Deadline Man

s my face, aims my eyes at her. “I’m going to explain what’s happening and why it’s essential for you to help, and then we can get you out of here and back to a normal life.”

It sounds so wonderful that I want to believe her, this pantiless angel sitting before me. She inches her chair closer. Our knees touch.

“Megan is so beautiful,” she says, putting a hand on each of my thighs. “I was never pretty in high school.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“I’m gonna barf,” Stu says.

“It’s true. I was a nerd. A late bloomer. Like you.”

I say nothing more. She gently strokes the tops of my thighs. “Warmer now? You must have felt like a nerd, at the U-Dub, one of a handful of all those thousands of students, who was in ROTC. Definitely not cool back then. But it was the only way you could get through college. And the Army loved your scores, off the charts….”

“You’ve got me mistaken for somebody else…” My throat is still feeling shut down, but the rest of me starts to react to the warmth of the blanket and her touch on my legs. And I do react.

“Army Intelligence.” She says it like a lover. “I always admired the smart ones.”

“Fucking oxymoron, we used to say in the Corps.” This from Bill, who seems an unlikely former Marine.

“Ignore them. They never liked officers, much less journalists. You’re with me.” Laura rubs my chest and my muscles ache and try to relax.

My mind doesn’t. “You killed Troy Hardesty. You’re the one who pushed past me that day outside his office.” Her eyes lose their seduction fix for just a moment. She is surprised that I saw her there. “Why kill Troy?”

The corners of her mouth turn up slightly. “I just do a job. I know you did things in the Army you can’t talk about.”

“I was an Army journalist…”

“I know.” She smiles at me, tracing a line with her fingernail down to my navel. “Afghanistan, 1982. You still have your old Combat Magnum. The guys in your unit preferred them to the nines. Isn’t it funny that with your background, you might have married Rachel Summers? Considering her father’s history? All in the family, right?”

“Rachel doesn’t know anything.”

“I know.” She starts stroking my penis with her left hand. Not that it needed encouragement. “Oh, you like that. I like it, too.”

She says my name as if we’d been together for years. “All you need to do is help us. Take us to Megan.” The stroking keeps up and I am breathing heavily. My brain has been through a sieve and I try to concentrate. Why does she want to know about Megan? Why not about what Troy told me?

Then I look down again in time to see the object in her right hand. It is bright silver and looks about six inches long. Maybe it’s a hat pin or maybe it’s some kind of cocktail swizzle. My pelvis instinctively jerks back but there’s no give in the chair. Through all her gentle ministrations the shackles have never been loosened.

“I know you want to talk to me.” Up to now, her touch has kept me erect, even with my eyes locked on the pin in her right hand. It glistens in the reflected light. “No, no, baby…” She pulls her left thumb and forefinger tightly around the base of my penis. “Don’t go soft now. I want you full of blood for me.” She keeps me almost painfully hard.

She runs the head of the pin along the top of my left thigh. I see it penetrate the skin as I feel a sharp burning. My leg jerks upward.

“Funny little nerve network there,” Laura says. She raises the pin to her mouth and silently sucks the blood off. “Pain and pleasure, right?”

Her left hand has me securely. She lowers the pin and rubs the long edge against the shaft. It’s cool compared with the warmth of her hand.

“I love cocks. So hard and yet so soft and vulnerable. So sensitive.” She readjusts her right hand, like someone about to eat with one chopstick. At first, the sharp edge of the pin just adds to the sensation. Then, pain. I see her run the tip of the pin against my penis, hard enough to leave a little red trail of worried capillaries. It’s deep enough to make me cry aloud.

“This is so unnecessary. But I tried.” Laura turns to Bill. “Get some towels because he’s going to bleed like hell. I don’t want any of it on my shoes.” All the gentleness is gone from her voice but her left hand keeps its hold around my penis. Bill walks to the door and opens it. He stops as if he’s hit something and backs into the room. The movement only catches my attention for a moment. I return to staring at the silver lance at my groin, when I hear:

“Get your hands off that, bitch. It belongs to me.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Bill keeps backing up, revealing a tall redhead crouched in a combat shooting stance and holding a black semiautomatic.

Amber.

“Oh.” She holds out an open black wallet, containing a gold badge and two windows for credentials. “FBI.”