Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

The door was wrenched open, and Antwan stood there buck naked. His Mr. Happy was very happy, saluting the flag and wearing a raincoat.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“Remember us?” Lula said. “We’re the bounty hunters, and we came to capture you.”

“What?” Antwan said. “Speak up!”

“Bounty hunters!” Lula yelled in the direction of his good ear.

A woman wearing five-inch red satin stilettos and nothing else stomped out of the bedroom. “What’s going on here?”

“Where’d you come from?” Lula said. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

The woman turned on Antwan. “I told you I don’t put up with this kind of shit. You gonna bang these two, then you not gonna bang Shaneeka. I got my standards.

I don’t do no parties, and I don’t put up with my man having some fat ’ho on the side.”

“Excuse me,” Lula said, pitched forward. “Did you just call my friend here a fat ’ho? Because that might be a hurtful statement.”

Shaneeka narrowed her eyes at Lula. “I called you a fat ’ho.”

“Better than being a skinny ’ho,” Lula said.

Shaneeka leaned forward. “Are you implying something?”

“I’m implying nothing,” Lula said. “I’m calling you a skinny ’ho.”

“Listen up, you bitches,” Antwan said. “I got a headache.”

“First off, I’m not your bitch,” Shaneeka said. “You’re my bitch. And second, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got some explaining to do, you little worm.”

“Shaneeka, honey,” Antwan said.

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me neither,” Shaneeka said. She whirled around and stomped back into the bedroom.

Antwan looked down at himself. Mr. Happy wasn’t all that happy anymore, and the raincoat was wrinkled.

Lula clapped a cuff on him while he was considering the state of the raincoat. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you could do better than her,” Lula said to Antwan. “She’s got a attitude, and I think she might be unstable.”

Shaneeka marched out of the bedroom and she had a gun in her hand. “I heard that, and you better take your hands off my man. He isn’t much, but he’s mine.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Lula said. “You can have him after he gets out of jail in ten or twenty years.”

Shaneeka squeezed off a shot and took out a lamp.

Everyone froze for a beat.

“Shit,” Antwan said. “The bitch is gonna kill me. She can’t shoot for snot.”

Lula and I jumped to the door and took off down the stairs. We could hear Antwan and Shaneeka yelling at each other back in the apartment, and another gunshot, but we didn’t stop running until we were in Lula’s car.

Lula peeled away from the curb and raced to the corner.

“That didn’t correspond to my vision,” Lula said. “I must have been getting a vision ahead of time. Like it was a vision going on tomorrow.” She stopped for a light and looked over at me. “Any more of those pies left in the bag?”

Lula parked at the corner of Fifteenth and Freeman, and we watched four boys who looked to be nine or ten years old tossing a football in the middle of the street halfway down the Freeman block.

“I’m going to ask them about Kevin,” Lula said.