Shock Therapy, page 22
Matt, Suz, Damian and me had been added to the list of those who’d be fortunate enough to be in the presence of Desideria’s guests, there to stud the international assembly of power brokers with pretty faces and bodies to look at and pick from if they were so inclined.
The rest of our teams were coming through far stealthier methods, closing in on the estate from all sides, with the vineyards for cover. We’d work the inside while they cleaned up the outside until our tactics converged for the showdown.
To get to this point, we’d had our manufactured identities checked by every attending bigshot’s intelligence machine. We’d passed their microscopic scrutiny, thanks to a combination of Sir Ashton’s and Desideria’s influence and Damian and Rafael forgeries. They’d found every evidence to our characters’ existence, documented by everything from papers, witness reports to amazingly doctored videos of those characters’ notorious exploits in the world of so-called classy pornography.
To their sure knowledge now, Damian and Matt were two of Desideria’s boy toys. Damian was supposed to be her favorite. He was called simply Jerard, her ‘nephew’, a not-really-disguised euphemism for her younger stud. Suz and me were the prerequisite female decoys to appease public considerations and Desideria’s husband’s dignity. Not that the guy cared for real what his wife did when he wasn’t around.
She’d insisted that they kept their residences separate to keep domestic shadows away from their passionate relation. With him totally under her spell and knowing that she was no gold digger with a wealth rivaling his own, he’d been far more than satisfied with the arrangement. That people whispered to him she was keeping a menagerie of young lovers didn’t seem to worry or faze him. As long as she remained in his life, as long as he was a recipient of all that sexual expertise those young studs kept honed, he was content.
We’d just passed every security check. Not that anyone could have found my hidden weapons. To do that they would have had to strip me down beyond my platform sandals, huge jewelry and mid-back-length platinum blonde wig, then take those apart. I was half-naked already in the dress Damian had bought for me.
It was reminiscent of a belly dancing costume, with a bra fully embroidered with multi-colored silk-thread patterns, sequins and pearls that cupped my breasts into an ample cleavage with nothing to connect it to a very low-fitting echoing hip wrap but sheer and similarly embellished skin-tone elastic chiffon before flowing into a multi-layered skirt slit from all sides so that my thighs showed all the way up to my G-string with every step. The security people didn’t see where I could be hiding anything. Not that they’d let me pass without a very thorough frisking. I’d had to endure a few hard-ons pressed to various parts of my anatomy in their pursuit of thoroughness.
Damian had sauntered after me, overpowering in a tuxedo and truly unrecognizable now with the addition of a different nose and front teeth, a what-me-worry expression all over his face and body language. Yeah, right. I had a feeling those men who’d manhandled me would be singled out for a very specific kind of male punishment later on.
Just as we passed the huge double doors into the mansion, we saw Desideria hurrying towards us from the ballroom’s door where she’d been receiving her guests. She passed by us, magical in a classical turquoise satin ballroom dress with fitted bodice and a flaring skirt, wafting an illusive scent I was sure contained an aphrodisiac. She made a point of caressing Damian’s cheek on her out.
She hurried towards a stocky man whom I recognized as her husband, Josiah Henderson
So—arriving even later than most of the guests, huh? He really didn’t have any special status around Desideria’s place. She hadn’t asked him to be around with her as she received her guests. This was her ball and he was just another hard-hitting tycoon on her list. And the financier/actuator of so many favors his lady’s guests coveted.
In seconds she was escorting him inside, her arm in his, her lips to his ear. I could see her hypnosis working as they neared us. By the time he was two feet away, his dark, vicious eyes were glazing over and his full, purple lips sagging into a foolish grin. From his weakness for Desideria you wouldn’t guess he destroyed people on auto, and relished it. Up close I saw what his photos hadn’t transmitted, the constitution of a bull and the temperament of a rabid dog. I now did believe Desideria was entrapping men like him for Damian to destroy.
She gave him a sensuous push towards us. “Querido, I want you to meet, Jerard, my nephew, and Serena, my niece.”
Henderson blinked up at Damian then down at me. I met his eyes two inches below my boosted to five-foot ten height. I flashed him a coy smile, but it was Damian’s reaction that should have been caught on video to be analyzed and taught to undercover agents of all times. He tucked his hair behind one ear, caught his lower lip between his teeth, leaned forward and shook Henderson’s hand, his eyes heavy with sexual intimidation.
God, these two were playing the guy! The invitation to threesomes, or even foursomes if you considered my presence, was loud and clear. And boy, was Henderson interested. And not a little shaken. He might pay for his kink all the time, but he dripped sexual insecurity by the gallon. It was also clear it was the first time he’d questioned his orientation. There was no doubt in his mind which role he’d play with Damian in the equation and his excitement about his prospective one shook him. It was fun watching him coming to grips with another level of depravity between mother and son’s overpowering sexuality.
Desideria decided his exposure had reached the correct dose and took him away from us. He kept turning around to snatch defiling looks at me and greedy, disturbed looks at Damian.
With our roles further cemented, we sauntered behind them into a ballroom out of Hollywood’s golden-era movies. The tide of affluence and luxury rose to an all time high as we passed between throngs of chatting world shapers. They were relaxed in the milieu where they negotiated mutually beneficial manipulation and destruction with allies and adversaries over circulating champagne and canapés. Their paid escorts were hanging on their arms and onto their every whim. Desideria had really gathered a stunning array of those.
They were a problem. But they weren’t only needed, they were expected. And then we’d already decided how to remove them to safety before we started our incursion.
I leaned into Damian, giving every onlooker a better cleavage view. “You know you’re so good it’s scary?”
He looked around, his game face in place, emanating open-to-the-highest-bidder sensuality. “You’re not bad yourself. How about we earn our keep? Give the good folks here a preview?”
I misunderstood him on purpose. “I don’t have lines with you, but an audience? Now if Desideria gives us this ballroom later, I have many uses for everything here. These floors, this piano, this chandelier…”
“The chandelier, eh? I’m holding you to this. But it will have to be another chandelier in another place.” Yeah. It would have to be. If our plan worked. “As for now, how about a dance?”
I focused on the music flowing from the twenty-four-piece orchestra, wrinkled my nose. “I wouldn’t know how to samba to save my life, darling.”
“That’s rumba, mi amor. You hear the suggestive tune and languid rhythm? Very different from a flirty, bouncy samba.”
“Sorry, tone deaf here. Latin music sounds the same to me.”
“I knew I’d missed something in your training. Your next intensive course will be the appreciation of all things Latin. For now all you have to do is give me slow, provocative hip motion. Think along the lines of what you did to me last night.”
Memories lurched inside me. “Oh, that I can do.” My blood rushed to meet his hands as he swept me into the opening steps of a dance that made dirty dancing look prissy.
For the next ten minutes we put on a performance for the increasingly appreciative crowd, spreading come-hithers as we took stock of our targets’ positions. The bastards were behaving as if they’d never been in each other’s presence before. Good.
As the music changed to a smoochy waltz, and yeah, I knew what this one was, I saw Sir Ashton strolling towards us with all the dignified grace of his title. He patted Damian on the shoulder. Damian turned to him with another suggestive glance and bow, and handed me over to him.
“Quite a show, my dear.” He smiled at me as we fell into the one-two-three rhythm. “You have captured many an eye.”
“Really?” I pretended to sway into him, offering what I’d been promising any serious bidder during my dance with Damian. “Care to introduce me to the most interested parties?”
“With pleasure.” He went on dancing until the end of the current dance, then led me from the dance floor towards a circle of men with one of our targets in the middle, Mukasa Mutima, a former Ugandan despot and a current weapons’ trafficker and the engineer of most African genocides in the past twenty years.
“Gentlemen, let me introduce my delightful dancing partner and as she tells me, our hostess’s niece, Serena Chadwick. She let me know she’d be delighted to meet you.”
“Gentlemen.” I fluttered my false lashes. “Sir Ashton is too kind to introduce me to you. My aunt sure knows how to gather la crème de la crème in her balls and I’m so excited that she let me attend.” I swayed a bit to the picking up rhythm of slow rock number. “Isn’t the music divine?”
“It ain’t the music thass divine Miz Chadwick.” That was the Texan, Dewar Hopkins, illegal immigrant importer and enslaver extraordinaire.
“That’s just too gallant of you, sir.” I turned to the leering Ugandan hulk. “Isn’t he just?”
“Name your price, woman.”
His gruff proposition surprised even me. Didn’t believe in wasting time, huh? I guessed not. He snapped his servants’ necks for being minutes late with his food.
I let out a tinkling laugh. “Why, sir, that just has to be the most flattering offer I ever had. How about we go over to the dance floor and discuss it further?”
The other men’s expressions ranged from amused to resigned to chagrined that the one who’d cut to the most offensive offer got the prize. The colossus let me tow him behind me, his simian, baseball mitts-sized hands already feeling up the merchandise. I met Damian’s eyes across the room. He was being almost as mauled by one of the few female guests present. Our gazes meshed on anticipation of what would befall my molester.
I dragged the man’s hands’ off my buttocks and around my waist, forced him by my determined undulations to shuffle around the floor with me. He cut to the chase again. “I want to acquire you for my harem. Are you a real blonde?”
“And what if I’m not?”
“The price I’m willing to pay goes down.”
My smile was so bright he blinked. “I got good news and bad news. The good news is I’m as real a blonde as they get. The bad news is I don’t take money. I deal only in assets. The other piece of bad news is, I don’t do harems. I’m independent, and time-dependent. We draw up a finite contract and we conduct our business on neutral grounds.”
Rage expanded his frame even more. “Insolent little whore. I can have you killed for that much alone.”
“Oh, you won’t. I’m worth every discomfort you’ll endure to assure my services and welfare, Mr. Mutima. Every. Last. One.”
Something horrific rattled in the man’s yellowed, soulless eyes. He was already planning how to use, abuse then snuff me. But for now, he was interested enough to play along.
I wasn’t sure that I could anymore. I wanted to snuff him, right now. It would be such an unfitting price for all the atrocities he’d relished in committing in the course of his unnatural life.
As if in answer to my seething, the sign came.
The wireless transceiver glued to my mastoid bone behind my ear buzzed its message. The others had dealt with all security personnel outside the ballroom. All who remained were inside it. There were thirty-nine armed men interspersed all around.
I gave Desideria our prearranged signal and she walked up to the orchestra. Immediately, an arpeggio heralded the transition from the mellow waltz to a pulsing-beat number and the many escorts provided for the single, or at least present alone men, jumped into uninhibited dancing. Whooping in simulated glee, I did, too. Still intrigued and needing to close our deal, my dancing partner tried to keep up with me.
In two minutes, the child-eating, out-of-shape gorilla of a man, with profuse apologies to gorillas for the analogy, was panting and wheezing. And I made my move.
Pretending to wrack my hair in abandon, I produced a dart from my wig, loaded with triple the deadly dose of potassium cyanide. Just what this doctor ordered with him being triple the size of a normal human being. The dosage was in mg/kg.
Hiding it between my fingers, I threw my hands over his neck and pumped it right into his carotid.
His eyes widened the second the dart pierced his hide, the realization in their hideous depths instantaneous. I smiled at him. So was my poison.
“Just a little something, for everyone you mutilated and massacred.” I hissed my taunt right in his ear. “It’ll be a minute before you lose consciousness. Though with you being an oxygen-deprived boar already, I’d say thirty seconds. But don’t think you’ll get off easy with a nice, painless instant death. I’m happy to say cyanide-poisoning victims have ultra vivid and harrowing deaths. Those seconds will feel like thirty years.”
I could just ‘see’ what the poison was doing to him on the cellular level, stopping oxidative metabolism and oxygen utilization, suffocating him cell by cell.
His repulsive flesh shuddered under my hands in an amalgam of outrage and disbelief. That man had lived his vicious life thinking death was something that he dealt other people.
I threw my arms around him, kept shaking him around. “Right this second you’re getting dizzy, you’re already struggling for air. Severe arrhythmia and unconsciousness will complete the clinical picture of the massive myocardial infarction I want to simulate. Minutes later I’ll be watching you convulsing and dying. My only regret here is that it’s too merciful a death for you. But needs must. The irony gods decreed I need your death quick and clean. The things I could have done to you otherwise…”
He was twitching now. He already knew that whatever happened now, he was dead.
He opened his mouth and a gutted gorilla’s roar issued from him. Son of a bitch. I hadn’t thought he’d be able to issue another sound. Must be his demon protesting its imminent exorcism. Thankfully, the others close enough to hear him over the frantic music thought he was joining in in the abandon. That was until he swayed, bumped into other dancers right and left, garnering glares proclaiming him a drunk ape.
I pretended to be dancing a frenzy, watched him dying on his feet through half-closed eyes. At the end of the minute, his massive thighs gnarled over each other as he made another stuck-boar noise, half swung over his axis then collapsed. The ground beneath my feet shuddered.
His fall brought his guards rushing towards us. As they descended on him, more and more people noticed the fallen behemoth in the middle of the packed dance floor and a commotion occurred. Still, it was more curious and amused than anything, everyone reaching the same conclusion I’d meant them to reach.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I exclaimed for all to hear, my hands digging into the back of my wig in pretense agitation, extracting more darts, preparing my next strikes. “I didn’t mean to tire him out this way.” I leaned over the two guards, almost spilling my breasts in one’s face as he looked up at me, eyeing that lovely gun he was packing. “Will he be OK?”
I placed a hand on each guard’s shoulder. The others would be in similar positions, about to take three or more guards down, confiscate their weapons. The moment we did I’d give the signal to the others outside and they would…
Suddenly, the double doors of the ballroom crashed back on their hinges.
They smashed into the walls with a bang so thunderous it brought the music and chatter to a sputtering halt. Every eye in the ballroom snapped towards the source of the boom. And I saw him. A bloody man standing framed in the doorway.
Oh, God—no. This was it—the glitch that would bring down everything.
NINETEEN
EVERYTHING FROZE as if someone had hit the pause button on a DVD. And I knew. I had a second. No more. Use it. Do it.
I did, injected the two guards at my side with the darts as the man at the door fell down like a cut-down tree, slamming face-first on the hardwood floor, spattering blood all over those nearest to him. I lunged to grab the guards’ guns—but I was too late.
The eerie silence exploded on pandemonium. A ram from behind sent me flying over the two dying guards. I impacted the floor cheek-first next to my first suffocating victim. My eyes defocused on his still open eyes, on the malice that overrode even the panic. Had time for this even now? He’d probably had his monster trapped and not vice versa.
I tried to push to my feet and was knocked down again and again in the stampede towards the French windows leading to the gigantic terrace and gardens. Hard-soled shoes tread on my legs and hands and back, kicked me in the head. Shouts and screams and gunfire ricocheted in my battered skull. Among those running over me, I recognized guards rushing to their employers, yelling on their communicators to their teams on the outside. I couldn’t see Damian. Or any of the others. It was all going wrong.
Then it got worse.
Three guards pounced on me, dragged me to my feet. I saw most of the escorts meeting the same fate. It was only logical to consider us the most probable source of betrayal. Then people were pouring back into the ballroom in a piercing riot, their panic clotting the air. Our team must have fired at them to herd them back inside. They knew we’d lost the stealth factor.
God—what was keeping them from initiating step two?
