Read Online Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) by Brian Rowe - Free Book Online Page A

dropped Liesel
and me to our stomachs.
    “Oh no,” she
said.
    “Oh shit!” I
said. “What do we do?”
    “Just stay calm.
And shut up.”
    She joked about
it a lot, but sometimes Liesel did wear the pants in this relationship. While
in high school I was the stud of the senior class, and Liesel was practically
unrecognized by the entire student body, here I was being bossed around by my
wife like I was a cockroach beneath her feet ready to be squashed.
    We stayed low to
the ground, bumping our shoulders up against each other behind a rack of
multi-colored paintballs. We heard the sound of whistling—it seemed to be
coming from an older man—before the whistling stopped abruptly.
    “What the hell?”
the man shouted.
    I moved my head
up to see the full white beard of a security guard. The guy looked sixty, at
least, but muscular and lean. He had a scowl on his face as he looked up to see
the missing paintball guns. He darted behind the desk, hit the gratingly loud
ALARM button, and started running to the back hallway of the building we had
entered in.
    “Now!” Liesel
shouted.
    She jumped up
and ran for the front door. I made my way up and followed her, slowly because
the guns and accessories were so damn heavy. But as soon as I reached the door,
I knew we had a problem.
    The door was
locked.
    Uh-oh.
    “Hey! You there!
I see you!”
    I tried to make
a run for it, but the security guard rushed up toward me, grabbed my bag, and
threw it to the ground.
    “The cops are on
their way,” he said, rubbing his hand against the snot under his nose. “Don’t
you even think about going anywhere! ”
    Wait, I thought. Where’s
Liesel?
    As an answer to
my question, I saw the top half of Liesel’s face appear behind the security guard’s shoulder. She tapped on his shoulder, and as he
turned around, Liesel drop kicked him right in the
face. The security guard stumbled back a few steps but maintained his
composure.
    He rushed up to
Liesel and tried to hit her in the face, but she dodged the hit and punched him
in the center of his back. She must have hit him somewhere sensitive, because
the man screamed and tumbled down to the hardwood floor.
    I watched in
amazement, my jaw dropped, as Liesel disappeared for a moment, and the guard
made his way back up to his feet. As soon as he turned around, Liesel
approached him again, this time with one of the paintball guns in her hands.
Before he could grab for one of his weapons strapped to his belt, Liesel
slammed the back tip of the gun against his face, knocking him out clean. The
security guard swayed forward, then backward, then slammed his face against the
floor, again.
    Liesel took a
deep breath and reached her hand out for me. “OK. Let’s go.”
    I couldn’t move
for a second. “How… what…”
    “Cam! The alarm!
Let’s go!”
    She helped me
up, threw her two paintball guns at me, and grabbed the heavier bag. The two of
us raced out the back of the building.
    When we reached
the car, I could hear sirens in the distance.
    “Cam, throw me
the keys!”
    “What?”
    “Now!”
    I did as I was
told.
    After throwing
the guns and the bag in the trunk, we jumped into the car, and Liesel drove us
out to the 101 freeway and back on our way to our next
destination.
    For the next few
minutes, I couldn’t help but think it, time and time again.
    Yep. Liesel definitely wears the pants.

 
 
    CHARISMA

 
    She’d never seen
the L.A. traffic this bad. Even though she had one eye on the 405 freeway and the other eye focused on her eye shadow in the
rearview mirror, she preferred the cars in front of her to move a little faster
than this . She always left for her
auditions at least an hour early, just to be sure. But she was worried this
afternoon, for the first time, that she might be late.
She was just passing Westwood, after all, and she still needed to get all the
way to Santa Monica.
    She finally
honked at the large truck in front of her, trying her best to control