Ready, Scrap, Shoot by Joanna Campbell-Slan

Author:Joanna Campbell-Slan [Campbell-Slan, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, amateur sleuth novel, mystery novels, scrapbooking, cozy
ISBN: 9781410448774
Publisher: Wheeler Pub
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Forty-seven

Other vendors arrived at the retail area. Johnny set up our tables, fitted the pieces of our display that he’d built. A colorful sign with a glass jar full of watch faces welcomed visitors to our booth. Peg board walls facilitated displaying merchandise. A foldout shelving unit showed off more goodies.

Mert racked hanging goods while I organized table displays. There was a lot to do, more than I remembered, and hauling boxes made for sweaty work. A part of me started to get ticked off, thinking about how Dodie didn’t trust me to share big decisions, like taking on a new partner, but she sure didn’t mind tasking me with a huge responsibility like setting up our entire booth for this event.

Maybe I was overtired, but the harder and longer Mert and I worked, the more irritated I got. Why was I busting my butt for Dodie? She sure didn’t think much of me. Why was I out here sweating and grunting and overseeing Mert’s efforts, while Dodie rested at home? She had a funny way of ignoring the responsibilities she’d shifted my way while still treating me like I knew nothing about the business.

I was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. A volatile combination to be sure.

So when Johnny came up from behind me and gave me a big open-mouth kiss, the wrong kind of fireworks went off inside my head.

I pushed him away. “Stop it.”

“But I’ve been working so hard, and you look so cute all hot and bothered like this.” He put a hand behind my neck and kissed me. I tried to squirm free, but I couldn’t. His grip was too powerful.

Before I could think, before I could apply reason, I panicked. Suddenly, I was a helpless child again, a child forced to endure her father’s “affection.” Johnny’s mouth covered mine and I gagged.

My mind shut down. I forgot who I was, what I’d been through, and the progress I made in becoming an adult. Johnny’s whiskers, rough at the end of the day, sandpapered my face the way Daddy’s had. Johnny’s hands, insistent behind my head, pressured me into submission. Mert looked away in embarrassment, and that served to trigger a memory of Mom turning the other way.

The child inside me cried for help. All this happened in the nanoseconds that it takes for neurons and synapses to fire in the brain. Johnny’s forced kiss took me to a place I’d escaped from, and I fought being dragged back there the way a swimmer resists having her head held under water.

An atavistic impulse gave me a sudden surge of strength. I brought my knee up hard, slamming it into Johnny’s groin. As he went down, I gave him a slap to the side of the head so hard that the skin on my palm stung. As he sank to the dirt, he sputtered, “Cop lover.”

The haze of my vision clouded. I kicked him in the gut, and I would have done it again, but Mert grabbed me.

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