by Simone Sinna
“Naughty, naughty,” said Zac. “To make up I’m going to have you suck my cock, can you do that, sub?”
Savannah, panting as her pulse came back towards normal, nodded. She felt Zac to her right move over her, as Ben moved between her legs. Zac’s hands brushed across her lips, then she felt the tip of his cock there, tasted his salty pre-cum and licked tentatively at first before putting her lips around his now-rigid cock. Between her legs she felt Ben’s mouth on her clit, tongue opening her up and then thrusting inside her as she sucked Zac into her mouth.
“Oh yes baby,” Zac said. She heard him grab the headboard above her as he leaned towards her, allowing her to take as much of him as she could manage. “Harder,” he ordered, and as she obeyed, Ben also licked and thrust harder with his tongue, massaging her pussy lips with his fingers as he did. There were so many sensations surging through her, Savannah wasn’t sure whether she would come again or not. Handcuffed to the bed she was unable to hold onto either man, totally at their mercy at one level, but increasingly she realized it also left her totally able to focus on her body and each man’s interactions with it. From Zac’s moans she thought he was close to coming, but he was careful not to overwhelm her, not to push into her any more than she could take. As he closed in on his own climax he pulled away, his cock moving between her breasts.
Ben took this as a sign to shift also, but instead he thrust deep inside her cunt with his own cock, filling the need she had had since they started. She gasped, and sucked him into her with every ounce of energy she could manage. Ben grasped her hips and thrust with an energy to meet her need. Zac’s cock was back again at her lips and she took him into her too, reveling at having these two men to herself. She had a sudden picture of what they were doing flash through her mind, and the idea of being so deliciously wicked set off an orgasm instantly. Ben caught up with her, and released as she was enjoying the short, sharp, intense vibration that rocked her body.
Ben rolled off to her left and Zac moved down to between her legs. “One more baby,” he said, and though she didn’t think she had the energy, the moment he penetrated her she could only think of wanting more. Ben pulled off a nipple clamp and sucked hard on her nipple as Zac’s fingers pressed hard under her butt, pulling her pelvis slightly off the bed and into him. As he thrust and Ben sucked, his fingers crept closer to her asshole, and as one dipped inside he thrust hard and both of them came again in final climax that would ensure a long and well-earned sleep.
* * * *
Zac dumped the hire car at the airport the next morning and they caught a plane to DC. Zac needed to be working the case from his base and he wanted Savannah where he could keep an eye on her, or at least where Ben could keep an eye on her.
Waiting in the airline lounge for the flight to be called, Zac commandeered a private room for them to talk. His office had come up with precisely nothing. Plenty of Todd Wilsons but none that had any connection with Yale. Savannah heard Zac tell them to keep looking, this time for anyone in the right age group that was at Yale when Hezekiah was, and had also been at West Point.
“You think he lied about his name?”
Zac shrugged. “We’re running out of possibilities. Todd may have been his middle name. He might have changed his surname back to his own father’s rather than his stepfather’s.” He paused. “Tell me what else was in that box.”
“Two letters to my mother signed Todd Wilson. Love letters, the second asking what he’d done wrong. I think she’d left him by then.”
“Left as in left the States?”
“What makes you think that?”
Savannah went over the letter in her mind. He hadn’t seen her but her mother had clearly conveyed the relationship was over. She had known she was pregnant, known it was his, but hadn’t told him. Had he been married? Hadn’t read like that to her. Then she remembered something else.
“It was in an envelope,” said Savannah. “Addressed to her in Australia, care of the ballet company.”
Zac nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, what else?”
“A dried flower. I figured one he’d given her.” Savannah closed her eyes, feeling like she was playing Kim’s Game. Not one she had been very good at, but she’d looked at these items often. “There were other newspaper articles. One reviewing the ballet she was in, with a picture of her. She was”—Savannah took a breath—“very beautiful. She should have been a great star. Would have been if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Any articles that weren’t ballet reviews?”
“Yes, one. I didn’t understand it at all. The Italian was easier. This was German. Berlin 1986.”
“Month?”
Savannah shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t remember. It wasn’t in English and so just didn’t stick.”
“Anything else in the box?”
“A pile of cards. I think they went with flowers, from her performances. All signed Todd. There were the ballet programs as well. Nothing else.”
Ben leant forward. “So let’s go back to the real clue. This started with me being employed to watch Corey. Three weeks before you arrived. What happened to you three weeks earlier?”
Zac nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, someone knew you were coming.”
Savannah’s mind when blank. Someone was monitoring her? In Australia?
“My mother died,” said Savannah slowly.
“Date?”
“September 10. The funeral was September 14. I visited my asshole stepfather and got the box September 15. Booked the ticket maybe two days later.”
“Which was just before Hezekiah, pretending to be Manfred Channing, rang me.”
“The only person who knew I was coming was a sort of boyfriend.” She looked at their expressions. Ben’s expression suggested he was worried about the word “boyfriend.” Zac’s appeared more interest in the “sort of.”
“Not serious,” Savannah explained. “But he is a cop. No way would he have told anyone, and he would have rung and told me if anyone had asked.”
Zac nodded, fingers together at his lips. “So tell me about your asshole stepfather.”
Chapter Ten
Savannah went through all she knew as fast as she could. Salvatore Mazzola wasn’t her favorite topic. On the other hand, if there was some way he turned out to be the bad guy, bad enough to extradite him to the USA and put him in jail, she was more than happy to talk. But she didn’t think she’d get that lucky.
“He was working in California and met my mother when she was there I think,” said Savannah. “No idea how. He certainly wasn’t a ballet fan.”
Zac made a note.
“He was from Italy, came to America in his late teens I think. Accent is a mess. A bit of everything, Aussie mainly now, I guess.”
“Work?” Ben was on a computer and didn’t look up.
“Imports. Furniture. Travels a lot.”
“Wealthy?”
“I guess. They put me through private school and Mum didn’t work. I always presumed that’s mainly why she married him. He could offer her stability long term. Ballerinas have a short career and then there was me of course. He had no taste though. We lived in a monstrosity that looked like Tara placed in the suburbs.”
“Tara?”
“The mansion in Gone with the Wind. Only without the style. We had gold-plated taps. The pool had gross statues of Eros peeing into it.”
“Travels where?”
Savannah shrugged. ‘I haven’t lived at home for a long time. Asia I think. Italy when I was young. Only trip he ever took us on. I would have been about eight. His father’s funeral in Calabria.”
Zac and Ben exchanged looks.
“You’re thinking Mafia, right? If so I sure as hell missed any signs.” Savannah shook her head. “His mother came from the US for it and she was pretty normal. Only one that spoke English. His father had been the local mayor or someone important, so guess he could have had mob connections.”
“So he lived in Italy, but his wife didn’t?
Doesn’t sound very Italian to me.”
Savannah frowned, thought for a moment. “It hadn’t ever occurred to me, but I guess it wasn’t his father,” she said. “It was his grandfather. Had to be. He was ninety or something. Everyone seemed old to me at eight, but thinking about it, has to be his mother’s father’s funeral.”
“So where was his father?”
Savannah shook her head. “No idea.”
“Well I do.” Zac and Savannah both looked at Ben.
“Got his birth certificate details from his US citizenship which he didn’t get until his twenties,” said Ben, looking up from the computer. “His father died when he was nine.”
“Why do I get the feeling this is significant?” Savannah looked at him curiously. Ben was barely holding in the level of excitement.
“He wasn’t born in Italy and Salvatore Mazzola is his grandfather’s name which he changed his to when he moved to Italy with his mother.”
“And before that?”
“Before that, he was Salil El Massari.”
Zac and Savannah both stared then looked at each other and back to Ben.
“He’s Palestinian. Father killed in the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967.”
“He’s an Arab-Italian,” said Savannah softly, reliving memories of her childhood, like the time he was talking urgently on the phone and though she had been learning Italian at school she hadn’t been able to understand a word. Now it made sense. He had been speaking Arabic. Then she thought uneasily about her mother’s fear. Maybe not just about him isolating her, maybe not just about the taunts and putdowns. Maybe a whole lot more than the battered woman syndrome Savannah had presumed was at the crux of their relationship pathology. “So where does that take us?”
“It gives us a possible connection through him to the ANO and the Rome bombing,” said Ben.
“It gives us more than that.” Zac was dialing. “It gives us a reason for Todd Wilson or whatever his name was to be in Rome as well.” He stood up and went to the corner of the room, barking orders in a low, serious tone.
Ben looked at Savannah. “Seems Zac thinks your father was secret service of some sort,” said Ben. “Maybe they had a tip-off about the bombing, but didn’t stop it. But Sal was there organizing it, under suspicion.”
“Why wasn’t he arrested?”
“Never proven, I guess.”
Savannah’s thoughts were whirling around and making no sense. “Sal is too stupid.” She stopped herself. “Okay, maybe not too stupid. Too lazy. He doesn’t strike me as a fanatic. Mob and family ties would be easier to buy than fanatical Arab militants.”
“He’s now nearing sixty,” said Zac, returning to join them. “They burn out. My pick is he got in with youthful passion and got out when the heat was too intense. Felt he’d done his bit.”
“So he escaped to Australia,” said Savannah, “using my mother as cover.”
“Where does Hezekiah fit in here?” Ben frowned. “I could see him tolerating and using a Catholic Italian, but an Arab? They’d be on his hit list straight after the Jews.”
“Or maybe straight before.” Zac was staring at the newspaper in the rack directly in front of him. He pulled it out and put it on the table.
Ben and Savannah drew in closer. The lead article in the Guardian was about the push to reopen a cold case. Savannah looked at Zac, puzzled. “You think this is connected?”
“Look at the date.”
They read on. The article was written by Peyton Foster. A US senator was advocating for the case of Alex Odeh to be reexamined. He’d been killed by a bomb in Santa Ana, California on 11 October, 1985. He had been the spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Commission, ADC. The day before he had spoken out about the Achille Lauro, a ship that had been hijacked by the Palestinian Liberation Front. Savannah’s head was spinning. More acronyms. No one had ever been charged, though the Jewish Defense League had been under suspicion, and someone called Robert Manning was in jail for another bombing. It was thought he might be involved but had never been interviewed. The senator was asking why not.
“I don’t get the connection,” said Savannah, giving up.
“Let’s play a game of joining dots,” said Zac. “Todd is a smart boy, very smart boy, not only does West Point but a Yale degree. Law, I would guess. Not sure whether he wants to go the military route or to be the President, maybe both. While he’s there at Yale, fresh out of military college, he’s going to be thinking like an army man. Let’s say Hezekiah, also doing law, but so he can fight the state in the future with his hair-brained ideas, or even as a senator he may have been thinking, meets our Todd. They aren’t going to like each other would be my guess. Our Todd is going to mark him as a man to be watched. Throughout his career.”
“By 1985 Todd and Hezekiah have finished their degrees and are moving right along with their lives,” said Ben, taking the idea along. “Hezekiah is building his empire. Part of it is in California, right?”
“Yes. We believe that The Soldiers of Leviticus are planning their own Armageddon. Slowly adding a cell in each state. We don’t know what they’re planning but it won’t be pretty. We figure they’ll target politicians, almost certainly the Democrats that have been outspoken against them. So far that’s the only pattern we can see. Every state with someone who has gone against them now has a cell. Plus the home base where the Tea Party guy eats out of their hand.” Zac leant back and rubbed his chin, thinking back to the problem at hand. “Todd had gone into secret service of some kind. I’m thinking military. I’ve seen those guys. They’re born with a broomstick up their ass.” He saw Savannah frown and laughed. “Sorry, I forgot it’s your father we’re talking about. Believe me, friendly rivalry only. Just gets on the FBI’s nerves at times because they consider themselves superior. When I see the war graves, believe me, I have no doubt they are special when I see what they given to the country.”
“So Todd gets a tip about Alex Odeh,” Ben said, getting back to the narrative. “Or maybe Odeh’s under surveillance because of the television broadcast where he denied PLO involvement and supported Arafat. Maybe Todd got there too late. He could still be FBI, Zac.”
“Maybe. My people are checking, and checking if Sal or Hezekiah were in the mix in this investigation.”
“Sal wouldn’t have killed Odeh. He must be pro-Arab.”
“But maybe he knew Alex Odeh, and Odeh’s murder was what set him off to do a stretch as a fundamentalist. He could have given Todd the tip about Hezekiah’s involvement. The timing is right if he already had Arab connections. The bomb in Rome was a couple of months later.”
“But they weren’t connected surely.”
“No, though we’ll look. But the first, Odeh, was against an Arab, and the second could be seen as a retaliation. Doesn’t have to be directly connected. Angry young men react in order to make a point and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt.”
“This is just wild guessing.”
“Not entirely.” Zac pointed at the paper. “Do you know what happened to the Achille Lauro?”
Ben and Savannah shook their heads.
“The US intervened. Took the boat with hostages to the nearest NATO base. Guess where that was?”
Savannah stared and looked down at the paper. “Naples.”
“Yes. Things didn’t go well there. The Italian authorities argued and some of the hijackers got set free. What’s the bet that Salvatore senior was involved?”
“Sal junior would have gotten emotionally involved, wanted to do more,” said Savannah, trying to picture her stepfather as a younger man. “He always had an overrated sense of self-importance.”
“I think he has some involvement with Rome, and maybe Todd recognized him from Santa Ana.”
“Then my mother met Sal then, too, not just my real father.”
“Maybe. If so, she’d wouldn’t ever have known Todd was investigating him.”
If she had, Audrey would have never married him. How different wou
ld life have been?
“So what then?”
“They all go back to the States, Todd woos your mother but is still investigating Rome plus whatever happened in Berlin.”
“I know what happened.” Ben looked up from his computer. “ANO bombed a nightclub. April 5, 1986.” He paused, looked awkward. “You’d better be ready for a possibility, Savannah.”
“What?”
“It was a nightclub US service personnel used. Three were killed.”
Audrey would have known she was pregnant, just. Savannah reread the letter in her mind. It could have been before, it could have been about Audrey trying to break off because of something entirely different and not the pregnancy at all. It would certainly explain why she married someone else. On the rebound. Sal would have told her whatever he thought she wanted to hear. Savannah nodded. It made a lot of sense. Her father was dead and her stepfather had killed him though her mother never knew. Which also gave the motive for Sal to stop her finding out. He knew her well enough to know she’d never let it go until he had been brought to justice.
* * * *
Corey figured he’d tell his uncle they had a breakdown. It wasn’t reasonable to expect a man to go so long without a drink and a bit of ass. And the motel they had pulled into had had just enough of both. Maybe a bit too much of the former. But as it happened, Hezekiah had said to get into position by tomorrow night, which suited Corey just fine. His uncle had found out where the bitch was and Hezekiah was back to planning her future rather than Corey’s punishment. The thought of being Savannah’s captor had Corey back thinking of exactly what he would like to do to her. With a bit of luck he might still get the chance.
“God determines our fate,” Hezekiah told him.
“He trusts you as the Prophet to deliver what was intended.” Corey wasn’t stupid. He had grinned at his mates as he recited his uncle’s words back at him on the phone.
“That’s true boy! I’m mighty perturbed at the moment because he’s telling me dark stuff.”