Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

go off in bright bursts of patriotic color against the dark, cloudy sky. No question now whether our rally would make it on Fox News tonight. Not even a scud attack would pre-empt this.

“Better late than never,” Dag muttered, sounding relieved. “That should cover our retreat. Come on.”

He pushed me through the crowd. Ahead of us, Flynn ran into the pack, looking back at the dark figure, with FBI written in light-catching white on his jacket, pursuing him.

He should have been looking forward. Flynn slammed into Mrs. Macpherson, his body wrapping inexorably around her “S” shaped body. His head got stuck between her massive, pointed breasts. His hands slipped on her polyester coat without finding purchase. They both went down in a tangle of arms and legs and breasts. Talk about symbolic. The former saint Flynn, sliding around on polyester while Mrs. Macpherson’s dress climbed her hose to expose her cotton knickers for a Fox News cameraman. The other news networks were going to be sorry they’d snubbed the patriotic party.

“Thanks, dad,” Dag muttered with a half laugh.

Hey, I never said the guy didn’t have a sense of humor.

He steered us around his struggling father and shrieking Mrs. M, holding me tight against him as we half-walked, half-trotted towards the street. Jostled by panicked bodies moving weirdly in the midst of strobing lights, inhaling smoke from fireworks and the fire, it all seemed unreal. Like it was a movie and we were just following directions.

“You got a car?”

“I came with the feds.” Pissed did a return engagement in my head. Goons and bad guys had been shooting at me and kidnapping me all week. I was getting tired of it. “Is this a real fire or smoke bomb sleight of hand, Dag?”

“Clever girl. I had a feeling we’d need the time to get away. Only those fools didn’t set them off at the right time.”

“Maybe you should have synchronized your watches.”

Someone bumped into us and Dag’s grip tightened. Since I was the one who took the brunt of it on my wounded arm, the ground did a one eighty around me, adding a distinct stagger to my already unsteady gait.

“Don’t flake out on me now,” he said, savagely, giving me another pain spiraling shake.

“Oh, that helped,” I muttered as the world did two one-eighties this time. I didn’t have to exaggerate the stagger that followed that one, but I did anyway.

I had a Plan.

I moaned, wobbled, then went limp. It’s not as easy as you might think. I mean, all I had was the world’s most selfish son of a bitch to catch me.

He did, but only, I suspect, because I was so close I almost took him down with me.

“Damn you! Stand up!”

That did it. I let my weight go his way so I could land on him when we went down. Would have worked if someone hadn’t broad-sided us from the other direction.

We sprawled untidily in the grass and the Uzi went flying. I was on the bottom. The two on top of me began to grapple and I moved up in the queue to become a kind of victim sandwich, with my head sticking out between two armpits. Someone’s belt was digging into my elbow. Someone’s elbow was digging into my throat. Both sets of feet were applying bruises to my shins. In one roll I found myself lip to lip with Kel, then another roll put me nose to belly button with Dag.

Not pretty.

After I took a nasty blow to the eye that set off my own private fireworks show, I’d had it with being in the middle.

I applied just enough elbow to a handy solar plexus. When it didn’t gasp like Kel, I did it again, only harder. Dag’s gasp caused him to retreat enough that I was able to roll over. I hooked my still cuffed hands into the grass and pulled. It was like being ironed from above and below. And then I was free, gasping to get back the air squeezed out of me. The two men rolled close, both reaching for the Uzi. I don’t know what came over me. I just grabbed it and slammed the butt down on Dag’s exposed temple.

No surprise when he went limp.

Kel rolled off him and sat up. Looked at Dag, then at me.

“Nice job,” he said. He wiped the blood from the side of his mouth and grinned at me. His face was blacked with whatever it was they used for blacking. Most likely something way more expensive than shoe polish. It was kind of sexy, except I couldn’t see his dimple. “You ever considered a career in the CIA? They’re looking for a few good women, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know,” I said, sort of bemused as men in black rushed forward, uncuffed me, cuffed Dag instead and hauled him away.

In their wake, more men in black led Flynn, also in cuffs, to a waiting truck. A gap in the crowd revealed Reverend Hilliard, looking somewhat less saintly than before, trying to calm Mrs. Macpherson. I felt sorry for him, but not enough to go to a Bible class every Saturday night.

“Can you get up?” Kel asked, recalling my attention. His blue eyes looked even bluer against the black of his skin. I felt like singing hallelujah. Instead, I took the hand he held out and, let him pull me up and into his arms.

“We’ve really got to start meeting like this,” I said, while the Fox News cameras rolled.

“What the hell were you doing this time?” he asked, stroking the grass from my tangled hair.

“Playing back up for Lee Greenwood?” I answered, brushing the grass from his stocking cap.

He shook his head, grinned, then lifted me off my feet and spun us both in a circle as the fireworks finale lit up in the sky over our heads.

The lady and the spy, together again and on Fox News. Surely I could count on them to edit in the fade to the commercial