The Housewife Assassin's Terrorist TV Guide Read online

  The Housewife Assassin’s

  Terrorist TV Guide

  A Novel

  Josie Brown

  © 2016 Josie Brown. All rights reserved.

  Published by Signal Press

  San Francisco, CA 94123

  [email protected]

  V120816AMZ

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 The Outer Limits

  Chapter 2 Family Ties

  Chapter 3 Alias

  Chapter 4 Married...with Children

  Chapter 5 Star Trek

  Chapter 6 Queen for a Day

  Chapter 7 Desperate Housewives

  Chapter 8 Sex and the City

  Chapter 9 Californication

  Chapter 10 Mad Men

  Chapter 11 Nip/Tuck

  Chapter 12 Breaking Bad

  Chapter 13 Gunsmoke

  Chapter 14 Full House

  Chapter 15 Big Love

  Chapter 16 House of Cards

  Chapter 17 I Love Lucy

  Chapter 18 Say Yes to the Dress

  Chapter 19 Leave It to Cheever

  Chapter 20 Deadwood

  Chapter 21 The Good Wife

  Next Up!

  HOW TO REACH JOSIE

  NOVELS IN THE HOUSEWIFE ASSASSIN SERIES

  HOLLYWOOD HUNK

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOSIE BROWN

  PRAISE FOR JOSIE BROWN

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Chapter 1

  The Outer Limits

  Do not attempt to adjust the picture. There is nothing wrong with your television set.

  Not yet, anyway.

  We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper.

  We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image—make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next three hundred pages, you are to sit quietly. We will control all that you see and hear.

  None of this will kill anyone.

  Well, not yet.

  You see, you are about to participate in a great adventure! You are about to experience the awe and mystery that reaches from the inner mind to the Outer Limits—

  Of fear and suspense.

  Do not worry, dear readers! Rest assured, for your comfort and safety, your guides on this new viewing experience are Donna and Jack—

  Okay, yeah, maybe you should be worried.

  Chaoxiang “Chucky” Chan joneses over three things: white-blonde blue-eyed kewpie doll pole dancers, Vancouver Canucks games (to which he has front row seats), and his $360,000 red Lamborghini Huracán.

  Sadly, his car is in the shop getting some much-needed bodywork. It seems that its low-slung chassis ran over a fallen lamppost in the middle of the road. Chucky is the reason the lamppost was there in the first place. Cars seem to go bump in the night when you drink and drive while a stripper performs unmentionable acts.

  Luckily, Chucky was wearing his seatbelt. However, the stripper’s bucket seat contortions left her with even more bodywork than the car’s. At least Chucky picked up her medical bills. She’ll always have a rod in her back, but the doctor assured her she’ll have a better nose than the one that got smashed when she was propelled through the windshield.

  I’ve correctly guessed that Chucky would haunt Vancouver, Canada’s largest Lamborghini showroom in search of a replacement vehicle. And because my latest mission dictates that I be his replacement girlfriend, I got there a few minutes after him. To make it easy for him to see me in the role, today I wear a platinum blonde wig styled in a gamine cut. My contact lenses—really video feeds monitored by Ryan Clancy, my boss at the black-ops organization that employs me, Acme Corporation—are vivid blue. It’s also why I’m wearing a black push-up bra under my low-cut sheer white silk blouse, and a tight white mini-skirt with six-inch heels.

  If you saw me, I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you thought my attire left nothing to the imagination. Bingo! That’s the point. To assure that Chucky gets it too, I sink into the passenger seat of a sleek black $1.9 million-dollar Lamborghini Centenarios roadster with my legs parted just wide enough that his imagination goes wild and his fifth appendage hardens. This is a predictable reaction since, as we circled each other in the showroom, he stared at my ass long enough to notice that there was no visible panty line.

  I reward his smirk with a come-hither wink and a crooked index finger that invites him to join me.

  My interest in Chucky has less to do with his bank account than that of his father’s: Huang Fu Chan just so happens to be China’s Minister of Natural Resources. During his administration, graft has boomed to new heights, thanks to too many collapsing mine shafts, and too few honest owners.

  That is, until now. Chucky doesn’t know it yet, but Daddy Dearest disappeared about six hours ago. Acme’s guess is that he’s now the guest of the MSS—China’s espionage agency, the Ministry of State Security—and is being interrogated in some black site located deep in the Tian Shan Mountains. The lives of miners and the reputations of China’s current administration may be gone, but Huang Fu’s ill-gotten gains are an acceptable substitute.

  Vancouver is bulging with fuerdai—superrich second generation trust-funders who, like Chucky, have no qualms spending their parents’ hard-stolen money on hot wheels and fast women, in that order.

  Or is it the other way around? Not that it matters. In either case, today’s his lucky day.

  When it comes to staying in his father’s good graces, Chucky’s sole responsibility is to hold onto the safety deposit box key that contains a list of the banks where Daddy has salted his cash stash. Chucky wears it on one of the silver chains around his neck, but not for long if I have my way.

  Of course, at the same time, I won’t let him have his way with me.

  After stealing the key, I’ll snatch the list from the safety deposit box so that Acme’s COMINT liaison, Emma Honeycutt, and our tech ops leader, Arnie Locklear, can hack the accounts. The CIA will then trade Huang Fu’s funds for a couple of Chinese-Americans who are being held as political prisoners.

  After exchanging lascivious winks with me, Chucky saunters over to the car, leans in, and asks, “Want to go for a test drive?”

  “Are you the salesman?” I purr. “Don’t count on me for your commission. In the club where I work, the tips aren’t that big.”

  His chest puffs up. “I don’t sell ’em, I buy ’em.” To prove his point, he snaps his fingers at one of his two bodyguards. “Yo, Tong, grab the keys to this ride from the showroom manager.”

  The goon shuffles off. A second later he returns with the key fob and tosses it to Chucky, who hops into the driver’s seat. Revving the engine, he asks, “Where to?”

  I tweak his nipple under his skintight T-shirt. “Let’s hit the open road—say, up the coast? I know of a little cabin in the woods off the 99, right over Brunswick Beach.”

  Chucky takes the requisite two-point-six seconds to prove the roadster can hit sixty miles-per-hour from zero.

  We’re off.

  We have a shadow: Chucky’s goon squad.

  They have one too: my mission leader and main squeeze, Jack Craig. He follows in a nondescript black Lexus—a ubiquitous vehicle in well-heeled West Vancouver, and certainly not as ostentatious as the Lamborghini.

  In case Jack loses us on the open road, Abu Nagashahi, another Acme operative, is several miles in front of us, in a white paneled van. Thankfully, the sluggish mid-day traffic over Lion’s Gate Bridge affords both cars excellent visual surveillance.

  The whole time, Chucky won
’t shut up. He rambles on and on about his assets and holdings, as if I’m a banker who can grant him a mortgage. No, it’s more like he’s got something to prove to a woman who isn’t acting at all impressed.

  The babbling is to be expected. At every red light, he takes a hit of the cocaine in the vial dangling from the longest silver chain around his neck. It’s next to the one that holds the coveted safety deposit box key. Now and then I’m rewarded with a glimpse of it. I ache to jerk it off his neck and then shove him out the door into oncoming traffic, solving our problem in a quick and dirty way. But, no, I must follow Acme’s much more discrete plan for Chucky.

  Traffic loosens up when we hit Highway 99 on the West Vancouver side of the bridge. Suddenly Chucky is doing his best to break the sound barrier—or at least achieve the speed claimed in the Lamborghini’s spec sheet: two-hundred-and-seventeen miles-per-hour.

  Ten or so miles zip by us. In a flash, we’re as far north as Horseshoe Bay, where 99 becomes the appropriately named Sea-to-Sky Highway because of the way it clings to the cliff that winds its way around Howe Sound.

  Can Jack keep up? I look in the side-view mirror to reassure myself that he can. Yes, he’s there, about a hundred yards behind us. Unfortunately, so are Tong and his buddy.

  Suddenly, Chucky realizes I’m not paying attention to his boasts. Worse yet, I’m slapping away his groping hands. His eyes narrow as he blurts out, “Hey, um…how ’bout giving me some head?”

  I snort. “What…are you kidding? So that I end up with a broken nose, like your last girlfriend?”

  He looks over sharply, completely ignoring the fact that we’re weaving to and fro on hairpin curves. “Who told you that?”

  I shrug. “Dude, it’s all over town. Sorry, but if I’m going to distract you, it’s going to be someplace we can both enjoy it”—I nod at the car with his bodyguards, now right on our heels—“but not with your cheering squad tagging along. What’s with the chaperones?”

  “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said, bee-hatch?” He takes his eyes off the road to lean in close. “I’m a very important guy! They come along to protect me.” He puts his hand between my thighs. “Look, sweet cheeks, if you make me happy, I’ll make you happy—”

  He grabs me by my neck and shoves my head into his lap.

  He figures out quickly that it was poor judgment on his part when I bite him—hard—on his thigh.

  Chucky’s howl is cut off by the sound of glass breaking. A barrage of bullets shatters the rear window.

  I duck onto the floor of the passenger seat.

  Instinctively, Chucky looks behind us. As bullets hit his head, it explodes, sending skull fragments and brain matter in all directions.

  When his body jerks in my direction, I see that his right eye is dangling from his optic nerve. His seatbelt holds him in place, but his foot has stiffened onto the accelerator.

  I scream, “What the hell?”

  Jack yells into my earbud, “Chucky’s bodyguards are shooting at the car!”

  “Driver down!” I shout back.

  The car is now racing along out of control. To take the wheel, I lean over his body and jerk it out of its counter-clockwise trajectory—

  And off the road we go.

  The car skids down the embankment, skimming the tops of the evergreens that cling to the cliff before crashing onto blacktop once more.

  It’s not easy steering a car from the passenger side, but I do the best I can, zigzagging down this side road. Still, we are going at a breakneck speed.

  “Donna,” Jack shouts, “You’re headed for the ferry!”

  He’s right. HORSESHOE BAY is emblazoned on the banner above it. The Queen of Capilano, hauling both passengers and cars to Bowen Island, has started to inch away from its dock.

  I’m just about to nudge Chucky’s foot onto the brake for a modulated stop when a bullet pings the roof of the car. Somehow Chucky’s bodyguards have followed me down the hill.

  Instead of trying to stop, I’ve got no choice but to shove his leg harder onto the accelerator in the hope of making it onto the boat. As the car picks up speed, it has lift-off—

  Flying off the dock, over the water—

  Only to land firmly on the stern of the boat. I shove Chucky’s leg onto the brake just in time: it skids to a stop beside some other cars.

  As Chucky’s head snaps forward and back, the nerve holding his eyeball breaks—

  And the eye rolls onto my lap.

  I smack it to the floor. Yuck!

  Passengers on the upper deck clap heartily at my feat of derring-do. Not the ferry’s purser. He scowls as he clambers down the stairs toward me.

  I leap out of the car before he has a chance to look inside of it. “No one gets a free ride,” he glowers.

  I shrug as I pull out a wallet tucked deep in my décolletage. From it, I pluck a credit card and hand it to the guy. His eyes, now the size of saucers, are glued to my breasts. I guess he thinks I’ll pull a rabbit out from there, or maybe a string of colored hankies. Well, at least it keeps him from rubbernecking the car and the dead body inside of it.

  After handing me a receipt, he walks away, shaking his head.

  I stare back at the shoreline, scanning it until I see Chucky’s bodyguards. They’ve abandoned their car. They’re running toward the smaller docks dotting the shore in the hope of securing a motorboat to follow the ferry.

  Jack has done the same.

  “I thought they were here to protect him. Why did they kill him?” I wonder out loud.

  “For the key to the safety deposit box. While following you, his bodyguards heard from MSS about Huang Fu Chan’s new status as a political prisoner,” Ryan explains through my earbud. “They were offered a bounty to take it from Chucky. The fact that he’s collateral damage—or for that matter, you—doesn’t mean anything to them.”

  “Where is this ferry headed?” I ask.

  “Snug Cove, an inlet on Bowen Island,” Jack answers. “It’s a twenty-minute ride. And from the looks of things, you’ll be met with a not-so-welcoming committee. I’ll try to head them off. In the meantime, grab the cargo and lock up the Lamborghini so that no one is any wiser regarding Chucky.”

  Jack is breathing heavy, which tells me he’s moving fast to find a boat before Tong and his buddy leave the dock—

  But he’s too late. “Chucky's goons just punched out a man, and are making off with his Bayliner Cabin Cruiser,” Jack reports.

  Yep, here they come.

  I watch as Jack, thinking fast, waves down a Sea Ray Bowrider coming into port. It has three bikini-clad women. Whatever he says to them has them giggling and tossing him the keys. Hmmm….

  Still, Chucky’s assassins have a head start.

  As they speed toward the ferry, I open the driver side of the Lamborghini and yank the key and its chain from around Chucky’s neck. The key is cold when it slips between my cleavage.

  “Grab the fallen eyeball,” Ryan shouts.

  Ewwww. “Why, pray tell?” I ask.

  “Just do it!” he commands. “And then take your cell phone and get as close as possible to text me a straight-on photo of the other eye. To get into his bank vault, we’ll need both for the eye scan.”

  I groan, but grab the loose eye. Then I yank my iPhone out of my skirt pocket. Straddling Chucky, I put it up against Chucky’s other eye, and mutter, “Say cheese,” before I text it to Ryan.

  Next, I shove Chucky onto the passenger seat so that I can finally take the wheel. Since this was the last vehicle onto the ferry, it will also be the first one off—

  And not a moment too soon. Chucky’s goons are trailing the ferry by a mere fifty feet.

  No better time than now to give them what they want: Chucky.

  I run to a nearby utility closet and grab a crowbar. It’s just the right length to prop against the accelerator. I lodge the other end against the steering column, and then I start the ignition.

  The Lamborghini’s engine purrs to life. I
shift the gear to reverse—

  And off it goes.

  Zero to sixty in two-point-six seconds has it in mid-air. Another two seconds puts it on a downward trajectory.

  By second number six, it has landed on top of Tong’s Cabin Cruiser.

  The explosion sends a spout of water sky high.

  The passengers are too busy ogling the collision to notice little old me as I make my way toward the front of the ferry.

  As Jack zips by in the Sea Ray, I smile and wave.

  By the time I file off the ferry, he’s already docked. Better yet, he’s secured a prime outdoor table at Doc Morgan’s Pub.

  “I ordered your favorite: snow crab legs and a cabernet,” Jack adds.

  “I can’t wait to hear what you told those women to get their boat,” I mutter as I tear open a crab leg.

  “Only that my one true love was on that ferry, and I had to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life: marrying the wrong man.” He shrugs. “It was half true, anyway.”

  “You’ve got that right.” I kiss him through a mouthful of crab.

  “Eat fast,” Ryan warns us. “You’ve got to head back to West Van and hit the bank before it closes.”

  No rest for the weary.

  It takes a half-hour to devour the crab.

  It’s good to be alive.

  Ryan was right. Chucky’s eyes were worth scanning.

  To get through the vault’s security system, I wear contact lenses. One reflects the retina scanned off the popped eyeball. The other lens, which duplicates the retina of Chucky’s left eye, was created from picture previously texted to Ryan.

  The security system’s approval is signaled with a pleasant ping. The alternative would have been the shrill bleat of a siren, so I stroll into the vault.

  The key opens Chucky’s safety deposit box with no problem.

  The list holding the names of a dozen or so offshore banks, account numbers, and passwords is inside. I take it, replacing it with another created by Acme. Should someone else come looking for the list, this will lead him or her on a wild goose chase. At the same time, it releases a Trojan virus that allows Acme to trace the perpetrator.