[plumboz]

Several readers lately have been asking if Doreen is going to be in the follow-up to Boomerang. That hasn't been determined yet, but here is a bit from fairly early in the book featuring what seems to be many readers' favorite character, along with her sister Amelia, and their daytrip guide Cy as they have their first encounter with Leslie, the ruthless assassin.


“Quickly, Mrs. Scott, we must leave, now!”

Doreen pulled back. “No!”

“I must insist! Something is very wrong here. I can feel it!” Cy took her arm in both hands and tried to slingshot her past him toward the front of the building.

“I am not going anywhere without my boomerang!” Doreen dug in with one thick-sole booted foot and kicked Cy in the knee with the other. He let go of her and fell backward.

As he fell there was a sharp thwack against the wood siding of the shop. A thin, golden-colored shaft, about six inches long, vibrated where it had pierced the siding directly behind where Cy had been standing. Three golden wings were spaced evenly about the end of the shaft.

Leslie stood in the doorway, a suit jacket and a small crossbow added to his ensemble. He was fixing another bolt, for such is the term used to identify what we would, if not otherwise informed for the better, call the stubby arrows or overgrown darts used by Leslie’s modern, carbon–fiber version of this weapon from the early ages of Killing from a Distance. He raised it to fire again, his cold eyes locked on Cy, who was still stretched out on the ground.

But just as Leslie’s finger began to tighten on the trigger, something very solid caught him on the left side of his head. He was thrown against the side of the house and his aim jerked up and to the side. The bolt released, arcing harmlessly over the corner of the shop. Leslie staggered briefly, but he quickly regained his footing. Ignoring the blood dripping from his left temple, he reached into his jacket to the specially designed pouch that held another half-dozen bolts. His face was still a cold, angular mask, but now it was a cold, angular mask with blood dripping down one side and an expression of silent rage. As Leslie raised the crossbow once again, his thoughts, however, were shifted to a consideration of the size and relative hardness of the white, squashed-grapefruit size rock that was speeding its way through the air in his direction, and doing so at a remarkably vigorous rate of speed. This train of thought was, in its turn, interrupted by the arrival of the white rock at his nose. Leslie plunged back through the doorway and onto the slate tile flooring of the entryway. The crossbow, possibly owing to the fact that it spent so much of its time in his grasp, did not abandon that familiar harbor. It came to rest, bolt intact and pointing out the door, directly where his belt buckle would have been had he not instead been wearing a set of very stylish braces.

Doreen was at once irritated at herself for not delivering the knockout punch with the first effort and smugly satisfied with the effectiveness of the second. She dusted her hands and triumphantly glared at the soles of Leslie's Italian tasseled loafers, the rest of him being obscured from view by position and shadow.

“Now,” she said, “maybe we can have a look inside that shop.”

She headed to the doorway where Leslie lay, intending to search his pockets and, if necessary, the house, for a key to open the shop door. Failing that, she was more than willing to exercise the break-and-enter option. If Sally was not going to be around to keep her appointments then it was her own bloody fault if her guests found it necessary to smash a window or jimmy a door.

“Mrs. Scott!” Cy called after her. “Stay away from that man!”

“Oh, shut up.” Doreen waved him off and continued toward the Italian loafers. She intended to give them a good, swift kick. All Italian loafers with tassels deserved a good, swift kick. They broke hearts, stole life-savings and tried to kill people with stupid little bow and arrow thingamajigs. It was time they got what was coming to them.

She was within ten feet of the hated loafers when they moved. They had been in a position more or less parallel to each other and perpendicular to the ground. Now the toes were fanning out and the soles were forming into a distinct V shape.

“MRS. SCOTT!”

Cy hurled himself at Doreen, catching her around the knees and flinging both of them to the ground just as another golden bolt went whizzing above them and buried itself in the eaves of the shop building. His adrenaline flowing at a rate he hadn't experienced since his days thirty years agoon the National Rugby Team, Cy sprang back to his feet, grabbed Doreen with a vice-like grip around the wrist, yanked her to her feet and dragged her, sprinting, around to the front of the property, back to the Land Cruiser.

“Miss Lewis!” shouted Cy as he yanked open the driver’s side door and shoved Doreen in. He gave her a push over and stood on the door frame to give himself a higher vantage point to call out. “Miss Lewis! Miss Lewis!”

Doreen poked her head out the other side and bellowed in a voice that humbled Cy’s by a couple-hundred decibels.

“AMELIA! AMELIA!!!”

“Miss Lewis!”

In a tiny window of silence within the wall of yelling Cy and Doreen heard a small voice coming from the back of the Land Cruiser.

“Doreen, dear, I don’t feel very well.”

Barely visibly above the middle seat was a pale-looking Amelia.

“Amelia!” scolded Doreen. “What are you doing back there?”

Cy didn’t care what she was doing as long as she was in the vehicle. He had the Land Cruiser started and in gear in two seconds. Substituting a terse, commanding "Hold on!" for his usual announcement regarding safety-belts, he jammed his foot on the accelerator and sent the big vehicle fish-tailing across the gravel drive toward the road.

If Cy had taken a look in the rear-view mirror, he might have noticed a bloodied and staggering Leslie come around the corner of the shop, raise the crossbow once again, and squeeze off yet another shot. As it was, the sound of the bolt scraping against the side of the Land Cruiser mixed in with the gravel ricocheting off the sheet metal and the only person to register any response to the effort was Leslie.

He looked disappointed.