Called to Kill

by A. M Surtees

  Extending my arm out until my hand landed in his, he pulled me up with force, our bodies colliding into one another, causing him to throw his foot backward to gather balance for us both before whisking me into the middle of the room to dance. If only the first visions he had of me weren’t of me dancing, I could’ve played the poor dancer card and gotten out of it but instead I had to convince him to hurry things along.

  Staring into his eyes, I placed my hand on the crest of his long jaw and drew him down toward me until our lips met, the same hunger he possessed at the club quickly returning. He lifted me up, my legs wrapping around his waist as he led me toward the kitchen but stopping just short, pressing my back into the wall adjacent to the doorway, my arms wrapped around his shoulders as our kiss deepened, triggering a reaction in his body that made him want me as badly, if not more, than he did at the club. He ran his hands along the curve of my back until they found the clasp of my bra, unhitching it with a precision that would make Joey Tribbiani weep with pride. Hell, even I was impressed. So impressed it would seem that my body was beginning to betray me, wanting for him as much as his body was wanting for me. Most of time it was just a physical transaction that served me nothing at all, other times I had a mark that made it worth the trip.

  I used to be careful and I used to care what people thought but when your step father starts forcing you to touch him and forcing you to let him touch you in return, you start to care a hell of a lot less. If he taught me anything, its that I’m a sexual being, so I fled and started to make money from it after I fell in with a pimp daddy who made me do things no fourteen year old should have had to, in order to pass initiation. But that’s a long story best saved for a rainy day.

  The ability to contain the sound was difficult as my body yearned for him to get me undressed and insert himself. A fact I wasted no time telling him, my voice breathless as the hunger claimed me. He was turning me on and I couldn’t deny it. If he wasn’t a criminal that I’d have to kill tonight, I might have let him take me out. In the wig of course and under the name of Ruby, but still. The sentiment was there.

  I pleaded with him to take me to the bedroom, which by a stroke of extreme luck, turned out to be the very door through the kitchen. Or so I thought until I saw the inside of the room. We were in his office. Carrying me over and sitting me down on the desk after sweeping all the papers onto the floor before chuckling about how he had always wanted to do that, he wrapped his arms around my waist, jerking my body into his as he buried his face in my neck, gentle kisses placed on my neck and shoulder before he cupped my exposed breasts in his hands and buried his face between them, enjoying the sensation of them against his cheeks.

  I took the opportunity to scan the room which contained three computer systems and nine filing cabinets that all appeared to be locked. Finding everything was going to take a moment. For now I needed a plan on what I could snuff him with and find a way to make it all part of the experience. It was when I spotted a scarf on the arm chair in the corner that I got the idea.

  “Lets play a game, trust me, you will love it” I moaned, barely making the words audible as my thirst grew. He took a step back and allowed me to take control. I seated him on the swivelling computer chair before retrieving the scarf and with the chair turned so that he faced away from me as I wrapped the scarf around his eyes, fastening the loop at the back and leaving enough free length to use later, I rotated the chair once again until it faced me, waving my hand in front of his face to make sure he couldn’t see anything. Perfect.

  Unbuttoning his pants, I freed him from his own personal clothing based prison and slipped on some protection, the touch of my hand along his shaft causing him to stiffen to a rock like hardness before offering him another dance, gyrating myself against his somewhat exposed flesh. His hands gripped my hips as he tried continuously to bring our bodies together to little success, until I finally turned around and lowered myself down onto him, the sensation sending tickling shockwaves through my lower body.

  The chair almost tilted backwards at the ferocity of the movement, Atkins reaching out to grip the desk and drag the chair towards it as the heat between us intensified. Once the desk became a source of support, I kicked things up a notch as he gripped my upper thighs to keep the movements short, sharp and deep. A sensation that drove me wild, sweat building on my brow as the impending climax became too much for my body to handle and it was in that moment of almost there, that he slid his hands up my back and buried his face, making little nibbles on my breasts that got me over the line, the genuine pleasure spilling from my mouth being exactly what he needed to push him to the limit, his hips shuddering as he reached climax.

  It was when he went to lift his hands to remove the blindfold that I told him I wasn’t done with him yet, an ear to ear grin enveloping his face. Rising off him and turning the chair away for what would be the last time, I slid my hands down his chest as I nestled my face into the nape of his neck, giving him an upper body massage that forced him to moan as the recent climax had every one of his nerve endings on high alert, making every touch feel like the most blissful feeling in the world.

  Dragging his head back until he faced the roof, I placed each of the two lengths of scarf over his shoulders before gently massaging them. His smile was hard to contain as he revelled in the feeling of my hands all over his body, his hands aimlessly reaching out to grab hold of anything he could, eventually finding the hard wood of the desk in front of him.

  As he began to shudder for a second time, I slid my hands down his torso and grabbed the lengths of scarf with the opposite hands so that when I drew upwards, they would criss cross over his throat. At first he enjoyed the kinkiness of the fabric against his airways but the enjoyment faded fast when he found it suddenly hard to breathe. He gripped at the scarf frantically as he tried to push off from the desk to force me to loosen the grasp that was shutting off his airways.

  After what felt like an hour but was mere seconds, his struggling subsided, his energy depleted, his life all but over. I actually felt a momentary pang of guilt over this one because I hadn’t had an experience like that in quite a while. It was almost cruel to take such a great experience from him and then take his life as well but he was a mark. I had a job to do and fifty thousand reasons not to screw it up, so I didn’t.

  Checking for a pulse and finding nothing, I released the scarf from my grasp, red marks on my hands from where I maintained my grip against his forceful attempts to break free, warm and tender to the touch. His arms hung beside his naked torso which had slid down in the chair as his lifeless body failed to continue keeping him seated upright. Now, to find those files.

  Chapter four

  My optimism quickly diminished when his computer illuminated. ‘Please enter password.’ Oh for the love of Christ. I was going to need help with this one otherwise Atkins would start smelling bad before I got anywhere near hacking this computer. Before I came to work with Jackson, I was a teenager working the streets. I needed help to set up emailing on my phone. I knew nothing about technology. I may only be twenty-six but I had the tech savviness of a ninety year old.

  The phone only rang once before Jackson answered, almost as if he had been waiting by the phone for my call. More likely explanation was that he was watching videos on Youtube while choking back his eCigarette. When I made a smart remark about his swift answering, he confirmed my theory.

  He told me to hold tight and he would get one of the I.T girls to call me to help me out before disconnecting the call, only to have it ring again moments later, the voice of April MacDonald, otherwise known as ‘Mack’ rung through the line. She gained the nickname both because of her surname but also because she was dubbed the ‘Mack Daddy’ of hackers by her peers. Nerds, am I right?

  “What can I do you for Tammy?” I hated when she called me that, which is why she did it. She knew I could put a bullet in her at any given moment, but she also knew that when it came to hackers, she was the best of the best and sh
e was the reason why I was able to go into a job with as much information on the mark as possible which to Jackson, made her invaluable and if I didn’t want to go back to street corners, I couldn’t go shooting my colleagues just because they pissed me off with stupid adaptations to my name.

  “I need to get into this computer but it has a password.” She went silent for a moment before her high octave voice rang through the receiver once again.

  “Have you got the drive Jackson gave you? It has a digital receiver in it that should allow me to remotely hack into the computer from here.”

  “In English please, April.” She hated repeating herself. So I made her do it. A lot.

  “Plug the little stick that Jackson gave you, into the hole on the big box thing that had the power button on it. Tell me when you are done.” The disdain in her voice was hilarious.

  “Ok, done. Now what?”

  “Now you be quiet while I hack the system.” There was no love lost between me and April. She still blames me for her relationship ending. Her boyfriend tried to sleep with me and she caught him, mid attempt. I did try and tell her that he wasn’t my type, but she used my job against me claiming it wasn’t exactly a stretch that I would lift my skirt for a man that wasn’t mine. She wasn’t wrong. But in that instance, she wasn’t right either.

  “Its done and the files have been transferred so you don’t have to do it manually now. Just check for any paper files and bring them in tomorrow so they can be delivered back to GameCorp” was all she said before the receiver disconnected. Goodbye to you too. As I said, no love lost.

  I knew the key to the filing cabinets had to be around here somewhere so I set out to find them, a task that turned out to be super easy because for a paranoid computer nerd, he wasn’t very bright. Although to be fair, if I was holding proof of stealing from a multinational corporation, I probably wouldn’t choose right next to it to bang a girl you just picked up at a strip club. Definitely not the smart option which is why the keys to the filing systems were all bundled together nicely on a single keychain in the top draw of the ironically unlocked, computer desk.

  I went through each cabinet carefully, taking almost three hours before I piled all the papers regarding GameCorp into my clean up bag once I had taken the stuff out of it so that I could restore the scene and eliminate any trace evidence.

  Bagging up the condom, the cleaning wipes and also both Jack Daniel’s cans to eliminate the risk of taking his and leaving mine behind and cleaning my fingerprints off everything, I threw it all back into the bag along with the papers and left the house, locking the door behind me. I also took the scarf with me. Perks of it being one of those mass produced scarves, even if when the police found the body, they were able to locate fibres from the scarf, there is so many of them sold at Kmart each week, that it would be impossible to ever find the one that was used to commit the crime.

  You might be wondering why we cleaned up the last body but are leaving this one and the answer is simple. The first guy was a nobody to the authorities. This guy was wanted by police for a number of crimes over the last five years and was out on bail pending his trial in three weeks. If he suddenly vanished from the planet, the police would start asking why. This way all they get is a closed case and a criminal out of circulation. It was a win win.

  I woke up the next afternoon to an email from Jackson, waiting on my mobile. At least he didn’t call me this time. Considering I didn’t get in until after dawn, I was glad he actually let me sleep and didn’t risk my phone waking me up. I may have let him have it if he had called.

  The email said;

  Tamikah,

  Great job on the Atkins case last night, GameCorp were impressed with the large quantity of files that were retrieved from his computer. Payment has now been wired to you and funds will clear within 48 hours. Take the weekend off and we will see you in the office on Monday at 10am.

  Regards

  Jackson Craig

  The weekend off hey? Looks like its off to the gold coast for a weekend getaway. I definitely deserve some rest and relaxation after the week I have had.

  Chapter five

  Timing for Jackson, is almost always a next level inconvenience for the rest of us. It’s almost as if he has all the time in the world and expects us to wait by the phone for it to start ringing. Well, not today, Satan. Not today.

  Walking in the door from my weekend vacation and throwing my bags on the floor before making my way to the bathroom to wash off the stench of the two hour flight and that’s when the phone rang. Because I had just landed, I let it go to voicemail. If it was anyone but Jackson or telemarketers, I probably would have answered the phone but it was Jackson, so I let it divert while I finished putting my bags in my room and having a quick shower. If it was important he would leave a message, if it wasn’t then he wouldn’t. It really was that simple.

  Checking my phone and the screen read ‘one new voicemail message from Jackson Craig’. Guess it was important enough to leave a message then. Dialling the number required to connect to my voicemail, I pressed 1 to listen to the message left by Jackson;

  “Tamikah, Jackson here, I need you to come into the office sooner than ASAP. Something has happened and we need all hands on deck for this one.”

  Ok, so maybe I should have actually answered the phone before getting in the shower. In our world, all hands on deck is the equivalent of a code black in a hospital. When Jackson says ‘all hands on deck’ he means someone in our family has been compromised and it would take all of us to do something about it. These were the times when Jackson would call on Natalia Andrews in Western Australia, his sister Natasha Craig in Adelaide, Edmund Watson in Canberra and Penelope Stewart in New South Wales and all five companies would send in their best. In the Melbourne crew, I was one of those people. Jackson was going to chew me a new one when I got in there. I just knew it.

  My fears were not unwarranted, Jackson had zero interest in stories when I walked into the office twenty minutes after I received the message and over an hour since he sent it. He was furious at the state of my tardiness.

  ‘”I’m sorry Jackson, I didn’t see the message until I got out of the shower. You know I would have been here sooner had I known it was urgent.” He simply glared at me with disappointment that burned through to my very soul. I had let him down and I had a feeling once he opened his mouth to debrief on why we were all called in, I would regret making everyone wait.

  I was right.

  This meeting room was where we held the ‘all hands on deck’ meetings. In eight years with this organisation, it was the third time we were called into this room. There had been a lot of big cases that were sensitive and required more than one operative, but this was the third time where all hands on deck meant country wide, not just state wide. That, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand tall.

  Jackson took a deep breath before speaking, his voice shaken. Which had the whole room on edge.

  “Ok guys, this one is a nation-wide all hands on deck request coming in from Sydney. Our target is unknown but our victim…” he took a moment, which made me sick to my stomach, before continuing “…guys, our vic is Penelope. Someone smashed her over the head in her apartment last night and she’s in ICU at Royal Prince Alfred hospital under heavy guard. At this point theres no word as to whether or not she will even make it, which makes this matter both of great importance and also highly personal, for all of us. This mark has gone after one of our own. We need to find them and we need to find out why.”

  A tear escaped from my eye at the mention of Penelope’s name. When Jackson brought me in as a fourteen year old, Penelope was Co-CEO of the Melbourne office before the CEO of the Sydney office passed away from a heart attack and she was offered to take his place shortly after my 21st birthday. She was like a mother to me. And someone hurt her. Someone tried to kill her. They almost succeeded.

  My mind was a mess of fury and pain, of grief and blind rage. I was going to find the son of
a bitch who did this and I was going to rip them to shreds.

  I was snapped out of my trance by Jackson’s hand on my shoulder, my fists clenched on the table in front of me, cheeks streaked with eyeliner tracks that formed around the overflow of tears from my eyes. I have little to no emotional connection to most people. Jackson and Penny were not ‘most people’. A fact Jackson knew all too well.

  “Tam, we have a strict do not kill, ok. Do you hear me? We need to know their angle. I don’t think this was random. They said there was no sign of forced entry so Penny knew her attacker. We need to be smart. You need to calm down before you get off that plane tomorrow morning.” His voice was soft, like a father telling his child that mummy wasn’t coming home.

  “That isn’t all guys” he said, his attention shifting back to the room. “Whomever attacked Penelope, also stole valuable information from the Sydney office. Information that could sink us all and land some of our operatives in prison. We need to find this mole and bring them in alive.” His eyes met with mine as he said the word, he wanted to be certain I understood the importance of the ‘no kill’ order.

  “When you guys meet up with the operatives from around the country, you have to all make sure that you are on the same page. As far as Sydney knows, we are pooling together because someone attacked one of our own. No one up there is to know that we are aware of the information disappearing. I spoke to Joseph Pruitt this morning and he has concerns that the attacker is one of Penelope’s agents that has been undercover this whole time. If we stand a chance of capture, it is paramount they continue to think we have no idea about the theft.”