Undercover in High Heels Read Free Page A

paused.
    I held my breath and leaned forward. Date? Lover? Girlfriend? Come on, for the love of God, finish the sentence, man!
    “…friend, ” he finally said.
    Jerk.
    “I don’t care who she is, ” Crazy Isabel responded. “She’s coming with me.” She shifted her hold on me, grabbing me by the arm with one hand and stuffing the gun into my ribs with the other.
    “And don’t you try to follow me, pig. I’ll kill her. I’ll happily splatter her brains all over this room.”
    I winced. Granted, this entire episode was proving just how very few brains I had. (Why, oh, why hadn’t I just sat at home neurotically wondering what my boyfriend was doing like a normal girl?) But I wanted to keep my brains right where they were, thank you very much.
    I saw the muscles in Ramirez’s jaw flinch, but he kept the gun steady on her. “Don’t do anything stupid, Isabel.”
    Isabel ignored him, dancing me backward as she made her way to the nearest exit sign. Ramirez stood rooted to the spot, his eyes intense, watching the gap between us widen.
    This was bad. Seeing Ramirez with another woman wasn’t so hot, but this? This was big-steaming-piles-of-cow-dung bad.
    Isabel pushed through the emergency exit, sounding a fire alarm that whipped the panicked crowd into a frenzy again. A bartender yelled, “Fire!” and I saw two girls in halter tops shove Dana out of the way, dashing like linebackers to the front doors. Unfortunately, Dana knocked into Mr. How-You-Doin’, sending him teetering backward and colliding with Ramirez. Ramirez staggered back a step—which was just enough to make his aim waver. Isabel took that opportunity to bolt.
    “Come on, Blondie, ” she said as the door slammed shut behind us. Keeping her vise grip on my arm, she kicked off her mules and sprinted through the parking lot.
    “Where are we going?” I asked as I stumbled after her, breaking a heel and stubbing my toe on the asphalt.
    “Shut up!” she said. Then she paused, scanning the lot. “I need a car.”
    I pointed to a green VW Bug. “How about thatone?” Not that I was actually into helping the crazy lady make a great escape, but I figured the faster she got away from here, the smaller the chance I was going to pee in my pants. If there was one thing I hated in life, it was having guns pointed at me.
    “A bug? What, do I look like a midget to you?” she asked, whipping her long hair around again.
    I narrowed my eyes. Was that a crack about my height?
    “Okay, how about that one then?” I gestured to a blue pickup with a COWGIRL UP sticker in the back window.
    Isabel turned on me. “What about me exactly screams redneck?”
    “You know, you’re awfully picky for a woman on the run.”
    “Shut up!” Isabel shoved the gun in my face again.
    The chances of my peeing my pants just rose astronomically. I clamped my mouth shut.
    Isabel looked over my shoulder and apparently found a vehicle to her liking. Her face broke into a grin. “Now that’s more like it.” She tightened her grip on my arm and dragged me with her, weaving through the rows of parked cars toward a big black Escalade in the corner. She peeked in the driver’s-side window. The valet had left the keys in the ignition. “Chumps, ” she said, through a big creepy smile.
    She was jiggling the door handle when the emergency exit flew open again and Ramirez’s voice rang out across the parking lot.
    “Isabel!”
    Without skipping a beat, she spun around, raised her arm, and fired in the direction of his voice. A bullet shattered the passenger-side window of the VW.
    “Shit, ” I heard Ramirez cry as Isabel popped off three more rounds in the direction of the midget car. “Maddie?” he called.
    “I’m okay, ” I replied. “She just really hates that car.”
    “Shut up!” Isabel screamed. “What are you, stupid? What don’t you understand about ‘shut up’?”
    I clamped my lips together and did a zipping-them-up-and-throwing-away-the-key