Leslie Langtry - Guns Will Keep Us Together (Greatest Hits Romance)

The Addams Family credo: Sic gorgiamusallos subjectatos nunc. We gladly feast on those who would subdue us. Not just pretty words.

Morticia Addams, The Addams Family

Getting a phone call can be a good thing. It could be someone calling to inform you of an inheritance, or that cute blonde you met last night begging for another round of find-the-kielbasa.

On the other hand, it could be the doctor calling to tell you that you did, indeed, pick up an intestinal parasite while in Uruguay, or the husband of the aforementioned blonde saying he will be stopping by this evening with a baseball bat. Its all a matter of where you are and what youre doing that can turn a simple phone call into a bonus or a disaster. This was one of the latter. I was in the middle of working when my cell rang.

Now, when I say I was working, I mean to say I had my foot on a mans throat, slowly crushing his trachea. Thats my job. My name is Dakota Bombay, and Im an assassin. Of course, the damn phone began to ring, and the worst part was that it was playing Dont Worry, Be Happy.

To be fair, Id just gotten the phone and hadnt had time to change the ring tone.

But how do you scare the hell out of your victim if some stupid shit like that is playing? My victimor Vic, as we call them in the bizbegan to smirk. I scowled and pressed harder with my foot. The son of a bitch was a serial pedophile and the son of a diplomatmeaning he was untouchable to everyone. Everyone, that is, but me.

Damn. The display showed that this was one call I had to take.

Mom, I said, never losing eye contact with the guy under my shoe. Did I imagine it or did he smirk again? This is a bad time. Im working here. I pressed a little harder until I got that oh-so-satisfying gurgle.

Fine. Mom sniffled and blew her nose into the phone. She was crying. Call me in five. And with that Carolina Bombay hung up. Fantastic.

Not your lucky day, I said to the vic as I pulled out my silenced Glock .45. Normally Id make this look like an accident. But Mom sounds upset, so we need to move this along.

I pulled the trigger twice, and with a thffft,thffft it was over. In a few moments Id retrieved the two spent casings, scanned the area for any evidence I might have left behind, then walked out of the vics life (or should I say death?).

Mom crying was not a good thing. Not when you come from a family of professional killers. Thats right. The Bombay family has been the first name in assassination since 2000 BCE. The legacy is handed down from parent to child, blood relatives only.

Four or five nightmare scenarios went through my mind as I pulled onto the highway and flipped open my phone. It hadnt been a banner year for the Bombays. Just six months ago my sister, Gin, was forced into a messed-up situation by the Council (the family elders who dole out assignments), and her daughter was kidnapped. It all ended up okay. Romi was fine, and Gin was granted an unprecedented early retirement. But after shit like that, you tend to worry a little when your moms upset.

Yeah, Mom. What is it? Id called her back within five minutes. Im not a moron. In this family you do what youre told. Discipline comes in the form of an ice pick through the ear instead of the traditional spanking.

I heard a little sniffling and thought thatwas weird, because my mom is pretty tough. I mean, she can take on five or six guys and walk away from their corpses without so much as a wrinkle in her denim jumper.

Romidoesntwanttocuddleanymore! she screamed, locked in one long sob and pronouncing the sentence as a single word.

What? Maybe I didnt hear her right. Important assassin alert number one: Always know what you heard. One of my great-great-aunts once made a fatal error because she thought she heard, Kill the Australian prime minister, when what the Council said was, Lets get the Australian prime rib dinner. As a result, Great-great-aunt Orleans was made an example of at the 1965 Bombay family reunion. I guess the old family adage is true: You cant pick your family, but you can pick them off.

Carolina Bombay repeated slowly, Romi doesnt want to cuddle anymore.

Uh, and this has what to do with me? I considered asking for Dad to find out if she was going through menopause or toying with insanity. Of course, in this family you couldnt get a section eight to get out of the business. We kind of look at lunacy as a benefit to the job.

Dont take that tone with me, Dakota Bombay! Ah. The voice was clearer now. You need to get married and give me more grandchildren!

Okay. She was definitely crazy. And crazy I didnt need. You know how creepy it is when your run-of-the-mill, average parent loses it? Well, its ten times worse when your mom is one of the best killers in the business.

Okay, Mom. Calm down. Stop drinking or take some pills or something. Cause it wont happen anytime soon.

And that was the truth. I might be thirty-seven, but I was having one hell of a good time. The Bombays lived the good life. Only one or two assignments a year, multimillion-dollar trust funds, and performance reviews only every five years. (Those arent bad. There really is no gray area in Well, did you kill him or not?) I was too busy jet-setting and sampling the international buffet of leggy blondes to settle down now. Maybe ever.

Dinner, she said.

Dinner? Great, we were down to one-word sentences.

Yes, dinner tomorrow night at seven. It was amazing (and seriously scary) how quickly her voice went from hysterical to stone-cold professional.

Um, okay. Why?

Im fixing you up with a nice girl.

Whoa! I pulled the car over to the curb, afraid to drive during this conversation. No, youre not. Every time you do that it ends in disaster.

Nonsense. Did Mom actually say nonsense? How very Charles Dickens. It wasnt Millies fault she had a hump.

I rolled my eyes, wishing she could see me. I continued, Remember Kelly? She was deathly afraid of trees. Trees! And how about Lacy? She wanted to have eight children and told me Id be good breeding stock! I left out Dora, the ber-perky Junior Leaguer who dressed like Jackie Onassis and asked if I had any political aspirations (which I thought was ironic). Oh, and Sasha, who passionately loved her job with the Illinois State Museum, where she had devoted her life to studying molds and fungus. (Insert shudder here. She actually said, You seem like a fungi! Get it? Believe me. I got it.)

Well, Nora is nothing like those other women. Youll see.

No, Mom. Im not coming. I think I even stuck out my lower lip. Thats me. The Pouting Assassin. What? I am the baby of the family.

Youll be there if I have to get one of Gins knockout drugs and tie your unconscious body to one of the dining room chairs.

Okay, she had me theremainly because my petite, blond mother was strong as an ox run amok on an adrenaline high and as stubborn as a pit bull when you tried to take meat away from it.

Fine. But no guarantees Ill stay. I made a quick mental note to start carrying a sharp pocketknife with me at all times.

Youll stay and like it! With that Mom hung up on me.

So Dakota Bombay, debonair assassin and sophisticated world traveler, was going to Mommys house tomorrow to meet a girl she hoped Id marry on the spot, and possibly begin procreating with on the dining room table before dessert.

I did the only thing I could think of: I stopped by my sisters house to complain.

Gin, short for Virginia, is two years older than me. Once widowed with a five-year-old daughter, my big sister is now married to a retired Australian bodyguard.

You might be wondering about all these names: Carolina, Dakota, Virginia.... Well, the Bombay family has a lot of weird traditions, including the assigning of geographic names to their progeny. I knowI think its totally stupid too.