Disclaimer: I do not own Stephanie Plum or any of the associated characters. I simply use them in my writing. The characters belong to Janet Evanovich.
A/N: This is my first Stephanie Plum fic. I started it a while ago and I just hadn't gotten around to adding it to the site yet. I hope you enjoy!
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Chapter One:
My name is Stephanie Plum. I live in a section of Trenton, New Jersey that is lovingly called the Burg to those who live there and in the surrounding area. It's suburbia on drugs. What kind of drugs, you ask? Well, Burgers prefer coffee cake to coke and they'd rather get high off a pineapple upside-down cake than marijuana. You'd be hard pressed to find a house that doesn't have some sort of baked good sitting on the table, waiting for visitors at all times.
I guess it wasn't all that long ago that I had a life as normal as the routine of Burg-wives. Think Stepford wives with a Jersey twist.
Maybe not normal, but it was a life that my mother didn't get phone calls about. It was a safe job buying lingerie for a store. However, a couple years ago I got fired from that job. I'm still not really sure why, but it sure as hell wasn't my fault.
The point is that it was a life that didn't make her iron for hours on end. Most people take Valium, but my mother irons. Not pansy ironing, either. She irons the same shirt for hours on end until the fabric of it is singed. However, there isn't a wrinkle on it. A word of advice: never leave any clothes you care to wear again around my mother when I've managed to blow up another car.
What could make a mother so crazy? I'm a bond enforcement agent, if you want to use the technical term for it. Most people refer to me as a Bounty Hunter.
My job is pretty simple. People around the Burg get stupid for a day and do something illegal and my cousin Vinnie bails them out. He runs one of the bond agencies in Trenton. When they decide that petty trials are beneath them, I find their sorry butts and bring them in.
For doing so, I get ten percent of their bond. It sounds easy enough but I've managed to get shot at, threatened, kidnapped and any number of other equally as stressful things in the process of trying to track these people down. Oddly enough, not many of them like the idea of going down to the station with me. That's when it gets sticky.
Sticky. Yes, that's a good description of the situation I'm in right now. Lula, my on-again off-again partner, and I tracked down Bernie McFarland to try and bring him in. He decided to…uh… defecate on his ex-wife's lawn because he found out she'd been sleeping with the whole block while they were married. Go figure.
Right now, Lula and I have a real good shot of Bernie's poop shoot. He's taken to sticking his large, hairy butt out his fourth-story apartment window. I got one look at the toilet paper still wedged up there and thought I was going to puke.
"I wish I could reach my stun gun all the way up to his ugly ass," Lula said, putting her hand out in front of her eyes to block his rear from view.
Lula was sporting her usual outfit of a tight, black spandex mini skirt and a bright green tube top that could barely stay together under the strain of her extra large body. She is an ex-ho that decided to use her donut-buying, Cluck-in-a-Bucket ordering powers for good instead of evil. Well, good instead of prostituting, I should say. At the moment, she was supposed to be filing at Vinnie's office but she'd managed to slip away with her usual excuses. Connie, Vinnie's secretary of sorts, was none too happy about it. The files had piled up higher than ever before and they showed no sign of slowing down.
This is my life.
Chapter two:
"Screw this little fucker," said Lula, "I'm hungry. Let's go to Cluck-in-a-bucket. Ass-kicking makes me hungry."
"We haven't done any ass-kicking today, but I am kind of hungry… why don't you go and get some food and I'll try working on this guy. I'm sure he can be lured out. Bring me something back." It was an empty suggestion, Lula tended to leave for some reason and just neglect to come back. I could wander my way to the office later and maybe eat a few stray pieces of chicken that Lula hasn't swallowed whole just yet. Heh. Yeah right.
"Sounds good to me," she said and, after flipping off the hairy butt still sticking out of the window, she drove off, poop-covered windshield and all.
I grabbed my .38 and headed for the door, watching to make sure he didn't see me. Maybe he will think we've left and let down his guard, or at least the lock on his door.
I debated whether I wanted to take the stairs or the elevator. The stairs would definitely be better for me and I'd have less of a chance of bumping into someone that might tip him off.
The elevator doors split open and I was about to step in, but I saw Bernie half-naked on his way out. His face curled into an evil, leprechaun scowl and he pulled out a Glock. Something a little strange about me is that, even if I have a gun, it's never loaded. My bullets were tucked away safely in my cookie jar that was sitting on my kitchen counter a few blocks away. I had no way to defend myself when he started letting off rounds into various parts of the lobby.
I ran my ass off toward the front doors but ran smack into some poor kid dressed in a hat shaped like a giant piece of pizza. His face turned into a surprised glare as I tackled him. It really wasn't my fault. Blame stupid gravity or inertia or whatever the crap law says that when you're running in the direction of a pimply-faced kid in a funny hat because someone is shooting at you, you're not stopping unless God himself decides to intervene.
I felt the marinara sauce ooze out from under the cheese and stick to various parts of my pants, the pizza box having defied the laws of physics and opened before I landed on it. Is this karma? What did I do to deserve this? Oh Lord. Just add a quick sign of the cross to that and I am my mother. Stupid genetics.
"Sorry kid, I'll pay for the pizza," I said and threw a twenty-dollar bill at him, barely dodging a bullet that shattered a window just a foot away. I high tailed it out of there, feeling the thump thump of my blood flow and a piercing pain shoot up my leg. Probably the pizza box cut my thigh open. Probably I've got pizza all over me. Probably I should get a new job.
Chapter three:
I strolled into Vinni'e's office with a don't-mess-with-me sort of look on my face, trying my hardest to make my eyes seem menacing. It was just one of those moods where I felt like I had to be tough when inside my heart was trying to commit heart-suicide. I wasn't sure it could happen, but I didn't want to take any chances. Maybe if I pretend like my day hasn't been shit, it will all be okay
"Uh oh," Connie said, spying the slightly pained but snarling look on my face. I heard the lock on Vinnie's door slide into place and for a moment I felt like smiling.
"What happened to you?" Lula asked, her eyes lingering at the various slices of pizza stuck to my legs and the blood that had dried around it. "Hairy ass get the best of you?"
"Stupid skips just love to shoot at me," I said, feeling the pain surge through my leg once more. I wasn't quite sure what it was coming from and I was definitely sure that I didn't want to look.
"Shit," Lula said, standing up and squinting her eyes at my leg. "You got a bullet in there… oh, shit, there's another one!"
And then my vision went black. I could feel the pool of blood envelope me in its sticky, disgusting warmth. Soon enough, I was swimming in a sea of dark shadows.
Chapter four:
"Babe? Babe?"
I groaned in response, my whole body felt like lead. I opened one eye and saw Ranger standing over me, a worried look on his face. It lessened when he saw my eye open.
"What do you want? I want to sleep, get out of my apartment," I said and turned over. Whoa. "Not my pillows. Stale pillows. Ugh."
"Definitely not your apartment," Ranger said, "and I can have the nurse fluff those stale pillows if you'd like."
He gave a hint of a smile and grasped my hand, careful not to squeeze too hard. He tried to pull away quickly after, but I grasped his hand tightly. I was glad he was there. I wanted him to stay.
What happened slowly came back to me and I felt a surge of anger add to the pain in my head. "Stupid hairy ass."
I could hear a short, deep laugh come from Ranger but could not see it, my eyelids having gained a few pounds since the last time I tried to use them. "Ranger, how do I look?"
"Like shit, babe," he brushed some hair off my forehead and I could feel his pity-filled gaze on my face. I hated having him see me this vulnerable and weak, but he normally did. It kept his life interesting, didn't it? I was his entertainment…
"Then I don't look half as bad as I feel," that was a plus. "What day is it? Time? How long have I been here?"
"Connie called 911 as soon as you passed out and you've been here for a few hours. While you were out, they put a gas mask over your face to make sure you'd stay under while they removed the bullets from your leg. You should be okay, but you need to stay off your leg for a while. You'll have to use crutches."
"I don't want no stinkin' crutches."
"I know, babe. I told them you wouldn't."
"Get me a wheelchair."
"So you can do wheelies?"
"Damn straight."