Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Read Free Page A

together, Bobbie Faye suspected there was a dumbfounded spider who woke up that morning wondering where in the hell its web had gone.
    Francesca headed straight for the gun counter. No hope that the impending doom of Francesca showing up was unintentional. She sashayed through the store, weaving past the camo gear and fishing tackle, the tents and Coleman lanterns, rerouting at the last second to avoid the screened-in boxes of live crickets and overstacked shelves of “Feng Shui” crystals Ce Ce hadn’t quite managed to unload.
    “Fuck,” Bobbie Faye muttered, eyeing the nauseatingly perky Francesca crossing the store.
    “Bobbie Faye!” Maimee reproached. “Watch your language!”
    “Miz Maimee, you’re buying a gun. I’d be willing to bet you just upped Mr. Edgar’s life insurance. You don’t get to take the high road today.”
    “Hi, Bobbie Faye,” Francesca bubbled when she reached the gun counter. “We have a problem.”
     
----
    Encryption code in: ***********
    From: Simone
    To: JTyp
     
    Confirmed: BF is inside, F has entered.
----
     
----
    Encryption code in: ***********
    From: JT
    To: Simone
     
    All plans are go.
----
     
    Bobbie Faye scanned past Francesca and realized that every male customer over the age of two had suddenly found the aisle to the gun counter absolutely essential for their shopping needs. Francesca, for once, seemed not to notice the attention she drew. (Once Francesca went through her
boy-crazy
phase—oh, wait, she was still in that phase—she’d morphed from a partner-in-crime prepubescent tomboy, breaking into the neighborhood “male-only” clubhouses, into a beauty-pageant attention-seeking missile, treating makeup application with the same reverence other people would give to CPR.) Francesca propped her purse and sample case on the counter and immediately proceeded to give Bobbie Faye the earnest expression.
    “Oooooohhh
no
,” Bobbie Faye said, having seen that wobbly helpless wide-eyed
please-oh-please-help-me-with-my-homework
pout one time too many. “We,” Bobbie Faye leaned forward over the counter, gesturing between the two of them to emphasize the point, “do
not
have a problem.”
    “Bobbie Faye, you have to help. I told them you would.” Francesca worked the big doe eyes and pouty lips.
    “Nice try. Not happening.”
    “Wait,” Maimee asked Francesca, her shrewd gaze narrowing beneath the brim of her baseball cap, “you’re that Lady Marmalade woman, aren’t you?”
    “Why yes,” Francesca preened, turning the makeup sample case to show the Lady Marmalade logo on the front.
    Maimee dug into her oversized handbag. “You sell to hookers and pole dancers and big-breasted women who frequent gambling parlors, don’t you?”
    Before Francesca could answer, Bobbie Faye put a hand on Maimee’s arm as it heaved out a Bible the size of a mini howitzer. “I don’t think we have time for you to pray over her today. It would take hours.”
    The old woman gave the Bible a little backswing shake. “I was thinking more along the lines of smacking her with it.”
    Bobbie Faye wanted . . . oh, how she wanted . . . to move out of Maimee’s way and let her have at it, but she gently guided the Bible down to the glass counter, and said, “Miz Maimee, have you considered anger management classes?”
    “She knows what she’s talking about,” Francesca said to Maimee. “Bobbie Faye’s had to take it three times already. They even give her discounts now.”
    “Not helping yourself one bit, Frannie. You should be leaving.”
    “I can’t, Bobbie Faye. They’re coming!” Francesca nodded toward the door, as if that was self-explanatory. “And if you don’t hurry, you’re gonna be in trouble.”
    “And just exactly
why
would I be in trouble?”
    “Because I told them you would know where they are. Or how to find them. So now they think you do, or that you can, so you have to or they’re gonna kill people.”

Three
    Aiden Stewart threw the rest of