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Disclaimer: “The Pretender” show and all it’s characters are the legal property of MTM and the network. I do not intend to take anything from the rightful owners. Just use a few of the characters, and put them back when I’m done. Cross my heart! Please don’t sue.
Spoilers: None. Set after Season two, after the advent of Mr. Bunny and after the discovery of Miss Parker’s ulcer.
Ratings: This story has bad language, violence and sexual situations. This an R rated story. Be warned. If violence, language and sexuality is not your cup of tea, please avoid this story. It is not recommended for those under 17 years of age. If R stories are frowned upon by your locale or country, please go away.
Dated: August, 2000
This story is a continuation of The Journey also by me. Please do not flame me as I have a sensitive and easily bruised artistic soul. Ego stroking eagerly welcomed.
PICKIN’ UP THE PIECES
by R. Schultz
”It’s just a routine inquiry, Brootsie baby, how the hell should I know where to look? That’s why we have your nerdy ass, to find things like that. Assets were in North Dakota last week. Our assets. How hard can it be to find them?”
I started another cigarette off the one I still had lit. The more I tried not to appear nervous, the more I thought I was failing miserably. Where the hell had all my ballsiness gone to the past two years? Two years ago I had been one of the guys in the white hats. Now I had an ulcer. Now I wondered.....
Now I wondered a lot of things. Now I felt another sharp edge sticking out of my persona. I was uneasy, and it got progressively worse as I continued my damned stubborn hunt for Jarod.
The scary part was I wasn’t that confident anymore as to what I would do with him if, no, Dammit! When I caught him.
For now, I just wanted a name, two names, three names. Names which had probably been logged off last week, or the week before. Or logged onto an Eyes-Only operation. Shunted into that mysterious land where even I felt unsure and lost now. Before there were questions. Hidden names, or disguised, assets used for .... another matter, for the Centre. Of course. Hidden in someone’s ‘private’ books, hidden in plain sight, I mean, all I want is a few #$%(*& names....
“Miss Parker,” Broots began, “Could you help me out with a little more information, please? How many, where, what did they do? If you could establish a few parameters I could at least begin by excluding all the other procedures that occurred last week. What I’m doing now is whirling in circles. I need more information.”
Trust the little creep to guess I wasn’t telling all. He certainly knew I wasn’t telling him why I was looking. He just sat there, cowed, but unable to do anything yet. This wasn’t like before. This one was all mine. With a shudder I accepted his need for more data. This whole problem of mine was a little too private to share. I didn’t want Broots knowing or understanding my goals. Or Daddy, or Sydney, or Jarod. This was my private jaunt to find my Holy Grail.
“Someone was in North Dakota last week, target Thursday, engaging in a wet operation,” I bent over and blew smoke in the side of his face.
“I don’t have any more pertinent information than that.” Once more I resumed pacing in circles behind my tame computer expert, looking at the back of his head.
“It had to take two days at least for the operation to take place, and up to four days max. Probably two. And I haven’t the faintest idea who might have sanctioned the operation. Check Cleaners first.”
Broots looked at me funny. “Well, I said it was a wet operation, didn’t I? Would you use Sydney to terminate someone with prejudice? Sweepers might do it, but don’t bet on it. Even Sam might balk.”
I had to hope it wouldn’t be Daddy who had my sister killed. Raines or Lyle or Brigitte I could accept. Especially Raines. Or Mister-Keeps-Disappearing Kyle. Brotherly love, yeah. Anyone else. Just so she would know. Once she knew who her target was, she could think about the next step.
Well, get a grip on yourself. I am woman, I am strong, I am invincible, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’ll shoot the cojones off the first pinhead who says I’m not.
Expecting nothing soon, I had begun pacing away when I heard a peep of a “Yes!” behind me. For a second I thought I’d just flashed the nerd, then remembered I was in pants today. In a milli-second I was standing over Broots’ shoulder and gripping his arm hard enough for him to say ouch and looking pained at me. I let go, snarling; “What do you have?”
“A beginning,” he replied. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“I have the payroll here, and I just had it filter out all people not working but still got paid.”
“Meaning?”
“They get paid, but they weren’t doing anything to earn their keep. Of that group I filtered out those on legitimate vacation or sick leave, but I didn’t filter out women....”
“Meaning Brigitte...”
“...Meaning Brigitte, in particular, yes,” he agreed. “This is a list of fifty-six people who according to the books were not doing anything for the company last week to warrant their paychecks. Or they were performing special and unlisted duty for which they got paid. Fifty-five, if you want me to take yourself off the list.”
I glared at him, he caught the change in my eyes and hastily deleted a name.
“I also eliminated all personnel who were essentially administrative personnel, but I’ve still got them on a separate list if we....”
“Broots, cut to the *#&%$+ chase, will you?”
He hit two keys. “These eighteen names were paid by one of five people on their private authorization. The pattern and authorizations are always the same.
“No job numbers, no work codes, just a sign-off, and pay. Eleven of these also got double checks for that week, and four got quadruple checks. Which might mean they were given a not so small bonus for a good job. For what, who knows? Maybe two of them put in a new sundeck for Brigitte. You should know in advance, though, that...”
“The four. Have they ever got quadruples like that before? And who signed them off? What were the codes?”
“Miss Parker....” he hesitated. Looking at her he softly said; “They were all authorized on his executive code, with a subcode...see the lower case number at the beginning? ...indicating, presumably, the actual request signature on the authorization. The actual office or person who made the request. All under your Father’s authorization code. All eighteen.”
“Yes, yes, all the ratty file stuff goes through his office. And? Who signed the authorization slips on them?”
“There’s no way for me to access his files. They’re under his own private system, Miss Parker. I can’t help you any further without your Daddy’s files.”
“Do I have to give you a prompt for every stupid thing to do? Access them, break the code, slip in, whatever it is you computer jockey’s do that feeds your pitiful ego’s. Just get them.”
“Miss Parker....”, he began, and swiveled in his chair to face me directly. Instantly my heart sank. This was news I wasn’t going to want to hear.
“There is no physical connection between these computers and the higher echelon staff’s computers. They have their own cable system. They even read each other’s hand-delivered discs most of the time. They created something no outside force can get into because there is no route from here to there. Period. What your father has in there I can’t find out.
“You can threaten me all you want, Miss Parker, it won’t get you inside his system.” I noticed a light sheen of sweat was on his brow, so I accepted what he was saying as the truth. He wouldn’t risk getting caught out on a lie.
“What...,” I began, “would you have to do to access his computer? Could you give me instructions on what to do? I have access to Daddy’s office, I could do it. Just tell me what it is I have to do.”
He looked at me funny, and I blushed to realize he had just had a major weakness of mine shoved in his face.
“Miss Parker....” Hesitating, he slid back in his chair, opening his work station to me.
“...Would you bring back up the original list of fifty-five names I had for you?” He waited, not doing anything dramatic, but anticipating something.
I hit the back and it came up with a series of supply requisitions for last month. I felt like trashing the monitor and Broots at the same time. My jaw was going to get sprained if I didn’t stop grinding my teeth so hard.
“I have a personal system which automatically covers my backside when I’m doing something they’re not paying me to do.
“The past year, with all we’ve been doing....”
“Broots,” I said, staring at the screen to avoid staring at him.
“My point is that your Daddy and the other highest levels have similar hand made systems....”
“And?”
He looked at me for a moment, trying not to look surprised. I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like it.
“Even if your father doesn’t have a private system, you wouldn’t know how to find his code-locked material, if we needed that. You’re simply not proficient enough for that.
“We can’t do it, Miss Parker. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Either I get to navigate your father’s system, or you start taking serious computer lessons.”
“You can teach me, right? Show me what it is I have to do, explain all your little button games?”
“Yes....I can teach you. It might take a year, a year and a half, and you’d probably come out of it a pretty good computer geek. During your first two minutes in your Daddy’s files you’d likely trip an alarm in the system even so. It’s too easy to trip-wire unique hand-made systems like that.”
“What if I.....”
“Beg pardon, Miss Parker, but if you want that information I’m going to have to go get it myself. Yet, if I saunter in that office and trip an alarm, I might start regaining my memory and waking up ten years from now. Working in a Mississippi prison road gang, with great muscles from whacking all those weeds, you would not believe.
“I have no idea of the effects of all that pharmacology Raines loves to play with, but some of it I’ll gamble is a pretty good memory destroyer.
“I don’t want to leave my little girl all alone any more, Miss Parker. I’m not going in that office. Uh-uh, no, not a chance, not me, not on the hair of your chiney-chin-chin, not for a piece of your tight little ass, Miss Parker, not even that. Count me out. You go start computer classes. Start tonight. Come back in three years and I’ll brief you on what to do.”
For a few seconds he crossed his hands across his chest and tried to look forceful and masculine. I looked down, ground out my cigarette stub and smiled my best smile at a suddenly white-faced Broots. The sweat was back worse than ever. He’d just realized what he’d said to me. Freudian slip, I’m sure.
“You think I have a tight little ass, Broots? Have you been looking? Have you dared?” Actually I knew damned well he looked. You don’t maintain your weight, walk, do stairs and wear a miniskirt if you don’t want the men to drool. Any men. Even Broots or Sydney.
I smiled, remembering the last time I’d worn the burgundy leather. I’d gotten it so it always rode up my hips, and I’d worn one of the satin thong’s I got from Victoria’s Secret. Allowing Broots and Sydney (and others) to view any of my sexier assets was for my own pleasure. I liked knowing they all wanted some of me. Liked better denying them any access. However, let’s allow Broots to sweat, thinking I was debating styles of torture.
“Not if you say so, Miss Parker...”
“My ass is tight as hell, you little weasel! What’s more the rest of me is world class as well. Tight and firm. I could model if I wanted to. Then somebody besides my tame computer nerd would know what a bod I have. I could have men on six continents wanting to lay their hands on this prime real estate!” With a significant number of women wanting to do the same, I thought.
The glare was frozen on, but I stopped dead in my tracks. I’d just engaged in a dialogue with Broots about my body. As if he was worthy of it. Who cared, really, if he or Sydney coveted my young warm flesh? Actually, I did. It was a little game I played with them both, a way of being in control.
“Are you prepared to tell me you actually considered using my body? I can imagine it how. Throw me down and screw my #$+*& brains out, right? Show me what a he-man you are? Get a new delusion,” I sneered.
Broots was as pale as a ghost, and his collar had to be wet, but he answered. “Actually it was more along the lines of making love,” he whispered.
I stared at him and I know my mouth was catching flies from the shock. “Love?”
“Yes,” he whispered, facing me. “Love, as in holding and touching and caring. Do you think I could help you like I do out of fear alone?
“I like you, Miss Parker. Or the woman I think you could be if you weren’t so damned relentless all the time. Yeah, love is a good word. I might be deluded, but I’d rather be deluded than think there’s nothing human in you.”
A pause. “Me? You have the guts to think I’m another one of those romance bimbo’s? Trying to escape my cocoon and fly away into perfect love?” This was getting into the twilight zone. Broots actually had the hots for me.
Broots looked calm now, he’d even ceased sweating. Death Row inmate calm, maybe. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing him look me in the eyes, either.
“Everyone could stand to have someone who cared,” Broots said. No stutter. Was he growing a pair of balls?!?!
“Even you.”
I leaned real close, smiling gently. Blowing smoke in his face. “Do you think of yourself as my special someone? Someone to watch over me? Dream On!
“You’re just a mouse wishing he dared grab the hunk of cheese laying next to the cat.”
With that I turned and stalked away. Four inch heels on concrete made a hell of a stalk noise. I hoped he was staring at my tight ass, wishing he could work at it. But I didn’t dare let him know I was expecting him to watch it wriggle so. So I didn’t whip around to check. But I felt like I should have. Let him drool.
BLUE COVE
DELAWARE
It hurt like hell going back to Broots. Sydney standing over my nerd’s shoulder didn’t make things any easier. For a second I caught Sydney looking at the smooth lines of hose and garter belt showing under the mini. He realized I saw his glance, and almost smiled at me. Then he proceeded to admire my legs, and the rest of me. When Sydney allowed himself to act even remotely human, it was disconcerting. But oddly pleasing. I suddenly felt like I’d dressed up for a date and was basking in the admiration.
I quickly buried that ridiculous feeling. I didn’t need the admiration of Sydney or Broots to feel good about myself. I was dressed in one of my killer outfits for one reason only. To work on Broots and his wish to avoid the danger of entering my Daddy’s office. I wanted some clues as to who killed Hope.
I would blow some smoke in Broots ear, none of it from a cigarette today. Rub his arms with my breasts, get the nerd in a state. Then have him come in with me into Daddy’s office to crack his computer files. The inner sanctorium key was a card in a little pocket inside my satin peasant blouse. Today was as good a day as any.
My revenge was a dish I didn’t want to lose it’s flavor.
“Good morning, Miss Parker,” Sydney soothed. The old fart looked me up and down, openly admiring the view. He probably noticed the nipples poking at the blouse as soon as his mind finished licking at my legs. I’d just as soon Sydney didn’t guess I was going to seduce Broots into doing what needed done.
“Broots might have a lead on our mutual friend,” he began. “With Jarod becoming increasingly obsessed with both justice and a climactic resolution, he’s patched together a system that pulls up likely instances of justice denied. Unfortunately it’s still over four hundred listings, and that’s just the past sixty days. It doesn’t spot hidden injustices, but it’s still an interesting start on getting ahead of our errant boy.”
Normally the thought of having Jarod in my hands again would make my nipples spike, but even the vague possibility of Jarod’s rangy body paled in relation to my other needs today. I’d made up my mind to fawn all over that geek, and I didn’t want to lose that focus. Strike while the nerds are hot. And hope my ulcer wouldn’t act up.
“Isn’t that your phone I hear, Sydney?”
He looked at me quizzically, not even listening for a faint ring. They he smiled at Broots, then at me again. You could hear the abacus beads clicking against each other as he came to understand the killer outfit was for Broots’ benefit. Damn him.
I felt the blush, which he noticed, of course. He pursed his lips, patted Broots on the shoulder and left. I walked up behind the geek and tried not to know Sydney was still checking out my legs in hose and garter belt. When I turned back to look, he saluted me and continued on his way.
Time to put the show on the road. I leaned forward, one hand on his arm, looking over Broots shoulder.
“Let’s get back to my problem. Broots.” Not nerd, or geek, or mouse. Just Broots. He tensed when he realized my nipples were poking him in the shoulder and arm, then tensed anew when I moved to rub them into the other shoulder.
“Tell me again why we can’t find out who was in North Dakota conducting a wet operation,” I purred.
DADDY’S OFFICE
SIDE ENTRANCE
“This is not a good idea, Miss Parker,” Broots voiced. “Just give me enough time and I might figure out a way to get those code identities. Maybe a process of elimination we can....”
“In,” I tried to purr authoritatively. Broots staggered when he found I was pressing my body against his. Belly to butt. Trying to accelerate his movement through the partially open door. I staggered to realize how stiff and enlarged my nipples were at this moment. It might be entirely due to the overt move against Daddy this operation exemplified. But it was excitement to be here, too. The lure of the forbidden.
Having a body in front of me to rub my nipples into was just a bonus. My belly rubbed his ass and that felt good, as well.
My next step probably would have me hang gliding or bungee diving. Anything for a rush. For a space of seconds I fantasized free falling out of an airplane.
Then the next fantasy was of me being laid over Daddy’s desk and getting done doggie style by Alec Baldwin and loving it. That one I killed quicker. Jarod doing the same thing I filed away for later reference.
“You see?” I whispered. “No one home. I saw Daddy go out with that bitch and her fake English accent, and he’ll be gone a long time. Probably. We should have all the time in the world.”
“I gotta tell you again, Miss Parker,” he reminded me. “One session at your Daddy’s computer might not give us what me need. The hardest part will be a probably drawn-out process of finding my through his system, identifying his traps and alarms and figuring out his codes. It might take a while.”
“All the more reason for you to stop jawing and start hacking,” I hissed. “Sit down there while I try to keep an eye on outside threats.” Try not to have him realize just how chancy his work was. He probably thought Daddy had a private security system here. Cameras in the corridors watching the doors, that sort of thing. He didn’t, but I had to act as if it was safe in here. Must be a way to crack the door enough to look down the corridors.
“Here, Miss Parker,” he said. A TV monitor rose out of the desk on the one side, locking with a audible click as the leather ink pad moved back to lock it.
“There’s a series of sixteen numbers and symbols on this hand surfer that probably control the cameras and surveillance equipment that it accesses.”
I scurried over to the desk and watched the views rotate through two images of each of Daddy’s doors from a corridor viewpoint. Then four more images of the corridors. Probably from just outside the entrances to Daddy’s doors.
“The pound symbol... Ah, yes,” he smiled. “Hit the pound symbol and it returns into it’s hiding place inside the desk. If you hit.... Yes. You can monitor quite a bit through the cable feed to this site. Want to try it?”
My dear trusting Daddy, with his own surveillance system. Broots hit a number, then keep adding to that, and the camera provided views of many rooms as well. One held the view of a queen-sized bed and upright wardrobe, a pale leather jacket thrown on the bed. Like the one Brigitte wore. I wondered how long that one had been on his system. *&%$#@+!
And did she know the camera was there? You betcha.
And did she have the Hitachi MagicWand with all the attachments? Probably. And I had thought I was an exhibitionist. It explained a lot of Daddy’s sudden attachment to that tramp, however.
Broots wondered at my glower, I know, but I simply said; “Just bring us back to the view of the corridors outside of here.”
I was trying to read the little code numbers on the bottom of the screen when I noticed I wasn’t hearing any computer noises. Broots was staring at my chest. By looking down I could see my breasts quiver with each motion I made. Time to re-button some of the buttons on my blouse. Broots carefully made his computer movements, eyes intent on the screen, little notes of electronic queries telling me he was working. Not looking me in the eye.
After a while I got bored watching Q & A on that screen, and channel surfed on the security one. Twice teams of sweepers went by in the corridors outside. Dear old friendly Sam being one of them.
Clerk types pushing little carts of their vastly important paperwork. One of the little electronic carts, carrying a coverall-clad blue collar on his way to a date with a thermostat or a pipe or whatever he did whenever he had to earn his keep. Normalcy.
It seemed better to ignore Broots as he worked. He could get amazingly focused on his computer hacking, but it seemed best not to breathe down his neck. It was boring watching nothing but corridor.
At the same time I was on edge because of the danger quotient in what we were doing. That spelled cigarette to me, but I didn’t dare light up in here. Daddy would smell it and interesting questions might be asked I had no desire to answer.
Broots might be a nerd, but I didn’t want to think of him ten years from now in Mississippi. With no mind and giant muscles, whacking miles of roadside weeds. Debbie deserved better than that. Anybody deserved better than that.
When he made Eureka! noises I rushed to stare over his shoulder. What was up didn’t mean much to me, but the screen kept dancing through fleeting changes.
“It wasn’t so hard after all, Miss Parker. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be, but I didn’t dare hold out any hope to you. Once I got past the usual entry codes, most of his system is open to me. There’s several areas heavily trip-wired I think, but we don’t seem to need to get in those.... Ah hah!”
“What?”
“Under manpower assignments. Here’s my eighteen names... Oh my. Oh my.”
“That does not sound like a positive type ‘oh my’ to my ears, Broots. I don’t want negative ‘oh my’ s today. What is the problem?”
“Everybody in those categories are forwarded from an originator system. Hundreds of people. Anyone who went to North Dakota on Centre business is lost in the shuffle.”
“Well, damn it, Broots! Unshuffle them! We can’t stay here forever! Pick out the names!”
“Miss Parker....” he began. I could truly learn to detest my own name pronounced in that tone of utter resignation. “The separation point is in another executive computer.”
He tried to meet my stare. “They’re in Raines’ individual system. Your Daddy is just being a bureaucrat at this point. Someone else makes up the paperwork. Your Daddy signs it. He has the authority, but has delegated it elsewhere.”
“Raines?”
“Raines. I know for a fact he has his own pocket universe just like your Daddy does. Only I’d be willing to bet nothing is easy in his system. Paranoids tend to love complex sensitive systems with more trip wires than the Chinese border.”
“Raines.” He wagged his head, ‘no’ written with every shake.
DAMN!
I glanced back towards the security cameras and froze. Adrenaline sung in my veins at the sight of Daddy and someone else walking down the corridor. Towards here.
“Broots,” I began. “I think we’d better leave. Now.”
He looked over, and a string of curses came out under his breath that I hadn’t known he knew. A few were foreign, and if we got out of this, he was going to tell me them. If.
“Close down, log off, let’s move our fannies out...”
“In a minute, Miss Parker...”
“A MINUTE?!”
I wondered if that qualified as a screech?
“Ah, Broots....”
“If I leave without issuing the correct prompts, it won’t shut down. Do you think your Daddy will believe he left his computer on? That’s what I thought....”
I felt like ripping his eyes out, knowing I was finally losing some of my infamous cool. Thinking. Thinking. Stall Daddy. How? He’d... He’d... Oh my. It sounded as inane in my own head as it had on Broots’ lips.
I had a vision of Broots whacking weeds and it hurt. No way was I going to dash through the side door and leave him behind. Besides Broots would tell Daddy who was the instigator in this.
“Broots...”
“A second....hit the number key on that security camera, yeah, that returns it to inside the desk. The surfer...let me move an inch...goes in this drawer here. No, the right... More. Good enough for now, I hope.” He hit a key and stood up.
The door was swinging open.
“Lay down, on your back, dammit, here, side of the desk! Pull your pants down. NOW!” I whispered.
I stepped out of my panties, feeling them tear somewhere. Tossing them on the padded chair.
Daddy turned towards his desk. Saw me. Getting up from a crouch alongside his desk. Hair out of place, blouse still mostly undone. I stood up, buttoning it, going around the desk fast. Daddy still stood in the door, his guest merely a vague presence in the corridor.
“Daddy...” I faltered. Not so deliberately.
“Angel?” Daddy strode past me until he could see something of Broots’ head alongside the desk. Then he made a hundred and eighty degree turn on a speck of dust, smiling at the other man. Blowing smoke in his ear. Distracting him. Giving me a little time and space to get me and my obvious lover out of his office.
Broots arose on my whispered command, trying to arrange himself so that he appeared as normal as ever. “What....” His face was pure white with a blue undertone.
“Get dressed, idiot. Daddy thinks we were in here playing hide the Oscar Meyer. Leave now before other thoughts come into his head and he starts questioning you. Or Raines does.” I wouldn’t have thought lips could turn pure blue like that so fast.
“Yo...your...your Daddy....”
“Is going to slice several thick morsels off that ass of mine you admire so much, lather barbecue sauce on them and grill them over a mesquite wood fire. But I think we’re free and clear on this.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Parker...”
The nerd was feeling sorry for me. I was also feeling sorry for me right now, so we made a matched pair. My ulcer was growling.
Maybe I should have retrieved my panties, but I figured Daddy finding them on the seat of his executive leather chair would reinforce the legend I’d just created.
Jeez! I hoped it wasn’t going to get around I was desperate enough to start banging my tame geek.
One of my best satin pair, too.
“Broots?” I asked. “You have any cigarettes on you?”
He actually patted his pockets looking for some. I was not tracking too well right then. He turned to look at me after it dawned on him what he was doing. “I don’t smoke, Miss Parker. You know that. It’s bad for your health.”
Bad for my health.
It was a release thing, I know. But I had to lean against the damned corridor wall and laugh and laugh and laugh. I couldn’t stop, it was a hysterical thing, I knew that, but I had to do it anyways. I slid down to where I was sitting on the crappy concrete floor, skirt under me. The echo was Broots, as he sat alongside me. Hysterical. Just like me. When we could stop laughing, I got up and helped him to his feet. Gotta find some cigarettes. The hell with the ulcer.
THE NEXT DAY
BLUE COVE, DELAWARE
THE CENTRE
I was wearing bra and panty hose under my clothes this time when I came up to Broots. Time for thinking and constructive action. Broots was huddling with Sydney again, and they both looked up as my heels rang across the concrete.
“Anything?”
“It appears Jarod was in New Orleans again. The red notebook is being shipped to us as we speak. The trail was several days old so I didn’t schedule an emergency flight. We go out this afternoon, and I presumed you want us to go. Delta. Hopefully we won’t find any more pineapples to send us to Hawaii.”
I nodded my head, not really interested in chasing wild geese tonight. Jarod was already deep into his legend by now, his Pretend. Jarod was a priest in Newark or a Dentist in Mobile or whatever, by now. And we were spinning wheels.
“Isn’t that your phone, Sydney?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “My phone....” He stopped and a small smile almost appeared on his lips. He looked from me to Broots and back again. Knowing his ears were in danger if he got a smirk on his face. I cringed to think the Centre might be buzzing about my assignation with Broots in Daddy’s office.
No. Daddy would never breathe a syllable about THAT.
“However, Miss Parker, I really should check messages. Maybe I’ve had an important call since earlier this morning.” He rose and left, silent as a cat.
When I whipped around to check, Sydney was already thirty yards away. He hadn’t even looked back.
“Broots,” I whispered in his ear. “About our special little problem, the one with a list of names. How are we doing on that?”
“Dead in the water and the bottom leaks.” Men must stand around in the bars and locker rooms inventing new little clichés of wisdom like that. Anything so they wouldn’t have to think.
“Are you all right, Miss Parker? I hope your Daddy....” he trailed off. Offering me sympathy. I didn’t want sympathy. I just wanted a few names. That’s all.
“Apart from an inability to sit down for a month or two, I guess I’m fine.”
Maybe Daddy wasn’t really my Daddy. Maybe he was actually my brother-in-law. But he’d raised me as his own. It still hurt when he got into one of those loud tempers of his. It was not fun listening to him use words like ‘nymphomania’, ‘diseases’ and ‘promiscuous’.
It didn’t help to know they were accurate.
“Now tell me in words of one syllable or less, if you can manage it, what we need to access Raines files.”
Broots looked at me, his mouth catching flies again.
“Miss Parker...” he started. “Man, you are one relentless woman, did you know that?” Then hurriedly found something to do on his computer.
“Broots,” I asked, with honey in my voice. “Do you recall what it is that we do?” He shook his confused head.
“We hunt someone. You, Sydney and I comprise a team searching for our little lost lab rat, Jarod. Poor confused Ratboy does not want to return to the loving arms of the Centre. Which is why a team was formed to find him. Because it would be difficult.”
Very close to his ear, making sure he got plenty of secondary smoke from my cigarette, I continued. “Which is why I’m team leader. Relentless is part of the job description. Capisch?” Nodding head.
“Good. Now tell me in teensy weensey little words a woman can understand, what the &%$#@ we have to do to draw those few names I want out of Raines’ computer files?”
I could just take all eighteen names and spend the next year or two years waxing them all. One by one. Not only was it inefficient, it was risky. I’d probably get nabbed by someone in a dark suit long before all eighteen had been terminated.
What was that Clint Eastwood movie? The ‘Eiger Sanction.’ A spy was one of three or four people and Clint inadvertently terminated them all. Got a bonus for ingenuity.
“Miss Parker....” he began, then stopped. Not looking at me. Not good news. “We’d have to physically sit in front of Raines’ computer and hack into his system. Remember, he’s a paranoid, so it’d be full of death traps and trip wires. Which means I’d have to tiptoe past his defenses. Which means I’d have to sit there for hours.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there would no longer be the threat of a dismissal Raines’ style. There would be the certainty.
“My Debbie would grow up an orphan. And I might wake up in a Mexican road gang instead of a Mississippi one. Having a hiney hole so loose you could park a Corvette in it. Thirty years from now.”
That’s it. They spend those hours and hours in the bars and locker rooms inventing new buzz-words and phrases.
“Broots, why are you so obsessed with prison road gangs?”
“Because the prospect of being cut up for body parts and reappearing as someone else’s kidney or lung transplant is something I want to think about even less.”
Sounds reasonable.
My mind is going. Broots’ little sayings are sounding reasonable.
“Forget that much,” I told him. “Concentrate on what we have to do, then we’ll concentrate on how to achieve our goals.”
“Our? Excuse me, Miss Parker, but that’s what I’ve been saying, isn’t it? There is no ‘our’ on this. You’ve got this bug in your ear and it’s liable to get both of us killed. You. Not me.”
Ignoring his narrow-minded outburst, I went on as if he were being reasonable.
“We know where the target is,” I said in a quiet reasonable tone. “Our problem is accessing it in a short period of time.”
“What do you mean ‘We’, Kemosabe?” Broots added.
Hours and hours in the bars inventing new clichés. Gotta be.
“WE” I continued, “can get into the office itself. Raines has a series of steel pin tumbler locks since he doesn’t trust the pass card system anymore. There are these little hand-held machines that pick locks for you. No skill needed. Sitting in each and every one of our limousines. Standard equipment. No problem in ‘borrowing’ one.”
I think.
“I can get us inside his office. What do we need to do then?”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Dead serious.” Maybe a little vague threat can put some iron in his backbone.
Now I’m starting to think in clichés. Is that my ulcer grumbling?
Broots looked off in the distance before he spoke. “I genuinely wish you lots of luck in your new hobby, Miss Parker. But I’m not getting involved in it. I’m part of a team hunting Jarod. Period. You go into Raines’ office, you’re on your own. I wouldn’t follow my wife into there, if it’d bring her back.”
Stubborn little nerd.
“I’d be right there, Broots. Anything happens I’d be able to defend you. Even from Raines. Trust me.” He was giving me a WTF look as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. I couldn’t believe it either. I kept thinking of how many weeds there were alongside the county roads of Mississippi.
Okay, we move to plan B.
“I know how hard it is to make ends meet, what with the sitters and day care. School supplies, you probably paid a bundle for her clothes. And then there’d be those great Nike’s she’d want to wear...”
“L.A.Gear.”
“Whatever. I could get you onto the double-time gravy train...”
It must be catching. Now I’m speaking in clichés. Whatever.
“....Maybe three or four-times, for all that great computer work you’ve been doing...” Still a doubtful look. “...And I could find the funds for that Disneyworld trip you want to take Debbie on out of my own pocket. I could probably sweeten things up for you quite a great deal...” Lay on the purr. Let it hang there. He knows I’d deliver, that’s one ray of sunshine here. Promises and threats are things I don’t forget.
“You know, Miss Parker, that’s very attractive. I could really use the money, but there’s a point you didn’t mention.” Bad news.
“Between my lungs and your heart we’d probably save the life of two really sick old rich white guys when they need transplants.
“Uh-uh, no, no, no way Jose, not by the hair of my chimney-chin- chin. Going inside Raines’ computer is a no-can-win situation, Miss Parker. Get yourself a SWAT Team if you want inside that set of poisonous snake’s jaws.” The hours guys must spend creating new clichés and passing them on to other guys.
The nerd was actually developing a set of balls. Not good. I can’t let this develop into one of those guy things where his puny honor or whatever will be at stake. On to plan C.
I eased myself into an angle between Broots and his precious computer. Letting him feel leg with his leg. He backed up a little in that rolling chair, and I eased in front of him.
“Come here, Broots.” Really low voice, sexy, come-hither. Leaning on his shoulders with my arms, he’s got to smell what went on my pulse-points earlier this morning. Looking him in the eye, smiling.
Close, damned close. Closer yet. Spread my legs to the sides, let the skirt ride up a little.
Hold on tight to him. Crouch a little bit, pull my pelvis to him. Ease my hips forward. Then my hands glide down his front until I have hold of his hips.
When I jerk his hips forward I’m sitting spread-legged on his lap. He’s got a major reaction by this time and I can feel the maleness of it in my groin.
“You like that, Brootsie baby?” He slides forward, and I can finally sit on his lap. Damn the way the little *&^%$#@ office chair keeps wanting to roll away. Mine doesn’t roll that good. I could give him a lap dance right now if it wasn’t for.... Yeah. Use the roll to tuck him into me when I tilt my pelvis into his bod. Give him a little face-to-face lap dance.
“Some things are worth taking a risk for, Brootsie. You ever hear the phrase about how some things are even worth dying for?” Grinding myself into what every male thinks of as their family jewels. Their most precious possession. What a delusion.
The good thing was that I could tell Broots was going to do any little thing I asked him for. He should have taken the money.
Let’s hear it for plan C. I am woman. I am invincible. Frankly, it didn’t feel all that bad holding the nerd and rubbing myself on his shivering bod. At least he likes women. I wondered how long it’s been for him between women?
Wow. I could definitely get into this lap-dancing gig. Dammit, Broots, scoot forward some more.... There. That’s better. This is fun.
ONE DAY AFTER THE RETURN FROM NEW ORLEANS
REST AND SNACK AREA
THE CENTRE
“Eighty-five cents for a Snickers! That’s plain flat-out robbery! A dollar for a Snapple. Where do they except us to get that sort of money, Miss Parker?”
Same place we got it for the last few price increases. He should pay vending machine prices for cigarettes a couple of weeks.
Broots was looking at the vending person, no, microwave repair. I was trying not to get bumped as he went out with the little heater. He should dump his coveralls in the cleaner bin this year sometime.
“One problem, Miss Parker, is believability.”
?????
Why use a simple phrase when a complex one is available...
“We walk down to Raines’ office right now there are a thousand things we could legitimately be doing. We stand in front of his door during the midnight shift and we’d be conspicuous.”
“During the night we could be....” Trailing off into a frown.
“Once in, I think I can work his system. He probably built it himself and he doesn’t know that much about computers. Trust me on that. A secret Internet surfer he is not. Give me time.....” He was looking at me funny again.
“Is that name really worth all this?” he asked. Including the promise of him being allowed to play hide the sausage in the Snow Goddess? Yes, it was, to me. He hadn’t been looking at that wide swath of blood two stories up like I had.
We slowly left the tiny break lounge, with it’s banks of greedy machines. The electric golf-kart rumbled out of the little niche it was in, past us. Broots kept watching it until it turned the corner.
“Miss Parker,” he began. “Did you just see that?
“What?” I looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
“That cart.”
“Yeah?”
“What did it just do?”
“Replaced the microwave, I guess. The worker did at least. Why?”
“Just him in the cart?’
“Yes, just him. What is this, Broots? Sugar rush do funny things to your brain or what?”
“There were two guys in the cart. Which one do you think was the taller? The blond or the fat guy?”
“The fat guy. Now Broots, will you...” Suddenly I made the connection. “There was just one guy in the cart, wasn’t there?”
“Almost. The blond was a woman.” Broots grinned.
“Miss Parker, I think I just figured out how to be invisible at night in front of Raines’ office.”
NEXT WEEK
RAINES’ OFFICE DOOR
12:22 IN THE MORNING
Just another crummy yellow golf-kart and two slobs in overalls on it. Going reluctantly to do some of the work they get paid for. Both with mustaches, both as commonplace as you can get.
“How much time?”
Broots whispered his answer in my ear. “Any second...” Suddenly the world went black as every light and machine went down in the Centre. Broots’ little interrupt program worked. Maybe.
The emergency lights came on, flickered, steadied. We were at the door. I got off, the mechanized lock pick slightly hidden by my body, finger on the on switch. The top one first, insert the pick, feel and hear the lock process into the lock, each part of it moved back until it was unlocked. Then the second, the Yale, seconds more. The next, forever it seemed, this was the toughest. The machine whined as it forced reluctant tumblers over, then finished. The fourth, seconds again. Broots was counting in a whisper almost lower than hearing.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-six....”
Then we were through and I re-bolting the door. “Cart?”
“Sitting right next to another in the niche.” He had something like a big channel surfer with two sticks on electric cords. He waved it at the door, up and down.
Suddenly the quality of light changed out in the corridor. Power was back on in the Centre. We both fingered our mustaches, wondering what the door alarms would do.
“They seem to be uninterrupted, Miss Parker. All clear.”
“Tell me once more. When does the power go down again?”
“Five fifty-four. With any luck we should finish this up in half the time. Like I said, the extra time is our safety edge. Just in case there are snags, it gives me extra time.”
I lit my little key-chain light and Broots scurried to the computer. He left again, grabbing a chair. Of course. Raines doesn’t sit in normal chairs if he can help it. He has his own special-made chair-stool. Broots kicked it over, then froze.
“Miss Parker? Please don’t move.” That did not sound good.
He was up waving those magic wands around, and it struck me there might be alarms elsewhere in this room. They didn’t have problems like this in ‘Mission Impossible’, did they?
He slowly walked around and I got my pistol out of it’s holster in my back. Wondering if I should save a bullet for Broots and me....
Been watching too much late night TV.
“Seems all clear....”
I let out the breath I’d been holding for the past ten minutes. Sat down on the floor facing the door. Then whispered curses for another ten. All this ‘Mission Impossible’ stuff seemed so.... entertaining. When it was on a TV screen. I kept the palms of my hands on the floor where I sat. Wouldn’t do for Broots to see me shaking like this.
Eventually I pulled myself to my feet again. Trying to tell myself the trembling in my legs was from fatigue. Not convincing me in the slightest.
For the first time in my life I was no longer convinced of my own invulnerability and immortality. This situation was not a rush.
Leaning over Broots’ shoulder I put my hand on the other shoulder. Realized where it was. Left it. &@%$# it.
It felt really good to touch another human being right then. Even if it was the geek.
He seemed to spend all his time going back to a page, again and again. Finally he asked me in an odd voice; “What was the date in Boston, Miss Parker? The one where his tank exploded?”
Eventually we figured it out. He tapped it in as a code, changed the day numbers three times, then barely breathed a ‘Eureka!’ when access was granted. I guess there was logic in the choice. It wouldn’t be a day Raines would soon forget.
He found other hold-ups, and his fingers made the screen flicker in incessant rhythms. It struck me there was an art to being a good hacker. It was like a dance. The ardent suitor and the reluctant goal. Whirl and whirl and come back again.
I found myself with my face in his hair. Breathing the clean antiseptic soap and the fear-sweat. He jerked a few times, then continued with his wooing of the computer. When I leaned back I began to massage his neck and shoulders.
He looked back at me when I began, but returned to his hypnotic courting ritual. He remained tense as a spring under pressure, and I eventually gave it up as a lost cause.
When I lay down on the floor I didn’t even remember my head going back. When Broots whispered in my ear I jerked to a sit, gun aimed straight at the door. I’d gone to sleep.
“It’s okay....it’s okay. Relax. I’m downloading most of his files, just in case. Onto DSA discs. I can unlock and search at my leisure. Later. When we’re out of here.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after four. Less than two more hours. We can do that standing on our heads.”
All those male-bonding hours in locker rooms and bars.
Now we had to spend eternity on bare wooden chairs. Raines wasn’t one to encourage people dropping by to shoot the breeze. Hour after hour it seemed.
All that work, and now boredom. Getting the lock pick out of the glove compartment. Finding where the carts were, how they traveled. Stealing the alarm tell. Creating the complex series of programs to crash the power twice in a night. Then crash eight random cameras as well as the ones on Raines’ floor. Try to leave zero trace to be found afterwards. Programming it to seem as if the problem was the outside source. The power company. The coveralls. Even the *&%$#@ fake mustaches in Dover. So much to do.
It all seemed so easy on ‘Mission: Impossible’.
Broots actually snarled at me when I asked him what time he had. So maybe it was the fortieth time. We needed to be sure.
As the magic minute neared, Broots stood behind me. Keeping time, trying not to jog my hand with the pistol in it.
The lights went out. Again. We were out the door, me swinging twice in a wide arc. The cameras should go back on with the power. Emergency lights made things look funny, but I could see the locks on the door clearly.
Broots went for the cart and I re-locked the door. Two locked automatically when the door came back. My pick-lock machine soon had the last two firmly locked.
Before I sat down in the moving cart the lock-pick went into the back. Just another piece of unknowable stuff amongst the other junk there. My gun was held under a rag and we buzzed down the aisle.
The lights came on, the freight elevator door opened to admit the cart, and we rose one floor. Trying not to sneeze my fake mustache off we drove off to the niche the cart came from.
One more glitch in the security camera’s run this morning and in the interval we ditched our uniforms and helmets in the trash. Seconds later two Centre employees were walking away from the break area with cups of bad coffee in their hands. Starting a new day. Sort of. First I was to go home, come back to work later. Broots was to go home then, drive Debbie to school, phone in sick and collapse at home.
At least we didn’t have to punch time cards in and out. Small blessing for being part of the Jarod team.
I had hoped to feel elated. Not depressed. But I was exhausted and had yet to think about my next step. Broots would find me names now. Names of men I was going to obtain answers from. First...sleep.
2:05 THE SAME DAY
BROOTS” DESK
THE CENTRE, BLUE COVE
Sydney didn’t know what to think. Broots didn’t cringe when he heard my heels, though he did jerk. I wished I could have worn my flats, but it would be out of character. My entire body wanted to slouch and shuffle. Why didn’t long hours chasing Jarod make me so tired? Maybe the chase was getting to me, if one night’s stress could waste me like this.
“You find anything on our lab rat today?” Back straight, stalk, let the hips sway a hair, be normal. Show attitude. Be normal. Remember, Miss Bitch, those legs you’re flashing are the Centre’s finest. The leather mini, the hair falling perfect. I am woman. I am strong. I have one &%$#@ killer bod.
“Or were you following a hot lead while the rest of us were doing our jobs?” That didn’t sound up to my previous standard of sneer, but it’d have to do for today. I’d been here since before ten in the morning building my legend. What I wanted to do was sleep six hours. Then curl up with my Bunny for hours and sleep until tomorrow. It’s difficult to be snippy when you want to say “Duh?” in reply to everything.
“As of a matter of fact, Miss Parker, we’re trying to refine that system where we track incidents Jarod might respond to. Also, now there was that cap for the Houston Oilers in New Orleans, and that actually gives a few more possibilities. Besides Houston, I mean.”
“I’m sure, Broots. Just keep hacking.”
I edged closer to Broots’ side. Waiting until Sydney moved to a table for a minute. In a low voice I asked Broots; “Have you come up with any good names?”
Broots knew what I meant. A name for someone who had been in North Dakota. Broots still didn’t know it was a someone who had been finishing my sister’s young life. That information, and my revenge, were all mine.
I suddenly realized Sydney was staring at my hand. It was on Broots’ shoulder. Staring as Broots own hand came up and patted it.
Jerking my hand back, dismay flooded through me. I had a debt to pay to Broots. I pay debts, even one to him. *&%$#@. There was no need for Sydney to know, though.
TWO DAYS LATER
FIFTH SUB LEVEL
OUTSIDE THE LADIE’S JOHN
“This is it, Broots baby. Here. Right now. Take it or leave it. You want to slip me your pathetic Oscar Meyer, you’ll do it now, when it’s on my terms.”
“Ahh....”, he began
“If you’re thinking of even trying to say the words love or darling to me, forget it. I’ve always been Miss Parker to you, and I always will. I don’t have a first name. Understand? Or do you want me to pull a Lorene Bobbit on you and throw part of you into a Seven-Eleven parking lot? Capisch?”
“You’re not showing much Faith in my discretion, Miss Parker.”
“That was very close, Broots. I told you don’t use my first name. What we’re going to do here is make like crazed minks, not make love. Get over your delusions. Now.”
“But the ladies john?”, he asked.
“There are no women working on this floor, and there are no offices they might be called to. This is safer than a Motel. No vice cops able to barge in.
“You want to go see Raines and ask him to loan his gurney for a few minutes? Or try for my Daddy’s desk? God knows it’s big enough. Or maybe that damned hot tub Brigitte keeps using for her sex trips? She could drop in and make it a threesome, then cut our throats afterward. Or....”
“Enough, Miss Parker. You’ve established once again that you’re in control.” He had the nerve to caress my shoulder to neck to chin. His hand felt cool and left a warm trail. Damn, but he was taking too much advantage of me now our bargain looked like being completed. Touching me. Enjoying me. I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying him touching me like that.
I wasn’t. Keep that straight in my head.
His hands were behind my neck and I tensed. “I said I don’t kiss. Kissing is for lovers, not us. We’re not lovers, we’re not. We’re *&%$#@ mating bunny rabbits. And I’ll give you such a sweet ride.....” Where had that come from?
He kept distracting me, rubbing my vertebrae like that with the backs of his fingers, finding the little hairs at the base of my head, the fuzz down my back neck. He kept touching me, oh hell, he shouldn’t be touching lightly like that, he was supposed to be all panting and sweaty and groping me and pawing at my breasts and butt. That hot tight butt he had to be mad to inspect inch by inch. He kept distracting me. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t he know it’d distract me if he kept caressing my neck and now my brow, and the lobes of my ears...
“Broots,” I managed.
“Hmmmmm?”
“Let’s at least get out of the @!%^*+# corridor and into the john?” That should slow things down a bit. I didn’t like being rushed. He wasn’t supposed to be sucking on my fingers like that, that was so damned nice....
“The corridor....” I continued. Why did he have to keep touching my neck? How the hell did computer guys learn about girl’s necks?
He swung the door out with no more than two tries, and I was sort of carried in a circle and through and he never stopped sucking on my fingers and then I felt the cold tile wall behind me. Shocking me back into sudden sanity.
“In! In! Let’s get into one of these stalls, now....”
He just kept touching, and now he was licking an ear, that was too much like kissing...
“I said no kissing, dammit!”
“I’m licking. Not kissing. And don’t you like it?” He began humming as his lips and teeth captured one earlobe. The vibration felt nice.
“....No kissing....”
”Well then,” he said with calm precision, “I don’t expect you to kiss me back, but you never said anything about licking....”
Oh God! He moved his head across the front of my face, his fingers lingering on my chin, licking the base of my throat as he went. Now he was finding the lines of muscle in my neck...
“You have such a beautiful neck, it’s crying for touches, it wants to be held, it wants...”
When was the last time anyone said nice things about my neck? And licked it like he was doing? Goddammit, he was male. He was supposed to have his hands in my panties already. I liked strong men, I liked strong hands on my butt and my breasts. I liked the rush of sex, knowing I’m going to get laid. Knowing I’m in control and feeling I’m out of control, why did he have to be pussyfooting around like this? Enjoying my neck? No one had paid any attention to my beautiful neck since...?
Yeah, August, the one I found in Rehoboth beach. We went from The Strand to Sydney’s and she thought I was a jazz fan because it was a music place. She didn’t know about my tame Sydney. She liked my neck. She kept kissing it all weekend long.... Just like this.....
“The stall,” I pushed, “Let’s get in the goddamned stall, let’s get this show on the road, I’m not going to hump you on the &^%$# floor, dammit, move it!”
He’s got a diamond cutter, I can feel that against my hip and belly, he’s got to be so hard he’d come the first stroke he had in me. Which was okay. I liked it when I got men off. I liked the feeling inside me when they gave me their all. Even when they used a condom I knew it, and I could feel a twinge in my cervix. They didn’t all get me off, but I enjoyed that rush.
Besides I really didn’t care for Broots to spend a long time in me. I wanted to pretend as much as possible that it never happened, and a one-minute quickie would suit me just fine. I liked the way he kept touching my skin with his fingertips, though.
I closed the door behind us, latching it. Then, for the first time grabbing his joint, working it through his pants. Stopping immediately when the thought occurred to me he might come in his pants. He was supposed to get a real session with me. Hand jive went out of fashion back in 1963, didn’t it?
My promises had to mean something, didn’t they? Otherwise why make them? Besides I liked it when he got back to sucking on my fingers and running his fingers down my chest and just when the hell had my blouse gotten open so far down? I didn’t even mind when he was licking at the base of my throat again.
“The pants, the pants, the F+&%@* pants, Broots, get them down, dammit...” Despite both our frantic efforts they finally unzipped and I slid them down to his feet. In a frenzy now, I wanted this over with. I wanted him to stop touching me and licking me. I leaned over and pulled his pants off his feet, both shoes landing outside.
Door open, retrieve them, turn to see Broots love tool staring at me. I’d seen a lot bigger. But I liked them all. I liked the thick black ones. I liked the silicone ones on dykes. Thin ones, short ones, I liked all of them.
I didn’t need any of them. Want was a different matter. I didn’t need anything to survive but myself.
Hands on his thighs I leaned forward, taking him in my mouth, licking, enjoying the flavor men have, even the super-clean ones like Broots.
I was tempted to do him that way, I liked that too. But I’d promised him a twelve-course dinner. Not a cheeseburger and fries. He would get his piece of tail off the Ice Princess. They may call me Miss Bitch and the Snow Goddess, but every person in the Centre knew I was one hot woman in bed. Even Broots was making me hot enough so that I found wetness when I felt my groin. Talk about improbable things...
I let him fill my mouth again, getting plenty of spit on him for lube. Damned if he didn’t pull a condom out of his shirt pocket and hold it out. With as much vehemence as I could I took it, tore it open with my teeth and slipped the thing over him, making sure of a space in the head.
Before I could move forward and ride him, he pulled out a little black bottle from the other shirt pocket. I stood/squatted there, skirt up to my armpits while he squeezed some on his fingers and shocked me by applying those fingers to my crotch. He’d just lubed me up, barely playing pinkie with me in the process. Then wet the rubber with the stuff as well.
I shuffled forward................
TEN MINUTES LATER
LADIES JOHN
FIFTH SUB LEVEL
Finally, my legs shaking, I managed to whisper a question in his ear.
“How did you do that?”, I asked.
“Practice.”
He must have felt my question. “Once a week I go up to the Tantric Exercises class up in Wilmington. Grandma watches my daughter. I have a lot of fun there.”
I pulled back to stare at him, almost speechless with surprise.
“I suppose he has you all doing karmic chants and all that New Age baloney?”
“It’s a she, and she’s in her seventies, and she doesn’t do hare krishna’s. But she likes to show me lots of things. She usually has seven or eight in her class and the single guys usually practice with her and it’s a load of fun....”
He must have partially read my look. I was squatting there with something in me that was only now feeling soft and he was telling me he practiced on Grandma Moses.
I leaned forward and we kissed again. Only this time I took his lower lip between my teeth and bit until I knew he was bleeding good. The damned nerd didn’t hardly flinch, just smiled at me. Why shouldn’t he smile at me? He’d just had a piece of ass off of me and I was world-class. I didn’t even want to wonder if I was as good as GrandMa Moses, her with her damned stable of studs.
“You cheated,” I murmured.
“Guilty as charged,” he admitted. The worse part about sex with men was that damned smirk they all got on their face afterwards.
Broots was going to want seconds someday, probably real soon. The hell with him. Let him go wait in line while GrandMa Moses pulls the rest of the train first.
At least he didn’t say anything about my mouth tasting like soot, the way so many did.
And where the hell were my cigarettes?
A CHEAP MOTEL
EASTERN SHORE, MARYLAND
I made sure, first thing, that my appearance was perfect. This was for high stakes, after all. I pulled the tiny one-shot twenty-two out of its holster inside my panties and again made sure it was already cocked. Yeah, yeah, it would not be recommended by the NRA to carry around a cocked weapon, even an almost-toy like this. If it went off it could permanently cramp my sex life. But I was not a congressman, however, and the NRA could kiss my grits. The Panty Surprise remained my ultimate fall-back.
At that instant the door was gently rapped. Way to go. Ten minutes early. I’ve still got the touch. When I opened the door for him, he stood there for most of a minute, drinking in the full effect.
The nightblue skirt, the red blouse out at the waist and hanging open, the deep-scooped crimson bra on, hopefully the jerk isn’t one of those who need big.... No. There couldn’t one person in the Centre that hadn’t figured out by now I’m not Dolly &%$#@ Parton.
“Come on in, you are alone, aren’t you? Checked the mirror a few times, you know the game, right? All the games....” I stroked his muscular arm under the jacket and shirt. Allowing a second of purring to escape my throat. He cupped my head with his hand, drawing me closer.
Before our lips met, I chuckled. Then put both hands to his face. Tracing the line of his chin as I whispered; “We do this at my pace, baby. I’ll let you know when we can get to that.
“Are you really big into kissing? No? Well, neither am I, so we’ll start out by getting to know each other a little better first. It’s a whole lot more fun this way,” I coaxed.
“Get to know....?” he began.
“I know, I know, we both know what we’re here for. Everyone also knows that I like to play with people’s minds before I play with their bodies.” I chuckled at that, and he answered with his own short laugh. He moved to open my shirt, and I held his hands.
“I get you first,” I said, trying to make it sound husky. ”I like the buildup, and you’ve got all night, right? Not going anyplace in particular? Then let me get that jacket....”
The tie next, pull the shirt out, get the cuff links and unbutton it, circling around behind him, pulling it off, running my hands over his back, letting my nails draw a little blood. He made a noise and let me pull his A-shirt over his head.
I rubbed myself into his back, and he held my hands as I found his nipples and scratched them, hard. He yelped from that, but seemed relaxed as I rubbed my belly into his butt, my breasts into his bare back.
“I like to give a little bit of pain....nothing major, scratching, there’s the door if you don’t want to take it. I think sex and pain are not necessarily exclusive....” He seemed to understand the phrase. With a Cleaner you can’t always get one that reads very well.
“Are you a whipper?,” he gently asked.
“No, and I don’t like to be bound, either. But I don’t mind using something on my man. If he’s man enough to let me be in charge. That bother you?” He asked a silent question and I answered it, sounding resigned.
“I like to be the one on top, and I REALLY like to feel I’m all the way in control. That I’m raping you. It....” A pause.
“It’s....something I like to do. I got a pair of handcuffs, you understand?” Draw my body against the front of his body, let my skirt ride up to my waist, rub my hip on his crotch. When he tried groping my crotch, I danced away.
“I set the pace, remember? Ground rules...”
He looked funny, which is hard to do when he’s as stiff as he was. Maybe he was debating playing a bit rough with me, I mean, it’d be hard to yell harassment or something when I’m the one lured him here. Of course he might also understand afterwards I’d terminate the SOB.
“Miss Parker,” he said, respectful again, “I really don’t think I can allow the handcuffs or ropes or anything like that. If you really need to have that stuff, maybe we’d better....”
So much for plan A.
I leaned forward, kneading his pecs with my teeth, letting a little purr escape my throat. “No.... What’d Terminator say? No problemo, yeah, that’s no problemo....”, I offered.
He reached for me again, big grin back on his face. I danced a little bit and he changed his move to caressing my neck.
God, that felt good. On with Plan B.
“We get you first,” I teased. “Off with the pants, here, let me get the belt....and the zipper...”
When he stood out of his pants, I chuckled and pulled his whanger out of his green boxer shorts. Nice size. Once a woman gets to that point it’s hell for a man to back down.
“Just stand right there,” I commanded. Husky, like I was feeling sexy or something. Men could be such jerks. Usable jerks, but still....
I unbuttoned my red blouse and draped it on a chair back. A loud zip after I got the side button, and the dark blue leather skirt was folded onto the motel desk. His first look at the embroidered angel on the crotch of my panties probably made him sweat.
Turn, turn again, let the crimson underwear work it’s magic on his mind. I stopped so he could knead my buttcheeks, admiring the too damned gorgeous visual feast of thong underwear. When he bent to kiss my butt I danced away again. He mustn’t grope my crotch or he’d discover my little Panty Surprise. Men always groped. It was something about undies that made them want to do caressing, feeling, panty diving.
As I turned again and reached behind to take off the bra at the same time, he didn’t get miffed at me. I lifted my nipples at him, vaguely annoyed at the way they spiked. Not now, I told my body. Maybe never.
At that point I chuckled and let him suck on my nipples. The thought crossed my mind again of getting a boob job. Just a minimal one. Nothing obvious. Just maybe a single cup bigger. Thinking this while he’s trying to suck milk from me.
I crank his stiff joint for a few minutes. Somewhere he’d lost his boxers and now looked all hot male. I adored feeling his hands all over my ass. Visual aids rule.
Time to proceed. It was the work of only a second to accidentally drop the fake diamond earring to the floor and kick it under the bed. It was why I’d gotten a pair of zircon’s made for non-pierced ears. So it could be just slipped off.
“Oh, hell,” I announced. “My earring just fell off, maybe it’s under the bed, it’s a real diamond, would you be a doll and get it for me?
In a flash he’s scooting under the bed, no doubt thinking about all the crud he was having to take so he could lay me.
I got behind him, opened the drawer and pulled out the snub-nosed pistol I’d put in there. I moved back, keeping it on him as he squirmed back and rose to his knees. He’d already focused on the part where I now had a pistol aimed at him.
“If this is about the handcuffs....”, he began.
“It’s about a hick town in North Dakota and a stolen car being driven too fast”, I replied.
I had to give him this; he didn’t pose or act or evade. He just muttered a few curses and then looked up at me. “It’s about nothing that need include you, Miss Parker.”
“I’m back to being Miss Parker, I notice. I suppose this means our little romance didn’t last? No matter. We have lots of time and you can tell me all about it. When you left. When you came back. Who was your partner. Who was your control.
“And most important, you can tell me who sanctioned this operation.” She felt an acidic taste at the last word, now. Hope was - had been - a human being, a sister. Not a thing to be terminated. Her sister.
Hope had been a flawed vessel, a bubblehead, maybe not quite so sharp and quick as she should. But you don’t discard sisters the way you do pantyhose. I was able to realize I felt proprietary towards my late sibling, rather than loving, but love could come. Could have.
“Listen, Miss Parker, I’m just doing a job here, you understand? I get told to do something and I do it. They tell me to pitch on the Centre baseball game, I pitch. They tell me to trash some blond in Nowheresville, I trash. I do what I’m told.”
“I’m listening, Mister Muscles, and I’m excited for you to be able to pitch for the Centre. But I haven’t heard a name yet. Any names. Aren’t we going to talk? Has the cat got your tongue? Cooperate...”
That’s as far as I got.
My eyes blinked in involuntary reaction when something materialized out of thin air, coming straight at me. I got off one shot as I startled, but knew it had pulled to the right. My mind processed the fact in retrospect of the Cleaner throwing something at me.
By the time I remembered the earring, he had slammed into my legs, pitching us both onto the floor. I grunted from shock, his hand on my shoulder, felt myself pulled to the man, my neck grabbed, trying to strike out at him, to find him and put a bullet in him. The gun was struck from my hand as I let off another wild bullet. Then he was behind me, alongside me, my neck in a one-armed lock, I couldn’t reach him except for blows and elbows to the body which only made him grunt. I tried kicking, with as little luck. As I tried a particularly energetic kick, he brought his knee up hard into my groin.
The pain shot through me and I couldn’t breathe. The effect had been increased because he was holding me so tight with both arms. My Panty Surprise felt like it had given me a clitectomey, and I tasted my blood from where I’d bitten my upper lip. I could only see through a pinhole for seconds after he kneed me. Anyone who thinks women don’t hurt when they get hit in the groin like that should get reality lessons.
He was on my back, ignoring my attempts to twist out from underneath, one hand in my hair pounding my forehead into the floor, disorienting me. All that training, all those lessons, all those hours on the mat and in the gym, and I couldn’t get organized enough to throw him off or pound him good. He was a man, bigger, stronger in this case, throwing me around one-handed, going to KILL me, goddammit!
He got something, he pulled his suit coat to us, he hit me hard half a dozen times until I was seeing darkness and stars again, then he got something....
...And I felt him loop something over my head.
One hand got up in time to protect my neck, I kicked against something and wound up on top, squirming, peeing on myself, desperate, scrabbling against the motel rug.
He had a wire around my neck, my right hand all that was keeping him from cutting my throat. He was using a two-hand hold on the taut wire, ignoring my twists and jerks, the pain nothing right now, but I could feel my fingers beginning to come apart. My throat was cut on either side of the hand, and the blood was leaking out all over me.
He grunted into my ear, ignoring my thrashing, maybe enjoying it. He spoke to me as I tried to get my breath.
“I work hard enough and long enough, you know I can take your damned head clean off, did you know that?” My left hand couldn’t even find my panties at first, then couldn’t find their way inside them. My damned fingers could barely feel anything, my right hand was a line of sheer agony as it discovered it was being cut into pieces by the wire. I tried wailing but couldn’t get the air.
“Once I got that goddamned smart-assed head of yours off, you know, you know what I’m going to do with that body of yours? I’m going to throw it on that goddamned bed and get what the hell I came here to get, do you understand me, Miss Bitch? You take that picture with you wherever you’re going, Ice Princess, and I’ll see you in Hell.”
I had the little pistol out of the holster now, and I could see only stars, and darkness. Where was he? I tried to twist, and the blood allowed me to partially turn. Fingering my way up his heaving side, I found his shoulder, then his neck, then his chin.
My last chance.
Sitting the one-shot pistol against the soft part inside of his chin bone, I tried levering the trigger back, trying, trying, not even hearing the pop as the twenty-two calibre bullet tore upward into his brain.
I don’t know when I found myself able to breathe again, but it was long minutes before I found myself crying furiously. Babbling, disengaging myself and my fingers from that damned wire. Snot running out of my nose, oh a perfect mess I looked, I know. I’d never known my hand could hurt so much and I knew I’d never have a grip like I did once. I felt liquid all over me and knew a lot of it was my own blood.
I crab scuttled over to the phone, never once looking around, intent on my unknown purpose. I hoped the phone was still there and it was a touch-tone.
In the end I pulled the phone down, punched operator, I could see a little past the stars and the confusion, and the $%@*+ motel clerk came up.
“There’s a one dollar and ninety-five cents a minute fee for an outside line....” Evidently my cursing silenced her, that and my hysterical blubbering. She called the local John Law and gave me Daddy’s number when I repeated it enough times so that the stupid damned bitch understood.
I think the police and the EMS got there first, but a pair of sweepers that knew me arrived to keep everything clean, and the ambulance guy started giving me shots and putting up IV’s. Daddy sent help, Daddy would see everything right, Daddy loved his little Angel...
ONE WEEK LATER
BLUE COVE, DELAWARE
“Miss Parker?”
It was Broots again. Goddammit, I knew he was eventually going to try for seconds on my bod. So let’s listen politely before I sink his pathetic little boat.
“Miss Parker?”, he began, “Have you got a minute or two you could spare me.”
“Sure, Brootsie, what are friends for?”
That one was obvious enough even he got it. He looked at me for a second, then he smiled. “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten your old spirit back, Miss Parker. Me and Sydney were worried about you yesterday, the way you were walking around with that glassy look to your eyes.”
“You have no idea how deeply I am touched by your concern for my well-being. Now what the hell do you want to show me?” It’s hard as hell to be intimidating when the best you can manage is a weak croak.
The wrappings around each of my fingers hurt like hell, I practically had to use a knife to open a pack of cigarettes, and I had to dress myself in sloppy gym clothes because those could be pulled on without fighting zippers and buttons. That or come in naked, and Daddy might be perturbed by that option. Now this nerd was irritating me.
“Not exactly show,” Broots continued. “Just around here, yes, this. That’s all”
Sydney was throwing what appeared a sheet of pale yellow cloth over one of the old green office chairs. It sat in front of a simple formica table, and around it sat two more, different style, office chairs. Scrounge stuff, the sort of thing supposed to be thrown out and instead purloined for personal use.
“Good Morning, Miss Parker,” Sydney said. “I hope you’re feeling better today. We were worried about you yesterday and Wednesday, you looked like you were running on automatic. Not at all your usual bright and cheerful self.” It took me a second to see the carefully repressed smile behind his usual veneer. The treacherous old bastard had just given me a zinger. I almost drew an up and down line in the air for him. Almost.
“Okay, Broots, you’ve gotten me here and you’ve both expressed your loving concern for my health, is that it? Do you require my presence for anything else?” Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word ‘loving’. Don’t want to encourage the reject.
“Just this, we both know how busy you are, it’s a little dinner I’ve made up for you. Actually me and my daughter.”
I must have been staring. Sydney was suddenly busy opening a Tupperware thing, eyes to the table.
Wipe that smile off your mind, I felt like snarling at him.
“There’s not much there, I know how careful you are about eating, and it’s all supposed to be nutritious with minimum fats and sugars.
“It’s Michigan Whitefish, baked with lemon, spinach pasta and a tomato sauce, my daughter makes it, it’s quite good. They teach everyone a few cooking things anymore in school, both boys and girls. She knows more about healthy foods than I do.
“Oh, and one more thing from my daughter.” He handed me what looked like a single twinkie, wrapped in clear plastic, sitting it on the bluish Tupperware bowl. “She said you’ve got to push the envelope a little bit once in a while, and indulge yourself.”
If Sydney had been even hinting he would like to smile or look my way, I would ripped his heart out of his protesting chest. And replaced it with this twinkie.
Brootsie looked warm, but he maintained his innocent and confused-with-life look as he stared me in the face. I suddenly wondered how much of him was genuine beaten-down-into-a-mush and how much was the simple ability to let most everything slide off him like he was made of teflon.
“She says her teacher says a woman should be lean and mean, but that you shouldn’t deny your body food.”
Not a solitary wrinkle showed at the mouth, but he was definitely sweating now. He knew his life lay in my hands. I leaned forward, and smiled a fangs-showing grimace at him and whispered; “Are you pretending to tell me. Again. That I should have more fat on this body than already exists?” The tone was gentle, but his neck got red.
“It’s nutritious, that’s all I’m saying,” he almost stuttered. “And we both do hope you’ll get the wrappings off your neck soon.” I could smell the dozen or more questions he and Sydney wanted to ask me. Afterwards, will there be scars? Can the surgeons take them away? Whathell had I been doing?
Did it scare me? Did I almost lose my head? Literally? Just as they’re probably saying throughout the Centre. Yes and yes and I’ll never say so. Three weeks and the plastic band-aid stitches come out, four weeks for the ones holding my fingers to my hands.
I’ll be back to my old self in no time. I had to.
“You’re welcome to come sit and eat with us,” Sydney dead-panned from where he was opening another Tupperware of his own. “I have a baklava from the Montenegrin place by me. It’s a large piece and I too probably should worry about my health.”
The old ballsey SOB had the nerve to look directly at me when he said that. I think he just wrote some sub-text for me to figure out later. He also waved an expansive hand at the chair they’d covered with a cloth, carefully not smiling. Broots wasn’t smiling either.
“If you don’t, that’s fine, we both know you’re a pretty private person, and we wouldn’t want to intrude.” He fidgeted in front of me for a few seconds, then slightly turned and looked at me again. “If you ever feel like dropping by, for whatever reason, me and Sydney would be glad to have you.”
“Just the two of us, we do not feel the need to be very social, and you needn’t think of this as a period for enforced interpersonal interaction. Just sit. The food tastes better when you’re not alone. It actually does.”
I’ll give him his enforced interpersonal interaction.
I stared, then, still holding the damned Tupperware and twinkie, turned and began to walk away. I realized I missed the point in time when I’d stalk away in my heels and tight skirt and knew every eye was on my jiggling butt. It’s damned hard to be aristocratic in low heels and gym’s.
When I stopped, I immediately began to walk back towards the pair, already sitting down at their dinner table. Both glanced at me, but it was Broots whose ears got red. I guess he thought I was going to rip them off. Instead I stood alongside Broots, staring at Sydney. It’s just not so much fun intimidating people when I look like I’m going to K-Mart’s. It also doesn’t work as well.
“How big a piece?,” I asked.
Sydney showed me, when he opened a smaller canister. “I’ll trade the twinkie for half that,” I said. They both stared at the pastry. Then Sydney reached to his ankle and suddenly he had a six-inch switchblade in his hand, the snick of it’s opening surprising me. Sydney, the perfect old fart, was armed, and probably had been for months.
Broots was trying mightily to look like he’d seen faithful ol’ stick-in-the-mud Sydney with an illegal and lethal weapon each and every day for years. I like to think I pulled it off better than he did. Also, maybe Sydney hadn’t felt the need to carry one until very recently.
Sydney slid half the evil sugary thing onto a paper napkin and laid it on my quickly offered Tupperware. He took off the twinkie, sliting it open before wiping his knife and returning it to wherever he kept it.
“Solingen, I presume?,” I managed.
“They’re legal over there,” he commented to no one in particular. “And yes, nothing but the best for myself. Would you carry a cheap Saturday Night Special in that small-of-your-back holster, Miss Parker? No, of course not.”
With that I simply turned and walked away. I’d never felt so drab and plebeian and un-sexy as I did in that walk. Both men, yes, they were men I admitted, both men had always watched me stalk away in those high heels, watched to catch a glimpse of panty on the days I let my skirt ride up a bit too far in back. It’s a bitch sometimes to get a leather skirt to do that on purpose. The rest of the time it’ll ride up when you don’t want it to.
I was feeling really depressed in these gray gym’s. My Bunny was no help at all getting dressed in the morning. Maybe I could hire someone to put my clothes on me for the next few months. I felt like crying, and it was a surprise to realize I had a smile on my face.
BLUE COVE
DELAWARE
Broots started violently when I touched his arm. He’d acclimated himself to hearing me approach in heels, and now he didn’t ‘know’ when I was near. He paused in his latest quest for the Holy Grail, or for Jarod, or to find a cheap way to take his daughter to Disneyworld next spring. He’d blanked the screen as soon as he felt the touch, but now he re-booted. His trust in me was so lame, and unsafe. He stared as I put the Tupperware on the printer by him.
“Be sure to tell your girl that I really liked the pasta, and thank you to her.”
“You really liked it? She’ll be glad to hear that.”
“Just tell her. Whether I liked it or not is not especially relevant. Capische?”
“Yes, Miss Parker,” he replied. Looking away from me he continued. “She’s making a pumpkin pie, it’s almost that time, and she wants to practice a little bit.
“I’ll bring in a piece for you and Sydney.”
I asked, “If I think it’s terrible?”
“I’ll tell her you liked it, if she doesn’t do too badly.”
He’d just smart-mouthed at me. Not much, but a first for Broots.
He looked at me, noticing my lovely matching baggy tulle pullover and the light blue skirt, the one with the elastic band waist, something I could just pull on. Belle of the &%$#+ ball, that’s me.
“What the hell are looking at?”, I snarled.
“Have your fingers been losing any of their puffiness yet?” Give him points for a fast answer.
“No,” I said, “maybe by Saturday. I hope so, I’m going to go up to a houseboat on the East Shore, feel sorry for myself, drink a domestic wine and wish I had Jarod in my hands.” That one suddenly pitched me into a mental scenario where I was running my hands on Jarod’s naked....
Stop!
When I could let out my breath, I turned away from Broots, determined not to think anything like that. Remembering the old joke about the guy who was promised heaven if he could think of anything but a white horse as he walked the stairs to heaven. Naturally he walked behind a white horse all the way.
There was a moral, I’m sure, but I hate stories like that.
I stopped, and looked over my shoulder at the now-busy Broots. He stopped, not turning to look. Not even when, after a while, I walked back to him. Hold that curiosity, I thought.
I dropped my still-warm gray cotton hi-hip panties in his lap. I thought he was going to turn to stone as he realized what I’d just given him. From the tenting of his pants over a period of one to two nanoseconds, I’d say it had a profound impact on him in another aspect.
He broke out in an immediate sweat, and I smiled. Even looking like a trailer-park housewife I still had it. Though my procedure had been extreme.
“I’ll want them back,” I carefully whispered.
“Wha...daa...ttaa..weh...I....when...when, when, how, when?”
“You can bring them this Saturday when you drop by. You can get a baby-sitter, can’t you?”
More noises. “Aaahh... Yaaah.. Ss...u..ure.”
“Don’t show up until past noon, maybe two, I’ll be sleeping in.”
With that I turned and walked away.
....eight.....nine.....ten....eleven..
“Miss Parker,” he managed finally. “Where will you be, I mean where’s that houseboat?”
In broad sunlight my smile would have blinded anyone nearby. “You have until Saturday and you have all the computers in the Centre at your disposal, or near to all.
“You’ll find me.
“Be sure to have my property, when you come.”
I just made a pun, I think.
It felt good to have myself back again. It’s hard to stalk in penny-loafers and with a pronounced limp, but I didn’t do a bad job of it.
Please read the sequel: In the Lane, Snow is Glistening
Spoilers: None. Set after Season two, after the advent of Mr. Bunny and after the discovery of Miss Parker’s ulcer.
Ratings: This story has bad language, violence and sexual situations. This an R rated story. Be warned. If violence, language and sexuality is not your cup of tea, please avoid this story. It is not recommended for those under 17 years of age. If R stories are frowned upon by your locale or country, please go away.
Dated: August, 2000
This story is a continuation of The Journey also by me. Please do not flame me as I have a sensitive and easily bruised artistic soul. Ego stroking eagerly welcomed.
PICKIN’ UP THE PIECES
by R. Schultz
”It’s just a routine inquiry, Brootsie baby, how the hell should I know where to look? That’s why we have your nerdy ass, to find things like that. Assets were in North Dakota last week. Our assets. How hard can it be to find them?”
I started another cigarette off the one I still had lit. The more I tried not to appear nervous, the more I thought I was failing miserably. Where the hell had all my ballsiness gone to the past two years? Two years ago I had been one of the guys in the white hats. Now I had an ulcer. Now I wondered.....
Now I wondered a lot of things. Now I felt another sharp edge sticking out of my persona. I was uneasy, and it got progressively worse as I continued my damned stubborn hunt for Jarod.
The scary part was I wasn’t that confident anymore as to what I would do with him if, no, Dammit! When I caught him.
For now, I just wanted a name, two names, three names. Names which had probably been logged off last week, or the week before. Or logged onto an Eyes-Only operation. Shunted into that mysterious land where even I felt unsure and lost now. Before there were questions. Hidden names, or disguised, assets used for .... another matter, for the Centre. Of course. Hidden in someone’s ‘private’ books, hidden in plain sight, I mean, all I want is a few #$%(*& names....
“Miss Parker,” Broots began, “Could you help me out with a little more information, please? How many, where, what did they do? If you could establish a few parameters I could at least begin by excluding all the other procedures that occurred last week. What I’m doing now is whirling in circles. I need more information.”
Trust the little creep to guess I wasn’t telling all. He certainly knew I wasn’t telling him why I was looking. He just sat there, cowed, but unable to do anything yet. This wasn’t like before. This one was all mine. With a shudder I accepted his need for more data. This whole problem of mine was a little too private to share. I didn’t want Broots knowing or understanding my goals. Or Daddy, or Sydney, or Jarod. This was my private jaunt to find my Holy Grail.
“Someone was in North Dakota last week, target Thursday, engaging in a wet operation,” I bent over and blew smoke in the side of his face.
“I don’t have any more pertinent information than that.” Once more I resumed pacing in circles behind my tame computer expert, looking at the back of his head.
“It had to take two days at least for the operation to take place, and up to four days max. Probably two. And I haven’t the faintest idea who might have sanctioned the operation. Check Cleaners first.”
Broots looked at me funny. “Well, I said it was a wet operation, didn’t I? Would you use Sydney to terminate someone with prejudice? Sweepers might do it, but don’t bet on it. Even Sam might balk.”
I had to hope it wouldn’t be Daddy who had my sister killed. Raines or Lyle or Brigitte I could accept. Especially Raines. Or Mister-Keeps-Disappearing Kyle. Brotherly love, yeah. Anyone else. Just so she would know. Once she knew who her target was, she could think about the next step.
Well, get a grip on yourself. I am woman, I am strong, I am invincible, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’ll shoot the cojones off the first pinhead who says I’m not.
Expecting nothing soon, I had begun pacing away when I heard a peep of a “Yes!” behind me. For a second I thought I’d just flashed the nerd, then remembered I was in pants today. In a milli-second I was standing over Broots’ shoulder and gripping his arm hard enough for him to say ouch and looking pained at me. I let go, snarling; “What do you have?”
“A beginning,” he replied. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“I have the payroll here, and I just had it filter out all people not working but still got paid.”
“Meaning?”
“They get paid, but they weren’t doing anything to earn their keep. Of that group I filtered out those on legitimate vacation or sick leave, but I didn’t filter out women....”
“Meaning Brigitte...”
“...Meaning Brigitte, in particular, yes,” he agreed. “This is a list of fifty-six people who according to the books were not doing anything for the company last week to warrant their paychecks. Or they were performing special and unlisted duty for which they got paid. Fifty-five, if you want me to take yourself off the list.”
I glared at him, he caught the change in my eyes and hastily deleted a name.
“I also eliminated all personnel who were essentially administrative personnel, but I’ve still got them on a separate list if we....”
“Broots, cut to the *#&%$+ chase, will you?”
He hit two keys. “These eighteen names were paid by one of five people on their private authorization. The pattern and authorizations are always the same.
“No job numbers, no work codes, just a sign-off, and pay. Eleven of these also got double checks for that week, and four got quadruple checks. Which might mean they were given a not so small bonus for a good job. For what, who knows? Maybe two of them put in a new sundeck for Brigitte. You should know in advance, though, that...”
“The four. Have they ever got quadruples like that before? And who signed them off? What were the codes?”
“Miss Parker....” he hesitated. Looking at her he softly said; “They were all authorized on his executive code, with a subcode...see the lower case number at the beginning? ...indicating, presumably, the actual request signature on the authorization. The actual office or person who made the request. All under your Father’s authorization code. All eighteen.”
“Yes, yes, all the ratty file stuff goes through his office. And? Who signed the authorization slips on them?”
“There’s no way for me to access his files. They’re under his own private system, Miss Parker. I can’t help you any further without your Daddy’s files.”
“Do I have to give you a prompt for every stupid thing to do? Access them, break the code, slip in, whatever it is you computer jockey’s do that feeds your pitiful ego’s. Just get them.”
“Miss Parker....”, he began, and swiveled in his chair to face me directly. Instantly my heart sank. This was news I wasn’t going to want to hear.
“There is no physical connection between these computers and the higher echelon staff’s computers. They have their own cable system. They even read each other’s hand-delivered discs most of the time. They created something no outside force can get into because there is no route from here to there. Period. What your father has in there I can’t find out.
“You can threaten me all you want, Miss Parker, it won’t get you inside his system.” I noticed a light sheen of sweat was on his brow, so I accepted what he was saying as the truth. He wouldn’t risk getting caught out on a lie.
“What...,” I began, “would you have to do to access his computer? Could you give me instructions on what to do? I have access to Daddy’s office, I could do it. Just tell me what it is I have to do.”
He looked at me funny, and I blushed to realize he had just had a major weakness of mine shoved in his face.
“Miss Parker....” Hesitating, he slid back in his chair, opening his work station to me.
“...Would you bring back up the original list of fifty-five names I had for you?” He waited, not doing anything dramatic, but anticipating something.
I hit the back and it came up with a series of supply requisitions for last month. I felt like trashing the monitor and Broots at the same time. My jaw was going to get sprained if I didn’t stop grinding my teeth so hard.
“I have a personal system which automatically covers my backside when I’m doing something they’re not paying me to do.
“The past year, with all we’ve been doing....”
“Broots,” I said, staring at the screen to avoid staring at him.
“My point is that your Daddy and the other highest levels have similar hand made systems....”
“And?”
He looked at me for a moment, trying not to look surprised. I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like it.
“Even if your father doesn’t have a private system, you wouldn’t know how to find his code-locked material, if we needed that. You’re simply not proficient enough for that.
“We can’t do it, Miss Parker. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Either I get to navigate your father’s system, or you start taking serious computer lessons.”
“You can teach me, right? Show me what it is I have to do, explain all your little button games?”
“Yes....I can teach you. It might take a year, a year and a half, and you’d probably come out of it a pretty good computer geek. During your first two minutes in your Daddy’s files you’d likely trip an alarm in the system even so. It’s too easy to trip-wire unique hand-made systems like that.”
“What if I.....”
“Beg pardon, Miss Parker, but if you want that information I’m going to have to go get it myself. Yet, if I saunter in that office and trip an alarm, I might start regaining my memory and waking up ten years from now. Working in a Mississippi prison road gang, with great muscles from whacking all those weeds, you would not believe.
“I have no idea of the effects of all that pharmacology Raines loves to play with, but some of it I’ll gamble is a pretty good memory destroyer.
“I don’t want to leave my little girl all alone any more, Miss Parker. I’m not going in that office. Uh-uh, no, not a chance, not me, not on the hair of your chiney-chin-chin, not for a piece of your tight little ass, Miss Parker, not even that. Count me out. You go start computer classes. Start tonight. Come back in three years and I’ll brief you on what to do.”
For a few seconds he crossed his hands across his chest and tried to look forceful and masculine. I looked down, ground out my cigarette stub and smiled my best smile at a suddenly white-faced Broots. The sweat was back worse than ever. He’d just realized what he’d said to me. Freudian slip, I’m sure.
“You think I have a tight little ass, Broots? Have you been looking? Have you dared?” Actually I knew damned well he looked. You don’t maintain your weight, walk, do stairs and wear a miniskirt if you don’t want the men to drool. Any men. Even Broots or Sydney.
I smiled, remembering the last time I’d worn the burgundy leather. I’d gotten it so it always rode up my hips, and I’d worn one of the satin thong’s I got from Victoria’s Secret. Allowing Broots and Sydney (and others) to view any of my sexier assets was for my own pleasure. I liked knowing they all wanted some of me. Liked better denying them any access. However, let’s allow Broots to sweat, thinking I was debating styles of torture.
“Not if you say so, Miss Parker...”
“My ass is tight as hell, you little weasel! What’s more the rest of me is world class as well. Tight and firm. I could model if I wanted to. Then somebody besides my tame computer nerd would know what a bod I have. I could have men on six continents wanting to lay their hands on this prime real estate!” With a significant number of women wanting to do the same, I thought.
The glare was frozen on, but I stopped dead in my tracks. I’d just engaged in a dialogue with Broots about my body. As if he was worthy of it. Who cared, really, if he or Sydney coveted my young warm flesh? Actually, I did. It was a little game I played with them both, a way of being in control.
“Are you prepared to tell me you actually considered using my body? I can imagine it how. Throw me down and screw my #$+*& brains out, right? Show me what a he-man you are? Get a new delusion,” I sneered.
Broots was as pale as a ghost, and his collar had to be wet, but he answered. “Actually it was more along the lines of making love,” he whispered.
I stared at him and I know my mouth was catching flies from the shock. “Love?”
“Yes,” he whispered, facing me. “Love, as in holding and touching and caring. Do you think I could help you like I do out of fear alone?
“I like you, Miss Parker. Or the woman I think you could be if you weren’t so damned relentless all the time. Yeah, love is a good word. I might be deluded, but I’d rather be deluded than think there’s nothing human in you.”
A pause. “Me? You have the guts to think I’m another one of those romance bimbo’s? Trying to escape my cocoon and fly away into perfect love?” This was getting into the twilight zone. Broots actually had the hots for me.
Broots looked calm now, he’d even ceased sweating. Death Row inmate calm, maybe. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing him look me in the eyes, either.
“Everyone could stand to have someone who cared,” Broots said. No stutter. Was he growing a pair of balls?!?!
“Even you.”
I leaned real close, smiling gently. Blowing smoke in his face. “Do you think of yourself as my special someone? Someone to watch over me? Dream On!
“You’re just a mouse wishing he dared grab the hunk of cheese laying next to the cat.”
With that I turned and stalked away. Four inch heels on concrete made a hell of a stalk noise. I hoped he was staring at my tight ass, wishing he could work at it. But I didn’t dare let him know I was expecting him to watch it wriggle so. So I didn’t whip around to check. But I felt like I should have. Let him drool.
BLUE COVE
DELAWARE
It hurt like hell going back to Broots. Sydney standing over my nerd’s shoulder didn’t make things any easier. For a second I caught Sydney looking at the smooth lines of hose and garter belt showing under the mini. He realized I saw his glance, and almost smiled at me. Then he proceeded to admire my legs, and the rest of me. When Sydney allowed himself to act even remotely human, it was disconcerting. But oddly pleasing. I suddenly felt like I’d dressed up for a date and was basking in the admiration.
I quickly buried that ridiculous feeling. I didn’t need the admiration of Sydney or Broots to feel good about myself. I was dressed in one of my killer outfits for one reason only. To work on Broots and his wish to avoid the danger of entering my Daddy’s office. I wanted some clues as to who killed Hope.
I would blow some smoke in Broots ear, none of it from a cigarette today. Rub his arms with my breasts, get the nerd in a state. Then have him come in with me into Daddy’s office to crack his computer files. The inner sanctorium key was a card in a little pocket inside my satin peasant blouse. Today was as good a day as any.
My revenge was a dish I didn’t want to lose it’s flavor.
“Good morning, Miss Parker,” Sydney soothed. The old fart looked me up and down, openly admiring the view. He probably noticed the nipples poking at the blouse as soon as his mind finished licking at my legs. I’d just as soon Sydney didn’t guess I was going to seduce Broots into doing what needed done.
“Broots might have a lead on our mutual friend,” he began. “With Jarod becoming increasingly obsessed with both justice and a climactic resolution, he’s patched together a system that pulls up likely instances of justice denied. Unfortunately it’s still over four hundred listings, and that’s just the past sixty days. It doesn’t spot hidden injustices, but it’s still an interesting start on getting ahead of our errant boy.”
Normally the thought of having Jarod in my hands again would make my nipples spike, but even the vague possibility of Jarod’s rangy body paled in relation to my other needs today. I’d made up my mind to fawn all over that geek, and I didn’t want to lose that focus. Strike while the nerds are hot. And hope my ulcer wouldn’t act up.
“Isn’t that your phone I hear, Sydney?”
He looked at me quizzically, not even listening for a faint ring. They he smiled at Broots, then at me again. You could hear the abacus beads clicking against each other as he came to understand the killer outfit was for Broots’ benefit. Damn him.
I felt the blush, which he noticed, of course. He pursed his lips, patted Broots on the shoulder and left. I walked up behind the geek and tried not to know Sydney was still checking out my legs in hose and garter belt. When I turned back to look, he saluted me and continued on his way.
Time to put the show on the road. I leaned forward, one hand on his arm, looking over Broots shoulder.
“Let’s get back to my problem. Broots.” Not nerd, or geek, or mouse. Just Broots. He tensed when he realized my nipples were poking him in the shoulder and arm, then tensed anew when I moved to rub them into the other shoulder.
“Tell me again why we can’t find out who was in North Dakota conducting a wet operation,” I purred.
DADDY’S OFFICE
SIDE ENTRANCE
“This is not a good idea, Miss Parker,” Broots voiced. “Just give me enough time and I might figure out a way to get those code identities. Maybe a process of elimination we can....”
“In,” I tried to purr authoritatively. Broots staggered when he found I was pressing my body against his. Belly to butt. Trying to accelerate his movement through the partially open door. I staggered to realize how stiff and enlarged my nipples were at this moment. It might be entirely due to the overt move against Daddy this operation exemplified. But it was excitement to be here, too. The lure of the forbidden.
Having a body in front of me to rub my nipples into was just a bonus. My belly rubbed his ass and that felt good, as well.
My next step probably would have me hang gliding or bungee diving. Anything for a rush. For a space of seconds I fantasized free falling out of an airplane.
Then the next fantasy was of me being laid over Daddy’s desk and getting done doggie style by Alec Baldwin and loving it. That one I killed quicker. Jarod doing the same thing I filed away for later reference.
“You see?” I whispered. “No one home. I saw Daddy go out with that bitch and her fake English accent, and he’ll be gone a long time. Probably. We should have all the time in the world.”
“I gotta tell you again, Miss Parker,” he reminded me. “One session at your Daddy’s computer might not give us what me need. The hardest part will be a probably drawn-out process of finding my through his system, identifying his traps and alarms and figuring out his codes. It might take a while.”
“All the more reason for you to stop jawing and start hacking,” I hissed. “Sit down there while I try to keep an eye on outside threats.” Try not to have him realize just how chancy his work was. He probably thought Daddy had a private security system here. Cameras in the corridors watching the doors, that sort of thing. He didn’t, but I had to act as if it was safe in here. Must be a way to crack the door enough to look down the corridors.
“Here, Miss Parker,” he said. A TV monitor rose out of the desk on the one side, locking with a audible click as the leather ink pad moved back to lock it.
“There’s a series of sixteen numbers and symbols on this hand surfer that probably control the cameras and surveillance equipment that it accesses.”
I scurried over to the desk and watched the views rotate through two images of each of Daddy’s doors from a corridor viewpoint. Then four more images of the corridors. Probably from just outside the entrances to Daddy’s doors.
“The pound symbol... Ah, yes,” he smiled. “Hit the pound symbol and it returns into it’s hiding place inside the desk. If you hit.... Yes. You can monitor quite a bit through the cable feed to this site. Want to try it?”
My dear trusting Daddy, with his own surveillance system. Broots hit a number, then keep adding to that, and the camera provided views of many rooms as well. One held the view of a queen-sized bed and upright wardrobe, a pale leather jacket thrown on the bed. Like the one Brigitte wore. I wondered how long that one had been on his system. *&%$#@+!
And did she know the camera was there? You betcha.
And did she have the Hitachi MagicWand with all the attachments? Probably. And I had thought I was an exhibitionist. It explained a lot of Daddy’s sudden attachment to that tramp, however.
Broots wondered at my glower, I know, but I simply said; “Just bring us back to the view of the corridors outside of here.”
I was trying to read the little code numbers on the bottom of the screen when I noticed I wasn’t hearing any computer noises. Broots was staring at my chest. By looking down I could see my breasts quiver with each motion I made. Time to re-button some of the buttons on my blouse. Broots carefully made his computer movements, eyes intent on the screen, little notes of electronic queries telling me he was working. Not looking me in the eye.
After a while I got bored watching Q & A on that screen, and channel surfed on the security one. Twice teams of sweepers went by in the corridors outside. Dear old friendly Sam being one of them.
Clerk types pushing little carts of their vastly important paperwork. One of the little electronic carts, carrying a coverall-clad blue collar on his way to a date with a thermostat or a pipe or whatever he did whenever he had to earn his keep. Normalcy.
It seemed better to ignore Broots as he worked. He could get amazingly focused on his computer hacking, but it seemed best not to breathe down his neck. It was boring watching nothing but corridor.
At the same time I was on edge because of the danger quotient in what we were doing. That spelled cigarette to me, but I didn’t dare light up in here. Daddy would smell it and interesting questions might be asked I had no desire to answer.
Broots might be a nerd, but I didn’t want to think of him ten years from now in Mississippi. With no mind and giant muscles, whacking miles of roadside weeds. Debbie deserved better than that. Anybody deserved better than that.
When he made Eureka! noises I rushed to stare over his shoulder. What was up didn’t mean much to me, but the screen kept dancing through fleeting changes.
“It wasn’t so hard after all, Miss Parker. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be, but I didn’t dare hold out any hope to you. Once I got past the usual entry codes, most of his system is open to me. There’s several areas heavily trip-wired I think, but we don’t seem to need to get in those.... Ah hah!”
“What?”
“Under manpower assignments. Here’s my eighteen names... Oh my. Oh my.”
“That does not sound like a positive type ‘oh my’ to my ears, Broots. I don’t want negative ‘oh my’ s today. What is the problem?”
“Everybody in those categories are forwarded from an originator system. Hundreds of people. Anyone who went to North Dakota on Centre business is lost in the shuffle.”
“Well, damn it, Broots! Unshuffle them! We can’t stay here forever! Pick out the names!”
“Miss Parker....” he began. I could truly learn to detest my own name pronounced in that tone of utter resignation. “The separation point is in another executive computer.”
He tried to meet my stare. “They’re in Raines’ individual system. Your Daddy is just being a bureaucrat at this point. Someone else makes up the paperwork. Your Daddy signs it. He has the authority, but has delegated it elsewhere.”
“Raines?”
“Raines. I know for a fact he has his own pocket universe just like your Daddy does. Only I’d be willing to bet nothing is easy in his system. Paranoids tend to love complex sensitive systems with more trip wires than the Chinese border.”
“Raines.” He wagged his head, ‘no’ written with every shake.
DAMN!
I glanced back towards the security cameras and froze. Adrenaline sung in my veins at the sight of Daddy and someone else walking down the corridor. Towards here.
“Broots,” I began. “I think we’d better leave. Now.”
He looked over, and a string of curses came out under his breath that I hadn’t known he knew. A few were foreign, and if we got out of this, he was going to tell me them. If.
“Close down, log off, let’s move our fannies out...”
“In a minute, Miss Parker...”
“A MINUTE?!”
I wondered if that qualified as a screech?
“Ah, Broots....”
“If I leave without issuing the correct prompts, it won’t shut down. Do you think your Daddy will believe he left his computer on? That’s what I thought....”
I felt like ripping his eyes out, knowing I was finally losing some of my infamous cool. Thinking. Thinking. Stall Daddy. How? He’d... He’d... Oh my. It sounded as inane in my own head as it had on Broots’ lips.
I had a vision of Broots whacking weeds and it hurt. No way was I going to dash through the side door and leave him behind. Besides Broots would tell Daddy who was the instigator in this.
“Broots...”
“A second....hit the number key on that security camera, yeah, that returns it to inside the desk. The surfer...let me move an inch...goes in this drawer here. No, the right... More. Good enough for now, I hope.” He hit a key and stood up.
The door was swinging open.
“Lay down, on your back, dammit, here, side of the desk! Pull your pants down. NOW!” I whispered.
I stepped out of my panties, feeling them tear somewhere. Tossing them on the padded chair.
Daddy turned towards his desk. Saw me. Getting up from a crouch alongside his desk. Hair out of place, blouse still mostly undone. I stood up, buttoning it, going around the desk fast. Daddy still stood in the door, his guest merely a vague presence in the corridor.
“Daddy...” I faltered. Not so deliberately.
“Angel?” Daddy strode past me until he could see something of Broots’ head alongside the desk. Then he made a hundred and eighty degree turn on a speck of dust, smiling at the other man. Blowing smoke in his ear. Distracting him. Giving me a little time and space to get me and my obvious lover out of his office.
Broots arose on my whispered command, trying to arrange himself so that he appeared as normal as ever. “What....” His face was pure white with a blue undertone.
“Get dressed, idiot. Daddy thinks we were in here playing hide the Oscar Meyer. Leave now before other thoughts come into his head and he starts questioning you. Or Raines does.” I wouldn’t have thought lips could turn pure blue like that so fast.
“Yo...your...your Daddy....”
“Is going to slice several thick morsels off that ass of mine you admire so much, lather barbecue sauce on them and grill them over a mesquite wood fire. But I think we’re free and clear on this.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Parker...”
The nerd was feeling sorry for me. I was also feeling sorry for me right now, so we made a matched pair. My ulcer was growling.
Maybe I should have retrieved my panties, but I figured Daddy finding them on the seat of his executive leather chair would reinforce the legend I’d just created.
Jeez! I hoped it wasn’t going to get around I was desperate enough to start banging my tame geek.
One of my best satin pair, too.
“Broots?” I asked. “You have any cigarettes on you?”
He actually patted his pockets looking for some. I was not tracking too well right then. He turned to look at me after it dawned on him what he was doing. “I don’t smoke, Miss Parker. You know that. It’s bad for your health.”
Bad for my health.
It was a release thing, I know. But I had to lean against the damned corridor wall and laugh and laugh and laugh. I couldn’t stop, it was a hysterical thing, I knew that, but I had to do it anyways. I slid down to where I was sitting on the crappy concrete floor, skirt under me. The echo was Broots, as he sat alongside me. Hysterical. Just like me. When we could stop laughing, I got up and helped him to his feet. Gotta find some cigarettes. The hell with the ulcer.
THE NEXT DAY
BLUE COVE, DELAWARE
THE CENTRE
I was wearing bra and panty hose under my clothes this time when I came up to Broots. Time for thinking and constructive action. Broots was huddling with Sydney again, and they both looked up as my heels rang across the concrete.
“Anything?”
“It appears Jarod was in New Orleans again. The red notebook is being shipped to us as we speak. The trail was several days old so I didn’t schedule an emergency flight. We go out this afternoon, and I presumed you want us to go. Delta. Hopefully we won’t find any more pineapples to send us to Hawaii.”
I nodded my head, not really interested in chasing wild geese tonight. Jarod was already deep into his legend by now, his Pretend. Jarod was a priest in Newark or a Dentist in Mobile or whatever, by now. And we were spinning wheels.
“Isn’t that your phone, Sydney?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “My phone....” He stopped and a small smile almost appeared on his lips. He looked from me to Broots and back again. Knowing his ears were in danger if he got a smirk on his face. I cringed to think the Centre might be buzzing about my assignation with Broots in Daddy’s office.
No. Daddy would never breathe a syllable about THAT.
“However, Miss Parker, I really should check messages. Maybe I’ve had an important call since earlier this morning.” He rose and left, silent as a cat.
When I whipped around to check, Sydney was already thirty yards away. He hadn’t even looked back.
“Broots,” I whispered in his ear. “About our special little problem, the one with a list of names. How are we doing on that?”
“Dead in the water and the bottom leaks.” Men must stand around in the bars and locker rooms inventing new little clichés of wisdom like that. Anything so they wouldn’t have to think.
“Are you all right, Miss Parker? I hope your Daddy....” he trailed off. Offering me sympathy. I didn’t want sympathy. I just wanted a few names. That’s all.
“Apart from an inability to sit down for a month or two, I guess I’m fine.”
Maybe Daddy wasn’t really my Daddy. Maybe he was actually my brother-in-law. But he’d raised me as his own. It still hurt when he got into one of those loud tempers of his. It was not fun listening to him use words like ‘nymphomania’, ‘diseases’ and ‘promiscuous’.
It didn’t help to know they were accurate.
“Now tell me in words of one syllable or less, if you can manage it, what we need to access Raines files.”
Broots looked at me, his mouth catching flies again.
“Miss Parker...” he started. “Man, you are one relentless woman, did you know that?” Then hurriedly found something to do on his computer.
“Broots,” I asked, with honey in my voice. “Do you recall what it is that we do?” He shook his confused head.
“We hunt someone. You, Sydney and I comprise a team searching for our little lost lab rat, Jarod. Poor confused Ratboy does not want to return to the loving arms of the Centre. Which is why a team was formed to find him. Because it would be difficult.”
Very close to his ear, making sure he got plenty of secondary smoke from my cigarette, I continued. “Which is why I’m team leader. Relentless is part of the job description. Capisch?” Nodding head.
“Good. Now tell me in teensy weensey little words a woman can understand, what the &%$#@ we have to do to draw those few names I want out of Raines’ computer files?”
I could just take all eighteen names and spend the next year or two years waxing them all. One by one. Not only was it inefficient, it was risky. I’d probably get nabbed by someone in a dark suit long before all eighteen had been terminated.
What was that Clint Eastwood movie? The ‘Eiger Sanction.’ A spy was one of three or four people and Clint inadvertently terminated them all. Got a bonus for ingenuity.
“Miss Parker....” he began, then stopped. Not looking at me. Not good news. “We’d have to physically sit in front of Raines’ computer and hack into his system. Remember, he’s a paranoid, so it’d be full of death traps and trip wires. Which means I’d have to tiptoe past his defenses. Which means I’d have to sit there for hours.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there would no longer be the threat of a dismissal Raines’ style. There would be the certainty.
“My Debbie would grow up an orphan. And I might wake up in a Mexican road gang instead of a Mississippi one. Having a hiney hole so loose you could park a Corvette in it. Thirty years from now.”
That’s it. They spend those hours and hours in the bars and locker rooms inventing new buzz-words and phrases.
“Broots, why are you so obsessed with prison road gangs?”
“Because the prospect of being cut up for body parts and reappearing as someone else’s kidney or lung transplant is something I want to think about even less.”
Sounds reasonable.
My mind is going. Broots’ little sayings are sounding reasonable.
“Forget that much,” I told him. “Concentrate on what we have to do, then we’ll concentrate on how to achieve our goals.”
“Our? Excuse me, Miss Parker, but that’s what I’ve been saying, isn’t it? There is no ‘our’ on this. You’ve got this bug in your ear and it’s liable to get both of us killed. You. Not me.”
Ignoring his narrow-minded outburst, I went on as if he were being reasonable.
“We know where the target is,” I said in a quiet reasonable tone. “Our problem is accessing it in a short period of time.”
“What do you mean ‘We’, Kemosabe?” Broots added.
Hours and hours in the bars inventing new clichés. Gotta be.
“WE” I continued, “can get into the office itself. Raines has a series of steel pin tumbler locks since he doesn’t trust the pass card system anymore. There are these little hand-held machines that pick locks for you. No skill needed. Sitting in each and every one of our limousines. Standard equipment. No problem in ‘borrowing’ one.”
I think.
“I can get us inside his office. What do we need to do then?”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Dead serious.” Maybe a little vague threat can put some iron in his backbone.
Now I’m starting to think in clichés. Is that my ulcer grumbling?
Broots looked off in the distance before he spoke. “I genuinely wish you lots of luck in your new hobby, Miss Parker. But I’m not getting involved in it. I’m part of a team hunting Jarod. Period. You go into Raines’ office, you’re on your own. I wouldn’t follow my wife into there, if it’d bring her back.”
Stubborn little nerd.
“I’d be right there, Broots. Anything happens I’d be able to defend you. Even from Raines. Trust me.” He was giving me a WTF look as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. I couldn’t believe it either. I kept thinking of how many weeds there were alongside the county roads of Mississippi.
Okay, we move to plan B.
“I know how hard it is to make ends meet, what with the sitters and day care. School supplies, you probably paid a bundle for her clothes. And then there’d be those great Nike’s she’d want to wear...”
“L.A.Gear.”
“Whatever. I could get you onto the double-time gravy train...”
It must be catching. Now I’m speaking in clichés. Whatever.
“....Maybe three or four-times, for all that great computer work you’ve been doing...” Still a doubtful look. “...And I could find the funds for that Disneyworld trip you want to take Debbie on out of my own pocket. I could probably sweeten things up for you quite a great deal...” Lay on the purr. Let it hang there. He knows I’d deliver, that’s one ray of sunshine here. Promises and threats are things I don’t forget.
“You know, Miss Parker, that’s very attractive. I could really use the money, but there’s a point you didn’t mention.” Bad news.
“Between my lungs and your heart we’d probably save the life of two really sick old rich white guys when they need transplants.
“Uh-uh, no, no, no way Jose, not by the hair of my chimney-chin- chin. Going inside Raines’ computer is a no-can-win situation, Miss Parker. Get yourself a SWAT Team if you want inside that set of poisonous snake’s jaws.” The hours guys must spend creating new clichés and passing them on to other guys.
The nerd was actually developing a set of balls. Not good. I can’t let this develop into one of those guy things where his puny honor or whatever will be at stake. On to plan C.
I eased myself into an angle between Broots and his precious computer. Letting him feel leg with his leg. He backed up a little in that rolling chair, and I eased in front of him.
“Come here, Broots.” Really low voice, sexy, come-hither. Leaning on his shoulders with my arms, he’s got to smell what went on my pulse-points earlier this morning. Looking him in the eye, smiling.
Close, damned close. Closer yet. Spread my legs to the sides, let the skirt ride up a little.
Hold on tight to him. Crouch a little bit, pull my pelvis to him. Ease my hips forward. Then my hands glide down his front until I have hold of his hips.
When I jerk his hips forward I’m sitting spread-legged on his lap. He’s got a major reaction by this time and I can feel the maleness of it in my groin.
“You like that, Brootsie baby?” He slides forward, and I can finally sit on his lap. Damn the way the little *&^%$#@ office chair keeps wanting to roll away. Mine doesn’t roll that good. I could give him a lap dance right now if it wasn’t for.... Yeah. Use the roll to tuck him into me when I tilt my pelvis into his bod. Give him a little face-to-face lap dance.
“Some things are worth taking a risk for, Brootsie. You ever hear the phrase about how some things are even worth dying for?” Grinding myself into what every male thinks of as their family jewels. Their most precious possession. What a delusion.
The good thing was that I could tell Broots was going to do any little thing I asked him for. He should have taken the money.
Let’s hear it for plan C. I am woman. I am invincible. Frankly, it didn’t feel all that bad holding the nerd and rubbing myself on his shivering bod. At least he likes women. I wondered how long it’s been for him between women?
Wow. I could definitely get into this lap-dancing gig. Dammit, Broots, scoot forward some more.... There. That’s better. This is fun.
ONE DAY AFTER THE RETURN FROM NEW ORLEANS
REST AND SNACK AREA
THE CENTRE
“Eighty-five cents for a Snickers! That’s plain flat-out robbery! A dollar for a Snapple. Where do they except us to get that sort of money, Miss Parker?”
Same place we got it for the last few price increases. He should pay vending machine prices for cigarettes a couple of weeks.
Broots was looking at the vending person, no, microwave repair. I was trying not to get bumped as he went out with the little heater. He should dump his coveralls in the cleaner bin this year sometime.
“One problem, Miss Parker, is believability.”
?????
Why use a simple phrase when a complex one is available...
“We walk down to Raines’ office right now there are a thousand things we could legitimately be doing. We stand in front of his door during the midnight shift and we’d be conspicuous.”
“During the night we could be....” Trailing off into a frown.
“Once in, I think I can work his system. He probably built it himself and he doesn’t know that much about computers. Trust me on that. A secret Internet surfer he is not. Give me time.....” He was looking at me funny again.
“Is that name really worth all this?” he asked. Including the promise of him being allowed to play hide the sausage in the Snow Goddess? Yes, it was, to me. He hadn’t been looking at that wide swath of blood two stories up like I had.
We slowly left the tiny break lounge, with it’s banks of greedy machines. The electric golf-kart rumbled out of the little niche it was in, past us. Broots kept watching it until it turned the corner.
“Miss Parker,” he began. “Did you just see that?
“What?” I looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
“That cart.”
“Yeah?”
“What did it just do?”
“Replaced the microwave, I guess. The worker did at least. Why?”
“Just him in the cart?’
“Yes, just him. What is this, Broots? Sugar rush do funny things to your brain or what?”
“There were two guys in the cart. Which one do you think was the taller? The blond or the fat guy?”
“The fat guy. Now Broots, will you...” Suddenly I made the connection. “There was just one guy in the cart, wasn’t there?”
“Almost. The blond was a woman.” Broots grinned.
“Miss Parker, I think I just figured out how to be invisible at night in front of Raines’ office.”
NEXT WEEK
RAINES’ OFFICE DOOR
12:22 IN THE MORNING
Just another crummy yellow golf-kart and two slobs in overalls on it. Going reluctantly to do some of the work they get paid for. Both with mustaches, both as commonplace as you can get.
“How much time?”
Broots whispered his answer in my ear. “Any second...” Suddenly the world went black as every light and machine went down in the Centre. Broots’ little interrupt program worked. Maybe.
The emergency lights came on, flickered, steadied. We were at the door. I got off, the mechanized lock pick slightly hidden by my body, finger on the on switch. The top one first, insert the pick, feel and hear the lock process into the lock, each part of it moved back until it was unlocked. Then the second, the Yale, seconds more. The next, forever it seemed, this was the toughest. The machine whined as it forced reluctant tumblers over, then finished. The fourth, seconds again. Broots was counting in a whisper almost lower than hearing.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-six....”
Then we were through and I re-bolting the door. “Cart?”
“Sitting right next to another in the niche.” He had something like a big channel surfer with two sticks on electric cords. He waved it at the door, up and down.
Suddenly the quality of light changed out in the corridor. Power was back on in the Centre. We both fingered our mustaches, wondering what the door alarms would do.
“They seem to be uninterrupted, Miss Parker. All clear.”
“Tell me once more. When does the power go down again?”
“Five fifty-four. With any luck we should finish this up in half the time. Like I said, the extra time is our safety edge. Just in case there are snags, it gives me extra time.”
I lit my little key-chain light and Broots scurried to the computer. He left again, grabbing a chair. Of course. Raines doesn’t sit in normal chairs if he can help it. He has his own special-made chair-stool. Broots kicked it over, then froze.
“Miss Parker? Please don’t move.” That did not sound good.
He was up waving those magic wands around, and it struck me there might be alarms elsewhere in this room. They didn’t have problems like this in ‘Mission Impossible’, did they?
He slowly walked around and I got my pistol out of it’s holster in my back. Wondering if I should save a bullet for Broots and me....
Been watching too much late night TV.
“Seems all clear....”
I let out the breath I’d been holding for the past ten minutes. Sat down on the floor facing the door. Then whispered curses for another ten. All this ‘Mission Impossible’ stuff seemed so.... entertaining. When it was on a TV screen. I kept the palms of my hands on the floor where I sat. Wouldn’t do for Broots to see me shaking like this.
Eventually I pulled myself to my feet again. Trying to tell myself the trembling in my legs was from fatigue. Not convincing me in the slightest.
For the first time in my life I was no longer convinced of my own invulnerability and immortality. This situation was not a rush.
Leaning over Broots’ shoulder I put my hand on the other shoulder. Realized where it was. Left it. &@%$# it.
It felt really good to touch another human being right then. Even if it was the geek.
He seemed to spend all his time going back to a page, again and again. Finally he asked me in an odd voice; “What was the date in Boston, Miss Parker? The one where his tank exploded?”
Eventually we figured it out. He tapped it in as a code, changed the day numbers three times, then barely breathed a ‘Eureka!’ when access was granted. I guess there was logic in the choice. It wouldn’t be a day Raines would soon forget.
He found other hold-ups, and his fingers made the screen flicker in incessant rhythms. It struck me there was an art to being a good hacker. It was like a dance. The ardent suitor and the reluctant goal. Whirl and whirl and come back again.
I found myself with my face in his hair. Breathing the clean antiseptic soap and the fear-sweat. He jerked a few times, then continued with his wooing of the computer. When I leaned back I began to massage his neck and shoulders.
He looked back at me when I began, but returned to his hypnotic courting ritual. He remained tense as a spring under pressure, and I eventually gave it up as a lost cause.
When I lay down on the floor I didn’t even remember my head going back. When Broots whispered in my ear I jerked to a sit, gun aimed straight at the door. I’d gone to sleep.
“It’s okay....it’s okay. Relax. I’m downloading most of his files, just in case. Onto DSA discs. I can unlock and search at my leisure. Later. When we’re out of here.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after four. Less than two more hours. We can do that standing on our heads.”
All those male-bonding hours in locker rooms and bars.
Now we had to spend eternity on bare wooden chairs. Raines wasn’t one to encourage people dropping by to shoot the breeze. Hour after hour it seemed.
All that work, and now boredom. Getting the lock pick out of the glove compartment. Finding where the carts were, how they traveled. Stealing the alarm tell. Creating the complex series of programs to crash the power twice in a night. Then crash eight random cameras as well as the ones on Raines’ floor. Try to leave zero trace to be found afterwards. Programming it to seem as if the problem was the outside source. The power company. The coveralls. Even the *&%$#@ fake mustaches in Dover. So much to do.
It all seemed so easy on ‘Mission: Impossible’.
Broots actually snarled at me when I asked him what time he had. So maybe it was the fortieth time. We needed to be sure.
As the magic minute neared, Broots stood behind me. Keeping time, trying not to jog my hand with the pistol in it.
The lights went out. Again. We were out the door, me swinging twice in a wide arc. The cameras should go back on with the power. Emergency lights made things look funny, but I could see the locks on the door clearly.
Broots went for the cart and I re-locked the door. Two locked automatically when the door came back. My pick-lock machine soon had the last two firmly locked.
Before I sat down in the moving cart the lock-pick went into the back. Just another piece of unknowable stuff amongst the other junk there. My gun was held under a rag and we buzzed down the aisle.
The lights came on, the freight elevator door opened to admit the cart, and we rose one floor. Trying not to sneeze my fake mustache off we drove off to the niche the cart came from.
One more glitch in the security camera’s run this morning and in the interval we ditched our uniforms and helmets in the trash. Seconds later two Centre employees were walking away from the break area with cups of bad coffee in their hands. Starting a new day. Sort of. First I was to go home, come back to work later. Broots was to go home then, drive Debbie to school, phone in sick and collapse at home.
At least we didn’t have to punch time cards in and out. Small blessing for being part of the Jarod team.
I had hoped to feel elated. Not depressed. But I was exhausted and had yet to think about my next step. Broots would find me names now. Names of men I was going to obtain answers from. First...sleep.
2:05 THE SAME DAY
BROOTS” DESK
THE CENTRE, BLUE COVE
Sydney didn’t know what to think. Broots didn’t cringe when he heard my heels, though he did jerk. I wished I could have worn my flats, but it would be out of character. My entire body wanted to slouch and shuffle. Why didn’t long hours chasing Jarod make me so tired? Maybe the chase was getting to me, if one night’s stress could waste me like this.
“You find anything on our lab rat today?” Back straight, stalk, let the hips sway a hair, be normal. Show attitude. Be normal. Remember, Miss Bitch, those legs you’re flashing are the Centre’s finest. The leather mini, the hair falling perfect. I am woman. I am strong. I have one &%$#@ killer bod.
“Or were you following a hot lead while the rest of us were doing our jobs?” That didn’t sound up to my previous standard of sneer, but it’d have to do for today. I’d been here since before ten in the morning building my legend. What I wanted to do was sleep six hours. Then curl up with my Bunny for hours and sleep until tomorrow. It’s difficult to be snippy when you want to say “Duh?” in reply to everything.
“As of a matter of fact, Miss Parker, we’re trying to refine that system where we track incidents Jarod might respond to. Also, now there was that cap for the Houston Oilers in New Orleans, and that actually gives a few more possibilities. Besides Houston, I mean.”
“I’m sure, Broots. Just keep hacking.”
I edged closer to Broots’ side. Waiting until Sydney moved to a table for a minute. In a low voice I asked Broots; “Have you come up with any good names?”
Broots knew what I meant. A name for someone who had been in North Dakota. Broots still didn’t know it was a someone who had been finishing my sister’s young life. That information, and my revenge, were all mine.
I suddenly realized Sydney was staring at my hand. It was on Broots’ shoulder. Staring as Broots own hand came up and patted it.
Jerking my hand back, dismay flooded through me. I had a debt to pay to Broots. I pay debts, even one to him. *&%$#@. There was no need for Sydney to know, though.
TWO DAYS LATER
FIFTH SUB LEVEL
OUTSIDE THE LADIE’S JOHN
“This is it, Broots baby. Here. Right now. Take it or leave it. You want to slip me your pathetic Oscar Meyer, you’ll do it now, when it’s on my terms.”
“Ahh....”, he began
“If you’re thinking of even trying to say the words love or darling to me, forget it. I’ve always been Miss Parker to you, and I always will. I don’t have a first name. Understand? Or do you want me to pull a Lorene Bobbit on you and throw part of you into a Seven-Eleven parking lot? Capisch?”
“You’re not showing much Faith in my discretion, Miss Parker.”
“That was very close, Broots. I told you don’t use my first name. What we’re going to do here is make like crazed minks, not make love. Get over your delusions. Now.”
“But the ladies john?”, he asked.
“There are no women working on this floor, and there are no offices they might be called to. This is safer than a Motel. No vice cops able to barge in.
“You want to go see Raines and ask him to loan his gurney for a few minutes? Or try for my Daddy’s desk? God knows it’s big enough. Or maybe that damned hot tub Brigitte keeps using for her sex trips? She could drop in and make it a threesome, then cut our throats afterward. Or....”
“Enough, Miss Parker. You’ve established once again that you’re in control.” He had the nerve to caress my shoulder to neck to chin. His hand felt cool and left a warm trail. Damn, but he was taking too much advantage of me now our bargain looked like being completed. Touching me. Enjoying me. I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying him touching me like that.
I wasn’t. Keep that straight in my head.
His hands were behind my neck and I tensed. “I said I don’t kiss. Kissing is for lovers, not us. We’re not lovers, we’re not. We’re *&%$#@ mating bunny rabbits. And I’ll give you such a sweet ride.....” Where had that come from?
He kept distracting me, rubbing my vertebrae like that with the backs of his fingers, finding the little hairs at the base of my head, the fuzz down my back neck. He kept touching me, oh hell, he shouldn’t be touching lightly like that, he was supposed to be all panting and sweaty and groping me and pawing at my breasts and butt. That hot tight butt he had to be mad to inspect inch by inch. He kept distracting me. It wasn’t fair. Didn’t he know it’d distract me if he kept caressing my neck and now my brow, and the lobes of my ears...
“Broots,” I managed.
“Hmmmmm?”
“Let’s at least get out of the @!%^*+# corridor and into the john?” That should slow things down a bit. I didn’t like being rushed. He wasn’t supposed to be sucking on my fingers like that, that was so damned nice....
“The corridor....” I continued. Why did he have to keep touching my neck? How the hell did computer guys learn about girl’s necks?
He swung the door out with no more than two tries, and I was sort of carried in a circle and through and he never stopped sucking on my fingers and then I felt the cold tile wall behind me. Shocking me back into sudden sanity.
“In! In! Let’s get into one of these stalls, now....”
He just kept touching, and now he was licking an ear, that was too much like kissing...
“I said no kissing, dammit!”
“I’m licking. Not kissing. And don’t you like it?” He began humming as his lips and teeth captured one earlobe. The vibration felt nice.
“....No kissing....”
”Well then,” he said with calm precision, “I don’t expect you to kiss me back, but you never said anything about licking....”
Oh God! He moved his head across the front of my face, his fingers lingering on my chin, licking the base of my throat as he went. Now he was finding the lines of muscle in my neck...
“You have such a beautiful neck, it’s crying for touches, it wants to be held, it wants...”
When was the last time anyone said nice things about my neck? And licked it like he was doing? Goddammit, he was male. He was supposed to have his hands in my panties already. I liked strong men, I liked strong hands on my butt and my breasts. I liked the rush of sex, knowing I’m going to get laid. Knowing I’m in control and feeling I’m out of control, why did he have to be pussyfooting around like this? Enjoying my neck? No one had paid any attention to my beautiful neck since...?
Yeah, August, the one I found in Rehoboth beach. We went from The Strand to Sydney’s and she thought I was a jazz fan because it was a music place. She didn’t know about my tame Sydney. She liked my neck. She kept kissing it all weekend long.... Just like this.....
“The stall,” I pushed, “Let’s get in the goddamned stall, let’s get this show on the road, I’m not going to hump you on the &^%$# floor, dammit, move it!”
He’s got a diamond cutter, I can feel that against my hip and belly, he’s got to be so hard he’d come the first stroke he had in me. Which was okay. I liked it when I got men off. I liked the feeling inside me when they gave me their all. Even when they used a condom I knew it, and I could feel a twinge in my cervix. They didn’t all get me off, but I enjoyed that rush.
Besides I really didn’t care for Broots to spend a long time in me. I wanted to pretend as much as possible that it never happened, and a one-minute quickie would suit me just fine. I liked the way he kept touching my skin with his fingertips, though.
I closed the door behind us, latching it. Then, for the first time grabbing his joint, working it through his pants. Stopping immediately when the thought occurred to me he might come in his pants. He was supposed to get a real session with me. Hand jive went out of fashion back in 1963, didn’t it?
My promises had to mean something, didn’t they? Otherwise why make them? Besides I liked it when he got back to sucking on my fingers and running his fingers down my chest and just when the hell had my blouse gotten open so far down? I didn’t even mind when he was licking at the base of my throat again.
“The pants, the pants, the F+&%@* pants, Broots, get them down, dammit...” Despite both our frantic efforts they finally unzipped and I slid them down to his feet. In a frenzy now, I wanted this over with. I wanted him to stop touching me and licking me. I leaned over and pulled his pants off his feet, both shoes landing outside.
Door open, retrieve them, turn to see Broots love tool staring at me. I’d seen a lot bigger. But I liked them all. I liked the thick black ones. I liked the silicone ones on dykes. Thin ones, short ones, I liked all of them.
I didn’t need any of them. Want was a different matter. I didn’t need anything to survive but myself.
Hands on his thighs I leaned forward, taking him in my mouth, licking, enjoying the flavor men have, even the super-clean ones like Broots.
I was tempted to do him that way, I liked that too. But I’d promised him a twelve-course dinner. Not a cheeseburger and fries. He would get his piece of tail off the Ice Princess. They may call me Miss Bitch and the Snow Goddess, but every person in the Centre knew I was one hot woman in bed. Even Broots was making me hot enough so that I found wetness when I felt my groin. Talk about improbable things...
I let him fill my mouth again, getting plenty of spit on him for lube. Damned if he didn’t pull a condom out of his shirt pocket and hold it out. With as much vehemence as I could I took it, tore it open with my teeth and slipped the thing over him, making sure of a space in the head.
Before I could move forward and ride him, he pulled out a little black bottle from the other shirt pocket. I stood/squatted there, skirt up to my armpits while he squeezed some on his fingers and shocked me by applying those fingers to my crotch. He’d just lubed me up, barely playing pinkie with me in the process. Then wet the rubber with the stuff as well.
I shuffled forward................
TEN MINUTES LATER
LADIES JOHN
FIFTH SUB LEVEL
Finally, my legs shaking, I managed to whisper a question in his ear.
“How did you do that?”, I asked.
“Practice.”
He must have felt my question. “Once a week I go up to the Tantric Exercises class up in Wilmington. Grandma watches my daughter. I have a lot of fun there.”
I pulled back to stare at him, almost speechless with surprise.
“I suppose he has you all doing karmic chants and all that New Age baloney?”
“It’s a she, and she’s in her seventies, and she doesn’t do hare krishna’s. But she likes to show me lots of things. She usually has seven or eight in her class and the single guys usually practice with her and it’s a load of fun....”
He must have partially read my look. I was squatting there with something in me that was only now feeling soft and he was telling me he practiced on Grandma Moses.
I leaned forward and we kissed again. Only this time I took his lower lip between my teeth and bit until I knew he was bleeding good. The damned nerd didn’t hardly flinch, just smiled at me. Why shouldn’t he smile at me? He’d just had a piece of ass off of me and I was world-class. I didn’t even want to wonder if I was as good as GrandMa Moses, her with her damned stable of studs.
“You cheated,” I murmured.
“Guilty as charged,” he admitted. The worse part about sex with men was that damned smirk they all got on their face afterwards.
Broots was going to want seconds someday, probably real soon. The hell with him. Let him go wait in line while GrandMa Moses pulls the rest of the train first.
At least he didn’t say anything about my mouth tasting like soot, the way so many did.
And where the hell were my cigarettes?
A CHEAP MOTEL
EASTERN SHORE, MARYLAND
I made sure, first thing, that my appearance was perfect. This was for high stakes, after all. I pulled the tiny one-shot twenty-two out of its holster inside my panties and again made sure it was already cocked. Yeah, yeah, it would not be recommended by the NRA to carry around a cocked weapon, even an almost-toy like this. If it went off it could permanently cramp my sex life. But I was not a congressman, however, and the NRA could kiss my grits. The Panty Surprise remained my ultimate fall-back.
At that instant the door was gently rapped. Way to go. Ten minutes early. I’ve still got the touch. When I opened the door for him, he stood there for most of a minute, drinking in the full effect.
The nightblue skirt, the red blouse out at the waist and hanging open, the deep-scooped crimson bra on, hopefully the jerk isn’t one of those who need big.... No. There couldn’t one person in the Centre that hadn’t figured out by now I’m not Dolly &%$#@ Parton.
“Come on in, you are alone, aren’t you? Checked the mirror a few times, you know the game, right? All the games....” I stroked his muscular arm under the jacket and shirt. Allowing a second of purring to escape my throat. He cupped my head with his hand, drawing me closer.
Before our lips met, I chuckled. Then put both hands to his face. Tracing the line of his chin as I whispered; “We do this at my pace, baby. I’ll let you know when we can get to that.
“Are you really big into kissing? No? Well, neither am I, so we’ll start out by getting to know each other a little better first. It’s a whole lot more fun this way,” I coaxed.
“Get to know....?” he began.
“I know, I know, we both know what we’re here for. Everyone also knows that I like to play with people’s minds before I play with their bodies.” I chuckled at that, and he answered with his own short laugh. He moved to open my shirt, and I held his hands.
“I get you first,” I said, trying to make it sound husky. ”I like the buildup, and you’ve got all night, right? Not going anyplace in particular? Then let me get that jacket....”
The tie next, pull the shirt out, get the cuff links and unbutton it, circling around behind him, pulling it off, running my hands over his back, letting my nails draw a little blood. He made a noise and let me pull his A-shirt over his head.
I rubbed myself into his back, and he held my hands as I found his nipples and scratched them, hard. He yelped from that, but seemed relaxed as I rubbed my belly into his butt, my breasts into his bare back.
“I like to give a little bit of pain....nothing major, scratching, there’s the door if you don’t want to take it. I think sex and pain are not necessarily exclusive....” He seemed to understand the phrase. With a Cleaner you can’t always get one that reads very well.
“Are you a whipper?,” he gently asked.
“No, and I don’t like to be bound, either. But I don’t mind using something on my man. If he’s man enough to let me be in charge. That bother you?” He asked a silent question and I answered it, sounding resigned.
“I like to be the one on top, and I REALLY like to feel I’m all the way in control. That I’m raping you. It....” A pause.
“It’s....something I like to do. I got a pair of handcuffs, you understand?” Draw my body against the front of his body, let my skirt ride up to my waist, rub my hip on his crotch. When he tried groping my crotch, I danced away.
“I set the pace, remember? Ground rules...”
He looked funny, which is hard to do when he’s as stiff as he was. Maybe he was debating playing a bit rough with me, I mean, it’d be hard to yell harassment or something when I’m the one lured him here. Of course he might also understand afterwards I’d terminate the SOB.
“Miss Parker,” he said, respectful again, “I really don’t think I can allow the handcuffs or ropes or anything like that. If you really need to have that stuff, maybe we’d better....”
So much for plan A.
I leaned forward, kneading his pecs with my teeth, letting a little purr escape my throat. “No.... What’d Terminator say? No problemo, yeah, that’s no problemo....”, I offered.
He reached for me again, big grin back on his face. I danced a little bit and he changed his move to caressing my neck.
God, that felt good. On with Plan B.
“We get you first,” I teased. “Off with the pants, here, let me get the belt....and the zipper...”
When he stood out of his pants, I chuckled and pulled his whanger out of his green boxer shorts. Nice size. Once a woman gets to that point it’s hell for a man to back down.
“Just stand right there,” I commanded. Husky, like I was feeling sexy or something. Men could be such jerks. Usable jerks, but still....
I unbuttoned my red blouse and draped it on a chair back. A loud zip after I got the side button, and the dark blue leather skirt was folded onto the motel desk. His first look at the embroidered angel on the crotch of my panties probably made him sweat.
Turn, turn again, let the crimson underwear work it’s magic on his mind. I stopped so he could knead my buttcheeks, admiring the too damned gorgeous visual feast of thong underwear. When he bent to kiss my butt I danced away again. He mustn’t grope my crotch or he’d discover my little Panty Surprise. Men always groped. It was something about undies that made them want to do caressing, feeling, panty diving.
As I turned again and reached behind to take off the bra at the same time, he didn’t get miffed at me. I lifted my nipples at him, vaguely annoyed at the way they spiked. Not now, I told my body. Maybe never.
At that point I chuckled and let him suck on my nipples. The thought crossed my mind again of getting a boob job. Just a minimal one. Nothing obvious. Just maybe a single cup bigger. Thinking this while he’s trying to suck milk from me.
I crank his stiff joint for a few minutes. Somewhere he’d lost his boxers and now looked all hot male. I adored feeling his hands all over my ass. Visual aids rule.
Time to proceed. It was the work of only a second to accidentally drop the fake diamond earring to the floor and kick it under the bed. It was why I’d gotten a pair of zircon’s made for non-pierced ears. So it could be just slipped off.
“Oh, hell,” I announced. “My earring just fell off, maybe it’s under the bed, it’s a real diamond, would you be a doll and get it for me?
In a flash he’s scooting under the bed, no doubt thinking about all the crud he was having to take so he could lay me.
I got behind him, opened the drawer and pulled out the snub-nosed pistol I’d put in there. I moved back, keeping it on him as he squirmed back and rose to his knees. He’d already focused on the part where I now had a pistol aimed at him.
“If this is about the handcuffs....”, he began.
“It’s about a hick town in North Dakota and a stolen car being driven too fast”, I replied.
I had to give him this; he didn’t pose or act or evade. He just muttered a few curses and then looked up at me. “It’s about nothing that need include you, Miss Parker.”
“I’m back to being Miss Parker, I notice. I suppose this means our little romance didn’t last? No matter. We have lots of time and you can tell me all about it. When you left. When you came back. Who was your partner. Who was your control.
“And most important, you can tell me who sanctioned this operation.” She felt an acidic taste at the last word, now. Hope was - had been - a human being, a sister. Not a thing to be terminated. Her sister.
Hope had been a flawed vessel, a bubblehead, maybe not quite so sharp and quick as she should. But you don’t discard sisters the way you do pantyhose. I was able to realize I felt proprietary towards my late sibling, rather than loving, but love could come. Could have.
“Listen, Miss Parker, I’m just doing a job here, you understand? I get told to do something and I do it. They tell me to pitch on the Centre baseball game, I pitch. They tell me to trash some blond in Nowheresville, I trash. I do what I’m told.”
“I’m listening, Mister Muscles, and I’m excited for you to be able to pitch for the Centre. But I haven’t heard a name yet. Any names. Aren’t we going to talk? Has the cat got your tongue? Cooperate...”
That’s as far as I got.
My eyes blinked in involuntary reaction when something materialized out of thin air, coming straight at me. I got off one shot as I startled, but knew it had pulled to the right. My mind processed the fact in retrospect of the Cleaner throwing something at me.
By the time I remembered the earring, he had slammed into my legs, pitching us both onto the floor. I grunted from shock, his hand on my shoulder, felt myself pulled to the man, my neck grabbed, trying to strike out at him, to find him and put a bullet in him. The gun was struck from my hand as I let off another wild bullet. Then he was behind me, alongside me, my neck in a one-armed lock, I couldn’t reach him except for blows and elbows to the body which only made him grunt. I tried kicking, with as little luck. As I tried a particularly energetic kick, he brought his knee up hard into my groin.
The pain shot through me and I couldn’t breathe. The effect had been increased because he was holding me so tight with both arms. My Panty Surprise felt like it had given me a clitectomey, and I tasted my blood from where I’d bitten my upper lip. I could only see through a pinhole for seconds after he kneed me. Anyone who thinks women don’t hurt when they get hit in the groin like that should get reality lessons.
He was on my back, ignoring my attempts to twist out from underneath, one hand in my hair pounding my forehead into the floor, disorienting me. All that training, all those lessons, all those hours on the mat and in the gym, and I couldn’t get organized enough to throw him off or pound him good. He was a man, bigger, stronger in this case, throwing me around one-handed, going to KILL me, goddammit!
He got something, he pulled his suit coat to us, he hit me hard half a dozen times until I was seeing darkness and stars again, then he got something....
...And I felt him loop something over my head.
One hand got up in time to protect my neck, I kicked against something and wound up on top, squirming, peeing on myself, desperate, scrabbling against the motel rug.
He had a wire around my neck, my right hand all that was keeping him from cutting my throat. He was using a two-hand hold on the taut wire, ignoring my twists and jerks, the pain nothing right now, but I could feel my fingers beginning to come apart. My throat was cut on either side of the hand, and the blood was leaking out all over me.
He grunted into my ear, ignoring my thrashing, maybe enjoying it. He spoke to me as I tried to get my breath.
“I work hard enough and long enough, you know I can take your damned head clean off, did you know that?” My left hand couldn’t even find my panties at first, then couldn’t find their way inside them. My damned fingers could barely feel anything, my right hand was a line of sheer agony as it discovered it was being cut into pieces by the wire. I tried wailing but couldn’t get the air.
“Once I got that goddamned smart-assed head of yours off, you know, you know what I’m going to do with that body of yours? I’m going to throw it on that goddamned bed and get what the hell I came here to get, do you understand me, Miss Bitch? You take that picture with you wherever you’re going, Ice Princess, and I’ll see you in Hell.”
I had the little pistol out of the holster now, and I could see only stars, and darkness. Where was he? I tried to twist, and the blood allowed me to partially turn. Fingering my way up his heaving side, I found his shoulder, then his neck, then his chin.
My last chance.
Sitting the one-shot pistol against the soft part inside of his chin bone, I tried levering the trigger back, trying, trying, not even hearing the pop as the twenty-two calibre bullet tore upward into his brain.
I don’t know when I found myself able to breathe again, but it was long minutes before I found myself crying furiously. Babbling, disengaging myself and my fingers from that damned wire. Snot running out of my nose, oh a perfect mess I looked, I know. I’d never known my hand could hurt so much and I knew I’d never have a grip like I did once. I felt liquid all over me and knew a lot of it was my own blood.
I crab scuttled over to the phone, never once looking around, intent on my unknown purpose. I hoped the phone was still there and it was a touch-tone.
In the end I pulled the phone down, punched operator, I could see a little past the stars and the confusion, and the $%@*+ motel clerk came up.
“There’s a one dollar and ninety-five cents a minute fee for an outside line....” Evidently my cursing silenced her, that and my hysterical blubbering. She called the local John Law and gave me Daddy’s number when I repeated it enough times so that the stupid damned bitch understood.
I think the police and the EMS got there first, but a pair of sweepers that knew me arrived to keep everything clean, and the ambulance guy started giving me shots and putting up IV’s. Daddy sent help, Daddy would see everything right, Daddy loved his little Angel...
ONE WEEK LATER
BLUE COVE, DELAWARE
“Miss Parker?”
It was Broots again. Goddammit, I knew he was eventually going to try for seconds on my bod. So let’s listen politely before I sink his pathetic little boat.
“Miss Parker?”, he began, “Have you got a minute or two you could spare me.”
“Sure, Brootsie, what are friends for?”
That one was obvious enough even he got it. He looked at me for a second, then he smiled. “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten your old spirit back, Miss Parker. Me and Sydney were worried about you yesterday, the way you were walking around with that glassy look to your eyes.”
“You have no idea how deeply I am touched by your concern for my well-being. Now what the hell do you want to show me?” It’s hard as hell to be intimidating when the best you can manage is a weak croak.
The wrappings around each of my fingers hurt like hell, I practically had to use a knife to open a pack of cigarettes, and I had to dress myself in sloppy gym clothes because those could be pulled on without fighting zippers and buttons. That or come in naked, and Daddy might be perturbed by that option. Now this nerd was irritating me.
“Not exactly show,” Broots continued. “Just around here, yes, this. That’s all”
Sydney was throwing what appeared a sheet of pale yellow cloth over one of the old green office chairs. It sat in front of a simple formica table, and around it sat two more, different style, office chairs. Scrounge stuff, the sort of thing supposed to be thrown out and instead purloined for personal use.
“Good Morning, Miss Parker,” Sydney said. “I hope you’re feeling better today. We were worried about you yesterday and Wednesday, you looked like you were running on automatic. Not at all your usual bright and cheerful self.” It took me a second to see the carefully repressed smile behind his usual veneer. The treacherous old bastard had just given me a zinger. I almost drew an up and down line in the air for him. Almost.
“Okay, Broots, you’ve gotten me here and you’ve both expressed your loving concern for my health, is that it? Do you require my presence for anything else?” Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word ‘loving’. Don’t want to encourage the reject.
“Just this, we both know how busy you are, it’s a little dinner I’ve made up for you. Actually me and my daughter.”
I must have been staring. Sydney was suddenly busy opening a Tupperware thing, eyes to the table.
Wipe that smile off your mind, I felt like snarling at him.
“There’s not much there, I know how careful you are about eating, and it’s all supposed to be nutritious with minimum fats and sugars.
“It’s Michigan Whitefish, baked with lemon, spinach pasta and a tomato sauce, my daughter makes it, it’s quite good. They teach everyone a few cooking things anymore in school, both boys and girls. She knows more about healthy foods than I do.
“Oh, and one more thing from my daughter.” He handed me what looked like a single twinkie, wrapped in clear plastic, sitting it on the bluish Tupperware bowl. “She said you’ve got to push the envelope a little bit once in a while, and indulge yourself.”
If Sydney had been even hinting he would like to smile or look my way, I would ripped his heart out of his protesting chest. And replaced it with this twinkie.
Brootsie looked warm, but he maintained his innocent and confused-with-life look as he stared me in the face. I suddenly wondered how much of him was genuine beaten-down-into-a-mush and how much was the simple ability to let most everything slide off him like he was made of teflon.
“She says her teacher says a woman should be lean and mean, but that you shouldn’t deny your body food.”
Not a solitary wrinkle showed at the mouth, but he was definitely sweating now. He knew his life lay in my hands. I leaned forward, and smiled a fangs-showing grimace at him and whispered; “Are you pretending to tell me. Again. That I should have more fat on this body than already exists?” The tone was gentle, but his neck got red.
“It’s nutritious, that’s all I’m saying,” he almost stuttered. “And we both do hope you’ll get the wrappings off your neck soon.” I could smell the dozen or more questions he and Sydney wanted to ask me. Afterwards, will there be scars? Can the surgeons take them away? Whathell had I been doing?
Did it scare me? Did I almost lose my head? Literally? Just as they’re probably saying throughout the Centre. Yes and yes and I’ll never say so. Three weeks and the plastic band-aid stitches come out, four weeks for the ones holding my fingers to my hands.
I’ll be back to my old self in no time. I had to.
“You’re welcome to come sit and eat with us,” Sydney dead-panned from where he was opening another Tupperware of his own. “I have a baklava from the Montenegrin place by me. It’s a large piece and I too probably should worry about my health.”
The old ballsey SOB had the nerve to look directly at me when he said that. I think he just wrote some sub-text for me to figure out later. He also waved an expansive hand at the chair they’d covered with a cloth, carefully not smiling. Broots wasn’t smiling either.
“If you don’t, that’s fine, we both know you’re a pretty private person, and we wouldn’t want to intrude.” He fidgeted in front of me for a few seconds, then slightly turned and looked at me again. “If you ever feel like dropping by, for whatever reason, me and Sydney would be glad to have you.”
“Just the two of us, we do not feel the need to be very social, and you needn’t think of this as a period for enforced interpersonal interaction. Just sit. The food tastes better when you’re not alone. It actually does.”
I’ll give him his enforced interpersonal interaction.
I stared, then, still holding the damned Tupperware and twinkie, turned and began to walk away. I realized I missed the point in time when I’d stalk away in my heels and tight skirt and knew every eye was on my jiggling butt. It’s damned hard to be aristocratic in low heels and gym’s.
When I stopped, I immediately began to walk back towards the pair, already sitting down at their dinner table. Both glanced at me, but it was Broots whose ears got red. I guess he thought I was going to rip them off. Instead I stood alongside Broots, staring at Sydney. It’s just not so much fun intimidating people when I look like I’m going to K-Mart’s. It also doesn’t work as well.
“How big a piece?,” I asked.
Sydney showed me, when he opened a smaller canister. “I’ll trade the twinkie for half that,” I said. They both stared at the pastry. Then Sydney reached to his ankle and suddenly he had a six-inch switchblade in his hand, the snick of it’s opening surprising me. Sydney, the perfect old fart, was armed, and probably had been for months.
Broots was trying mightily to look like he’d seen faithful ol’ stick-in-the-mud Sydney with an illegal and lethal weapon each and every day for years. I like to think I pulled it off better than he did. Also, maybe Sydney hadn’t felt the need to carry one until very recently.
Sydney slid half the evil sugary thing onto a paper napkin and laid it on my quickly offered Tupperware. He took off the twinkie, sliting it open before wiping his knife and returning it to wherever he kept it.
“Solingen, I presume?,” I managed.
“They’re legal over there,” he commented to no one in particular. “And yes, nothing but the best for myself. Would you carry a cheap Saturday Night Special in that small-of-your-back holster, Miss Parker? No, of course not.”
With that I simply turned and walked away. I’d never felt so drab and plebeian and un-sexy as I did in that walk. Both men, yes, they were men I admitted, both men had always watched me stalk away in those high heels, watched to catch a glimpse of panty on the days I let my skirt ride up a bit too far in back. It’s a bitch sometimes to get a leather skirt to do that on purpose. The rest of the time it’ll ride up when you don’t want it to.
I was feeling really depressed in these gray gym’s. My Bunny was no help at all getting dressed in the morning. Maybe I could hire someone to put my clothes on me for the next few months. I felt like crying, and it was a surprise to realize I had a smile on my face.
BLUE COVE
DELAWARE
Broots started violently when I touched his arm. He’d acclimated himself to hearing me approach in heels, and now he didn’t ‘know’ when I was near. He paused in his latest quest for the Holy Grail, or for Jarod, or to find a cheap way to take his daughter to Disneyworld next spring. He’d blanked the screen as soon as he felt the touch, but now he re-booted. His trust in me was so lame, and unsafe. He stared as I put the Tupperware on the printer by him.
“Be sure to tell your girl that I really liked the pasta, and thank you to her.”
“You really liked it? She’ll be glad to hear that.”
“Just tell her. Whether I liked it or not is not especially relevant. Capische?”
“Yes, Miss Parker,” he replied. Looking away from me he continued. “She’s making a pumpkin pie, it’s almost that time, and she wants to practice a little bit.
“I’ll bring in a piece for you and Sydney.”
I asked, “If I think it’s terrible?”
“I’ll tell her you liked it, if she doesn’t do too badly.”
He’d just smart-mouthed at me. Not much, but a first for Broots.
He looked at me, noticing my lovely matching baggy tulle pullover and the light blue skirt, the one with the elastic band waist, something I could just pull on. Belle of the &%$#+ ball, that’s me.
“What the hell are looking at?”, I snarled.
“Have your fingers been losing any of their puffiness yet?” Give him points for a fast answer.
“No,” I said, “maybe by Saturday. I hope so, I’m going to go up to a houseboat on the East Shore, feel sorry for myself, drink a domestic wine and wish I had Jarod in my hands.” That one suddenly pitched me into a mental scenario where I was running my hands on Jarod’s naked....
Stop!
When I could let out my breath, I turned away from Broots, determined not to think anything like that. Remembering the old joke about the guy who was promised heaven if he could think of anything but a white horse as he walked the stairs to heaven. Naturally he walked behind a white horse all the way.
There was a moral, I’m sure, but I hate stories like that.
I stopped, and looked over my shoulder at the now-busy Broots. He stopped, not turning to look. Not even when, after a while, I walked back to him. Hold that curiosity, I thought.
I dropped my still-warm gray cotton hi-hip panties in his lap. I thought he was going to turn to stone as he realized what I’d just given him. From the tenting of his pants over a period of one to two nanoseconds, I’d say it had a profound impact on him in another aspect.
He broke out in an immediate sweat, and I smiled. Even looking like a trailer-park housewife I still had it. Though my procedure had been extreme.
“I’ll want them back,” I carefully whispered.
“Wha...daa...ttaa..weh...I....when...when, when, how, when?”
“You can bring them this Saturday when you drop by. You can get a baby-sitter, can’t you?”
More noises. “Aaahh... Yaaah.. Ss...u..ure.”
“Don’t show up until past noon, maybe two, I’ll be sleeping in.”
With that I turned and walked away.
....eight.....nine.....ten....eleven..
“Miss Parker,” he managed finally. “Where will you be, I mean where’s that houseboat?”
In broad sunlight my smile would have blinded anyone nearby. “You have until Saturday and you have all the computers in the Centre at your disposal, or near to all.
“You’ll find me.
“Be sure to have my property, when you come.”
I just made a pun, I think.
It felt good to have myself back again. It’s hard to stalk in penny-loafers and with a pronounced limp, but I didn’t do a bad job of it.
Please read the sequel: In the Lane, Snow is Glistening
