by E. C. Towers
9
The Call
“Aaow!” she screamed.
Linda jerked her hand out from the rose bushes and saw a red droplet forming through her glove. She took it off and sucked on her pricked finger absentmindedly, wondering why she had even taken gardening up in the first place. She could call a professional landscaper and have this done minus the thorns, heat, and bugs. But there was just something about this house that rejected the pretentiousness of professional landscapers, housekeepers, drivers and all the other luxuries she had become used. She even parked her Tesla inside the garage and covered it, as if she was trying not to offend the house.
Linda stepped back to look at what she had done so far with the rose bushes and was genuinely proud of herself. The bright red flowers grew all around her house and framed her white little beach cottage perfectly, enhancing the feeling of homeliness and serenity she had felt when she first saw it. Maybe this whole green thumb deal wasn't such a bad thing after all. Although in looking at her thorn-pricked fingers, her thumbs appeared more red than green.
The familiar tune of her cell phone came from inside the house. She took off her other glove and ran inside to answer it.
“Hello?”
Only silence answered her greeting.
“Hello?”
The cell reception inside the house was sometimes spotty, so Linda walked outside onto the porch hoping she could hear whoever was on the other line.
“Hello?” she asked again.
She heard a rustling noise on the other end, the sound of wind.
“It’s almost time,” a gravelly voice broke through the rustling, and it immediately made the hairs on her neck stand up.
“I'm sorry. What? Who is this?” she demanded.
A strange deep laughter was the only answer, and then dead silence once again.
“Hello?”
Linda stared at her phone not quite knowing what to make of it. She tapped to her call history log to see where that call had come from.
Unknown.
Of course, she scowled.
Linda went back inside and shrugged it off as a prank call, though something about the way the voice spoke to her suggested that the call had been meant for her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone immediately rang again. Linda looked at who was calling expecting to see “Unknown” again but instead saw Jacob’s name.
“Hello there,” she answered.
“Hey there, gorgeous.”
His warm, friendly voice immediately put her at ease.
“Is it alright if I come over?” he asked.
“Oh, Jacob. I wish you would have called earlier. I have Cory coming over for dinner to discuss some real estate properties he thinks I might be interested in.”
Cory had not stopped hounding her about some investment property in the area that he wanted Linda to look at and possibly purchase. She had been such an easy sale, Linda didn't blame him for trying to squeeze a few more bills out of her. She finally accepted his offer with the condition that after their dinner meeting, he would stop all talk about investment property.
“Oh, okay, that's fine!” Jacob replied a little too loudly for Linda’s taste. She sensed that it bothered him that Cory was coming over. Damn it. He promised not to get possessive.
“I'll call you after the dinner, okay? Maybe you can come over then and have a nightcap with me,” Linda said suggestively.
“Ah, that's okay. I'm actually getting kind of tired now. I'm sure I'll be asleep by the time you're done. Why don’t we just meet up tomorrow night?
“Oh. Okay. Sure. See you tomorrow night,” Linda smiled at his attempt to one-up her with his own attempt at rejection. His foolish young pride was such a turn on.
* * *
“Dinner was exceptional, Linda. Thank you,” Cory wiped a little lasagna off the corner of his lips. “You should be a chef! That was DELICIOUS!”
“Thank you, Cory,” Linda rolled her eyes as she turned her back to him and began collecting their dirty plates.
“Oh, hey, let me do that. You did the cooking; I'll do the dishwashing!” Cory grabbed the plate from her hand, stacked his on top and put them in the sink.
“Just leave them there, Cory. You don't have to wash the dishes.”
“Oops. Too late!” he grabbed the rest of the items off the kitchen table, put them in the sink and ran the hot water.
“So what did you think about the properties I showed you?” Cory eagerly asked as he rolled up his sleeves to begin washing.
“I liked those Tudor homes right by the bay,” Linda made up her mind that she wasn't going to be swayed by Cory’s pitch before dinner had even begun. She wasn't interested in buying any investment property, but as cheesy as Cory was, the man was an excellent salesman. He came armed with full-color pictures and conducted virtual tours on his pad, explaining the different amenities of each home.
“The Tudor homes are gorgeous. And I can tell you, you're not the only buyer who has noticed their charm.”
Ah yes, of course, someone was interested in it already. Linda rolled her eyes again. She was getting tired and longed just to relax with a bath and a book.
“Listen, what you showed me was very nice, but I'm not going to make a decision today about it. I promise to call you first thing on Monday after I talk to my accountant.”
“Great! And please feel free to pass on my information to your accountant if he has any questions!”
His enthusiasm and volume were grating her nerves. Linda had to get him out of here.
“Don’t worry about the rest of these dishes, Cory, please. Just leave them there,” she insisted.
“Alright,” he smiled and grabbed a dish towel off her counter, wiping off his wet hands and extending one of them to Linda.
“Thanks, Cory. I'll call you soon,” she shook his damp hand.
“Wonderful!”
Linda saw him out and watched the taillights of his Mercedes disappear before she went inside to draw up her bath. The steam from the hot water filled the bathroom and relaxed her immediately. Linda slipped off her t-shirt and shorts and sank slowly into the warm water. The tightness in the small of her back, the result of being crouched over rose bushes all day, loosened up slowly along with every muscle in her body. She laid her head back and felt a pang of disappointment that Jacob hadn't wanted to come over tonight. Linda wondered how long she could sustain their casual relationship. The last few weeks after that night in her kitchen had been perfect. She would call him whenever she was in the mood, and he came, ready and willing to please her. On some days like today, he would call her if he were in the mood, and most of the time she welcomed him because, simply put, he was an incredible lover. Not only was he physically fit and attractive, but he possessed genuine stamina, a huge cock and a deftly skilled tongue. Nor was Jacob afraid to try new things and get a little kinky at unexpected moments.
The last time he had come over, she had gotten an unexpected business call that she needed to take. Undeterred, Jacob proceeded to eat her pussy while she was talking with her colleagues. After she hung up the phone, she couldn't get his dick into her fast enough, and he happily obliged. She enjoyed orgasm on top of orgasm as he fucked her with abandon. Just thinking about that day made her desire him even more.
She took a deep breath and relaxed into the bath even more, thinking about Jacob and his giant cock filling her up over and over again. She slipped her hand down between her legs and felt her arousal. She opened her legs a little bit more and massaged her fingers up and down between and around her pussy lips that were now flushed with excitement. Linda closed her eyes, but this time it wasn’t Jacob she thought about, but rather Dalila.
She recalled how her soft tongue felt against her clit as Dalila pressed against her, kissing her nether lips tenderly but firmly at the same time. It was as if Dalila could barely contain herself from ravishing her. Linda moaned as she imagined her fingers were Dalila’s wet hot mouth stroking her into ecstasy.
She quickened her pace and gasped as her desire built up inside her.
As Linda plunged her fingers into herself, attempting to satisfy her ravenous hunger for Dalila’s touch, a terrible loud bang against a window put an abrupt halt to her fantasy. She grabbed a towel and got out of her bath, trying to recall where the noise had come from. It had come a little further into the house; the living room, most likely.
Linda ambled out to the living room, feeling silly. It could have been any of the critters that were roaming around outside among the trees. But the bang sounded much more deliberate than an animal who’d somehow lost their way and hit her window. She knew it made no sense, but it didn’t have to. Whatever hit her window was obviously not an animal.
She drew the curtains back and discovered a dark smear covering almost all of the bottom half of the large picture window facing the front yard. Was it blood? Maybe an animal had been drawn to the light in the room? There was no body of evidence, one way or the other. Linda went to her bedroom, slipped on her sweats and grabbed her revolver. After the incident with Tim, she had been extra careful of properly arming her house with alarms, motion sensor lights in the driveway and motion sensor cameras all around the property that were hidden away so discreetly that you wouldn’t even know you were being filmed even if you were standing right in front of it. Linda made a mental note to check the tapes later to see what had caused the noise. For now, she wanted to inspect the stain on her window a little more closely.
She walked out of her front door and down the steps that climbed to her expansive porch deck, moving around it on the lawn, keeping her eyes on her surroundings while holding the gun pressed against her left side. As she got closer to the window, she saw what seemed to be a clear bag filled with the same dark substance that was on her window. Linda crouched down to inspect it and saw the dark liquid was slowly oozing out of the bag through a hole, likely to have burst open after the impact. She dared to picked it up and realized her mistake too late as the bag completely opened up and spilled its contents all over her slippers.
The alkaline scent was unmistakable: it was blood.
10
Blood
“In 600 hundred feet, turn left,” the GPS’s dead voice shrieked through her skull.
Dalila made a left, shaking her head while she opened the window, hoping the crisp, cold morning air would make her headache disappear. She knew she shouldn’t have indulged in two bottles of wine last night, but lately going to sleep without the aid of something from the liquor cabinet was getting a lot harder for her to do. Dalila knew that it was a big red flag that she should be paying attention to since alcoholism ran in her family, but the only thing that she was mildly alarmed by was her lack of concern for her sudden turn to the bottle. She had never drunk this much before because she hated to lose control, but over the last few months that seemed to be her only goal. Or at the very least, to let someone else take control. Desperate to be absolved of her constant mental anguish, her regrets, doubts about herself, Linda, and Derrick, she freely gave her control, not to someone, but something that greeted her warmly every night before putting her into a numb daze.
“You’ve arrived at your destination,” the GPS informed her. She brought her SUV to a stop in front of the shipyard, already surrounded by police cars and unmarked cars like her own.
“Shit,” she grumbled under her breath.
She was late, and before she could even get out of her car, Officer Ramirez was already rushing towards her.
“What the hell took you so long!? Even the local news got here before you!”
Dalila closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried to squelch the urge to punch Ramirez in his chubby, smug face.
“So what’s going on?” Dalila sidestepped his question about her whereabouts and hurried over to the area crisscrossed with police tape.
“Well, if you would have been here on time…” Ramirez mumbled.
“Don’t give me any shit. Not today, all right?!” she snapped. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he motioned to the scene of the crime, and as they got closer, Dalila saw a body bag in the middle of the cordoned area. When she attempted to lift the bag up, Ramirez put his foot out and stopped her.
“Don’t worry about it, he’s been identified. I gathered the evidence. Shit, I even filled out most of the paperwork while you were probably still snug under your covers, Sleeping Beauty. We’re just waiting for the coroner to officially declare him dead and the body snatchers to take him to the morgue.”
Dalila made no attempt to argue with him; he was likely right. She probably had been passed out under the covers, completely oblivious to the blaring of her alarm clock. She didn’t blame him for being angry, but she was positive most of his disdain was due to the fact that Ramirez was a sexist son of a bitch who still believed she had gotten her spot on the police force instead of his cousin because she was a woman. It never occurred to him that his cousin probably didn’t get the spot because he was as smart as a box of rocks and would’ve most likely handcuffed himself to himself and given the criminal the key.
“Here,” Ricardo shoved his clipboard into her face. “Go back to the office and do the office work like you’re supposed to, then take credit for it later like you always do,” he let out a condescending chuckle before walking away and shouting over his shoulder. “The men have this handled little lady!”
“Oh yeah, where are they?” she shouted back to which Ramirez replied with his middle finger.
“Fat, piece of shit asshole,” Dalila grumbled loudly enough for the other officers to hear. They all chuckled softly in agreement. Dalila lifted up the body bag and saw that it was a white male, dark hair and looked to be in his early 40s. The body was wet and bloated.
“Who found him?” she asked one of the officers standing near her.
“One of the guys who works here, I guess. Floated up from beneath one of the boats as it left this morning, ” one of them replied.
The officer peeked underneath the body bag.
“Judging by the way the body's bloated like that, he’s been under that boat for at least a few weeks.”
Dalila examined the man’s rotting face, then ran back to her SUV, anxious to know more about this guy. It was probably just a simple drowning, but something told her this dead guy had a more complicated story to tell her than that.
* * *
Jacob roared into Linda’s driveway on his bike and cut the motor.
“What happened?!” he called out loudly as he walked across the yard to see what she was doing.
“That bike’s going to make you deaf, you know. What are you doing here?” Linda put the wet sponge on the window ledge.
“I’d thought I’d stop by and say hi before I went to work,” he mindlessly answered, looking past her to stare. “What’s all over your window?”
“Blood.”
“Blood? What happened? Are you okay?” he looked her over with concern.
“I’m fine, Jacob. A bag of blood just came flying at my window last night.”
Linda grabbed the sponge again, immersed it the bucket of soapy water by her feet and continued cleaning the dried on blood from her window.
“Did you check the video from the camera?”
“I did. All it caught was a car driving by really fast and someone throwing the bag out their window. It was too dark to make out who was driving the car or the make or the license ...nothing.”
“You seem a little too calm about this, as if having a bag of blood thrown at your house happens every day,” Jacob cocked his head.
“I was scared when it happened, but it was probably just a bunch of teenagers being stupid. There's a lot of empty trails and gravel roads to pull off of around here.”
She looked out to the scatter of tall trees that surrounded her property.
“It’s a perfect place to make out, smoke pot, fuck with dead animals...” She decided to omit the part about the om
inous phone call, as she didn't believe it was connected. Or at least she hoped it wasn’t.
“Why didn't you call me? I would’ve came.”
“It’s all right, Jacob, I can take care of myself. I adjusted one of the security cameras so it can tape whoever's coming up from the highway.”
Jacob scowled skeptically.
“Plus, that was probably a one-time thing. I'm sure it's not going to happen again. So please stop worrying.” And stop acting like my boyfriend, Linda thought, but she bit her lip and kept that last part to herself.
“All right, well, I better head out before I'm late,” he wrapped his arms around Linda’s waist and gave her a kiss that made her momentarily forget where she was. The awkward guy she had met in Mexico was maturing into a man who knew how to touch a woman as a woman wants to be touched. His once rushed and sloppy kisses were now slow and sensual. His teenager-like groping had been replaced by caresses that cared more about her pleasure than his own. Linda knew that she played a large role in Jacob’s sexual transformation, and she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy being his teacher.
The kiss ended a little too soon for her taste, but Jacob still kept her close.
