by Payne, Jenna
When the trunk popped open, sunshine beamed in on her dilated pupils. She couldn’t see Joe at first as he stood off to the side, probably so she couldn’t kick at him when the trunk lid swung open. He may have been an asshole, but he was smart enough to learn from the mistakes of the previous evening, and he knew Linda would fight back if he gave her an opening.
He bent over her, and the metal ring popped open. Then he backed off and ordered her to step out of the car. His pump action shotgun was pointed at her as her bare feet touched the stone driveway.
“Turn around and close the trunk,” he said.
As the trunk clunked shut, she saw that they were in the driveway of a two-story brick McMansion adorned with yellow crime scene tape.
“Time to go inside, Honey. The door’s unlocked.”
She stepped onto a cool marble foyer that opened onto a plush living room with a stairwell to the second floor on the left side and windows looking out over a creek to the right. More yellow tape crisscrossed the bottom of the stairway.
He marched her to a white leather couch and ordered her to sit, and then the cop in the overstuffed uniform sat opposite her in an overstuffed chair. “I hope you like your new home,” he said. “It just became available last week.” He smiled, and she decided that his teeth were entirely too small for his puffy face. “I’d give you a tour of the master bedroom, but a meth lab blew up under the stairs. It’d be a pity to see you fall into the basement.”
“How long do you think you can keep me here, Joe? How long before someone comes looking for you?”
“I’ve got a week off. That’s plenty of time to make you see the error of your ways and to put a beat-down on your little boyfriend. Maybe I’ll bring you some of his tender parts in a jar.”
“You’ll need a really big jar—bigger than I ever imagined before I met him.” She didn’t even know why she said it. She knew it was a dig at his insecurities, but she didn’t know why she made that particular dig while he sat across from her with a shotgun in his lap.
His ruddy complexion turned even more crimson as his jaw clenched and his eyes glared. He looked almost nothing like the man she had met and married. To think that they had tried to have children—that she kept trying even as his behavior became more controlling and her friends became more concerned. Now he sat across from her in puffy skin with a badge and a puffed-up ego surrounding a sad little core. And he thought she was his property, apparently, despite the fact that he had divorced her for another woman.
The divorce had been a blow to her, but she turned it into the blow that forged the blade. She was the stronger alloy now, and she sensed that he knew it as well; sensed that he could feel the rust in his veins and the lead in his gut, and it scared him.
And fear had led better people than him to do terrible things.
*****
Kirk knew what had happened the second he saw Linda’s phone and the broken coffee mug on the floor. He retrieved his semiautomatic pistol and a leather-handled fighting knife from a hidden lockbox in the closet and turned immediately back out of the apartment and called Mary, who asked for five minutes to contact a friend inside the Arlington County Police Department. It was seven and a half minutes before she called back.
“I’ve got a location on Officer Asshole’s patrol car, Kirk. It’s in northern Arlington County just northwest of Chain Bridge. I’ll send you the lat/long via text. Also, I talked to our friends on the FBI side, and there’s not much they can do through unofficial channels. I can try the Virginia State Police, but they may do a handoff to the Arlington County Police. ”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“My contact worries that officer Platt may be monitoring their frequencies or that one of his buddies might send him a warning. There’s also the small matter of how my contact came to know about this in the first place.”
“No worries, Mary. I’m already heading north on the GW Parkway.”
“Are you armed?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“No. I’m pretty sure you know how to take care of yourself, Kirk. I suppose you can forget what I said about avoiding confrontation. I’ll get some kind of help to you as soon as I can. “
Kirk parked in a church parking lot off of Rt.123 and set off through the woods, staying parallel to the river. He reached a small creek and turned to follow it uphill to the target, but there was too large an open area and too many windows on that side of the house, so he worked his way back down to the river’s edge and moved fifty meters upstream. Then he turned ninety degrees and crept uphill again to where the woods were closer to the house.
He could see the back of the patrol car parked outside the attached garage, so the target was confirmed. The garage also offered the easiest and most concealed access to the roof, and it was always better to take a building from the top down, even if you had no grenades. Slow and smooth, he crept up to the garage, climbed onto a fence post and then onto the roof. He made his way to a window and checked for alarms before laying a few strips of electrical tape on the window pane above the lock and tapping the point of his knife at the center of the glass. The glass cracked in several directions, and he carefully removed it all, placing the rough triangles of glass on a shingle he’d bent up, to keep them from sliding off the roof.
The window opened easily enough, and Kirk listened for a minute before inching through it into an empty bedroom. He moved down the hallway in a combat glide and cleared every room on the second floor before turning back to the stairs. He scooted down the first few stairs sideways and leaned to get a view of the floor below. Linda and her ex sat across a low coffee table from each other in a large room. Kirk could see stainless steel handcuffs glinting on her wrists and the blue steel of a shotgun barrel in his lap. Their shoulders were to the stairway, and Joe seemed warier of the front door than the stairs. Kirk would be somewhat behind him almost all the way down to the landing. Linda would have the opportunity to see Kirk much sooner as he descended the stairs, and he hoped she wouldn’t react.
He was almost two-thirds of the way to the landing when the center of the stairway collapsed. He dove forward, feet twisting behind him, and landed on his right shoulder. His clavicle gave an unhealthy snap, and the pistol skittered across the landing to the main floor. Kirk rolled to his feet and lunged through police tape toward the towering police officer as the shotgun swung around quickly. The business end would be pointed at Kirk before he made contact. He was just ready to roll onto the deck when Linda crashed into her ex and the shotgun swung too far and boomed. Kirk hit the man high, and the low coffee table cut his legs from under him so they rode over the stone table top together. The back of Joe Platt’s head smacked to the floor just as Kirk’s fist smashed into his face. Kirk snatched up the shotgun with his left hand, jumped clear, and pointed the weapon back at his opponent, but it was clear that the man wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
Linda stood across the table from Kirk with her handcuffed wrists extended toward him. “Now that you’ve made your grand entrance, can you help a girl out?”
He found the key in a keeper on Platt’s belt and released her from the cuffs, all with his left hand, since he seemed unable to lift his right arm. Then he rolled Joe onto his stomach and let Linda have the honor of cuffing him. That seemed to signal the real end for her, and her relief came out in silent tears on Kirk’s shoulder.
“That was quite a fourth date,” Kirk said.
She lifted her head from his shoulder and kissed him. “You really know how to show a girl a good time.”
*****
By that evening, it was clear that Officer Joe Platt would survive his injuries, but would not survive the security footage of him shoving his ex-wife into the trunk of a police car. Kirk would survive as well, but a broken right clavicle and a broken bone in his left hand were going to keep him off of the traveling team for a while. Apart from some soreness, Linda was fine, and she didn’t mind at all that her big, tough SEAL
needed some help in the shower.
She propped him up in bed that night sans clothing and then left to change into a sheer black babydoll she had fetched from her apartment. When she walked back into the bedroom his eyes widened and he gave a low whistle.
“Come to Papa, little lady,” he said, his fingers curling in a ‘come-hither’ motion.
She walked slowly up the side of the bed, letting her fingers trail up the inside of his leg and bump over his abs. “Remember: Some things are meant to be savored, taken in small bites.”
She bent to kiss him and let her hand drift to his navel and then slowly back up to his chest. Then she moved her lips to his ear and whispered, “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast, right?”
She stepped back, stripped the babydoll up over her head and tossed it onto his shins with an “Oops.” Then she pinched a corner of the garment in her fingers and dragged it up his legs and around his swollen penis where it climbed like a snake on a branch until it crawled off onto his torso and she flipped it up onto the pillow beside his head.
“Was that slow and smooth, Kirk?”
“You’re killing me,” he said, “and I just broke two bones for you.”
“Well, it seems I’ve helped you grow another one.” She touched over the glans with her index finger and drew a slick trail of his anticipatory emissions down the shaft. He twitched and moaned, and his hips rose ever so slightly. “I really need to be de-thonged again before I deal with that. It’s too bad that I’m the only one capable of a proper de-thonging at the moment.”
She turned her back to him and slowly bent at the waist as she stroked her hands down her hips and legs, drawing the lacy black fabric along as she went. She tried not to think too much about the show she was putting on for him, and felt some relief when she finally straightened and kicked free of her panties.
She turned back toward him and climbed onto the bed between his legs. She took him in her hand and kissed her way along the path her lingerie had taken and then continued upward. She felt his hot need press between her breasts and down her abdomen before it met with her own. She kissed him and slid back, taking him in millimeter by millimeter until he was fully sheathed.
“Was that smooth enough for you, sailor?”
“So smooth that I’m afraid it’s going to be really fast.”
“That’s okay. We’ve got all night.”
It wasn’t too fast. It was just perfect.
And they had all night and then some.
THE END
Bonus Story 7 of 40
The Wedding Plan
I can’t breathe. I’m standing here dumb as a brick in the doorway of my office watching all of my hopes and dreams slip slowly out of sight.
I know that sounds ridiculously dramatic, but it’s true all the same.
My stepbrother, my boss, my best friend since high school is walking down the hall towards me with a tall, dark haired, olive skinned model-like woman hanging off of his arm.
As she gets closer, I see the large diamond ring dangling from her left hand. I realize that there could only be three explanations for this, none of which serve to settle the falling sensation currently taking place in my stomach.
She could be a particularly friendly new business partner. Gus has been in Canada for the past few months trying to grow the business, after all.
But, the way she’s clinging to him and laughing at his jokes that I know are ridiculous even though I can’t hear them, makes me think that she is acting a little too friendly to be just a business partner.
That means they’re together. But, it doesn’t necessarily explain the diamond ring.
My stepbrother could be having an affair with a woman who is engaged to a rich old geezer who she’s only marrying for money.
But, that explanation doesn’t sit well either. First of all, I know Gus. I’ve known him since the first day of freshman year at Grant High School when he sat in front of me in English class. He’s not the type of guy to have affairs or cheat or do anything at all unscrupulous.
Second, Benning Tech is one of the largest corporations of its kind in the country. Gus is worth over 2 billion dollars. He makes Forbes list of Richest men in the world every single year.
The beautiful model wouldn’t have to marry an old geezer for money and have an affair with Gus. It’s more likely that she would marry Gus for money. Though, along with the money she’d also get a young, handsome, virile man. It’s the best of both worlds.
This leads me to the horrifying ultimate conclusion. The beautiful model is wearing Gus’s ring.
My step brother, my best friend, got engaged while he was in Canada and didn’t tell me.
Gus catches my eye, smiles, and waves at me as he and his little girlfriend (I refuse to say the word fiancée, even in my head) move towards me.
I try to smile back but, I don’t think I’ve quite managed it. Gus doesn’t seem to notice. His smile is brighter than I’ve ever seen it and there’s a new spring in his step as he comes closer.
“Emma!” he says. “It’s so good to see you! I hope you’ve been taking good care of my company.”
“Didn’t need much taking care of,” I answer. “It’s a well-oiled machine.”
“Most of that’s due to you and you know it,” he says playfully elbowing me in the ribs the way he’s always done. As though we’re fourteen again and I’m the little sister substitute.
None the less, I smile at him and take a step back both hoping and dreading being introduced to the beautiful woman behind him. Apparently she’s got the same feeling about this meeting because she’s looking at Gus with an impatient frown while tapping her foot.
Gus catches the look out of the corner of his eye and quickly, almost nervously, moves to appease her.
“Oh, Emma,” he says ushering the woman forward, “I’ve got a...well a sort of surprise for you...this is Ramona. My fiancée.”
And there’s the word. The dreaded title that made what I already knew in my head to be true an indisputable fact.
I swallow, and paste an entirely fake smile on my face.
“Nice to meet you,” I say holding my hand out to Ramona. “I’m Emma.”
She smiles back at me. Her expression looks every bit as fake as mine feels.
“It’s great to meet you too,” she says in that sexy low voice that actresses in movies always seem to have. She takes my hand with a feminine limp wrist.
“Gus has told me all about his little stepsister. I know you two are close.”
I try to keep the smile on my face even as the words she’s just spoken ring in my head: ‘little stepsister’. I don’t know if she means to be condescending or not but, it certainly feels that way.
With another fake smile at me, Ramona turns back to Gus.
“Honey, I really should get going,” she says. “If we really want this wedding to happen next month, I’ve got a lot of planning to do.”
“Next month?” I ask before I can stop myself. Getting engaged in a matter of months is one thing. But, a wedding so soon…
“It’s a stupid thing with Ramona’s Green Card,” Gus tells me. “We’ve got to get married within two months of her moving here or they can send her back to Canada.”
“Not that that’s the reason we’re getting married,” Ramona assures me, correctly interpreting the hopeful expression on my face. (A Green Card marriage after all, wouldn’t be quite the same as a real marriage).
She continues, her voice suddenly pouty and cutesy. “I just wanted to be with Gus and this was the only way we could make it happen.” She leans into Gus and gives him a peck on the lips and I think I’m going to be sick. She makes as if to depart.
“Okay, you can go if you have to,” Gus tells her. “I’ve got to talk to Emma about some business stuff anyway. See you tonight?”
“Of course,” she says sweetly. And, with another kiss (and another urge to gag from me), Ramona saunters out of the hall.
As soon as she leaves, the sm
ile fades from my face and I fix Gus with a glare.
“So,” I say rather firmly to him, “when were you planning on telling me you were engaged?”
“Emma, can we not do this here?” he asks looking at the other employees rushing about. A few have glanced over their cubicles to watch us.
“Fine,” I say, “should we go into your office and have it out there?”
My arms are crossed and I’m still glaring at him. To my right I hear the tech guy, Ed, snicker behind his computer screen.
I ignore him. I’ve learned to do that over the years. But, when Gus looks at him and his face colors, Ed’s laughter stops immediately.
“Sounds good,” Gus says. “I’m sure you’ve got some things to go over with me anyway.”
Satisfied, I nod and let him lead the way past the row of cubicles and towards the large brown door to his office.
“The boss man’s in trouble,” I hear Ed whisper to Cindy, one of the data entry girls, as we pass them by. Though I send him a glare that shuts him up again, I can’t help but silently agree with Ed.
Gus is in very, very big trouble.
*****
“You want me to what?!” I all but yell in Gus’s direction. I didn’t think this day could get any worse. First, my stepbrother/best friend/man I’ve had a crush on since high school gets engaged and doesn’t tell me. And now he wants me to plan his wedding.
“Please, Emma,” he says in that pathetic voice he always uses when he’s trying to get me to do something. “We can’t get a planner on a month’s notice! There’s no one else to ask and besides, you’re really good at this stuff. You know you are.”
