I’m only vaguely aware of the fact that he’s calling me a dirty whore. A little laugh flitters inside that he would call me dirty; the irony is lost on him but not me. I’ve almost completely tuned him out, focused on the job I’m here to do.
And then he makes a mistake; he hits my face, hard. If I were still alive, it would have done some damage, broken bone, maybe even knocked me out.
This isn’t playful anymore – this bastard actually likes to hurt women – now, I’m done playing.
I pull back slowly from him, looking at his fist wrapped around what looks like a roll of quarters. He’s using every ounce of strength and leverage he has to try to hold me on my knees. He has no more effect holding me down than the weight of my clothes. His eyes begin to widen and he lets go of my hair as I rise slowly and determined. His fist is still drawn back, but we both know he’s not going to swing. I’m going over all the painful ways I can drive home the point that he doesn’t get to hurt the girls he plays with, all the while considering how much I love this dress and don’t want to ruin it.
Standing in front of him I wipe his liquid from the corner of my mouth and stare deeply. I can see the panic in his eyes. I can smell his fear, deep, rich and growing, and for the first time tonight, I’m actually aroused.
“Now, Buck, what could possibly have made you think that was a good idea?” I ask in a cool and controlled voice.
“Get back on your knees, whore! I ain’t paying you to fucking talk!” He spews the words out loudly, in a vain attempt to regain control as he tries to force me back down with one hand, while still menacing with his fist. He only succeeds in ripping my dress.
Not this dress, not tonight. He’s decided it for me; tonight is the end of his story.
“I’m used to the rough stuff, Buck.”
In an instant, I have his throat in my hand and his back against the wall. He’s beginning to shake as he draws back to swing.
“I was just going to let you off with a little pain and a warning about hurting working girls, and look what you’ve done.”
The fear pours off of him in waves as I disregard his raised fist and calmly show him my torn dress. It’s enough to make even my body react involuntarily to the stimulation. “You want a pretty girl to throatfuck, you pay for it. We’re all good. You like it a little rough, that’s fine. But slapping a girl around hard enough to actually hurt them? We just don’t do that, Buck. You’re incredibly lucky I don’t bruise easy.”
I flash him a smile and for just a moment I can see he thinks it’s all going to be okay.
“We had a perfectly good deal worked out, and now you’ve ensured that I’m the last thing you’re gonna see, and given me the extra work of dealing with your corpse.”
He shudders and wets himself.
It really is dirty how hot this has gotten me. I’ll blame it on my state of mind, certainly not wanting to give this bastard any credit.
I peer deeply into his eyes, and his mind unfolds to me. I see all that he had planned for me; I know all that is ‘Buck.’ The last restraint I had left is gone. He’s from out of town, no one here knows him, and only his trucking company will miss him.
I apply just a touch more pressure, and with a flick of my wrist, he goes limp. I let go and he crumples to the ground in a heap. Quick and painless is better than he deserves, but I’m pressed for time.
I drink from him what I need and leave him piled up behind the dumpster. At least he’s served his purpose, even if he was more trouble than I’d planned on.
Why this dress? Any other dress he could have ripped and he’d still be breathing. Clearly, I’m too stressed out.
I dial my cell and wait, more than a little irritated when I get voicemail. “Frank, you really need to call me back. I have a pick up for you and it’s time sensitive. Remind me again why I keep you on payroll?”
I walk back up to the end of the alley and wait for my phone to ring. The straps on the left shoulder of the dress are ripped completely out of the back and there are two deep tears where they had been attached. This is what happens when you have to rush. Things don’t go as planned, and then shit gets broken.
“Can I help you with that?”
His voice is steady, soft, and scares me almost out of my skin. This is why I pay him so well.
I turn to face him and am a bit taken aback to see him dressed in jeans and a wife-beater. He’s never this down-dressed, even when I tell him to be.
“Not with my dress, but you can wrap that up,” I fume, nodding my head back down the alley to what remains of Buck. “And make it disappear.”
Frank O’Leary looks like what a Greek god should look like. Chiseled out of stone; an example of everything that makes a man attractive. His mane of auburn hair, always perfectly messy, hangs down between his shoulder blades. Like all men who look this good, Frank has no interest in women. He also has very few morals, a deviously creative mind, and an unequaled love for money. That serves to make him an irreplaceable asset. I keep telling myself I can never trust him completely, but he’s too smart to bite the hand that pays for his lifestyle. Also, despite my attempts to keep him at arm’s length, I’ve grown attached to him over the years.
He stares, one eyebrow raised, at the boots jutting visibly out from behind the dumpster and nods. “Any particulars on how he disappears or just ‘out of sight out of mind?’”
“Just make it fucking happen, Frank! I don’t have time for bullshit tonight!” As soon as the words escape me, I’m aware they’re harsher than he deserved.
The look on his face says it all. He understands. He’s not happy about it, but he knows why I’m stressed and he’ll accept it for now and hope that things will get better.
“He is coming in tonight, then?”
“Should be here in about an hour.”
I really have to get back to the old me, and soon. I know better than to kill this close to where I go to relax. I know he knows that, too. It felt good to destroy that piece of shit, and save generations of women from having to deal with him, but I still know better.
Frank looks down the alley again, then back to me and holds out a set of keys with a silver skull keychain. He knows me too well. I take the keys to the Charger and hand him back the ones to the little flat black speedster.
“How much gas does she have?” he asks, still looking down the alley, sizing up the job.
“You need to get some,” I call back at him, already walking toward the emerald-green muscle machine. “You’re on fumes.”
He’s muttering under his breath as I get in, but his voice is less than a whisper and it gets lost under the deafening roar of the engine coming to life. I put the top down and back her out slowly while checking my watch. Not much time left.
I leave the lot and the mess behind me, able to count on Frank. I have to get to the airport, and make sure everything is secure before his plane lands.
CHAPTER 2
I CAN SEE A HALF-DOZEN or so impatient workers shuffling things back and forth through the tinted front windows of the miniature rural airport as I slide slowly by the building, craning my neck, eyes darting, to see everything. Nothing can go wrong, my anxiety won’t allow it. The steering wheel slides through my fingers as I finally being to look for a place to park. His plane is a charter flight due to land at ten tonight. It’s obviously the only thing keeping them here so late, and they’re clearly not thrilled about it.
I’m thirty minutes early. That barely leaves me enough time to do a real sweep of the area to make sure there won’t be any embarrassing surprises once he’s here.
Idling to a stop, tires against the cracked concrete parking block, I let out a deep sigh and look deep into my eyes in the rearview mirror. I hate cutting things so close.
Stepping out into the parking lot, I take a deep breath, steeling myself. While I’m relieved not to find anything immediately out-of-place, I’m not foolish enough to take anything for granted. Jessica, one of my errand runners, was sitting on thi
s place today, to let me know if anything untoward happened. She thinks I have a shipment of drugs coming in, and I’m more than happy to have her believe that for now. Some people get so excited thinking they’re doing something illegal. Give ‘em what they want, right?
I let my consciousness leave my body and flit back and forth across the landscape, looking for anything that could be a threat, anything I might have missed. All that is natural or living becomes closer to me, a part of me, an extension of my body. I can’t ‘feel’ in this area as well as I’d like – there are too many manmade impediments – but that doesn’t stop me from giving it every ounce of effort in me.
In this kind of place I’ll have to do my leg work with my legs. That sucks, but what doesn’t lately?
I’m so preoccupied that I’m fifty feet from my Charger, looking behind the rental car building, before noticing I’ve left my keys in the ignition. I really am a child again; trying to make sure the house is clean before her parent gets home.
I’m walking the crumbling lot from end to end, still fumbling with the ripped straps on my dress. It seems that I have managed to keep everyone completely oblivious to Jules’ arrival.
Wrapping the straps hanging down from my left side around my right hand, with the dress in my left, I give one quick jerk and remove them. He’ll notice, I think as I drop them into my purse, but now I don’t look so disheveled to anyone else who sees me.
A warm ripping sensation spreads through the back of my neck and chest a second before I hear the pop.
Looking down at pieces of my chest laying on the parking lot in front of me, I roll my eyes and growl.
“Really?”
This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot, but now on top of everything else there’s blood on my dress. Thankfully, the shot only went through my body. Two inches lower and the front of my dress would be as frayed out as the skin and upper bones of my chest. Four inches higher and my head would have come off, and then I’d be beyond caring.
I fall to the ground on my stomach to sell my ‘death’ to whoever just pulled the trigger. Laying motionless I don’t have to wait long. An engine starts in the distance, then tires pull up next to me.
Only one door opens and closes, with the sound of one set of feet.
How sad is it that this is the good news of my night so far? Only one asshole trying to kill me this time.
I let him turn me over and shine a flashlight in my face. He’s checking a photo to make sure I’m me.
The plates on the van he’s driving are from Texas. They’re hiring people from out-of-state to kill me now? That’s great.
A hand pushes into my neck, checking for a pulse that’s not there. This guy has no clue what he’s hunting.
He hoists me up on his hip and carries me to the side door of the van. Holding my limp body under one arm, he jerks the door open then roughly drops me on the carpet like a sack of potatoes.
He slams the door and runs around to get in the driver’s seat. His hand is on the gear shifter when I slide silently up behind his seat and press my boot knife to his throat. His bladder releases and the pungent smell of urine rushes up to fill my nose. This is one of the times a super-sensitive sense of smell is less than a blessing.
“Wanna tell me what you think you’re doing?” I ask mockingly.
“You’re dead. I shot you. You didn’t have a pulse. You have a hole all the way through you!”
The wavering and panic in his voice are nice, but I don’t have time to enjoy it now.
The gaping hole in me is rapidly closing, skin and bone reconnecting, but it’s still left a gory mess down the front of my dress. Of all the times this sort of bullshit could happen, this has to be the worst. What happens if it doesn’t heal fast enough for me to get in to meet Jules? I’m sure he’d frown on me starting a riot in the airport.
“Damn it!” I spit out before focusing up on the would-be assassin. He wilts under the heat of my gaze.
“You’re lucky I’m short on time and manpower to clean up bodies tonight. Tell me who hired you.” The blade sinks into him lightly, letting a trickle of warm blood run down onto my hand. My tongue slides around my lips even though I’ve already gorged myself this evening; my hunger is second nature, but I have to control it. I push my mind’s eye into his head painfully. As he whimpers and cries I start flipping through his thoughts like I had a remote and was flipping channels.
“Molder. A guy named Molder. Two hundred grand, no questions.”
Christ, this guy took a contract over the internet. He doesn’t even know who hired him really. Next thing you know people are going to be after me from chat rooms and social networking sites.
“Maybe next time you’ll ask some questions, huh?” I jab the blade in-between the bones of his shoulder and turn it. He screams and that makes me smirk.
Reaching into his back pocket as he leans away from me in pain, I find his wallet. I rifle through it until I find the little plastic card that unflatteringly depicts his face next to his home address. I hold it up in front of his face, making sure he sees it. Then, smiling viciously, I drop it in my purse.
“Thomas Laird. I know your name, your face, your address, and your license plate number. You can leave the state now and never come back, or I can make sure you suffer for many, many agonizing years before I let you die. It’s your call.”
I wipe my knife on his shirt and get out of the van. His eyes are saucers, looking at the hole in my chest that’s almost completely closed. I expected him to take off as soon as I was out, but he’s just sitting there.
I don’t have time for this. I take a step toward him. “Boo!”
That’s all it takes. Within seconds, his taillights are fading into the distance like a memory as I walk back to my car.
Dropping into the bucket seat I check to make sure I’m presentable in my visor mirror.
“Looks like I spilt food all over the front of me but past that, I’m fine.” I say it aloud, as though actually hearing it will make the lie to myself more convincing.
I stand up out of the car and start flicking off the clots and chunks remaining on the front of my poor dress. I slam the car door and put my knife away, convinced the night can’t get any worse.
My feet take the direction of the terminal again, this time with me physically heading there, past the barricade and in through the automatic door. I stop long enough to let everyone who’s here get a good look, before heading to the window near the arrivals gate.
Then it hits me. He’s here.
I can feel Jules’ presence, like a second soul in my body with me, before the plane even touches down. He’s already scanning through my emotions. I can hide myself from almost anyone, but he made me, and to him I’ve always been an open book.
The blinking lights on the horizon grow larger. The dark silhouette of the plane comes slowly into view and the butterflies in my stomach begin to try to break free in earnest. I give the inside of the building one last slow sweep without moving. The bark of the tires hitting the tarmac echoes in my ears. There really is no turning back now. What have I done?
I can see his face as soon as he exits the plane. Even at this distance his eyes meet mine, and I know. Those piercing blue-green irises that I love and fear so much show me he’s more displeased with me that I had hoped he would be. It’s time to start the song and dance. I can only hope to impress him enough with what I’ve accomplished that he’ll be willing to forgive, or at least accept, my failures.
He walks in like he owns even the people standing near him, and they treat him as though he actually does. All eyes are on him, and I can’t help but want and fear him a little, like everyone else here does. There’s a beauty to his face, to all six-foot of his body really, and the way he carries himself. But none of that comes close to the haunting otherworldliness of his being that you can’t help but sense just by being in his presence.
He’s wearing the hat I bought him. I’ve always thought he looked good in a beret.
The rest of his attire is black and casual, under his trademark leather. He obviously thinks he’s going to have to get dirty.
I’m insulted by that for a moment, and then I realize that he might.
Twenty-three short paces and he’s through the metal detector and we’re standing face to face. He looks me up and down like a military inspection. The memory of the dress, at least, has brought a slight smile. Either that or he thinks the condition of my clothing is sad enough to be laughable. It’s really a toss-up.
“It’s good to see you again.” I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist. He returns my embrace, but it’s loose and cold. “I hope your flight wasn’t too horrible.”
“I hate to fly V, and you know that.” He doesn’t hold back his contempt. He takes a silver case from his coat pocket, opening it as he turned from me to face the exit. Producing a cigarette from it, he closes the case and taps the smoke against it solidly three times. He had far more to say, I could tell, but not in front of the breathers. “Let’s just get going, shall we?”
He snaps his lighter and takes a long first drag. Exhaling slowly he gestures and we begin to walk to baggage claim to retrieve his suitcase. Several workers look as if they are about to inform him the terminal is smoke-free, then think better of it, going on with their work. A predator and prey reaction; I don’t inspire that in breathers. Honestly, I hope I never do.
***
As we drive back to the ranch house, in what started as strained silence, he questions me about why I seem to have so many connections to the living world, and why it is that I spend so much time ‘playing with my food.’
I try to defend myself, but the concept seems so off-putting to him that my defense for my actions comes off as little more than hollow justification.
“After you left, I began to branch out. I became more civic-minded about the community I was calling home.”
“Did you somehow delude yourself into thinking that any of their affairs needed your direct attention, or did you simply need to feel important? What are you now? Their salvation or damnation? Didn’t I teach you better than that?”