by Simone Sinna
* * * *
The girl was only a block away from the station when Corey worked it out. He’d been too distracted by her ass. And the backpack. He could just run past and grab it. Sure, she was tallish for a girl, but skinny as hell and no match for him. He could pull a gun if he had to. As they got closer to the station, there were fewer people and no sign of any cops. It would have been easy. So easy he figured it wasn’t going to be that much harder to pick her up too. Which was why he had a truck with doors and no windows. He pictured throwing her into the back, tying her up and then taking her somewhere to have some fun. He’d dump her afterwards in the middle of nowhere and take her pack. He could ditch the plates, because he had a second set. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
He slowed the truck down, stopped fifty yards ahead of her. Opened the back up. Saw her only a few feet away and then put on the balaclava. It was going to be a piece of cake.
* * * *
Savannah wasn’t in any hurry. She’d found one of the principle dancers from 1985, who was now living in San Jose, only a short train journey, and was seeing her that evening. The train didn’t go until two but she figured there’d be takeout at the station and she planned to sit there and think rather than in the bustle of the hostel. She wasn’t sure if she’d be coming back to San Francisco and was happy she’d done the tourist things the previous day.
She didn’t take any notice of the truck stopping in front of her, but she did notice when the driver opened up the back and fiddled with a balaclava. It was far too warm for one, but by the time she had made sense of it, the huge man—soup-man?—had a hand over her mouth and was dragging her into the van.
Savannah knew she was no match for him. She’d done plenty of sport, a little dance, but never martial arts of any sort. He was probably twice her weight. She sensed that if he got her into the van she would probably die. Her best hope was fighting like crazy and hoping someone would at least call in the incident, maybe take the van registration plates and give them to the police. Bruises and even broken bones were better than being raped and murdered. Her heart sank as she realized no one really knew her here or would worry about her.
But she was wrong. As she was trying to bite her abductor, kicking furiously as he threw her into the truck, she was aware there was someone else there. At first she thought it must be his accomplice, but dazed, she realized someone was coming to her aid. Quickly, she looked around and found a wrench from the back of the van and hit the man with the balaclava. As he was wrestling the second man, she missed balaclava-man’s head and hit his shoulder. It wasn’t enough to break anything, but it meant he let go of the grip he had on her rescuer’s neck. Balaclava-man rolled, kicked her rescuer in the groin and scrambled up, getting into the van and driving off, back doors still flapping. Savannah sank onto the pavement, getting her breath. Soup-man sat up next her. “Hi. I’m Ben Masterton, from yesterday. And right now I need to get you somewhere safe before that jerk calls for reinforcements.”
It was only then she realized that her pack was in the back of the truck.
Chapter Four
“He’s taken everything I have.” Savannah bit her lip.
“Shit. Passport and money too?”
Savannah shook her head, hand unconsciously going to the money belt she was wearing under her shirt. “Advisable if you’re travelling alone,” Dan had said. She silently sent her thanks. Her hand went to her back pocket. The photo had gone too. She looked around in despair and saw it on the ground where the balaclava-man had scuffled with her. She stretched over and picked it up. Her mother’s smile shone out at her, but either her foot or the man’s had scrunched where her father had been. He was barely discernible as anything other than the broad shape of a person.
“I need to report it I guess.”
Ben looked at her awkwardly. “Sure, I’ll drop you off at the police station if you like. But…”
She looked at him. For a big man who could clearly hold his own in a fight he was going all Labrador on her. She felt she could drown in his brown eyes.
“Thing is,” said Ben, standing up and offering her his hand to pull her up, “I’m a private detective, and cops don’t like us much.”
“So you’d rather I didn’t mention you?”
He grinned. “You got the idea.”
“Okay, no need to. Not as like you knew who attacked me.” Savannah stood up and brushed her jeans down. “Guess that means I’m going to miss my train to San Jose.”
Ben paused. “You’ve had an unfriendly introduction to the USA. Let me make it up. I’ll drive you.”
In the end he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and it was easier to give in. It wasn’t like she minded spending extra time with him. He had coffee while she reported the theft to a bored sergeant, bought some underwear and a change of clothes, and afterwards they talked all the way in the car. Mostly, she realized later, about herself.
“If you really are a private detective, maybe you can give me advice,” she said.
Ben nodded, eyes on the road. “Happy if I can be of service.”
Savannah fished out the photo. “I’m looking for this man. Name Todd Wilson. Don’t know much about him, other than he’d be probably around fifty-five to sixty and at least in early 1986 he was in San Francisco.” She told him about her mother dying and that she thought he was her real father.
“So why are we heading to San Jose?”
“Where one of the principle ballerinas at the time now lives.”
“Want me to come in with you?”
“I can’t afford to pay you.”
“My good deed for the day.”
“I think you’ve already done that.”
“You are the good deed. Anything you want today is yours.”
Savannah grinned but had to look away as she thought of exactly what she’d like to do with her gift. It was unusual for her to warm so quickly to someone. Maybe she was as susceptible to American magic as her mother was. At least she had contraception, and fortunately in light of the theft, the long-lasting type.
Rachel de Grange lived in a spacious house on a leafy street set well back. A Spanish-speaking maid answered the door to them and showed them through. The lady of the house was out on the back patio, but getting there Savannah paused to look at the corridor of photos of her performances. She had been stunning, and now a quarter of a decade later she still was, though a little shrunken, or perhaps that was just in comparison to Ben’s bulk.
“Of course I remember your mother,” she said, her voice musical and accent more French than American.
“Do you remember him?” Savannah handed her the photo.
Rachel frowned. Truth was the photo could have been of just about anyone after the scuffle. “I remember a man,” Rachel said. “We all thought she was so lucky to have such a hunk. What was his name again? Tony?”
“Todd Wilson.”
“Oui! He sent us both flowers for that Swan Lake performance. She was Odette, I Odile. He took us to cocktails at the University Club and showed us both off. ”
“Do you recall anything else about him, Ma’am?” Ben asked.
The maid interrupted them with a plunger of coffee. After Rachel had poured them each one, and offered cake of which she took none, she answered.
“Non. Just that he was very taken with Audrey.”
“American?”
“Yes,” said Rachel. She frowned. “Though for some reason I am thinking Italian? Not his accent certainly.”
“His mother maybe? Wilson doesn’t sound very Italian.”
Rachel shook her head, then brightened. “Of course! It was where they met.”
Savannah felt a rush of excitement. “In Italy?”
“Yes, Rome,” replied Rachel. “At the airport.”
“You seem very certain. It was a long time ago. Have you seen Audrey or him since?” Ben sounded skeptical.
“Non, not after she returned to Australia. She was only with
us a few months. But their meeting was very…”
“Romantic?”
“I suppose you could say that. It’s why I remember it so well. He saved her life.”
It had been perhaps a little exaggerated, but Rachel told them that Audrey had been on her way to San Francisco, holidaying in Europe. She was in the Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Rome checking onto the San Francisco plane when there had been a bomb explosion. People had died, many injured.
“In 1986?” Savannah asked after they had left, on their way to find somewhere cheap to eat and for her to stay. “Who was bombing things then? IRA? Not in Rome surely?”
“There have been people bombing other people since bombs were invented,” said Ben.
“It must have been what the newspaper clipping was!”
“What?” Ben looked puzzled.
“In the box my mother left me was a clipping from an Italian newspaper. I hadn’t gotten around to getting it translated. But there was a picture of what could have been an airport terminal and lots of people and police.” She thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I am pretty sure Leonardo da Vinci was mentioned and I couldn’t work out what it had to do with art or my mother. Not art though, it was the airport.”
“Easy to Google and find out.”
They found a cheap motel with a cheap and cheerful Italian restaurant opposite—seemed appropriate—and ordered a bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine. Savannah couldn’t afford international roaming so she borrowed Ben’s phone. It took five minutes, delayed until she remembered the newspaper clip had been dated December, 1985. Audrey hadn’t yet arrived in America. She hadn’t been due until the New Year.
“Here it is,” said Savannah, unable to contain her excitement. “It happened in Vienna too. Some group I’ve never heard of. ANO. Mean anything to you?”
Ben shook his head.
“Sixteen dead, ninety-nine wounded.” She kept reading. “Something to do with the PLO. This is like reading a different language.”
Ben frowned. “PLO is or was the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
“I guess it’s irrelevant. Both my parents just in the wrong place and the wrong time. Does it tell us anything about Todd? He visited Rome? Worked there maybe? He was able to afford to go to San Fran but doesn’t mean he lived there. Any way of looking up flights back then? Or the wounded list?”
Ben shook his head. “Doubt if I could do that even in the US, let alone overseas.”
They spent another half hour trying to work out what to do next. The name was too common to put through databases and they just didn’t have enough information to head anywhere else. Dispirited, Savannah agreed to let it go and think on it overnight. But Ben was such good company, and the wine and food hearty and delicious, so she found herself putting her problem aside and making the best of the situation. So much so that when Ben took her to her motel door, against a deeper instinct that said he was a hold-onto type of guy and she was only moving through, Savannah didn’t want to let him go just yet. She felt more alone than she had in a long time, and maybe just a little more apprehensive about the task in front of her now she could see how difficult it was going to be.
Ben stood there for a moment and they looked at each other. He hesitated and for a horrible moment she thought he was going to leave, but instead he bent down and kissed her and she was sure that he knew in that instant, just as she did, that he wasn’t going anywhere.
He tasted of the rich, sweet liqueur he had finished dinner with, and smelt of salt and a hint of apple shampoo. But she was most aware of how hard his body felt against hers, how she felt her body melting into his, her juices responding as if she was on fire with desire. Later she wondered if it was the assault, the search, the anticlimax of getting close and then finding a dead end, all on top of jet lag, that made her fall so hard so fast. The feelings that stirred in her were an unusual combination of feeling relaxed and safe as well as a burning desire. Perhaps, because of Sal, all her relationships had been tainted with the lack of trust and Ben saving her had somehow transcended this.
They half fell, half walked through the door of the motel, Ben kicking it closed behind him. He pulled her onto the bed, and they both became lost in the exploration of each other’s bodies. Savannah ran her hands under his T-shirt, felt the ridges of his six-pack, couldn’t for a moment believe that real people had six-packs, let alone that she was kissing someone who did. Ben’s hands went under her shirt and over her breasts. She hadn’t been wearing a bra, rarely did, but from his gasp he hadn’t been expecting such ready access. She felt her nipples pebbling under his fingers, and moaned with pleasure when his lips, hot and moist, sucked each one in turn.
Savannah arched back, wriggling her hips, mindful of how wet her panties were going to be. Ben sat up, grinning. “God you are gorgeous. I feel like an angel dropped out of the sky into my lap. Please don’t tell me this is all a mirage.”
“Take you shirt off.”
He did, and Savannah stared. “Yep,” she finally said. “A mirage.”
“Well as long as we’re both dreaming together, nothing can go wrong.” Ben pulled her shirt off, then standing, eased her jeans and panties down before kneeling at the end of the bed. “A very sweet-tasting mirage, I’m thinking.”
He gently pushed her legs apart and, easing her back, began licking her thighs. Savannah couldn’t stop herself wriggling, wanting to scream “take me,” all the while reveling in the wait. His mouth finally reached her pussy, and she felt his fingers gently opening her lips, brushing over her sex before his mouth, hot and hard, sucked on her clit, rotating his tongue around, the early stubble on his chin grinding against her opening of her cunt.
She felt as if she lost time, oblivious to the world around her as he licked and sucked her juices, then came to lie beside her, mouth again on hers. She rolled over onto him, naked against the buckle of his jeans, and she ground herself against the bulging cock barely contained in them.
“Honey, I so need to come in you,” he moaned.
“Yes please, me too.”
“But I don’t have any condoms.”
“I just had a total check pre-trip and I’m on contraception.”
Ben groaned as she wriggled down, kneeled between his legs and started undoing his belt and jeans. “And you?”
“So long since I had sex might have forgotten how to,” Ben said, watching her, grin in place. “And yeah, after Laura left me I got checked up because she’d been playing around. I’m clear.”
Savannah pulled off the last of his clothes and looked at him in wonder. Gorgeous even with a hunk out of one thigh.
“That must have been painful,” she murmured. She knelt between his leg, hand running over his thigh scar, then up to his cock, long and hard, top glistening. She put her lips over the tip, felt him quiver beneath her, his hips grinding as she licked and sucked and returned the gift he had given her. Finally he could take no more.
“Sit on me honey, let me watch you.”
Savannah raised herself up, opened her pussy and teased him, rubbing the tip of his cock in her juices.
“How much do you want me?”
“Take much longer and you might find out.”
She gyrated a little, but her own need drove her as fast as he needed, slipping herself down slowly and relishing the feel of his cock filling her. Arching her back she angled her hips, felt the changing pressures and closed her eyes as she concentrated on the pleasures they were providing each other. Ben’s hands went to either side of her hips, big hands that could take all of her ass cheeks in them. Altering the angle slightly, Savannah sat more upright, watching Ben’s face change as she continued to move, using her pelvic muscles to suck and massage his cock within her.
“Honey you are so, so, good. This must be heaven, not a mirage.”
She kept on, enjoying the sensations as her juices continued to flow, as her body drove her towards a climax. Each time she was nearly there she forced herself to slow, delayi
ng so she could watch Ben’s face, enjoy his pleasure and let it fuel her own. His hip movements became more energetic, his hands so hard on her hips she wondered about bruises, but the harder he held, the more she felt herself juicing, the more she wanted him deeper in her.
“Come on top,” she whispered to him suddenly. He paused to catch his breath, then flipped her effortlessly. Though before she had wondered about his weight on her she now pulled him down on her, wrapping her legs around his hips and arching as he thrust. Together their movements became frenzied. All Savannah was aware of was how much he filled her and how the pressure of his hips pushing him deeper accelerated her desire, until finally she felt him starting to release, and in one last energetic rocking, she allowed her muscles to tighten until the excitement reached its peak and released her in long waves of ecstasy.
Chapter Five
She woke gradually, head still foggy, unsure where she was. The bedside clock said 6:00 a.m. and she was alone. It took a few minutes to remember where she was, first the delicious memory, and then the disappointment he wasn’t there. She couldn’t recall him leaving. She sat up, mouth dry, hoping the minibar had mineral water, when she noticed his shoes were still there on the floor. She smiled. He must be in the bathroom.
Except he wasn’t. As she pulled out the mineral water she heard him. He was outside talking to someone. Who the hell was up this early?
Savannah stepped closer to the door which hadn’t been properly closed. He was on the balcony, his back to her, cellphone in hand.
