Contract Killer is in Too Deep

I brought my elbow down with violent force into the forearm of Thug Number Two. A bone snapped with a sickening crunch. The thug whimpered, spit bubbling on his thick lips, and sagged in my grip. I imagined he was wondering how things had gone so bad for him so quickly. Of course, the thought was probably secondary to the immense pain.

I jammed my gun into the side of his neck, under his chin where his jaw ended.

"Please, God, no," Thug Number Two blubbered. I don't think anything looks as pathetic as a scumbag begging for mercy. They're neck-in-neck with starving orphans and one-eyed puppies.

"If you were smart, you'd be praying to ME," I said.

"Anything," the thug whined.

"Information," I said and waited for the familiar song of a desperate canary.

***

Joe Hawk helped me hide the bodies. He's a good man.

***

The thug had sung his song, but the tune was an old one. Knox wanted me dead for the murder of his brother and the attempted hit on Dread. Mostly for the Dread thing, I assumed, since the incident had lost him his cushy job. What was the loss of a brother compared to the loss of a healthy near-six figure income?

But I had to wonder... why me and not The Black Ghost?

The Black Ghost was my rival, another contract killer who had crossed paths with me more than once. She had been there the night the shit had flown in Dread Tower and had not only instigated the shooting but had been the culprit behind Jimmy Knox- the dead Tuxedo brother-'s death.

Something stunk in Denmark, and it wasn't the fish.

I had little time to wonder about this as a black limousine with the license plate, "LDY DRD" idled outside of my apartment. I had ditched my unregistered gun since I'd used it to kill Knox's men, and it could be linked to their corpses if anyone searched me. Now I wished that I hadn't. I sauntered towards the limo, pulling my cap down over my eyes as I neared, hoping that maybe she wouldn't see me, and then the side door opened. I felt my insides lurch. I caught a glimpse of a long, white feminine leg, and then Mrs. Dread leaned out of the car to say, "Take a ride, handsome."

"Do I have a choice?" I said with a slight smile.

She pursed her lips and then replied, "Of course," but something in the tone of her voice told me, "Hell, no." With a shrug, I walked around to the other side of the limo and let myself in. If nothing else, I figured it was an opportunity to gain some information.

Veronica Dread wore a navy blue dress, sleek and elegant. It clung to her, accentuating the taut and curvaceous body hidden beneath it. Her dark, luxurious hair swooped down her neck and bundled at her shoulders in soft black curls. As dark as her hair was, her eyes were darker, two bottomless oily pits leading to hell. A glittering diamond necklace looped around her neck and pooled at the curve of her breasts.

"Nice bling," I said.

"I'll leave it on when you fuck me," she whispered into my ear. I leaned back, allowing a bit more space between us. I kept an indifferent expression, a mask of selfless disinterest, but I felt my pulse quicken with a brisk tha-thump.

"Really. You're the wife of the man who tried to have my father killed. Then I was nearly killed at one of his fashionable high-society parties. Now because of certain happenings at said party, his former bodyguard wants me dea. By the way, tell him thanks for inviting me."

Veronica regarded me for a moment. As much as I hated to admit it, she was a stone cold fox. We had met before, on a previous hit. We had... well, gotten to know each other quite intimately beside the corpse of her dead brother. At the time, I had no idea who she was. Later, I found out that not only was she a sociopath on the same lines as me but the wife of my worst enemy. Yet something about her turned me on in ways that I cannot begin to describe. It probably had something to do with her tits.

Veronica reached into her purse- just looking at it, I could tell it was worth more than I was- and pulled out a photograph. She twirled it between her fingers like a magician preparing a card trick, then dropped it onto the white leather upholstery between us. I glared down at it, and it was like looking into a reflection.

Yep, it was me, all right. Me gunning down the dude with the Tom Selleck 'stache.

"Why?" I said.

"I want to hire you," Veronica Dread said behind her Cheshire grin.

"I repeat the question."

"Let's call this," she said, tapping the photograph, "a bit of insurance. If you decide to be... uncooperative, a copy of it will end up in the formidable hands of my husband."

Her eyes twinkled. She enjoyed playing games with me, and I can't say I hated it, myself. But games can be tiresome, especially when you're playing with amateurs. The thing with chess: it's all about the Queen. I tried to lure her out into the open.

"He'll know it was a set-up. It's too good of a picture to be a shot by some Joe who chanced upon a murder. So who? Someone who wanted to use the photo for blackmail. Someone who set me up," I said.

"If you're being blackmailed, you're not totally under your father's control. This would mean you're a wild card. You could be working for anyone. Even the Black Ghost. Either way, you'd be a liability and better off dead in my sweet Simeon's mind," Veronica shot back, allowing her smug grin to widen.

The game was deadlocked. I tried a different strategy.

"You never said why you wanted to hire me."

"To kill my husband," Veronica said, "of course."

Her words in no way surprised me. Knowing Veronica, they were what I expected. That is, with Veronica, one could only expect the unexpected, to borrow a worn out cliché. I frowned. The wheels of my mind turned, trying to see all the angles. Veronica should have been content as the wife of Simeon Dread; she had it all and didn't have to lift a finger. Something was going on that I didn't have a handle on yet, and that bothered me.

"And what's in it for me?"

Veronica's finger played along the neckline of her low cut dress, drawing my eyes towards the curve of her significant cleavage. Her brilliant black eyes glittered with imp-like mischief.

"You mean, besides an insane amount of money? Do you really have to ask?" she said, then leaned in and placed her lips over mine. I let her press our mouths together in a slow, deep kiss. But after a moment, she pulled back abruptly and sneered. I had a fleeting thought that I'd done something wrong. Her expression was unsettling, a hint of her inner corruption.

"Of course, you'll have to leave that blonde bitch you've been shacking up with."

My eyebrows rose in questioning arcs. Was she really implying that I'd have to dump Sheila to work for her? If so, Veronica Dread was more delusional than I had anticipated.

I paused and replied, "I'll consider it."

"Consider this," she said, crawled over, and straddled me. She yanked the top of her dress off her shoulders, over her breasts, and then grabbed both sides of my head with her hands and pulled me forward into her soft mounds of flesh.

I supposed I could have (should have) fought her off. It would have definitely saved me a lot of future grief. But I didn't. If you saw her, maybe you'd understand.

Instead, when she demanded, "Lick 'em, suck 'em!" in gasping whispers, I did exactly that. I give a lady what she wants. What can I say? I'm a helpful guy.

My mouth sucked on her warm skin; my tongue lashed out at her nipples. In response, Veronica writhed; her buttocks rubbed against my throbbing erection. They felt snug and firm through the fabric of her dress. Her diamond necklace shimmered.

Veronica had once told me, "Why kneel at the feet of an angel when you can fuck the devil?" I realized now- as she ripped my skirt open and licked the side of my face- that she had a point. The woman was intoxicating, and I was drunk off her.

My hands crept up her smooth, warm thighs and under the edge of her dress. Her skin was just as smooth and even warmer there, and (surprise, surprise), nothing covered her.

"No underwear," I said. "Classy."

Her tongue lapped my lips. Her hands worked my pants open, and my erection sprang free. My cock prodded her inner thigh, leaving a clear smear of pre-cum. Veronica wrapped her fingers around me, and I could feel my pulse pounding in my cock. And then she put me in her, and I felt her sheath me, encasing me with tight, wet heat.

Her jet-black hair dangled around her face, and her eyes bore into mine with searing intensity. I was struck by Veronica's beauty, her sharp, feminine features. She was as gorgeous as any professional model or movie star, but there was something else, too, something sinister. Yet that only made her hotter as far as I was concerned. She was the evil bitch that every man secretly wanted to fuck.

And I was fucking her. Or rather, she was fucking ME.. As a matter of fact, she was fucking the HELL out of me.

Her breasts bounced in my face, twin mounds of softly slapping flesh, and her thighs clapped against mine. The weight of her shapely body pounded into me, lifted, then pounded down again. My hands dug into her hips, gripping her as she gyrated. Her toned abs flexed and writhed.

It felt so good, insanely good, and I gritted my teeth and matched her look of challenge with one of my own. I was going to take everything she could give and then give her back double.

"Waited a long time to fuck you again," Veronica growled as she impaled herself on my shiny cock. I felt her moisture dribbling down my shaft as she lifted and then drove down on it with a hard smack, skin-on-skin. Her entire body tremored with each impact.

"Worth the wait?" I asked and managed a sly grin. She answered by slamming into me and grinding hard on my cock. She leaned back so far that I thought she might break me off inside of her and then humped me hard, my cock bending backwards as her hips gyrated back and forth as if Veronica was riding a mechanical bull.

Remember those old Atari videogame machines? The ones with the one joystick? Well, her pussy was working my cock like a kid with ADHD working that joystick during a ridiculously high level of Pac-Man. But damn, if it didn't feel good.

Veronica's diamond necklace sparkled and swung between her large, flopping breasts. She had, in fact, left it on while she fucked me. She groaned and leaned back up, one of her tits slapping me in the face.

"Hit me," she breathed. I froze.

"What?"

"Hit me, slap me, hurt me," she chanted in a singsong voice.

"You are one crazy bitch," I said.

You find out what kind of a person you really are when you're fucking a woman with seemingly no limits. You can do whatever you want to her. Now I wasn't going to be doing any slapping, scratching, or hitting, but a little pile-driving wasn't necessarily out of the question. Considering what I could have done to Veronica Dread, I don't think that's too bad at all. She deserved and probably desired worse.

I maneuvered Veronica upside-down so that her head was on the floor mat and her pussy faced me like a pursed mouth. I half-stood, half-squatted above her, pushing my cock down with one hand, and slid it into her. She moaned softly under me, and I rammed down into her. The meat of her thighs rippled. Her toes curled at the ends of her spread legs. I gnashed my teeth. Both hands now available, I held her legs apart at her ankles.

I pushed into her with hard, dominant strokes. Veronica's face turned red as blood rushed into her head. Sweat slithered down my forehead, slipped down my nose, and hung for a precarious minute before falling and splashing against Veronica's naked, glimmering chest. But even over her, I felt as though I was not entirely control of the situation. She had such a way of manipulation that no matter how the cards fell, you had to wonder if Veronica had predetermined knowledge of the outcome.

"Ah, god, make me take your cock hard," she slurred.

"Plan on it," came my reply.

Placing her hands on the floorboard next to her head, Veronica pushed back up into me with violent gyrations, hips swiveling and torso twisting. She grunted, and spittle flew from her mouth like foam from some kind of rabid animal. Every muscle of her body tensed in impending climax.

"Fuck, yeah, fuck, yeah!" she cried with rising volume.

Naturally, I followed suit, and just as Veronica Dread squealed in exquisite, carnal release, I pulled out of her with a slurping vacuum of disconnecting flesh and erupted in spasming spurts of liquid seed. I watched great white globs of it spew forth in arcing trails before splattering against the sweat-lathered skin of the demon under me. Then I collapsed back into the leather seat with shuddering breaths.

I closed my eyes and felt the weight of potential consequences darken above me like thunderclouds. It happened that way sometimes when you fucked a woman who was not your girlfriend. Things like guilt and regret had a way of burrowing into your subconscious and nesting there. But you did what you had to do to win the game, and I had to play a little into Veronica Dread's hands if I wanted to stack the deck against her.

A stickier version of Veronica climbed into the seat next to me, hiking her dress up over her breasts and pulling it down her thighs with opposing hands. Patches of her skin gleamed with my sperm; rather wipe it off, she had rubbed it into her skin like lotion. Content, her dark eyes were glazed with momentary satiation.

"So, do we have a deal?" she said, all business now that the pleasure had been transacted. "I'll consider it." I punctuated the comment with a noncommittal shrug. The answer drew a grim smile from Veronica's swollen lips as if she had expected no less. I felt the limo pull to a slow stop, and the smile widened, allowing a view of straight, white teeth. I realized that again Veronica had manipulated the situation in a way that I did not yet understand.

"Where are we?"

Veronica crossed her legs and replied, "I had a feeling you'd be a tough sell. So, I figured I'd throw in a little extra to sweeten the deal. We're next to a warehouse. Inside you'll find Johnny Knox, unguarded, unarmed and vulnerable."

My eyes narrowed.

"He has a morally-challenged filly, a blonde with big lips and easily spread legs, that he enjoys breaking in on a weekly basis. The poor girl." An impish twinkle danced in her eyes as she continued. "I've set a few wheels in motion that have placed Knox and his filly in this building to be disposed of at your, well, disposal," Dread explained.

"I don't have my gun," I said. Veronica winked.

"You'll figure something out."

***

The limo pulled away, leaving me and the looming warehouse alone with my misgivings. I tried to sort the situation out, but it was a tangled mess, a string of knots within knots that could only be unwound after a length of careful, skilled determination. I gave it a shot, anyway:

A)Veronica Dread wanted me to kill her husband. She had a photograph of me killing a man i.e. blackmail material to bend me to her will. I needed the photograph and any copies of it destroyed since a copy in the hand of, for instance, a federal agent could easily spell D-O-O-M.

B)Johnny Knox wanted me dead. But he knew as well as anyone that the Black Ghost had killed his brother. This meant he was being influenced by some other force than mere revenge.

C)Knox was supposedly in this building without the benefit of his men or his weapons. I found this hard to swallow. Knox knew better than to show up anywhere without back-up, even to a salacious rendezvous with a whore. This meant that Veronica was either lying or setting me up in some fashion. If she was telling the absolute truth and there were no guards or weapons with Knox, then HE had been set up, but by who?

As usual, I had more questions than answers. This was nothing new. Despite the fact I could be walking into a deathtrap, I figured the only way I could get a better grip on the situation would be to enter the warehouse and see what happened.

First, I decided to walk around the perimeter and check for guards. One can never be too careful when dealing with psychopathic killers. They have been known to be dishonest from time to time. A shadowy alley sat between the warehouse and the abandoned complex next to it, and I figured it was as a good a place to start as any.

As I made my way through the dilapidated alley, past stagnant puddles and rotting cardboard, I noticed fingers. The fingers hung from the lip of a closed dumpster, and they didn't look like the fingers of a living person. They had a grayish, discolored look to them. I flipped the lid of the dumpster open and came face-to-face with the corpse stuffed within it. A nasty-looking exit wound gaped open like a third eye from the dead thug's forehead; he had been hit from behind. I let the lid drop closed.

The guy was one of Knox's men; that much was obvious. Knox had come with guards, but someone had already taken them out. Who? My mind flashed to the Black Ghost, but I couldn't figure what role she had in the Dreads' gothic melodrama. And why would the Ghost lend an assist for me? Traditionally, we were mortal enemies.

I felt a dry scratchiness in the back of my throat. My hands itched for a gun. I reopened the dumpster and searched the body, but I was unsurprised when I found it had already been disarmed and its wallet taken.

Not knowing what else to do, I found a broken window and climbed into the dark of the warehouse. Inside, there wasn't much to see but broken glass, dust, and a whole lot of nothing. I heard sounds, something like fleshy snaps and weak sobbing. I followed them.

I moved slow, careful not too make much sound. As large as the warehouse was, there was an echoing quality to everything. I could hear Knox and his girl from the depths of the warehouse as if they were fucking right next to me, and as I approached, the sounds only grew louder. I rounded a corner, and there they were.

A manager's office sat on a second level, a large platform in the middle of the center of the building. I could see them through the plate glass windows of the office. Knox looked like a shaved ape raping an eleven year old girl. His muscles rippled as he plowed into her bent over the desk. She was not eleven, but she was tiny, a rail-thin waif with dirty blonde hair and the glassy, dead eyes of a stoner.

Her smeared mascara made her wet, blood-shot eyes look like a raccoon's. Knox had pounded her to tears, and she whimpered quietly as he continued to hammer into her. It wasn't surprising he was hurting her; he was about three sizes bigger than she was. He could have easily broken her in half if he hadn't already from the inside.

"Yeah, bitch! Take it!" Knox demanded. The girl gave a high-pitched shriek as he yanked back on her hair and thrust. I couldn't believe she gave into this routine degradation. Knox must have hooked her on something expensive and addictive.

My mind worked quickly, trying to think of ways that I might kill him.

I started up the metal stairs to the manager's office. My eyes searched the room, but I didn't see anything useful as a murder weapon. Not unless I planned on killing Knox with old cardboard or crumbling drywall. I knew that I could technically shove enough rolled-up cardboard down Knox's throat to choke him, but he was too powerful for me to get close enough for long enough to finish the job.

The stair under my right foot screeched a long, metallic cry. The entire staircase trembled, and a puff of grit shifted and fell to the concrete floor below me.

I heard the assault and sobbing in the office come to an abrupt halt. Knox had heard.

Thud! Thud! Thud! The sounds of the ex-bodyguard were like that of a rhino gathering speed for a vicious charge as he approached the door. I had no good option. I could either run down the stairs, giving Knox a clear shot at my back, or I could head up and face him. What the hell, I figured I'd come here to kill him, and I'd have to face him to do so.