Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(45)

“Briggs,” I said on a sigh. “And Ranger’s Porsche.”

A couple people got Briggs to his feet and walked him away from the fire toward the store. I met them halfway.

“What happened?” I asked Briggs.

“Boom,” Briggs said. His eyes were glazed, and his hair was smoking. “Big boom.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How do I look?”

“You look good,” I told him.

That was a lie. He looked like an overcooked marshmallow. The one that got dropped into the fire and retrieved and was all sooty.

“Yeah,” he said. “I feel okay. Did you get the cookies?”

“Yeah, I got cookies.”

“I think the wine got blown up.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get more wine. Maybe you should sit down over there by the store.”

“It went boom,” Briggs said. “There was a big boom.”

I stayed with Briggs until the paramedics came and checked him out. He had some superficial burns and scrapes, but he was basically okay. I went back inside the store, paid for my groceries, and returned to Briggs with the bag of cookies.

Briggs selected a cookie. “I put the wine in the car and sat down in the passenger seat, and then I decided to see if you were finding everything okay in the store. So I got out of the car and next thing I hear WHOOOSH! and KABBAM! and I was flying through the air.”

What was left of the car had been hosed down, and the fire truck was packing up. I’d given the police a preliminary report.

Ranger called on my cellphone.

“The tracking mechanism on my Porsche went dead,” Ranger said. “Is there a problem?”

“There are some mechanical difficulties,” I said. “It would be great if you could send someone to pick me up.”

Fifteen minutes later, Briggs had eaten the entire bag of cookies, and Ranger arrived in a black SUV. He got out and stood looking at the smoldering lump of melted, mangled Porsche.

“I assume this is my car,” he said.

“Yep,” I replied.

“No one was hurt?”

“Nope. Briggs was a little rattled, but he’s okay.”

He wrapped an arm around me. “How about you? Were you rattled?”

“I’m always rattled.”

“Do we know who did this?”

“No. I was in the grocery store, and Briggs was sitting in the car. He decided to come get me, got out of the car, heard a WHOOSH, and next thing he was flying through the air. He didn’t see anything, but I think it sounds like the rocket guy.”

“So this is the fourth attempt to kill him?”

“Yes. Three firebombs shot from some sort of rocket launcher, and one car bomb.”

“Any suspects?”

“Several.”

“We have two options,” Ranger said. “We find the inept amateur who’s doing this, or I put a bullet in Briggs’s brain and we get on with our lives.”

I was pretty sure Ranger wasn’t serious about shooting Briggs, but then again, he had a point.

We looked back at Briggs. He was sitting on a bench with a blanket wrapped around him, and his feet didn’t touch the ground.

“Your call,” Ranger said.

“Boy, this is a tough decision.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Ranger’s mouth, and he kissed me just above my ear. “I suppose we should take him home. Where is he living?”

“In my apartment.”

“Babe.”

“I’m letting him stay there while it’s under construction.”

“And you?”

“I’m rooming with Morelli.”





TWENTY


WE DROPPED BRIGGS and his groceries at my apartment building, and Ranger drove me to the bail bonds office, where the Buick was still parked.

“Have you heard from Vlatko?” I asked Ranger.

“No. With any luck, he’s busy working on his primary assignment and I have time to find him before he goes on the attack after us. I had a contact comb through recently issued visas, and no one named Vlatko was on the list, so we can assume he’s using a different name.”

“We know he’s working out of the Russian consulate in New York,” I said. “Suppose I go back there and try to get a name.”

“Do you have an angle?”

“I can go back with my lawyer and my slashed shirt and accuse Vlatko of viciously attacking me at the party.”

“Who’s your lawyer?”

“Briggs. When all else fails, he’s good at playing the short card.”

“I like it, but if something goes wrong, you’re on foreign soil and a rescue will be more difficult.”

“But not impossible?”

“Not impossible,” Ranger said. “When do you want to do this?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

I watched Ranger drive away, and I called Briggs.

“Do you have a suit?” I asked him.

“Did you say ‘fruit’?”

“I said ‘suit.’ ”

“Sorry, my ears are ringing from the explosion. I had a suit, but it went up in flames with everything else I owned.”