Page 33 of Jacking Jill

Except Jill didn’t have a car parked out there.

And she didn’t have a phone to call a taxi.

Maybe you can hitch a ride with someone going back to the hotel, she thought. Or if someone’s arriving in a taxi, you can snag it on the way out.

Thinking through the practical problem of getting herself to the Winchester Hotel sent a wave of comforting relief through Jill’s body. It was a good plan, she told herself as the pounding music from the main hall receded to the sound of distant thunder. She was walking fast now, clutching her wool shawl tight around her shoulders, eyes wide and hopeful as the glass-paned double-doors leading to the guest parking lot came into view at the end of the marble-floored corridor.

The empty marble-floored corridor.

Not a living soul in sight.

Nobody coming or going.

“Damn it.” Jill got to the doors and peered out, hoping to see headlights or tail-lights or any lights other than the diamond-white string-lights forming a starry canopy over the blustery-cold parking lot. “Too early for folks to be leaving the cocktail party and too late for new guests to still be arriving. Perfectly bad timing. Shit. Shit. Shit!”

“Shit, you again?” came a familiar voice from behind Jill now. She spun around and saw Bobby Carmine along with Nina and a couple of his drugged-up buddies loping down the hallway. “Where’s your gorilla of a boyfriend, Jill? Did he finally wise up and dump you for being a meddlesome bitch who can’t mind her own fucking business?”

“Bobby, stop!” Nina’s voice was loud but whiny. One look at her dinner-plate-sized bloodshot eyes and Jill knew Nina was still hopped up on something like speed or meth or whatever other chemical stimulant was being manufactured in the drug labs nowadays. “Jill and I are friends again. Aren’t we, honey?”

“We never stopped being friends,” Jill said with a pleasant smile that she hoped covered up the urgency inside. “Where are you guys off to?”

Bobby sneered instead of answering. He was wasted and wired, his left eyebrow twitching, tongue snaking around his dry lips like it had a life of its own. He stormed past Jill, pushed open the double-doors to the parking lot. His two equally-wasted buddies stumbled out behind him, but Nina stopped long enough to answer Jill’s question.

“We ran out of . . . um . . . stuff.” Nina fidgeted with her fingers, her tweaking body twitching hard as she looked this way and that like a guilty schoolgirl. “Bobby’s friends have some more in their hotel room, so we’re going to run back there and grab it. They were going to bring it back on their own, but Bobby says they’ll just get high in their hotel room and pass out. So we’re all going on a little field trip.” Nina hiccupped once, raised a twitchy eyebrow. “You wanna come along for the ride?”

Jill stared, then blinked and tried to act casual. “Sure. Why not.”

“Great!” Nina grabbed Jill’s hand, dragged her out to the parking lot, then stopped under the string-lights and gazed up at the overcast night-sky. “Ohmygod, look, Jill! It’s snowing!”

Jill glanced up just in time to feel a snowflake on her eyelash. Nina was already spinning around with her tongue sticking out to catch the virgin flakes that fluttered down like white cotton-candy.

“Hey,” called Bobby from the driver’s-side window of a black Mercedes Benz that slid up beside the two snow-flaked women. “We’re leaving. Get in or get out of the way.”

“We’re coming!” Nina squealed, catching a last flurry of flakes on her tongue before grabbing Jill’s hand and pulling her towards the backdoor, which one of Bobby’s buddies had helpfully popped open for them. They got into the backseat, Jill squished between Nina and some guy in a wine-stained wool suit. “Let’s go! Dashing through the snow! In a one-horse open sleigh! Let’s go!”

“Yee-haw!” Bobby shouted, pumping his fist through the open window and spinning the car’s rear wheels on the road which was rapidly getting covered with December’s first snowfall. “Giddyap, motherfuckers!”

Jill gulped when she realized Bobby shouldn’t be driving. But she needed to get to the hotel, and besides, it was a straight road with basically zero traffic. Still, Jill reached down behind her bottom and felt around for the seatbelt which had partially ridden up her butt. She was in the middle seat and so it was just a lap-belt, but it made Jill feel more secure as Bobby screeched the car onto the road, flashing the car’s brights, which lit up the snowflakes and made it look like they were driving headfirst into an Arctic snowstorm.

“It’s really coming down,” Jill said nervously, placing her hands on the backs of the two front seats and bracing herself as Bobby gunned the accelerator and raced the powerful car down the empty two-lane road leading to the Winchester Hotel. “Be careful, Bobby.”

Bobby glanced back at Jill over his shoulder, his face twisted in a sneer. “Excuse me? Who the fuck are you to tell me how to drive? And why are you even here?” He grinned wickedly now, showing a row of shiny white teeth-veneers, like he’d got his drug-ravaged teeth fixed along with Nina’s for the wedding photos. “Wait, are you going to get high with us?”

“No, she’s not, Bobby!” Nina leaned forward and shrieked into Bobby’s ear. “Just leave her alone.”

“Fine,” Bobby muttered, turning his attention back to the road, where a set of headlights from an oncoming car shone through the rapidly thickening snowfall. “I’ll concentrate on not killing my lovely fiancée in a head-on collision the night before our wedding.” He put down his window as the oncoming car approached. “Hey, asshole, stay on your side of the road!”

“Um, I think it’s you that’s driving on the wrong side of the yellow line,” Jill said quietly but quickly. “Move over to your right.”

Bobby blinked, then swerved back to his side of the road. The oncoming car had already slowed down to prevent a collision, and as Bobby’s Benz got closer, Jill realized it was her own red Honda hatchback driving towards them on the other side of the two-lane road.

“Oh, that’s Jack on his way back to the wedding,” she blurted out, a wave of relief passing through her that he was all right, that Kay Steffen hadn’t sent an assassin to murder Jack at the Winchester Hotel, that Jill was just being paranoid and everything was all right and—

And then Jill saw two lightning-bright flashes on the side of the dark road.

Followed by a chilling pop-pop sound that came through sharply from the same direction.

Pop-pop.

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