Hunting Mink

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Well, I hope it’s at least up to code. Reasonably well-appointed even.’

  ‘Huh, well… Yeah, it’s both of those, though I’ve never been quite sure what “well-appointed” means.’

  Bianca giggled and walked down the short length of corridor which let into the main part of the loft. It was open-plan with windows all down the wall on her left and a kitchen area at the far end divided off primarily by a counter. On the right of the entrance was a blocked-off area which, she suspected, contained the bathroom. Stairs rose up on the left side of the lounge to an area built over the kitchen: likely the bedroom. There was a sofa and a coffee table, and a TV on a stand set to face them. It was not much, but it looked comfortable.

  ‘I like it,’ Bianca said. ‘You know I’m your landlord, right?’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘The warehouse downstairs is used as storage by Fullerton Technologies Inc. The building is owned and managed by one of our holding companies. So, yeah, ultimately I’m your landlord.’

  ‘So if I have any complaints about the plumbing?’

  ‘I’ll send Elaine round with a wrench. Seriously, the girl can fix anything.’

  Damian chuckled. ‘Okay, two nights off, nothing to do before you have to go to work on Monday, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, I got wine in.’

  ‘A balanced diet is important. You got potato chips?’

  Damian frowned. ‘Uh, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Why?’

  ‘Carbs. For stamina.’ Bianca grinned at him and then her expression shifted to a slight frown. ‘We’ve been going out for a while.’

  ‘Over a month.’

  ‘Yeah… There’s something I think I should trust you with.’

  Damian frowned along with her. ‘That sounds kind of serious?’

  ‘Well… It is to me. My dark secret. Go pour some wine. I’m going to freshen up and then we’ll talk.’ She turned, opening what she suspected was the bathroom door, nodded, and went through.

  Damian watched the door close. ‘Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.’ He started for the kitchen, and the fridge. ‘Not a problem, Inman. If she turns out to be a serial killer, you’ve got a gun.’ He opened the fridge and took out the bottle of wine he had stored there. ‘If she’s a really good serial killer… At least the sex was good.’

  Retrieving two glasses, Damian walked over to the sofa and sat down. He cracked the seal on the bottle. It was a screw-top, but he had heard that could actually be better for the wine than a cork and the vineyard was supposed to be a good one. Did the serial killer in the bathroom know much about wine? She had never professed to be a connoisseur, but he figured she had more experience of the stuff than he did. It occurred to him that he knew relatively little about Bianca Fullerton. They had talked over meals, after sex, just random chatter and some more meaningful stuff. But he seemed to have told her more about himself than she had about herself. He had not felt an imbalance, but now, thinking about it, it was there.

  The bathroom door opened and Damian turned his head. Bianca stepped through and moved around… slinked around to stand where he could see her properly, and Damian’s jaw dropped. It was partially that she had emerged dressed in her pumps and a lacy teddy which left a deep cleavage and most of her stomach bare, but it was mostly because she now had a short, black cap of hair in place of tousled, blonde, and shoulder-length.

  ‘Oh,’ Damian said after a second.

  ‘Is that a good oh or a bad oh? I mean, some guys really like blondes…’

  ‘It’s a surprised oh. Why the, uh…’

  ‘Wig? When I was a teenager, I had it long and dyed it blonde. They have more fun, or so I’m told. Now, everyone knows Bianca Fullerton has long, blonde hair, so when I want to be… not Bianca Fullerton for a while, I can have short, black hair and no one seems to notice it’s me. My “dark” secret.’

  ‘Right. You’re not a serial killer then?’

  ‘Only on weekends.’

  ‘It’s Saturday night.’

  Bianca held her fingers over mouth, formed an oh with her lips, and said, ‘Oops.’

  ‘You still look beautiful. I don’t have a major thing for blondes. Actually, Mink has the same hair. Uh, more or less.’

  ‘So I’m told. Never been introduced to the lady, but Elaine’s met her.’

  Damian’s eyes narrowed briefly and then he shook his head. ‘No… No, I think she’s a little taller… Her breasts are a little larger and her face is a little narrower. Your brow is more prominent. Oh, and her eyes are brown. Well, more like amber…’

  Bianca raised an eyebrow. ‘Should I be jealous?’

  ‘Ha! No. She’s an attractive woman, but so are you, and you’re standing in my lounge with more or less nothing on.’

  ‘Like the outfit?’ Bianca posed for him, hip cocked and one hand on it.

  ‘Like the outfit. Like the contents more.’

  ‘Charmer.’ She walked over to the sofa, picked up a wine glass, and sat down, crossing her legs. ‘I do expect you to have me out of this before the glasses are empty.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Didn’t think it would be.’

  5th October.

  He lay behind her, in much the same position they had been in when they awoke, but now he was within her, the length of him a delicious, slow torture as he moved, almost constantly on the edge. He was taking it slow; lazy sex for a lazy Sunday morning.

  ‘I think you’re killing me,’ Bianca whispered as another flare of languid heat rolled up her body. She reached down between her legs and placed just the tips of her fingers against him, feeling the slickness of her own juices as his shaft slid past.

  ‘I thought… you were the… killer.’ It seemed that she was doing a reasonable job of killing him too. He squeezed her left nipple and a sudden jolt, a pre-shock, bolted through her. Her muscles clenched and he groaned.

  ‘Kill me,’ she said. ‘Kill me now.’

  His hand clenched around her breast and he upped the pace suddenly, almost harshly. Her back arched and he pulled her against him. Fire burned up from between her legs, engulfing her, yet still not giving her what she wanted. She felt him tense, felt his body struggle to hold back, felt it fail, felt him fill her. And Bianca went over the edge as though it was a precipice waiting to claim her…

  The first thing her senses took in when they returned was his laboured breathing and the fact that he was calming quickly. Then she was aware of him within her, relaxing slowly, but still filling her and pulsing occasionally. Each pulse sent a ripple through her body and she squeezed, smiling as she did it.

  Damian groaned. ‘Murderer. I’m sure I died for at least a few seconds.’

  Bianca giggled. ‘Don’t move yet. You feel wonderful.’

  ‘I’ve no plans to go anywhere. No power to for that matter.’

  Another giggle. ‘Let’s go out to my place this afternoon. I’ve seen yours, so it’s only fair that you see mine.’

  It was Damian’s turn to laugh. ‘Nice phrasing. Sure. I can go swan around that big mansion you’re supposed to have.’

  ‘I do, but I don’t live in it. I live in the pool house.’

  ‘The pool house?’

  ‘Uh-huh. We can drink wine in the hot tub on the deck, and we can snuggle up in front of my frankly enormous TV and watch movies.’

  Damian smiled. ‘If we snuggle up in front of a TV, there won’t be much watching going on.’

  ‘God, I hope not.’

  Belvedere, CA.

  ‘Where’s the pool?’ Damian asked, and Bianca laughed.

  ‘Everyone asks that. In-joke. The pool is that big one at the bottom of the hill.’

  Damian looked out through the huge picture window, which was the entire front of the building, out over the bay to Angel Island. They had eaten brunch in a diner in North Beach and then taken the ferry across to Tiburon and been collected from the terminal by a limo. Now he was standing on a small private est
ate on the side of a hill with a huge house at the top and the biggest, most luxurious pool house Damian had ever seen near the bottom.

  ‘So this is how the other half lives,’ Damian said, mostly because it was sort of expected.

  ‘I tend to think Libby lives in the other half. Okay, this place is nice, and I’ve got a way bigger TV than you, but it’s not exactly lord-of-the-manor territory.’

  Damian turned to face her. She looked a little nervous, as though she was worried he might be put off by the sudden revelation of how rich she was. In truth, maybe he was, just a little. ‘So why live here and let your sister-in-law have the big place?’

  ‘She has the kids and I absolutely rattle up in that place. I never really liked it. So, I leave Libby to take up the south wing, with the staff, and we use the north wing for corporate stuff.’

  ‘And Libby doesn’t know about the wig?’

  Bianca rolled her eyes. ‘God no. If she knew, it would have been blabbed all over.’

  ‘But you told June Summerfield.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, I was fairly sure she was used to keeping secret identities. To be honest, I’d have told you sooner, but I was waiting for… I don’t know. The right moment, I guess.’

  ‘Like when you were half-naked and all the blood was rushing away from my brain?’

  Bianca grinned at him. ‘Something like that. So, not put off by my fabulously wealthy lifestyle?’

  Yeah, she had been worried. ‘Just out of interest, what are you worth?’

  ‘Personally? A few billion. I haven’t checked the share prices today. My take-home is a little higher than a cop’s. Even a San Francisco cop’s.’

  ‘I suppose I should be scared out of my mind or plotting marriage. I’ll worry about why I’m not some other time.’ Without thinking, he turned his head a little at the sound of footsteps outside the front door.

  ‘Good. Now I’m going to–’ Bianca stopped as the phone buzzed. ‘Damn. Who’s that?’ She hit the intercom button. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bianca? It’s Marie. You busy?’ The voice sounded young and a little hesitant.

  ‘I can spare a couple of minutes,’ Bianca replied. ‘I’ve got company.’ She hit another button on the phone.

  ‘Okay,’ said the voice, and a second later, its owner appeared from the little lobby. And stopped. ‘Oh… Uh, hi.’ She gave Damian a slightly wide-eyed look.

  Bianca did her best not to smirk. ‘Marie, this is Damian, my boyfriend. Damian, this is Marie, my niece.’

  Marie looked to be fifteen or sixteen: puberty had largely come and gone, but she still had a couple of years of flowering left in her and there was still some teenage insecurity hanging around. She looked like she might make the same height as her aunt, but was not quite there yet, and her body probably had a little more work it wanted to put in on her hips and waist. She already had a respectable bust and it looked like she put at least a little effort into exercise. Her face still had some youthful roundness to it but was narrowing. Maybe she would never get the sculpted, model looks of Bianca, but she was pretty and shaping up to be beautiful. Her lips were a little thin, set under a pert, fairly small nose with an upward tilt. Blonde hair fell long and straight to her upper chest and had bright pink streaks in it at the front, and she had clear, blue eyes. Dressed in a tank top and blue jeans, she looked like a teenager, but there was a distinct possibility that she could look a lot older if she wanted to.

  ‘Problem, Marie?’ Bianca asked, hoping to prompt the girl to speak.

  ‘Oh… Mom’s being impossible,’ Marie said, her attention refocussed on her annoyance.

  ‘I’d need more detail than that.’ The words suggested that Libby being ‘impossible’ was not an uncommon occurrence.

  ‘She won’t let me go to a beach party at Kirby Cove next weekend because Rory Taylor-May invited me and she says he’s too old for me, but–’

  Bianca held up her hands. ‘Woah. Wrong argument to bring me in on, Marie. I happen to agree with your mother.’

  ‘I’m old enough to–’

  ‘You’re fifteen, he’s eighteen, but that’s not the point. The point is that Rory Taylor-May takes after his father. They’re both entitled dicks who won’t take no for an answer. Gregory’s just sleazy about it, but the only reason Rory hasn’t been locked up is good lawyers. I take that back. It was lawyers who know how to smear a sixteen-year-old waitress. If that little shit touches you, I’ll have to beat the crap out of him, and you don’t want your favourite aunt locked up for assault, do you?’

  Marie’s face fell. ‘O-oh. Why didn’t Mom say that?’

  ‘Because she’s your mom. She gossips like an old woman, but she’s not going to go near something like that with you. You know that.’ Bianca let her expression shift to a grin. ‘Also, Libby couldn’t beat up a wet sponge so the assault bit wouldn’t apply.’

  Biting her lip to stop herself giggling, Marie nodded. ‘Okay… I mean, I really wanted to go, but… Rory can be a bit grabby.’

  ‘I know it’s tough, but stay away from that kid.’

  Marie nodded again. ‘Okay, Bianca. Promise.’

  ‘Ah, no. No promises. You do it because you know it’s what you should do. You don’t want what Rory Taylor-May has to offer. You can do way better than that.’

  Another nod and Marie’s eyes shifted to Damian. ‘Yeah. You’re right. Nice meeting you, Damian. See you later, Bianca.’ She tripped out looking a lot happier than when she had come in.

  ‘That kind of thing happen a lot?’ Damian asked. ‘You seemed kind of used to arbitrating between Marie and her mother.’

  ‘Libby “being impossible” is not an uncommon occurrence. And Marie’s not wrong far too much of the time. Those streaks in her hair? You should have heard Libby whining about that. Marie’s fifteen, but Libby treats her like she’s twelve. Mark’s the opposite, sort of. He’s thirteen and she keeps telling him he’s the man of the house. Now, as I was saying, I’m going to go find a swimsuit. You change into yours. Then it’s hot tub time.’

  ‘I’ll pour the wine while I’m at it.’

  Bianca smiled. ‘Heaven, here I come.’

  San Francisco, CA.

  Snapshot was not the best known of the San Francisco Stars, but he liked to think he was recognisable and an integral part of the team. He had skills. Primarily, he had an innate talent with pistols which let him get away with shots lesser men simply could not manage, and he had got by on that for quite a while. Well, that and the tricked-out ammo Backroom made for him. He used twin, silver-plated Colt .45 revolvers, which Backroom had also done a little work on to improve the reliability and accuracy.

  He did have other skills though. Well, he was working on having other skills. The team did not really have a detective, so Snapshot was working on that. It was hard work, but Backroom was there to handle crime scene analysis, evidence collection… deduction.

  At least he was the best-looking guy on the team. He had that. He looked damn good in his bright red cowboy outfit, even if he did say so himself. Big hit with the ladies. Well, Backroom was gay, Muse just looked at him like he was an alien, and Lament was… cold, but other ladies. Generally, the ones who had never met him before were impressed.

  So with the detective work and the attractiveness, he had been both unsurprised and kind of excited when he got an email from Mink saying she needed his help on something. Obviously, she had heard of his skills as a detective and wanted him to assist on some investigation or other. And, obviously, that would result in him finding out what she looked like without her costume. These were given facts and he was not going to disappoint the lady.

  As he walked through the container yard at Potrero Point, he was wondering what it might be, this investigation. More people smuggling? Maybe illegal export of high technology? Drugs was always a possibility: she had uncovered a stash waiting to be picked up? Something more sinister, like espionage?

  Ahead of him, at the end of the row of containers, a woman stepped int
o view. It was dark and he could see no detail, but the shape was female. Mink was there, waiting for him, just as she had said. Except that, as he closed the distance, he began making out details which did not fit with what he knew. Mink, as far as he knew, wore high heels and this woman was in flats. Mink was reputed to be a big girl, while the shadow was slimmer than he expected and less well-endowed.

  Snapshot slipped one of his pistols free of its holster and closed the distance. The closer he got, the more he thought that he was not about to meet the mysterious Mink and, inside of ten yards, it was pretty obvious he was not. This woman was wearing some sort of bikini and had a ponytail which fell to her behind. Snapshot raised his pistol.

  The woman was moving before he registered it. Moonlight glinted off something metal just before it smashed into his hand. He let out a yelp and his pistol clattered to the ground. Well, he was ambidextrous: he reached for his second pistol. It was just clearing its holster when the business end of a rope dart punched into his throat. He choked for a brief second before the spike was pulled free and blood splashed the containers. His vision blurred. What the Hell had just happened? He was on his knees and there was blood on the ground. His blood. He fell…

  Diao Hua watched for a second to be sure that Snapshot was unlikely to be able to call for help and then turned on her heel. The foolish hero would die and the evidence would lead to Mink. Things were progressing as planned: soon the SFPD and the local Ultras would be out doing Diao Hua’s job for her.

  6th October.

  It was around ten a.m. before Bianca had everything nailed down which she had put aside to clear the decks for her weekend. Okay, so she should have probably done some work, but two days with Damian was a rare thing given their schedules, and she was damned if she was going to feel guilty about it.

  She felt a little guiltier when she walked into Elaine’s lab and found her friend looking distinctly frazzled. There had been no taking it easy for Elaine, apparently, and here Bianca was, coming in to check up on progress…

  ‘Morning, Elaine. Everything going okay for Wednesday?’