Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum #28)(72)

“No. I think he’ll go to Ranger for help, and they’ll come in here like commandos.”

“That might get me blown up,” Lula said.

“Oswald plans to blow us up anyway. He wouldn’t have told us about the space station if he intended to trade us for Melvin and Charlotte. He wanted to vent and to brag and we were a safe audience.”

“It’s that damn freaking moon that did this to me,” Lula said. She looked down at the vest. “Do you think you can get me out of this?”

“I’d be afraid to try,” I said. “It looks complicated, and I don’t know anything about explosives.”

“This is depressing. I never got to do a hair correction. What are people going to think when they see me dead with bad hair?”

If Oswald detonated Lula’s vest there wasn’t going to be enough of her left to fill a jelly jar. I didn’t think she had to worry about her hair.

“I don’t suppose you have your cell phone on you,” I said to Lula.

“He took it,” Lula said. “How about you?”

“He took mine, too.”

A small bright spot in the whole ugly situation was that if Oswald didn’t disable my phone, Ranger could track it.

From time to time Oswald would check on us. He’d open the door a crack and peek in. This would last maybe ten seconds before he’d slam the door shut and lock it.

“What the heck is he doing out there?” Lula asked. “I don’t hear any sounds. We’ve been locked in this stupid room for hours.”

“I imagine he’s working. Finding the shortest route to crash the space station into something.”



* * *




It was beginning to get dark in our bedroom. The sky was overcast and the sun was setting. Not a lot of light was filtering in between the buildings. My peripheral vision caught a flash of motion at the window. I turned to see what had caught my attention and saw Melvin in a homemade harness, dangling on a rope, looking in at us. He was wearing a bike helmet with a GoPro camera attached and he looked terrified.

“Holy crap,” I whispered, and I made a motion to Lula not to say anything.

A second rope dropped down. It had a harness attached and Melvin pantomimed that it was for us.

Lula and I rushed to the window and tried to open it. I got the latch turned, but the window wouldn’t budge.

“It’s old and stuck,” Lula whispered. “It needs a good shove. On the count of three… one, two, three.”

We jammed our hands against the window frame, but it didn’t move.

Melvin had his feet and his hands against the window like Spider-Man. His eyes were wide, staring at Lula and the vest with the explosives attached.

“I can’t see any way of doing this except to break the window,” Lula said.

“It’ll make too much noise. It’ll bring Oswald in here.”

“Yeah, but what if we break the window and you don’t waste any time getting your ass up the rope to the roof.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll stop Oswald.”

“You’re going to sacrifice yourself for me.”

“What the hell. My moons are for shit anyway.”

“Not gonna happen. If Melvin is here, I’m sure Ranger isn’t far behind. We’ll hunker in and wait.”

The door to the bedroom crashed open and Oswald walked into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Lula said. “We were just talking.”

Oswald spotted Melvin and went for the gun that was stuck under the waistband of his jeans. Melvin pushed off the widow, swung out on his tether, swung back, and broke through the window glass feetfirst. He lost momentum and slammed back against the wall and the smashed window.

“Nice of you to drop in,” Oswald said to Melvin, holding him at gunpoint. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

I heard a scrambling sound on the outside wall of the building and turned in time to see Charlotte slide down the second rope like it was a fire pole. She had her arms and legs wrapped around the rope and she had a gun in her hand.

Oswald swung around, pointed his gun at Charlotte, and she shot him. There was a look of astonishment on Oswald’s face, blood spurted out of his chest, and he fell over and crashed to the floor.

No one moved or spoke. We all just stood there breathing hard. Charlotte was the first to say something. She was holding tight to the rope and her eyes were huge and glassy.

“Help,” Charlotte said.

We all rushed to the broken window and pulled Charlotte inside. She sat down hard on the floor and made a sound that was something between a giggle and a sob.

“I’m okay,” she said, stifling another sob. “I’m okay.” She looked at Melvin. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“I’m okay, too,” Lula said.

I joined in. “Me, too.”

We all looked at Oswald, lying on the floor. He wasn’t okay.

Lula walked over and looked down at him. “He has a hole in his chest the size of a grapefruit.”

“I was on the roof, watching the relay from Melvin’s GoPro, and I was afraid Oswald was going to shoot Melvin,” Charlotte said.