Called to Kill

by A. M Surtees

  Ripping open my shirt, buttons sent flying as they were forcibly detached from the lining of cloth, he brought himself upwards, grasping my side as he buried his face into my breasts. Every inch of me was aching for him so everywhere he touched brought me closer yet again. My resistance to begging was dwindling and fast as my hunger grew somewhat animalistic. I wanted him with everything I had and it was like I had a rational Tamikah on one shoulder demanding I stop behaving like a sexed up teenager and a free spirited Tamikah who was singing some rubbish about true love which irritated me to no end.

  As he worked his way upwards, he rubbed against my inner thigh, no more than an inch away from where I wanted it to be. He only just met me but it was like he knew exactly how to drive me wild and make me beg for him. So much so that I didn’t even consider the fact that he had driven me past the point of no return, with his tongue, when I brought his lips up to meet my own.

  With his free hand he retrieved the condom from his back pocket and lowered himself until our bodies were linked together the way I had been begging for since I met him.

  Reaching climax together for the last time, fatigue stopping us from continuing any further. I staggered into the kitchen to grab a glass of water, looking out the window to see that the sun had started to rise. I checked the time on my phone and nearly passed out. It was six forty-five in the morning. We had been at it for a little over seven hours. Now that’s the kind of sex even a porno couldn’t comprehend and no adult writer could ever dream of describing.

  My legs trembled from being in the same position all night, no matter which of us was on top, my legs remained spread. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be walking right for a day or two.

  Daniel put my things in the wash which impressed me on a whole other level. While we waited for my clothes, we opted to have a shower, together.

  He kissed me softly on the lips, but this time it was different. It wasn’t a hungry kiss like I had been accustomed to in the last seven hours. It was soft, like the way a couple kisses. The thought of that terrified me to the core but the kiss sucked me in and I couldn’t help but kiss him back in the same manner.

  He placed his hands on my lower back, just holding me, as the hot water ran down over us, washing away the smell of sweat and other bodily fluids. It was horrifying, but actually kind of nice to have him hold me the way he did. There was a spark between us that I simply couldn’t deny. I thought it was nothing more than a primal urge. Now, I’m not so sure.

  Chapter eleven

  After leaving Daniel’s place at around nine, I went back to the hotel to change into clothes I hadn’t worn the day before. Even though he had washed the stuff for me, that wasn’t the point. I was still wearing the same thing I had on yesterday and if I walked into headquarters like that, Marcy would ask questions I wasn’t willing to answer.

  It was a little after eleven when I got into headquarters. Marcy was working away in her own little world, inching closer to having the ID number of the employee that had accessed the restricted files.

  Walking to one of the small offices down the hall so I could call the boys without being overheard and giving away the fact that we knew this was an inside job and get an update on how they were doing on their hunt for information.

  I rang Braxton first who turned out to be pretty much a total waste of time. The apartment was spotless and virtually bare and after turning over her entire apartment throughout the night, he had come up empty. Nothing at all to indicate who attacked Penelope.

  The only thing we could deduce from the information that Brax gave us was that the attacker must have known Penelope because there was no signs of forced entry. Which didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, that someone Penelope had trusted as part of her team, was behind her attack.

  Next I rang James and Dimitri, who gave me some splendid news; Penelope was beginning to come to. She wasn’t one hundred per cent awake yet and she wasn’t ready for visitors, let alone agents from Melbourne asking her a bunch of questions but, the simple fact that she was coming out of it could be huge. Now let’s hope she actually remembers the night she was attacked. I told the boys to make sure that news of her condition wasn’t made public news, as far as anyone knew, she was still out. I thanked Dimitri for the information before disconnecting the call.

  I made a start on my interrogations of staff and after two hours and speaking to about one hundred people, I came to realise that this was not going to be easy. These people all came in with expressionless faces and answered all my questions with short, sharp answers. A few of the female agents cried before I could even open my mouth, begging me for details of her condition.

  One of the things you learn during training before becoming an agent is, A; how to lie through your teeth and B; how to keep a straight face in an interrogation. I should have known this very simple fact. It stands to reason that I thought I was giving myself the easiest job when in actual fact; my task was probably the hardest.

  Opening up my laptop, I spent close to four hours creating a file for each and every employee, stating their name, address, date of birth and the most important question, their employment history. With this information I could make a list of people who are capable of getting into a computer system with thirty-eight fire walls. I also looked into how long they had been working here. The files started to vanish about six months ago. First step would be to eliminate those who had been working here for a shorter period of time than that. Can’t steal files if you don’t have a job here yet.

  Next step would be to group together those who had been here for between six and twelve months, focusing more on the nine month range. Three months to build rapport before hacking into the system. Those three months that a con artist takes are vital. They can determine how closely someone looks at you when something like this happens. It’s the ones that build a brilliant rapport that usually end up getting away with it because everyone has nothing but nice things to say about them.

  I finished up with a list of twenty that had begun employment between six and twelve months ago. Now it’s time for the hunt to really begin.

  Chapter twelve

  “Tam, she’s awake!”

  The voicemail that I discovered on my mobile when I woke up in the morning, in my own bed I might add. I hadn’t seen Daniel in close to a week. And yes, I have been counting the days but if anyone asks, I’ll deny it.

  After breakfast and a shower, I caught a taxi to the hospital to hopefully get some information out of Penelope, and to most importantly, give her a hug and demand she never scare me like that again. Time to cross my fingers and pray to whoever is listening that she remembers something, anything, from the night she was attacked. We’ve been here for a little over two weeks, we were getting nowhere and I was starting to get really frustrated. We all were.

  I arrived at the hospital at around quarter passed nine. Penelope was on the fourth floor, room twenty-three. Due to the guard she had on her, she had been given her own room, just in case a patient was swayed by her attacker to finish her off while the guards were standing just outside her door.

  James was in the hallway with two other men, keeping an eye on anyone who sought passage into Penelope’s room, even conducting body checks to ensure that no one came in with anything that could bring any harm to her. Even I was body checked. Efficiency or what? I applauded their dedication to keeping her safe, at least I confidently found two people who weren’t behind this. Although, muscle was pretty low on my list of suspects. This person was tech smart. Muscle were a lot like me and didn’t know a damn thing about computers.

  Penelope was sitting up in her bed, her sister Emily sitting at her side. No one had been allowed into the room while she had been comatose, not even her family. To the boys outside that door, everyone was a suspect and no one was allowed near her. Even doctors and nurses were escorted by guards. Pays to be important hey?

  Dimitri was standing at the end of her bed, checking over her chart and run
ning a couple of tests. Just to make sure there was no underlying damage to her brain or other key organs.

  Penelope greeted me with a wide smile that reached her eyes, tears beginning to form in them, “Oh, Tamikah my darling girl, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Turning to her sister, I said, “Em, can you give us a minute please.” It wasn’t a question.

  Emily gave her a hug and asked her if she would like anything before leaving the room, Dimitri exiting behind her, giving me a chance to speak to Penelope one on one.

  I opened my mouth to speak when she cut me off, “I’ve been trying to remember what happened since I woke up but no matter how hard I try, it’s all a blank. The last thing I remember is putting my car keys down on the table just inside the front door. After that I don’t remember anything at all. Please tell me you are here to get this bastard, Tammy.” I hated when she called me Tammy, but looking at her in this state, I willingly let it slide.

  Her demeanour suddenly changed, I could tell she was beating herself up for not being able to remember. Yes, I was annoyed that she couldn’t remember the events before the attack, but I couldn’t really blame her either. I think they call it a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, where the memory blocks out things that are too difficult to deal with. If I could help to jog her memory, then maybe we could get something to work on.

  I sat down on the end of the bed, placing a hand on her calf, “After everything you’ve been through, no one expects you to recall what happened straight away. Don’t worry, it will come to you soon enough and then the bastard who did this will get a bullet.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she looked up at me, a deep hopelessness shining through her emerald green eyes.

  “I won’t push you about what happened but I do have some questions that you will be able to answer for me.”

  “If I can help you to find the person that put me here and hacked into my system, then I will. The fact that I’m here doesn’t concern me as much as knowing what files are missing. If any of that information falls into the wrong hands, it could cost me my girls.”

  Fear struck through her as she spoke about her girls, – a group of four girls trained to kill and built to lure with sex appeal – girls who work in the same sort of field I do. It was like she left me to take on the job in Sydney and created a team of girls just like me and it was clear she held them close to her heart and cared about them as if they were her children. That was a sentiment I understood well. She helped me to become the woman I am today so I knew those girls were in good hands with her.

  Pulling me off the street at fourteen and cleansing my system of the multitude of drugs that I had pumped my body with, her and Jackson saved my life. While I still work in a manner that requires me to have sex for money sometimes, but, the pay is a lot better – ranging from fifty to five hundred thousand per job – and it’s not fifty or more clients a night, it’s more like five a month, and that’s a busy month.

  “I actually want to ask you about your staff. Is there anyone that has acted suspiciously in the last couple of months? Someone who has been somewhere they shouldn’t be or asking too many unnecessary questions, especially about the computers?”

  She sat back against her pillow and thought for a moment, trying to recall if anyone had acted oddly. Something she may not have thought much of at the time but could be rather important now.

  “Actually, there has been one person who has acted a bit bizarre lately. Not so much asking questions but just getting chummy with people you wouldn’t usually expect. He was getting a bit hands on with one of the girls in our tech department about two months ago but it didn’t seem to last very long. Then he was trying to do the same with me about three weeks ago. I thought he was just being friendly, he’s been around since I took over so I thought maybe he was just finally comfortable around us, but now that I think about it, I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “You said he was trying to get hands on with you? Could he be the one who did this? I ask because your apartment showed no signs of forced entry, indicating that you let your intruder in.”

  “Oh my. I suppose it’s possible, I guess. But, he seemed so nice.”

  “They always do,” I said matter-of-factly.

  She looked as if she was about to break. She must have grown quite fond of this guy in the few weeks that they’d been fooling around but to me this guy just sounded like a real piece of work.

  “Penny, please. Can you give me a name? Then we can work to either rule him out, or take him out.”

  She looked at me, eyes wide with a deep fear. She knew who I was, knew what I did for a living. She knew that if I got my hands on this guy, and he was guilty, he was dead. After we got what we needed from him of course.

  Then, in an instant, her demeanour changed again. She grew firm, decisive; she knew what she had to do. To protect her girls and their futures.

  “His name is Daniel Paulson.”

  My heart shot up into my throat.

  That night, no matter what I did, I couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning whenever I tried and fighting the urge to put a bullet in him when I was on my feet.

  This is why I don’t date, why I don't let anyone get close to me. If I don't let them in then they can’t screw with my head and hurt me. I much preferred it that way. But there was just something about him that was so enticing. Something that pulled me in, made me want to taste him, to please him, to let him please me. And he did, oh my god, did he ever. But what if it was just another part of his plan?

  The thought that it could be a ruse, a play to get insight on how close behind his heels we were, it sickened me. It made me want to scream, vomit and cry all at once. Pulling myself together, I had to take back the control that was mine, that should never have been surrendered in the first place. Least of all to some guy.

  “Wait!” The rational Tamikah screamed inside my head. I was being blindly irrational. For a clear thinker like myself, it was unlike me. But when it came to him, it seemed like all rationality was sidelined to desire. Gathering myself, it was as if a lightbulb went off. I was missing one key factor in this rage against Daniel. I didn’t have proof. It still may not be him.

  As much as I hated to admit it, every fibre of my being hoped and prayed that it was someone else, that I didn’t have him all wrong and the spark between us was real, not some game. But the more I thought about it, the less I was convinced, rational thinking or not. He has gone M.I.A since our night together, after all.

  Please God, let it be anyone but Daniel. Don’t make me have to kill him.

  Chapter thirteen

  After what was no more than two hours sleep that could barely even be considered sleep at all, my alarm went off. It’s time to confront this bastard and get some answers.

  Walking into the office I was allocated to use while in Sydney, I was stopped dead in my tracks as I looked up to find him sitting behind my desk, ruffling through the paperwork that sat on top. The war inside me raged, the fight between the desire to jump him and the desire to jump him. Even with Penelope’s words roaring in my ear, I still couldn’t help feeling a pull toward him. One that I was somewhat in control of, now that he was the leading suspect. “Play it cool” I told myself, crossing my arms and glaring across at him.

  “What do you think you are doing in my office?” My voice carrying a squeak to it which thankfully could have been taken for surprise to someone who didn’t know me. He hadn’t heard me come in, darting backwards against the chair with his hands up as if in a ‘it’s not what it looks like’ gesture. Not what it looks like my ass.

  He shifted out from behind the desk in an extended attempt to make it look like he hadn’t just been rifling through my things. Unfortunately his behaviour was only forcing me to further question his innocence. He walked up to me, a smile on his face suggesting that he either didn’t realise he was caught or was just trying to weasel his way out of it. I vote the latter.

  “I missed you while I was away, I
had to come and see you.” He put his arms around my shoulders, leaning in to kiss me, which, against every fibre of my being, I welcomed. Almost instantly as if an imaginary switch had been flipped, my resistance faded away. There was something about him. I was like a meth user trying to kick the habit and walking into a meth lab. It was insanity. The hardest thing for me, if he was guilty, would be pulling that trigger when the time came.

  “Where were you?” My voice desperate, more desperate than I would have liked as I pulled away from his kiss. I wanted to kick myself and then kick him. “No call, no word, you just get me home and then knick off. What’s up with that?” I tried to stop the words that sounded like a needy girlfriend but they were spilling from my mouth faster than I could catch them.

  He slid his hands until they reached my rear, picking me up and placing me on the desk, shifting my knees apart as he moved closer in a desperate attempt to change the topic of conversation. He dug his fingernails into my neck, forcing my head to tilt before sealing my mouth with his own as he invited himself into me. It wasn’t like last time at all. This time it was less intoxicating and more demanding. He wanted to change the direction of my focus, of that I was certain, but the way he went about it was all wrong. He was doing the one thing that no one gets away with. He was using sex against me.

  Finding myself almost instantly, blind fury fast replacing any feelings I had of pleasure towards him, I sat up on the desk, wrapped my legs around his hips and put my hand up to his throat as if to pull him closer. But pull him closer is not what I did. I pushed him backwards and as I came back into myself, I dug my nails into the front of his throat, cupping them around his Adam’s apple, coming within millimetres of crushing his airways.

  He froze, unable to move, “Ow, Tamikah, what are you trying to do? I thought you’d like sneaky office sex,” his voice trying to sound as innocent as possible. He still intoxicated me but right now he crossed a line and I was going to hold on to my rage as long as I could to keep myself from falling into his trap.