Free Mona Lisa Eclipsing by Sunny Page A

fired bullets, and seemed to physically pain the prisoner upon contact—no sound, just a subtle clenching of his face and arm muscles. They had dumped him in the trunk of our car, and though he was out of sight, it was impossible to forget him.
    For some reason, I didn’t like knowing that we sat comfortably in the car while a shot and injured man lay locked in the dark and cramped trunk space behind us. Could he breathe? Did he have enough air? He must have or Roberto would not have put him there, I didn’t think, but I couldn’t even ask Roberto. He had been on the cell phone speaking in rapid Spanish ever since the car started moving.
    I had a number of questions I wished I could ask the captive. Number one was how he knew my name, my secret name that no one else knew. Mona Lisa. The second was about his companions—the big wrestler-type, the guy with an old-fashioned Vandyke beard and mustache, and Mr. Invisible. Together, with him, they made four men, half of whom clearly matched the description my landlord had given me. The other two descriptions were off, however. The poor schmuck bound and gagged in the trunk was neither movie-star handsome nor average looking, though the latter might apply to Mr. Invisible—a startling trick, by the way, turning invisible; almost as good as turning into a bird and being able to flip big cars onto their side. I felt an edge of hysteria grip me for a frantic instant and didn’t know if I was going to laugh or start crying. Thankfully I did neither, just sat there feeling my world, my reality, distorting.
    Okay, deep breath. Clear thinking.
    No telling what the guy in the trunk looked like with all that mountain-man hair and beard covering his face. He didn’t look movie-star handsome, but maybe he’d dressed better and hadn’t had all that facial hair when my landlord had seen him. Maybe he’d been smiling instead of tearing his way through flesh with horrific clawed hands. First impressions really did matter, you know.
    Another surge of demented giggling threatened for a thin, precarious moment, then subsided.
    Jesus. Maybe I was going crazy because now that I’d had time to think about that chaotic fight, a couple of things bothered me. For one, they didn’t seem to be trying to rob us as I had first assumed. My second thought had been kidnapping; Roberto was wealthy, after all. But the guy had clearly been about to kill Roberto, not hold him for ransom. I wasn’t too familiar with the profession, but I believed kidnappers generally kept the person they wanted to demand money for alive, not cut their head off, which I was pretty sure Mr. Pale Eyes had been about to do before I stopped him. He had been willing to hurt everyone but me. And what had the Invisible Man called me? My lady. Let’s go, my lady, quickly. As though he’d known me and had expected me to come with him.
    I hadn’t been able to see his eyes but I wondered if Mr. Invisible might have had the same confused and surprised expression on his face as the man in the back of the trunk had when I’d thrown myself in front of Roberto and stopped his killing blow.
    I had assumed Roberto had been their target, if not to kidnap him then to kill him. That seemed to be what Pale Eyes had intended, his death. But if that was their goal, then why try to take me away?
    I was confused—confused and feeling something almost like dread rising within me.
    Roberto ended his phone call.
    “Why did they attack us?” I asked him.
    Did Roberto hesitate a moment or was I just imagining it? And if not imagining it, then reading something more into it than I should?
    “I told you before, querida . Sometimes others come here to try to take what is mine.”
    Reasonable answer. But I wasn’t satisfied. “They were trying to kill you but not me. They did their best, in fact, not to harm me. No one shot at me, not once. And the guy in the trunk pulled his blow, the one he had intended to take off your head with, or it would be