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Predator

By: Lesly Sloan



I search the bar at SEATAC, the Seattle-Tacoma airport, for prey. If my quarry is a lesbian traveling alone, there isn't much of a challenge. No challenge, but good sex. It gets tricky if there's a lesbian couple in the bar. With a couple, the chance of successfully intruding into a committed relationship is hard to figure. If the women have no interest in a threesome, my hunt is futile. But if they're looking for a playmate to join them; that's far different. I love three-way action because there are so many possibilities.

The most exciting thing for me is to seduce a gal who hasn't yet tried sex with another woman, but who may be curious. The airport is a great place to hunt because women away from home are frequently willing to try something new. I've had sex with many married women, or with single women who have a boyfriend back home.

I've been called immoral, screwed up, and all sorts of things. A person who doesn't want any long-term relationship offends most people. I get this kind of crap often, "If you meet the right person - blah, blah." I don't want the right person - I just want good hot sex with strangers. Is that so bad? 

Last night presented a tough problem but in the end, I was able to bed a lovely woman. (At some cost to me, but more about that later.) It didn't look promising at first, but I like to think that I've developed a sixth sense when it comes to knowing that a women has an itch to get it on with another woman, for the first time. I felt that the cute brunette at the corner table with her husband was ready to come out, even if she didn't know that herself. What made it tough for me was that she was with her husband. She was so attractive that I decided to stalk her, despite her hubby's presence. 

For fifteen minutes I'd had my sights set on the husband-and-wife duo at the corner table in the bar. How did I know that they're married? Trust me; I know these things from experience. I didn't have to see the wedding rings to know that they were married. He'd been swilling down booze and showed it. His lovely wife looked bored. She was my type of prey: a classy woman with an attractive face and body. I got wet, just thinking about her white thighs opening to my kisses, .... Better stop dreaming and focus on the hunt. 

The first tactic was to find an empty table close to where they were drinking. You have to move close to the quarry without alarming her at first. Then I leaned over and asked, ever so politely, if they knew Seattle. No matter what the hell they said in reply I was prepared to get a conversation going. For example, if they said that they knew Seattle, I could bullshit them about being a stranger in for a business weekend who needed advice on what to do in town, or something along those lines. The goal was to get them involved in a friendly conversation. Then I would steer the conversation mostly to the woman.

If they didn't know Seattle, I would say that I lived in town and volunteer to tell them about restaurants, concerts, clubs, whatever they were most interested in. It was very easy to explain why I was in the bar - maybe having a drink after seeing a friend off. Whatever. With practice you can play off the other person's remarks and make up whatever must be said to get the quarry close to the mouth of my trap. I call that baiting the trap. 

She said they were visitors, and wondered if I knew of any interesting activities. I didn't tell her the interesting activity I had in mind. Not time for that yet.

An experienced predator knows when to pursue the quarry, and when to give up the chase. I've learned over time when to continue a seduction, or quit and look elsewhere. The world is full of very nice women who can satisfy me. No point to waste time on a low-probability event. Shit, that's how I talk at work. I'm a data analyst at a high-tech firm. There are many juicy looking gals at work - but it would be plain stupid to go after them. So, I hunt at places like SEATAC.

So far it looked promising - the husband was deep into his cups and seemed to have no idea of my interest in his wife, or anything else that was going on in the bar. A real slob. I thought that his wife might be interested when I put my hand on hers as we talked, and then on her knee, getting a very friendly smile from her. So far, so good. Then I got a little bolder. I leaned close, as if trying to speak clearly in the noisy bar. My hand naturally moved up under her skirt as I leaned in her direction. I could tell from the sudden movement of her eyes that she knew what I wanted. Now it's a critical moment for the hunter: will my prey try to escape, or will she go willingly into my "trap"? 

The trap is not physical but psychological. She'll be trapped into doing what I want because of her own wants and needs.

She didn't recoil from my touch. My lovely sparkled for me. Yes, we'll be going up to their room at the Best Western next door, if her asshole husband doesn't get wise and cause a problem. Problem solved: she thought my suggestion that we have a drink in the room was a good idea. The oaf agreed that it might be a good idea. Maybe he thought he could get into my pants! The dummy had no clue as to what was happening. 

After we entered the room, the husband called Room Service and asked for drinks to be delivered. In the meantime, I'm talking to his wife at very close range, sitting on the couch with her. I'm getting excited now with the kill coming ever closer. But I have to be careful; it's bad news to get so close to what I want and then screw things up. That's a big investment of time thrown out! I figure she's a 'virgin'(the kind I love to seduce); a neophyte is likely to bolt. Better not rush things.

I was shocked when she opened a small bag and took out some objects. At first it didn't register; they were sex toys! She had a dildo, some cuffs, and a flogger. Then I noticed that her husband, who looked quite sober now, had unpacked a video camera, and was setting it up. He had a shit-eating grin on his face. The guy bowed to me when he saw that I was looking his way.

"My dear," she said, "I'm pleased that you picked me out from the crowd in that bar so that you could have fun with me. You're quite attractive and I'd love to make love to your pussy - right after I show you how delightful submission can be."

I was completely confused and no idea what to say to her. 

"Answer me, you little slut," she said, holding the flogger and stroking it. That was ominous as hell. I figured I'd better say something. In the meantime, that grinning idiot of a husband was taping the action.

"I'm not a slut," I said. "What the hell is going on here?"

"It's quite simple," she said. "It's easy to catch a predator if you use the right kind of bait. I'm the bait, and now we've caught you. Hunting predators, that's our game. Let me assure you, after tonight you'll ask us to give you the pleasure that comes from painful submission. You'll not just ask. You'll *beg* to be punished. By the way, we live in Tacoma and we'll have you over to our little home dungeon for some sessions."

"I don't......"

"You will. My name is Jeanne, and that is Arnold recording this entire session. You will call me 'Mistress or 'Mistress Jeanne' until I say that our little scene is over."

"Please let me go."

"We'll do that, if you wish. But consider that I won't damage you in any way that will leave permanent marks. Moreover, I'll give you what is called a 'safeword' which you can use whenever things get too intense for you. Your safeword is 'red'. In return I'll show you a world of pleasure and excitement that you won't get any other way. Think about that and tell me if you want me to proceed. As an added incentive, I occasionally like to switch. That means you can treat me as your submissive, after you've learned the basics."

I hesitated, recalling what I've read about the world of domination and submission. It did excite me. I knew there were S&M clubs around but hadn't gotten up enough nerve to try them. Maybe this was my chance to explore that part of me.

She spoke again, to convince me. "After a session of domination and submission, we'll make love while Arnold records us." She embraced me and kissed me directly on the lips. "I want to lick every fold of your pussy, and have you do the same to me. I can taste your clit already." 

I almost came at the thought of her tongue making slow circles on my nub.

"Your answer?," she asked while stroking my hair. 

"Yes, I'll do it."

"Yes, what? You must call me 'Mistress', my lovely sub."

"Yes... Mistress."

"Good, we start now. Kneel down, with your ass in the air. Pull your panties down. Arnold, focus on her face."

It looked like a long night ahead. 

* * * * *

Copyright 2001 by Lesly Sloan. This story may not be distributed or copied without the express permission of the author. All comments are welcome.

Predator



"Very nice," he remarked, tilting his head to one side as he judged the body, which lay butchered at his feet, "Give you four out of ten for that one. Getting better." He stepped closer to her, his hand trailing gently up her back; she shivered, her eyes involuntarily closing as she savoured his touch. His fingers ran round the line of her jaw and raised her chin to make eye contact, their eyes met and electricity jolted through her body. He smiled, her desire running through him like adrenalin, "One day child, not yet." She sighed sadly; her eyes fell to her victim. He tapped her lightly and whispered, "Until next time little one" before he turned and faded into the darkness of the forest. 

She awoke the next morning, stiff from the night before. Her body ached with every movement she made, stretching slowly and carefully, she dressed herself, her mind replaying the events of the night, a surreal daydream to get the day off to a good start. Murder always turned her on, and victims she took died at the highest point of sexual bliss, it was the least she could do for them. They were giving her their life; she had to make sure they died happy. 

She spent her day in school fantasizing, fantasizing about everyone she passed in the corridor, caught a glimpse of in the crowd. She wondered what it would feel like to take them, how they would react. She knew girls who called themselves sexual predators, but they were nothing compared to her. She really had the killer instinct. She wondered what it would be like to take one of them; it would be a challenge. Men were easy to excite, and most of them never thought she was really going to kill them. They viewed it as some weird sex game, in a way it was, but her games always ended in their demise. No one had survived an encounter with her. 

She was tired after last night, but she wanted to take someone tonight. Just to see him again, he gave her the will to live; he gave her the gift to kill. She mused that if it hadn't been for her chance meeting with him, she'd be like every other 18-year-old girl in her school, guided by hormones into the bed of every narcissistic guy she knew, to be talked about incessantly, compared to all the others, with their bleached blonde hair and non-existent skirts. She liked not being like that, she would submit to only one. 

The bell rang, resounding horribly in her head. She exited her class quietly, blending in with the crowd. They never gave her a second glance, as per usual. Ironic, for many who had passed among them, hers had been the last face they had ever seen. As she wove through the crowd, bag clutched to her chest, she spied out her victim. 

Tall, shapely and moving with that unmistakable air of popularity-fed confidence, Daria watched her. She was beautiful, and she knew it too. Daria felt her body tense as she yearned for the taste of her. She followed her in the mass exodus from the school, tracking the girl with ease. The crowds thinned, she knew this girl. Vaguely. She lived on the other side of town; Daria knew when she would get her chance. They had to walk alongside the woods as they passed the bypass road. She'd grab her then, and then the games would begin. 

Shadows sprawled lazily across the road and the girl crossed, walking under a canopy of drooping branches, Daria followed, her pace increasing as she quickly checked around for witnesses then lunged at the girl, dragging her, while gagging her mouth with her hand, into the undergrowth. They struggled for what seemed to Daria like an endless time, her chosen victim putting up a fight as she fought to get and stay on top, beating her into submission took a few minutes, but eventually she collapsed victorious on top of the gasping girl. 

She paused as she caught her breath, pressing her full weight onto the squirming beauty spread beneath her. The girl's eyes were rolling wildly as she struggled and bit deep into Daria's hand. Pushing further over the girl's mouth, Daria reached for a stone, grasping it in one hand she raised it as high as she could, and dropped it heavily onto the girl's head. 

The struggle ended, Daria prepared her victim. She reached into her bag, hardly equipped for what she had planned, but ever resourceful, she'd make do. Stripping the girl, she tore her clothes, each item probably more expensive than Daria's full outfit, into strips and laid them beside the naked canvas. Spreading the legs of the girl, she bound her ankles and wrists tightly together, making the ropes so tight that they cut into the flesh and sent her hands and ankles into a deep shade of purple. Tying a bundle of fabric together, she created a gag and pushed it firmly into the girl's mouth, binding it tightly at the back of her head. 

Daria leaned back, and wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead as tried to decide how to address this subject. Reaching back into her bag, she withdrew both her blades, cheap and sharp, perfect. She twisted the blades round in her grip and gently pierced them into the soft flesh of the girl's nubile breasts creating two thin sanguine streams which followed the curve of her body, steadily increasing in flow as the blades dug deeper. Daria could feel the girl coming back around, she felt her own stomach flutter with excitement as she slowly withdrew the blades and sketched them over the girl's once pristine form. 

Slipping one blade between her teeth, Daria moved the other down between the girl's legs, her hand moved in greedily, and with firm, circular motions she brought the girl an edge of pleasure to add to her pain. The knife, which had lay coldly on her thigh, now began stroking gently beside Daria's hand. The girl moved, in reaction to Daria's exploring hand, as it pushed further, and increasing pressure upon the blade until it drew blood which mixed with the natural fluids already flowing languidly down her thighs. 

Daria moaned, she felt herself gripping to the girl's leg and her free hand momentarily danced over herself, raising a low growl in her throat, instinctive and predatory. Her eyes flashed to the girl's, which were wide open and rolling back to the lids, the combination of pleasure and pain sending her further over the edge. Her whole body was tense, responding to even the lightest touch as Daria brought her over in a crescendo of pleasure, ended with the sharp agony of the knife being driven home. 

She pushed the knife as far to each side as she could, twisting it as she wrenched it from the now raging river of blood, which flooded over Daria's hand. The girl's body was shaking now; she was close to death, but not quite there. Climbing over her fevered frame, Daria perched herself on the girl's chest and drew the blade lightly across the girl's throat, their eyes met, and Daria continued to do this, the knife leaving bloodied lines across the throat, but none enough to cause any serious damage, as the girl gulped, Daria plunged the knife deep into the throat, sawing it across, splashing herself in the girl's blood. The body went limp beneath her. 

Daria smiled, pressing herself down upon the corpse, she licked down the creamy, virgin skin. The scent driving her wild, a knife held in each hand, she went to work. Her art was impressive, she mutilated the body beyond recognition, cutting and slashing, and tying the bonds tighter as the body gave a bit more. She cut the corpse to shape what to her was the perfect fuck, hip bones cut from the flesh, and perfect to hold onto and the legs drawn back as far as they would go, giving easy access, to this now very wide open, gaping wound. The breasts were cut open, nipples removed, left open to suck the blood from. 

She pulled herself back from the body, and smiled, and from nearby she heard a rustling and someone clapping lightly, she whipped around to face him as he slowly faded into view. "Perfection," he murmured. He ran his fingers down Daria's arm, sending shivers down her spine before moving on to test the art, "Total degradation of the female form, I love it." 

He moved in slowly, and Daria watched from behind. She heard him unzip himself and listened to the low moan as he eased himself into the corpse, seizing the jutting bones, he took the body roughly and Daria found herself unable to watch as she found herself taken to the point where she felt she could not breathe, voyeurism wasn't her thing. She turned her back, but still she could hear his heavy breathing as he filled the corpse with his seed, something redundant in necrophilia, but then true copulation is never something that should be available to those who find solace in such activities. 

She turned as she heard him rise to his feet. He smiled at her, "Ten out of ten my dear." She smiled, and looked up to catch his eyes. He passed his hand over her face and whispered, "Close your eyes." Her eyes flicked with fear, but were soothed by his gaze and she shut her eyes, trusting him completely. He grabbed her neck and pushed down firmly on the pressure points, catching her lightly as she passed out in his arms. 

She came around bound, spread eagled to a cold, bare bed. She looked around groggily, the darkness overwhelming her, suffocating her like a heavy blanket, amplifying her fear beyond what she thought was possible. She tried to scream and bit down hard upon the gag, which was secured tightly round her mouth. Her eyes darted around, and finally she spotted him. 

He stood silently in the corner, observing her. Catching her eye, he stepped forward, " Welcome to the world of the living Daria, but not for much longer I regret." A muffled exclamation came from behind the gag, "You are perfect, you learned so quickly, and you killed so beautifully. An eye for art in sex and death, you failed to see the perfect untouched canvas. Yet you saw it every day in the mirror." 

He started traversing the room, around blacked out obstacles, and now as she started to find her bearings, the smell became apparent to her. She knew what it was. The smell of flesh rotting in the heat, it is unique and gives a bitter taste to the mouth. He stopped on the opposite side of the room and flicked a switch, bathing the room in fluorescent lights which illuminating all the bodies that decorated this hellhole. Positioned at torturous angles, hung from the rafters, split open, their fluids used to paint the walls. Anyone else would have been sick, or at least freaked out. Daria just met his eyes calmly. 

"That's my girl," he whispered, moving closer, Daria looked at the knives, which were slotted into his belt, gleaming silver, and recently sharpened, she gulped as she imagined the use they would see before the night was out. He pulled himself onto the bed and ran his hands all over her. Daria felt herself reacting to his touch, and she thought of how many times she had fantasised about this moment, about giving herself to him. Never had it occurred to her that he would want her on the same terms she took her victims. 

His fingers eased her open and he moaned as placed one into his mouth and sucked her taste from it. Removing the knives from the belt, he laid them beside the foot of the bed as he pulled his clothes off and kicked them away. He entered her gently, and she found herself reacting to him, pushing her body against him as much as she could manage, she had waited for this moment so long. 

She had waited so long for him to take her, that even knowing it would bring about her death; she gave herself to him willingly. He reached for the blades and started to carve her apart while he brought her to orgasm, cutting her in the way she had desecrated the girl earlier, she found herself delirious in both shock, pain and pleasure, falling victim to her own art. 

Unlike Daria's art, he did not kill her. As the blood loss increased, he took her from the bed and tied her over a frame, snapping bones to contort her into the perfect position; her eyes were still glassy, life glistening behind them. He took her again on the frame and felt her die as he reached his peak. He sighed as he withdrew and pulled his clothes back on, now blood slicked and sticky. She had been the best so far, yet had been the quickest to die. He patted an extended hipbone and left the room. 

Dawn broke, and the sky erupted in the early morning palette that lifted the hopes of millions around the world, and inside a cottage at the edge of the woods, a man slowly stirred from sleep. He dressed in clothes, which were simple and sexy before heading the hospital. He approached from the car park and accidentally bumped into a pretty young nurse, whose books scattered across the tarmac. He smiled at her, and her heart melted. He looked at the books as he picked them up, they were medical for sure, but not on the course list. As he handed them back to her, he whispered, "Would you like to meet for lunch? I've a proposition that might interest you..." 

She looked at him uncertainly, "Sure," she replied, her eyes dropping to the books, shame apparent in her them, he smiled again, "Don't worry, what's a little murder between friends?"



Predator



This is a work of fiction. They say every woman has a rape fantasy at some time and this is mine.

It was just after I turned eighteen and I was still living at home and doing my A levels. My parents were away for the weekend and I had the house to myself; I had just had a shower and was on my bed in my housecoat and nightshirt curled up reading a book on the Tehran Conference for my History A level.

Then I thought I heard a sound downstairs. All my senses went on full alert; it could not possibly be my parents. I tried to tell myself that I had imagined it but then I heard the loose stair creak and I began to panic. He was no longer trying to be quiet now and I heard him running up the stairs. My first thought was that the telephones were downstairs and in my parent's room but then I jumped off the bed and tried to reach my mobile phone which was on my desk.

That was when the door opened and the sight of him made me freeze. He wore black trousers and a black sweater with a black balaclava covering his face apart from the eye holes and a slit for the mouth. As he made a grab for me my senses returned and I instinctively backed away but now he was gripping my upper arms and hurting me. I could smell his sweat.

He spoke in that hoarse whisper which I will never forget.

"Not a sound Julie. Do you understand?"

I managed to croak out that my parents were due back at any moment and he released my arms then one hand gripped my face with a finger squeezing each cheek and painfully distorting my face.

"Wrong answer! Your parents are staying with your Gran in Andover. You didn't go because you wanted a quiet weekend to study. They are due back Monday lunchtime."

Still gripping my face he swung me around and forced me backwards so that I fell onto the bed with my gown gapping open. Because I was panting in panic I was aware that my boobs were rising and falling in a way which did nothing to calm the situation.

He was on top of me now.

"When you lie to me you get hurt Julie."

With that he grabbed my left nipple through the thin cotton and tweaked it hard. A woman's nipple is very sensitive and, apart from that, our breasts go right to the centre of what makes us female so an attack there affects us deeply. I suppose it is the same as putting a razor blade to a man's balls.

He put his lips to my face and was slobbering all over me. I could feel his hardness through his trousers and knew that there was nothing which I could do to save myself. Then he used one hand to unzip himself and the same hand went up my nightshirt handling my pussy and feeling my fuzzbush. I know that I was groaning and whimpering and at the same time I was cursing myself because I knew that the sounds which I was making were only increasing his excitement. I wanted to tell him that I was a virgin and beg him to stop but that was hardly likely to reduce his lust.

My nightshirt had ridden up to my waist now and I felt his organ against myself. I had kept my legs tightly clamped together but he put one hand around my throat and told me to get my legs apart which I did. I felt sick as I felt him against my intimate lips and he began to push into my still dry opening. It hurt and I was terrified that he was going to tear me open; I had a mental picture of myself with nothing between my legs but a mass of blood.

And then, of course, he came up against the resistance of my membrane and, with a grunt, he gave a powerful thrust. With a sensitive lover losing one's virginity does not have to be terribly painful but this brute was not sensitive and I felt sudden intense pain deep inside. It seemed to me that his member was huge and that I could not possibly take it. I am sure that I was over reacting but, in that situation, no-one thinks rationally.

My whole vision was filled with this grotesque balaclava covered head bouncing up and down a few inches from my face and the room seemed to be full of his animal grunts and my sobbing. My face and my hair were soaked in his saliva and my whole body was slick with my own perspiration. The ordeal just seemed to go on and on until eventually he gave a great shout of triumph and rolled onto his back beside me. I just lay there with my legs obscenely splayed feeling my whole lower body soaked in my blood and his semen mixed with my own juices. I had a sensation of everything being ruined forever; my bedroom, my home, my body; just everything was in pieces.

He was standing over men now although I had no memory of his actually getting off the bed.

"We shall meet again Julie and you will tell no-one. Not a single word."

He took a white envelope from a pocket and threw it at me then he was gone.

I must have lain on the bed weeping for hours curled up in a painful little ball and towards the end of that time questions began to creep into my mind. What would I tell Rob, my boyfriend, when he found that I was not a virgin? How would I ever clean up the mess on my sheets? Should I go downstairs to see if my rapist had left the front door open? Was he waiting for me down there?

The white envelope was not sealed. It contained photographs. In increasing horror I looked at pictures of Rob outside his house, my mum at the supermarket, my best friend near our school and myself standing at a bus stop in my school uniform. The threat was obvious; he was telling me that he could reach me and my loved ones whenever he chose.

I won't bore you by telling you how I made myself go through the motions of normal life but the horror had only just begun. A short time later I received an email and I noticed that the sender was Abigail who is in my year group.

Of course I opened the mail and I read.

"Hello Julie. This mail is not from Abigail but I had to ensure that you opened it. In future my mails will be headed PREDATOR and you will open them. Now click on the attachment."

The attachment was a video clip. I saw myself on my bed in my white silk pyjamas. My hand went down inside my waistband and it was obvious that I was pleasuring myself. My mind nearly blew a fuse. How could he.....?

The same email contained an internet link which took me to a website advertising surveillance equipment. I found that one could buy cameras which were the size of a pinhead and had a battery lasting about a year. They could transmit their feed to a receiver which might be in a car two or three streets away. He could be in his car outside right now watching me and listening to my crying. 

The next night he just sent me a sound file. I was going to just delete it but then I thought of those photographs of my mum and my friends. I heard my own voice.

"I just wondered what time you were going to pick me up tonight."

And the next voice was Rob's.

"Oh about seven, it should be a good party."

I had made that call on my mobile. How could he have bugged my mobile? But he had.

My tormentor left me no rest. The very next night it was a video of my parents preparing for bed. My dad was talking about having the car serviced and my mum was on the bed in her "Mankiller" scanty nightie. She made a MIAOW sound and my dad moved towards her. Everyone knows that their parents have sex but it is usually impossible to imagine it and now I was witnessing it. I wanted to just shut it off but somehow I was hypnotised. I watched, and heard, the whole thing feeling dirtier every moment.

I was fairly sure that the rapist could not have installed his cameras on -- on that night -- but if he broke into the house during a working day when I was at school and my parents were at work he would have eight hours to do whatever he wanted to do. It was a living nightmare. He had stripped away the privacy of my home and my whole life.

For two nights there was no email then there was another video.

I recognised the changing room at school. There were no people but there were bags on the floor and school uniform hung on most of the pegs. Then the door opened and I saw my year group come in, including myself. We all stripped off our muddy hockey kit and headed for the showers. A group of about twenty eighteen year old girls were putting on a strip show for a man sitting nearby in his car and probably masturbating himself as he studied every detail of our bodies. Then the scene switched to the showers and to a close up view of me soaping between my breasts and down where a sweaty girl can sometimes get smelly so she has to work the soap in thoroughly. 

Of course there was another mail the next night.

"9pm tonight. I'll pick you up outside the Slug and Lettuce pub. If you let me down someone will get very badly hurt."

(This document was discovered on the victim's computer the day after she disappeared. If you saw a young brunette getting into a car outside the Slug and Lettuce public house on the night in question please contact Hampshire Police)



Predator



Tuesday Afternoon

He was about forty, forty five years old, very tall, almost gaunt, and not very well groomed. The man was, in fact, slothful looking in a peculiar, potbellied sort of way, and was wearing greasily tattered green chinos and an old, untucked plaid short-sleeved shirt. His sneakers were foul looking, and probably even fouler smelling, Officer Amy Breedlove thought as she watched the suspect through binoculars from her unmarked patrol car, a battered, twenty-six year old silver Pontiac Grand Am coupe. She was parked beside a fragrant trash dumpster off Harry Hines Boulevard, deep inside the industrial wastelands of central Dallas, Texas, in an almost war-torn district full of taquerias, strip joints, peep shows and barren industrial warehouses. She had been following this 'perp', a guy named Bruce Walker, who was a 'just released from prison' pedophile-rapist, for three days, ever since CID had received an anonymous tip that Walker was downloading kiddy porn and had been seen roaming around schools and playgrounds.

Yet here he was in an area full of homeless addicts, scabby-legged hookers and tired old gays cruising glory holes for their next load – and not working the parks and playgrounds the detectives in CID were hoping for. Still, Breedlove had her orders, so she pulled a battered old Canon 1Ds from the seat beside her and slapped a 400/5.6 on it, then swung it to her face. She lightly depressed the shutter and centered the guy in the viewfinder, then fired off a five frame burst when his face was clearly visible.

It was around two in the afternoon, two hours to shift change, and it was hotter than Hell outside – maybe '110 in the shade' hot, and of course the air conditioner in this stinking, fucked-up old car had seen better days – 'like maybe ten years ago,' she thought. Breedlove was baking in the afternoon heat, sweat was pouring from her neck down her back, and she wanted an ice cold Coke in the worst sort of way. She leaned forward and tried to pull the water-logged bullet-proof vest away from her skin, sure the goddamn thing was adding about ten extra degrees to her internal temperature, when she caught sight of really odd looking person following the suspect. 

"What the fuck! Is that – a woman?"

The woman was short, dressed in black fatigues – including a black hood covering her head – and every instinct Breedlove had screamed "wrong!" – that this woman was following the suspect. Breedlove raised the camera to capture this woman, but just then she stopped, turned and looked directly at the unmarked car. Breedlove instinctively fired off a burst with the Canon – and the woman turned and ran off into shadows between two buildings. Breedlove noted the time and location on her notepad, started the engine and slowly made her way over to the area where she had seen both the suspect and the woman, and when she came up empty she started to drive around the area looking for any trace of them.

"I don't fucking like this," Breedlove said to the hot air in the car, so she picked up the mic dangling from the radio and pushed the transmit button:

"317 to 310 on two," she said, calling the district patrol sergeant on the tactical frequency.

"310, go head."

"Uh, 310, I've got a female over here in what looks like a black ninja suit, including a hood, following a signal 7 suspect."

"317, what's your 20?"

"Harry Hines at Freewood."

"10/4. 247, are you clear yet?" the sergeant said on the primary frequency.

"247 to 310, 10/4, clearing now."

"247, back up 317, Harry Hines at Freewood on a signal 13. Contact 317 on Tac2 for information."

"247, code 5."

"Central received, 247 en route at 1420 hours."

Breedlove circled the area, was driving north on Harry Hines when she saw someone running west from a Church's Chicken a block ahead, so she jumped on the accelerator.

"317 to 247, got the suspect running west on Mrytle Springs, away from the chicken place, black fatigues, black hood, looks like a large knife or machete in hand."

"10/4, almost code 6."

"310 to Central, get me some units heading to 317s location, and notify CID."

"Central received at 1422 hours."

"317, suspect running south on Maybank, through the trees!"

"247, code 6 in the area."

"247 at 1426 hours."

"247, this is 310 and I'm about a minute out."

"Received, uh, 247, Signal 33, officer down, repeat, 33, officer down on, on Maybank, just south of Myrtle Springs..."

"310, get some air support headed this way, and all responding units go Code 3, now!"

"1426 hours."

"310, code 6, oh, crap! 310, two officers down, repeat two down! I want a full tactical callout, now! Advise Watch Commander...oh, shi..."

"310, received at 1427 hours."

"141, Code 6 in the area." '141' was Ben Acheson, a traffic officer assigned to motorcycle patrol in northwest district, and as he was close when the call came out he headed to the area to provide extra back-up. He was the next unit to roll up on the scene, and he nearly vomited when he saw the carnage.

He jumped off his BMW R-1200-RT-P motorcycle and let it fall to the ground while he drew his Sig-Sauer P-226 from his holster and covered the scene.

"141, I've got three officers down, decapitated, no suspect in sight."

"141 at 1429 hours."

Acheson kept his 9mm moving, his senses acutely tuned to pick up the slightest sight or sound, but all he heard now was a rolling avalanche of sirens, then a helicopter overhead. Within a minute he was relieved to hear a herd of patrol cars approaching, and he knew a mobile Command and Control Unit would be on the scene soon. He holstered his weapon and walked over to the three slain officers; their bodies were artificially positioned, leaning against one another, the heads placed neatly in their laps. He fell to his knees and vomited just as the first back up units screeched to stop behind him.

+++++

Acheson could hear several helicopters over the crime scene now, and he knew the entire area was being cordoned off as detectives and Crime Scene Units from the department arrived. He saw techs from the Medical Examiner's office looking over the bodies and his stomach lurched again. Looking around, Acheson guessed there were more than fifty patrol cars searching the area now, as well. He had poked his head in Breedlove's unmarked car, looked it over, read her notes, and now was back on his BMW, trying to trace 317s route from where, he'd read on her notepad, she had first picked up the suspect.

He circled around a particularly seedy area on Harry Hines just south of Lombardy Lane, looking around a cluster of adult bookstore/video arcades that were usually full of gays and hookers worshipping cocks on their knees, when he thought he saw something odd behind a tire store on the corner. He motored over and saw a leg sticking out from behind a pile of old, worn out truck tires, and got on the radio.

"141, out on a possible Signal 1 at 10499 Harry Hines, believe this is related to 317s case."

"141 at 1455 hours."

"105, get some backup and CID over there, Code 3!"

"1455 hours, 309, 315, respond Code 3 to 10499 Harry Hines, at Lombardy, back up 141 on a possible Signal 1."

Acheson got off his bike and walked over to the tires, looked down and suddenly felt like vomiting again. There on the ground lay what was left of an old man, his head severed and his green pants pulled down past his knees. The man's penis had been cut off, his abdomen cut open from the sternum to the pubic area, and his intestines were spread out randomly on the dirty concrete. He walked around the tires, heard sirens closing in on his position when he found the man's head.

Acheson fell to his knees again and vomited uncontrollably when he saw what he assumed was the man's severed penis lodged in a hideously contorted mouth.

Wednesday Morning

Captain John Wayne Dickinson, usually called "The Duke" by his team in CID, was in charge of the investigation, and he was tired, dog-tired, having been at the scene on Maybank since late afternoon the day before. He picked up another glazed donut and took it down in one bite, then downed a pint of ice cold milk in one long pull. 

"Look, I want to get some sleep sometime this month," he said as he looked over the crime scene photographs one more time, "so let's summarize what we know so far.

"First, Breedlove was assigned to tail this perp, Walker, and had been for three days;

"Second, she had him near the cum-palaces on Harry Hines, south of Lombardy;

"We also know she was detailed to photograph the perp, so she had one of the department's Canons with her, a 1Ds with a 200 and a 400, and those are missing;

"Third, she calls in and advises she has a suspicious person, dressed in some sort of ninja get-up, stalking the perp, this Walker guy... 

"So, do we assume she got some images of this suspect?"

The Duke looked around his briefing room.

"Sounds reasonable to me," Ben Acheson said.

"Remind me, Officer Vomit, just why you're here?"

"Watch Commander assigned me, sir, in case I can fill in any gaps."

The Duke sneered derisively. "Fine, but if you barf on my floor, you'll be working Animal Control for the next five years. Got it, Meathead?"

"Yessir."

"Well, again, assume she got some images of the suspect, as well as the perp she was tailing. So, where does that leave us?"

The Duke looked around the room. "Anyone have any ideas?"

"I do," Acheson said.

"I don't give a fuck if you do or don't, Meathead. Anyone else?"

The room was silent.

The Duke fumed.

"Okay, Meathead, let's hear it."

"Well, okay, assume she shoots them both, but the suspect sees her with the camera. Taking her photograph, that is. If that's the case, it seems to me the suspects first priority would be to recover the camera, get the memory cards. So she disappeared, briefly, then lured Breedlove into a kill zone, took her out but then had to deal with two other officers who got on the scene quicker than she anticipated. So, she took 'em out."

The Duke nodded his approval. "Then what?"

"She circles back to her original target, Walker, and takes him out, then gets the fuck out of Dodge."

"Okay, I like it, makes sense. What about the crime scene? What does that tell us, Meathead?"

"First, she treated the officers' bodies with respect. She placed the heads neatly on their laps, so my guess is she killed them reluctantly, out of perceived necessity. I guess we can assume the suspect was pretty pissed off when she did Walker, sir."

"Okay, the rest of you take off, get some sleep. I want to talk to Acheson for a minute before I go home."

The room cleared, leaving The Duke and Acheson alone.

"That's pretty much what I took from things, kid. Good work."

"Thank you, sir."

"No sirs when we're in here chewing the fat, kid. So, why are you on motors?"

"Calculus, I guess, sir."

"Calculus?"

"I have an engineering background, BS in Mechanical, UT Austin. When I finished my probation here they moved me to Traffic, sent me to reconstruction school..."

"Oh? Where?"

"Northwestern, sir."

"No shit. So, you're one of those hotshots, eh? You're not exactly young. What did you do before?"

"Air Force, sir. Right seat on C-17s."

"Really? Why aren't you flying for American or Delta or some such shit?"

"I did. For a couple of years. Layoffs got me, in 2008."

"Oh, yeah. Shitty times all over."

"Yessir."

"Duke. Call me Duke."

"Sorry sir, ain't in my DNA."

"Alright. So. Did you know her?"

"Sir?"

"Breedlove. Did you know her."

"Yessir. Academy."

Ouch, Dickinson said to himself. Academy classmates were always close. "You okay about that?"

"I will be, sir. In a few days, I guess."

"Okay, understood, but don't keep it bottled up. Any interest in coming to CID?"

"No sir, none. I love it out there on motors."

"Yeah, I did too."

"Sir?"

"I was in motors, Traffic, for about five years. Bad crash, fucked up my arm."

"You miss it, sir?"

"Somedays, but not when it rains." The Duke laughed, then shook his head. "Fucking shoulder is like a goddamn barometer now. Every time a fucking storm heads this way my whole fucking arm feels like it's going to implode."

Acheson nodded. "Sorry, sir."

"You ride out there long enough and you'll know what it's like to feel like a barometer. Don't you forget that."

"Yessir. You still ride?"

"Yup. A hawg, every now and then. Electra-Glide."

"Heavy bike. Where do you ride around here?"

"Hill Country. Llano. Usually run down to Cooper's BarBQ and pig-out, then come back up next day."

"I've heard about that place, sir. Good grub?"

"The best."

"Well, next time you head that way, give me a yell if you want some company. I'd like to get out on the open road, away from all this, anyway."

"Sure, kid. Well, I guess you're with us on this one. You finish your report?"

"Yessir, two supplementals, for each crime scene."

"Okay, I'll look 'em over later, but tomorrow. I'm going home now, get some shut eye. Report to me after briefing tomorrow morning, but write up your theory about what happened, put it in a supplemental and drop it in the Watch Commander's box. Tell him I told you to."

"Yessir."

"And good work, Meathead."

Acheson turned, grinned. "Thank you, sir."

____________________________________

Acheson wrote the report Dickinson wanted, dropped it off at the WC's office, then walked to the locker room, grabbed his helmet and a fresh ticket book before he ambled through the station and out to the parking lot. He started the BMW's motor and turned on the strobes, then walked around the bike, checking to see that all the emergency lighting was working properly. He mounted the bike, turned off the lights and was getting ready to retract the side-stand when a patrol car pulled up alongside.

"Hey," Carol Denison said as she rolled to a stop.

Acheson looked over at her and smiled. "Hey, yourself." Then he looked at the thing next to her, and groaned. "Hey, Rookie," Acheson barked.

"Sir!"

"Don't you ever, and I mean ever, ever let me see you picking your nose when you're in a department squad car. Got that?"

"Sir?"

"And that bugger on your fucking finger? You put that mother fucker in your mouth and I'll put three rounds in your fuckin' face. You, like, hear me, Rookie?"

"Sir! Yes sir!"

"You his FTO?"

"Yup. Hey, someone's gotta train these kids..."

"Guess so."

"Well," Denison said – rolling her eyes, "How you hangin'?"

"Low. Like down in the weeds low."

She nodded. "I don't know how you did it, man."

He looked away, didn't really want to go there today.

"So," she said when she saw his eyes, "Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? Me and Brad are doing up some steaks by the pool. Maybe a salad and ice cream?"

"Y'all still over in that complex off Northwest Highway?"

"Yup."

"Well, sure. Unless..."

"Yeah, I know, I know. There he is, ladies and germs: Joe Ace, Traffic Reconstructionist Extraordinaire. Gets called to go work every bad wreck in the county."

Acheson grinned. "I never, ever shoulda taken calculus. No good ever came from taking too much math."

"You finally figured that one out, like all by yourself?" Denison smiled. That knowing smile he remembered. 

"With a pencil, too. Say, that reminds me. Rookie!"

"Yes sir!"

"Do you know how a mathematician gets rid of constipation?"

"No, sir!"

"Works it out, with a pencil."

Stone cold silence.

"So, you get it?"

"No, sir."

"Where do they did up these morons," Acheson moaned.

Denison shrugged. "He's not too bad, Ben."

But not as good as you were, she said to herself. She and Amy Breedlove and Acheson had become inseparable halfway through their Academy class, and for a while there had been even money on who loved Acheson more, Carol Denison or Amy Breedlove. Yet Acheson had been oblivious to everything, was always the serious student and had never let on that he noticed what was going on. 

And who knows, Denison thought, maybe he really hadn't caught on. Better for him now if he hadn't.

"So, got a girlfriend yet? If so, bring her along!"

He shrugged. "You know me, still flying solo. You and Brad engaged?"

"No way! He's still married to his job..."

"Still selling cars?"

"Cadillacs, Ben, not cars."

"Oh, right. Silly me."

They laughed.

"Well, okay. Seeya around four thirty or five?"

"Sounds about right, and Rookie? Keep that finger out of your nose." he said, then he looked at Carol: "Be careful out there."

"You too, Ben." She slipped the car into gear and eased away, pulled out into traffic and was gone.

"141, are you in service?"

"141, 10/4," he groaned, knew what was coming next.

"141, 27B, Lemmon at Turtle Creek. Vehicle on fire, one fatality reported."

"-41, Code 5."

"141, at 0910."

"Well," he said as he pulled away from the station, "there goes the day."

____________________________________

Acheson cleared from the wreck a couple hours later, then headed out Lemmon Avenue past Love Field, then wound his way over to Harry Hines and began cruising the area Amy had been working the day before. He didn't have any idea what he was looking for; in fact, he felt kind of lost as he cruised up and down the streets around the crime scene. He stopped on Maybank, looked toward the tire store as a Southwest 737 lined up on final for Love Field, then made his way back to Harry Hines. He was waiting to make a left onto Lombardy when something, some sort of insight, flashed through his mind. The light turned green and he turned east on Lombardy, rode a few hundred yards, then stopped on the shoulder and looked around again. Something was bugging him, but after a minute he pulled back onto Lombardy, then turned south on Denton Drive. Another few hundred yards and he crossed a little concrete bridge over a paved storm-water runoff ditch that carried floodwaters down to the Trinity River, and there it was again – he knew he was missing something important. But what? He pulled the bike over onto the shoulder again, and something in his gut twitched, some little alarm in his head went off.

"So, if I ran from Maybank to Lombardy, killed Walker there, where would I go next?"

He looked through the trees to his right. He could just see the tire store, there beyond the drainage ditch. And the crime scene on Maybank – was at the far end of an imaginary line running from here through the tire store.

"Well, I'd keep on running, away from the scene on Maybank."

He drew a line on the map in his head, and it led to right here. He pulled the BMW off the road, parked under a shade tree and walked down the concrete slope of the drainage ditch, then over to the bridge that carried traffic on Denton Drive over the ditch. He saw a couple of water moccasins in the shallow, brownish water and skirted them warily, then walked under the low bridge.

He saw it immediately.

A white towel, folded neatly on top of a small blue duffel bag.

He walked over to pile, took a pencil and unfolded the towel.

A blood-soaked knife. A notepad.

And some writing on the notepad.

"Better luck next time, Ben," was written on the pale yellow pad, and in a daze Acheson ran up to the BMW and called dispatch.

The mobile crime scene unit arrived before anyone from CID, and they secured the scene while Acheson paced around and around, obviously agitated.

One of the techs came up a few minutes later.

"Any idea who this 'Ben' is?" the tech asked.

"Yeah. Me."

"No shit? That's fucked up, man."

Acheson looked at the guy, cold smoldering fury in his eyes.

"Well, right, anyway, the camera is in the duffel, along with a bunch of shots of that Walker dude, probably from the CF card."

"That sounds about right," he said as the implications of the note pounded away inside his head. He went to the radio again, shook his head, took a deep breath.




Predator



"141," he said into the mic.

"141, go ahead."

"141, would you contact Captain Dickinson, advise him he needs to come to this location."

"141, received at 1347 hours."

Acheson walked over to a telephone pole and put his hands out, leaned against the creosoted wood as his head began swimming in the currents of his doubts and fears.

Then he vomited. Again.

______________________________________

Dickinson arrived on the scene about an hour later; Acheson led him down into the ditch and over to the bridge. The CSU techs had left everything pretty much as they'd found things, primarily to let Dickinson look things over before they tagged and bagged the evidence and took it down to Central.

Dickinson read the note, then whistled.

"Holy fuck-a-doodle-do," he said. "I didn't see this one coming."

"No, sir. Neither did I."

"So, how the fuck did you find this shit?"

"I worked a major accident first thing this morning. When I cleared I decided to come over here, just poke around. I thought, well, I tried to picture a vector, a trajectory, from the crime scene on Maybank to the tire store, and I carried that line forward. I, well, it pretty much leads to the bridge, sir. I went down there, and bingo. There it was."

"Are you, like, a weirdo, or some kind of fucking genius?"

Acheson shook his head. "Not hardly."

"I guess there's no memory card in the camera?"

"No sir," the CSU tech replied.

"And no fingerprints?"

"None."

"Fuck-a-doodle-do," Dickinson said again. "Any theories, Meathead?"

"It's either a cop, sir, or an ex-cop. And maybe she put this stuff here yesterday, or saw me a while ago and dumped it then."

"Damn right it's a cop, and a pissed off cop, too. Fuck-a-doodle-do." He walked down the ditch towards Harry Hines. "Anyone check the area for footprints?"

One of the detectives from CID answered that she and her partner had just finished walking both sides of the ditch down to Harry Hines and back, and had found nothing.

"Figures. Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. Guess we'd better send the towel and the bag over to the Federales, see what the fuck they can come up with."

"Yessir," the CSU tech said. "Can I bag it now, sir?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Acheson, let's go grab some chow. If I can't sleep, we might as well eat."

"Sir, one of my Academy friends is cooking steaks this evening. Meeting her around five. Could we head over there?"

"Steaks? Well, why the fuck not. Never turned down a steak in my life."

"It's not far from here, sir, if you want to follow me."

"Lead on, boy. Just don't lose my ass. That fucking bike looks like it's going a hundred miles an hour just standing still. Hey, come to think of it, we'd better stop off and pick up some extra meat. I'm fucking hungry!"

_______________________________________

"So, just what did you run into over on Denton," Carol asked when Ben and The Duke had settled downn chairs out by the pool behind her apartment building.

Ben looked at Dickinson, who nodded it was okay to talk about it.

"Some evidence. From the thing, uh, yesterday."

"What Mr Articulate here is trying to say, Officer Denison, is that he found the missing camera and the murder weapon."

"Really? That's, uh, pretty wild. How'd you put that together?"

"I can't wait to hear this," The Duke said. "I swear to god, Meathead, you ought to go into politics. You could bumfuzzle a raccoon."

"Yessir. Uh, well, I had a picture of the area, uh, in my mind. I just drew, uh, a line. Well, in my mind..."

"I just fuckin' love this guy," The Duke interrupted. "He's like Cary Fuckin' Grant. Suave, man, I mean fuckin' grace under pressure."

Carol laughed, then looked at her watch.

"Heard from Brad," Ben asked.

"Nope."

"Well, I'm starved," The Duke said. "Got some charcoal handy? I'll get us a fire going..."

Carol's cell phone pinged, she answered, walked away from the pool while she talked, then came back a few moments later.

She didn't look happy.

"Well, I guess that's that," she said.

"What's up?" Ben asked.

"Brad. He's done with me, with us, the whole police widow thing."

"Hot damn!" The Duke yelled. "A purdy girl all to ourselves, and an extra steak for me! Fuck-a-doodle-do!"

________________________________________

"That guy's a trip," Carol said a few minutes after The Duke left. 

"Kind of a force of nature. And a legend in Texas law enforcement, from what I've heard."

"You know, he kinda looks like John Wayne, too. Spooky."

"I think he's even bigger," Acheson answered. "How're you holding up?"

She shrugged, turned away, walked into the kitchen.

Ben heard tears from the living room, walked into the kitchen, stood behind her. "You going to be alright?" he asked.

She turned, walked into his arms and buried her face in his neck. "I don't know. It's kind of hard to blow off two years. You know what I mean?"

"I reckon so."

"Haven't you ever had a serious thing with a girl before?"

"Yeah, once."

"Once? When..."

"In college. Well, we were together from our second year 'til we graduated."

"And you split up after..."

"No."

"What happened?"

"Killed. An ice storm up in the panhandle, on 287. She was headed home for Christmas, a truck lost it on the ice, hit her head on."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Ben. I didn't...you never..."

"Nope, no reason to. Never been a big fan of pity parties."

"And, well, has there been anyone since?"

He shook his head.

"No one?"

"Nope. Not a soul. Actually, I thought I'd make a decent priest, gave it some serious thought, too."

She laughed, then stopped. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes, but I don't believe in God. I figured that might not be the best way to approach the ministry."

"I can see that would present a few problems," she said gently, almost smiling again.

"A few."

"You know, Amy and I were both in love with you. Back in Academy."

His eyes didn't register the words, but his head shook a little. "What?"

"We were both in love with you. Amy and..."

"You?"

"Me. I. Yes."

"Sorry. I had no..."

"Idea. Yes, we knew. I know."

"That's so...weird. I just never thought..."

"Of me that way. Yup, I know."

"But..."

"Yessiree. Good ole Carol, the invisible girl."

"What? Why do you..."

"Why do I say that? Well, Officer, let's look at the evidence before the court, shall we? See? There's this girl in his arms, this suddenly available girl, and this girl's had like a mad crush on him for like five years, and you aren't even going to kiss me, are you? You aren't even going to, like, throw me down on the kitchen floor and screw my brains out, even though she's just standing there, right in front of you, practically begging you to do just that?"

"You want me to kiss..."

"Oh my fucking God! Do you like have some kind of brain tumor or something, some weird-ass-fucking-thing in your head that makes you totally stupid when it comes to girls?"

"A tumor?"

"Would you just shut the fuck up and kiss me now, you moron?"

Thursday Morning

"So, did you and Officer Carol swap some spit last night," The Duke asked when Acheson made it into CID the next morning.

"What?"

"Are you, like, totally stupid? Or are you some kind of fuckin' space alien, from, you know, like Mars or someplace like that?"

"What?"

"Jesus H Fucking Christ, Meathead! I have never, and I mean never, ever seen a girl as crazy in love with a guy like that gal is with you! Tell me, really, you weren't like, you know, picking up on that even just a little bit?"

"I think she kinda got me dialed into that, sir. Took a while, though."

"Man, and I thought you was like half way smart, too. Shame on fucking me." The Duke shook his head, grinned a little, then said: "You'd better go wash your hands again, son. I think I can smell a little, well, you know, on them fingers."

Acheson turned a deep crimson purple, put his hands behind his back.

"I'm serious, slick. That hand smells like a can of tuna that's been sitting out in the sun for a week. Now, git! And use some soap this time, too."

Acheson took a leak, washed his hands, then went back to CID.

"So, did y'all set a date yet?"

"What?"

"Jesus, this is fun."

"What?"

"Okay, Meathead, okay...where do we go with this case? Any ideas?"

"Forensics. On the bag and towel. Any idea when we'll get those back?"

"Probably a week. Thereabouts, anyway, but I don't feel like waiting. So? What's next?"

"We bait a trap."

"And how would we do that?"

"We find another perp, another Walker, get CID onto him, put a tail on the guy."

"Tether a goat, wait for the lion?"

"Yessir."

"Might work. What else?"

"Unmarked patrols around the bookstores and arcades. Clear out all the marked units from Harry Hines, for a while, anyway."

"Oh. Did you finish that accident report? From yesterday?"

"Yessir. I came in early, 0600, and wrapped it up."

"She's seems like a helluva girl, Ben. You figure that out yet, or are you going to pass?"

"Carol?"

"God, I'm sure there's a fucking brain in there somewhere," The Duke said as he squinted hard and looked at Acheson. "Yes, Carol. Did she say how long she's been in fucking love with you?"

"Since Academy. She's says, sir."

"That fits. What district is she working?"

"She's floating, Field Training Officer this month. Working with a rookie around Love Field, I think."

"I'm going to pull her off the street, until this is over."

"Sir?"

"Well, first Breedlove is killed, then the note to you. It could be random, or you might be the common denominator in this case, and if that's true then she's at risk."

"Unless she did it, sir."

"Already checked that one, slick. Last night, while you had your fingers in the pie, so to speak. She was here in the station when you checked out on Maybank, doing paperwork, and she didn't leave until it was all over. So..."

Acheson nodded, felt a chill run down his spine. "Have to wait until the woman strikes again," he almost whispered.

"No way, Meathead. No fuckin' way, and don't ever let me hear you thinkin' like that again, not even to yourself. We don't wait for people to get killed, got it?"

"Yessir."

"Now, don't make a fuckin' stink about it, but go check your bike in, write it up on a mechanical or something, then check out an unmarked and head over to Harry Hines, just start setting up, scoping out those dirty movie places, them glory holes where the hookers hang out. My bet is she's going to hit some guy who's about to take out a hooker."

"What about the pedophile angle, sir?"

"Possible, but we've got the district squads handling that, putting pressure on the parks, so maybe that'll push her to the peep shows. Assuming she's smart, and that's her kill zone."

"Sir, if she's inside, she probably knows every unmarked car we have."

"Hadn't thought of that," The Duke said as he looked out a window by the water cooler in the corner of the room. He walked over, took a little paper cone and filled it with cold water, then tossed it down while he looked out the window. He filled it again, tossed that one down too, then crumbled up the little cup and threw it across the room to a waste can by his desk.

He didn't miss; the wadded paper flew straight in the can, and The Duke smiled.

"That's kind of like life, kid. You gotta take the shot, every time. And you can't afford to miss."

"Yessir."

The Duke looked around the room, walked over to a long table, opened up a white box sitting by some folders.

"Empty! Motherfuckers! Not one fuckin' donut left! Bunch of goddamned vultures! What kind of fuckin' police station is this! Where are my Goddamn donuts!" The Duke screamed as he rambled off down the hall...

________________________________________

Acheson was driving an old Toyota past Love Field on his way out to Harry Hines, and he stopped by the old Braniff hangers on the north side of the airport and watched as a Southwest 737 flared over the threshold and roared to a stop. He looked at the jet and had to admit that he missed it. Flying. Being in the cockpit. The economy that had ruined his career was starting to turn around again – and he wasn't too old, yet. He could get back on with a major again, or even Southwest, if he really wanted to. 

Still, he really loved police work, and he'd never expected that. He loved riding motors, working wrecks. Even arresting people from time to time, those that really needed it, anyway. He could see himself doing the work, doing it for the rest of his working life, but every time he saw a 737 coming in to Love, or a heavy out at DFW, his heart fluttered a bit. It was a lot like loving two women, each with a lot of good things going for her, and then being forced to choose between them.

He shook himself back into the present, got back on Lemmon Avenue and headed toward Northwest Highway – then that instinct hit him in the gut again and he swung off Lemmon into a parking lot, cursing himself as he jumped a curb. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a map of the city, penciled in a line from the initial scene on Maybank to the tire store on Lombardy, then extended the line out in both directions.

"Fuck!" he said. The line extended south, straight to Love Field, right down runway 1-3 Right until it veered slightly into a new parking garage across from the remodeled main terminal building. His stomach lurched as he got back into traffic, then he U-turned and backtracked on Lemmon until he hit Mockingbird Lane, then after another half mile he turned right on Cedar Springs and into the airport.

"Now what?" he asked himself as he drove on to the terminal area. He slowed, looked at his marked-up map again, looked where the line crossed the runway and veered through the new garage, and so he headed for it. He came to a pay gate and took the time-stamped card the machine spit out at him, then drove inside. 

The garage looked to be three, maybe four stories tall, so he started cruising the lanes, looking between parked cars as he worked his way up to the next level. There were construction trucks parked on the second level, and construction materials were stacked in a few corners of the building, but there were still a lot of parked cars, just normal airport traffic mixed in with the trucks and pallets...

"What the Hell is that?"

He stopped near a corner of the garage on the second level, and while there was some sunlight flooding other parts of the building, this corner was dark, almost pitch black. He could just make out a large pile of what looked like garbage stacked in this corner, some construction debris maybe, but a blue plastic tarp covered a large part of the pile – but something else caught his eye. 

Acheson picked up his flashlight and got out of the car, then walked over to the pile, lifted the tarp, fell to his knees and started vomiting. Again.

_______________________________________

Captain Dickinson got to the scene fifteen minutes later, along with a few dozen patrol cars, and he made his way up to Acheson's location as quickly as he could. The Duke got out of his Ford and walked over to the CSU van; he saw Acheson standing away from the scene, but then he saw the fresh pile of puke Acheson had just deposited on the concrete.

He walked over to the victim, looked at the poor fucker and turned away before his own stomach started to heave.

"Fuck-a-doodle-do-do!" he said as he made his way over to Acheson. "Man-o-man, she field dressed that poor sumbitch. Phew-whee, poor fucker must've eaten at Taco Bell. Wow! You ever small anything like that?!"

Acheson stifled a heave. "Could you stop that?"

"So, what got you this time? The olives? Or the sour cream?"

Acheson dropped to knees again, and The Duke walked away with a big grin plastered on his face, then 'high-fived' a CSU tech as he walked to the van.

"Got anything interesting?"

"Nothing much too new, but a few differences. Same MO. Cut his head off, probably same type of blade, probably a Special Forces K-Bar. Disemboweled, as before, only this time looks like she took a bite out of the large intestine."

"No shit? Hungry little bitch, I guess. Bite marks worth a damn?"

"Still working on that. Anyway. Cut his penis off, same knife, then put the pecker in the guy's mouth, tip sticking out, just like the one yesterday. Another something different. She took the guys testes, put them where his eyes used to be."

"Now, that's a nice touch. Find the eyes?" The Duke heard Acheson ask.

"Not yet," the tech replied.

"Oh, you back among the living, Meathead?"

Acheson was standing behind The Duke. "Yup."

"So, what do the eyes tell you?"

"She thinks we're blind. And we're thinking with our balls, or think like men, I guess you'd say."

"Uh-huh. We probably are. That's the problem with having balls. Anything else?"

"Yeah, the shoe-print."

"She left...a shoe-print? Didn't see that..."

"Well, it's over here, and I'd say it's a plant. It's too perfect."

"Show me." 

The tech, Acheson and The Duke walked over to the corner by the body; there were bright work lights set up now, and a team of techs was dusting everything down for fingerprints. A few feet away, bright yellow tape on the concrete demarcated a dark red shoe print on the concrete, and a tech was photographing it when the three of them approached.

"So, what is it? Blood, or paint," The Duke asked the tech.

"Best guess right now? Blood."

"The shoe?"

"Woman's high heel, probably size 7. Imprint on the sole says Pepe Jimenez."

"An imprint?"

"Yeah, that's the giveaway. Probably a new shoe, never worn."

"Search the building. I'd make bet it's in here somewhere." He turned to Acheson. "So, what's that shoe supposed to mean?"

"Either, uh, wait a minute..." Acheson said as walked back to his unmarked car. He rummaged around on the floor, then came back carrying a compass and a map of the city in his hands.

"Hey, look! It's...Dallas!" The Duke cried when he saw the map. "Holy shit, what a clue!"

Acheson ignored him, put the map down on the concrete, spread it out to show most of the city.

"Okay, sir. Here's how I found this scene. I drew the line..."

"Yeah, from Maybank to the drainage ditch. You told me that. What of it?"

"Well sir, I extended the line. It leads to the runway over there," he said, pointing to the threshold of 1-3 Right, "but veers into the garage. Right here, as a matter of fact."

The Duke kneeled down to the pavement and studied the map. "I'll be damned."

"Now, that bearing is roughly 130 degrees true. My guess is if we take the heel and the tip of the toe on that shoe print and use that as a vector, we'll get roughly 130 degrees."

"Do it."

Acheson walked over to the print and gently placed an edge of the map along the heel-toe axis, then placed the compass on the axis. "132 degrees, sir."

"Fuck-a-doodle-do," The Duke said, looking at Acheson. The tech nodded, clearly impressed.

"So..."

"So, think she's pointing us to her next kill? What's along that axis, Ben."

Acheson placed the map on the pavement again and extended the line on the map to the very edge of the paper. Condos and high rises on Turtle Creek..."

"Gucci Gulch, you mean?"

"Yessir. Then along Haskell, on the other side of Central, and then out to the north side of Fair Park."

"A lot of potential kill zones in there. Anything stand out?"

"Besides the fair grounds? Nothing jumps out at me, sir."

"What about the shoe? You were about to say something. What was it?"

"Well sir, it's feminine. The shoe, I mean, and it's a woman's size. She's either telling us something about herself, or her next victim."

"Assume it's hers. Then what?"

"First, we find out about the shoe, find out who carries that brand, then try to find anyone in the area who bought one in that size, then cross check that info with women in the department, with that shoe size."




Predator



"Like we have that kind of information on file, Meathead!"

"Then we get it, sir. Daily briefings. Shouldn't take more than a few days."

"Okay. So I think we should extend that line north and south, plot it out on a really accurate, really big fucking map. Start patrols along that line. Like, today."

Acheson shook his head again. "Probably isn't going to matter much, sir. Whoever it is, she's probably inside, very dialed in to what we're doing, my guess is she's monitoring all our frequencies, and my guess is she has whatever equipment she needs to de-scramble every channel we use. She'll know the patrol districts, squad numbers, you name it."

"Ben, you and I are going downtown, talk to the Chief. Leave that piece of shit car here, ride with me. Give the keys to...what's your name?" The Duke asked the tech.

"Logan, sir."

"Logan, have someone get that unmarked back down to Central when you clear."

"Yessir."

"I'll go get my stuff out, sir," Acheson said as he jogged over to the old Chevy. Then...

"What the FUCK!" he cried.

The Duke and an army of detectives and crime scene techs ran over to Acheson's car.

Down on the driver's seat was another notepad, open to a fresh, blank page.

Acheson leaned over, read it aloud: 

– Not bad, Ben, but you're not there yet. And time's running out, so don't waste any more of my time. Luv, C –

Everyone stood up and looked around. Whoever planted the notepad had done it in the past few minutes, while the group had been over next to the body looking at the shoe print, only now the car's passenger door stood open – and there was a stairwell just beyond the car's open door.

Thirty cops and detectives took off running for the stairs; half ran up, half ran down, and nobody found anything or anyone in the least bit suspicious.

_____________________________________

"You know," the Chief said as The Duke looked on, "you took the sergeant's exam, scored high, could have had your stripes but you turned 'em down. I'm curious. Why?"

"I would have had to give up motors, Chief. I like Traffic, I like what I do."

"I can relate to that," he said. "I was on motors in LA for nearly fifteen years. Still, no ambition beyond motors?"

"I'm not sure, Chief," Acheson said as he looked away.

The Chief opened Acheson's personnel file. "Oh, yeah, you're one of the pilots. I understand now. Southwest's hiring. So are United and Delta. When are you going to apply?"

"I haven't decided what I want to do yet, Chief."

"You mean, you might stick it out here?"

"Yessir."

"You miss flying, son?"

"Something awful, sir."

The old man nodded. "Yeah, once it gets in your blood it's hard to shake, and life's short."

"Did you fly, sir?"

"Me? Yup, a little. Right after 'Nam. Navy. RA-5C, recon bird. You know it?"

"Yessir, probably the prettiest aircraft ever made. Must've been a hoot and half, sir."

"You flew, what, the C-17? Then for American? What did you fly with them."

"Right seat, 757s."

"Pretty bird, too. Still a lot of carriers using 'em," the Chief said, pointedly. "Bet you could get a job tomorrow."

Acheson shrugged, looked back at the man.

"What could I offer you? To keep you here?"

"I don't know, sir."

"What about...if you could have 'em both. Would that work?"

"Sir?"

"Go get your job, just keep yourself based here in the Dallas area, work some days off as a Reserve."

"Could I stay in Traffic, Chief?"

"Maybe, maybe, but the Duke wants you pretty damn bad. Over in CID."

"Maybe Traffic for a few more years, then jump over to CID?"

"Duke? Would that work for you?"

"Hell, Mike, we're short downstairs, and I could use him full time, right now. I'd bump him up to sergeant tomorrow, get him on the list to take the Lieutenants Exam in September. I'm retiring in five years. He's got the chops to take my place, the only one I've been around the past few years that has the mind for the job. Anyway, that's what I want, Ben."

"Ben," the Chief said, "I'm not a high pressure type of guy. You want to fly, you go fly. Do whatever you can in this life that makes you happy. I believe if you're happy, your family will be happy, and the people you work with will be happy. That said, we can sure use you. We need men and women that can think on their feet. Hell, the world's changing faster than ever and, well, we need officers like you more than we ever have. Ya know, the days of redneck policing are over, the job is simply getting too complex. Anyway. We need you. Please think about that...before you make any decisions. Okay?"

"Yessir."

"Oh, one more thing. I've got a complaint from a rookie about you. Says you threatened to blow his head off?"

"Yessir, I did."

"Oh? I guess I'd kinda like to know why, Officer?"

"He was right seat, in a patrol car, saw him pick his nose, and I think he was getting ready to eat a pretty big bugger, sir."

The Chief's and The Duke's eyes went round, the Chief made a small retching sound.

"Tell you what, Officer Acheson; you see that sumbitch do that again you put that pistol of yours right in that motherfucker's mouth, and tell him I told you to pass along that's his last warning. We clear on that, Officer?"

"As a bell, sir."

The Chief stood, held out his hand. "It was good to meet you, son. I hope you decide to stick around, and if you do just let Duke know. Now, Adios you two."

"Yessir. Thank you sir."

The Duke and Acheson walked in silence down the hall to CID, the old man stopping once to look at a particularly nice pair of legs, then they went into the briefing room and sat down.

"Nice set of stems on that one, eh?" The Duke said.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. That your secretary?"

"Yup. New gal. Took her on a few months ago. Sweet as can be, had a sad life. Well, nice chat with the Chief. Guess you know where things stand."

"Yessir. Thanks. For what you said in there. I appreciate it."

"Well, you've got a report to write, me too, for that matter. Then why don't you get over to that gal's place, Carol, and take her out to dinner? You two might have a few things to talk over tonight."

Acheson smiled, nodded. He hadn't thought about her all day.

"Oh, by the way, I've got her detailed to dispatch for the time being, until we get this little fracas settled, anyway. In case you want to drop by or call her or something."

"Sir?"

"Oh, man, you do disappoint the shit out of me sometimes, Meathead."

"Yessir."

_____________________________________

"Sounds like you had another weird day," Carol said as they settled in a dark corner booth at a decent little Mexican place close to her apartment.

"Yup. Weird's a good word."

"You found...another body?"

"You want some guacamole or something?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Maybe about ten Margaritas!"

"Yikes! Hope you got kneepads, and your plumbing works!"

A waiter came by and Ben ordered a couple of Maggies and some green stuff... 

"Anyway, I had a 'two-on-one' with Dickinson and the Chief this afternoon."

"Uh-oh," she said, turning serious. "About my rookie and that stuff about picking his nose?"

"Oh, no, not really. More the 'are you going to stay with the department?' kinda stuff. Am I going to go back to flying, in other words, and Duke wants me to move to CID as of yesterday, will bump me to sergeant right away if I do, and as much as said he wants me working towards taking over CID when he leaves."

"Holy shit, Ben, that's wonderful news. What did you tell them?"

"Nothing, yet. It was more a 'you need to go home and think about this for a few days' kinda thing, but Duke seems to think you might have something to do with this decision."

"Oh? Me?"

"Well, he seems to think you love me, and that I'd be crazy not to jump all over you..."

"Or maybe he's just using me to manipulate you?" she said.

He shook his head. "Maybe, but I doubt it."

"You like him, don't you."

"Kinda reminds me of my grandfather. Hard around the edges but a softie inside."

"You trust him, then?"

"I think so. He's a natural leader, but an honest one, too. Rare, in other words."

"Loves donuts, or so I hear."

"Loves? Shit, he drinks 'em down. I mean it, in like one bite. And he inhales a pint of milk after almost every one. Fucking amazing. Amazing he doesn't weight four hundred pounds. Anyway," he leaned forward, took a folded up letter from his shirt pocket and opened it. "It's from United. Got it today. First officer's position, 757s. Probably Seattle, maybe Denver. Pay is about twice what I'd make as head of CID five years from now."

"Uh-huh? But?"

"But the Chief said I could fly and, if based out of Dallas, still do motors in the Reserves."

"But aren't you still in the Air Force Reserves?"

"Yup."

"So, you'd be flying three or four days a week, then maybe a day or two per week on the street, and what is it, a weekend a month driving C-17s for the Air Force? Sounds an awful lot to me like you'd be burning the candle at both ends."

"To me, too."

"So, you've got a big decision to make, don't you?"

"Yup."

"And do I fit in there, somehow?"

He sighed, nodded his head. "I, well, I guess that's the question. I say we give it time, see where it goes."

"Yup, no need to rush."

"So, this stuff...when you say you loved me in Academy? Were you serious?"

She smiled, shrugged her shoulders. "I wasn't making that up, Ben, but maybe it was more of an infatuation, for a while, anyway. But over time, as I watched you, well, I don't know. I began to feel something more, as I got to know you better. Amy did too, but I never thought it was anything like love – with either of us. It was more like we respected how you picked yourself up after getting dropped by American, how you didn't give up. But it was more than that, it was how seriously you took becoming an officer, like you really respect the job, the problems we deal with, that people have to care enough about the world to try and make a difference. The funny-sad thing about Amy, though? I think she fell for you, hard. Like she really wanted to love you, somehow needed to...but she never really got over the idea when it looked like, well, you two just weren't going to happen. I tried to move on, tried to tell her to, too, but really, it's funny, I could never commit to Brad, and I think he guessed the real reason why. But Amy? Like I said, she never really tried to move on. I think she wanted to be near you any way she could, maybe get to talk to you every now and then. Who knows, maybe she thought if she was around you long enough she'd get an opportunity."

"That sounds sad. And it's like, well, I never had a clue."

"She was poor, I mean her folks never had anything. She never had anything. Then she met you."

"Why didn't she say something? To me?"

"What would you have done if she had?"

"I don't know. She was nice, I guess, but not my type. A little too wild."

"She could be. Remember the party, after graduation? When she started stripping?"

"Not sure I'll ever forget that. She was toasted."

"And she did come on to you, didn't she? That night."

"Yeah, but she was coming on to everyone that night."

"No, Ben, she wasn't. She was, well, she was making her play for you."

"Drunk people are a real turn off – to me. Maybe if she had...well, no, we just never clicked."

Carol nodded. "Did you feel anything last night? With me?"

He looked at her, wasn't sure what he wanted to say. "Kinda hard to put into words."

"You're off the next three days, aren't you? What are you going to do?"

"Going up to Denver, to United, and talk with them."

"It must be like a dream come true for you."

"In a way, yes. I never thought the choice would be anything but clear...like I always knew I would fly for a living. It's what I always wanted to do."

"Then you should, Ben."

He nodded his head. "If that's the choice I make, well, would you stay with the department?"

"It's too soon to make those kinds of decisions, Ben, but if you want me there with you, I will be. If not, I'll understand, and I like what I do. Life goes on."

Monday Morning

"So, Ben," The Duke asked as Acheson walked into the CID briefing room, "how was Denver?"

"Decent. Good package. Shitty city."

"Oh?"

"Uglier than this place, and I always thought that would be just about impossible."

"But the mountains..."

"They're there, all right. I guess. Smog was so thick I couldn't see 'em."

"Well, the Rockies are something else. Best motorcycle roads in the country."

"Yeah, imagine so."

"So. United? Good pay package, you say?"

"Decent. Yessir."

"Did you sign with 'em?"

"No, not yet. Hung up on how long I'd have to wait before I could make Captain. I was due at American. United wants me there five years before they'd consider it. Not sure I want to wait that long."

"Hallelujah!" The Duke said as he slapped his desk. "Their loss! Anyway," he said as he walked over to the wall behind his desk, "here's the map, with your 130 degree vector drafted on it. City surveyor did it, so it's accurate."

Acheson walked over and studied it, slid his finger along the line. "Oak Lawn, Holland, Turtle Creek, then...that Frank Lloyd Wright building. The Dallas Theatre Center, it's right on the line."

"Theatre? Why is that important?"

"Yup, well, this is, in a way, someone's scripted drama unfolding slowly, isn't it? What better place than a theatre!"

"Let's go!"

____________________________________

They came down Blackburn, turned left on Sylvan and approached Wright's cream colored masterpiece slowly, then turned up the hill into the little parking court and got out of The Duke's Ford. Acheson walked up the stairs and over to the glass entry doors and peered inside. He tried a door and it was locked, so he walked over to a little fountain and stopped dead in his tracks.

"I think this is what we're looking for, Captain!"

Duke walked over, looked down into the water and saw a woman's shoe; it was already in a department evidence bag, sealed from the water. "The bitch is playing with us now, isn't she?"

"Gotta camera?"

"In the trunk."

They both heard it, at the same instant. Footsteps, running on gravel, then on pavement. Acheson ran to the car, looked on the front seat.

"Mother fucker!" he yelled. Duke trotted up right behind him and looked down into the car.

A note pad, open to fresh page.

"What's it say, Ben?"

Acheson read it silently first, then aloud: 

– What? No back up? You guys are pathetic. Ben, you most of all. Expected more from you. Come on, get with it. Oh, Ben. I hope you enjoyed Denver as much as I did. Luv, C –

"What the fuck?" The Duke said.

"She followed me?"

"Okay, let's grab some pictures and bag that shoe, then get the fuck out of here..."

"Used to be a railroad track up there, now it's a jogging trail. She ran towards Lemmon..."

"There are hundreds of joggers on that trail every hour. Forget it; let's get to work. I want to get you out of here, out of the city, before she nails you."

"Calm down, Duke. She wasn't in Denver. It would be too damn easy to check passenger manifests against our employee roster, and DHS could run that down in about two minutes. Remember, look where we are. This is theatre, she's the director, and she's fucking with us."

The Duke turned and stared at Acheson. "If you go to Denver it's gonna be a black day for law enforcement in this town, Ben."

"Come on, let's get the camera."

"Yup. We were stupid, Ben. Shoulda had the area surrounded before we got here."

"She would have known, Duke, and wouldn't have shown up here, or maybe just jogged on by when she made us."

They got back to the fountain, and Acheson looked at the shoe for a moment, then looked up and drew his pistol. Dropping into a combat stance he moved forward toward some deep bushes at the periphery of the building, then stepped into the undergrowth. He looked back at the shoe once, then pushed his way deeper until he came to the next body, then he jumped back out of the bushes, fell to his knees and vomited.

Tuesday Morning

"So, the shoe is a red leather Pepe Jimenez, a 'Lola' pump, size seven and a half, made in Spain and imported into the US by a firm in Illinois called Classic Pumps; in the past 12 months they've shipped this size and color to 21 addresses in the Metroplex. If you look at all sizes and colors shipped here, then it's to almost a three hundred addresses in the region. None of these addresses collate in any obvious way to any officer in the department."

"What about P O Boxes?" Duke asked.

"Just six, sir," the CSU tech advised.

"Let's get to those POs, pull the cards, see who signed for those boxes," The Duke said to the detectives from CID, "and let's get those by lunch time, okay?"

He motioned to the tech by the video projector to move on.

"Now, the bodies," the tech resumed. "The victim at Love Field was one Jonah Feldman, 42, lived in an apartment over off Northwest Highway. Mister Feldman is, was a registered sex offender, three convictions for child pornography, a couple misdemeanors for lewd conduct, exposing himself in adult movie theaters..."

"Sounds like my father," someone said.

"Knock it off!"

"Anyway, his parole officer noted some porn in his apartment on his last home visit, wrote him up..."

"Parole officer?" The Duke sat up. "Cross check all female parole officers with the shoe data, and the post offices."

"Maybe we should cross check with female sheriff's deputies too," one of the detectives added.

"Do it."

"Right on it, sir."

"What about his computer? Anything on it?"

"About twenty thousand encrypted images sir, mostly young boys being sodomized, but there's a bunch snuff porn, again, young boys, looks like southeast Asian stuff, some south of the border stuff too. His email contacts were sent to the FBI and Interpol."

"Anything else on this guy?"

"Not much at this time. Nothing much on phone records, neighbors didn't say much one way or another, parole officer thinks he was born again, reformed, but he ran his PC through a maze of firewalled networks set up by other kiddy pornsters. How he hid his activity. Pretty common."

"What about that duffel and towel from the Walker crime scene? Anything back on that yet?"

"Lands End duffel, both mail order and sold at Sears, more than four thousand sold in the area over the past eighteen months, in this sales region alone, sir. The towel is worse. Target's house brand, pretty generic, maybe twenty plus thousand sold over the past two years in Dallas County alone."

"Shit."

"Could be our girl chose these items for their anonymity," Acheson said. "What did you find on Walker's computer?"

"Lot of porn, kiddy porn. Boys, sodomy, mainly stills, but a few snuff videos, too."

"Well, there's a link," Acheson added.

"Rodriguez," the Duke interjected, "did you check air traffic to Denver and back for the weekend?"

"Yessir. Nada. DHS ran a broader crosscheck of all LEOs in the region. Only one made the trip, a male, Tarrant County SO lieutenant, went up to Ft Collins for his mother's funeral."

"Okay, that's a blank, just like you called it, Ben. What about the victim on Turtle Creek?"

"That would be," the tech resumed, pausing to look at his notes, "one Rueben Salazar, thought to be a mule for one of the big border cartels, been running junk and girls out of Oak Cliff, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, and The Grove, and with some recent moves into Waco reported. Been using girls to move product, works 'em for a while then allegedly dumps 'em."

"Dumps? You mean kills 'em?"

"Well sir, no one knows. Most of his girls, well, all of 'em, probably, are illegals. There's just no record of them, no way to track 'em."

"So, what are you telling me? There are drug runners up here using girls to move product and killing them off after a while? And we have no idea how many have been killed, or even where the bodies are?"




Predator



"Yessir," the tech said, looking down at his notes. "That about sums it up."

"Holy Mother of God. So, this Salazar? Any porn on his drives?"

"Stuff's still downstairs in Evidence, not in the lab yet, sir."

"Expedite that. So," The Duke said to the detectives in the room, "why does this one feel important? Why hit Salazar? He's not trafficking porn. Or was he?"

"Well," Acheson replied, "he's trafficking women, now purportedly killing them, too. That makes our suspect an avenging angel, doesn't it? Out doing what we can't, or haven't been able to do."

"Like that movie, Death Wish," one of the detectives added.

"Maybe. Could be as simple as that, but I kinda doubt it. That Bronson character in the movie is motivated by revenge, isn't he? Hoods break into his apartment, rape and kill his wife, beat up his daughter, rape her too, and the cops seem powerless to do anything about it so he goes on a killing spree. Becomes known as a vigilante killer. Public see him as doing the cops' work for them, crime goes down as scrotes get taken out, and in the end he becomes the invisible hero."

"So," The Duke said, "are we missing something big here? Motive? Revenge is the oldest motive in the world, isn't it?"

"My guess is Salazar is the key," Acheson replied. "He seems atypical, as a victim anyway, but something might be on his computer that links him to the first two perps. Say," Acheson said to the tech, "that email list? Is it possible that Feldman was getting images from either Walker or Salazar? Or the other way around? Are they linked somehow?"

"Haven't checked that angle, sir." The tech got on his cell and made a call.

"Well, Salazar was running women and drugs up here," Acheson continued. "He had a working pipeline, a renewable, fresh supply of talent, so who's to say he wasn't running families, and families have little boys in 'em. Maybe he was providing kids to these perps, for them to photograph, or have, uh, sex with. Or...oh sweet Jesus."

"What, Ben? What is it?"

"Or to kill. Snuff vids," Acheson groaned. "What if these guys were making snuff vids, then dumping the bodies. Kill the kids, then kill their moms. Leave no trails..."

"BINGO!" cried the CSU tech. "Multiple IP hits on Feldman's drive with Walker. As soon as we know Salazar's IPs we'll run crosschecks on that one too."

"Cloud storage," Acheson said. "Check to see what kind of Cloud storage facilities Feldman used, see if Walker..."

"Right! Got it!" The tech was back on his phone, relaying instructions.

"Cloud storage?" The Duke asked.

"Places to store huge files off site, video files mainly, encrypted and easy to share with known associates. Be hard to locate because he's got so many...was he using Tor?"

"Yeah," the tech said, "they all do, but it's not as bullet proof as they think. NSAs been inside Tor for years."

"So, we ask NSA to run down these guys, see if they were running a network together. Captain? That might have to go through the Chief, via the FBI."

"Got it, Ben. I'll go have a chat with him. Say, do you think our suspect is leading us to these guys?"

Acheson leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling. "There's not a doubt in my mind now, Captain. That's exactly what she's doing."

"So. Do we really want to run her down?"

Acheson looked at The Duke. "She killed three of our own, sir."

"Yeah. She's gotta pay for that."

"Uh-huh, but my guess is she's always going to be at least two steps ahead of us. So in the end, Captain, when she's got what she wants she'll either turn herself in, or just disappear."

The Duke nodded, left to go see the Chief, grateful this shit hadn't got to much attention in the press.

Yet.

_____________________________________

The Duke, Acheson and a handful of detectives from CID were sitting behind little school-desks eating ribs and brisket at Sonny Bryans' on Inwood Road, and had been talking about the case and where it was leading them – before their food was ready.

"You know, potentially, this shit's going to go international. Those creeps had, have a huge network set up," Acheson was saying, "and there's just no way of knowing where this is going lead."

"God damn, these are good fucking baked beans!" The Duke cried. Acheson took that to mean it was time to stop talking shop.

"Ribs ain't too bad today, neither," Deke Slater, one of the senior detectives added. "Still, too much sauce. Like mine dry, anywho."

"How's that sam'ich, Ben? Got onions and relish over there if it's too dry."

"It's fine, sir."

"Ya know, this is still the best place in town," Duke continued, "Has been since the sixties, when Sonny was still cookin'. Heard he was a dentist! Did y'all know that? Come in and stoke the fires on his way to his office. Course, don't know if that's true or not, but it sounds good. Died of cancer. Shame. He was a good man."

"You knew him, Captain?"

"Yup. Short man, nice smile. Had this old 60-something Mercedes, silver I think, drove it in every morning, always around four or so, almost always had a police escort, or so the legend goes. When they opened up in the mornin' there'd always be about ten squad cars out back, just waitin'. Shame he didn't sell donuts, ya know? He'd a been a gozillionaire."

Nods around the group, then The Duke's cell phone pinged.

"Dickinson," he said into the thing as he took out a notepad. "Okay, go ahead...yup...yup...you don't say. Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. Alright. We'll see you back at CID in, say," he looked over at the desert menu on the wall, "in about forty five minutes. Right. Bye."

"Anything new?" Acheson asked.

"Probably. That cloud shit? They're all linked. Internet addresses, too. Looks like twelve more here in town, on Feldman's list anyway, and seems they share the same cloud storage thingy, so presumably we got eight or nine more potential targets. FBI's running down the addresses now, they're gonna meet us at the station, go over what they got with us, then maybe we'll go pay some of these boys a little visit this afternoon. Say, Slim, is that peach cobbler worth a shit today?"

___________________________________

The group got back to Central CID just before noon, just before a small contingent of FBI agents arrived, and The Duke took a seat, loosened his belt a notch, then lifted a cheek and cut loose a monster fart.

"Jesus H Christ, Captain, smells like you ate fuckin' road kill for lunch."

"Don't smell half as bad as that after-shave crap you're wearin', Slim," The Duke parried. "By the way. You ever heard of deodorant?" 

Then, a knock on the door.

"Y'all come on in."

A handful of federal agents, easily identifiable in their blue suits, white shirts and red ties, walked into the room, but all the detectives' eyes zeroed in on one agent in particular.

About five foot six, trim, navy blue blazer and mid-length skirt, sheer stockings and...

'Navy blue pumps...' Acheson said to himself. 'About a seven, seven and a half.' He stared at her shoes, then up at the woman's eyes. 'And looks exactly like the shoe in the fountain,' he thought as he looked at her legs and shoes again. 'A she's got a runner's legs, too.' 

He looked up at her again, only now saw she had stopped in her tracks and was staring at him.

He pursed his lips, turned red and looked away, then the woman came and sat next to him.

"Genie. Genie Delaney. And you are?"

"Ben Acheson."

"Oh, right, the motor-jock." She held out her hand. "Read your reports, good work. Nice to meet you." She then leaned over, almost conspiratorially, and whispered: "Say, you got, like, a shoe fetish thing going on there, Ben?"

Acheson pulled away, turned even redder in the face.

"Not your thing, huh?" Delaney said triumphantly as she leaned back in her chair.

"Guys," The Duke began, "This here's Red Gibbons, SAC Dallas. Red? Why don't you make up a few introductions?"

"Well, let's see, that's John, Paul, George and Ringo," the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Bureau said sarcastically as he pointed at four of the sunglass'd agents, "they do computer crime when they're not playing video games. The shady looking pervert over there is, uh, Mick Jagger. Sex Crimes are his thing, when he's not in the bathroom jacking off. The chick with the legs is, what the fuck, she's Twiggy today, and she's our profiler. A psychologist too, so watch what you say around her, boys, or you'll be on the couch."

"So," Acheson said. "We're keeping this on a bogus, first name basis. Cool."

"Yeah, well, these guys are from D.C., but they're not here, if you know what I mean."

"Ah. Quantum teleportation, is that it?" Acheson said.

"Whatever, slick," the SAC said sarcastically. "Anyway, where are you guys on this thing?"

"Ben, this is pretty much your show. Why don't you get these freaks up to speed?"

Acheson jumped a little, looked down, saw Delaney's shoe rubbing against his right ankle, then he looked up, caught a faint smile on her lips. He stood and went to the map on the wall, the new one with the vector drawn on it, then recounted events of the last week.

"So, you're the one that figured out the line linking the kill zones?" Gibbons said when Acheson finished. "How'd you come up with that?"

"I'm not really sure. I think I was looking up at a jet on final, landing at Love. I was over on Maybank, and I could see the tire store, well, some trees by the store is, and everything was lined up just right. From where I was to the tire store, and then there was the aircraft, right up above the store, and on the same line. Anyway, I just started looking along that vector..."

"Vector? You a math freak?"

"BS in Engineering, UT Austin, sir."

"No shit? Not exactly common for a traffic cop?"

"He's a pilot too, Red," The Duke added. "Air Force, American Airlines. Got dropped when the shit hit the fan back in '08."

"Okay," Gibbons nodded. "So, that's how you found the duffel?"

"Yessir. And that's when I started thinking more and more about the line. Anyway, that's what took me to Love Field, and that confirmed the theory."

"Interesting. And the shoe? You figured out the compass thing from that?"

"Yessir, and the shoe at the Theatre Center, that it pointed to Salazar, in the bushes."

"How long had Salazar's body been in there, Duke?"

"About two hours, plus or minus."

"So she knew you were out of town, when you'd get back to the station, and about how long it would take you to figure out the next kill zone."

"Yessir, and I'd say her note mentioning Denver proves that."

"Why didn't you guys set a trap for her there?" Delaney asked.

"I fucked up," Acheson said.

"We fucked up," The Duke added. "My fault. Shoulda seen that one coming."

"She wouldn't have shown if you had," Delaney said.

"I know," The Duke said, "and Acheson told me that too, at the time."

"Solid work, Acheson," Gibbon said. "Why don't you take a seat. We'll fill y'all in with what we found, then we'd better hit the street, see if we can round up a few of these fuckers."

Acheson returned to his seat, Delaney leaned over again and whispered in his ear: "You have a cute ass, too."

He turned beet red. Again.

Her shoe was on his ankle a second later, and she poured it on now: "I wore these today, just for you."

He sat back, pushed his chair away from her, then she winked at him.

"Hey, Ben," Gibbons said, smiling, "don't let her fuck with your head too much, okay? She's a pro, but I think she's having way too much fun today."

Delaney sat back in her chair, a mock pout on her face, her lower lip leading the way. "You're no fun, Red, you know that?"

"Yeah, well, deal with it, Delaney," Gibbons smirked as he began handing out papers, "Anyway, these are the addresses associated with the IPs and links you gave us this morning. Most are known sex offenders, a few are registered, all have been confirmed as using the cloud storage box Feldman was using, and it show activity from these guys, and all within the past 48 hours. I say we break up into two man teams and hit them right now."

"Warrants?" Acheson asked.

"No time, exigent circumstances."

The Duke nodded. "Agree." He looked at the printout in his hand, then around the room, and called out assignments. "Ben, why don't you take Miss Twiggy there and hit the guy at 4408 McKinney."

'Swell,' Acheson groaned as he looked over at her – again.

"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Delaney said – before she rubbed his ankle again.

They left the station and were making their way over to Central Expressway when she started in on him.

"So, you a leg freak?"

"Excuse me?"

"You were practically drooling over my legs when..."

"I was looking at your shoes. They look like a match..."

"But the color's off, don't you think, Darling?" Delaney said in a patently sultry voice.

"Are you for real?"

"Oh, alright. I'll be good. So, you have a girlfriend?"

"Jesus H Christ! Would you like me to pull over right here? Fuck you now, so we can get it over with?"

She laughed. "Not a bad idea, Ace, worth thinking about anyway, but maybe we ought to check out the place on McKinney first?"

"And yes, I have a girlfriend."

"Really?"

"Well, sort of."

"Uh huh."

"But your legs aren't bad," he said, smiling.

"You oughta smell these things..."

"What?"

"The shoes! The leather! Spanish...and, well, it's just kinky as Hell."

"So, are we kinky?"

"Play your cards right Ace, and you might find out."

"Uh-huh, So, I take it, you just got them?"

"The shoes? FedEx, this morning. Hit the web, called the owner, ordered 'em after I read your report. You know, for follow up, evidence, that kinda thing."

"Wow."

"So? You think they're sexy?"

"If you want to get there in one piece, you'll knock it off, right now."

She laughed again. "Never had anything quite like 'em. Ever since I put 'em on this morning it's been nonstop stares. Kinda cool."

"If you dig giving men woodies, yeah, I guess that's kinda cool."

"Oh? You feeling a little stiff?" she said as she started to go for his ankle again.

"Stop it!" Acheson said as he pulled onto Central.

"Traffic's not too bad," she said, suddenly all business. "Better take Henderson."

"I know..."

"Of course you do, darling. I'm so sorry."

"You just don't let up, do you?" he said as he rolled his eyes. He exited on Henderson, turned across the highway, then south on the frontage road.

"Looks like Oliver is the best cross street – and park just after you make the turn."

He turned, pulled to a stop and parked the car, then checked out on the radio. 

"Is it an apartment?" he asked.

"Yeah, back right corner, looks like," she said, glancing at her iPhone. She looked up, then around the area, before pointing – "Right over there."

"Okay, let's do it," he said.

"Glad you're not in uniform," she said. "What are you carrying?"

"Sig, 226."

"Great, me too. Got extra clips in my coat pocket if you need 'em."

"Yup, got three in mine."

"Cool."

They walked to the alley behind the building, stopped at the tall iron fence that surrounded the parking area in the rear; Acheson hopped over, then drew his pistol and went into a low combat stance. When he heard Delaney behind him he moved toward the building, a maroon brick two story affair that looked vaguely like Frank Lloyd Wright had inspired the design.

"Which unit?" he whispered.

"That one," she pointed, then they ran for the door.

"Fuck!" they whispered – in unison. The door was ajar, there was blood on the sill and on the floor just inside the door, and Delaney bent down, touched it, rubbed it between her fingers.

"Still warm," she whispered.

Acheson kicked the door gently, stuck the Sig, then his head inside the doorway.

"Stairs right here, covered in blood, looks like someone was just pulled down."

"You lead," Delaney said, and Acheson slipped inside, began heading up the stairs – with his 9mm in the lead. There was a living room at the top of the stairs, a dining room to his left in the far corner. The kitchen was to his left, and he guessed the bedroom and bath would be behind and to his left. He led off to the kitchen and walked through it, then headed back toward the bedroom...

"Oh, shit," Acheson said as Delaney came up behind him.

"Oh, bloody fucking..." She bent over, retched once, then vomited.

The little bedroom was almost completely bathed in blood, there were splatters on the ceiling, huge sprays on the walls, but worst of all was the bed. There was a kid tied to the bedposts, spread-eagled, obviously dead and floating in a pool of blood, and what appeared to have been a fairly sophisticated video recorder on a tripod lay by the foot of the bed. Acheson looked at the rig, guessed it had been set-up at the foot of the bed, but now lay in pieces on the carpet. The CF card was gone, the battery too, so everything on it was wiped.

"You better call Gibbons; I'll go get the car, get dispatch on..."

"Okay..." Delaney groaned.

"You alright?" Acheson looked at Delaney. She seemed pale, more than upset.

"No. No, I'm not."

"I know. Sometimes it helps if you barf, sometimes it doesn't."

"So I've heard."

They laughed. 

"Yeah, I must be famous by now. Well, I'll be right back."

"I'm going with you," she said.

He turned, looked at her. "What is it?"

"Something, I don't know, monstrous. Evil. It's everywhere, and it's close, too," she said, shivering, then she looked at the bed again. "Poor fucking kid. Never had a chance in this world, did he?"

"Don't think about that right now. Think about the evidence, the scene."

"You're right. Sorry."

"Okay, let's get downstairs. You stand outside the front door; we have to secure the scene."

She nodded her head, seemed unsteady. "Yeah."

"Give me your hand," he said when he got her to the top of the stairs. "You look kind of shaky." 

He led her down the stairs, noticed she was still shivering when he got her out under the mid-summer sun. "Can you call Gibbons?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll be right back." Acheson ran to the iron fence and jumped it, then ran over to the car and got on the radio.

"741 to 700," he called, using his temporary and The Duke's call numbers.

"Go ahead, 41."

"We have multiple Signal 1s at this location."

"You aren't the only one, 41. Does it look fresh?"

"10/4, sir, maybe an hour, maybe less."

"700, get back-up headed to 741s location, Code 3!"

"700, at 1418 hours."

Acheson grabbed his hand unit, cursed himself for forgetting it, then jumped out of the car and drew his weapon just in time to hear Delaney scream, followed by rapid bursts of gunfire.

Then... silence.

"741, shots fired this location!"

"741 at 1419 hours."

He ran for the fence, jumped it, sprinted across the parking lot and found Delaney breathing heavily, blood all over her blouse and jacket and a defensive knife wound on her left forearm.

"That way," she said, pointing towards McKinney Avenue. "Black one piece suit, hood, about a fifteen inch blade," she said, gasping. "Black hair maybe," she said airily as she slumped to the ground.

"741, Signal 33, officer down behind 4408, am in foot pursuit of suspect at this time!" he yelled into the hand unit.

"741 at 1420 hours."

He heard sirens everywhere as he ran between buildings and out onto the grassy lawn in front of the apartment building. He shuddered to a stop, turned and looked both ways down McKinney.

Nothing.

"What the Fuck!"

He heard a car peeling out behind 4408 and ran back between the buildings for the alley, ran right past Delaney and hopped the iron fence again, then stopped in the alley.

Nothing.

"741, lost contact, heard a car leaving the area at high speed, going back to down officer."

"741 at 1421 hours, paramedics advise ETA less than two minutes."




Predator



"Received."

He jumped the fence again and got to Delaney's side; she was pale, breathing rapidly, and he pulled her coat open, saw a massive slashing wound across her belly, could make out her intestines through a pool of blood.

"Did you see the car?" he asked.

She nodded. "Bla-ck. Camaro. May-be – mid 80s. T-tops. Clean. Two people inside, both masked."

"741, stand by for BOLO!"

"741, go ahead at 1422 hours."

"741, BOLO black mid-80s Chevrolet Camaro, t-tops, two occupants. Vehicle described as clean..."

"I seen 'em."

Acheson spun around, saw an old homeless man standing behind the fence, and he could smell alcohol on his breath from ten feet away.

"Describe them!"

"Yeah, okay. Only one I saw good was a gal, had on some kind of leotard like thing. Black. Her skin was real white, black hair. Had on..."

Sirens were close now, Acheson ran to the gate and hit the inside release and the powered gate started retracting just as the Fire Department's ambulance unit pulled onto Oliver.

"In here!" he yelled, waving his arms. When the driver saw him he turned and ran back to Delaney.

"They're here, kid, just hang on."

"Not feelin' too hot, Ace. Sorry."

He ran his hands through her hair, looked her in the eye. "C'mon. Just fight it a few more minutes. Keep breathing! You can do it!"

She nodded her head just as the first paramedic ran up.

Acheson backed out of the way, turned to the homeless man. "Okay, she had on what?"

"Well, like that girl there. High heels. Real nice ones."

"Color?"

"Black, man, like everything else she had on."

"741, more BOLO information. Suspect one, white female, black leotards, black high heels, very white skin, black hair, and, wait one...what did you say?"

"She had a big knife, man, and a gun, a pistol, in a black shoulder holster."

"741, suspect one armed with a knife and a handgun in a shoulder holster."

"741, at 1424 hours."

"Okay, did you see the driver of the car?" Acheson asked as he watched one paramedic starting CPR, while another started an IV.

"Not real good."

"Male, or female."

"Oh, a girl, same black hair, same clothes."

"Anything else stand out?"

"Yeah, the car. It had Oklahoma license plates."

"You sure?"

"Yeah..."

"741, BOLO update, suspect two probably a white female, same description, black hair, black clothing. Suspect vehicle reported to have Oklahoma license plates."

"741, at 1426 hours."

"700 to 741 on tactical, how's your partner?"

Acheson switched to the encrypted TAC channel, then keyed the mic: "Alive. Multiple knife wounds, bleeding out, looks bad. CPR and IV going now."

"Be there in about five."

"10/4. Sir, the suspect dragged a body from here, to their car, wherever that was. There's gonna be a blood trail. We need a lot of manpower here, right now."

"I'll take care of it, you look around but stay close to Delaney, ride with her in the box if we don't get there first. Find out anything you can, got it?"

"Yessir."

"We're going to transport now," a paramedic said. "You coming?"

"Yup."

_____________________________________

"We've got a blood expander going now, and her BP's stabilized. Bad belly wound, but it doesn't look like the intestine or stomach is cut, so probably no peritonitis. There's a really, really good cutter at Parkland right now, guy named Sanchez, and he's standing by in the ER. My guess is she's going to be fine."

Acheson held her hand, squeezed it, and he felt her squeeze his hand in return: "Hear that, baby," he said gently in her ear, "everything's going to be okay."

She opened her eyes, looked at him oddly. "Are you crying?" she asked through the clouded green oxygen mask.

He rubbed his eyes. "Guess so. Sorry."

She squeezed his hand again. "Don't be sorry. It's not so bad."

"Shouldn't have left you alone."

"Bullshit. You did everything right. I screwed the pooch, lost my concentration."

"You remember anything?"

"Pretty sure I hit her in the arm, left arm, maybe her side too, like near the left ribcage. And her eyes. They were bright blue. Like really bright."

"Contact lenses?"

"Probably. And the hair. It's a wig."

"Witness said she was wearing shoes like yours."

She thought for a moment. "Didn't see that, but wouldn't surprise me."

"Why?"

"They're nice shoes, Ace. Got you going, didn't they?"

"They sure did, baby."

"Why're you calling me that?"

"Because I don't want you to leave me."

"Why?"

He shrugged, shook his head. "I guess because..."

Her eyes fluttered, closed. The EKG began to dance, her BP started falling.

"Step on it, manno!" the medic called out to the driver. "She's crashing!"

"'Bout three minutes, Steve! Pump some more of that super glue shit in the bag!"

The ambulance pulled into the ER's parking area and backed up to the huge, covered unloading ramp; a team of nurses and medics was waiting and pulled Delaney from the box, then rushed her through sliding doors into Trauma 2; Acheson ran in behind them, only to be pulled out of the room by a uniformed officer. Acheson stepped back, pulled out his badge and the other officer let him go.

"Who is that," the officer asked.

"FBI."

"Oh, shit. Say, you wouldn't be Acheson, would you?"

"Yup."

The other officer stepped back. "Hey, man, that's cool...just don't, you know, like barf on me, okay?"

____________________________________

The Duke, Red Gibbons and Acheson sat in the surgical waiting room somewhere in the UT Southwestern hospital complex, and they were worried. Delaney's operations was supposed to last two hours max, but she had been under now for almost five hours. 

For the first hour or so they had talked about the case, and the fact that the Camaro had been abandoned a few miles away and, not surprisingly, that the car had been reported stolen a few days hours earlier by some kids visiting from Tulsa. And again, no surprise, there were no unaccounted for fingerprints in the car, only a single Pepe Jimenez pump in the back seat, size seven and a half, this one Navy blue. 

Just like Delaney's.

As the second hour approached – and passed, the talk turned more to Delaney, her background, and Gibbons talked about her like he knew her pretty well.

"She's just a kid, you know? Bright as Hell, a psych major at Penn, went from grad school straight to the Academy at Quantico. Valedictorian. Hates guns, so with her background went into profiling. Seemed a natural, ya know what I mean? But she likes to play games, fuck with people's heads. Been bounced out of two postings, doesn't make friends. Probably intimidates too many people, those she doesn't irritate the hell out of, anyway."

"No boyfriend we need to call?" Acheson asked.

"She's cute, Ben, but watch out. Still waters – know what I mean?"

"So that means, I take it, no boyfriend?"

"No one. You spend enough time around her and you'll get it."

The Duke watched this exchange knowingly, looked at Ben and saw all the signs, then shook his head. 'Well,' he said to himself, 'you never know when it's going to hit, do you?'

Passing four hours, Ben was almost beside himself. He was up and down and pacing back and forth, looking at the clock on the wall one minute, at his wristwatch the next, then a few minutes later a surgeon in bloody scrubs came into the waiting room.

Red and The Duke came over, stood next to Ben.

"A real mess in there," the doctor began. "Thought all we had was a knife wound, but we found this in there." He held up a bullet, and the three cops' eyes went wide. ".223, best guess, anyway. AR-15 probably. Too bad she wasn't wearing a vest."

"Is she okay," Acheson asked, now almost pleading.

"Well, yeah. Her gut's a mess, the bullet's the problem, though. Why she crashed, anyway. Nicked her aorta. Close call. Tim Snyder, a great vascular cutter, just happened to be around the corner when we put out the first Code Blue, but he was there when we needed him. He's still in there, finishing up. Her lucky day, I guess. Not too many docs around here could've handled a clusterfuck like this, and he's the best we got, period."

"So, she's gonna make it?" Acheson asked pointedly.

"Well, yeah. Didn't I just say that?"

"Thank you, doctor," The Duke said, taking Ben by the shoulder and turning him away. "Say, let's go get some dinner. Red? Wanna tag along?"

"Might as well," he said, looking at Acheson and shaking his head. "Where to?"

"Want some ribs? Sonny's is still open, and they're just across the street?"

"Didn't we eat there, for lunch?" Acheson asked through a fog.

"What, you some kinda Yankee? Can't eat BarBQ two times in one day?"

"Well, I kinda wanted to keep my cholesterol under 1500, at least once in my life, anyway."

"Sheeyit, then don't eat dessert!"

_____________________________________

He went up to her room after The Duke and Gibbons took off, sat up while she slept until he too fell asleep – sitting up in an old blue vinyl recliner. Sometime in the night a nurse came in and reclined his chair, covered him with a blanket, and he slept through a world of nightmare images: little boys being cut up by butchers, drowning in oceans of blood. Then he woke with a start around five in next morning – when another nurse was drawing blood and checking vitals.

"You've been here all night?" he heard Delaney ask.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, smiled when he saw her face. "Yeah, guess so. Where are all the horses?"

"Horses?" Delaney said. "What are you..."

"The ones that walked through my mouth. Tastes like one took a shit in here."

"Goddamn! Don't make me laugh, you asshole!"

He came to her side. "Hurts, huh?"

"Feels like I've been shot."

"You were."

"What?"

".223. Just missed your right kidney, nicked your aorta."

"Shot?"

"In the back, kid. Whoever these bitches are, they're playing hardball."

"That's right. There's more than one."

"It's worse than that, kiddo. Best estimate is, as of now, anyway, there's at least four two-girl teams out there."

"What?"

"Three of the other search teams ran into them, when they went to their target houses."

"This is unreal. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?"

Acheson shook his head. "No one has. Gibbons told me last night the FBI is bringing a few hundred agents down from D.C. Full court press, I think he called it."

"How long am I going to be here? Anyone tell you?"

"Depends on your aorta, how it heals. Maybe a while, or maybe you're taking an early medical retirement."

"That bad?"

He nodded. "Could be, from what the doc told Gibbons. You're lucky to be here right now, that's what an OR nurse told me, anyway."

"Got that right, sweetie," the nurse finishing up her rounds added. "You coded, twice. Lucky ain't the half of it, sister!"

"Coded?"

"You was dead, sweetheart. Dead times two. Now, can I get you anything? Pain alright?"

"Feels okay. Kind of a bad burn in my back, that's all."

"Okay, I'll slip you something in your IV. You'll sleep good for a while, too."

"Could you give us a few minutes?" Delaney asked.

"Sure. Just hit that Call Button when you're ready." The nurse left the room.

"So, I remember you crying," she said.

"Yup. Like I said. Sorry."

"And I remember you squeezing my hand."

"Guilty, your honor."

"So, uh, I'm not going to ask any questions. Well, maybe one."

"Fire away."

"Are you, like, crazy or something?"

He laughed. "I wasn't. Not until I met you."

"Oh. What was it? My sparkling wit, or the shoes?"

"I'll never tell."

"Prick," she said with a smile.

"Douchebag."

They both laughed, then she winced, one eye closed tightly.

"Time for Mister Morpheus, me thinks," she said.

Then Acheson's phone rang.

Number blocked. He ignored it. Then it rang again. And he ignored it.

Then again.

He answered.

"Hello?"

"Tell her we're sorry." It sounded like a middle aged woman, Texas accent.

"Who?"

"Delaney. Agent Delaney."

"And who would you be?" He reached down, put the phone on speaker.

"I was driving the Camaro, and I'm the one, well, the one who shot her."

Delaney's eyes went wide.

"And why'd you shoot her?"

"I was trying to knock the gun out of her hand."

"Nice shooting. Any of your people hurt?"

"No. Tell Delaney she needs more time on the range."

"Right. So, when is this going to end?"

"It's over. In Dallas, anyway. We're moving on."

"Moving on? We?"

"We accomplished what we set out to do. We're moving on."

"Don't suppose you want to tell me who 'we' is, do you?"

"Hang on."

They heard a phone being exchanged between people.

"Hello?" It was a new voice, an older woman's.

"Acheson here."

"Oh, hello, Ben."

"Excuse me, but have me met?"

"Once or twice, yes."

"Oh?"

"No names, Ben. Don't even ask, okay."

"Got it."

"So, another apology."

"Oh? What for?"

"Breedlove, and the other officers. I didn't find out Breedlove was a friend of yours until yesterday. Were you close?"

"Friends. From Academy."

"Oh. I understand. Well, I'm sorry."

"I'm curious," Delaney interrupted, "who did these people take from you?"

"Agent Delaney? You're awake?"

"It's either that, or this is one seriously fucked up nightmare..."

The voice on the other end laughed, they heard other women's voices in the background laughing as well.

"Obviously I'm not going to answer that, Agent Delaney, but you're on the right, shall we say, track?"

Then the line went dead.

"Now what did she mean by...Ben, what is it?"

Acheson had grown suddenly cold, as if an icy hand was suddenly gripping his heart.

He looked at his iPhone, looked up The Duke's home number and dialed it.

"Ben? That you?"

"Sir, I know where the bodies are, and there's something else."

"Ben, it's like five in the morning. Where are you?"

"Sir, with Delaney. They called me, here."

"Who? Who called you?"

"Them. The suspects. Just now."

"Fuck-a-doodle-do!" Acheson could tell the old man was now wide awake.

"Meet me at Fair Park, sir. On Washington, by the train exhibit, and get a CSU rolling."

"Do we need a TAC team?"

"I doubt it, sir, but better safe than sorry. They told me they're finished in Dallas, and moving on."

"What? Told you? You believe 'em?"

"Yessir. I think so. Still, it could be a trap."

"Okay. Give me...uh...we'll be there in about forty five minutes or so."

Acheson cut the connection, looked at Delaney.

"Holy mother fucking guacamole," she said.

"I know. Gotta go, but... Mind if I kiss you first?"

"If you don't, I'll shoot you myself."

He leaned over, kissed her gently on the lips.

"Now that feels good," she said.

He kissed her again. Longer this time, and deeper, then he leaned back, ran his fingers through her hair, and noticed her eyes were locked on his.

"I've been waiting for you, for a long time," Delaney said.

"Have you now?" She winced again, took a deep breath. "Pain getting worse?"

"A little, yes."

"I'll get the nurse?"

She nodded, but now the skin on her face looked pale and waxy, and her brow was lined with beads of perspiration. "Ben, be careful. I doubt this is over yet. These aren't the kind of people that leave loose ends."

"Neither am I, Agent Delaney."

Tuesday Morning

Acheson took surface streets through town as dawn came for the city, and he made his way to Haskell Avenue and streaked east through light traffic towards Fair Park. As he approached Washington he turned off his headlights and wound around the convoluted intersection until he was sitting a few hundred yards away from a fairly large exhibit of antique trains. 

Within minutes he spotted The Duke's Ford, followed by several large dark blue vans, all with their headlights off.

Acheson flicked his lights once, and the caravan headed for his position.

"Seen anything," The Duke asked as he pulled up to Acheson's open window.

"Nothing."

"Okay, so why are we here?"

"A pun."

"A pun?"

"She said we were on the right track. This exhibit is right on the line, sir."

"Oh, fuck-a-doodle-do."

"Yessir. My thought, exactly."

The Duke picked up his radio's mic: "700 to all units, let's move in on foot, surround the train exhibit. Anything in there moves, kill it, ask for ID later. Got that?"

Seventy Tac Team officers poured out of the vans and sprinted around the fenced-in exhibit; Acheson and The Duke followed and went to a gate in the fence; the lock was destroyed. Some sort of acid had been poured on it, the metal had simply melted away, leaving the gate ajar.

"Blood?" Acheson said, pointing down at the ground. "Is that blood?"

A Tac sergeant came over, took out his SureFire and hit the ground with it's intense beam.

"Looks red to me," the sergeant said.

"Okay Collins, get ten of your best over here, and let's follow the trail."

The sergeant turned, called out names and a new team formed and assembled by the gate.

"Weapons free," The Duke whispered hoarsely. "Y'all follow me." He led off, the TAC sergeant by his side, Acheson just behind, and the rest of the team fanned out beside and behind the leaders, H&K MP-5s sweeping the area as they followed the blood trail... 

...which led between two rows of old "Heavyweight" passenger cars, and ended at an old Railway Post Office baggage car... 

...and the lock on this car had been similarly defeated; drooping bits of melted metal lay on the sill, and had dropped down onto the ballast below in slagging heaps... 

...The Duke slid the door open... 

...The Tac sergeant shined his light inside... 

...and Acheson looked in, then fell to his knees, and, well, started vomiting. Again.

____________________________________

The rest of the pedophiles were inside the baggage car, hanging from meathooks strung out evenly from the ceiling – heads lay below each disemboweled body, a severed penis in each mouth, testes in each eye socket, and seething piles of warm intestine lay oozing all over the old oak floor.

The sun was up now, and it was getting hot – very, very hot. Acheson took notes for his report but was already getting tired of all this detective crap. He wanted nothing more than to get on his BMW and hit the streets, write a few tickets even, if only because all this 'blood & guts' crime shit was starting to get on his nerves. He popped another Tums and chewed the chalky crud, then swallowed it. 

"Here, have a donut," The Duke said, holding out a fresh, warm glazed one.

Acheson scowled at the thing. "No, thanks."

"Man, ain't you figured out why cops eat donuts yet?"

"Nope."

"Well, Meathead, it's because nothing, and I mean nothing neutralizes stomach acid faster than a fresh glazed donut and a pint of ice-cold milk. And besides, they kinda help keep things in perspective."

"Well then, you better give me a couple."

"See? You ain't as dumb as you look, Meathead."

"Got Milk?"

"Hey, beggars can't be choosers."

"Swell."

"Got any more of them Tums?"

"Yup." Acheson handed his bottle over. "Perspective, huh?"

"One born every minute, Meat. Did you stay up with her all night?"

"Think I slept some."

"How is she?"

"Better."

"I could see it in your eyes last night. She hit you like a ton of bricks."

"That bad, huh?"

"Gibbons had a good laugh over it, anyway. Seems to think she's a handful. Personally, I don't doubt that. Good legs, though."

Acheson looked at The Duke. "Yessir, reckon they are."

"What about Carol, what's her name? Denison?"

"Sir?"

"Think she'd go for an old fart like me?"

"She'd be a fool not to, sir."

The Duke smiled. "We'd better head in to the barn, lots of reports to write."

They walked back to their cars, still parked side by side, down on Washington Street. Ben opened the door, saw a piece of folded up paper on the passenger seat as he got in. He sighed, looked at the thing like it was a cobra, then picked it up and read it:




Predator



A young woman nursed a drink at the bar of the Birmingham Hilton. She had glossy black hair that fell in soft waves to her shoulders and wore a short red jersey halterneck dress which clung to her curves. It was not the kind of dress with which you could wear a bra. 

It was a warm, close evening. The air conditioning was turned up high and the swell of her nipples was plainly visible to the barman with whom she had been chatting. The bar had begun to fill up with conference attenders and she covertly appraised each one as they arrived. At length she made a decision. A man of around 45, greying but still with a full head of hair, in suit trousers and open-necked shirt and wearing a gold ring on the fourth finger of his left hand sat alone at a low table. She took her glass, crossed the bar and slid onto the sofa beside him. "Do you mind if I join you?"

His shrug was not particularly welcoming, but she was undeterred.

"I'm Leda," she said. "Are you with the accountants?"

"The civil engineers," he replied. "Graham." She smiled and offered her hand to shake.

"You're married, Graham?"

"For nineteen years," he said. "You?"

Leda shook her head. "No. I like casual sex. No strings. I prefer it when they are happily married."

Graham stared at her. He hadn't been actively looking to pick anyone up and hadn't really looked at her closely until now. He very much liked what he saw: she was a very attractive girl, no more than 24 or 25 - and he was open to persuasion.

"I need a lot of sex," Leda continued, looking into her glass. "I like it."

Graham took a sip of his own drink, studying her lovely face. Her lips were painted red, her wide eyes were a clear, candid green.

"Are you faithful to your wife?" she asked.

"No," he replied, honestly. "I'm sleeping with my secretary. And sometimes I fuck a widowed neighbour and one of my daughter's friends."

Leda drained her glass. She would have seduced him regardless of his reply, but had he professed fidelity her answer would not have been as direct as the one she gave now. "Would you like to fuck me?"

. . .

In the lift, they kissed urgently and his hands crept under her skirt to cup her arse-cheeks.

They were not alone. An older couple stood beside them. They were a distinguished, good-looking pair, expensively-dressed and well-groomed; probably, thought Leda, in Birmingham to sample its cultural, not its carnal, attractions. The woman huffed disapprovingly as Graham slammed Leda's back against the mirrored wall, thrusting his tongue into her hot mouth as she wrapped her slender legs around his hips. Her husband, however, was watching openly. Leda, surfacing for breath and catching his eye, winked at him. Mischievously she reached behind her neck and untied her halter. The top of her dress slipped down to reveal her pert tits with their erect nipples. She let the old guy get a good eyeful before burying her fingers in Graham's hair and feeding her left breast into his mouth.

The uppity woman, who had been studiously gazing straight ahead, tight-lipped, didn't notice until the lift stopped moving and Graham set Leda back onto her feet that Leda was naked to the waist. The woman gasped, scandalised, and snapped, "Come on, Robert," to her staring husband. Reluctantly he trailed out of the opening doors behind his wife but hung back, continuing to look back at Leda in frank admiration, a hard-on tenting his trousers. Leda followed him down the hallway, making no attempt to cover herself, and Graham walked behind her, admiring the sway of her hips and the movement of her tight buttocks under the red fabric, amused by her casual exhibitionism.

Graham's room was directly opposite the older couple's. He slipped his access card into the lock and pushed the door open for Leda. Behind her back, his eyes met Robert's and he nodded and smiled. Robert noticed that the door swung to behind Graham but did not click.

"Robert!" came Helen's enraged voice from his own room. Meekly, he went inside.

. . .

Students Jake and Tyler worked the overnight shift at the Hilton. They'd arrived a little early and decided to have a cold Coke in the bar. The barman shovelled ice into their glasses.

"Is she here tonight?" Jake asked him.

"Oh, yes."

"Who's the lucky man?"

"Room 407. A Mr Swann."

Jake and Tyler made a mental note. Being called to a room Leda had been invited into often meant a treat. Several times they had caught sight of her naked. Once, she had been giving a blowjob while Tyler brought in an order and had winked at him. Competition for these deliveries was fierce.

. . .

Graham leaned back against the closed door, careful not to let it latch. Leda smiled inwardly, the subterfuge not lost on her. She fervently hoped that Robert would have the courage to take Graham up on his unspoken invitation, but was not convinced he would. Dismissing the thought from her mind she wriggled from her dress, dropped her clutch; and in her hold ups, high patent shoes and knickers she dropped to her knees and unzipped Graham's trousers.

His dick, she thought, was beautiful: slightly curved, on the short side but impressively thick with prominent, ropey veins bulging from the surface. The mushroom head was swollen and deep red. Good choice, Leda, she thought. She sighed happily as she extended her tongue and began to give his shaft long, sloppy, enthusiastic licks, as she might a melting ice cream cone. A good quantity of pre-cum had seeped from the tip on the ride up in the lift and she scooped it up with relish. She took his cock in her fist to hold it out of the way and sucked first one of his heavy testicles and then the other. He was well-groomed, his pubic hair neatly trimmed, and she inhaled his masculine scent. Her tongue ran wetly along the raised seam under his scrotum and she ducked between his legs and tilted her head to lubricate the sensitive skin between his sac and the crack of his arse. His balls tightened and she worked her way over them again and up the length of his pole, before finally sucking his cockhead into her hungry mouth. Graham groaned and seized handfuls of her soft, shiny hair. She flicked her tongue over the tip of his penis and probed at his pisshole. Then she closed her lips around his dick and lowered her mouth towards the root, gradually taking in the entire length until he felt the back of her throat close on him. Rhythmically, she began to bob on his cock, bathing it in her saliva, gagging slightly as it filled her. At the same time, she stroked his balls lightly and caressed his taint. She varied her tempo so he was never quite sure exactly how long she would remain still with her mouth stuffed to capacity before pulling back, sometimes with a jerk, sometimes slow and smooth, bringing him to the brink of orgasm before teasingly backing off. 

Leda was skilled and her mouth felt incredible but he didn't want to cum too soon. At a point when she had drawn back until only his bulbous cockhead remained invisible, he twitched his hips and it popped from her mouth. She looked up at him in surprise until he lifted her bodily and carried her over to the bed, dropping her clutch bag on the nightstand. She kicked off her shoes and lay on her back, stretching her arms above her head, as he undressed. Graham parted her legs and crawled between them. She was wearing - of course she was, he thought - red crotchless knickers. He ran a finger along her wet pussy lips and then spread them for a closer look. She had a neat, pretty cunt and a thin strip of trimmed, dark hair bisected her soft mound. He peeled off her knickers to reveal a small heart-shaped tattoo where the landing strip ended. He slid his tongue over her folds and over and around her clit. She mewled softly and he continued exploring as she writhed under his mouth. He pulled back to suck his middle finger, which he then eased inside her. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but she was as tight as his daughter's 18 year old classmate and her pussy clung greedily to his finger as he pulled it out. On the second thrust he tried to insert a second finger but it was an effort and she flinched away. It was going to feel amazing around his cock.

He kissed his way up to her mouth, lingering on the way to tongue her nipples. Unlike his wife after he went down on her, Leda had no hesitation in sucking his tongue into her mouth. She even darted her own tongue out to clean up the glistening cunt juice coating his chin and his cock twitched impatiently. He spread her legs again, preparing to enter her but she braced her palms against the mat of black hair on his chest and said, "No." He was momentarily nonplussed until she added, "On your back," and she climbed astride him and guided the tip of his cock into her slick passage. 

Her pussy really was phenomenally tight. Had she not been so wet it would have tugged painfully on his foreskin as she very slowly sank down and he watched his length disappear inside of her. She held her breath as her vaginal walls gradually stretched to admit him, blowing it out in a rush when she finally felt his wiry pubic hair scratching her velvety mound. Her eyes were closed and her brow furrowed in concentration. She rocked a little from side to side to get comfortable before bearing down and moaning in pleasure. "Leda," he said, "are you OK?"

She opened her eyes and smiled radiantly. "I'm fantastic," she replied, beginning to move.

Leda liked to feel in control. She hated being told what to do or having to compromise, which was one of the reasons she liked one-night stands with married men who wouldn't make demands on her time or independence. She was single, lived alone in a converted warehouse apartment, and had a good, well-paid job. She visited a city centre gym, where she kept a locker well-stocked with conservative work clothes, on her way to the office each day to keep her body taut and toned, and she spent freely on her hair, nails and clothes. She had a healthy sex drive and most weeknights she would make only a brief pitstop at home to shower, change and reapply heavier make up before heading to one of the Birmingham hotels with top conference facilities, looking for sex. 

She liked to make the first move and would sit at the bar talking to the bartender to discourage anyone from sitting with her while she waited and watched. If she was approached she would have some well-prepared brush-offs ready. As might be expected, Leda was well-known by sight and name to many of the hotel staff and once or twice, when a porter had been asked by a male guest travelling alone if he could recommend company, she had been asked if she would be interested. She always declined. She was only too aware that her chosen lifestyle was high risk and she was unwilling (particularly as she disliked condoms) to fuck men who paid for sex. 

The men she chose were invariably much older than herself and wore wedding rings - and never once had she been turned down. She had extraordinary powers of persuasion but, given the way she looked, seldom had to deploy them for long. Despite her need for control she would not have been remotely interested in a submissive man or an inexperienced one. She didn't want to have control ceded to her; she wanted to *take* it; and she got off on power struggles. (She had to be very firm with herself in the workplace when conflicts with male colleagues or clients arose. In these situations she would become enormously aroused and have to remind herself that she had rules about office liaisons. She didn't need that sort of complication in her life.) Paradoxically, though, if a man she picked up managed to wrest control back, so much the better; she could respect that: she was open to most things and some of her favourite things, including anal sex, she had discovered when her partners had been reluctant to take no for an answer.

Now, she rode Graham in a smooth, fluid style as if she were rising to the trot in the dressage ring. She sat virtually erect and her breasts sagged only very slightly under their own weight. Her nipples jutted out, red and swollen in arousal. He held her waist, watching her perform. "You are so beautiful," he said. 

"Thank you," replied Leda. "Your cock is amazing."

"How often do you do this?" he asked.

"Oh, three or four nights a week," she said. "Do you always pick up women in bars when you are working away?"

"I didn't pick *you* up," Graham pointed out. "You very much picked me. Not that I'm complaining. Christ, your pussy's tight. What was I saying? Oh, yes. No, rarely in fact. I usually just watch the porn channels. But I'm very glad you came on to me tonight."

"I haven't cum yet," Leda said, insolently, and Graham's eyes narrowed.

Abruptly, he sat up and lifted her off his cock. "Hands and knees," he said, brusquely. He spread her buttocks, pushed her face into the mattress and plunged balls-deep into her wet pussy. She cried out in alarm as he ploughed her brutally. "Did nobody ever teach you any manners?" he asked and slapped her arse as hard as he could. Leda gave a muffled yelp. He did it again and she yelled harder. On the third slap she screamed and he felt her cunt clench violently around his cock as her body shuddered and shook. 

"Now you have," he said in quiet satisfaction, as he filled her hot passage with semen. In their battle for control, he had taken round two.

Leda laughed, surprised out of her composure. When he flopped onto his back she uncharacteristically snuggled against him, running her fingers through his chest hair. This was going to be fun. She leaned over to kiss him and whispered, "I'm thirsty."

He picked up the phone and called room service while she used the bathroom. As she returned to the bed, he said into the receiver, "We'll probably be busy. Just bring it straight in," and hung up as Leda's mouth closed on his.

When a light tap came at the door, Graham was pounding Leda's pussy again. She was on her side with him behind and he was holding one of her legs in the air for a better view in the mirror of his cock pistoning in and out of her. Jake was thrilled when he pushed the trolley into the room to be treated to a full frontal view of Leda's nude body being fucked. 

"Evening Mr Swann, Miss Knight," he said. "I'll just leave this by the window, shall I?"

He was savouring a last glance at Leda's stretched pussy lips when Graham withdrew from her, saying, "Hold on, son."

Jake froze. "What's your name?" Graham asked.

"I'm Jake."

"You like what you see, Jake?" Graham asked, splaying his fingers around her slick labia.

"Beautiful," Jake managed to croak.

"Come closer. Would you like to touch?" Leda looked uncertainly at Graham, opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.

Jake hurried forwards. He reached out his hands and watched in astonishment as his own palms cupped Leda Knight's soft, round breasts. He pinched her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers and rolled them. Leda gasped.

Graham was enjoying himself and his dick remained erect.

"You can kiss her if you like."

Jake looked at Graham and then back at Leda, who said nothing. He knelt at the side of the bed and moved his hands to her flaming face. Then he kissed her, at first tentative and then aggressive, forcing his tongue between her teeth. For a moment Leda was tense but suddenly she relaxed into it, and he felt her hands on his shoulders.

Graham was speaking again. "She has the tightest pussy. Try it."

Jake sucked on Leda's bottom lip before pulling back. Graham pushed her onto her back, spreading her thighs. Jake looked in wonder at her parted folds. This is, like, the best dream ever, he thought. He licked his lips and lowered his face between her legs, probing her cunt with a hungry tongue. Leda shivered helplessly. He sought her clit, tonguing it vigorously and then catching it between his teeth and gently pulling. Leda's back arched and as it did, Jake thrust his middle finger into her tight hole. Leda convulsed and cried out.

"Nice work," said Graham. "You made her cum."

Jake, still not quite able to believe what had happened, kissed her wetly again and swiped at his wet chin with the back of his hand. Graham pressed a banknote into his hand as he left the room. "For your trouble," he said, catching the door again to ensure it didn't latch.

"What the hell was that?" Leda demanded.

"The drink you ordered," he said.

She glared. 

"OK, OK. I couldn't resist. It was the way he looked at you - like you were the embodiment of his ultimate fantasy. And you can't tell me you didn't enjoy it."

She bristled but said nothing, and when he poured her a glass of white wine she took it from him and drank deeply.

When he lifted her in to his lap, facing away from him so her arse was pressing into his belly and entered her again, she made no objection.

Leda's hair and tits were flying as she bounced energetically on Graham's meat when the door opened again and Robert, dressed in a hotel bathrobe, came in. Neither Leda nor Graham paused in their fucking and he sat in an easy chair to watch the show. Pleased that he had decided to join in, Leda smiled into his eyes and he let the bathrobe fall open to reveal his rock hard cock and began to stroke. Leda did like an audience. When Graham slid his hands up from her waist to squeeze her breasts it was all too much for her and she cried out as yet another powerful orgasm coursed through her supple body. Graham stood up, lifting her with him, and eased his erection from her sopping snatch.

"Help our guest out with that," he ordered and Leda obediently knelt at Robert's feet and set to work on his prick with hands and mouth.

"I'm glad you could join us," Graham said, sitting in the other easy chair. "Where's your wife?"

"Sleeping," replied Robert. "She's a poor sleeper usually but she's taken a couple of sleeping tablets and zonked right out. She'll never realise I'm not there."

"Excellent. I'm Graham and this hot slut is Leda. Say hello to Robert, Leda."

"Hi Robert," she said, indistinctly, her mouth full.

"So, Robert," Graham went on. "What would you like to do with her?"

"Fuck her in the arse," Robert replied immediately.

"I like a man who knows his own mind," Graham said, impressed.

He pulled Leda to her feet and led her to the bed. He lay back and she swung a leg over him until she was straddling him. His cock slapped against her flat belly and she rose up and used her hands to guide him inside her. As she had before, she took her time in sinking down to engulf him and then wriggled once he was deep inside. Then she looked back at Robert over her shoulder, lips parted, panting.

"Come on," Graham urged and Robert stood and dropped his robe. 

Leda was rocking gently on Graham's dick as she said, "There's lube in my bag, Robert." He spotted the black clutch on the nightstand and reached inside for the bottle. She beckoned him over and coated her hands with the viscous liquid, then ran her hands all over his hard cock until it was slippery and ready. She leaned forward from the waist, pressing her mouth to Graham's, dried her hands on the bottom sheet and reached back to spread her buttocks.

Her pink puckered hole was open to him. Robert moved between her legs and Graham's and squeezed a stream of lube between her cheeks. He stroked her crack, distributing it, and then circled her anus with his forefinger before working it inside to open her up. Leda moaned into Graham's mouth as Robert's cockhead nudged her arsehole and pushed. She pushed back and he felt her stretch around him. She whimpered and he grasped her hips, digging his fingers into the tender flesh, to hold her still as he thrust harder. Suddenly his cock popped inside and she gave a muffled scream. He stayed still for a moment, his balls crushed between their bodies, while she breathed hard and then began slowly to move.




Predator



Her pussy clenched even more vicelike on Graham's prick and he panted beneath her. She ducked her head, focusing on the sensation in her pelvis. She was sandwiched between them, absolutely stuffed. The two men adjusted their positions until they were able to establish synchronicity. Alternately they thrust in to her holes as she moaned in abandon. Graham felt her juices gush from her, drenching his balls. He said to Robert, "Together?" and they changed tack, both withdrawing together and then ramming into her at the same time. She shrieked each time they bottomed out and after six thrusts begged, "No, no, stop! I can't take it!" Heedless, they continued and tears began to course down her face, her body wracked with sobs. When she started to struggle in earnest and push against his chest in her efforts to escape the pounding, Graham relented and they returned to the alternating pattern. Her body continued to quiver but she no longer wept and at length her moaning resumed.

In instinctive unison the men slowed and then stopped for a moment, their cocks still inside her, catching their breath. Leda lay still, her hot cheek resting on Graham's shoulder. Graham lifted the phone beside the bed. "Room 407," he said. "You can collect the tray now."

Tyler, who had snatched up the phone, couldn't believe his luck. He had been furiously jealous when Jake told him he'd not only seen Leda get fucked but actually tasted her. "407," he said in triumph and fairly ran for the service lift. He tapped on the door of 407 and it swung open beneath his knuckles.

He didn't at first see Leda among the thrashing limbs on the bed, but he heard her little cries as she was double-teamed. "Er ... can I help?" he stammered. Robert knelt upright, to reveal Leda's body impaled by two cocks. She was slick with sweat now, her hair clinging in wet strands to her face, her eyes dark with lust, her lipstick and mascara smeared over her lovely cheeks. Tyler gaped, "Fucking hell!" he exclaimed, instantly rock hard.

Graham laughed at his open-mouthed shock. "Thanks for getting here so quickly. Yes, you can help. As you can see, Leda's not completely full yet."

Tyler didn't immediately grasp his meaning, but when he did he grinned widely. He moved to the head of the bed, unzipping and dropping his trousers and pulling down his pants. Graham and Robert resumed their pounding of Leda's holes. Leda's lips parted invitingly and Tyler slipped the very tip of his cock into her mouth. He held it there for a moment and on an impulse grabbed his phone. He needed a record of this moment. With one hand he opened the video recorder and trained it on Leda's face. Then he put the other hand on the back of her neck and fed the rest of his dick into her.

Leda's senses were on overload. After so many orgasms it was taking her body longer to get to the brink of another. She wouldn't have approached the room service boy, who was her own age or a little younger, but she had seen him around in the past and fuck, he was hot. His body was lean and athletic, his features regular and masculine, and as she now discovered he was hung like a horse. She sucked on his huge cock hungrily and it bumped against the back of her throat. Saliva seeped from the corners of the stretched, rounded "O" of her lips and ran down her chin. Tyler's hips bucked, fucking her mouth as he continued to film her. She used her tongue to stimulate the underside of his cock and her muffled moans as her pelvis was pounded caused a delicious vibration on his pole. He shuddered.

Robert was ready. He gripped Leda's hips again and released hot jets of semen into her bowels. His climactic howl triggered Graham's own orgasm and he flooded her pulsing pussy. Robert rolled away and Graham lay still, his penis slowly softening. Leda sat upright, still with Graham's dick inside her, now able to use her hands too to pleasure Tyler. She stroked his balls and shaft, looking up at him through her long lashes, feasting her eyes on his face. Under this stimulation, he couldn't hold back. He cried out and released a huge load into her mouth. She swallowed but it kept coming. She choked, gasping for air and he pulled back, holding his dick like a fire hose and spraying her face and chest. She laughed and threw back her head, using her palms to smear his jizz over her breasts and neck. Then she rolled onto her back, breathing heavily, one leg flung over Graham's thigh.

She reached out to stroke Tyler's shrinking cock. "That was such a rush," she murmured.

Tyler dressed, shoving his phone in his pocket, looking down at Leda's splayed and spent body, already wanting to go again. But, with a vast effort of will, he gathered up the crockery, muttered, "Thank you," and went back to work.

Leda stumbled to the bathroom and switched on the shower, finally peeling off her hold ups, and stepped under the steaming water. She soaped her face and body, sluicing off the sweat and - regretfully - the cum. Slyly, she pushed a little more of Tyler's into her mouth before sluicing the rest away. When she finally emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, water streaming from her hair and face scrubbed clean of all make up, Robert and Graham were deep in conversation. They both smiled as she came in. With her clean face she looked even younger. She sat in an armchair and towelled her dripping hair.

"What, never?" Graham was asking.

"Twice," Robert said. "Her arsehole felt amazing. But she reckoned it hurt her. After that she would never do it again."

Graham looked thoughtful. "How deeply does she sleep when she's taken those tablets?"

"She'd sleep through an earthquake."

Graham grinned. "Then I have an idea."

. . .

Half an hour later, they crossed the hall - Robert and Graham in bathrobes, Leda palely naked - to the dark room where Helen peacefully slept.

Robert turned up the lights. Helen didn't stir. She lay quite still, her chest rising and falling, her ash-blonde bobbed and highlighted hair still sleek and perfectly styled. "Helen?" said Robert loudly. Leda held her breath but Helen slept on. "See?" said Robert. "Dead to the world."

He pulled back the covers. Leda was surprised to see that, underneath, Helen was nude. She had a tidy blonde bush, heavy breasts which drooped and spread towards her armpits and a slightly rounded tummy with a small black mole to the left of her belly button. She was exceptionally well-preserved for a woman of 71.

Graham lifted one of her arms in the air and released it. It flopped limply back to her side. "Perfect," he said.

The men rolled Helen's sleeping form onto her front, turning her head to one side so she could breathe, and spread her slim legs. Graham took three plump pillows from the wardrobe and Robert raised her hips so he could slide them underneath.

"Start filming," he told Leda, who pulled up a chair and opened the video function on Robert's iPad. He squeezed Leda's lube into Graham's hand and, while Graham spread it over his hardening cock, he carefully anointed Helen's anus, warming the lube in his palm first. Robert sucked a finger and inserted it into his wife's rectum. He worked it in and out and beckoned Leda over to ensure the gradual opening of Helen's arse was captured on the screen. He added another finger, scissoring them in her tight hole, and then a third. Inside her brown hole, Leda could now see pink glistening flesh. Robert looked back over his shoulder, "She's ready for you." He spread his wife's buttocks as Graham moved closer.

Graham's thick cock head nudged at Helen's pucker. He pushed gently and very gradually an inch of cock disappeared inside her. He pulled out and Robert's three fingers stretched her again. Graham re-entered her, forcing a couple more inches into her. Next time, he would ram it home.

"Leda," said Robert, "can you get her face?" 

Leda moved round the bed, carefully lifting Helen's head and propping it on another stack of pillows. Her pussy juiced. Startled, she realised she was getting a tremendous kick out of watching this woman taken.

This time, as Graham pushed inside her arse, Helen reacted slightly. She gave a small whimper and her face contorted. Leda watched, fascinated. Graham's dick nudged insistently at the ring of muscle inside Helen - and suddenly he was in. His balls slapped against her thighs and he luxuriated for a moment, letting her rectum stretch around him. Then he began to thrust in and out of her hot depths as Robert watched, his rock hard erection in his fist. 

Each time Graham bottomed out inside her, Helen gave a soft grunt, but she was plainly still fast asleep. Her face was blank. Leda moved round again, closing in on the spectacle of Graham's glistening pole pumping in and out of Helen's tight anus. Robert took Leda's spot at the head of the bed. Too consumed by lust for caution, he grabbed a handful of Helen's hair, yanked to force her jaws apart and thrust his dick into her mouth. "Oomph!" Helen said. He froze for a second but she remained silent and he began to jerk his hips aggressively back and forth.

Leda's pussy leaked as she watched Helen spit roasted between the two men, defiled and helpless. She remembered her prissy disapproval of Leda's sexuality in the hotel lift. Leda pressed herself to Graham's back, her moist mound and hard nipples crushed against him and slid her arms around his waist as she sucked his earlobe into her mouth. This tipped Graham over the edge. He thrust deep into Helen one last time and shot a vast load of semen into her bowels. He held her hips as his dick spasmed for several seconds, before pulling out, turning and kissing Leda deeply.

Robert dropped his wife's head and took Graham's place. Her arsehole was sloppy now, Graham's semen leaking out and soaking the pillows under her pelvis, and he had no difficulty in bottoming out inside her. Graham snatched up the iPad, knowing Robert wouldn't want to miss this. 

He had another thought. "You had the serious hots for that kitchen boy with the donkey dick, didn't you?" he whispered in Leda's ear. She didn't attempt to deny it. "Why don't you get him up here?"

In a flash, Leda was dialling room service. "Who's this?" he heard her saying. "Oh, Jake, it's Leda Knight. Can you ask Tyler to come up here, please?"

When the service lift doors opened on the fourth floor, Leda - looking even more naked with no make up - was waiting outside for him. She seized Tyler's hand and pulled him after her. He was only a little surprised when she led him into the Archers' room, but he gaped at the sight of Mr Archer sodomising his motionless wife. Leda was unbuttoning his uniform waistcoat and shirt, pushing them from his shoulders, as she French kissed him. She ran her hands over his chest, drawing back to gaze at his face and chest and tracing the line of his hair down his belly. "So fucking hot," she murmured. 

His trousers dropped to his feet and he was once again inside her hot mouth. She sucked on his huge dick with evident enjoyment. She was amazing, Tyler thought, already dangerously close to cumming. He was eager to fuck her and quickly pulled out of her mouth, sitting on the dresser chair and positioning her on his lap, facing him. His cock slid into her, splitting her and pushing urgently at her cervix. She moaned and rocked on him and closed her mouth on his. She was so hot for him - his face, his body, the feel of him inside her. She quivered and arched her back as a huge wave of lust broke inside her and her orgasm shook her to the core. He held her on his lap, savouring the feel of her pussy pulsing around him and groped around for his clothes to find his phone. He snapped a picture of her, her chest flushed with her climax, her pupils dilated, her nipples swollen, and she took the phone from his hand and tapped in her number, texting the photo of herself cumming on Tyler's cock to her own phone. It was the first time in her life she'd given a man her number. She began to move again, but before he could reach his own climax, Robert, who had filled his wife's anus with jizz, was calling him over. He raised his eyebrows at Leda. 

"Go on," she said. "I can wait."

Tyler inched his vast dick slowly into Helen's rectum and avidly Robert watched him open her up. His cock was the longest Robert had ever seen, in life or on screen, and he wondered which part of Helen's colon was being invaded. Leda stood behind him stroking his balls as he fucked Helen, and he knew he wouldn't last more than a minute. Sure enough, it was mere seconds later that his semen exploded inside the unconscious woman. He withdrew and a gush of creamy liquid followed.

Done with Helen, he was already kissing Leda again. Reluctantly, he said, "I need to get back to work."

"Will you be serving breakfast?" she asked and he brightened. "See you there."

. . .

Robert and Graham wet a towel and mopped at Helen's leaking backside before drying her off and sliding the pillows from beneath her used body. Leda couldn't see the point. Helen's arsehole was bright red, gaping and inflamed and there was little chance of her not noticing the burnin, chafed tissue when she awoke. They arranged her on her back in the position in which they had first found her, but it wasn't the same. Her lips were bruised and her perfect hair mussed. Robert crawled into bed beside her, saying, "See you both at breakfast," and Graham turned off the light as he and Leda left the room.

Back in 407, Leda took her phone from her purse and texted her boss. "I'm so sorry but no chance of getting in tom been up all nite Leda," it said. She had two new messages, both from Tyler. The first was the photo she had sent herself. The second read "when can i c u?" Smiling, she selected Add to Contacts and then curled herself against Graham, who was already asleep, and closed her eyes.

. . .

When Leda and Graham reached the crowded dining room, the Archers were already seated at a table for four. He was tucking in to a hearty cooked breakfast. In front of Helen was a cup of black coffee and a slice of dry toast. Neither appeared to have been touched. Leda thought she could see Helen shifting around in her seat as if unable to get comfortable. Robert beckoned them over. "It's busy this morning," he said. "Come and join us. Helen, this is Graham -" Helen smiled weakly but politely shook Graham's hand, "- and Leda." Helen scowled when she saw Leda, unmistakable in her tight red dress. Leda smiled at her discomfort and took a seat. 

Tyler had been looking out for their arrival and instantly came over to take their drinks order, putting his hand possessively on Leda's shoulder and grinning at Helen's strained expression.

"Did you sleep well, Helen?" Graham asked solicitously and she looked confused.

"Well, I ..." she broke off. "Have we spoken before?"

"Not spoken, Helen, no," Robert told her. "But you could say he knows you intimately."

Helen's brows knit. "What on earth do you mean?"

In answer, Robert pushed her toast aside and placed the iPad on the table in front of her. He had turned down the sound but pressed Play. Helen stared at the little screen, watching as her naked body was flipped and lubricated. She stiffened and her hand flew to her mouth. She half stood but Robert checked her. "Don't even think about walking out on our guests," he said, his voice dangerously controlled. "Where are your manners?"

Relentlessly, the video continued to run. Helen watched as Graham entered her arsehole, her face frozen in horror. Robert took pity on her and fast forwarded. Now he himself was ramming into her. He fast forwarded again but couldn't resist slowing down as his face on the screen contorted and he came in her bowels. Finally, little Helen was being skewered by a penis of mighty proportions. Tyler said in her ear, gesturing to her plate, "Did you not want that, Mrs Archer?" and she jumped violently, recognising his face instantly. Robert's fingers crept between his wife's legs to her pussy. The gusset of her knickers was soaked.

"She's turned on," he exclaimed to Graham. "Her cunt's absolute sopping wet." He pushed her knickers to one side and slid his finger between her labia. She gasped and her body stiffened. Her face flushed as she struggled to conceal the power of the orgasm that swept through her and she shuddered violently.

Robert grinned, wickedly, and Graham rose. "I think our work here is done," he said. "Helen, you're an old-fashioned sort of woman. Remember your duty as a good wife is to satisfy your husband's sexual needs. If you don't, you might find that little gem doing the rounds of the internet." Helen quailed.

Leda caught Tyler as she left the dining room. "When do you finish work?" she asked. 

"As soon as the dining room is cleared," he said.

"Are you working tonight?"

He shook his head. 

In the lobby, Graham kissed Leda on the forehead. "Thank you for a lovely evening," he said.

As she emerged onto the pavement outside, Leda took her phone from her bag and selected Tyler's name from the address book. "3pm," she typed, followed by her home address.

THE END



Predator & Prey



Helena heard her door close softly but didn’t bother to turn around, nor did she even bother to ask how he’d gotten through the locked door. She could feel him behind her; his presence enveloped her like a fog. A knot formed in her throat and her heart began to pound but she swallowed the fear. Instead of showing any reaction she continued to type away at her thesis. Helena had been expecting him all evening since their little encounter in his room when he’d caught her snooping through his belongings. Leave it to her roommate to choose this night to spend with her boyfriend.

Minutes ticked by and neither spoke a word. The only sounds in the room were her typing and the noise from the party going on in the first floor common room. She’d expected him to speak by now and his silence was unnerving. Although she could probably try and scream out for help, something within her prevented it.

“Go away, Julian,” she said finally, trying her best to sound nonchalant, “I’m in no mood to deal with you.” The young woman was tired of his games, tired of playing along. This had gone on long enough, and she somehow had to end it. She held her breath as her words were only met with silence. Doing her best to keep her hand from shaking noticeably, Helena continued to type. The only response to her words was the hollow moan of the wind outside where a storm was brewing.

“What were you thinking tonight, Helena?” His velvety voice was barely raised above a whisper, but it held a note of deadly irritation. 

Helena sucked in a deep breath. “At what point?” She attempted to keep her voice at an even, conversational tone. “I think a great many things, you know.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Williams,” he warned. 

Helena glanced over her shoulder with a genuine expression of annoyance on her pretty face. She hated how he always addressed her by her last name. Helena’s composure almost faltered when her eyes fell upon him. 

Standing in the center of her room with all the aloofness of a tom cat, arms crossed over his bare, muscular chest, he was bathed in the light of her sputtering vanilla scented candle and the glow of the computer monitor. He was dressed only in black jeans and a rumpled black shirt hanging open to the waist. His feet were bare and damp from having crossed the grassy courtyard between the men’s and women’s dorm halls. The candle flame reflected in his gray eyes eerily, his full lips twisted in anger. His shoulder length hair fell over the right side of his face and shimmered like spun gold. The pale blue light of the computer monitor exaggerated his paleness. He appeared wraith-like in the gloom. Helena half expected ethereal organ music to emerge out of nowhere and accompany the scene.

She compelled herself to look away, and even managed a desultory roll of her eyes as she did so. Yes, she was frightened, terrified to be precise, of the man she suspected to have had something to do with the bizarre murders around campus. But he was undeniably beautiful, and if she did not turn away she knew she would go to him. He was halfway across the room but her body reacted as if he were standing directly behind her.

“Okay, I won’t,” she blurted out. At least she had managed to sound emotionless, even as her heart pounded in her ears.

“Obviously you need to learn some respect.” His voice was cold, dry.

Lightning flashed outside, punctuated by the rumble of thunder. Helena started slightly. Praying he hadn’t noticed, she attempted to call his bluff. “Sure. Right. I need to be punished. You are going to kill me. Blah blah blah.” His threats when he’d noticed she was following him around had convinced her that he indeed was the killer, or at least one of them. But no one would believe her. He was the son of a state senator, she needed proof… but becoming his next victim was not the proof she’d had in mind.

Encouraged by the ensuing silence, she continued, “I’ve heard this all before, Julian. Really, if you were a girl you’d be labeled a tease.” Once again she turned her head to peer at him over her shoulder through her tangle of sable curls. He hadn’t moved, but his face registered the shock he felt over what she’d said. Emboldened by his confusion she whipped her head back around and waved him off with an imperious flick of her wrist. “Get out! I’m too busy for your games.”

A shriek of pain escaped her as her hair was seized and her head pulled back, forcing her to gaze into his wrathful countenance. Something cold bit into the tender flesh of her throat and she froze, her eyes widening. Her body turned to dead weight as the reality of the situation flooded her consciousness. Another bolt of lightning invaded the sanctuary with brilliance. With a crackle of thunder rain began pounding upon the window, drowning out all other ambient sound.

“Games, are they, Williams?” From the sound of his voice she would have believed he was teasing her if she couldn’t feel the blade biting into her neck. Uncontrollable shivers coursed her body. “Seems I’ve been a bit too soft on you.”

“Stand up,” he ordered. But before she could move to obey he was dragging the young woman to her feet with the pressure on her hair, the blade still digging into her neck. Her legs had all the strength of dried grass as she willed herself to stand. When Julian kicked the chair from between them, smashing it against the wall as a simultaneous crack of thunder swallowed the sound, she fell back against him with a gasp. Forced to release the handful of curls, he now supported her with his arm tightly around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. The blade still pressed at her throat, though the force behind it was not as intense.

Julian’s breath caressed her cheek as he looked down at her. She closed her eyes tight, shutting him out of her mind; fearful he would see the truth of her feelings that lurked beneath her terror. Withholding that truth, which even she herself had only begun to acknowledge, seemed to be her only weapon at the moment. There was nothing she could do about his awareness of her fear, she was sure he could sense it, as a predator smells the fear of his prey. Predator. Prey. The acceptance of what their relationship had become offered Helena no comfort. 

Pressing his smooth cheek against her forehead he squeezed her tightly to him. “A-are you going to kill me?” she whispered. A lock of his hair had fallen over her face, and she realized he smelled like the sweet fragrance of spring carried on the breeze of late winter. 

“M-m-m-m… perhaps,” he murmured, nuzzling his nose against her cheekbone. Julian’s tenderness was disconcerting. “You’ve already concluded I am a killer, it’s what I am supposed to do, isn’t it?” Helena felt herself consumed with the feeling that she was falling away from herself, that her consciousness was leaving behind her rational side. She fought to hang on as he tickled her cheek with feathery kisses. “But you know, I haven’t yet decided.” A sound somewhere between a chuckle and a growl emerged from his throat.

Another clap of thunder startled Helena and she jumped. Her computer shut down as the power went out just then. Below on the first floor she could hear the partiers hooting and booing in protest. Only the flickering candle flame now lighted the room. 

Breathe, Helena, she instructed herself. You can find a way out of this. Doing her best to ignore the sensations his kisses aroused in her as he trailed his lips across her face, the young woman glanced about until her eyes found the one thing she’d forgotten. A metal letter opener lay on her desk right next to the assignment she’d been working on. It wasn’t much, but it was something and was only a mere arm’s reach away. If only…

Julian’s lips found hers, and though what remained of her cogent mind screamed out in protest, she gave herself unto that kiss. His mouth was so gentle as it played over hers. The world around her faded into the background and for a moment all Helena knew was Julian’s lips. Involuntarily, she whimpered into him as she opened her mouth to accept his tongue. 

Now! Her mind shrieked out as she felt the arm that wielded the blade move away from her throat. He must have felt her tense because just as she was about to clamp her teeth down on Julian’s tongue he jerked his head back. Although she’d not managed to cause him any pain, she had managed to startle him and seized the moment. Ignoring the disappointment she felt in the lost contact, she smashed her elbow into his ribs with all her remaining strength. He roared in pain and outrage, and the dagger fell from his hand, hitting the floor with a clatter.

Helena leaped forward grabbing at the letter opener, but her legs tangled in her long white nightdress and she fell to her knees slamming her chin on the edge of the desk and cracking her teeth together. For a moment the pain obliterated her consciousness and all went white. Before she could recover Julian pushed her to the floor, his knee in her back. Grabbing her at the tender spot on her wrist between arm and hand he squeezed hard causing her to scream and her hand to unwillingly release the weapon. He flicked the instrument away with his hand sending it skittering across the bare floor to where it stopped beneath a nearby bureau. Helena realized all was lost. Weak and sobbing, she allowed herself to be dragged into a standing position by the wrists he held together in one strong hand.

“Stupid fucking bitch,” raged Julian through his clenched teeth between labored breaths. “What the hell is wrong with you?” She didn’t answer, but inclined her wet face away from him, her eyes shut tightly. 

This wasn’t the way he wanted it, the way he’d played it out in his mind ever since the first time he’d met her and seen the beauty she attempted to hind behind unruly hair and baggy clothes. But he’d discovered that Helena Williams always found a way to make things more difficult than they really needed to be. 

“Tears won’t help you, Helena,” he said softly, using the tip of the dagger to turn her face toward him. “Look at me.” She obeyed, and he momentarily lost himself in the beauty of her earthy brown eyes. Then he leaned forward and tasted the tears from her face.

Oh God, is he insane? Acceptance of her assumed fate gave the young woman a new, strange sort of courage. “Just get it over with quickly, please,” she murmured.

Raising an eyebrow, Julian smirked. “Get what over with quickly?”

“When you kill me, do it quickly.” She’d stopped crying and stuck her chin out bravely. “You’ll honor a last request, won’t you?”

Julian laughed, a sound that made her knees quake. “ I told you I haven’t decided if I’m going to kill you or not.”

Helena was confused. She was sure he’d come to kill her. “But-.”

“Do you want me to kill you?” He asked the question in the same manner one would ask how many sugars she wanted in her tea.

“Of course not!” Helena hated being patronized, and even in this dangerous position she was in she became irritated. It was an odd feeling, but everything she’d experienced thus far in relation to Julian Osborne was odd.

“Okay then,” he said, caressing the line of her jaw with the blade, “you’ll have to do several things for me.”

She swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump from her throat. “Such as?” The force with which he restrained her hands was causing her fingers to go numb. When she wiggled them, trying to ease the discomfort he clamped down even tighter, thinking she was trying to escape him again. The pain made her grimace.

“Well, for starters you’ll have to apologize for that little er… outburst.” He drew an imaginary line across her throat with the tip of the dagger.

Closing her eyes she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.” When she opened her mouth to repeat herself, he cut her off. “Look me in the face, Helena, or I might not believe your sincerity.”

Looking into his silvery gray eyes she said, “I’m sorry, Julian.”

He smiled. “Now kiss me and I will accept your apology.”

Leaning up on her toes Helena kissed him on the cheek.

“No, no.” He became frustrated. “Like you mean it.” To emphasize his directive he pulled her against him. She shuddered at the sensation of his body through the flimsy cotton of her gown. His face came down to meet hers and she willingly offered her lips to him. Her mind was spinning; cognitive thought once again becoming a near impossibility. Their tongues met and Julian groaned softly.

When the kiss broke he whispered, “Very nice.” For some reason Helena believed him.

Believing her penance to be complete, Helena attempted to move away; uncomfortable with the way her body was betraying her. Julian maintained his grip on her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I-I thought-.”

“That’s just your problem, Williams, you think too much. We are not finished yet…” he whispered softly, nuzzling her cheek. 

“What do I have to do now?” she asked in a hoarse voice, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. How could she make sense of something so illogical?

“You are going to please me,” he purred into her ear sending a wave of chills over her skin.

“Er, um… how?”

Julian sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “Really, Williams, even you can’t possibly be that naive… I’m sure you’ve done it with that computer geek friend of yours plenty of times!”

“No!”

“What?”

“I’ll do nothing for your pleasure!” she barked out and began to struggle but the prick of the blade on her back stopped her in mid-movement.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s all about my pleasure, it is I who do nothing for yours.”

Backing away a step without releasing his captive, Julian sliced through the shoulder straps of her nightgown. The insubstantial piece of clothing floated to the floor. 

Exposed and nude before her enemy, Helena felt the last of her dignity had been stripped away. Shrieking, the young woman made a last attempt at freedom. With a jerk she pulled from Julian’s grasp, but she was unable to run, her legs would not move. Tears came again to her eyes and she did the only thing she could think of. Wrapping her arms around herself, she tried in vain to hide her body from his eyes. She’d never been naked in front of a man before. 

Summoning up the last of his patience, Julian calmly informed her, “If you fight me again I will change my mind about killing you. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“And stop trying to cover yourself,” he murmured, his appreciative eyes sweeping over her curvaceous form. “You’re beautiful.”

Beautiful? He was complimenting her now? No one had ever called her beautiful before. She didn’t want to believe him, but she could not think of any reason he should lie. He could easily throw her to the floor and rape her, there was no logical reason for him to try and make her feel good unless he actually meant it. Nothing made sense anymore.

Dropping her arms to her sides, she stood there with her eyes closed, listening to the pattering of the rain on the window. A cool breeze found its way in through the tightly closed window and wafted over her body, tightening her nipples.

He swept her hair away from her face and putting a thumb under her chin, tilted her face up. “Lovely,” he crooned and then his mouth was on hers again. The hand wielding the dagger crept around her back, though he did not threaten her with the blade, it was merely there. With the fingers of his free hand, he touched the tender skin of her neck just below her ear, sending out shockwaves of sensation. Down, down his fingers crawled over her silken skin… over her shoulder, across her chest to where it found a breast.

Taking a nipple between his fingers he gently stroked it. She gasped and wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing herself into him, silently demanding more. He complied by slipping his hand down to the sensitive cleft between her legs.

Except for her own explorations of herself in the dark of night, she’d never been touched there before. Pulling back, she shook her head. “No, Julian… I can’t… I don’t 

want-.” She didn’t want him to find the evident truth that lingered there.

But his fingers had already invaded her private place. 

“Sh-h-h-h… yes you do… you’re so wet for me…” His voice had dreaminess in it, something she’d never expect from him. Stroking her softly, he summoned a pleasure that seemed to burn from her very core. Helena buried her face against his chest, moaning and unconsciously rocking her hips against his hand. 

A finger slipped into her and she moaned loader. “Oh, God…”

“You want me don’t you?” he whispered, his lips and breath grazing her ear, intensifying the pleasure.

“Yes.” She realized she could not deny it any longer, to him or herself. Although her brain screamed out in protest her body behaved as if it were under a magic spell. She wouldn’t run now, even if she thought she could escape.

“Tell me… tell me what you want.”

“I… want … you…” she managed to say between moans, covering his neck and chest with tiny kisses.

“What else do you want?” She couldn’t see the look of rapture on his face.

Helena instinctively knew what the correct answer was… she knew because she felt it. “I want to please you,” she said, running her hands through the cool silk of his hair, frowning slightly as he removed his hand and the pleasure stopped.

“Mm-hmm, and you shall.” He guided her to the bed and she lay down watching as he removed his own clothing, trying not to blush as she saw his penis for the first time. She reached for him, wanting to explore his body, but he pushed her down to the bed. “I didn’t give you permission to touch me,” he informed her.

She frowned, confused.

“Yet,” he added. “You’ll earn that right one day.” Then, spreading her legs, he knelt on the bed and tasted her virginal sex. Helena groaned loudly at the feeling of his mouth on her, licking and suckling. She spread her legs wider, hoping to give him easier access to her pleasure center. Raking her fingers through his hair, she attempted to convey without words how much she enjoyed his mouth on her.

“Oh,” her voice held a disappointed tone as Julian pulled his mouth away. “You stopped!” she complained, petulantly playful. He appeared amused by this and chuckled.

He slithered up across her body, positioning himself above her. When he kissed her she could taste her own fluids on his mouth, the aching in her body intensified. She ran a hand over the smooth, taut flesh of his chest, marveling in the alien feeling of the man’s body. 

“It’s time for your lesson, Helena.”

“What is that?” she asked distractedly, tracing the striations of his muscles with her fingertips. Leaning up, she kissed one of his nipples and felt a shudder pass through his body. She smiled at his reaction, but her smile faded quickly and she froze when he pressed the blade to the side of her neck at her jugular. In her lust she’d forgotten about it. Fear and desire converged, heightening her senses. Looking into his eyes she saw no anger there and she relaxed, slightly.

He smirked down at her. “I have to teach you the rules, so we are going to play a game.” When her face registered fearful interest he continued. “Your pleasure only exists for my pleasure, and your focus will never be on your own. Understand?”

She nodded. “I think so…”

“Put your arms down and keep them there,” he ordered. She dropped her hands from the exploration of his chest, and though he still craved her touch he went on to explain the rules. “You are not to move at all, or show any signs of pleasure. And keep your eyes closed. If you do not obey, I will cut you. Got it?”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

Rising up he kneeled between her legs. Julian gazed down at her, entranced with her loveliness. He thought she was beautiful just as she was… naked, compliant, her expression apprehensive yet impassioned. Goosebumps appeared and disappeared on her skin. She shivered.




Predator and Prey



Nick had been stalking his prey for weeks. He knew her inside and out. He had followed her and learned her routines carefully. She was not his usual prey and that was what had interested him in her. She was in a professional job, a psychologist, clever, intelligent, tall at six foot with delicious perky tits.

Her dark hair was cut short and he could imagine gripping it tightly in his hands. Laura worked specific days and always left home at a certain time. She had a boyfriend who was there most of the time apart from one day of the week when she was home alone. Through careful observation he knew that on this day she did most of her cleaning and then took a bath early afternoon and relaxed watching rubbish TV.

He had tracked her movements for weeks and knew all about her and what she did, where she went, who came round and when and was prepared for today. He knew the boyfriend was prone to forgetting his key and so there was one hidden in the back yard under a zombie gnome. Today he was going to take his prey.

Silently he moved into the back yard, wearing his mask and dark clothes he found the key and silently opened the back door. Slipping into the house he could hear the water draining from the bath. He walked through the house, bolting the front door just in case her sister decided to drop in unannounced. Pausing to stroke the wooden bannister railing he made his way up the stairs towards the bathroom. Checking it silently he found it empty.

Padding stealthily up the stairs he checked one room then moved onto the last room, the one he knew belonged to her and the boyfriend as a bedroom. Pausing at the door he stopped to listen. She was talking on the phone to someone. Apparently the conversation was quite naughty. He licked his lips listening to her call someone Master over the phone - listening to her play with herself. He shifted his weight and the wooden floorboard creaked under him.

He heard her freeze then a whispered goodbye, she had to go, her sister might have come over. He grinned and heard her walk up to the door. As she opened it he slammed into the room grabbing her round the throat, his eyes revelling in her nakedness as he shoved her back hard onto the bed with his hand gripping her throat tightly and a knife pressed to her tits as she collapsed backwards onto the bed, legs sprawling as she flopped. Nick let go of her throat, grabbed the cuffs from his belt and whilst she was still dazed cuffed her wrists and dragged them up to the headboard.

Pulling out one of the cable ties from his pocket he secured her hands to one of the dark, wooden headboard. She regained her senses and kicked out at him, he contemptuously slapped her leg away and then stabbed the point of the knife into the inside of her thigh - not quite hard enough to break the skin but she froze petrified. He stood and slid his shirt off as she lay there helpless and naked. Slipping down his pants and boxers he kicked off the trainers and stood naked (apart from the mask) in front of her, his hard cock throbbing in front of him.

He moved to the bed and gripped her ankles, spreading those long legs painfully wide apart he pushed them forwards angling her hips up. She stared up at him in mute terror. Obviously not wanting this but scared of the knife. He let go of one leg and gripped his cock pressing it to her slit, the dampness from her bath helping to ease his cock inside her. Her eyes widened and she let out an involuntary moan as his cock hit every important bit inside her as he filled her bigger than she had ever been filled.

For his part Nick was amazed at how tight her cunt was around his cock. He had felt every bump and as he pulled out he felt his cock rubbing inside and make her cry out. Nick gripped her around the throat with one hand and leaned down to bit her nipples as he began slamming his hard cock in and out of her cunt. He bit down fiercely on the flesh of her nipples making her scream as his cock buried itself in and out of her over and over. He tightened his grip and then watched her shudder as she came.

Grinning at her body's betrayal he fucked her harder seeing her face turning an interesting colour as he choked her and fucked her at the same time. Her eyes bulged out of her skull as she came again and again. He released his grip on her throat allowing her to gasp a breath in then rammed his cock into her hard. She came instantly on just that thrust. He pulled back and thrust in again, the head of his cock hitting every special spot inside her making her explode again. He repeated this twice more and she came both times... By this point she had hit fifteen orgasms. Never before had he ever fucked someone who came so easily on his cock, this slut was amazing.

Gripping her ankle he turned his head and sank his teeth into her calf leaving her shuddering and orgasming. The pain and pleasure overwhelmed her; her eyes rolled up into her skull and she twitched and writhed underneath him as he drilled in and out of her again and again. Looking down at her helpless, his teeth marks in her pale skin he leaned down, grabbed a handful of her hair and then thrust his cock deep inside her cunt and pumped it full of his juices.

"I hope your pregnant slut." He whispered into her ear as he fucked his cum as deep inside her as he could. Slipping out of her he wiped his cock in her hair. He uncuffed her twitching body and left her lying on the bed. Taking photos of her lying there legs spread with his cum leaking from her cunt he leant in close again. "Tell anyone about this and your sister, your mum, your boss and half your clients will all see these photos slut - as well as posting them to the internet."

Undoing the cuffs, he cut the cable tie and left silently before she could recover from her orgasmic daze.

The following day Nick was sat in his office and watched as Laura walked into work. He sat in the director's office and smiled - if she wasn't pregnant after this weekends visit he was sure next weekend would do the trick.