Free Bone Orchard by Doug Johnson, Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi Page A

is! Holy shit, she’s jacking him off!
    Sian bit her lip to stifle a snicker. Dylan shuffled impatiently, refusing to venture past the doorway arch. His eyes gravitated to the guitar amp in the fireplace and the Flying-V beside it.
    Five thousand quid right there, he thought with more than a twinge of jealousy.
    Kitty slapped Lazarus. His eyes blazed down at her but he remained silent. She slipped the knife lower, still mindlessly flicking with the same mechanical rhythm.
    “Don’t ruin my fun,” she growled.
    Sian clamped a hand over her mouth to silence the snort of laughter that almost exploded from it.
    Kitty leaned into Lazarus and the blade scraped across his belt. He felt the icy heat of adrenaline like bleach in his veins and gripped the table harder.
    It’s all fun and games until somebody gets castrated.
    Lazarus felt he might be sick.
    Sian watched on with voyeuristic glee.
    Then Kitty nonchalantly set the knife down on the table and Lazarus slumped against her, exhaling with a shiver of relief.
    “Dirty boy,” Sian whispered. She quietly turned and raced back across the room, shooing Dylan through the door into the hallway. “Go on, they’re coming!”
    Lazarus slipped away from the table, mentally drained but still in grateful possession of all his parts.
    Kitty took a healthy pull off the Glenfiddich bottle and Lazarus remembered the knife. His hand crept toward it on the table but Kitty snatched it from his reach.
    “You’ll pay for that later.”
     
    Dylan and Sian hurriedly grabbed their things in the parlor. She couldn’t wait to tell him about the handie, but they had clearly overstayed.
    “Oh, no. Leaving so soon?” Kitty barked, startling them nearly as effectively as the grandfather clock had. She glided into the room as if she were Lady Bentwicke herself.
    “Yeah,” Sian said. “I’m sure you have things to do.”
    “Sorry to interrupt,” Dylan added.
    Lazarus straggled into the room, visibly spent. “Well… thanks for dropping by.”
    Both Dylan and Sian just stared at him. Lazarus glanced at the cake stain on the wall.
    “No, really.”
    “Right,” Dylan said. “Well… see you around.”
    Lazarus made for the door.
    “No need. We’ll show ourselves out,” Dylan offered.
    Sian gave Lazarus a knowing smile and Kitty a once-over with barely concealed disgust before Dylan ushered her from the parlor.
    A minute later, Lazarus and Kitty were standing stiffly in the front doorway, the happy host and hostess waving farewell as Dylan’s Fiat rounded the circular drive and disappeared into the absolute dark of a cloud-hooded night in the English countryside.
    Neither of them yet had any idea that Arthur McGregor’s second-best shrubbery deliveryman had left his prized Zippo lighter on the couch in the parlor. Of course, with all the excitement, Dylan hadn’t yet even realized it himself.
     

 
    CHAPTER 11
     
    Had Lazarus not bent a passing glance up at the transom window above the door as Dylan and Sian were making their awkward exit, he would not have noticed it. Something airborne had flitted past, a bat angling for moths perhaps, or maybe the damned kite again. Whatever it was had caught a glint of pale light from one of the few driveway lampposts that remained operational, enough to draw his attention with its fleeting twinkle before winking off into the darkness like a match in a puddle.
    It could have been a bloody sprite for all Lazarus knew or cared at that moment. What really piqued his interest wasn’t over the door anyway but beside it. When he pulled his eyes from the transom, there it was, sitting on top of the Queen Anne hall cabinet, hastily stuck behind one of its urn-shaped finials. The black cigarette pack.
    The stun gun.
    For someone Kitty’s height, it would certainly have seemed hidden well enough, but Lazarus was a good six inches taller then she was.
    He had played it very cool. It seemed a long shot that Dylan and Sian would sympathize with an