“I hit her. I had Big Tiny rape her within an inch of her life”—a wicked smile—“until he couldn’t rape her anymore.” Isabella’s face takes on a different look when she says it, as if she is picturing the very moment in her mind. “Big Tiny raped her until she bled and now I have to nurse her back to health. God knows I would rather dump her in the ocean, but we can’t risk her body being found. We can’t risk Big Tiny’s DNA being found on her and then him being linked back to us. To the Operation.”
Isabella starts to calm down.
Her cheeks no longer match her raven hair.
But she is still in a mood.
“Take your clothes off,” she commands Thomas.
He knows better than to disobey her when she is like this.
Soon he stands in front of her naked, as he has many times before.
She takes off her clothes, down to black French lace thong underwear and bra.
He knows what is coming. The same thing that always happens when she is in one of her moods.
She takes him by the hand to their master bedroom, throws on a long black silk robe and storms through the house. She commands all the staff to leave immediately. They know to do as they are told when Isabella is like this. All are gone from the house within three minutes.
Isabella waits impatiently for them to go.
Then she storms back to the master bedroom and into the master closet. She comes out with a ball gag, a black silk blindfold and two pairs of real handcuffs.
Watching her intently, Thomas thinks about Isabella and her “games.”
Sometimes, they are fun. But tonight, they will be different.
Games are never “fun” when Isabella is in this sort of mood.
Isabella leans into his face so they are just inches apart. Thomas wants to caress her shining red hair, but he dares not touch. “Now turn around,” she barks at him.
He does as he is told.
“Now, make Isabella feel better, won’t you?” Her tone is pleading, as if she is just a young girl. Thomas is turned on by it.
But he says nothing.
“Be a good comrade for me.” As she says these words, he can feel her calves wrap around his thighs and her lace bra against the skin on his back. Her silken skin against his. The mere thought of her smooth skin arouses him. The clean smell from her Chanel No. 5 perfume. Her long red hair brushes against his back as well.
She is teasing him.
Enticing him.
It is Isabella’s way.
He can feel her breath on his throat as she slips the blindfold over his eyes, tying it tight with a cinch knot.
“There.” She lingers for a moment, saying nothing. He knows that she is watching him, looking at his back, but more so at the tools of her domination over him. She is admiring him before she takes him to new heights. “Turn around again,” she whispers seductively in his ear, “so that Isabella can see your face.”
Once again, Thomas does as his mistress commands.
She is enjoying it because she knows he is hers now.
He cannot see her, nor can he touch her yet. It is too soon. There will be time.
He is hard for her.
She purrs at him, “Now, look what a good boy you have been. Isabella will reward you.” With these words, she stuffs the red ball gag into his mouth hard; he must breathe through his nose. He knows. They have done this many times before. But tonight, he can feel his blood pressure rise and heart rate quicken faster than before. There is a new urgency now. Borne perhaps out of the danger of law enforcement being close, perhaps out of this new foe—Dr. Catherine Powers. Perhaps out of nothing at all.
For a second, Thomas wonders what Dr. Cat Powers would be like in bed. Would she be like his Isabella or something different? Would she be all silky satin and lace? Or would she be fierce and controlling like his Isabella?
Thomas puts it out of his mind. He concentrates on Isabella. His love. The only one who has ever done things like this to him. The only one he has ever given total control to.
Sex like this is exciting.
Isabella finds it pleases her as well.
“Now, I will be back in one moment,” she says. “You may sit on the bed until I return.”
He hears her leave the room and wonders why she has not put the handcuffs on him yet. She has a certain order to these things. Even in sex, it is Isabella’s way. There is an order that must be followed. A way that things usually happen.
Today, she is out of sorts.
He knows that he is to say nothing while she is gone.
He is not even to move as he sits on the bed, his hands clasped in his lap.
She comes back in the room and he can smell the leather in her hand. Smell the musky smell of it mixed with the crisp smell of her Chanel perfume and the smell of her skin. It is a smell he never tires of. A smell of sex and lust and love—all rolled into one.
Beneath the black blindfold, he imagines her standing in the doorway. Her hot body all wrapped in sheer black French lace lingerie. The look she is giving him. Red hair and green eyes ablaze, as she serves as his dominatrix. A role she so enjoys.
He is her slave tonight, as he has been many nights before.
“Now, lay back, or I will beat you.” Her voice has turned from schoolgirl to dom. He must do as he is told or pay the consequences.
Thomas does as she commands, but he knows the beating will still come.
It is Isabella’s way. It is how she gets off when she is upset.
And tonight, she is very upset.
Over him, she looms. He knows because he can smell her skin. He can feel her breath, just over his perspiration-covered skin. Just far enough away from him to excite him even more. Isabella is in control. She is always in control.
She is very close, almost touching him but not quite.
“Now, your hands up above your head.”
He knows what will happen next. He feels more excited. He has never been with a woman like Isabella. She is one of a kind.
She takes both handcuffs, cuffing his wrists to the huge custom-built iron headboard that they have had dead-bolted into the wall and reinforced into the studs. Isabella begins to laugh as she cinches down on the cuffs so they are closed so tight, they make Thomas’ wrists hurt.
“That is better,” he says in muffled voice.
She does not respond to him verbally but does so physically. With her long silken legs, she mounts his chest and squeezes so hard that he can hardly breathe.
“Silence,” she shouts as she cracks her leather whip on the white Jerusalem-marble-tiled floor.
Thomas knows that there are cattails at the end of her whip, barbed and stinging. He cannot wait to feel their bite in his skin. He can feel the beat of his heart in his chest as his pulse quickens. He’s gasping for air as she continues to grind herself into his body. She is heavy on his chest, but this is how he likes it with Isabella. She is to do what she pleases with him.
The mere thought of her total control over him excites him even more.
She sees it. He can hear her excitement increase too, her breath quicken.
Isabella enjoys this role.
Total domination and total control.
Total power over her world and her man.
She flips around so she is in his face. She issues commands, telling him what he is to do and how he is to do it, and all the while, her whip is clicking and snapping against the floor. Around him, the air is hot. There is no coastal breeze tonight. Or maybe it is just Isabella’s heat that he feels.
She is amazing.
He does as she instructs.
Isabella moans in delight.
He is hers and she is his.
Aggressively, she whirls around again, back in her original position on top of him. He wishes he could run his palms down her long legs and touch her, just there. His wrists strain against the cuffs, but it is no use. He is trapped, exactly as she likes it. He is her slave tonight.
Next, she wraps
her leather whip around his neck.
Leaning down so her breasts meet his chest, she whispers, “There, my love,” in his right ear. The soft sexiness in her voice takes him to the edge.
He can feel the leather bearing down on his Adam’s apple as she says the same words again, only softer. She lifts her chest and head, increasing her clasp around his chest, so he can hardly find air.
Suddenly, she pulls the leather whip tight around his neck, at the same time shifting back on him, so he is in her. They both cry out at the same time, as he is straining against his cuffs, surrounded only by her sexual essence in his darkness.
“Isabella.” He says her name only once, as he has been trained to do.
As they both take each other to a new place of fulfillment, she pulls off his blindfold so he can see her body and her face at this moment. Both are divine now, just as always.
He dares not say her name again, as they collapse in a heap. He knows that he loves her more than any other woman ever.
He wants it to be like this always.
He knows that he must never let her go.
* * *
That same night, after Cat has placed a good-night phone call to Joey, she gets a call while working late. It is Miss Jennings from Black and Knight; her voice is low. It is clear she is afraid of something or someone. She identifies herself and says, “Can I see you?”
“Whatever you have to say to me can be said on the phone,” Cat calmly replies. She will not buy into this woman’s obvious paranoid behavior.
“No. We have to meet somewhere public. The Galleria mall, you know it.”
Cat rolls her eyes. Everyone knows it.
“Yes.”
Miss Jennings says, “Okay, there in an hour. Look for me by the south entrance to Dillard’s. I’ll be looking at the sale shoe racks.”
Cat figures it couldn’t hurt and agrees.
Within the hour, she is at the Dillard’s department store in the allotted area.
Miss Jennings is there. She is a mousy-looking woman in her mid-fourties, just as Cat remembers. There is nothing remotely fashionable about this woman. Cat wonders when she was last in a department store to shop.
They acknowledge each other without saying much.
“Did you park nearby?” Miss Jennings asks.
“Yes, why?”
“I think my car is bugged. I think they are following me.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Cat asks.
“I don’t know. But not here.”
Miss Jennings starts to walk briskly out of the store’s south entrance.
Cat follows a few paces behind.
Soon they are outside in the oppressive South Florida humidity. Cat can feel sweat rolling down her back.
Miss Jennings turns and asks which car belongs to Cat.
Cat has her keys out. Miss Jennings can hear the familiar chirp-chirp of a car alarm being turned off. She and Cat walk toward a rented red C-Class Mercedes. They get inside. Cat turns on the air to full blast. They both sit for a moment enjoying the AC.
Cat can see Miss Jennings is nervous.
She is fidgeting in the seat, messing with things in her purse.
“What is going on?”
“I think I am being followed.”
“Yes, you already said that.” Cat does not want to seem impatient, but she is. “Who would be following you?”
“I don’t know who they are, but ever since Anna went missing, I feel like I am being watched. There has been a black sedan I have never seen that is parked on my street when I get home at night. The windows are tinted so dark, I can’t even tell if there is someone in the car. And when I am going to work and coming from work, a similar-looking car has been following me. Far enough behind that they do not think I can see them, but I know they are there.” Miss Jennings’ explanation comes rapid-fire. “I don’t know who they are, but I know they want to hurt me.” She perspires even though the AC is on full blast.
Cat wonders if this is all a figment of an overactive imagination, but she continues to listen.
“This all started after Anna went missing. At first, I just dismissed it. I figured I was imagining things. Maybe I was watching too many action movies late at night. Or someone new had moved into my neighborhood with the black car. I thought it was all in my mind. But then I started to think about it. No one has had a ‘For Sale’ sign up on any of the houses on my block. And I know all my neighbors. No one new has moved in. I don’t recall seeing anyone new when I take my dog for a walk. My neighbors would have told me if there was someone new or if a friend was visiting. I have lived in that neighborhood for over fifteen years. Everyone knows everyone.” She takes in a deep breath, exhaled and continued. “And even though I can’t see the face, I sense that there is someone sitting in that car watching when I leave for work and when I get home. It’s spooked me.”
Miss Jennings pauses long enough this time to allow Cat to ask some questions.
“You say this started after Anna went missing?”
“Yes, the very next day is when the black sedan showed up by my house.”
“I noticed in Ms. Perez’s file that it didn’t match what Mr. Pierce was telling me. Do you know anything about that?”
“Huh?” was all Miss Jennings could manage. “What?”
“Well, your boss, Mr. Pierce, seems to have a different story to tell about Ms. Perez. He said she was fired by her prior employer and he seemed to suggest it was because of sexual misconduct, but he didn’t say so. He said she was a flirt who liked to pal around with the firm’s young male associates and associate herself with them, if you know what I mean. He made a lot of disparaging remarks about a dead woman who could hardly defend herself. But when I looked at her employment file the other day, none of that appeared true.”
Miss Jennings’ face is flushed. “That’s ridiculous. It’s a lie. All of it.”
“Pierce is lying about it. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, but I can tell you something is not right at that law firm.”
“Why do you say that?” Cat asks.
“Well, for starters, Thomas Pierce never does a bit of legal work. You’ve seen the man’s office. Spotless. I’ve never seen him work on a client’s legal file. But there are files that he keeps locked in his office. No one is allowed to see them except him and the other partners and Isabella. And the only time those files ever see any action is when there is a partners’ meeting. The partners’ meetings happen once a month, behind locked doors. Always done on the last Friday of the month at ten a.m. and only in his office. That is the only time that those files ever come out. The only reason I know about them is that there is a vague reference to them in the partners’ meeting minutes, which I type up every Friday afternoon after the meeting is over.”
Cat says nothing.
“So, there is that.” Miss Jennings continues to spew information. “And there is the fact that Isabella Arsovska attends each of these meetings. She is not even a partner of the firm. Why is she even there?”
Cat stops Miss Jennings mid-thought.
“Hold on a minute. Pierce told me that Isabella’s last name was Sudakova the last time I went to see him.”
“No, her last name is Arsovska. I have seen her passport because sometimes I arrange travel trips for the two of them to Ukraine, Istanbul and Eastern bloc countries. Isabella Anna Arsovska is the full name on her Ukrainian passport.”
“Why would Pierce give me a different last name for her?”
Miss Jennings says, “I don’t know. Maybe there is something about her he does not want for you to know.”
Cat figures so—it’s obvious. “What about this black sedan? Do you have more of a description?”
“It is an Audi A5, black. It carries no real license plates, just a paper plate, like it’s brand-new or a dealer car maybe. There are no stickers on it—not even a AAA sticker. The windows are tinted so dark, like I said, you can’t hardly see inside. But I know there i
s a man there. I can feel his eyes on me.” She pauses for a moment, then keeps talking. “I have asked the neighbors. They don’t know who it is either. The car gets there and parks about a half hour before I leave in the morning for work. He watches me walk my beagle, Buddy. And the neighbors say he gets there about a half hour before I get home from work. I have even experimented and changed the hours that I get home a few nights a week. You know, I went to a restaurant to eat or went straight to movie after work just to kill some time. But it doesn’t matter; the car is still sitting there when I get home and the neighbors say it shows up a half hour before I get home. Whoever it is, is following me, or it’s two people working together maybe. I’m telling you, it gives me the creeps. I mean, what do they want with me?”
Cat takes out her notepad, starts writing down everything that Miss Jennings is saying in shorthand.
When Miss Jennings sees this, she says, “I don’t want to lose my job over this. Over coming to you.”
Cat understands. “Don’t worry. I will be very discreet in how I use this information. I understand your concerns.” Cat’s words seem to calm Miss Jennings. It seems as if the cold AC is finally reaching her flushed face. Her breathing quiets just a bit.
“And what about the other car?”
“It is also an Audi, but a bigger model. One of the Quattros, I think. A four-door sedan. Candy-apple red. Newer. Dark-tinted windows as well. So dark you can’t see inside. I haven’t been able to get license plate numbers on it, but it has Florida plates.”
“Does anyone at your office drive such a vehicle?”
“No, I looked for that. I walked the parking structure where all our monthly parking is assigned. No one drives a big red Quattro. I’ve even checked with building management, who have all the assigned spaces’ vehicle and license numbers in their data base. They say no one drives a candy-apple red Quattro. No one with a Florida plate.”
“What about Isabella? Or one of the firm’s clients?”
Ms. Jennings shakes her head. “Nope, I checked with our building’s doorman, Mr. Justice. I asked him; he said no. I did the same with the nice Asian man who mans the parking booth at our offices; he says no too.”
Dying Declaration Page 8