Twisted Game (Margot Harris 6)

Chapter 12

Margot watched the ground floor apartment Lucas lived in and was glad to see it looked worse than her own. It didn’t look like being a driver for a mobster paid very much. Lucas emerged and got in an old Honda Civic, his ride when not driving Harry, and drove off.

Bobby had told her that he thought Lucas would be driving him and Harry around this afternoon, so Margot figured she had some time to do some illegal breaking and entering if she had to. She waited until he was out of sight and then went to the door. She knocked first, even though she’d been told Lucas lived alone. She was examining the lock when she heard Lucas saying, “What the fuck?”.

She had her hand in her purse as she turned.

“You going to pull that little lady gun on me?” he asked. “All that talk of weight class was just that, wasn’t it?”

“You going to pull that razor on me?”

“Shit, I don’t need no blade to take on you. I don’t even have it with me.”

“You know Bobby’s not here?” Margot said as she took her hand out of her purse and zipped it shut.

“I don’t need him.”

Margot saw the straight razor he pulled out of his back pocket open, and the blade come at her face just in time to lean back. He was quicker than he looked, and the honed steel missed her nose by about an inch.

He immediately swung at her again, but this time he lost the element of surprise. His swing left him open and Margot kicked him in the chest. Taking her heel to his sternum knocked the breath out of him and pushed him back a few steps. He swung wildly with the razor and Margot let the blade go by her again before she drove her heel into his knee and then hit him with a straight left followed by a right cross.

Lucas stumbled and fell to the ground. Margot stomped on his hand and then kicked the razor away. Before she kicked it away, she noticed the pearl handle was marked with the initials ‘T M.’ She looked up and saw several people watching the proceedings.

“Anybody call the police yet?” she asked, thinking she may have gotten lucky and found a souvenir from a past crime that Lucas had kept.

When no one replied, she said, exasperated, “Well, get to it.”

A couple of phones came out and Margot said to Lucas, “Get up. We’re not done here.”

To his credit, he got to his feet and threw some kicks and punches her way that indicated he’d taken some martial arts at some point, but Margot had been a borderline professional fighter before she joined the police. He gave her an opening and she broke his nose with the heel of her hand and swept his

legs out from under him so he hit the ground hard.

When he got up, instead of coming at her again, he ran for his apartment. Margot didn’t see this coming and he made it to the door before she could react. She still could have stopped him, but him being inside would give the police an excuse to look around his place, so she let him.

What she didn’t expect was for him to come out carrying Glock. Margot ran and jumped over the nearest car parked on the street as he tried to take aim. He put a bullet through the window as Margot got low and retrieved her own pistol. She was thinking she really screwed this up when the police arrived.

As the squad car pulled up, Margot put down her gun. Lucas did not. He wheeled and put a couple bullets into the red and blue lights on top of the squad car. He turned to run after that and took a bunch of bullets to the back. When he fell down, it was clear he wasn’t getting back up.

While they were putting the cuffs on them both, Margot said, “You might want to tell someone in homicide the razor he attacked me with has a murdered man’s initials on it.”

Chapter 13

“You got lucky,” Radcliff told Margot, “that could have been much worse.” He’d met her outside the county jail where she’d got to spend the afternoon until they realized she was fighting the Masterson Hot Tub Massacre perpetrator and let her go.

“Yeah, well, how was I to know Lucas forgot his phone?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been snooping around his place.”

“Part of the job. Was I right about the razor?”

“You were. Turns out he kept the butcher knife too. Since it was actually the murder weapon, he hid that in a shoebox in his closet, along with a handful of spent bullets. Looks like you found the killer.”

“That should make Phoebe happy.”

“Did you see her? I mean, you were both in the same jail.”

“She had her bail hearing in the morning and she got it. We have the same lawyer. Or had—I think we’re both going to be in the clear.”