Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [0]
Also by Janet Evanovich
Lean Mean Thirteen
Twelve Sharp
Eleven on Top
Ten Big Ones
To the Nines
Hard Eight
Seven Up
Hot Six
High Five
Four to Score
Three to Get Deadly
Two for the Dough
One for the Money
Plum Lucky
Plum Lovin’
Visions of Sugar Plums
Metro Girl
Motor Mouth
How I Write
(with Ina Yalof)
FEARLESS
FOURTEEN
_______
Janet Evanovich
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FEARLESS FOURTEEN. Copyright © 2008 by Evanovich, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Evanovich, Janet.
Fearless fourteen :a Stephanie Plum novel / Janet Evanovich. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34951-6
ISBN-10: 0-312-34951-3
1. Plum, Stephanie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women bounty hunters—Fiction. 3. Bail bond agents—New Jersey—Trenton—Fiction. 4. Bank robberies—Fiction. 5. Trenton (N.J.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.V2126F43 2008
813'.54—dc22
2008017664
First Edition: June 2008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Woohoo!
To Team Evanovich:
Alex, Peter, and SuperJen
Thanks to Sandy Sherwood
for suggesting the title for this book
FEARLESS FOURTEEN
ONE
IN MY MIND, my kitchen is filled with crackers and cheese, roast chicken leftovers, farm fresh eggs, and coffee beans ready to grind. The reality is that I keep my Smith & Wesson in the cookie jar, my Oreos in the microwave, a jar of peanut butter and hamster food in the over-the-counter cupboard, and I have beer and olives in the refrigerator. I used to have a birthday cake in the freezer for emergencies, but I ate it.
Truth is, I would dearly love to be a domestic goddess, but the birthday cake keeps getting eaten. I mean, you buy it, and you eat it, right? And then where are you? No birthday cake. Ditto cheese and crackers and eggs and the roast chicken leftovers (which were from my mother). The coffee beans are light-years away. I don’t own a grinder. I guess I could buy two birthday cakes, but I’m afraid I’d eat both.
My name is Stephanie Plum, and in my defense I’d like to say that I have bread and milk on my shopping list, and I don’t have any communicable diseases. I’m five feet, seven inches. My hair is brown and shoulder length and naturally curly. My eyes are blue. My teeth are mostly straight. My manicure was pretty good three days ago, and my shape is okay. I work as a bond enforcement agent for my cousin Vinnie, and today I was standing in Loretta Rizzi’s kitchen, thinking not only was Loretta ahead of me in the kitchen-needs-a-makeover race, but she made me look like a piker in the Loose Cannon Club.
It was eight in the morning, and Loretta was wearing a long, pink flannel nightgown and holding a gun to her head.
“I’m gonna shoot myself,” Loretta said. “Not that it would matter to you, because you get your money dead or alive, right?”
“Technically, that’s true,” I told her. “But dead is a pain in the tuchus. There’s paperwork.”
A lot of the people Vinnie bonds out are from my Chambersburg neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey. Loretta Rizzi was one of those people. I went to school with Loretta. She’s a year older than me, and she left high school early to have a baby. Now she was wanted for armed robbery, and she was about to blow her brains out.
Vinnie had posted Loretta’s bond, and Loretta had failed to show for her court appearance, so I was dispatched to drag her back to jail. And as luck would have it, I walked in at a bad moment and interrupted her suicide.
“I just wanted a drink,” Loretta said.
“Yeah, but you held up a liquor store. Most people would have gone to a bar.”
“I didn’t have any money, and it was hot, and I needed a Tom Collins.” A tear rolled down Loretta’s cheek. “I’ve been thirsty lately,” she said.