Lucinda’s Story
“Oh Marco, you’re so droll.” Lucinda’s laughter tinkled through the Golden Fox’s dining room, her eyes sparkling as she laid her hand on Marco’s forearm, gently stroking it.
Marco gave a self-satisfied smirk as he sipped his champagne.
Clouds drifted past the airship’s windows, adding to the majesty of viewing the Iron Mountains from above. Within two hours they would fly over Lake Anstett, perfect for when Lucinda would dump Marco’s body down the garbage chute.
Lucinda leaned over to whisper into Marco’s ear, hand sliding over his thigh under the table. “I know we only met two days ago, but we get into port tonight, and I worry that if I don’t take the chance now, it’ll never come again. Care to go to your room?”
Their eyes locked with rising flames of mutual desire (well, supposedly mutual). Marco rose and placed Lucinda’s hands at his elbow as they strolled out of the room, the picture of a perfect gentleman (he wasn’t). They soon reached Marco’s berth, him fumbling with his room key because Lucinda began kissing his cheek, neck, earlobe. Marco managed to pull his door open, grabbing Lucinda around the waist, preparing to press her up against the back of the door while kissing her thoroughly. Meanwhile, Lucinda prepared to press the knife she had pulled into Marco’s throat. The moment the door clicked shut, Marco’s bedside lamp flickered on and a voice both of them loathed spoke.
“I wouldn’t finish that if I were you. I have no desire to see what either of you planned.”
Maxwell Harrison sat along Marco’s bed, ankles crossed and a smirk gracing his stupid face.
“You!” Marco sputtered, his cheeks turning florid. “You said you’d never approach me in public!”
Maxwell cocked his head and gestured around the tiny berth, barely big enough to fit three people. “Does this look public to you, Marco? Or does your perception of the word differ from the general populace? Besides, you should be thanking me. I just saved your life. Really, Lucinda, put away the knife. It’s wholly unnecessary.”
Finally registering Lucinda’s weapon, Marco backed half a step before hitting the bed frame. “You were going to kill me?” He asked, horrified.
Lucinda pointed the dagger at Maxwell. “I should have known you were after my mark the moment I saw your smug grin at the port. I have first dibs. Get out and let me get on with my job.”
“First dibs?” Maxwell asked. “He’s been your mark for what, a week? He’s been mine for a year.”
“Well then, you should have worked faster. ‘You snooze, you lose’ and all that. Ah ah aaah,” Lucinda said, twisting Marco’s wrist as he lunged at her knife. She held his wrist behind his back and placed the dagger’s edge at this throat. “The more you move, the quicker my job is over and I get paid,” she trilled.
“Why do you want to kill me?” Marco asked.
“For the same reason I’ve blackmailed you. You’ve been embezzling thousands of goldens from your company for years,” Maxwell said.
“You tipped my partners off,” Marco seethed.
“You’re not very intelligent, are you?” Maxwell replied. “I can’t very well blackmail a corpse. You getting sloppy and ever more brazen is not my fault, but it is now my problem.”
“I know you’re disappointed that this source of effortless income has dried up,” Lucinda cut in. “After all, I know how much you detest work.”
“I really do,” acknowledged Maxwell.
“But,” continued Lucinda, “the jig is up and his partners want him dead. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”
“Really, Lucinda, you usually have more finesse than this. Murder is so gauche,” said Maxwell.
“Gauche perhaps, but the payoff from this job will buy me a nice country house.”
“You hate the country.”
“Beside the point.”
“A cozy city apartment in uptown, then. One where you could spend your days with your gorgeous, almond-eyed lover.”
Lucinda rolled her eyes. The insufferable man was far too handsome for his own good and he knew it.
“Now that would be a disaster,” she replied.
“But oh so much fun while it lasts.”
“Quit trying to distract me,” Lucinda lilted, pressing her dagger deeper against Marco’s throat. Little did Maxwell know, he regularly distracted her with those impeccable suits and aforementioned almond eyes. Better move things along.
“I have a daughter,” Marco squealed. “She needs me!”
Lucinda raised her eyebrows in derision. “No, you don’t.”
“He does, actually,” drawled Maxwell. “There’s a picture of her in the safe. She’s pretty cute, too.”
Lucinda cocked her head in a coy manner, her voice syrupy. “Maybe Marco should have thought of her before he cheated his partners.”
Maxwell clapped his hands together. “Tell you what. You need Marco to disappear and I need to not get blood on my favorite Edith Ives loafers. Marco knows that if he ever shows his face in Gearhaven or the surrounding countries, he’s dead on arrival. So, Marco takes a parachute and jumps ship now. He has his secret wife sell his secret manor and gets out of the country. Perhaps one of the colonies would suit him. You don’t have to go through the hassle of cleaning up a bunch of blood, you still get paid for the kill, he gets to live, and I still get a potential source of blackmail for whenever I bother to track him down again. Everyone wins.”
Lucinda arched her eyebrow. “I know you too well for that, Maxwell. You’d never walk away with so little.”
Maxwell shook his head. “Fine. I also found 3 months’ worth of payments in his safe. I’ll throw in one month’s to you if you keep him alive and thus my wardrobe pristine.”
“Do I get a say in any of this?” Marco asked.
“No,” they replied in unison.
Lucinda thought it over for a moment. She really did hate cleaning up blood.
“Deal,” she finally said, pulling the knife and pushing Marco away. “But you get off this ship with him. I know you have a second parachute, and I don’t want you skulking around. And I get the picture of the daughter so I know who to look for if Marco ever decides to come back from the grave.” She gave Marco a deadly stare. “Clear?”
Marco gulped. “Clear.”
“Good,” Lucinda said. “Now open the safe while Maxwell hands me my cut.”
Marco and Maxwell had to maneuver around each other in the tight berth as Marco opened the room’s safe. His shoulders slumped at the sight of his family’s portrait laying alone in the container and handed it over to Lucinda. Meanwhile, Maxwell had pulled a stack of bills from his breast pocket and counted out a third.
“This is all you blackmailed him for?” Lucinda asked with a flirtatious grin. “You’ve gone cheap, Maxwell.”
“He took most of what I embezzled!” Marco hissed, outraged. “I would have stopped long before if that bastard hadn’t been blackmailing me!”
Lucinda’s laugh filled the small room. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you told yourself, Marco. As if you’d ever stop.”
“And really, if you’re going to attempt to insult me, do it properly,” Maxwell added. “I assure you, my lineage is well established. Shall we go?”
“Gladly,” Lucinda replied.
Maxwell led the way to one of the airship’s exits, with Lucinda guiding Marco along with her knife. Within minutes Maxwell had a parachute strapped to Marco and shoved him out the door.
Lucinda turned her knife toward Maxwell. “Now you. Where’s your chute?”
Maxwell gave that cocky chuckle of his as he opened a cabinet and slid some of the ship’s emergency supplies out of the way.
“A parachute? How pedestrian, my dear Lucinda,” Maxwell said as he strapped a strange metal device to his back. “Those will be out of style within the year.”
Lucinda leveled a cool look at Maxwell. “Let me guess, one of your silly little inventions?”
Maxwell gave a particularly smug smirk as he put on his helmet and goggles. He stood at the edge of the doorway, back facing the open sky.
“Wait for iiiiiiit!” he said with a cheeky grin, holding the moment before letting himself fall backward from the ship.
Lucinda peeked out the door and watched as Maxwell flipped himself face down. A moment later, the bottom of the device exploded in white smoke and Maxwell veered off to the right, heading up towards the cloud cover. Rolling her eyes at Maxwell’s theatrics, Lucinda couldn’t help but be impressed. Handsome. Charming. Genius. A dangerous combination, that one. She closed the door and then counted the money she had lifted from Maxwell’s various pockets (significantly more than the cheeky scoundrel had claimed). Between that and the jeweled cuff-links she had stolen from both men, it was nearly what she would get paid for the hit. Twice the money for half the work – all in all a good haul.
Lucinda tucked her goods away and sauntered towards the smoking lounge. She had a few more hours to kill and the lounge would now fill up with a bunch of slightly drunk idiots wanting a drag or two post-dinner. It would be fun to see how much she could fleece before landing. Could she manage to triple her earnings?
She opened the door to the smoking room, taking stock as a slow smile spread across her face.
Challenge accepted.
