Alien Diplomacy

afternoon.
    The window between the front of the limo and the back was down, and the lack of brilliance of this current plan was reinforced when the one who’d demanded diplomatic immunity pulled a gunfrom somewhere Kyle and Christopher had missed and aimed it at my head. “Please don’t take this personally.”
    “Excuse me?”
    He shrugged. “You’re a pretty girl. I don’t like killing pretty girls. Or little babies.”
    “Then why have you been trying to do just that all day?”
    “A job is a job.”
    “Were you in taxis earlier, trying to get us?”
    He gave me a small smile. “No. They are…amateurs.”
    “How do you mean?”
    He moved the gun nearer to my head. “They didn’t want to damage the merchandise.”
    “Before you pull the trigger,” I said quickly, “where the heck are you from? You’ve got an accent I really can’t place.” I wanted to keep him talking because I wasn’t sure if I had enough speed left to get out of the car without getting hurt or shot. Hurt was better than shot, of course, but not my preferred plan. Of course, my preferred plan had me back in the garage with Jeff right there to at least perform an assist. So much for my plans, preferred or otherwise.
    “You heard that woman.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re really from Kazakhstan. I think that was just a really good forgery.” Or a way to toss blame onto a country that could easily work as a fall guy, though circumstances suggested I table this line of thought.
    He gave me a small smile. “I am from all over.”
    “I get that. But where did you start out, spend the formative years, and all that jazz?” Keep ’em talking, that was my motto. It was a big reason I was still alive to have a motto.
    “Why does it matter?”
    “I’d hate to die not knowing.”
    “Just kill her,” the driver snapped. He sounded like he’d grown up next door to wherever the guy with the gun had lived. “We have no time for this. We are behind schedule.”
    Interestingly enough, I was fairly sure English wasn’t either of their first languages, yet they weren’t speaking to each other in native tongue. My gift for languages extended only to high school French and a smattering of Spanish, so the likelihood that I’d recognize anything they’d say seemed slim. I wasn’t sure if they just didn’t want to take the chance or if there was some other reason. Like their reason for having Kazakhstan papers, tabled for later, like when I was out of this car and safe later.
    “What, you were supposed to have me offed already? So sorry I’ve caused your timeline to get screwed up and all.”
    The gunman shook his head and made a frowny face. “You are not the target.”
    “You’re going to kill me why, then?”
    “You are…in the way.”
    “Shut up and kill her,” the driver snarled. He was racing us along. The traffic that had been a problem earlier seemed all cleared up, or else he was taking a different route. Unsurprisingly, I heard no sirens. And I didn’t want to risk looking away from the man with the gun to see where we were heading or if there might be a cop in silent pursuit.
    The gunman nodded. “We are close to the river?”
    “Yes. Kill her, toss her body in.”
    “Why not take me as a hostage?”
    The gunman stared at me. “Why would you want that?”
    “Better than being dead.”
    He shook his head again, and I got another shot of the frowny face. “I would like to offer that alternative, but the orders were very clear.”
    “Orders from whom?”
    He cocked the gun. “From the people who want things to run more…smoothly.”
    “I don’t get the names of the people who paid you to kill me before I die? What kind of a deal is that?”
    “The only kind the people we work for make,” the driver snarled.
    “I am truly sorry,” the gunman said. “Good-bye, Miss Katt.”
    I could tell by the way the car was moving we were on a bridge. I decided I’d gotten all I was going to. I ducked to the right and slammed myself against the partition separating their side of the car from mine.
    The A-C superstrength wasn’t as strong in me as it was in Jeff or Christopher, or even Lorraine and Claudia, but it was a lot stronger than humans normally managed. I didn’t break through, but I rocked both of them.
    The gun went off, the driver shouted, and the car went out of control. The gunman tried to shoot me again, but we were flipping around and he missed. I took the opportunity to kick the