Mother - Hostile Makeover Ch. 11

Random impressions slowly sorted themselves into the outlines of her predicament. She was slouched in the footwell on the passenger side of the little convertible. Her wrists were bound together in front of her, wrapped around with wide steel tape of the kind that Ethan sometimes used to repair cars. Probably retrieved from the trunk. It didn't cut off circulation but was tight enough that the edges bit into her skin when she tried to twist free.

Jakob noticed her stirring. His eyes flicked downward, then back to the road ahead. He drove in silence, his grim profile barely visible in the moonlight and the dim illumination of the dashboard gauges.

No street lamps or traffic signals. No city lights.

Her head pounded. Squirming up and into her seat without the use of her hands was difficult. Jakob hadn't bothered to seatbelt her. That was discouraging.

"What are we doing, Jakob?" He hunched forward over the wheel, staring straight ahead. "Talk to me, honey." Determined to do whatever it took to save her own life, she leaned toward him but could not reach out to him. "This is Aleksandra, isn't it? I'm in her way. That's why she's not here. She's got an alibi."

Jakob stiffened. His head jerked toward her in surprise.

"Did she just tell you to get rid of me? This is a terrible plan, can't you see? This isn't her turf. If something happens to me, the police will investigate. Negotiations will stop, votes won't happen--"

"Yes. And Aleksandra Novak will fail." The grim combination of satisfaction and utter loathing in his voice left Lauren speechless.

"I had hoped there was another way," Jakob's shoulders slumped wearily as he steered on through the empty night. "I tried first with Frank Palmieri. I was cruel to him, yes, but still I thought it the kindest way."

"You're not making sense. Did you try to kill Frank?"

"Please, I meant him no harm!" As if realizing how absurd that sounded, he added, "That is, I did not intend to injure him. When Aleksandra had me give the Libidramine to the Palmieris, I gave Frank a substitute."

"A placebo." Lauren remembered Stefan's clumsy practical joke back in New Derby. A million years ago. "Why in the hell?"

"To humiliate him. Make him hate us. In his anger and despair, it was easy to convince him that he was in physical danger. And without him knowing it, I arranged for what he believed to be his escape. And I said to myself, this man will never do business with us now. He will warn his fellows, and that will be the end of Aleksandra's scheme."

The two-lane asphalt road ahead wound upward between a steep, scrub-dotted rock face to Lauren's right and a sheer cliff to the left. They passed stretches without shoulder or guard rails. Where barriers did exist some were buckled or broken clear through from heavy impacts. Jakob was taking them up the Ortega, probably headed toward Elsinore, the section of road once nicknamed Ricochet Alley.

At this time in the evening they weren't likely to so much as pass another car up here. It was an efficient place to dispose of someone without going through the incriminating messiness of killing them first--the thousand-foot drop would take care of that.

It might be a while before the body was found. Then a longer wait for them to identify her shattered remains.

"You do hate her, after all."

He scowled. "She calls herself our benefactor. But she is worse than her father. She uses us, as he did. Our bodies. Our souls. She is supremely wealthy but always desires more. She truly believes that the world will discover what we have and take it from us. So she pursues the power that she claims she will use to shield us from that threat.

"But the Tiare itself has always been our shield. It gives us health, and happiness. For many centuries, again and again, the wolves have come to Kai'ulau to exploit us. Some, like her father, promised to bring prosperity. Some claimed to be saving us from evil that truly existed only in their own hearts. But always the Tiare has changed them, and always they have lost their ways."

"Lotus-eaters." Seeing his confusion, Lauren explained, "It's a very old myth. An island where adventurers were seduced by eating a flower. They forgot their lives and their families and their nations. They only wanted to stay there, forever."

"You do understand, then. Even ambitious old Lukasz settled in the end for bartering some of the red flower now and again in exchange for personal influence and money. But his daughter? She thinks she will sell so much and bring Kai'ulau such wealth and power that the world must bow to us. Bow to her.

"She is such a fool.

"I know better. I have lived in your world. A place of greed and waste and violence and slavery. You are destroying yourselves. I can't let you destroy us, too."

Lauren wished that she could touch him, to somehow connect with him again. "Jakob, I can't argue with any of that. You see some things clearly enough. But don't you also see that if you kill me, you can never go home? They won't let you. The police will go through my texts and find out that you arranged to meet with me this evening."

Jakob didn't answer. He veered left and pulled the car up onto the narrow few feet of shoulder on the side of the road by a drop-off cliff. He killed the engine and got out. The ground sloped up away from the road here. With the nose of the car pointed upward, she could not see the land below, only the Moon set in its blue canopy of night. She visualized the flat sea of sparkling lights in the valley beyond, a view she'd admired many times on her late-night drives home from the office. It was going to be the last thing she ever saw.

He walked around and opened the passenger door. He held a knife in one hand. "Hold up your arms."

"Why? You thinking you're going to cut me loose and make me drive over the cliff? Hell, no. Do your own dirty work."

He shook his head in exasperation, leaned over the door, and grabbed her right wrist. He pulled her toward him.

"We will be thrown from the car when it hits." Jakob pointed with his chin toward the valley below. "They won't know which of us was driving. That will confuse their investigation. Slow them down."

We. With that one word, Lauren lost all hope. Jakob was committed beyond the point of persuasion. He was going to sacrifice himself for his cause. He was such a young man. He still thought himself a good man, and he must have believed in his heart that a good man could not go on living after doing so terrible a thing.

The rattle of an approaching vehicle shook the air, a noise more like that of an old lawnmower than a car. A sudden bright flash lit Jakob's face. Startled, he blinked and looked away toward the road.

Lauren drew her knees up against her chest and kicked the car door with all her strength. It flew open and caught Jakob hard across the legs, propelling him backward but not knocking him down. She stumbled out of the car. Backing away from him, she stole a glance at the road and at the rapidly growing, single yellow headlight coming up from the same direction they had traveled.

She backpedaled, putting distance between herself and Jakob, trying to find the space to plant herself. Sharp gravel cut into the soles of her feet. She expected with each step to feel empty air beneath her heel and to go tumbling backward into darkness without end.

He moved in close, knife in his right hand. His first attack was a hesitant, stiff-armed stab from a nearly standing position. No follow-through. Not an experienced move. Like a child pretending to fight with a wooden sword. Or like a man with no stomach for killing, one who had never drawn blood.

His lingering conscience was a small mercy, one that she could not afford to share. She stepped and leaned back, shifted her weight to the ball of her left foot, aimed her right knee at his head, and kicked out as high and as straight as she could.

Lauren was used to sparring on a mat in a gym with a coach barking instructions on Thursday mornings at eleven. It was less preparation for fighting for her life in the dark by the side of a mountain road than she would have wished. She caught Jakob hard in the shoulder. He spun and staggered backward. With her arms bound, she went off balance and fell onto her back on the stony ground.

The knife's blade caught the moonlight as it arced through the air, bouncing off of the rear fender of the Miata with a metallic snick. He dove after it. She rolled over and struggled to her knees.

"Lauren!"

"Mom!"

Stefan leaped from the sidecar of Ethan's old bike while it was moving, running toward her. Her son dismounted and sprinted past him. There was no chance that they could reach her before Jakob would.

He recovered the knife and charged at her. She ran blindly, then realized in horror that she'd gone the wrong direction, up the road away from the car and the motorcycle, away from rescue, right along the edge of the cliff. Every step took her further from any help, and there was nowhere to turn.

Jakob made a desperate lunge forward, knife raised above his head in a reverse grip. She sidestepped as he stabbed downward. Without hesitating, she ducked low and hurled herself at him as he stumbled past. Her shoulder slammed into his ribs. There was a sickening crunch, and he tumbled over the edge.

With a desolate shriek of terror, Jakob was gone.

So was Lauren.

Her momentum carried her after him. She flew, a moment of weightlessness too surreal to be terrible, suspended between the endless canyon of air above and the unseen depths of the earth far below.

Something snatched her back.

In the distance, the Dnepr's little engine coughed and stalled.

"She's breathing okay." Ethan's voice was higher pitched than she'd heard it for a decade. "Doesn't look like he cut her."

"Thank God. Lauren?"

Stefan and Ethan were kneeling at her sides. Her hands were free. She started to sit up, grimaced in pain, and sank back onto the hard ground.

"Does it hurt to breathe?" Stefan asked, rubbing her abraded wrists.

"My arm hurts. And I peed."

"I yanked pretty hard when I grabbed you," Ethan said. "Didn't dislocate anything I don't think, but the shoulder may be sprained."

"Where--How did you know where we went?"

"I got a notification that you'd left the parking lot. I should have checked it right away. I'm so sorry, Stefan and I got so wrapped up in planning..."

"A notification? From who?"

Ethan looked sheepish. "That GPS tracker that I mentioned Lew had installed in your car? I didn't actually remove it. There was so much weird shit going on, and I thought it might be a good idea for the time being to just, well, repurpose it. I set it up to ping me whenever the car moved."

"And thank God he did."

"You could have told me."

"I was afraid you'd get mad. Like I was spying on you."

She tried the sitting experiment again, this time with Stefan's help. "I want to go home." Her own voice sounded dull and strange to her ears. They helped her up and walked her down to the Miata. The key was in the ignition. Her arm was getting stiffer.

"You can't drive," Stefan insisted.

"I'll take her back to my place. Let me show you how to start the bike."

"I should follow you," Stefan suggested.

"No!" Lauren held up the hand attached to the arm that she could stand to move. "Please! Go back to your hotel. We'll talk later. And we'll see each other at the office, if not before."

Stefan was crestfallen. He exchanged looks with Ethan, who nodded slowly in agreement with his mother. "As you wish, then."

When Stefan was a dwindling, forlorn figure in Lauren's side mirror, Ethan said, "That was kinda harsh, Mom."

"I'm just back from the dead, kid. Give it a couple of minutes before you bust my chops about manners."

"Sorry."

"I may be done having adventures with strange men. You, at least, I've known all your life."

They drove on in silence for a few minutes before he said, "Something you ought to know. I was way too far out over the ledge when I grabbed you back there. We'd both be dead, except that Stefan caught my leg and held on. He could have gone right over with us. But he saved us both.

"Dude's strong, Mom. Dude's solid."

Cuddled up beside her son in the big bed up in the loft, Lauren found herself shivering uncontrollably despite the warmth of the night. "It's starting to sink in. I must be in shock. Just hold me, okay?" He enfolded her, and she rested on his shoulder. "I keep seeing Jakob in my mind, down there on the rocks in the dark somewhere. Smashed to pieces. And animals all around." She shuddered again. "What happens now?"

"We'll report it in the morning. It'll be okay. You've got witnesses, and we can all tell the absolute truth about what happened. Pending lawyer's counsel."

"You're always so fucking practical. That's not what I meant. Darling, I killed a man. A man that I...I mean, we were--"

"Mom." He turned on his side so that they lay face to face, and combed his fingers through her hair. "Lauren. Remember what you said this morning, when you cried? Monsters don't grieve."

Several minutes passed before she reached beneath the sheets to fondle him.

"I thought you just wanted to be held."

"Mmm. Must be some kind of survival instinct. One minute I'm mourning the guy who tried to kill me, and the next my body wants to celebrate life."

"You think a whole lot."

"Come to Mama."

Her glossy skin was the color of the blond teak bed frame. The sculpted lines of her calves and thighs flexed in all their sculpted glory as she stood on tiptoe at the end of the bed with her legs spread wide. She bent forward to grasp the footboard and, with a toss of her long raven hair, looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Do my ass again. Please."

"Your wish, Aleksandra..." Jon Chase stepped up behind her. "Lean forward just a touch more."

The Kai'ulauan tilted her rear toward the ceiling. Jon admired the perfect twin globes and the dark little pucker nestled between them that softly gleamed with a mixture of gel lubricant and his own dripping semen. Penetration would be a cinch the second time.

He didn't need to let her in on that, though. "Gotta lube up, first." The swollen knob of his dick glided down her ass cleft to poke between the flowering lips of her pouting pussy, that beckoning pink hole winking out from between fat dusky lips, always drooling wet and ready for cock.

He sank in all the way to his balls on one stroke, Damn, what a fantastic cunt. Tight and elastic as a teenager's and skilled as a thousand-dollar hooker's mouth. He knew quite a bit about both.

Aleksandra's invitation to meet her alone at the Sunset Tower had come out of the blue late last evening. She wanted to break the ice, she said, disturbed by the poor impression that some at Blue Oasis might have of her character and intentions.

The videos she'd attached to the email had gone a long way toward correcting any such "poor impression" for Jon. Aleksandra had no shyness about displaying her body, nor at being recorded in full sexual performance with a number of partners.

He'd had no idea Kai'ulauans were such big dudes. But the visual aid had made the long drive and fight with L.A. traffic a no-brainer.

"I am so eager to take on new partners," she'd confided. "Stefan frankly disappoints me. Oh, I love him of course, in all the ways that a mother should love her son,. But as for business? He lacks what you'd call the killer instinct."

And then she'd demonstrated just how eager she was to take on her new partner. She'd been demonstrating it all evening.

Jon buried his cock in her sultry slit from behind, taking hold of her huge tits and yanking on them. She liked it a little rough, which suited him fine. He'd never had his hands on a set like hers: firm, warm, resilient, and ideally shaped to stiffen a guy's dick despite their enormous size. Natural, too, go ahead and try finding that combo out in the Valley. Squatting on her chest for a tit-fuck and unloading all over her face and funbags had been one of the high points of their burgeoning relationship, so far.

Lauren claimed that Aleksandra was near seventy. Jon didn't believe it for a minute. Her belly was as flat and unmarked, her thighs as firm, and her tits as high as any twentysomething company intern he'd ever banged. No, he was sure she couldn't be older than Lauren and she was a hell of a lot hotter.

But you could never tell Lauren shit. Sure, she was right occasionally, but she was arrogant as fuck. She rebelled against his every idea for the company. On the home front, she'd so doted on Ethan his whole life that she'd ruined Jon's attempts to inspire the kid to excellence.

This was another way that Jon related well to Aleksandra Novak. Offspring had disappointed them both.

Fuck Lauren, anyway. Or don't. It wasn't like Jon had been faithful along his fast track to success. Wealth and notoriety and the availability of female attention went together. In his book, there could never be too much of either.

"My ass, darling," Aleksandra hissed through gritted teeth as Jon kept plugging his cock into her pussy. "This whore needs hard cock up her asshole now."

"Right." He pulled out of her pussy, raised up, and shoved his cock-head against her asshole. Bracing his palms against her ass to steady himself, he pushed forward. Aleksandra's anus yielded as if by command, which Jon knew from their previous round of assfucking was indeed the case. The woman's control of every part of her body was incredible. The little ring of muscle at the entrance of her rear fuck-tunnel worked a guy's cock like an oiled hand. She'd bucked and shrieked like a cat as he'd gone the distance, hammering her ass for ages before pumping what felt like a geyser of cum into her guts.

Then she'd dragged him to the big limestone bathroom of her suite and sucked him off twice in the shower.

Jon didn't know how he'd gotten along all of these years without Libidramine. He'd lost count of how many times he'd come tonight, but they'd been fucking for five or six hours and time after time he bounced back hard as steel and full of jism.

In the last few years, he'd had to admit to more than one doctor that his sexual energy had started to flag just a bit. That he'd experienced failure--only just once or twice--and did they maybe have anything a little stronger than the usual pills and shots? It had been humiliating.

But never again. Here was Aleksandra Novak with the answer to every doubt and trouble in his life, be it sexual or financial.

Jon Chase couldn't stand doubting himself.

Lauren called Aleksandra a shark? Well, that was another thing that Her Highness was wrong about. This was a passionate woman who just lacked a strong man beside her to show her the way. She'd been far too long with no real mate, nothing but hirelings and naïve young punks to fulfill her needs. Jon marveled at how mistaken his wife could be about a person's character--unless, of course, she'd been shrewd enough to recognize Aleksandra as competition and had simply wanted to throw him off the scent.

He didn't believe his wife was that clever. Lauren was just wrong. Again. It didn't matter too much, because either way, Jon could manage this woman. Also, either way, she was the gateway to the miracle drug that was their shared future.

"So, we have an understanding, Jonathan?" Aleksandra purred, wriggling and rolling her broad pelvis. He took hold of her hips, using them as fuck-handles.

"We do. We sure do." Jon laughed and kept on ramming her ass.

Definitely trading up.