Two Evils

by Christina Moore

  “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a fresh piece of virgin pussy,” Malone said with a leer.

  “Really, Malone? I didn’t know you were interested,” Wainright said conversationally. “I do believe we’ve some fresh stock coming in on the next order. You’ve been doing your job very well lately—perhaps I will let you have first pick.”

  “Thank you, General,” Malone replied with a slight bow.

  “I dunno fellas,” Stan put in, grinding himself once again into Billie’s backside as he nuzzled and then licked her ear. She twisted her head away in disgust. “There’s something to be said for putting it to a woman that knows what she’s doing.”

  “No doubt that little cunt has spread ‘em for every asshole on her team and then some,” Malone replied snidely. “Probably fucked that CIA dickhead, too.”

  “Well gentlemen, as you are both well aware, a whore’s only good for being passed around,” Wainright said then.

  Billie found herself wanting to do as Rebecca had done—spit in their worthless faces. She knew perfectly well she wasn’t a whore, but that didn’t mean being accused of it pissed her off any less. And to be forced to listen to them discussing having sex with children and virgins so callously… It made her stomach turn, and she’d been forced to swallow the bile rising in her throat as well as her mounting anger.

  “Take them into the double bedroom,” the general said suddenly. “We need to mobilize and prepare to tie up the loose ends.”

  Rebecca turned to her, her eyes wide with fear as Malone stepped around the table to take her by the arm. She wasn’t stupid after all—she knew precisely what that meant:

  Wainright intended to kill their rescue party before they could mount the rescue.

  The “double bedroom” turned out to be a tiny little stateroom with a twin bed on either side of it. Billie and Rebecca both were shoved roughly inside before the door was slammed shut and locked from the outside.

  “Gee, what the hell are we supposed to do if we have to go to the bathroom, assholes?” Billie shouted angrily.

  She turned and looked at Rebecca, who now sat stonefaced on the edge of one bed, looking down at her hands. Billie moved to sit beside her, guilt washing over her at the pitiful site of the soaked and bedraggled young woman. “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” she said slowly. “I never should have brought you into this.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Rebecca replied, raising her head slowly to look at her. “If I’m going to die today, I’ll know it was in defense of my brother’s honor, and for all those lost women and girls. Maybe I wasn’t successful, but I tried.”

  “Hey, don’t give up on me, now,” Billie said. “I’m going to try and get us out of here, and I know that John and the others are coming. They’ll come for us, Becky.”

  “Billie, they’re walking into an ambush!”

  “I know they are,” she said, and then leaned over, whispering into her ear as she said, “But you and I both know that they’re closer than an hour. It won’t take them long to get here and I know my guys—they’ll scout the area for all points of advantage before moving in on this boat.”

  “I’m scared, Billie,” Rebecca said with a sniffle.

  “I am too, hon,” she replied.

  Now her companion snorted. “Please—you’re the She-Devil. Eddie always said you weren’t scared of anything.”

  Billie smiled at the compliment from her old friend, but shook her head as she said, “Just because I know how to keep my cool under pressure doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of anything. Every time I was in combat with the unit, every time I was on assignment for the company—every single time my life was even remotely threatened—I’ve been scared. I just didn’t show it. I learned not to.”

  Rebecca looked at her again, amazement in her eyes. “How do you do that? I’m so terrified they’re just going to come in here and shoot us, and at the same time I’m sick of being so scared. I am ashamed to call myself a Marine—we’re not supposed to be afraid, we’re supposed to be courageous.”

  Billie held her gaze with a stern look in her own eyes. “Now Rebecca, you listen to me: You have no reason to be ashamed of yourself. You broke into the office of a brigadier general based on circumstantial evidence and a hunch, and that takes a lot of guts. You didn’t call your mom to tell her about Eddie because you were protecting her from the very same man. I know how much you wanted to tell her, but you didn’t for her sake, and that takes courage too.

  “Do you want to know why your brother claimed I wasn’t scared of anything? It’s because seeing me be able to keep my head in the middle of nightmares made him feel better about being scared shitless himself, and I can assure you that he and the other guys were scared plenty of times. Having courage doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid, Becks. It just means that you’ve realized there’s something else more important than your fear.”

  “Like keeping Mom safe and wanting to save those girls,” Rebecca said.

  Billie nodded. “That’s right. And we’re going to save them…right after we save ourselves.”

  

  They should have known it was a set up.

  John and the team, plus Teddy, Presley, and Green, had taken their two vehicles as fast as possible back south toward the marina. They’d pulled into the long drive and split, approaching dock eight from opposite sides. Each driver pulled into a parking space in a back lot and their groups approached on foot—John kept Teddy with him because it simply felt safer. He knew he’d be able to keep him from losing his shit and doing something too stupid that way. When they were in position they held, with quiet communications being relayed through Green and Presley, the only two of the group with radios.

  Lifting a pair of binoculars Presley had produced from somewhere, John checked out the last boat on the left side of dock eight. He was disappointed but none too surprised to see no sign of the women on the boat—there was no sign of anyone, in fact. In the early evening hours, under the last rays of the sun, all was strangely quiet on dock eight—on all the docks, for that matter.

  The hairs on the back of John’s neck stood on end. He didn’t like this. Something was off, and he made sure Presley relayed his sense of foreboding. The return message was one of agreement, with Gabe’s voice coming over the mike saying, “Does the state of Denmark smell rotten to you, G-Man?”

  John took Presley’s radio from him. “Like week-old socks, Thunderhead,” he replied.

  Wayne’s voice came next. “I think we need to take the boat now—no sense waiting another thirty minutes.”

  “Then let’s do it,” John said, handing Presley’s radio and the binoculars back to him.

  His fellow agent tucked the items away and pulled his gun. John drew his as well, and gave the go-ahead nod to Teddy. Part of the plan—since he didn’t have a gun—was that Teddy would slip into the water and swim to the boat. While John and the others drew the general and his cohorts off and onto the dock, he was to climb aboard out of sight and get Billie and Rebecca to safety—and no matter how much she protested, he was not to let Billie join the fray.

  “Yeah, good luck with that one,” Teddy had muttered as they hashed the plan out on the drive over.

  Jogging in a crouch to the edge of the water by dock seven, Teddy was careful to conceal himself in the shade of a boat and a large, leafy tree. John watched intently from his position by another tree, his every nerve ending humming with anticipation. After walking as quietly into the water as he could, Teddy started swimming. He was halfway down the space between the docks, keeping only his head above water, when suddenly a shot rang out—a splash in the water by his shoulder had him crying out in surprise and diving for cover.

  Giving up the pretense of stealth, John slipped from his hiding spot and fired toward a power boat three slips closer to the shore than their target. In his peripheral vision, he saw Gabe’s group advancing from the other side, where more shots were being fired from the right-hand side of the dock. A second shooter on their sid
e also began firing and Presley engaged him, exchanging shots as though they were in a tennis match.

  A bullet whizzed past John’s ear and he ducked, then fired again before slipping back behind the tree next to Presley, flicking his eyes toward the water briefly to try and locate Teddy… and there he was, about to do precisely the one thing he’d kept him on his team to try and prevent: something stupid. Billie’s baby brother had swum across the distance between himself and the shooter’s boat—under the water, apparently—and right then he was easing the top of his head above the water along its side, just a few feet from the shooter.

  Suddenly John realized what his goal was and he lifted his gun, keeping up a steady stream of fire from his position behind the tree, distracting the shooter until Teddy was ready. A moment later the firefighter launched himself out of the water, clearly startling the gunman, whose turn to strike at the new threat actually became a disadvantage—it made him all the more easier for Teddy to grab a hold of, dragging him over the side of the boat and into the water. He was quickly yanked back up by the front of his shirt and decked with a hefty right hook, effectively rendering him unconscious. Teddy pushed the man away from him in disgust; he drifted away from the boat and out of the slip.

  Way to go Teddy, John thought proudly, just as Presley elicited a painful grunt and dropped to the ground. Crouching, he noted that his fellow agent had been caught in the shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “The fuck do you think? I’ve been shot,” Presley said wryly. “Unfortunately it’s my shooting arm, making it and me useless since I never mastered the art of ambidextrous gun control.”

  Bullets struck the tree as John was examining the wound. It was bleeding pretty heavily but it didn’t appear that anything vital was hit. Grabbing Presley’s free hand, he slapped it to the man’s shoulder, causing him to wince.

  “Sorry. Just keep pressure on it,” he said.

  Just then an engine roared to life, and a sudden fear struck him in the gut. He jumped to his feet just in time to see the last boat on the left-hand side pulling away from the dock.

  Rage—and fear that he would lose Billie before he had the chance to tell her how he felt—engulfed him, and mindless of the danger he moved out from behind the tree, firing his gun at the man who had shot Presley. The second shooter was on the flybridge of a small yacht not unlike the one now pulling away into Boundary Channel. In mere moments, the engine would pick up speed and they’d escape to the Potomac.

  

  Billie had examined every inch of the tiny cabin…and found nothing that might help her get out of the handcuffs. Frustration and anger clawed their way into her mind as she sat on the bed opposite Rebecca and tried to figure another way out of this mess.

  And though she tried her damnedest not to think about it, she was worried too. John and the others were walking into an ambush—surely they’d figured that out by now. Who knew how many reinforcements the general had called in? Her friends were going to be slaughtered trying to rescue her and she was helpless to stop it. Feeling that way was really beginning to piss her off, as ‘helpless’ had never been a word in her vocabulary.

  A niggling thought at the back of her mind forced its way forward then: Why hadn’t General Wainright asked about the flash drive? Certainly he was aware of—or at least suspected—Rebecca’s snooping. He obviously knew that she had seen the Pleasures file, but was there any way for him to know that she’d copied it?

  Billie perked up a little at the thought. If indeed Wainright was oblivious to the files having been copied, it meant that even if he had destroyed or transferred the originals on his office computer there was still evidence to be used against him.

  The downside to that, she realized, was that his not knowing about the flash drive meant he was planning to kill her and Rebecca simply because of what they might know. Great.

  She started looking around the room again, hoping to spy something she had missed on her first perusal—there had to be something in here she could use as a lock pick. Her eyes hadn’t gone far, having fallen on Rebecca’s closed eyes as she took deep, steady breaths, when the sound of a key in the door lock intruded into the relative quiet of the room. Rebecca opened her eyes and both of them turned to face the door as Stan pulled it open.

  Naturally, he had a gun in his hand.

  “Did the general send you here to kill us?” Rebecca snapped angrily. “Wouldn’t have thought he’d be happy with you getting blood all over his precious boat’s décor.”

  Billie was surprised at the strength of the venom in her voice. Clearly Stan was too, as he raised an eyebrow and regarded her with renewed interest. “My, my, my…” he said with an exaggerated drawl. “Looks like the little kitty has teeth after all. Don’t you worry, pussy cat, you’ll get your turn to purr. But right now, I’m just a little more interested in the lioness over here.”

  He stepped into the room further, shutting the door behind him. As the already minuscule space was reduced even further by his entrance, he had only to take one step and he was at Billie’s side. The nerve endings along the length of her spine started dancing a jig when he put the muzzle of his gun to her temple and started drawing lazy circles with it.

  “The general and Malone seem to think that you’re some kind of hellion,” he taunted softly. “They seem to think that even in handcuffs, you’re still dangerous.”

  They’re right, she agreed silently.

  “I gotta say… I don’t see it. Ain’t much even a shooter with your record can do with her hands locked behind her back.”

  Stan suddenly swung the gun away from her and pointed it squarely at Rebecca’s face. His eyes remained on Billie as he said, “Tell me, She-Devil… how much of an angel are you willing to be in order to save the lieutenant’s life?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Billie didn’t hesitate to answer: “I’ll do anything.”

  She looked to Rebecca then, and knew without a doubt that it was true. The young woman before her was family, as a Marine and as a sister to one of her team brothers. Though she barely knew her, yes, she would to anything to save her.

  Eddie would come back from the dead and kick her ass if she didn’t.

  Stan grinned lasciviously. “I was really hoping you’d say that,” he said, grabbing her under the arm and hauling her to her feet. “You and me are gonna go somewhere a little more private.”

  With that, he stuffed the gun in the waistband of his pants and reached for the door, shoving her out into what might have been a corridor if it was about ten feet longer and four feet wider—as it was, the space separating the twin-bed cabin from the kitchenette and lounge area was barely wide enough for the two of them to stand together comfortably.

  Not that I’d ever be comfortable anywhere near this pervert, Billie mused sourly as he was re-locking the door behind them. Stan then turned her toward another door, which he opened to a somewhat larger stateroom with a full-size bed covered by a satin bedspread. He pushed her inside and stepped in behind her, shutting the door with a snick and a chuckle.

  “I’d really like to have a good time here,” Stan said as she turned to face him. “It doesn’t have to be unpleasant for either of us, you know.”

  A plan quickly began to form in her mind, and though it nearly made her gag to think of what it might take to overpower him, all Billie had to do to shove her displeasure back down was remember the fear in Rebecca’s eyes as Stan’s gun was pointed at her face. She had only to recall the terror-filled scream the younger woman had cried out as the truck plowed through the concrete siderail of Memorial Bridge and they’d plunged toward the river.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said sweetly. “Maybe we screwed up, Stan—me and Rebecca. We shouldn’t have done what we did, but that doesn’t mean we should die for it. Please, if you’ll help us, I’ll do anything you want. We just want to live, that’s all. We won’t tell anybody anything. I’m sure she’ll agree to that. I can make her agree to it.”
<
br />   Stan sauntered closer, grabbing her by the hips and yanking her body into his. “Baby, if you rock my world, I’ll personally get you and your little friend off the boat alive.”

  Billie grinned, then leaned her head forward so that her lips were but a breath away from his. “Will you do something for me first? Help me…get in the mood?”

  Stan closed the distance, crushing her mouth beneath his. Billie parted her lips slightly, inviting him to slip his tongue between them. He hesitated for only a moment as though he thought she might bite him, then plunged it in, tangling their tongues together in what she was sure he thought was a passionate kiss.

  She just wanted to throw up in his mouth.

  But she had to play the game out, and if it meant letting him think she was into this twisted excuse for foreplay, so be it. After a long moment the kiss ended, and he lifted his head to look at her. His eyes told her that he was surprised she was being so compliant, but the lust that accompanied it was quickly growing stronger. His desire to get laid, she thought with dark satisfaction, would be his undoing.

  “What is it you want me to do, baby?” Stan asked, his voice husky with want.

  Billie teased his nose with hers, brushing her lips against his with the barest touch. “I want you to lick me, Stan,” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “Nothing gets me hotter than seeing a man’s face at my pussy, lapping up my cream.”

  “And there ain’t nothin’ gets me hotter than a slut who loves to talk dirty,” he told her, pushing her back on the bed.

  Using her elbows, she scooted back a little as he reached for her left leg, drew off her knee-high boot, and dropped it on the floor. He repeated the move with her right leg and then reached for the snap of her jeans, drawing her zipper down slowly. Billie’s stomach roiled in protest, sending bile burning up her throat. She had to do this, she reminded herself firmly. The men on the boat, while easily handled if she was alone, could use Rebecca as leverage against her—she had to make things a little more even. Stan had also been the one to put the handcuffs on both of them, so it stood to reason he had the key.