Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25)(39)

“What if it gets stuck somewhere?”

“It’s unlikely that it would get stuck, but you would check to make sure it leaves your body.”

“Eeuuww.”

“Babe,” Ranger said.

It was almost five o’clock when we carried everything into the deli. Raymond and Stretch were at their stations doing prep work. Ranger’s housekeeper, Ella, was at the sandwich station.

I looked over at Ranger. “You brought Ella in to make sandwiches.”

“I can’t watch the customers if I’m making sandwiches,” Ranger said. “And at some point, we’re going to have to send you out to the dumpster while I’m watching the monitor.”

Oh crap. The suicide mission. If it went wrong, I’d be stripped naked, written on with a marker pen, and I couldn’t even imagine what happened next.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get to me in time if you’re watching in here?” I asked him.

“I have men doing undercover surveillance from the building behind the deli. And I have men on constant patrol, circling the block, in unmarked cars.”

“And the instant someone lays a hand on me all hell will break loose, right?”

“Wrong,” Ranger said. “We want them to lead us to the other captives.”

Double crap. I really hated the strip-naked part, and I feared it happening sooner rather than later.

“If you captured the kidnappers right away, you could force them to tell you about the rest of the stuff,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to swallow the transponder?” Ranger asked.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long,” he said.

People were lining up outside the deli, and Lula pushed her way in through the front door.

“You’re not going to believe what I just saw,” she said. “I was coming back here from getting my nail repaired, and I was looking for a parking place. I was driving all over creation being that those idiot people waiting to get in here took up the parking places. Anyways, I went down one of the alleys and all of a sudden something black caught my eye. It was crawling out of a window on the third floor of a building. And then it stood up on the ledge, and I could see it was a man all dressed in black. And then he spread his arms out, and he had bat wings. And next thing he stepped off the ledge and flew away.”

“He flew away?” I said.

“Well, it looked like he was flying because he had his bat wings out, but I guess you could say he was dropping.”

“From the third floor?”

“Yeah, except he touched down on a little awning over a back door, and sort of swooped off to the ground. He folded his wings, turned and walked between two buildings and disappeared. I was a distance away, but I’m pretty sure it was Wulf.”

“I don’t suppose you could have mistaken a cape for bat wings,” I said.

“I guess that’s a possibility,” Lula said.

“Where was the alley?” Ranger asked.

“It was one street over,” Lula said. “The awning he landed on said ‘KitKat.’ It’s a bar. I think there are apartments over it.”

“Someone needs to turn the sign in the door and start letting people in,” Stretch said. “It looks like it’s getting ugly out there.”

Three minutes later, every table was full, and there were ten people in line at the takeout counter. I was the only waitress, and customers were getting surly. The first food came up before I was done taking orders. I grabbed the plates and plunked them down on a table.

“This isn’t our food,” a woman said. “We ordered the number seven and ten.”

I picked the plates up and turned to the room. “Who ordered whatever this is?”

Three tables claimed it. I looked over at Ranger and caught him smiling.

“Order up,” Stretch said.

Crap! I gave the plates away and ran to get the new order.

By eight o’clock no one was smiling. Not me. Not Lula. Not Ranger. Not Stretch, Raymond, or Ella. And certainly not the customers. Turns out, I’m not the world’s best waitress, and Lula’s patience gets thin after forty-five minutes of phone orders.

We shut down at nine o’clock. My feet were killing me and my brain was numb.

“I vote we discontinue phone orders,” Lula said. “I’m underappreciated on the phone. I give these fools my happy sunshine voice and all they do is bark orders back at me. It’s a demoralizing experience, and after a while I find myself getting phone rage and wanting to smash something. Toward the end I was thinking I got a gun in my handbag and I could kill the phone.”

“It does not sound like a terrible idea,” Raymond said. “I often feel just that way about my fries. Sometimes I leave them in the oil too long on purpose because I hate them. Kill the fuckers, I think to myself. Kill the fucking fries.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “Do you kill a lot of fries?”

“No,” Raymond said. “After I kill just one or two I take a break and smoke a big doobie and I feel much better.”

“I guess that’s the difference between you professionals and us amateurs,” Lula said. “You got good work habits established.”

Ranger was holding a garbage bag. “Someone needs to take this to the dumpster,” he said.