No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) by Shelly Fredman Page A

hoped he’d still let me have the leftovers.
    The street was dark and empty, so that even the sound of a car door softly closing somewhere nearby put me on edge. I decided to wait for Alex inside. As I began walking towards the door, I got the sudden and distinctly creepy feeling that I wasn’t alone.
    Prickles of sweat broke out on the back of my neck as my imagination raced. Slowly, I reached into my coat pocket for the set of “Clear Knuckles” I found on the Internet,
“designed to tear flesh and inflict topical pain. Legal in every state!”
    As I reached the building I breathed a sigh of relief, and then a hand came out of nowhere, grabbing me by the back of my head, its fingers fisting in my hair. I tried to scream, but another hand, large and gloved, clamped itself over my mouth and nose. A slightly sweet odor filled my nostrils, making me dizzy. I held my breath and swung my arm backwards, blindly reaching for my assailant’s face. He growled low in his throat as the Clear Knuckles made contact with soft muscle tissue.
    The hand over my face tightened and I tore at his arms, struggling to loosen his grip on me. I was suffocating and I gasped for air, sucking the sickly sweet scent into my lungs. It was the last thing I remembered before I passed out.
    “Do you think she’s dead?” The voice was muffled and seemed to be coming from far away.
    “Christ, I hope so. The bitch took a chunk out of my face with her fist.”
    I was just conscious enough to realize that the person he was calling a bitch was me and to take offense to it. But it was hard to muster up righteous indignation for name-calling when the real offense seemed to be they were plotting to kill me.
Whoever they were.
I was still too groggy from my chloroform and ouzo cocktail to believe any of this was real.
    I had been blindfolded and stuffed into a cramped, dark space, my hands and ankles bound with some kind of cloth. The earth seemed to move beneath me, making it hard to get my bearings. I struggled to sit up and bonked my head against something hard, a tire iron, I think.
Shit. I’m in the trunk of a car. What’s that thing you’re supposed to do if you’re ever kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a vehicle? Oh yeah, kick the taillights out. Okay… where are my feet?
    While I pondered this, the car stopped moving. The driver cut the engine and popped the trunk. I thought about jumping out, but then what? Yell, “Surprise!” and hop away on my shackled legs? I could barely lift my head—or remember my own name.
    Another car approached and stopped and soon I heard footsteps crunching along the ground. I lay motionless, doing my best impersonation of a dead person, which I would be soon if I didn’t get my wits together. I was too out of it to be scared, which was actually a good thing, because if I fully understood how much trouble I was in I’d have peed my pants.
    “Where is she?” asked a new voice, male and slightly more upscale.
    In response, the trunk lid was yanked open, letting in a blast of fresh air.
    “Signed, sealed and delivered.”
    I braced myself for the worst, made the sign of the cross in my head and began to thrash about, shouting my lungs out. “Help! Someone help me! Call 911!”
    Mr. Upscale banged his fist against the trunk and the lid slammed shut again. “For Christ’s sake, you morons, you got the wrong girl.”
    His outburst was followed by a moment of stunned silence, which I felt compelled to fill. “Hey, anyone can make a mistake,” I yelled through the closed lid. “No harm, no foul.”
    There was the sound of crunching gravel, as three sets of feet stomped away from the car. More muffled conversation; quiet murmurings punctuated by angry expletives. Then the trunk popped open and the gloved hand pressed itself against my nose once again. I tried to fight the guy off, but there were three of them and one of me and I was just too damn tired. For the second time that evening I was out like the