Smoke

by C. P. Mandara

  His comrade then watched as my arm flew out of the covers. “Fuck, one of ‘em has…” he didn’t manage to get the rest of his sentence out because a bullet had been lodged in his skull, and I got his friend squarely in the same place before he’d even managed to fall to the floor. Picking off another two with the art of the surprise was easy enough, and then I flew over the side of the bed in an attempt to prevent myself from getting shot as the other two ganged up to slaughter me. I could hear the fizz pop of silenced bullets burying themselves into the mattress as I moved, and was thankful it was a nice, thick number.

  The fall off the bed had been a calculated move. It’s my job to notice things, and when I entered the room, I realised that the bedstead had a space underneath it large enough to crawl through. This was hidden by a large, standard issue, white, hotel duvet, but a trained eye would notice it. I was counting on the guys who had burst in to be amateurs at best, but I was about to find out if I was right. Rolling underneath the bed so I would exit out the other side, I’d surmised that I would be able to get one of the goons in the groin from my new vantage point. We killers aren’t fussy with our targets as long as they do enough damage or cause enough pain to prevent bullets from being fired. Thankfully I was right on the money, and the penultimate goon went down clutching his blood-stained crotch in agony. That meant I only had one bastard left to kill, but I had no idea where he was. After the last gunshot, he would have a fair idea of where I was, so things were not looking good. Sure enough, the next thing I heard was the click of a safety being released and the barked command, “Put the gun down, or I pull the trigger.”

  If I was in a standing position, I might have risked something stupid, but he had me trapped under the bed, and he knew it. Yeah, I could have shot him in a kneecap if I was lucky, but I'd have been dead ten seconds later. This was one of those times when you had to call it a day, even if you suspected your life expectancy was shortly going to evaporate. Still – any chance was better than no chance.

  “Come out fucking slowly, with your hands in front of you, or I’ll pump so much lead in you they can use your remains for plumbing.” I did as he asked. As I’d just killed five of his friends in cold blood, I certainly didn’t want to spook the bastard. It was a miracle I was still alive, really.

  When I'd got out from underneath the bed, I remained crouched on the floor, waiting to see what he'd do. I remember that he was dressed in a dark grey suit and that his shoes were dark brown moccasins. It's crazy the amount of detail that my over-active brain stores. Shoes are a particular favourite of mine.

  “Stand up. Slowly.” His gun was trained on me the whole time, so taking a deep breath, I did as he asked until I was standing in front of him – mostly naked bar a black lace bra, a pair of matching stockings, and a rather fetching suspender belt. There was a chance this get up might put him off guard, if he was new to the game. As soon as I found my feet and took one look into the stone cold eyes before me, I knew the man wasn’t an amateur. Killer’s, in my experience, wear one of two looks. It varies between animated, evil, and completely insane, to a detached, cold, lifeless look. The guy wore the latter, and that meant I was in trouble.

  “Who do you work for?” he barked.

  I gave him my best cynical look in response. "Not even I know who I work for, which is exactly how it should be. Let's not ask pointless questions. We can either help each other, or you can kill me, but we need to work fast. Judging by Clement's open laptop over there, my eyes looked left to the writing desk, he's expected to check in with the embassy shortly. When he doesn't, we're going to have company." The lies spilled out of my mouth so quickly, you'd have thought I was born to this profession, but lifeless guy knew all the tricks of the trade.

  "Whatever you say, sweetheart. Perhaps I should just kill you, and then I can get on with things."

  “Go on and try it.” I grinned up at him. There was still a switchblade nestled in the back of my diaphanous lace panties. If he did decide to put a bullet in me, he wasn’t going to get away unscathed because I’d make sure the asshole went down with me.

  He snorted at my bravado, which I figured was a good sign. Bad signs would involve the trigger of his gun being pulled or blood, mine specifically.

  "Relax, I'm not going to kill you. I have too much respect for a waif that can kill five men without even blinking. However, I need something in this room, and if you're intent on getting out of this situation alive, I suggest you help me find it."

  Backing away from me, he pointed his gun towards the laptop on the writing desk. “Are you good with computers?”

  Looking at him from behind lowered lids, I smiled coyly. “Why do you think I’m here?” He nodded as if that’s what he had been thinking all along. Flinging a flash drive at me, that I caught effortlessly, he then said, “I need the blueprints to the Mirage 3000. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “Depends on whether you have his password. If you do, then it should be a nice easy hack into the Ministère de la Défense and voila!” I may have used my ‘slightly sarcastic’ voice. I was good, but I wasn’t fucking Superwoman. Some websites are easier to hack than others.

  "I have his password, and I also know how to get into the MOD, so just do your thing. Oh, and you can give me your knife now, darlin.' Preferably before your pants start falling down around your ankles, or I might not be able to contain myself." It was at that point that I knew I was dealing with a professional. His buddies might have been the hired help, but this guy was the real deal. Handing over the knife, and cursing at my ill fortune, I hustled over to Clement's laptop and fired the thing up.

  Sitting at the desk, with a gun casually trained on me, I followed all of his instructions to the letter. Sure enough, in less than twenty minutes time, I had downloaded a bucketful of the country’s national secrets, and then some. When everything had downloaded to the flash drive, I brought it up to my mouth and turned to face my captor.

  "I'm going to swallow the fucker if you shoot me now," I said, and I meant it. If he wanted to dig through the remains of me after I was dead, that was his problem, but it would take time the bastard didn't have.

  “If I shoot you between the eyes, you won’t have time to swallow it,” he replied, and his dark brown eyes had taken on a steely glint.

  “My reflexes are my life in this business, sunshine. You know that.” I opened my mouth and tipped my head up, to let the big guy know I meant business.

  “Fine. How do you want to work this, sweetheart? The one thing I can tell you is that I’m not leaving this room without that drive, so you’ll have to factor that into your equation.”

  “Start walking towards the door and get the hell out of here. When you’ve gone, I’ll toss it to you underneath...” I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence. My legs had been taken out from underneath me, and the flash drive landed approximately five centimetres from a brown moccasin-clad foot. He bent down to pick it up, all the while looking at me, as I stood there pale as a sheet. All the blood in my body had drained through the floorboards because I knew there was only one outcome left to me now, and it wasn’t going to pretty.

  “Do it quick.” My courage had left along with most of my blood, and there was a strange warbling quality to my words.

  “And why would I do that?” That was the comeback that I’d feared most. He wanted to play with me, just because he could. Fantastic. My last few minutes on this earth were destined to be filled with tears and screaming.

  "Because you're not a total asshole." I managed to spit that out with a fair degree of venom, and I was almost proud of myself.

  “I’m a complete and utter bastard, sweetheart, but as I said before, I’m not going to kill you. What I am going to do is leave you with a warning. If you breathe a word of what’s happened here tonight to anyone, I’m going to do something really unpleasant.”

  "I get it. You're going to come and find me, and kill me." It seemed straightforward enough, and I was more than happy wi
th the deal."

  “Wrong. I’m going to find you, and study you at my leisure until I find every single person in your history that you’ve ever cared about. I will then make it my life’s mission to exterminate them one by one, until your life is a walking, breathing, living hell. I’ll start with your partner, by the way. Kiel, isn’t it?”

  I sucked in a massive gulp of air as the floor started swallowing me whole. How did the bastard know that? In order to know that, he had to know who I was, and if he knew what I did for a living…

  “Your secret is safe with me. Just make sure you keep mine. If you’re in any doubt that I mean what I say, my employer is Alain Dumortier. Look him up. He’s not the kind of guy you want to mess with.” He gave me a wolfish smile as he came towards me, and in one vicious swipe of his hand, he tore my lace bra in two. In less than ten seconds flat, I was back on the bed, and the man with the gun was unbuttoning his pants. Oh. My. God.

  My mind was a bit of a blur after that. I remember my legs turned to jelly after he left. I also remember falling to the floor and putting both hands on the top of my head. The words, ‘What the hell has just happened here?" kept on turning over and over in my brain at the time, but those words were now coming back to haunt me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When the men filed out of the library, I was left in an empty void. I didn’t want to think about any of the shit that had just gone down here and I sure as hell didn’t want to talk to anybody about it. This was one of the incidents that needed to be filed away to the furthest recesses of my brain, never to be unearthed ever again. Focus on the prize. Dumortier's goons might have killed my partner, but I would have the last laugh. Time was of the essence, though. Thankfully, I had no family to speak of - a prerequisite of the job – but I did have friends, and I wanted them to remain in one piece. So I guess this was my way of tackling the problem. It was revenge and peace of mind, smartly wrapped up together.

  I was now almost certain that Kiel's death had not been an accident. The way in which he was killed indicated a hit and run, and the guilt sat heavy in my chest. I had spoken on the matter to one of my closest friends just a few weeks before he disappeared, in the strictest confidence, and as we were in HQ with scramblers and radio interference everywhere, I'd felt confident that we wouldn't be overheard. She'd been talking about Dumortier, and I'd happened to mention that I'd met one of his henchmen before. She asked for details, and stupidly I'd given them, believing that anything I said would remain confidential. Either she wasn't quite as squeaky clean as she appeared to be, or someone had the office bugged because less than two weeks later, Kiel was dead. With that kind of timing, it was pretty unlikely to be a coincidence.

  So, here I was, prepared to do battle, in the vain hope I might prevent someone else being murdered. Cellular Operations had their agenda, I had mine – but I was ready to do everything in my power to make sure I got the job done and that included dying, if absolutely necessary.

  Looking around behind me, the silence in the room starting to creep me out, I wondered if I’d be able to get up on my own. My arms and legs were still restrained, so it wasn’t going to be an elegant affair. It was probably safer to remain here until someone came to give me a hand. The last thing I needed was a fall. I was already bruised enough as it was.

  As if someone had read my mind, the door opened, and after a three-second pause, slammed suddenly, making me jump.

  "That fucking bitch." The voice had Adie's sexy Spanish twang, and he did not sound happy. "When I get my hands on you, Fabiana, I am going to wring your neck." There were more footsteps, the sound of the door being opened again, and a barked command, "Get me some water." He then re-slammed the door and began striding quickly towards me. After yesterday's episode where he tried to massacre my back, I wasn't really looking forward to seeing him again, but at the moment anyone's presence was better than none. Although I wasn't really sure about that, come to think of it.

  When Adie squatted down in front of me, I swear the bastard saw straight through me in an instant. There was a wry smile playing at the corner of his lips that almost spoke of pity. In the next moment, though, he was all burning anger and rage, so much so that I felt sure my mind was playing tricks on me.

  Turning his face to the side, he let out a stream of cuss words that involved a good deal of saliva flying all over the place, before he said, “It appears that Fabiana is a little jealous of the attention I showed you yesterday. She doesn’t like me playing with the new slaves. She’s worried I might form an attachment to them.” He turned his head to the side again, almost as if he were talking to someone, and looking upwards, I realised there was a camera trained on us. “Fabiana is a silly little female, though, with shit for brains. I know your watching, darling, and I look forward to getting my hands on you later.” There was a distinct ‘edge’ to his voice.

  Then he spoke to me in a whisper, "The walls have eyes and ears around here, in case you haven't noticed. If you don't want the whole world to know what you've been up to, you'll need to speak quietly around these parts." He brushed a stray wisp of hair away from my eyes with such a gentle caress that for a moment my head was at war with the man I knew him to be. The bastard put me so off balance, I couldn't think straight.

  "This is Fabiana's way of asking for pain this evening. Don't take it personally. All the masters and mistresses around these parts have their own little agendas, and the day-to-day drama is often exhausting. So, she pokes, I push back, although I confess she's beginning to bore me – which is probably why she pulled this stunt." The door opened once again, and a maid with the same latex outfit I was wearing came scurrying over with a bottle of water.

  “Sir. Your water, Sir.” Adie plucked the bottle off the tray and with a flick of his hand shooed the slave away. He slowly unscrewed the cap and brought the bottle up to his glistening lips. Tipping it up, he took a few long swallows, before wiping his hand across his lips to dry the errant moisture there. To this day I have never been jealous of a bottle of water before, but that changed in an instant.

  His head bent close to my ear once again. "You don't look so good, Thirty-Eight. Didn't have a clue what you were letting yourself in for, huh?" He grabbed hold of a lock of my hair and pulled it sharply. There's talk that you might be an imposter, you know. We love a good imposter around these parts." He then took another swig of his water, but his eyes stayed on me the whole time, and his gaze began to fry me. Thankfully, some semblance of common sense then kicked in, and I started to fight back.

  “What kind of imposter would sign up for a spell around here? They’d have to be fucking insane,” I whispered.

  “And are you?” The half smile was playing around his lips again, and my eyes were torn between staring at his face, or the bottle of water in his hand. I was so damn thirsty I could cry, and right now, there was a lot I would be prepared to do for a sip of that water.

  “Probably. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  "Good point." My eyes had now stopped staring at his face, and they were glued to the bottle of water. My throat was so dry, it could have had the Nevada desert parked up inside it. Adie followed my glance, and his smile turned evil.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, wondering if some new type of torture would follow – one that outlawed water, for instance.

  “Well, we’d better get you up, hadn’t we?” Putting two of his thickly muscled arms beneath me, he quickly got me back on my feet. I was a little unsteady at first, with my arms and legs in chains, but his steadying arms waited until I had found my balance. Then he held out the bottle of water for me. I automatically went to grab it with my hands, but they were still tightly cuffed behind me, and there was no point in my struggling against them.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  "Please doesn't mean shit around here. Everything has a price, Thirty-Eight." He waved the bottle in front of my eyes, taunting me. I wanted to cry but held back the tears. It was way too ear
ly in the game to lose it. Besides, I could live without water for a few days. Wouldn't be an enjoyable experience, but I didn't think they'd kill me just yet, especially after they'd spent a small fortune acquiring me.

  “What’s the price?” If this was how the game was played, I might as well figure out how high the stakes were.

  Adie looked thoughtful for a moment, and then put his hands in front of him, prayer-like, before interlocking his fingers together. “Tell you what, as you’re new, I’ll give you an easy task.” Walking behind me, he made short work of unfastening my cuffs. “Fetch the plug from behind you, and get your ass back on the table. Reinsert the beast, and edge yourself to orgasm ten times. Make no mistake, Thirty-Eight, you are not allowed to come. If you can do that, then you’ll get your water. That’s my only offer, take it or leave it.”

  He needn’t have bothered with his last sentence, I was already searching for the plug, which I found lying on the end of the table. The thing was a beast, much bigger than anything James had shown me. No wonder I had struggled with it. The thought of pushing it back inside my ass had me wincing, but the longer I went without water, the more dangerous my situation would become. I already had a hangover to rival an inner-city building site, and it would only get worse if I didn’t try and replace some lost fluids.

  Hoisting myself back upon the thick slab of wood, I laid down on my stomach and took a good grip of the tapered rubber plug. It was still smeared with lubricant, so hopefully, my task wouldn't be as bad as I feared. Positioning it with a great deal of care, I heard the scrape of chair legs in the background. I tried not to let it distract me. Adie was obviously getting settled in for the duration, and would be keeping a hawk eye on me. I would just have to try my best to please him.

  "Start slow, Thirty-Eight, and build up a steady, gentle rhythm. It will go easier on you if you do." The words were surprisingly soft and gentle, accented with his seductive purr, and for a moment, I almost forgot Adie was my Crazy Monster.