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It's Dolly's Birthday
Chapter 3.
The furnace guys show...
When the furnace guys showed up, Dolly was in the ground floor exercise room doing some high impact aerobics. She knew it would mean another shower, but that didn't bother her. She would not willingly pass up either her touch-loving with Mitch or her exercise sessions. The latter were normally taken in the O'Connor gym at the Center, but the little room on the West side of the house was ideally suited for a proper workout and she used it.
She heard the doorbell and considered: Drummond was upstairs, banging away on a computer keyboard, his head no doubt under the stereophones. She went to answer it, padding across the flagged entryway to the front door. Through the sidelight, she could see two men in blue-gray coveralls wearing tool belts and baseball caps. Apparently the service men sent by the furnace company. Even so, she remembered her training and opened the door only a crack, keeping it on the chain...
... And was totally overwhelmed when the door was struck as though by a battering ram and she was bowled over to land on her butt in the middle of the foyer. She gave a quiet little shriek of dollish outrage. As she scrambled to her feet, her adrenaline level ramping up to crisis mode, she wondered what was going on... who these guys were... what they wanted -- if not her, what?
"Hi!" said the first one through the door, taking a swipe at her that she ducked easily. "Cray was my brother."
Dolly's eyes widened and her face took on a thoughtful expression. Cray had been the alien disguised as a grandfatherly type who had pretended to come to her aid and then tried to kill her up in Michigan. She buried a stolen combat knife in his torso and left his corpse to rot in a drainage canal.
"Pleased to meet ya, Cray's Brother," Dolly drawled. "You got a name? Or did your mama forget to give you one? Oh! So sorry. I forgot. You don't have a mother, do you?" Her needling had its desired effect. He moved toward her, arms swinging wildly. She left him on the floor gasping for breath and wondering what she'd hit him with.
There were four or five of the Mequillar aliens crowding through the door, now, and Dolly reached for the 9mm pistol that they kept in the drawer of a table by the stairs. It was gone, and she took just a trifle too long to look for it. She found herself being grabbed from behind and lifted off her feet.
Struggling as violently as only she could do, she tried in vain to break free. There were too many of them and they had come on her too quickly. Feeling a little ashamed of what she saw as her weakness, Dolly took a deep breath and screamed. She kept screaming until a hand covered her mouth while another slammed into the side of her head.
"Quiet, bitch!" came a urgent hiss from one of her captors. They began to move in a group toward the front door, dragging Dolly with them, fighting every inch of the way.
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