Steffie Breaks the Law pt.2

Steffie, in her high powered truck disguised to look like a rattletrap, followed the GPS in the lawyer’s tie. Since his criminal contact had stuffed him in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental, there was nothing to be learned from the microphone also in the lawyer’s tie.

They drove out of the city, through two small towns, and into the desert. Where the roads permitted Steffy passed the Lincoln and allowed it to pass her. Nothing could seem more natural.

They drove into another small town where, to Steffie’s surprise, the Lincoln led her off the interstate and into a residential area.

On a stretch of road just big enough for two vehicles to inch past each other but not big enough for a line down the middle, the Lincoln clicked its right signal on and turned off the road into the drive of a small house. There was a three-foot high wall around the housewide porch and brick columns holding up the porch roof.

Two dogs, one on the wall and one on the ground, ignored the Lincoln pulling in and barked furiously at Steffy driving past.

Steffie drove around a curve and pulled over into the grass on the side of the road. She turned off her motor and listened.

She heard a click and the muffled sounds of the lawyer trying to talk. She heard feet on gravel, feet on cement, feet on wood, and the growls of 2 dogs. She heard the clatter and squeak of doors opening and the solid thud of a door closing. She heard the soft hiss of tape being pulled from flesh and the cry of the lawyer, whose mouth had just been freed.

“Are you going to take off the blindfold?” the lawyer asked.

“Sure,” said the criminal. “Why not?”

Steffie would have taken off the blindfold first and left the tape over the lawyer’s mouth.

“Nice place,” said the lawyer. “Very homey. Much as I appreciate your hospitality, I’m a busy man and have appointments to make, so if you would just pay me and take me back–“

The criminal laughed. “Why would I pay you? I have what we bargained for right here in my pocket. Bullets aren’t free but one would cost a lot less than I agreed to pay you.”

“I don’t like to brag,” said the lawyer, “but I do have friends.”

“By the time your friends know you’re dead, I’ll be far away in another country protected by friends far more powerful than any of yours.”

“Who?” asked the lawyer, as if he just couldn’t resist digging for information.

“That’s needed to know,” said the criminal, “and you don’t need to know.”

“No! Wait! Don’t shoot!”

Steffie, who had neutralized the dogs and crept silently in through the back door, shot the criminal in the back.

She stepped over his tranquilized body and covered the lawyer’s mouth with duct tape of her own.

She touched a Bluetooth phone at her ear and said, “Pete, one criminal, one lawyer, and two dogs. All alive, all quiet.”

When Pete and his cleaners arrived, she pointed to the lawyer and said, “Don’t take that tape off. If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

MY PROMPT TODAY: People wanted a follow up on last Thursday’s story