter laugh. “Hardly. We both know he wouldn’t have stood by and let us kill the delectable Isabel.”

Delectable? Perhaps he wasn’t a total villain. Maybe ninety-nine percent with just a tiny corner of surprisingly good taste. Or really bad vision. Who can say?

“No,” Flynn said. “And I shouldn’t have.”

Nice to know who your friends were. Who’d have thought that beneath Muir’s dull exterior lurked a knight errant’s heart beating just for me?

A pity I was learning too late that appearances are deceiving. Not too late though, I wondered, with a sudden pang. Did they think they had finished me off? No, I answered my own question. You don’t cuff dead people. Had I missed the disposition of my person, or was that the topic to come?

“It’s too late to turn squeamish now, pater,” Dag drawled. “She should have kept her nose out of our business.”

“You shouldn’t have grabbed her. There was nothing she could have done this late in the game.”

“Except point the finger at us,” Dag said, turning my way.

I played possum, though I wanted to lash out when I felt his fingers on my pulse.

“Is she dead?” Flynn asked.

“Not yet.”

The chill turned to an ice flow.

“Dag—”

“Don’t try to stop me. I owe her for the car and I mean to collect payment in full.” I almost cried out when his fingers twisted into my hair. Survival won out over pain, though it wasn’t easy. Lucky for me, he got distracted when another figure approached and said something in a low voice.

“Later, my sweet,” he said in a low voice, then straightened. “Show time.”

“I won’t let you do this, Dag.” Flynn sounded determined.

“You can’t stop me, old man.” Dag sounded ruthless. “Cuff him, Hamid.”

“I will kill him,” a voice I presumed belonged to Hamid. I heard Flynn give a muffled groan, but felt no satisfaction. How much worse it must be for him to know his own son had betrayed him.

“No. I want him to see it first. Then you can kill him.” Dag moved to the rear of the pig. “Pity Isabel isn’t awake to appreciate the irony.”

“Irony?” Flynn’s voice sounded stifled filled with pain.

“You don’t find it ironic that you’ll both die because you tried to save Congress?”

Here I’d thought things were as bad as they could be. He was worse than a bastard. For once I cursed my Baptist vocabulary that left me without a vile enough epitaph to spit at the toe rag.

“Dag,” Flynn’s voice sounded strained. “You can still stop this. Fire now, before the President gets there!”

He gave another muffled grunt. I saw a shadowy Hamid raise what looked like an Uzi and bring down on the head of a slumped figure. Dag said nothing.

“Three minutes,” another guttural voice intoned.

In my mind I