“There are boxes everywhere,” she said. “He uses them for delivery.”
“He does?” Mickey put a mildly curious look on his face. “How do you know what he does, San?”
She colored slightly, but blustered. “Because he delivers the impressions to our office, is how I know,” she said.
“Ah. The office.”
Sandy looked like she was going to say something else and then didn’t. She stacked paperwork on the desk with brusque little slaps. Mickey went to find a box. When he got back, it was apparent that he’d need another one.
“It’s almost one,” he said. “You finish piling stuff up and take off. I’ll pack everything and take it home. We can look at it tonight.”
“Almost one?” She looked at the little ship’s wheel clock on the wall. “I didn’t realize it was this late, honey. I have to go.”
She stood up and gave him a quick little kiss and went out the door without even a sideways glance at the leather sofa. Mickey stayed to pack. He found some tattered porn in Davidson’s bottom desk drawer and a half finished bottle of cheap bourbon. Out of curiosity, he looked through the other drawers. Found a threadbare baseball. An assortment of broken ball point pens, old bills, retirement stuff from the FBI human resources office. Then he looked in the file cabinet.
The first thing he found was a thick stack of photographs. Nude poses. Some partly dressed. Standing. Kneeling. Bending from the waist. Sitting on the couch. Lying on it. All of Sandy. It took his breath away. In some she looked deeply unhappy. In others, cheerful, or frankly seductive. And in more than a few, she was obviously drunk.
Mickey sat down behind Davidson’s desk and sorted slowly through the pictures, which weren’t, he couldn’t help but notice, all bad. His wife was a helluva good looking woman, lean bodied and pretty and more salacious in still photographs than he had ever seen her in real life. He thought about what Davidson had said the night he hit her. Something about she would do what he told her, or she knew what would happen next.
The photographs explained a lot. They weren’t dated, but her glasses in one set were the old ones she was wearing again after losing the red ones in Linus’s parking lot. Those were the pictures where she was drunk, and Mickey could tell they were from last summer or maybe that was before she started wearing bangs over her forehead again.
That meant she’d been fooling with Linus for six or eight months, at least. It hurt, knowing she’d been doing the asshole for a lot longer than he thought. Mickey had no idea what the attraction was in the first place, but it was pretty obvious that Linus had gone to great lengths to control Sandy afterwards.
So, maybe Linus fed her a line and poured her full of tequila to get her the first time. But by the time that night was over, whenever it was, she was caught in the nasty spider web. He’d have waved those pictures under her nose and threatened her. Fuck me, or your old man gets the pictures. Or your boss. Or maybe your daughter. At least that’s what Mickey hoped had happened. It sounded silly, but any other variation of this had Sandy complicit in other ways, and Mickey just cringed at the thought.
“You sorry mother fucker,” he said aloud, and venomously, and it wasn’t clear who he was talking about, even to himself.
He spent the afternoon going through Davidson’s stuff, most of which was prying behind panels and under the furniture. A small safe was bolted to the floor in a closet. Mickey went outside and got his smallest cutting rig and torched the hinges off. Inside, he found nearly forty thousand dollars in cash, a Nikon, and three camera chips, along with half a dozen DVDs. Plus another gun and four boxes of ammunition.
In the trunk of the red Caddy, he found a black plastic shopping bag full of brand new sex toys, still in the packaging. Trashy underwear. A vibrator the size of a hoagie roll. Batteries. Nipple clamps. He wondered if Sandy had even seen that stuff, or what she might say. None of it was evident in the photographs of her.
Mickey wasn’t interested in Davidson’s stash. The piece of shit wasn’t even worth stealing from. He took the camera and all the recording stuff and the photographs and stuffed them into his truck, along with the work files that Sandy would need. Sandy. Poor bitch. Got drunk and got fucked in more way than one, and maybe fucked Mickey in the process without meaning to.
When everything else was done, he stuffed the money and the personal files back into the safe and held the door on with his foot long enough to do some spot welds to hold it on. Davidson would need a big hammer and a cold chisel to get back into it, but that was better than nothing. Mickey was beginning to wish that he had cracked the bastard’s head open. No wonder he’d said to stay out of his stuff. The dumb fuck must be scared shitless, knowing what Mickey would find.
At nine o’clock, watching Sandy on the treadmill, he wondered what to do about Linus Davidson. If the asshole had the goods on Sandy in his office, what would he have at home? It wasn’t possible that he’d only preyed on one woman. He was a glib, smooth talking bastard with plenty of experience manipulating people. The more Mickey thought about it, the more certain he became that there was more to it.
He was going to be busy for the rest of the week working on the crane jib and that rambling wreck of a work boat the seawall guys used. It astonished him to have had forty big ones in his hand that very day, and still be going to work for thirty bucks an hour. Davidson’s money would be enough to solve all of Mickey’s problems and then some. Only he didn’t want it. If Linus was blackmailing people, then that money belonged to someone else. Maybe quite a few someone’s.
“Earth to Mickey,” Sandy said, puffing a little. “Lookee here, boss. I’m up over three miles an hour.”
“And the crowd went wild,” Mickey said, and forced a grin. “Keep it up, honey. You’re doing great.”
He was grappling with the overwhelming desire to kick her ass. Or at least to take a belt to it. If she had kept her goddamned pantyhose on, Mickey wouldn’t be worrying about some ex-FBI prick augmenting his retirement benefits with blackmail. And he was sure that was exactly what Davidson was doing.
“We need to finish with Linus’s paperwork,” Sandy said, startling Mickey because he’d been thinking about the man, too. She looked over at him. “Can you help me with that after I catch a shower?”
“Catch a what?”
“The paperwork,” she said. “After my shower.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“This was your idea, Mickey. Remember?”
“I said I’d think about it,” he said, more sharply than he meant to.
Sandy scowled at him. “I don’t need this shit from you,” she said. “I’m trying to help us here, damn it.” She reached for the controls of the treadmill.
“Seven minutes early,” he said. “That’ll be seven with the paddle.”
“Paddle? What the hell are you talking about?” She stepped off the machine and grabbed her towel. “I’m out here buck naked so you can watch me prance and goddamn it, you could at least show a little gratitude.”
“Seven,” he said again. “And one more for your mouth.”
Sandy spun on her heel and went into the house, banging the door behind her. “That’s eight,” Mickey said, wondering what the hell he was going to do. The problem really wasn’t Sandy. He figured she’d made a mistake, and been paying for it ever since. Letting Davidson blackmail her had been the only way she saw to... “Fuck!” He threw his cup across the garage. It smashed above the tool box which contained screwdrivers, and damning evidence. Both hers and his.
Mickey had half a mind to take it all into the house and throw it in Sandy’s face. He could tell her what he’d done, and explain it. But she couldn’t. All she could do was confess and make excuses. What a miserable corner to be shoved into. Right down to brass tacks, Mickey was stuck, not knowing what to do and with the frustration building in him to dangerous levels. Again.
He went into the house an hour later to find Sandy at the dining room table, poring over Davidson’s
receipts with her glasses on the end of her nose. She’d put on her bathrobe.
“That’s nine,” he said, and went to bed.
Chapter Fifteen
He worked three long days on the crane jib and made eight hundred dollars, which was a lot, but didn’t seem like enough. Thirteen hour days in the summer heat pounded him flat. The baby was still asleep in the morning when he left, and back in bed when he got home. Sandy had set the lab up in the spare bedroom and he’d see her in there working at night, but didn’t have much energy for talking.
The first time he saw her, she was wearing jeans and a shirt. He gave her a look and when he woke up in the morning, she was naked in the bed beside him. The second night he came in at ten and she was already asleep. Late Friday afternoon, with money in his pocket and some good news, he poked his head back into the lab and whistled appreciatively. Sandy had tiny pliers in one hand and a file in the other, and one of those gray plastic vision enhancers on her head. Otherwise, she was completely naked. She tipped the industrial specs up and looked at him over the work table.
“Best looking spaceman I ever saw,” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “Honey, are you finished? You look like hell.”
“Done for now,” he said. “Got a chat coming up with that Carlyle guy about a job starting maybe next week. The architect I told you about? You remember.”
“The one with the two pretty engineers with nose rings.”
“That’s them. He’s got some deal coming up, and likes the way I work.”
She smiled. “We all do, babe. You’re an animal.”
“Road kill, more like,” he said, and motioned at her work table. “This going all right, Sandy?”
“I’m trying to catch up this week. Maybe by Sunday. I figured we could send everything out overnight. I won’t make any money by the time it’s over, but everything after that is gravy.” She sighed. “Mom and Dad took Cindy for the week-end. I knew you’d be tired, and I really have to concentrate here when I’m working. Poor thing. She’s used to my full attention and when I can’t give it...”
“You did the right thing.” He went around and bent to hug her from behind. “She’ll be able to ride the pony out there, and they spoil her rotten.”
Sandy tipped her head back onto his shoulder and kissed his ear. “I’m worried about you,” she said gently.
“Be okay tomorrow.” He nuzzled her neck and cupped her breasts. “I missed these babies.”
“They miss you, too.”
“I like it, you going naked like this.”
“I know,” she said with fondness. “It feels strange, kind of, but I’m getting used to it. Funny to be self-conscious in your own house.”
“If I was ordering a custom woman with all the options, she’d be you. I might like you in a corset every once in a while, or maybe a little rope, but it’s really the girl underneath that I love the best.”
“I don’t have a corset,” she said, amused.
“You’d be great with your waist about...” He stood and made a circle with his hands. “About this big.”
“I’m twenty-six inches in the middle, God help me,” she said. “You’d have a heck of a time getting me down to...”
“World record is a woman in England,” he said cheerfully. “Sixteen inches. She wears a corset twenty-three hours a day. Saw it on the internet the other day.”
Sandy looked warily at him. “You do know that I’m nearly six feet tall, right? You have to leave me something, Mickey. I’ll break in the middle.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” he said. “You’re only five ten. We’ll get you down six or eight inches. You wait and see.”
“I don’t think that’s even possible.”
“Wanna bet?” he grinned. “Now, how about you shut down in here and come give me some loving?”
“Ten minutes,” she said. “You get a shower, and I’ll be out in a minute.”
It was nearer twenty when Sandy got finished, but it was already too late. Mickey was fast asleep in the lounge chair in the living room with his feet up and a cold beer in his hand. Sandy took the beer and woke him up enough to totter off to bed. She tucked him in with a kiss on the forehead.
Sunday morning, Pete Oliver called the number Mickey had left on his card. “Didn’t you tell me you were a licensed boat captain?” he said.
“Six-pack ticket,” Mickey said. “Licensed but not active.”
“Okay, you interested in a job?”
“Sure.”
“I’m taking the boat to Key West tomorrow, and I could use a steady hand. It’s just going to be me and Phillip Carlyle and his staff. Phillip’s a boat guy, and if I had you, then we could swap out on the bridge and make the run in one day without killing ourselves.”
“Long way down there, Mr. Oliver. Two hundred and fifty miles or a little better.”
“Boat cruises on the high end at twenty-one knots. Ten hours. Going to be a nice day, so we can do the run outside and won’t have to worry about those damned no-wake zones in the Intercoastal. We get out of the inlet by daylight, and don’t have any trouble; we’ll be at the Green Parrot on Caroline in time for happy hour.”
“I’d need to be on home pretty quick,” Mickey said, thinking about it.
“Sleep on the boat Monday night; I’ll put you on a bus Tuesday morning. You’ll be home for supper. What do you say? Pay’s two and a half, plus expenses.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars?”
Oliver laughed.
“Be here at five-thirty. Bring your captain’s license, in case we need it.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Mickey said and hung up.
He was back at the kitchen table looking at the budget when Sandy came out of the lab. With her doing all the extra work on Linus Davidson’s jobs, Mickey had picked up the pace for himself. He had a load of wash ready to go to the line, and another in the washing machine. Cindy was at her parent’s house for the day, and the house was quiet and still.
“What’cha doin’,” she said, looking at the laundry basket. “Why don’t I hang all this out for you? I need some fresh air.”
“Pour us a cup of coffee first,” he said. “Got something to tell you.”
She grinned. “You want me to put on my waitress suit?”
“I prefer my waitress naked,” he said, and the grin on her face grew dimples. When she brought their coffee over he kissed her nipples and pulled her down in his lap. “Another job came up,” he said. “I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“What job?” He told her and she made a long face. “Jeez, I wish somebody would pay me to drive a two million dollar boat to Key West.”
“I’d pay you to sunbathe on the front deck, just so I could watch you.”
“Not very interesting.”
“You don’t have to be interesting to be interesting.”
She giggled at that and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her, and they let the coffee get cold, just sitting there sucking tongues and playing around.
“This is fun,” Sandy said happily. “I can’t remember when we had this much fun.”
“It’s about time, don’t you think?”
“Don’t say that,” she said, hugging him. “We’ve always had fun, Mickey. It’s just been hard the past few months.”
“Now it’s hard every day,” he said, squirming under her suggestively.
“More than that,” she sighed. “I don’t know what’s happened, master mine, but whatever it is, I like it.”
He rocked her back and bent his head to kiss her breasts, and then to catch the nipples, first one then the other, between his thumb and the crook of his index finger. He pinched her, gently, and then harder, until she tensed in his arms and her breath caught where he could hear it.
“Too hard?” he said, raising his head again.
“Just...intense.”
“Does that mean you liked it?”
“It’s...sexy. I don’t know how to explain, but.
..” She sighed. “It’s weird, Mick. I really don’t like it, but...”
“But?”
“It turns me on. You know it does. Like flipping a switch.”
“It’s a good weird, then. Want some more?”
“Pinching?”
“Something else.”
“You’re starting to worry me,” she said, and bent to touch his forehead with hers.
Mickey reached around her for the clothes pin bag and got two. She shivered a little, and goose bumps came up on her arms.
“I should have kept my big mouth shut,” she said.
He thumbed her left nipple flat and put the first clothes pin on, closing the jaws gently with the nipple inside, but a good bit of brown areola as well for padding. Sandy arched her back, head back, and made a sound he’d never heard before, although during an orgasm, she got close. After a few seconds she raised her head and looked at him first, and then down at her breast.
“Ow,” she said in a breathless little voice.
“One more,” he said. “This time.”
“All right,” she said, drawing a deep, shaky breath and letting it out.
“Ready?”
“What difference does that make?” she asked.
Mickey grinned and repeated the exercise on her right nipple. Sandy was breathing oddly. She gulped and blinked at the sudden dampness in her eyes.
“Now you can go hang the clothes out.”
“Like this?”
“Don’t make me paddle you.”
“What is it with this paddle thing?” she asked, getting to her feet. “You don’t even have a paddle.”
“How about a wooden kitchen spoon, then? That worked pretty well for my grandmother, back in the day.”
“What fun you are.” She lifted the laundry basket and brought it over so Mickey could put the bag of clothes pins on top of the damp clothes. “Better if you shake everything out and fold it sort of straight when you take it out of the washer,” she said. “It keeps the wrinkles down on my uniforms.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “Hang those on the line. The washer has stopped, so by the time you get back, I’ll have another load.”
Redemption For Two Page 9
