Alice could see she was tired. She wondered when it would all hit her and she would reject her. She didn’t take Kathy’s offer to see justice served on Dan and Bonnie seriously.
“I’m going to take a shower…” Kathy began.
“Want company?” Alice tried to joke.
“Yes,” Kathy answered surprising her and leading her into the master bath.
“We need to go back home,” Kathy told her the next day. She had woken up surprisingly refreshed, she stared at the knife impressions in the faux bamboo and thought over everything they had discussed the previous evening. Yes, she should be horrified that her wife was a killer. Yes, she loved the woman who had tried so hard to do what was right. Alice was right though. They deserved justice. They wouldn’t get it from the authorities. When Kathy asked her Alice explained the portfolio she had put together that someone had failed to act on in a timely manner, that Bonnie and Dan had escaped, the information that Kathy was to be ‘bred’ didn’t even phase her anymore. She wondered why those things didn’t bother her anymore and thought perhaps it was her desire for revenge. Could she have killed those men and Alex? After what they put her through, you bet!
“Are you sure you are ready?” Alice asked. She had been surprised that Kathy had made love to her in the shower and again in bed later. She would have thought and was still waiting for the horror to hit., the rejection. None of that was in evidence and she felt Kathy was a ticking time bomb. The lovemaking was satisfying in its own way but still something was missing. It was almost as though Kathy were ‘thanking’ her for something this time.
Quietly Kathy nodded as she answered, “Yes, I think it is time.”
Alice looked at her questioningly as she agreed to make the arrangements.
The plane came in a few days later. They had packed all their bags. Months of staying at the island had made them all so used to the ease of living there. Going back to reality, to the States was going to take some adjustment. Everyone was sad to be going but at the same time eager to get back to their ‘normal’ lives. Living on a private island was a fairytale for anyone.
It took off from their cove and banked sharply as it flew over the island that had been their home for the long months as Kathy recovered.
Kathy took Alice’s hand and squeezed it. Alice looked over at the love she saw in her wife’s eyes. She still waited for something…
They landed on an isolated landing strip and an officious car drove up to greet them. Alice had the servants take the children and the dog to the private jet waiting for them as other men transferred their luggage. Kathy watched as their passports were given to one of the officials. There seemed to be ‘extra’ passports but the man discretely removed the currency from each of the passports and pocketed it as he stamped all of them. He handed Alice the passports and a manila envelope and giving her a sloppy salute got back into his car and drove off.
“You have pull?” Kathy asked admiringly.
Alice smiled and nodded as she looked up at the clouds hovering on the horizon. It was going to be a bumpy ride with a storm heading in. She opened the manila envelope as the two of them walked over to the jet to mount the steps. “We needed papers for the dog or she would have had to go into quarantine for a month,” Alice informed her.
Kathy was confident in Alice, she was one of the most thorough women she knew and had ever known. If she said she knew where some of those criminals were Kathy knew they would find them. Alice had refused to tell her when they would go as they needed to get back to L.A. and settle back into their life there.
A customs agent and his team met them in Los Angeles and inspected their papers, luggage, and their plane. Alice was silent as the team went over everything. The extra passports were hidden in a manner she was confident that they would not be found, she had done this way too many times to worry about it. The jet was perfect for bringing in drugs but Alice had never used drugs, even recreationally. She felt they were stupid and although she knew she could get away with transporting them, she had the expertise, why bother, she had more money than she could ever spend in her lifetime. The team though was determined to find something. Perhaps Alice Weaver and her family, her wife Kathy who had been rescued from that compound, questioned by the F.B.I, were on some ‘list’ somewhere but Alice didn’t sweat it as they waited patiently for the team to finish with their sweep and rifling through their things.
“Okay, you can go Ms. Weaver,” the agent finally said although he wondered why she had gotten special treatment and it had been emphasized that they be checked.
Alice and the family got into a stretch limousine that was waiting patiently on the tarmac for them. Their luggage was loaded in and the dog sitting on seat with the children looking happy to be there with them all. Their papers for the dog as well as all of them had passed inspection. Alice handed the passports for her employees back to their nanny and housekeeper for them to keep. Her families she tucked into a leather briefcase. They would go into the safe at home.
Alice got out to unlock the gate. Only the gardeners had a key to the estate while they had been gone. Although she had visited once in the many months to check on something the place had been unoccupied. Other than regular security checks by the firm they had inherited with the purchase of the house no one had been in the house or on the property other than the gardeners.
The house smelled dusty and unused as they removed the covers from the furniture. The children seemed to explode into the house and the place soon resounded with calls, the dog barking, and noise! No house is a home unless the children are making it theirs. Alice smiled. She had missed this place. She loved the house that she had bought for her bride. She looked at Kathy and was pretty sure she felt the same way.
Kathy unpacked for them one at a time as Alice looked around the house. Someone had been here while they were gone. Only someone of Alice’s particular talents would have realized it though. Despite the layer of dust they had been very careful to replace to hide their presence. They hadn’t been completely successful and Alice wondered what the cameras that she had never turned off and were motion activated and digital would tell her later. It could wait. They were home and she wouldn’t worry Kathy or the staff unnecessarily and certainly not the children.
Over the next few days they got things back to ‘normal.’ Their housekeeper, Mrs. Fernandez shopped and restocked the cupboards and refrigerator. Nan got the kids back on a schedule especially after Kathy felt brave enough to re-enroll them in school. With Alice along to provide her with moral support the kids were soon back in school, in fact they were caught up with their contemporaries, and each in classes including Emily who they enrolled in pre-school. The kids were thrilled to become reacquainted with their friends and it wasn’t long before they were having them over and playing. Kit seemed to find a lot to giggle about with her friends, she joined sports teams or planned to when the new seasons began and was looking forward to being with her friends and that happiness transcended everything she did.
Alice scheduled a spa treatment for herself and her wife and they got facials, manicures, pedicure, their skin was exfoliated, they were massaged, it was a nice relaxing day and with their dark tans they looked terrific. Alice had decided to keep her longer blonde hair and Kathy found herself enjoying the expensive trim they both got. The day made them both feel young, exciting, and sexy.
“Hey Darling, what are you doing?” Kathy asked Alice as she came into her office and put her arms around her. She was happy to be home, in the weeks they had settled in it was like nothing had ever happened. If she pretended really hard the year plus that she was gone, the months and months of questioning and the months on the island had never happened. The last two years didn’t exist. Reality though was that she was home, she was safe, Alice made it so.
Alice would normally have pressed a button on her computer and changed the screens she was looking at. Instead, because it was Kathy she left them on so that her wife could see the research sh
e was conducting looking for their enemies.
Kathy looked down at the screen, at the screens that showed a name, one Harry Summerling, his assets and various other information. He looked to be moderately wealthy, had homes in Florida and California, a nice income from what she could see. Alice might be looking at a new client for all she knew. “Who is Harry Summerling?” she asked.
“Dr. Dan Shloggles,” she replied and turned to look at her wife and her reaction.
Kathy’s eyes widened at the news as she glanced back at the screens in shocked surprise. “He is going by another name?” she asked numbly. She had thought about this man and what he could have done to her daughter, had helped facilitate in her own world, and his involvement with Bonnie.
Alice shook her head, “No, this is his real name, his ‘wife,’” she made quotation marks at the word ‘wife.’ “Is conveniently named Bonnie.”
“Not very original,” Kathy said dryly.
Alice grinned and shook her head again, “No, but it was the clue I needed to figure out who they really were. They are pretty well hidden in their other world.” She turned to her computers and put up another screen pointing out a newspaper article to Kathy. “Apparently the Summerlings are very social in Miami.”
Kathy looked to see the Miami Herald social pages and a picture of a man and woman. She barely recognized Bonnie all dressed up in a stunning gown. The black and white picture showed a moderately attractive man with a mustache that drooped unbecomingly below his lip and horn rimmed glasses. “That is their disguise?” she asked astounded.
“No, their disguises were as Dr. Dan Schloggles and his next-door neighbor Bonnie Culver,” Alice explained.
Kathy was excited that Alice had found them. Then she realized what this meant and asked, “When are we going to meet them?” She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice and failed.
Alice assessed her wife. She knew Kathy hadn’t deviated from her plan of accompanying Alice. She had to try though. “Maybe I should go and meet them myself…” she began.
“NO!” Kathy gasped. “I don’t want you to go alone, I need to go along!”
Alice’s eyes darted between her wife’s. Her pupils were dilated in distress. She could see she was highly agitated. She hesitated to argue with her but…
Kathy sensed Alice’s reluctance. “Don’t you understand? I need to see this done. I need to know they are gone from our lives, permanently.”
Alice understood that. It was why she saw to these things herself. She nodded but did not smile. “You are going to need some training,” she offered.
“Training? Like what?” Kathy asked.
“I’ll show you.”
Kathy’s first impression of the house was its austerity. There was very little of anything here. No food, no dishes, and very few pieces of furniture. It was apparent no one lived here. Alice showed her the locked bedroom which indeed held a few boxes and nothing else. “You could store this at our house,” she pointed out reasonably.
Alice nodded, “I could, and probably should.” She shrugged. “I guess I just kept it here because it always was here. I never thought of changing it.” Alice re-locked the door after Kathy had looked over the room completely and led her to the basement door in the kitchen.
It was obvious here that no one could have possibly lived in the house. The cupboard had pretty glass front doors with nothing on the bare shelves. The cupboards were painted a pale yellow that had been in style in the 1960’s or 1970’s, even the refrigerator was a matching yellow. None of it was in use though and the refrigerator was even unplugged. The house though was very clean; the only thing the woman must clean was the dust that would settle, no one would be generating dirt of any kind.
Alice unlocked the basement door and removed a few of the tell-tale signs that would have told her if someone had entered her private domain, nothing had been triggered since she had been here so long ago. Reaching for the light switch she turned it on and lit up the steps and whatever was below them. For the first time Kathy felt a little scared, whatever was below them, in a basement, had been hidden from other’s eyes for years, she knew only Alice had been here since she bought the house so long ago.
As they descended the steps Kathy’s eyes darted everywhere. What she saw though surprised her. The basement was the length of the entire house with no walls separating it into smaller rooms. It was also below the level of the ground with no windows to give it away. It was very quiet. She saw a bathroom in one corner and could see into it seeing a shower stall and a toilet, a washer and a dryer. Next to the bathroom were some tools including what looked like a sharpening apparatus. Alice had told her she sharpened her own knives. On one of the walls were the crossbows, very small, with triggers like guns. Next to them hanging on the wall was some sort of leather pouches and holders. One looked like a bandolier with specially designed arrows in it that apparently fit the crossbows. At the end of the basement she could see targets drawn on the far wall. The wall apparently was covered in some sort of cork board that Alice used for target practice, several knives were centered around the head of figure of a man. Kathy admired how many went through the heart as well. She was excited. On another part of the basement were bags hanging from the ceiling and pads of different sorts.
“Here, I brought you this,” Alice said handing her a packet.
Opening it Kathy was surprised to find work-out clothes. She looked up at Alice.
“You need some basic training before we go after them.”
Kathy had been amazed to find out how firm Alice was about this. She had seen Alice work-out many times in their own home, they had a work-out room after all. She had seen her get sweaty and it had aroused her. She had seen her do laps in the pool. She had not however seen her do any of the things that the bags, the pads, and the knives would indicate.
Kathy was exhausted by the end of the two hours that Alice taught her. She was hot and sweaty and irritable at how clumsy she felt. When she had complained Alice had simply stopped whatever activity they were doing. She had refused to continue in that activity but simply changed the program. When Kathy asked why they needed to know certain things she didn’t explain, she showed Kathy. Kathy had been amazed to see Alice throw herself against the pads, beat the hell out of the punching bags, and then effortlessly throw the knives from very far across the room with precision and an accuracy that could only come from practice. Kathy knew she could never be that good but Alice said she didn’t need to be that good, she just needed confidence in her own abilities.
Alice handed her a towel and pointed her to the shower stall. Kathy could see that the bathroom had not been used in a very long time by the amount of dust on the water in the toilet, on the floor of the shower, and the sink. It was obvious that no one but Alice was allowed down here. Kathy rinsed off the shower before using it and flushed the toilet. She also rinsed the sink as she looked at herself in the mirror and saw the sweat on her own body. She wasn’t over-weight but she was out of shape.
Kathy came out of the bathroom to see Alice execute a series of moves that almost looked like a dance. She made it seem so effortless and it was all so deadly. She started by running, jumping against one of the padded bags only to throw a couple of well-aimed knives at the target hitting the ‘victim’ squarely between the eyes with both knives. She dried herself and stood there in her towel looking at Alice who smiled a smile Kathy had rarely seen. It would have frightened her if she didn’t know that it wasn’t directed at her but rather an imaginary foe. Alice turned to her and her smile changed.
“All done?” she asked unnecessarily.
Kathy nodded, “Do you have a hairbrush?”
“In that cabinet behind the mirror.”
Kathy turned surprised that there was a cabinet, she hadn’t noticed. It disappointed her how much she didn’t seem to notice that Alice took for granted. Apparently her skills were a bit sharper than Kathy’s.
“Here, give me your clothes,” Alice orde
red as she stepped out of her own sweaty attire and threw them into the washer along with Kathy’s. Alice took a quick shower while Kathy brushed out her hair and dressed back into the clothes she had been wearing when they arrived. Alice threw the clothes into the dryer and they left. The clothes would be waiting for them the next time they went to the house.
“I can’t believe how upset Bonnie got me over that house,” Kathy said as they sat in the Porsche and Alice maneuvered it back towards the freeways and home.
“She merely planted the seed, you let it grow, she probably fertilized it too,” Alice replied.
Kathy shook her head. Alice was right, she had to take some of the blame for that herself. She now knew though with absolute certainty that Alice loved her. She trusted her too. The things that Alice had shown her showed an amazing amount of trust. Kathy knew she should fear her, after all Alice had killed for her, but strangely it didn’t. It made sense, it seemed…just.
Over the next several weeks Kathy couldn’t believe how clumsy she was. Some things came easier but she would never had the grace or skill that Alice did. Alice didn’t expect her to though. She just wanted her to have confidence in her own abilities or so she kept saying. Kathy was becoming impatient though, she was afraid Harry and Bonnie would get away and perhaps there were others.
“Those four others that you took care of, were there more?” Kathy asked one night after they had made sure the kids were tucked in for the night.
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