Whatever. If I let that get me down, I would collapse with the burden of depression, tragedy, and guilt.
I leaned on the rendered-brick outer wall. Chunks of the render dug at my shoulders. My sandals had grit in them too, and I shook those out and decided today was going to be a good day. It must be so. I was awake and aware.
Eventually, the pills would run out, maybe soon.
Our luggage lay stacked before me, and in the middle of the pile, standing tallest, was the big terror-laden suitcase. I’d avoided looking at it until now. My lip curled.
The suitcase was made for binding women inside it so they could be fucked by random friends of Isak. The holes at either end were covered by leather, clipped-on sections.
My heart cringed. My stomach did too. That suitcase would never leave my memory.
The purpose of the vile thing wasn’t obvious unless you’d seen it used. That first time…
And yet here I was, committed to reforming him.
Isak exited, and the screen door banged shut and made me flinch.
“This way.”
Cherish this day, I reminded myself. I am me.
In a small, somewhat threadbare room with faded wall paint and a bright quilt on the bed, we showered. I sat at his feet, kneeling – he seemed to get a kick out of that – with the water pouring down on me from the ancient showerhead.
“We sleep. You, floor.” It was six AM, I noted from the bedside clock. He turned off the light, tossed a pillow and the quilt onto the floor for me, and I curled up on it. Sleep came like a hammer.
When I woke, my first thought was that he’d made me sleep. The asshole.
“Breakfast. Get dressed.” His words made me sit up and realize he was already dressed and sitting on the bed.
His lizard-eyes were in force.
I scurried to get dressed, and we loaded our stuff into a grey SUV. The red Porsche was gone from the car park. Someone else had been blessed. A woman, of course. If he swapped enough vehicles, the trail would have to get cold. So long as neither of us plowed into an oncoming car due to driving on the wrong side of the road… which was the left? No, the right.
Remember, dumbass. Red is R, and R is wrong?
Saying my name to myself had reminded me of something else he had done, long ago. Being more aware was rocking me with these ancient deeds that I wished would stay buried. It did not help me to recall them, but I could not stop them piling in either. I followed Isak toward what looked to be a cafeteria attached to the motel.
My name was not Red. I hadn’t even known he’d altered it and wiped my real name, until the day he told me.
He’d changed it inside my head.
My past me, a CIA analyst, existed in records, but accessing those was impossible without being a superb hacker and knowing that name. Catch 22, as they say. Even Google needed the right words.
In the past, he had delighted in reminding me that he could do anything to me. Taking my name ranked up there as potentially the most disturbing thing possible.
I might never know my true name. The sadness of that weighed down my feet.
Forget it. Focus on the doable and on today.
“Did you lose the Porsche to throw Ted off the trail?”
“Yes. And because I found an interesting news story.” He tapped his cellphone then showed me the screen.
I read the title out loud, “Man Finds Out Wife Gave Away Porsche. Oh.” The photo at the top of the article showed a guy standing next to our shiny vehicle.
“Oh indeed. You were right.”
That was his last comment, until we were sitting at a window-seat table that overlooked the delightfully boring car park and had ordered a late breakfast. Ten AM according to his cellphone. He’d deposited it, screen up, beside a knife and fork wrapped in a white serviette.
I unrolled my own set of unfortunately blunt cutlery. Not that he would let me stab him.
“I bet you never even paid for the room.”
His eyebrow rose. “Did you expect me to?”
“No.” I frowned, played with the knife, then decided to plunge in. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Nothing ventured also meant less likely to be punished but, hey, swings and roundabouts. “How often are you taking those pills. Do you know what dose you need?”
“Hmmm. Why?”
“You want me to help you be human? Is that still on?”
He sat back, slowly, creaking the chair, drawing my attention to the solidness of his body and the perfection of his hand where it rested on the table edge. Underneath that gray shirt lay muscles. My nostrils flared. If only he was not an evil dick who should be minced up and given an early grave.
“It is, still on.”
“Then if you don’t have a plan, I do.” Or I will. “I don’t see this as an easy task.”
“Task?” He chuckled. A waitress arrived bearing our plates of sausage, bacon, fried eggs, and hash browns, then went away and returned with two coffees before he continued. “Tell me more.”
Before anyone can change, they need to recognize the problem and want to change. I remembered that from some self-help shit I’d read once upon a time. Isak appeared to be at that stage. Until the pills wore off.
“You want to change? Be more…” I did air quotes. “Human?”
He nodded, eyes narrowing as he watched me and blindly stuffed a forkful of food into his mouth.
I cut up some of mine, poked it into a pile. “Can I have your phone?”
The fork was waved at me, and I spun the phone. No password. Was this a burner? Did they have those here? Who cared? I googled what does it take to be a good person.
Bingo and ala khazam. It looked pretty straight-forward. The hard part? Getting him to do it. This was like Peter Pan taking Wendy off to Neverland.
Where a Captain Hook had waited.
Isak was probably Hook not Peter, I reminded myself as I prepared to speak. He was the villain in spades, with icing on the top and a bloody knife stabbed through the middle of the imaginary cake. Assuming Captain Hook was a cake.
I purloined a business card from the little display on the table and convinced the waitress to bring me a pen. Then I wrote stuff down. Then I ate some food.
Let Mr. Asshole wait, for once. By the time I looked up – I’d been super hungry – Isak was lying back in his chair with his arms folded. The man had patience. I dabbed at my mouth with a serviette then pushed the card across. The writing was tiny – it had to be to fit.
“Your list. A To-do List.”
He dragged the card closer with a finger then picked it up and read. “Shocking writing, Miss Red. We need to send you back to school.”
Somehow, god knows why, I almost smiled at that. The smile broke and failed. Simply recognizing that I had almost smiled at what might have been a teasing joke made tears spring to my eyes. I wiped them away, quickly.
Fuck that. He would not have meant it to be funny.
He eyed me, waved the card. “Say it.”
“What makes a person good?” I ticked it off on my fingers, reciting from memory what I’d written.
“One. Be kind to others, especially your loved ones.” I doubted he had any loved ones.
“Two. Do good deeds.
“Three. Smile and be cheerful even when things aren’t going your way.
“Four. Be honest.
“Five. Be generous with your belongings.” And don’t steal Porsches? Hell. Stealing was the Way of Isak. We had tens of thousands in one bag. Most were fifty-dollar bills. Whenever we passed a woman and he felt the need, he’d stop them and get some cash.
Of course credit cards in Australia would be a liability since neither of us was here legally, though he would surely fix that minor problem.
“Six. Be selfless.”
I felt some of those doubled up, but all of them were good, moral points.
He blew out his mouth like a puffer fish. “Interesting.”
Then a man walked by the cafeteria on the outside. I
stiffened. “It’s him.” My eyes felt as if they’d bugged out.
“That is Ted’s man?”
“Yes.” How had he followed us? Maybe someone staying here had spotted the Porsche and stuck a pic on social media?
“We’re leaving.”
Isak headed toward a back door and I scurried after him. A car engine noise grew louder. There was a bang, and I swung to see what had happened. A large black SUV rammed Ted’s man off the sidewalk next to the café, scraping him forward, and jamming him against the wall. As the vehicle jolted to a stop, a few windows shattered. Seconds later, people began screaming.
“Come.”
At the command, I jogged after Isak.
Within a few minutes, we were in a different SUV and driving away. I think I heard sirens approaching, but they were distant.
“You made someone run him over?”
“Of course.” Isak nodded, swung the wheel to change lanes. “You can drive when we get to the next car. This one here will pull over with us.”
A young woman was beside our car in a black BMW, and she slipped behind us, following in the lane. I had no doubt he was controlling her. I slid down in the seat, shut my eyes. “I don’t think you quite got the picture.”
“Oh?”
“We need to tack an extra bit on that list I gave you at the café: Seven: Do not murder people.”
“Gotcha. Next time, Red. Next time.”
I sighed and said dryly, “From now on, if you want me to help…” This was scary, standing up to him. “I get to dole out that drug.”
“I have to get more of it at the next town.”
Not a yes, but not a no.
CHAPTER 7
ISAK
Collecting more Keppra was easy, since female pharmacists were common here. We stopped at a town, found the pills, and swapped to a bronze-colored, four-doored pick-up – what they called utes in Australia, or utility vehicles. I told Red to drive. Everything we currently carried had fitted in the back under a solid lock-down cover. The woman I’d taken this from now had a silver-gray sedan to drive back to her remote property.
She was heading inland, same as we were, and nobody in the Outback was likely to care which car she drove. Being recently widowed, her time and money were hers to play with. The car registration authority was a different and more difficult problem I would eventually have to deal with.
I’d questioned her thoroughly. Outback was such a crazily casual word. This country reminded me of Texas or Arizona in the US. I gathered that the further west we went, the greater the resemblance would be – dry, dusty, immense, and beaten down by the sun.
The ute was eating up the road at a good speed.
“We’ll keep this one.” Until I grew bored with it. The bronze color was nice.
“Okay.” Red adjusted her hands on the steering wheel, and I took the opportunity to study her – my muse? Tutor? What did she regard herself as? It was amusing how her natural need to diagnose, decipher, and solve had emerged more and more once I lifted the… what did I call it? The subjugation? The suppression of her personality?
I liked this more. She was wilder but still controllable.
And more of a challenge, which made her more fun. Yes.
Fun. I’d missed fun.
The wind fluttered and rustled in, lifting my hair and hers, toying with her dress at neckline and hemline. The glow of her skin in the flickers of sunlight pleased me. My hand strayed to my chest where a strange warmth hovered. It was not simply desire. I rubbed at my chest, thinking.
That list of hers was ridiculous. I wanted to feel complete and to lose this bleak absence of emotion and to fill it with more of what made me happy.
Strangely, happy with this drug in me wasn’t the same as the happy I’d felt when in full-on mesmer mode. That created an incandescent joy. It was also an empty joy. Nothing remained when it was gone, except for the need to do it again.
Mesmer equals addiction. How had I not seen this?
“Are you due to take another of those?” Red arched an eyebrow at me. “A pill?”
“You want to dole them out? To be my little pill timer, like I’m some geriatric who forgets?”
She side-eyed me. “Sure. But not because I don’t trust you to remember… because I think maybe you’ll decide not to take it.”
I grunted. That was honest, if reckless.
She side-eyed me again, with more worry in her glance.
She was right. Half of me was at war with the other. Not always but as the drug wore off, I had to wrestle more and more. I wanted the effects, until I did not.
Why?
The mesmer part of me loved controlling me, that’s why. And that didn’t make a whole lot of sense if I turned it over in the light of day and studied it. I also wanted more of what this was right here, right now.
I stretched my hand out the window and watched the wind tug at my hand, felt the coolness of the rush.
I didn’t want to do good deeds, or less murder, or whatever. I wanted more feelings. Mesmer dulled my senses and made me one-tracked.
I wanted more from Red. More of her. I drew my hand inside the ute.
“Okay. Deal. You remind me about pills.” Maybe with her and my better half… hah… telling me to swallow it’d come easier.
“Are you due now?”
I cracked open a pill packet and popped out a pill, snapped it and swallowed the half.
“Every twelve hours seems to work.” I leaned my shoulder on the door so as to see her better. “Pull your dress higher. Let me see you.”
Her exhalation was audible.
“The agreement,” I reminded her, intrigued by how an annoyed Red was more exciting than when she was zombified.
Her hand sneaked downward, and she inched up her dress until the edge of her ivory-colored lace panties showed.
Almost a strip show, in slow-mo. I smiled. “Panties?”
“You never said to—”
“Shhh. Take your time but roll those under your butt. Let me see you put your hand on your pussy. Play with yourself. Turn yourself on. We have some distance to travel before we stop. And keep to this outside lane.”
The lanes were double here, the road straight and flat. We’d gone over a mountain range earlier.
As if to emphasize the exposure she risked, a semi-trailer was overhauling us. The driver would be too far over to see in. Red looked worried, glancing at the truck even as she hoisted her ass a little off the seat and obeyed me – pushing the butt area of those panties to thigh-level.
The curious thing about this? I was deliberately keeping my mesmer powers on simmer. She was obeying me automatically, of her own volition.
Interesting. My dick liked the idea of this. This was closer to consensual than I’d ventured in years.
“The next one might have a passenger who can see you.”
“If I get arrested for indecency—”
“What trucker would report a girl half-naked and masturbating?”
Her brows knitted; her mouth puffed out.
“If they stop and stare, you keep going.” I’d risk this just to tease her. How quaint that this troubled her, after all we had done. All she had done. Group sex was not new, neither was having her asshole reamed while I’d kept her tied to a wall.
Why now? This minor thing?
A thought trickled in. “You’ve done worse. A bit of exhibitionism shouldn’t be fucking with your head.” Her shrug was dismissive. “Is it because this is your own doing?”
“It’s not!” Her blush was mild but visible, then Red shook her head. Her hand paused in its work between her legs.
“It is our agreement. Which is your doing. You agreed. Keep going. Keep fucking yourself. Do it!”
She jerked and pinched her lips together as if rethinking this. Then… then I watched as she slowly inserted her finger inside herself. Watching her do that on my command was as fascinating as the first time I’d made her come in that alleyway in Cuba. My dick throbb
ed.
“Good girl. You see, Red, no matter what I can make you do, right now I am not. Not the way I used to… and you agreed to be mine until we part. Yes?”
“I suppose.”
Grudgingly said. I chuckled. I liked this… this painstakingly extracted submission.
“From now on, this is how it will be.”
Unless I absolutely had to do mesmer shit. Such as when I wanted to make her come like a nuke exploded inside her.
I leaned over and twisted to place my hand on hers, feeling the pump of it as she delved inside her own cunt, hearing the sharpening of her breaths.
“Keep going. Watch the road and yeah, I’m not letting you come.” I shifted over further, stretching the seat belt, slipping my left hand down the slope of her thigh until my finger could squeeze into her cunt alongside her own. “Work it. Let me feel you get sopping wet.”
Already she was leaking onto those cute panties. My finger had no trouble joining in. The feel of her clamping down onto me… those little moans. I grabbed my dick and squeezed it through my pants.
Red muttered some curse, writhing on the spot. “I can’t drive safely.”
“You can. When we stop, if you’ve been really good, maybe then you can come. After I fuck your brains out.”
Gently, I pulled the straps of her white dress off her shoulders and exposed her bra, pulled that down too and scooped out both breasts. Breathtaking – no matter how many times I saw her. Then… then I toyed with her to my fucking heart’s content.
She wanted me to let her go once she had ‘taught’ me how to be a human?
A good human she thought I’d meant. Wrong.
I was not going to let her go.
I kissed the side of her ear, softly, and whispered, “No coming. Even when I pinch your nipples and shove a dildo up you. No coming. Got that?”
“Uh. ’Kay.” She sucked in her lower lip as I pulled her hand from between her legs and placed it back on the wheel.
Her hands flexed, her fingers opened and closed, but the vehicle steered straight and in its lane. We might crash? If I went too far.
“Watch your steering. And keep those legs open.” The ute was an automatic and easy to drive. “The rest stop that’s on the map should be another five minutes of driving.”
The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used Page 12