Kara Leigh dashed around the mental hospital, desperately trying to find a way out. Her chances of escape were slim; she was bound in a tight straitjacket that made every door a dead end. All she wore was the straitjacket and slippers, nothing else. She ignored the crotch strap rubbing against her unprotected private as she raced through the hall.
Tonight was her best chance of escape. The main orderly was a little weasel by the name of Ted. Ted was only about 5´7, and resembled a pale, drowned rat. Even with her arms bound, the 5´9 former track athlete and amateur kick boxer dispatched him with a pair of vicious kicks to the head as he came to drug her for the night.
Now, she was ramming into doors, trying to get free before one of the more sturdy orderlies got a hold of her.
“Where are you going Ms. Leigh?’ someone asked behind Kara as she tried to decide which sterile white hall to go down.
Kara spun, greeted by the head night nurse, Dorothy. Dorothy was a short chubby woman with boyishly cut grey hair and cruel blue eyes. She was the most vicious of the staff that held Kara here, and that was saying something.
“Getting some exercise, old lady,’ Kara snarled as she tried to catch her breath.
Dorothy didn´t reply, just looking over the delicious Kara. Kara´s blonde hair was captured in a tight ponytail, revealing refined features and big green eyes that displayed a fear that contradicted her angry tone. Her legs were tan and fabulously muscled, glistening with sweat that made Dorothy´s heart beat faster.
Kara began to back away under Dorothy´s intense gaze, struggling against the nearly skintight straitjacket. She looked down both hallways and saw nothing which gave her hope. She was about to just chose one and go when strong arms wrapped her up from behind.
“Calm down, Ms Leigh, everything is going to be okay,’ a familiar, soothing voice said in her ear. It was Warren, the head orderly and a monster of a man. He easily controlled her upper body and withstood her desperate kicks. As Dorothy approached her with a smug grin on her face and a syringe in her right hand, Warren massaged Kara´s breasts and whispered in her ear.
“You´re not going to get away with this, you perverts!’ she yelled, fighting back sobs as she felt Dorothy´s needle prick her muscular thigh.
“Its okay, Kara, we are going to take good care of you,’ Warren said, as if he was talking to a little child. “When you wake up, you will feel much better.’
Kara was already succumbing to the drug, her frantic struggles dying down rapidly. When he was sure she was out, he flung her over his shoulder, his hand caressing her hard, tan ass.
“I knew that shit Ted wouldn´t be able to handle a quality product like this,’ Warren said, giving Kara´s ass a hard slap. “We should have just left him to care for the street rats that we pick up to meet quotas. It´s hard enough getting a sweet peach like this without him screwing it up.’
“Dr. Pace wanted the others for a big acquisition tonight, and with you busy, he had to rely on Ted,’ Dorothy said, a little defensive, as they walked back to Kara´s cell.
Ted still lay on the floor, his nose bleeding and his mouth open to reveal a couple of missing teeth. Warren flung Kara onto the cot in her cell and dragged Ted out. He thought about disposing of the little idiot, but the argument with Pace afterwards wouldn´t be worth it, so he walked down the hall to the service closet, and pulled a couple of things out.
“Regardless of Ted´s idiocy, we need to teach little Kara that we are in charge here, and defying us has consequences,’ he told Dorothy as he reentered the cell.
Dorothy grinned as he handed her a vibrator and he kept a thick, padded blindfold and a padded gag with a ball on the inside. The two went to work, Dorothy strapping the vibrator deep inside Kara, while Warren blindfolded and gagged her.
“Here,’ Dorothy said, producing a pair of earplugs out of her pocket. Warren put them firmly in Kara´s ears and the two left the cell, locking a helpless Kara in behind them.
Ted was slowly stirring on the floor, whimpering and moaning as he came to his senses.
“Get up, asshole,’ Warren said, kicking Ted harshly. “We may have to do some processing tonight, and I am really struggling to find reasons not to kill your ass for almost losing one of our best products tonight, so get up and come with me to wait for the others.´
Ted sobbed, but got to his feet and trailed after Warren, frightened but excited to see what the boys would bring in tonight.
Nothing.
Oscar was Warren´s second in command, and the best acquisitions officer working for the Pace operation. He had captured Kara Leigh, turning a night of clubbing into captivity for the Amazonian beauty. Tonight had started off well; he set his sights on a pair of brunette ex-cheerleaders enjoying their first year in college. Both were fit, tan, and surprisingly bright, perfect for his purposes.
So with the help of Tony and Eugene, basically a pair of walking muscle piles, he had isolated and gotten the two cheerleaders out of the club and to his car. He and Tony chatted the girls up; Eugene got the drugs and restraints ready.
Everything was going great, the girls were into them, no one was around or noticed they were gone, and getting the women into the car was a foregone conclusion.
Until they reached the car, that´s when the whole thing had fallen apart. Eugene was there, but not in the car, preparing to subdue the two women, instead he was outside of the black Lincoln town car, transfixed by the figure standing on top of the car, looking down on him with cold hatred.
The girls squealed, Tony reached for his weapon under his jacket and was rewarded with a bullet right in the center of his forehead. Before he hit the ground, the girls were running away, screaming like mad. Oscar didn´t even bother to chase them because bringing in any women tonight was out of the question, only survival was possible.
The figure on the roof was female; sleek, athletic and elegant. She had long brown hair and cool green eyes that stood out even in the night. She wore an all black suit and a necklace with an odd symbol on it. A mask covered the upper portion of her face; her full lips were set in a hard line. In each hand was an automatic pistol, he couldn´t make out which kind.
This was the 7th Street Angel, the knight of death.
She had appeared over a year ago; from where and why she had taken up her guns were mysteries that tabloids love to speculate over. Her first targets were a local gang called the Tuesday Blackhawks; none of the members survived her wrath, and 7th Street was one of the quietest areas in the city now. After the destruction of the Blackhawks, she disappeared for a few months before beginning to operate all over the city. No one was safe from her vigilante justice.
“I know what you are and what you do,’ she said, in a throaty voice. “Tell me the nature of your operation and the scope and I will let you live, otherwise, tonight you die.’
Oscar said nothing, amazed she spoke. Eugene whimpered, turning to run. He did not get five steps away before two bullets ripped through his calves. Oscar drew his gun faster than he though possible and fired. She flipped through the air; upside down she pointed her two gleaming pistols at him and fired.
He did not hear the guns fire, only saw the muzzle flash. He felt the bullets tear through him and the pain smothered his mind in black. He collapsed to the ground, his mind unable to deal with the pain.
When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the Angel; she stood over him with the barrel of the gun pointed at him.
“I will find the women you have taken; and your partners will join you in hell,’ she said, her voice frighteningly emotionless. “I am justice and the women you have harmed will be answered for. Your blood is just the first.’
She squeezed the trigger, and the flash guided him to oblivion.
“His name was Oscar West, he seemed to be unemployed but the car and the money in his wallet suggest otherwise. The two girls he was with, a pair of college girls named Cindy and Sara said they seemed like good guys; they said when they got outside a woman in all black with two guns was waiting for them. After she killed one of them, a guy named Tony Horner, they fled. Cops were called but by the time they got there the other guy Eugene was dead and Oscar´s head was spaghetti.’
Jacinda Hill looked up from her notebook and stared out at her team. All the members were studiously scribbling down notes, with the exception of Sergeant Finley Ericsson, who yawned into her cup of coffee and appeared generally disinterested. Jacinda fought a sigh, sometimes Finley made her so crazy. The slim, sinewy brunette with the boyish hair cut and barely contained energy was one of the best when pointed in a direction and told to act, but all the other times she could try a saint´s patience.
“So this is about the 7th Street Angel?’ Marcus Funangi asked, looking up from his notes.
Jacinda´s mood further soured at the mention of that name. There was nothing angelic about brutally murdering people, even criminals. This past year had seen numerous dead bodies all credited to the so-called Angel.
“No,’ Jacinda said. “At least, not just her. We found drugs and bondage gear in the car. We believe that the men were planning to kidnap the women for some reason.’
“Does this have to do with the Kara Leigh case?’ Rachel McQueen asked. Rachel was the embodiment of the surfer blonde. A lean, sun bronzed goddess with shining blue eyes and glowing blonde hair. She also happened to be the most deadly person Jacinda knew; with a gun in her hand she was frightening, without one she was merely terrifying.
“Maybe, we´re not sure, it fits what the investigators pieced together before the trail got cold,’ Jacinda said.
“So why us?’ Finley asked, barely containing her boredom.
“Because we are the Mayor´s personal task force; designed to deal with city wide problems that don´t fit into any single category. Kidnapped women and killer vigilantes fit that description I think. Do you agree, Sergeant?’ Jacinda asked with a tight grin on her face. She did this with Finley at least once a week.
Finley nodded, blushing and sitting up straight.
They were the New Athens Special Operations Task Force. They were called The Shooters by the media and the rest of the police force, because they had a tendency to get into gun battles with the more bizarre elements of the city. The team had seven members; all women except Marcus. They were nationally renowned for their success rate and handling the high profile that came with the job.
“So what is the breakdown?’ Marcus asked, smiling.
“Alex and Monica are at the coroner´s getting details on the victims to find out what they were doing and who they were doing it for. Natalie is going through every database in the country trying to track all three men and see what we can dig up on them. Marcus, you and Rachel go see if you can get anything on the car and the drugs, maybe even the bondage gear. Finley, we´re going clubbing.’
Everyone got up and started going about their assigned tasks. Watching them leave, Jacinda felt confident that this would be the end of the road for the 7th Street Angel, and that whatever those men were into, it was big and they were going to bring it down. She smiled at Finley as the two of the walked out of the conference room. She had a good feeling that her team was perfectly equipped to deal with this case.
Unfortunately, she was right, but not in the way she thought, or any way she would ever have thought, not in a million years.
“So what happened?’ Dr. Thurmond Pace asked for the thousandth time.
“I don´t know, I was here cleaning up after the moron Ted,’ Warren said, with more patience than he thought he had in him. “The 7th Street Angel is onto us and now the Mayor´s personal task force is after her and us. That has to be one of the greatest one night clusterfucks in history.’
Dr. Pace glared at him as he ran his hand through his thinning brown hair and adjusted his glasses. Their operation was supposed to be so far below the radar that someone like the Angel wouldn´t notice. They dodged a bullet when Oscar took Kara Leigh, but this time it seemed their luck was running out.
“So what do we do?’ Warren asked.
“Well, my brother says we should do what no one expects us to, go on the offensive.’ Dr. Pace said, though his tone suggested he had misgivings about that idea.
“So what, Dorothy, Ted, and I versus the whole city,’ Warren snorted. “Sounds like a great idea.’
“No, little brother is dipping into the war chest,’ Dr. Pace said. “He put out the word that he wants the 7th Street Angel taken out, and freaks are coming out of the woodwork.’
“What about the cops?’ Warren asked.
“Same thing, we take them off the board,’ Dr. Pace said, now he was grinning. “We make them movie stars.’
Warren nodded, impressed. He did not like the younger Pace very much, but the guy was about as daring a man could be. These next few weeks would be some of the most interesting in Warren´s life, maybe even his last.
“I´m going to go check on Kara, she should be more pliable this morning,’ Warren said, excited about what he might find in her cell.
Dr. Pace nodded, lost in though, as he mentally prepared himself for the coming storm.