“I left my cell in the lab,” he said to the receptionist. “Would you mind going and getting it for me?” She eyed him suspiciously.
“Look,” he leaned across the reception area with his arms on the counter. “I know you’re just doing your job, and I don’t want to get you in any trouble. So you don’t have to let me in. But I’m positive I left it on the lab table in Dr. Foster’s hall. It was stupid, really. I shouldn't have taken it out of my pocket, not during the interview, but I was expecting a call from my mom.” Brad met her eyes, and held them. “She’s a little sick right now and I’m expecting some news. Anyway,” he shook his head, “I can’t leave without my phone. My life’s on that thing, plus the casework. I could lose my job.”
She said, “I could lose my job if I leave the reception desk.”
Brad leaned in closer and gave her the look that hadn’t failed him once since mid 2008. “It’ll take two minutes,” he said. “Tops. If it’s not where I think it is, I’ll leave immediately.”
The receptionist smiled, said okay almost like she didn’t have a choice, then buzzed Brad into the lab. Of course it was on the lab table in Dr. Foster’s hall, exactly where he set the dummy cell phone he always “accidentally” left behind.
Once in the lab Brad immediately looked for Dr. Jacobs, the one scientist who seemed like he had looser lips than the lab liked. Sure enough, it was only a minute back into the conversation when the good doctor spilled a lead.
“Sorry to waste any more of your time,” Brad said, “but Arthur sent me back to follow up with a few questions. What were you saying the last time we spoke?”
Brad looked at Dr. Jacobs patiently, waiting for him to pick up where he never left off. After a long couple of minutes, and a little more prodding from Brad, suggesting he might be able to lead him to someone closer to Madsen, Dr. Jacobs suddenly lit up and said, “If I were you I would check with Ms. Monroe.”
“Ms. Monroe? You’re not the first person to tell me that,” Brad said, even though he was. “Why do you think we should check with Ms. Monroe?”
“Because Willow and Dr. Madsen seemed especially close. She was his secretary and all, but a lot of us in the lab thought there was more going on than that, you know. Then she quit out of nowhere just a bit ago, and did it over the phone. That’s pretty weird, and a lot of coincidence you’d have to admit, considering what happened.” Dr. Jacobs delivered the last part in a whisper.
Brad shook his head. “No argument from me, Dr. Jacobs.” He glanced up at the wall and noticed the red light on the camera aimed directly at him. He winked and saluted. He thanked Dr. Jacobs for his time, left the lab, and was met by Rothstein as soon as he stepped on the other side of the door.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Rothstein said, gently taking him by the arm.
“Sure thing, Artie. No reason to get all handsy, at least not without a few drinks in me,” Brad said with a wink that painted Artie’s face in discomfort.
Rothstein stood glaring, and said, “We have been extremely accommodating, Mr. Hammer, but our kindness ends here. If you don’t have a court order on you right now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave immediately.”
“I’m already gone,” Brad winked at Rothstein. “Come on, Agent Grayson.”
Brad walked down the long hall, then stepped inside the elevator and rode it four floors to the lobby, then crossed the parking lot and climbed into the passenger side of the Lincoln, Grayson by his side the entire time.
“I’m going back in,” Brad said as soon as she slammed the car door.
“No, you’re not,” she shook her head, started the engine, then pulled from the parking space.
“They’re burying bullshit in there,” Brad said, drumming his fingers on his knee. “Don’t tell me you can’t smell it.”
“Of course I can smell it,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m going to scrape it from my shoe while the world is watching. That’s the difference between me and you, Hammer. I’m discreet. You, well, let’s just say you’re not.”
Brad ignored her, and told Grayson all about the scientist’s secretary, Willow Monroe, who had mysteriously quit over the phone. Grayson agreed it was a lead worth following, so Hammer looked up her address, then told Grayson to hit the highway and head west. Just as she pulled onto the onramp, Brad’s cell started to buzz. He looked at the screen. It was their superior, Mike Cooper.
“Hammer here.”
“Pack it up, we need you back at HQ.”
“What? We just got here,” Brad said.
“I heard about your little stunt at Helix.”
“Wow, news travels fast, eh?” Brad said.
“Forensics is on the scene, you did your interviews, just bring back what you’ve got, and we’ll handle it from here.”
“What the fuck? I’ve got leads to follow, follow-up interviews, I’m not even hours into this and you’re acting like we’re a week in,” Brad said.
“It’s not a request, Agent Hammer.”
“Just let me follow up one more lead,” Brad said.
“I don’t want you going back to Helix,” Cooper said, hesitating slightly. Cooper was a team player, and bowed at the first orders from above, but he had just enough balls to allow Brad a bit of leniency so long as it wouldn’t blow back on him.
“I promise, I’m not going back to Helix. We’ve got a potential witness. We’re tracking her down now.”
“I’m not authorizing this. I want you back here tomorrow. Are we clear?”
“Crystal clear,” Brad said and hung up.
Before Brad was even finished with the phone call, Grayson was merging over to pull off the highway.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Grayson looked at Brad like she didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean what am I doing? We were told to stand down and drop the case, right? Do we really have to go through this again?”
“Yes, we do,” Brad said. “First of all, Cooper said he was not authorizing this. That isn’t the same as him forbidding us. He’s just covering his ass in case we get into trouble, but he’s fine with this. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Grayson said skeptically. “Like that time you detained Lady Gaga because you were certain she was an alien?”
“I never said she was an alien! I said she had info on an alien spy, big difference!”
“Yeah, you’re lucky we didn’t get fired for that little stunt.”
“She was cool with it, she likes the way I swing my hammer.”
“Ugh,” Grayson said, “You’re such a child!”
Brad grinned, but then turned serious. “Listen, I want to know what they’re making in that lab, and why there was an empty elephant’s sack worth of spunk splattered all over the hotel room. I want answers, and I’m pretty goddamn sure Miss Willow Monroe will lead us to at least one. We have two options: We either head to Monroe’s together, and you help me do my job while doing yours, or we go back to the hotel and I come back alone, then you can report me to Division.”
“Have I ever reported you to Division?”
Brad smiled, “Not one single time, Agent Grayson. That’s why you’re the best partner a guy like me could have.”
He grinned ear to ear as Grayson glided the Lincoln back into the fast lane. “You know you’re not a tenth as adorable as you think you are.”
“I figure I’m at least half.”
“Just promise you’re not gonna do anything stupid. Again.”
“I promise. Something big was happening in that lab. I haven’t felt that sort of nervous energy since ’08.”
Grayson was quiet at first, but then she agreed. “I felt it, too.”
“I’ll be careful,” Brad promised as Grayson swung the Lincoln onto Willow Monroe’s quiet street in Forest Park.
“Yeah, careful as a bull in a china shop.”
XXX
Monroe didn’t answer the door until the fourth ring, just
long enough for Brad’s fingers to twitch toward the hilt of his .45.
When she did open the door, she looked like death warmed over. Because Brad was always looking, he could easily see she was normally a knockout. She was the sort who didn’t quite know it, and kept most of it hidden behind mousy hair, sad eyes, and clothes that were slightly too large for her small, tight body. But there was no mistaking the smooth roundness of her tits, the tiny waist that led to her tiny bubbled ass, or the legs that seemed to start in the earth’s sub-basement, then shoot up toward Saturn.
She looked nervous, maybe even terrified, but not at all surprised.
“Miss Monroe? I’m Agent Grayson and this is my partner Agent Hammer. We’re here investigating the death of Dr. Richard Madsen.”
Willow’s eyes widened, but not as much as they should have. Brad wondered if she’d been called by someone at Helix, unless her knowledge of the doctor’s death was first hand.
“Yes, I saw on the news,” she said, which explained why she wasn’t more shocked.
Damned reporters, robbing me of a chance to get a good read as I delivered the news!
Willow opened the door wider and ushered the agents inside.
Like at the lab, Brad thought there was some bullshit buried in Willow’s house, too. He saw three suitcases lined in a neat row beneath the window, the middle one bulging from the sides like it was pregnant with a sudden getaway.
Brad pretended not to notice. “We’ll be out of your hair in a second,” he smiled. “We just have a few questions we were hoping you could help us with. Specifically about the research Dr. Madsen was working on at Helix.”
Willow shook her head. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “But I can’t answer any questions about the work we do at Helix. I would love to, really, and will be happy to answer anything you ask if you can come back with a court order. But I’m bound by about 10 pounds worth of non-disclosure agreements. Everything in the lab is confidential. Until I see something in writing saying it’s okay for me to speak, I’m legally obligated not to.”
Grayson said, “Can you tell us why you left the company?”
Willow shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t say anything involving Helix without specific written consent, including why I left.”
They stayed for a few more minutes asking questions that led nowhere. Brad couldn’t shake the feeling that Willow was hot for him – like scorching. He wouldn’t say anything to Grayson since she would’ve thought it was his ego yelling like it always did, but there was something more and he could feel it. Sure, Brad thought most girls were hot for him because they usually were, but he could practically smell it on Willow Monroe. He would’ve bet a month’s pay that her slit was slick as a slip-n-slide, and had a sudden and surprisingly powerful urge to slip a trio of his fingers inside her to see.
But Brad ignored her sweet scent, handed her his card, then told her to call if she wanted to talk, or could think of anything that might help them in their investigation. She stared into his gray eyes with her brilliant green ones and said, “Of course, Agent Hammer.”
As their fingers touched and eyes locked, he felt that familiar spark. Not only was she hot for him. She was hungry.
XXX
Chapter Three – Willow Monroe
Willow closed the door, slamming her back against the cool wood, hoping the pair of agents didn’t hear the thud behind them. They were gone less than a minute when Willow shoved her right hand down her pants and started furiously rubbing herself in a frenzy.
Willow wasn’t wet, she was waterlogged.
She had a million other things to do, including planning the recovery of Richard’s briefcase. Followed by her necessary escape from Atlanta, if not humanity. And that was what she should have been doing, but the Red Breath was boiling inside her, and if there was a way to control the impulses that claimed your body once it was inside you, Willow had yet to find it.
Richard sure as hell hadn’t known.
Willow ran to the sofa and bent herself over the top, as if there was an invisible man behind her, pulled her pants down past her thighs and wiggled her ass until they fell to a puddle at her ankles. She shoved three fingers inside her, already cumming by the time she slammed her slit with her third thrust.
“OHMYFUCKINGLORD!!!”
Willow closed her eyes as tears painted both sides of her face. She kept fucking herself harder, adding a fourth finger as juices coated her inner thighs and dripped into a puddle on the floor. Her left hand was twisting her right nipple, as her right hand curled into her cunt, with her thumb pressing hard into her flesh. She eased it up from her cheek, then slipped it into her asshole.
Willow screamed like she was being murdered, chewing on her lip, and sloshing herself to one orgasm that fell into several. She pulled herself onto the couch, then with one leg on the floor and the other splayed across and over the other side in a V, she scraped her palm wildly across her pussy, rubbing her nub until she lost all control, shaking and sobbing and slapping her back against the leather until the Red Breath inside her finally settled.
Willow traced her swollen slit with her fingers as her body slowly stopped shaking, sending her into thoughts of the last two years with Dr. Richard Madsen and the development of Red Breath – the drug that had changed both of their lives and was destined to change the world.
Red Breath made Viagra look like a Tic-Tac, which was why Helix was pouring so much into its research, development, and top level secrecy. The only reason Madsen hadn’t ended up dead two years earlier was because no one knew what the good doctor was doing. But there was no doubt with anyone who had seen it – Dr. Madsen’s research would change the world more than anything since birth control in the 60’s. While the pill had led to the sexual revolution, Red Breath, delivered via cigarette, promised nothing short of an evolution.
Unfortunately, Red Bread didn’t yet work in reality like it did in theory. They were years from perfecting it, clinical trials, and likely a decade from getting it to market – and that was if everything was going right.
But things weren’t going right.
The problem wasn’t that the drug didn’t work. The problem was that the drug worked too well. Madsen had yet to find a way to dilute his results. In its current form, Red Breath completely consumed the user, taking over their body and mind, turning them into a sex machine.
Not only could the drug enable male users to experience multiple orgasms, Red Breath also released a pheromone which made them irresistible to the opposite sex. This meant users could not only live out their wildest fantasies, but could also get any woman around them to be an active, eager participant. There were ethical issues of whether the drug was the equivalent of a date rape-type drug. If a woman couldn’t resist, was she then being involuntarily forced into sex? There was no way the company would get approval on a drug like that.
They had yet to find a way to dilute the drug enough that it still delivered a rock hard erection and multiple orgasms, while curtailing a bit of its pheromone effects. Making men more attractive to women was acceptable. Making them truly irresistible was illegal. Willow suspected that the company’s reticence to release full-strength had less to do with morality than FDA regulations.
There was also a fear of what effect the drug had on women. There had been no human trials, but female chimpanzees and rats who’d taken the drug all died within less than 30 days of taking the drug. They had also grown sexually ravenous, and turned their sex into an almost parasitic function. Male chimps and rats who mated with females on Red Breath were essentially sucked dry of life, while the female became stronger.
Dr. Richard Madsen had been working on a fix.
It was six months ago when Richard thought he had finally found the solution. The newest strain of the drug was working 100% on male and female lab rats and chimpanzees, but Helix said they weren’t yet ready for human testing.
They weren’t, but Richard was.
Little did she know at the time, but h
e’d been using an older modified version of Red Breath on himself, and had been utilizing it’s powers of persuasion to convince her to experiment with him.
Willow had already said yes to Richard’s bedroom a year earlier, before he’d been using the drug. Her feelings for him were genuine, but she never would have agreed to unsanctioned testing of Red Breath on anyone, much less herself. Not if she were in her right mind.
But she hadn’t been. So she said yes.
At first it seemed as though Richard had found Heaven on Earth. On the surface, Red Breath worked like a charm. The two of them would fuck for what felt like days, slipping in and out of nirvana only as long as the reality of life required. It was utter bliss, until the Breath turned sour.
Two weeks ago, everything changed. Willow suddenly turned into a succubus, seemingly overnight; a monster with uncontrollable urges. Perhaps that’s what she had been ever since the first dose of Red Breath, but Richard was so well armored from his months of experimenting that she couldn’t harm him.
It wasn’t until they invited others to join them that the horror was unleashed.
The doctor brought home a couple for them to play with, a beautiful set of upper-crust socialites from Buckhead. Part of Red Breath’s beauty was the way it gave its users the ability to persuade others to do their bidding. Because sex was always on at least part of everyone’s mind, it was easy to use it to get what you wanted. The doctor hadn’t paid for a single thing in months. After a long night partying at the XO Bar, the doctor suggested they return to his house and enjoy each other’s company.
They did, a little too much.
Willow had never fucked or been fucked so hard in her life. The rush was electric in her veins and her brain. She’d never felt so alive as when she inhaled their lifeforces through her skin and mouth. And then when she came down from the euphoria, she realized she was lying next to two corpses.
Richard stared at her in horror.
Fifty Shades of Lexi Maxxwell Page 47