A lone lamp in the corner lit the room, the shadows falling over the weapons on the table as the occupants moved around.
"Sloppy work in the museum," a woman said. "You missed the intended target."
A man frowned slightly. "Blame my spotter," he said with a nod to another man in the room. "He pointed out the wrong person."
All eyes turned to him. "I was told she'd be wearing a white dress with golden trim," he said. "How was I to know she found out someone else was wearing the same thing, and changed last minute?"
"You got the Deputy Minister of Security killed."
"No big loss," he said with a shrug.
"Big fucking loss," she replied. "Thanks to your fuck up, we've got the freaks from CISA on our asses."
Someone cleared their throat, and the others looked at him. "Freaks is such a harsh word. We prefer the term 'differently abled'." He stood and walked to the table, his fingers trailing over one of the weapons. "But, you're correct. You've got two of the best on your asses, and you've got to find a way to divert their attention."
"Get me their personal files."
"That's going to be hard. I don't have access to that."
"Then find some way to get them off our backs," she said. "I don't care how."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Next target," she said, pointing at a map, "is the Dark Cloud Theatre on River Street. There's a midnight performance of Hamlet, with an exclusive champagne breakfast afterwards."
The shooter for the other two attacks walked up to the map and took a look. "Same as before?"
"Not exactly. The target for this one is going to be surrounded by personal body guards."
"Makes no difference."
"Good." She nodded to the others. "Soon someone is going to clue in to the fact that we're using fund raisers to tag our quarry in the open. Our movement relies on being able to continue."
"Death to the uber-rich," the man whispered.
"Yes," the woman muttered, and turned to walk away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The security surrounding the theatre was staggering. The gunman tugged at his tuxedo, willing the time to go by faster until it was time for him to act. He despised those around him; despised their money, their frivolity and most of all, their willingness to support a worthless cause when people elsewhere were suffering.
The time to give the message to the country was now, and he was more than willing to listen when a lone CISA agent entered his prison cell and offered a pardon in exchange for certain favors. Originally facing a life sentence for killing three squad members during his army hitch, the man agreed.
His new ‘friends’ had the same ideals that he had been raised with, and wanted to stop the insanity that was facing the world. If that meant killing off a little of the upper echelon and letting the much needed money flow to other sources, then so be it. To him, the money here tonight could benefit a lot more than the construction of a vaulted ceiling. Wasted money, that was.
He excused himself from his table, and headed for the restroom in the hall. A security guard nodded slightly as he passed, then walked away from his post. The man immediately went into the 'out of order' female restroom. He quickly got his gear out of various hiding spaces, and shook the water off a few bags he had taken from the base of the ‘out of order’ toilet.
Dressing quickly, he looked up as a small tap sounded on the door, followed by three more taps, then one more. That was his signal that it was time to start. He inhaled deeply, then stepped out of the washroom.
~~~~~~~~~~
Francis jumped as the phone by his bed rang, and for a moment he was lost in confusion. There was a weight on his body that he couldn't identify, and he forced his eyes open to see J.D.'s head raise. She rolled off his body as he reached for the phone, and stared at him curiously.
"Go ahead," he said into the phone.
"Francis... MackQhine?"
"MuhQuinn," he corrected sleepily.
"This is the Fifth Section Police."
"Okay," he sat up. "What's up?"
"We've been advised to inform you of an incident which occurred two hours ago at the Dark Cloud Theatre on River Street."
J.D. got dressed as Francis talked, catching enough of the conversation to know that another shooting had taken place. She pulled a shoe out from under his bed and slipped it on, her mind alternating between the shooting, and the events that had happened in the bedroom earlier. She wasn't sure what would happen between the two of them, and prepared herself for a 'fuck and chuck', and his dropping the pursuit of her.
Francis hung the phone up, and fell back on to the bed. "Fuck," he whispered. "It's too early for this shit." He looked at her, grabbed her arm and pulled her over on top of his chest.
She stared into his eyes as he watched her. "Thank you," he said.
"For?"
"For last night." He gave her a soft kiss. "Care to have a repeat performance tonight?"
"We'll see," she said, more to keep him on his toes than anything. She kissed him, then pulled back. "We should get going."
"Yeah." He sighed and got up. "Theatre on River Street."
~~~~~~~~~~~
"Not good." J.D. looked around at the blood on the floor and at the bodies that remained. She walked to one and stood as the crime investigator was checking the wounds over. "Initial report?" she asked.
He glanced up. "He’s dead. Quite dead. Rather large concentration of holes in him." He stood. "He’s all yours."
"Who is he?"
He shrugged. "That’s your department, not mine."
J.D. crouched and took a look at the man’s body. It was indeed riddled with holes, especially his face…or at least what was left of it.
"You’d think people wold get the hint by now," Francis said lowly as he walked up. "Two mass killings, and they still host something like this."
"I don’t think we’re going to see many more fund raisers for a while," J.D. said as she took another look around.
"That would make our job so much easier."
She looked up at him. "You okay?" she asked. "You sound strange."
He crouched by her, let his gaze rest on the body for a moment, and then looked away. "There is nothing about this that makes sense. Sure, there’s connections on certain levels, but what would make someone target a room full of…artsy types?"
"Security recordings?"
He held up three small disks. "Front area, in here and ticket office." His gaze lost focus for a moment, a thing that happened when he was thinking three or four steps ahead of himself. "Come on." He stood.
"What?" she asked as she followed.
"In all three places, where’s the one spot that’s been out of camera range?"
"Where?"
"Restrooms," he said as they approached a small alcove area that held the washrooms and looked up. "Camera is pointed to see people coming to the restrooms, or, at least to the hall leading to them. Someone could easily walk by that camera without being noticed, change, then walk back."
"They already checked the restroom," J.D. said.
"They already checked the Men’s Room," Francis corrected her.
They both looked at the discrete ‘out of order’ sign located on the women’s room. J.D. gently put a gloved hand on the knob and turned slowly. Nothing seemed out of the order, but a search resulted in finding several wet bags in the garbage can.
"Interesting," J.D. said. "The museum and the art gallery all had out of order washrooms, too."
"We just got a break… a small one, but it’s better than nothing."
~~~~~~~~~~
Jake Eastman was bored, and wished he could finish up his required desk time and get out into the field with the rest of the CISA members. He sighed as he looked at the calendar…two more months as a desk jockey and an intense testing before he would earn his little bronze badge.
He hadn’t wanted the position of the man desk, and begrudged each and every person that dumped their problems and bad moods on him. Speaking of which, he glanced up as two people entered the coffee shop out front. He watched them through the one-way mirror as they grabbed a coffee.
His half-brother looked even more relaxed than usual, a feat which he thought entirely impossible. Jake envied the older man, had applied to the Canadian Internal Security Agency to work with an idolized brother. He also envied the fact that Francis had the luck to grow up with a different father; something Jake would have given his porn stash to have experienced. His own father had been distant and cold, and had treated him with barely disguised disdain. He was amazed that he turned out as good as he did, regardless if others thought him to be a bit of a jerk.
Jake looked up as Francis and J.D. entered the CISA office, then went to ignore them, but stopped, looked again, and then glared.
"What?" Francis asked, slightly paranoid.
"You two did it, didn't you?"
"Pardon?"
Jake sighed in aggravation. "Hell! You cost me fifty bucks!"
"What?" Francis asked, completely confused.
"Fifty that you'd never do it, twenty that you would and ten that you're gay."
Francis tried to rub away a sudden headache. "Let's just pretend that I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and... what the fuck are you talking about?"
"The pool, man, the pool! I put in fifty that she wouldn't be dumb enough to lay you."
"What. The. Fuck. Are you talking about." Francis demanded, his voice low. "And why only ten bucks that I'm gay?"
J.D. burst out laughing at his train of thought.
Jake ignored the dangerous look in his half-brother's eyes. "Some guys here are gonna be so disappointed. They thought they had a chance with you."
Francis looked thoughtful. "Hey, if they're good looking..."
Jake ignored him as the phone rang, and turned his back to effectively shut them out.
Francis shook his head in annoyance and walked through the office to his desk. He stopped by it, then looked at the others in the room. "Could I have everyone's attention for a moment?" He waited while people looked. "Apparently, a certain pool has closed, and anyone seeking their winnings should go see Jake." He sat down as a few people left, and smirked at J.D. as she sat opposite him.
"Smartass," she said.
He shrugged. "You're the one who was dumb enough to lay me." He looked confused at the way that came out.
"Pardon?"
"That came out completely wrong," he said. "What I meant was that I'll be sitting here keeping my mouth shut for the rest of the day."
"Thought so." She turned to her computer to check out some information and to go through the reports of the recent shootings. The theatre had the largest body count out of the three, and she slowly went through the list.
Francis started at her for a few minutes, wondering how he would fuck up the relationship enough so that she would end up hating him. It was what invariably happened to every relationship he'd been in, and he basically expected it.
It seemed that he just couldn't connect with someone outside of the bedroom, and although it was worth a try, a long lasting relationship couldn't last on sex alone.
"You're staring."
He forced himself not to jump at the voice. "Yes, I am."
"Why?" She wasn't looking at him.
"Because I think you're beautiful," he answered honestly.
She finally looked at him and smiled. "Mind on your work, Lieutenant," she chided lightly. "You can bask in my beauty later."
He laughed, and grabbed the dark glasses to check through security footage. Halfway through, he took the glasses off, grabbed a different footage disk, and slipped it in.
"Find something?" she asked.
"Do you have the complete guest lists?" he asked as he took the glasses off and inhaled deeply a few times to calm his dizziness. He took it from her and put it in his computer.
"Remove names not from Canada," he said, watching as the program removed quite a few names. "Remove names with net worth less than five million dollars." Again, more names were removed. "Cross reference names with political contributions, listing largest to smallest."
J.D. watched as he went through a series of commands, and as the list grew shorter and shorter until it was about ten names long.
"Same specifications, all guest lists," he ordered, then looked at J.D. "What if the Deputy Minister was just a fluke?"
"You said he tracked to her."
"Yeah, but...these other killings don't make sense. It can't be her that was the target, or, if she was, she wasn't the only one. There has to be more involved in this." He motioned to the screen. "Biggest political contributors in attendance. Two of the top three are dead, and the third was at the museum."
In a list
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Comments
1 - 7 of 7
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This was extraordinary....I loved reading this and getting to know the characters more..What looking for but never found was what J.D. looks like.. I have been wondering because she is called "beautiful", but you don't know what she looks like Maybe I will find more details in Chapter 4...
The sex in this...Seemed to be perfect in placing.. There was no real erotica, it was just...sexy in a way that is not "hard-core" or "over-done"... Good job!
As with Amicus, I am confused as to who the bad guys are also, but I assume I will learn more of that when I read on
This was wonderful and I look forward to reading more of this
Ana
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Thank you for your comment
The 'sex scene' was edited out recently, as part of my rewriting while I shape it to match a later chapter.
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Sex and Politics...sighs...
This is your story, of course, to do with as you choose and anything I offer is no more than a personal opinion as I do not get paid for editing, although I do a lot of it for others and myself.
Perhaps you have seen a film, "The Long Kiss Goodbye" I think, with Geena Davis. All the way reading your story, I see it as a film along the lines of that movie.
I think Adventure and Erotica are two quite separate genre's, one can write either, but not both in the same story. My opinion.
Explicit sex in an adventure/mystery, yes, of course, should it become a film it can always be presented with some taste.
But in reading erotica, I tire of 'shaft' and 'juices dripping' and the entire 'stroke' scene that most Porn writers limit themselves to.
I am surely old fashioned and maybe a bit of a prude, but the casual office "Pool" attitude, while witty and sexually sophisticated, changed the entire flavor of the story for me.
In the fast paced, dangerous world of your characters, I fully understand sex on the fly, so to speak, but I feel the attention paid this event detracts from the body of the story.
And, again personally, it seems Canadians in general are hell bent on embracing Socialism and hating the productive wealthy ones in a society. That irks me a little, smiles, but then again, to each his/her own.
I am also a little confused as to who the 'bad guys' are...seems like they are part of the same organization that is investigating, but I most likely misread something.
Okay...those are my thoughts, take em or leave em, hope they may be useful to you.
amicus...
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Thank you for your comment.
I wasn't sure about the sex part, and this is my first actual attempt at writing erotica in a story, and I will admit that I suck very badly at it. I've been rewriting, and that part got cut....(which, will completely change the rest of the story, since it brings a relationship, but hey, that's the way editing goes). But, I like to see things through to the end, and I'll be doing this story line until the end, then posting the rewrites. I'll take some of this, most of that, and combine them, then rewrite, fine tune, change around again, scrap it for a coulpe months, then go back and fine tune again.
When I first started writing, this was set in Hawaii, then Australia, then, I think I went to Dublin and another planet.
The 'ones being killed'... well... it's not PC anymore to pick on anyone, so I went with art types first(writers, painters, etc), then switched over to the rich. (one bad guy is a 'good guy', but the typical traitor).
I find that by writing it all first, I can weed out the crap and hopefully be left with a better finished version. Most of what is here now might not even make it to the final, and even the names could change.
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I had to read certain parts of this over a few times... quite a few times... day-um! What a hot sex scene. (two applauds for that! )Mind if I print this out for when I get home with my man? (evil laugh) It reads like it was everything he had dreamed of, and more.
The beginning brings that bit of intrigue and description that ties the first two chapters together with the story.
And thank you for pronouncing his name.
The pool was a cute addition. Completely believable, and a refreshing change from the PC that has mucked up the world in some ways.
Bless ya for setting your stories in Canada, and not making them about farming, fishing or some other stereotype.
beginning: 4, language: 4, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 4, characters: 5.
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I edited it a bit.....
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You're just a naughty little minx anyway
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