It didn’t help, too, that she
carried a CD in her purse that had resulted in a man being killed, a coworker
at Mercy Hospital being bound and gagged, or Susan herself and a mysterious
government agent being tied up and left to die amid the burning timbers of her
own home. The feeling that at any
moment someone was going to jump out and grab her kept gnawing at Susan. She knew she was drawing attention to
herself with each wary glance she made around her, but she couldn’t help
it. Still, it was important for the
safety of the world that no one get hold of that CD, particularly the shady
characters she had met so far.
Arriving at the Towne Square Mall,
a multi-level urban shopping mall that was, for now, the chic place to shop for
low income and high-income shoppers alike, Susan headed for the entrance. Just before she went in, she cast a glance
back behind her. Nothing unusual was there. So why couldn’t she shake this feeling?
“This whole business has made you
paranoid,” Susan thought to herself.
Still, the sooner she could be rid
of this disk, the better she’d feel.
The mall had two corridors at the approximate midpoint. One led to a set of restrooms, while the
other contained a block of pay lockers for the use of the shoppers. Susan headed for the lockers. Glancing nervously over her shoulder, she
opened the nearest unused locker and placed the CD, still in her CD player, in the
locker. Dropping a quarter in the slot,
she closed the door and removed the key.
A tired sigh escaped her chest.
It was if she had locked her nervous, ill-at-ease demeanor in the locker
with the CD player. Susan tossed the
key in the air, caught it with an exaggerated swing of her arm and popped it
into her purse.
“Now let’s see about replenishing
my wardrobe,” she said to herself.
Marie hung limply from her wrists,
as she had since roughly midnight. Her
shapely body, clothed only in the shadows of the basement, was still stretched
to its furthest length by the metal weights tied to her ankles. There was no resistance. There was no struggle. Li had to look closely to detect a sign of
life, that being the faint rise and fall of her ribcage under the melon-like
breasts.
The robustness of Marie’s figure
intrigued Li. Li had always been a
small, slim woman and, though it had never been a hindrance during her thirty
years as a Chinese espionage agent, the robust figures of western women had
always intrigued her. Their big breasts
and big hips seemed more of a hindrance than anything else, but she had noticed
the way western and some eastern men looked at them. Of course such attributes probably made them very desirable in
childbearing and rearing. Still, China
had more people than they knew what to do with and most of them had been born
to small women like her.
“Mmmmfff,” groaned the
prisoner. She had raised her heavy
eyelids enough to see there was someone with her and was now begging for
release.
Li wanted to let her down. Xia had been unnecessarily cruel in ordering
the French woman hang there until she died.
There was no justification for it.
The prisoner had only been a competitor for a prize. She had done nothing so terrible that it
warranted such a torturous death. Xia
had let her temper and her blind patriotic zeal get the better of her
judgment. Had it been up to Li, this
woman would have gotten a quick bullet to the brain and be gone. It would be less torture for her and less
risk to the network China had set up here in America.
Xia was good and showed even more
promise as an agent, but her pride and her temper were potentially fatal flaws. Regardless of how this mission came out, Li
planned to report her feelings to their superior. It may throw her into political disfavor, but she felt it was
something she needed to do to prevent a catastrophe down the road.
“Mmmmfff,” Marie pleaded through
the tape plastered over her mouth. Li
steeled herself against it. She had
seen so much pain and suffering in her career.
She had even inflicted her share.
She could ignore a little more.
Xia was in charge of this mission and she would follow orders.
The barest of warnings came too
late for the small Chinese woman. She
turned around just in time to see a tall, handsome western man with graying
temples bring a metal rod across her in a vicious whipping stroke. Li crumpled and fell.
Marie couldn’t believe it to be
true. After all she had suffered, after
all the pain she had endured, was salvation finally at hand? Was that really Armand kneeling over her
jailer, binding the woman’s hands behind her, or was she suffering some
delusion induced by pain and deprivation?
She wanted to struggle, to shrug off the ropes holding her and run to
him, but she was too drained to move.
She watched him finish with the woman’s wrists then move to a roll of
tape and pull a strip over the woman’s mouth.
He didn’t seem concerned with whether she could get loose, only in
hampering her long enough to accomplish his mission. But was it all real?
“Mmmmff!” Marie begged, praying the
sight was real and would answer.
“{Patience, my petite},” Armand
replied as he finished gagging Li. He
immediately moved to her and produced a utility knife to cut the ropes holding
the metal weights to her ankles. “{We
can both consider it fortunate I was able to find you as quickly as I did}.”
The weights fell away and Marie
sagged noticeably. Pressing up behind
her, Armand wrapped one arm around her waist to cradle her while the other cut
the rope holding her to the rafter. The
rope parted and Marie oozed into his arms.
Armand gently cradled her to the floor.
“{I see they have been none too
gentle with you, my dear},” he commented as he pulled the tape from her mouth.
“{It was horrible, Armand}!” sobbed
Marie. “{They tortured me! They left me to die! They were brutal—inhuman}!”
“{There, there, you are safe now},”
he cooed in her ear as he stroked her forehead. “Do you recall how many there were besides this one?”
“{Two more},” Marie replied
softly. “{A young man, deferential,
easily dominated, and a woman. She is
the leader}.” Marie’s face twisted in
cold fury. “{She did this to me. The bitch is a cold, cruel monster! Armand, if I ever meet her again I will not
rest until she is broken and flayed at my feet}!”
“{Yes, a battle for another
day. At this time, though, I think we
should leave as quickly as we can. I do
not like the odds at the moment}.”
“{Not yet}!” Marie cried. “{Hang this cow by her heels}!” and she
pointed weakly at Li. “{Let her dangle
as she let me dangle}!”
“{Petite, this will not accomplish
anything positive},” Armand replied.
“{Please, Armand! You must do this for me! You must give me some small crumb of revenge
against these devils! Please}!”
Armand sighed helplessly. Although he was the mentor and she the
pupil, when she pleaded like this with her soulful eyes and that mouth he would
give anything to kiss, his better judgment strayed. Easing the rapidly tiring woman down, Armand turned to the
helpless Li. Her ankles and knees were
bound, as were her elbows. Rope was
drawn across her chest, then criss-crossed down her body to her ankles. Armand worked fast and he worked sloppy
because he wanted to finish and leave.
Using more energy than he would have in the past, he hoisted Li into the
air until she dangled by her ankles from the rafter, her head inches from the
cement floor. He tied the rope off,
then walked over to Marie and gently scooped her up in his arms.
“{Are you satisfied now, my
petite}?” he asked.
“{Yes},” she cooed, resting her
head against his chest. “{When I am
stronger},” she gasped faintly, “{I will reward you in the special way I
have. You are so very good to me,
Armand}.”
“{I know},” Armand replied as he
carried her up the stairs.
“What do you have for me?” Angela
said.
“Positive ID on the John Doe that
passed the CD off,” Jack told her. “You
ever hear of a Dr. Karl Dressendorfer?”
“Should I have?”
“He’s some hotshot genetic
scientist,” Jack told her.
“Tennison/Yount’s got him set up over at the university in a research
lab.”
“Don’t they make drugs?”
“Drugs are just one part of their
business. They’re into anything
connected with medicine or human physiology.”
“And Dressendorfer’s a big shot
geneticist who gets shot up and passes a CD to a stranger before he dies,”Angela
mused.
“What do you suppose is on that
disk?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it is,
it’s hot,” Angela said. “I think I’m
not the only one tailing Miss Hitchcock.
I’ve caught sight of a Chinese woman.
I’ll try to make her when I get back.”
“What’s our nurse doing, Angie?”
“Shopping,” Angela replied, “and
she had boring taste in clothes. Whoop,
got to go. Our nurse is moving.”
“A dolphin!” Shondra thought.
Mimicking the swimming motion of a
dolphin, Shondra halted her descent at ten feet and began slowly propelling
herself to the ladder.
“This would be easier if I had swim
fins on,” thought Shondra. “It’d be
even easier if I wasn’t tied up!”
Going was slow as Shondra only had
her feet and the thrashing of her bound legs to displace water and propel her
forward. The ladder seemed miles
away. For a brief moment the thought
crossed her mind that she would run out of air before she reached it. That in mind, Shondra altered her course
slightly, flipping over onto her back as she neared the surface. Her face broke the surface of the water and
she sucked as much air as she could into her nose before lack of momentum
dragged her below.
Pivoting in the water, Shondra
kicked herself forward and continued on until she reached the ladder. She grasped a rung with her bound hands
until she could get a foothold, then pushed herself up until she could grasp
the next highest rung. This was slow
work, too, and after a while she could feel the stale air beginning to burn in
her chest. Whipping herself on, Shondra
continued to climb the ladder. With her
chest feeling like it would explode, Shondra’s face broke the surface again and
she inhaled as much as her lungs would hold.
Her heels perched on the ladder, Shondra rested for a few moments.
“This water has taken some of the
stiffness out of this rope,” Shondra thought as she tested her bonds. It’s lubricating my skin, too. If I can catch a break, I might be able to
stretch this rope enough to slip it.”
Shondra strained against the ropes
binding her wrists until her muscles could strain no longer, then rested a few
moments before trying again. Over and
over she would pull at the cord, then spend a few minutes trying to wriggle her
hand out of the loops.
“Come on,” she thought to whatever
power governed fate and luck. “You owe
me this. Do it for Shondra. You owe me, damn it!”
“{What did you find out}?” Xia
asked as they walked up to the house.
“{The American agent does not have
the disk. She thought it was in the
possession of the French woman. I
ascertained this and then eliminated her}.”
“{One less obstacle in our path},”
commented Xia. “{Very good}.”
“{And the nurse}?”
“{I observed her. I am convinced she has the disk. It has not been turned over to the
police. The American agent didn’t have
it. The French whore didn’t have it. The German doctor had it when he was
shot. There are no other players
involved. Besides, the nurse moves as
if she is hiding something}.”
They entered the house. Li was not there to greet them.
“Li!” Xia called out.
Getting no answer, Xia and Huan
immediately drew their guns. She
directed Huan to the second floor while she searched the first. Neither agent found any sign of anyone. They converged at the basement steps. Xia silently directed them down. Stepping cautiously, back to back so as to
negate their blind sides. They reached
the bottom of the stairs and surveyed the gloom. Just then, mrrfing sounds were heard from where they had left
Marie.
Huan started forward, but Xia
seized his shoulder and stopped him.
They ventured in slowly, carefully, their backs to the room already
surveyed, their senses alive for any sign of trouble. Huan reacted in surprise upon seeing Li dangling from her ankles,
a spattering of blood beneath her. This
time he sprang forward before Xia could stop him, so she contented herself with
a final sweep of the shadows in search of an ambush. By the time she was satisfied they were safe, Huan had already
cut the older woman down.
“{You let her escape},” growled Xia
with unconcealed disgust.
“{How}?” gasped Huan, trying to
stop the bleeding from a gash at the back of Li’s neck. “{How could she have gotten loose}?”
“{She had help, no doubt. I would guess the older man we left in the
hotel room. They are partners and
apparently she has managed to inspire some sort of loyalty in him}.” Xia scowled. “{Lust driven, I would guess}.”
She sighed in frustration. “{No
matter. They are gone, but they do not
have the disk and they are probably not in any condition to make another
attempt anytime soon. With the American
agent neutralized as well, our path is clear.
However, we must strike quickly while the path is clear. And we cannot strike from this house. It has been compromised}.”
Xia paced like a caged tiger,
oblivious to the suffering of Li.
Finally she came to a decision.
“{You will call medical branch},”
Xia told Huan, “{and arrange for Li’s treatment, then notify home office of the
breach at this house. I will arrange
for a new place to operate from}.”
“{And then}?” Huan asked.
“{And then we will set up a barter
between us and this nurse for the CD.
She will gladly hand it over to us, and if she does not, she will pay
the penalty}.”
“{What do we have to barter
with? What do we have that an American
nurse would want? Do you intend to buy
the CD from her}?”
“{We will have something much more
valuable to her than money},” Xia said with a malicious smile. “{Were you aware that the nurse has a sister}?”