by JA Huss
It’s not so bad being injured in battle. I mean, it’s a hell of a lot better than being Nolan and Ivy, who are stuck out there in the desert answering questions about why there was a secret unpermitted tunnel underneath their five-star resort.
Not to mention the fire in the room of mirrors. The cops actually asked Ivy if she was a devil worshipper.
That conversation was a hoot to listen to.
I’m still privately cracking up about Ivy Rockwell being painted a Satanist.
Or Pax and Oliver, who were taken into custody and are being held for questioning in the shooting of Claudette Delaney.
Five’s handling that. Turns out Oliver and Pax were filming the whole thing using cameras mounted on their rifles, so there’s plenty of proof to back up our story. That fucking Five. He thinks of everything, doesn’t he? Even gun cams.
Or West and Mac, who took the Mister jet back to Mac’s house in Colorado, trying to wait the investigation out. They’re totally out of the loop.
So I get stuck here in the hospital with Ariel, Ellie, and Victoria.
“Bitch,” Tori says. “Are you even listening to me?”
She’s been talking incessantly since she got here this morning. I’m stuck in bed. What choice do I have?
“My plan is still a good one.”
“True,” Ellie says, eating my canned peaches off my hospital tray with a spork as she lounges next to me in bed. “I’m inclined to agree with her, Cindy. We should give it a vote once Ivy gets back.”
Ariel answers for me. “Well, I’m in too. I say these Misters have taken far too long to figure this shit out. It’s time they step aside and let the women take over.”
“I love you,” Tori tells my sister.
“Love ya back, bitch.”
I crack an eyeball open as they fist-bump. I get to stay silent because I’m pretending to be sleeping off my drugs to make them all leave me alone so I can plan my next Miss Cookie Meets Detective Mysterious encounter.
I kinda like these crazy bitches, but they are not very good at taking hints. Ellie is gonna stick around as long as they keep delivering me trays with peaches on them. Tori is going to stick around until I agree to her plan. And Ariel… well, she’s my sister. She’s always around, even when she’s not.
We didn’t get all the answers. We still don’t know where Mariel is. Or what part she played in all this. And Oliver, well… Tori says that he’s next. That every Mister has been fucked with and now it’s his turn. Not to mention all the lingering questions about my sister, Rory.
So that really sucks.
But I did get the one thing I went after before this whole thing started.
My Mister.
And I’m happy with that.
For now.
Epilogue - Paxton
“Why, Miss Cookie,” I say. “What brings you to my bedroom tonight? I thought your case was solved?”
Cindy is leaning against the window of the Malibu house terrace, backlit by the orangey-red sunset behind her. She places the back of her hand up against her forehead with a dramatic flair Vivian Leigh would envy. “No, Detective,” she says, with an exaggerated Southern accent. She swings her head to look at me, then resumes her despairing pose. “It wasn’t solved, merely… halted in place.” She comes towards me, her long, coral-colored dress splitting all the way up her thigh with each step. “I need answers, Detective. And I need you to get them for me.”
“Hmmm,” I say, looking her up and down lewdly as I grab my dick through my pants. “But you’re broke, Miss Cookie. Dead broke. How will you ever manage to pay my fee?”
“I have heard through the grapevine, Detective”—I raise my eyebrows in anticipation. I’ve been waiting to play this game with her all damn day—“that I can suck a man’s cock like the wind blows across the Gulf during hurricane season.”
I chuckle and then bite on the stem of my unlit pipe to stop it. It’s a nice prop, I think. Making its debut Miss Cookie Meets Detective Mysterious appearance right now. I still have the trench coat. And the hat. But the pipe is still a nice addition.
I take a step towards her, making sure to admire her tits in that low-cut gown. “Well,” I say, stuffing the pipe in my pocket so I can fondle both her breasts at the same time. “How could a man turn that down?”
“He can’t,” she says, leaning in with pouty, seductive lips like she’s going to kiss me, but pulling away at the last possible moment. “No man,” she says. “Not even the great Detective Mysterious.”
I come to her this time. And I don’t pull away at the last second. I kiss her. Deep, and hard, and soft, and seductively… all at the same time. Trying to forget all the many, many things that still haunt me.
Where is my mother? She hasn’t answered her phone since last week when all that shit went down in the desert.
What was in that silver envelope? Cindy said Claudette had it in the infinity room, but the cops insist they never found it on her person. There’s no telling if it went up in flames.
It’s just so frustrating. We were so close. “What if we never get any answers, Cindy?”
She bows her head and looks up at me, batting her false eyelashes to try to keep the scene going. But I can sense the moment she gives in. “We’re all still here, Paxton. And the number of people on your side has doubled in size since last year when all this shit started happening. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“There are just so many mysteries.”
“That’s OK,” she says.
“What if we never get that happily ever after?” I ask. God, I just want to make her happy. She refused to sign the paperwork that gives her ownership of the house, but I forged her signature. So it’s a done deal. But it’s not enough. It’s just not enough to make me feel like no matter what happens to me, she will always be taken care of.
“Do we need it?” Cindy asks.
“Don’t you want it? Doesn’t every Cinderella deserve the happily ever after?”
“Well,” she says, resuming her dramatic character voice. “Maybe most princesses like that tired, old happily ever after, Detective. But me”—she stops to bat the lashes again—“I prefer the ‘till death do us part’ ending, myself.”
I chuckle at that. “You would.”
“Why, Detective, I do believe you’re calling me a troublemaker.”
“If the shoe fits, Miss Cookie.”
“That’s right,” she says, placing both her palms flat on my face as she leans up on her tip toes to kiss me on the lips. “The shoe does fit, Pax.” Her dramatic accent is gone, and in its place is just… her. “I’m Cinderella, you’re Prince Charming. And no matter what happens, we’ll be together till the end.”
She picks up two mint juleps off a side table and hands one to me. We lift them in the air and clink them together. “To Mr. and Mrs. Mysterious,” she says.
“Till death do us part,” I say. “Till death do us part.”
Mr. Match
By J. A. Huss
Edited by RJ Locksley
Copyright © 2016 by J. A. Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-944475-12-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
DESCRIPTION
Oliver Shrike thinks ahead. He likes to make lists and tick off boxes. He plans, he plots, and he’s got everything under control.
Until one day he sees my videos on his dating site. The private erotic videos I make just for him.
When I’m looking at the camera I can practically see his face. Hear the internal arguments. Feel his desire.
Because I’m that kind of woman.
You should delete my videos, Oliver Shrike. It’s your job to keep that dating site on the up and up.
But you don’t, do you?
Y
ou watch them. You get off to them. You crave them.
Every week I make a new one with you in mind. I’ve hooked you now, Mr. Match. You’ve been in control for way too long and this is where it ends.
Chapter One - OLIVER
From my top-floor office in the old bank building in downtown Fort Collins I can see my whole world. For real. My whole world is on display down below.
My father’s shop, Shrike Bikes, sits kitty-corner to my building, about half a block up on the opposite side of College Avenue. The Fort Collins Theater, which my cousin Sparrow is running right now, since her mom and dad are in the Bahamas, is across Jefferson Street. So close I can see the plants hanging in her office window on the third floor. And Sick Boyz, Inc., my mother’s family’s tattoo shop, is down College Avenue the opposite way.
Right now I can see ten family members as I look out my office window. My mom, my sister Jasmine, my Uncle Vic, my Uncle Vinn, and my Uncle Vonn are all standing out in front of Sick Boyz, looking up at the sign like it’s the Virgin Mary crying or something.
My mom is saying she wants it painted before this weekend. I know this like I know my own heart. She’s been talking about painting that sign for weeks.
My uncles are saying, Who the fuck cares about the sign? Not them. This whole sign-painting thing has been a regular fight since I was a kid.
Usually when my Uncle Vic is involved in some kind of argument, I put my money on him. But if he’s in an argument with my mother…
Down the road she turns away from her brothers and my sister, smiling.
She wins. The sign will be painted.
On the other side of my building, my father is standing in the parking lot of Shrike Bikes yelling. His face is red and his arms are waving around like he’s a madman.
Ford Aston, who is an uncle in his own way, is ignoring him. In fact, he’s looking at me, looking at him.
I wave.
He waves back.
My father turns, arms still flailing around like he’s about to lose his shit, sees me watching, then—even though he’s not really close enough for me to see—rolls his eyes. I can tell by the way his head moves. Which means he’s rolling his eyes at Ford.
Who knows what they’re arguing about. Probably something to do with the Zombie Run this weekend. That’s why my mom wants the sign painted.
The Zombie Run happens every year on Halloween weekend. Between three and five thousand bikers will ride through downtown on Friday as they make their way up to Poudre Park for ZombieFest, and every year about a hundred of them stop for a tattoo over the weekend.
Shrike Bikes will have a little swap meet to take advantage. My dad will sell merchandise, a few dozen leather jackets, and if he’s lucky he’ll get three or four custom bike orders. That’s no small thing since his bikes still go for more than a hundred grand each these days.
My sister Belle has a clipboard in her hand as she walks around the bikes on display in the parking lot. She’s the serious one. A real numbers girl. She and Ford get along well.
And across Jefferson, Sparrow is outside on the side of the building facing me, tacking up the ZombieFest Halloween Week Haunted House schedule—sponsored by ZombieDust beer—in the glass-encased bulletin board which overlays the new ZombieDust mural covering the old brick facade
I guess that’s only nine family members down there. But then there’s Ariel, standing behind me, yelling, as she tends to do, and generally throwing a fit about the perverts who are trying to take over Hook-Me-Up, our co-owned dating site.
“I said,” I say, sighing, “I’d take care of it.”
“Yeah, but you said that two weeks ago. We have about two hundred more on the list for review.”
“Yeah,” I mimic, “because two weeks ago I was killing people in the secret tunnel underneath Nolan Delaney’s five-star resort in Borrego Springs.” I turn around to face her. Take her in. She looks a lot like my mom, except her hair is more strawberry than blonde. But she acts like my dad. Loud, tough, funny but dead-ass serious at the same time. “And I spent two days in jail while all that shit was sorted out.”
“I know that, baby brother. I was there.”
I roll my eyes.
“But everything is cleared up now. So we need to clean this shit up.” She throws a folder down on my desk. It’s large and heavy, so it makes a thump sound. “I have so many other things to do, Oliver. I don’t have—”
“I said I’d take care of it.” I give her the sneer. Narrow eyes, one corner of my top lip slightly lifted, like I’m baring my teeth.
“Stop it,” she snaps. “You look like Billy Idol when you do that. I can’t take you seriously.”
“‘In the midnight hour,’” I sing, walking over to her, my boots thudding on the vintage hardwood floors.
“Don’t,” she says, trying not to smile.
I grab both her hips by the belt loops and start swaying, like we’re gonna dance. “‘She cried more, more, more.’”
She places her palm on my chest, right in the middle of the Shrike Bikes logo of my long-sleeved white thermal, and pushes me away.
“‘With a rebel yell,’” I sing, taking a step back.
“Cut it out! I’m serious. We can’t have this shit on the main site. It will draw attention, Oliver.” And then she narrows her eyes at me, gives me the sneer right back, complete with lip lift. “We cannot afford more attention.”
I stop my silliness and get serious. “I know. I said I’d take care of it. I’ll do it today, OK?”
“Make sure you do.” She stares at me for another second, then turns on her heel and walks out. There’s no door to slam to punctuate her point because the whole top floor belongs to me, and my ‘door’ is the open stairwell that leads down to her office on the third floor. She’s never quite gotten over that little arrangement. But we flipped for it and I won. I got the top-floor office because the coin toss is sacred.
I turn back to the window and walk over to it, but the people who ground me to this world are all gone.
My mom has disappeared somewhere. Jasmine and all my tattooed uncles have gone back to work. Sparrow’s task outside is complete, and Ford, Belle, and my dad are out of my line of sight or back inside.
Ariel is downstairs.
So it’s just me.
Alone.
As usual.
I walk back over to my desk and slump into the old wooden chair. It came with the building. So did the desk. They both have to be a hundred years old. But they’re solid. This desk is made out of some oak tree that stood out on the prairie for two hundred years before it was turned into this once-fine piece of furniture. It’s probably got a helluva story to tell. The rickety chair with the spindle back that threatens to tip over every time I kick my boots up on the desk is just as old. They have no luster or shine to them. Just wisdom that comes from age.
I reach out and pick up the stamper, then turn the dials on the mechanism until it reads today’s date. It’s old-fashioned, like the desk, and the chair, and building. And me. But I like the satisfaction I get from pushing down on the handle over the offending member’s account printout. I like the way the stamp pad mechanically flips around and makes its mark.
It says D-E-L-E-T-E-D. With the date.
And then I stack all the papers in a box and Belle eventually comes and takes them away to be filed in the record-keeping room down in the basement.
I do it online too. I check all the appropriate boxes in their profiles and click the Ban User button. But it’s not nearly as satisfying as this stamper.
Ariel is right. I open the file and find hundreds of papers. You really have to keep on top of the perverts. They are probably the same hundred people, over and over again. Just using different IP addresses and emails. But you gotta keep on top of them or other members stumble onto the dick pics in their profiles—or the masturbation videos, or the strippers who use the site to advertise their ‘private chat rooms’—and complain.
They might just
complain to us, but they might not. They might complain to the FCC, or the FBI, or some sexual predator organization. We’re not regulated by the FCC, the FBI or anyone else, but no one needs that shit coming back to haunt them.
Especially us.
Especially when there is so much more going on here than anyone knows.
So I dutifully and diligently start wading through the flagged users and one after another I go into their on-site profiles, check their pics, and videos, and autobiographies. And one by one I ban them, stamp them, and let their piece of paper float down into the box with Belle’s name on it.
This is my life on most days. Sitting up here in my office listening to the sound of business on the floors below as it drifts upwards through the stairwell. Occasionally I have an out-of-town meeting to get big clients. Believe it or not, there are a bunch of new tech start-ups that think online dating is a perk their employees need. We have seven of those accounts, including the new one I just procured a few weeks ago out of New York.
Whatever.
If getting laid on a regular basis is good for their business, it’s even better for mine.
And I don’t want to think about New York. That shit is stressing me out. So I just put my head down and get busy banning perverts.
I’m about halfway through the stack when I stop breathing. Stop hearing. Stop everything when I see the image on the page.
My heart beats fast—then faster—as I stare down at the profile on the page.
I pick it up and focus on the girl.
I can’t see her face in the offending image and isn’t that so typical. But I can see other things. I can see the only things that matter.
Her tattoos.
Katya.
In her main profile pic she’s wearing a black sweater with a white blouse underneath, so the rounded collar peeks out from around her neck. She’s sitting demurely, leaning forward like she’s listening to someone talk. This picture cuts off her head but I can see her neck. The collar is high and her golden-blonde hair is covering some of it. But I search for the identifying mark anyway.