by Loki Renard
“Settle down,” Tex's deep voice rumbled.
She didn't settle. She couldn't. As the panic rose beyond the point of control she made a peculiar, almost strangled sound and threw up all over the seat and Tex's spare trousers and the foot well of the car. Tex said pulled the car over smartly whilst Zora continued to alternately retch and gasp for breath. “Are you alright?” He inquired redundantly when they came to a stop at the side of the road.
Zora pushed her door open and stumbled out into the desert. She made it a few steps away from the vehicle then went to her knees, her head down on the ground as waves of nausea continued to roll over her.
“Zora,” Tex came up beside her and placed his hand on her lower back, crouching down next to her. “What's wrong?”
“Let me go,” she said woefully, pleading with him. “Please just let me go.”
He made a sympathetic clucking sound and rubbed her back. “I can't do that, little girl.”
“You have to,” she whimpered. “You have to let me go.”
“I just want to know the truth,” he said. “If you tell me the truth, there is nothing for you to worry about.”
Shaking all over, Zora shook her head. Her mind was still whirling. He couldn't know the truth, she had to safeguard that at all costs. Sensing that she wasn't ready to talk, Tex didn't push her anymore instead he stayed silent until the tremors subsided and her breathing was back to normal.
“Are you sick, or just scared?”
The question was as humiliating as having thrown up bits of dry toast all over the place.
“I'm not sick,” she said, avoiding an admission of weakness.
Tex's large hand rubbed across her lower spine, soothing her as effectively as it had spanked her. “Okay, let's get you cleaned up,” he said, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her back to the car. Mercifully he did not insist on her staying in the front seat and instead laid her in the back before cleaning up as best he could with a towel he retrieved from the trunk of the car.
“Always have your towel nearby,” he winked over the front seat at Zora, who groaned, but smiled a little at the Hitchhiker’s Guide reference. He was being nice, so nice and that was dangerous. He was most dangerous when she felt herself softening towards him, when she felt like maybe, just maybe he could be a friend.
Tex cleaned up what he could then they got off the main highway and found a small town going by the auspicious name of Bethlehem not too far away. It wasn't much to look at, but it had a few stores, a couple of motels and a car dealership. They checked into a motel aptly named 'Dry Dock Inn', which had seen its heyday sometime in the 1950's judging by the memorabilia which was scattered everywhere it could be scattered. Betty Boop was also prominently placed in several locations, including an almost life sized cut out behind the front desk that threatened to dwarf the proprietor of the establishment.
“A room please,” Tex said, sliding a credit card across the desk. He had Zora firmly by the hand, making sure she didn't go dashing off anywhere.
“You want a single or a double?” The motelier was a weathered woman in her sixties who regarded them with a mixture of relief at their custom and suspicion. Her wispy gray hair was tied back in a severe bun and she wore a light yellow checkered blouse with a blue skirt that looked a lot like the one Zora had stuffed into the trash.
“We won't be staying long,” Tex said. “A single is fine.”
“Oh it's like that is it?” The woman's lips pursed in undisguised disapproval.
In spite of being still partially covered in her own vomit, Zora snorted with laughter. She thought they were shacking up for a dirty afternoon. “Don't worry, I'm not going to touch his di...”
Tex clapped a hand over her mouth. “Please excuse my niece, she's not feeling well. We just need somewhere for her to clean up and take a nap.” He bestowed his most charming smile on the woman and Zora watched her icy demeanor melt away almost immediately.
“Oh,” the woman's expression brightened. “Well now. I think we have a room that will suit. Suite 3 is on the ground floor, last one on the right.”
“Thank you kindly ma'am,” Tex said, taking the key she offered. He tugged Zora out of the front office before she could say anything else wildly inappropriate.
“Uncle?” Zora laughed as she trailed behind him.
“Sure, why not? It might explain the spanking I'll give you if you speak that way to her again, you foul mouthed little brat.” He slipped the key into the door of the suite and ushered Zora inside the simple room. “Go take a shower,” he said sternly.
For once, Zora didn't argue.
* * *
In the small motel bathroom covered in seashell wallpaper and gaudy pink accents, Zora showered in a pink plastic shower. Tex was in the main room, but he wasn't wasting any time sitting around waiting for her, as she'd been getting ready to get into the shower she'd heard him on the phone organizing for the car to be properly cleaned at the yard down the street. She was mildly impressed that he'd thought of that. Nothing really phased the man, he was always in control, even when things were going wildly out of control all around him. Hell, she'd fired a gun at his face and it hadn't bothered him at all. What kind of craziness must he have been party to in the past to make him so bomb-proof?
She raised her face to the water and let it run over her as she soaped herself down, sliding the bar of predictably pink soap down between her breasts and over her tummy. Maybe if they'd met under different circumstances they might actually have been able to be friends. He was funny and he was charming and when he wasn't spanking her, he was pretty gentle too. There was a lot to like about him that was for sure.
She turned away from the shower head and the warm water dashing against her stinging bottom reminded her that it wasn't all fun and games with Tex. He might feel like a friend, but that was probably his job. It was probably his job to get close to people and then betray them, or make them betray themselves. She had to be vigilant, and she had to make sure that he didn't take her to the 'proper environment' for questioning too.
“Stay strong, Zora,” she lectured herself. “Don't let him trick you.”
Having washed herself from head to toe, she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel long enough to cover her from under her shoulders to her knees. The shower had made her feel better, but a lingering sense of doom still hung about her. She was not happy, not at all.
Tex had used the motel's facilities to make them both a cup of tea and was sitting at the glass topped wicker table when she made her entrance. He waved her over to take a seat, which she did.
“Okay,” he said kindly. “Do you want to tell me what is going on with you? Why did you panic out there?”
“I've been kidnapped,” Zora said. “It's scary being kidnapped.”
Tex cocked his head at her. “You weren't scared until I said I was taking you somewhere to ask you questions. In fact, you were anything but scared.”
Zora fiddled with the handle of her teacup. “I wasn't scared before because I knew you'd let me go when you figured out I didn't know anything. But now it sounds like you're going to put me in a cell and interrogate me.”
“Is that the only reason?” He looked at her with those oh so intelligent eyes and she did her best to make her expression inscrutable.
“I think that's more than enough reason,” Zora said, putting her hands in her lap. “Look, you're ruining my life and you're scaring me and I don't know anything. Why won't you just let me go?” An unsolicited tear slid down her cheek as she made the plea. “I don't know anything about him anymore, not that I ever did anyway. He was always totally secretive.”
Her words had a ring of truth to them. Savage always had played his cards close to his chest. He had always kept her in the dark, even now, months and months on she had no idea what was going on. For all she knew he really had just dropped her in Iron Horse and forgotten about her.
“What sort of work do you do, Ms Matthews?”
The sudden change caught her off guard. “I used to be an accountant,” she said, looking up at him.
“But you're not anymore.”
“No I'm a professional alcoholic and bum,” she gave a wry twisting smile.
“Why?”
“Eh,” she shrugged. “Why not?”
Tex leaned forward, his eyes keen. “People don't just toss in the towel and move to the middle of nowhere for no reason.”
“Maybe I was heartbroken when Savage dumped me,” she suggested. “Handsome man like that, leaves me, takes my heart with him. What's the point of going on?”
Tex smiled thinly. “You're lying, Ms Matthews.” He had slipped into a very professional way of speaking and Zora got a glimpse of what it would be like to be sitting across from him in one of those plain austere interrogation rooms. It wouldn't be pleasant.
“Am I?”
“Here's a tip,” he said. “If you're going to lie, you have to at least make it sound plausible by speaking in the first person. You don't say 'maybe' as if you're making up a story.”
“Maybe I do,” Zora replied flatly.
Tex snorted. “Brat.”
“I really don't know anything. I'm of utterly no use to you,” Zora repeated the words she'd said so many times before as if simply repeating them would somehow convince him.
He nodded blankly. “We'll find that out, won't we?”
The threat of incarceration was there again, along with the impulse to cry. Zora held the tears back in favor of finding out what he really meant. “How? Are you going to torture me?”
Tex's brow creased and he shook his head. “Torture is never useful unless you want to break someone. I have no reason to break you.”
“So what are you going to do?”
He tried for a reassuring smile. It failed.“I'm going to take you to a secure place where we can get to know one another better. I want you to think of me as a friend. I can help you, Zora.”
“If you want to help me, let me go,” she insisted.
“And what? You'll go back to that little town and drink yourself into an early grave?”
“Probably. So what?”
“Don't you want more for yourself?”
“Not really.”
“You need such a spanking,” Tex said, shaking his head at her. “You're obviously a bright, strong woman. Wasting your life away is just that, a waste.”
Zora sat silently. She couldn't refute what he was saying without giving herself away. Besides, wasn't this precisely what she wanted? She wanted him to think of her as a complete waster. If he thought she was nothing more than a lovelorn lush she might get free. But it still stung, hearing him say those things.
“I will tell you something I do know about Savage,” she said, looking at Tex directly. “There's no way he'd ever give himself up for me. He fucked me and he abandoned me. I doubt I know anything about him you don't.” She picked up the tea, which was going cold, and drank deeply whilst he watched her. “Hell,” she said, putting the cup down on the tablecloth. “If I did know something that would help you get him, I'd probably tell you. But I don't know anything. Nothing.”
“He never talked to you about his work?”
“He hardly ever talked to me at all,” she said with just the right note of bitterness.
“So,” Tex said softly. “He was nothing more than a fuck buddy who broke your heart, you've not heard from him in years and I should let you go because he wouldn't lift a finger to save you even if you were being tortured?”
“Excactly,” Zora said, looking at him with wide doe eyes. “He doesn't care about me and he never did.”
Tex nodded and reached into his pocket. He pulled out his smart phone and thumbed through it for a few seconds before setting it down on the table and pushing it towards her. She squinted and frowned at the screen, then her heart almost stopped when she saw what was there. There were lines of figures. Well, one figure, repeated over and over and over. 500. 500. 500. 500. They were bank records. Records of the payments Savage had been making to her for months. Her mouth went dry as her pulse raced in her ears.
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
Chapter Five
She stared at the little screen with the oh so incriminating numbers displayed, her mouth going dry as Tex's rumble drifted to her. “If he's just an ex who broke your heart, mind telling me why he has a shielded account set up to pay you every month?”
“He feels guilty for dumping me probably. Thinks tossing me a bone every now and then will make it all okay,” she lied as smoothly and quickly as she could. “Maybe he just likes helping me drink myself dead, who knows.” She sat back and looked at Tex defiantly.
Her interrogator chuckled dryly. “That lie was better, but still not quite good enough, little girl.”
She shrugged and remained silent. Saying more would just give him more ammunition. It was now clear that he knew more than he was letting on. Maybe he knew precisely why she'd been in Iron Horse. Maybe he knew about everything, her recruitment, her service, her escape. It was impossible to tell what Tex knew and didn't know, he was such a smooth operator, always controlling the flow of conversation, always keeping her off-balance.
“This is why I'm taking you in,” he said with definite finality. “Your story doesn't add up, which means you're hiding something from me. If you want to avoid going into custody you have to come clean here and now.”
She fiddled with the edge of her towel and looked up at him under her eyelashes. “So you'll let me go if I tell you what you want to hear?”
“Tell me the truth and you'll avoid that cell you're so keen to avoid.”
Not believing him, Zora clamped her lips closed and they looked at one another in silence for a time, she dripping onto the carpet slowly, he maintaining an authoritarian demeanor.
“Miss Matthews,” Tex eventually said, showing signs of impatience in his voice. “I am trying to help you. I'm trying to make this process as painless as possible for you. I suggest you start co-operating.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You're not trying to help me. You're trying to help you. You're lying to me just like he did and you'll get rid of me when I'm not useful anymore just like he did,” Zora snapped, her temper flaring.
A glimmer of triumph flashed in Tex's eyes. “He used you, did he? We're not talking sexually, are we?”
“He used me sexually,” Zora said flatly.
“Probably,” Tex said with casual callousness. “But that wasn't all he used you for, was it? You were on one of his teams, weren't you?”
Zora's blood ran cold. That was far too close to the truth for her comfort.
“I can see it in your eyes,” Tex's expression held triumph. “So let's speak plainly, shall we?”
Retreating back into silence, she clenched her jaw and held her tongue. No matter what she said, she would be revealing too much.
“Not going to talk to me?”
She sat in stony silence, pretending she was a statue. She almost wished she really was a statue, then people might stop messing with her.
“We know what happens if you won't talk to me, don't we?” His tone had become very patronizing, something Zora didn't appreciate at all. “Just tell me what you know and you'll be able to go home.”
He was wrong there. She would never be able to go home. Her home had vanished the moment Savage had stepped over its threshold and she'd not been able to find a real one since.
A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. It was the front desk clerk with a set of clean and vomit free clothes for Zora. Tex got the door and thanked the woman heartily whilst Zora kept her seat, scowling furiously. Soon enough they were alone again and she found herself confronted with yet another ugly and uncomfortable skirt and an equally uninspired blouse. Adding to the overall hideousness of the clothing was an additional scrap of fabric with a faded yellow sunflower pattern on it.
“I think it goes over your hair,” Tex smirked.
Zora rolled her eyes dramatically. “Why don't you just get me a fucking burka?”
“Language,” Tex growled.
“Oh shut it, you're not my father,” Zora snapped, tossing the headscarf across the room. “You're a kidnapper.”
“A kidnapper who is going to tan your behind if you don't settle down.”
Zora gave him a look of focused fury. He was entirely unperturbed, a slim but strong figure sitting straight backed in his chair watching her carefully.
“Go get dressed and...”
“We'll go to jail? Yeah, sure, I see no reason not to co-operate with you.”
“There are things worse than jail.”
“What exactly are you threatening me with?” She took a step towards him, forgetting that she was clad in little more than a towel. Anger was making her brave and bold.
Before an altercation could take place Tex reached out and grabbed the edge of the towel, flicking it away from her body. Suddenly naked, she screamed and grabbed for the towel. Unable to wrest it from him, she scooped up the clothes and ran into the bathroom completely bare assed and blushing.
She slammed the door behind her and locked it then burst into tears of embarrassment and frustration. He'd seen her, he'd seen all of her. The sardonic smirk had said it all, he found her amusing. That wasn't how a man was supposed to react to a woman, a man was supposed to be filled with lust at the naked female form, not be entertained like it was some sort of sideshow.