Spy Games Ch. 15

This chapter of Spy Games mirrors chapter 15 of Realtor Games and chapter 6 of Realtor Revenge.

Spy Games

Chapter 15

I awoke early the following morning, as is my custom, and carefully untangled my assorted limbs and appendages from those of Miss Moorehead. She had a big day ahead of her so I let her sleep as long as she could while I took over her kitchen.

Breakfast was simple fare... coffee, crepes and fruit. She devoured what I gave her and asked for more. Just one more thing I loved about the woman. She had a healthy appetite... for food and for life. After breakfast, I kissed away a stray sprinkle of powdered sugar from her lips and then took her back into the bedroom to prepare for her meeting with the city council.

When I left Miss Moorehead's condo that morning, I thought every detail was covered. Flanagan and I knew the plan from both the city council's point of view and were fully aware of Raven Hardwood's sinister deviation from that plan... because Raven's plan was actually our plan.

The mayor would invite Miss Moorehead to an emergency meeting at the courthouse where the council would confront her with the blackmail notes they thought were from Miss Moorehead but actually came from Miss Hardwood. Miss Moorehead would naturally deny the accusation since she knew nothing about Miss Hardwood's blackmail efforts. But what Miss Moorehead said in her defense really didn't matter. We were listening to the mayor and city council's phone calls, reading their e-mails, and listening to their office conversations. At this point, they had already decided to kill Miss Moorehead to keep their dirty secrets from becoming public knowledge.

Now I obviously wouldn't let the cretins in the Merryville city council harm the woman I had recently become extremely fond of. While I needed them to think they killed Miss Moorehead, I went to extreme measures to ensure they did not.

At my request, the Company provided us with a standard dose of a fast-acting sedative that, unless you checked closely, would make the victim appear deceased for at least two hours. Flanagan gave the sedative to Miss Hardwood who gave it to two of the more crooked Merryville cops who would eventually stick the needle in Miss Moorehead's arm... in front of the mayor and entire city council... convincing them that Miss Moorehead had been killed at their command. Once that happened, the cops would deliver Miss Moorehead's seemingly lifeless body to Officer Flanagan, who would put her in our highly modified coffin and transport her to the already prepared grave site.

Miss Hardwood, unlike the mayor and city council, would know Miss Moorehead was under the influence of a sedative and not deceased. She would help Flanagan lower the coffin into the pre-dug grave, hook up an air and water supply, and then cover the coffin with dirt. Once that was accomplished, thinking she had buried Miss Moorehead alive, she would leave her lifelong nemesis to suffer the most agonizing death possible... starvation whilst chained to a wooden box six feet under a pasture.

But that was not going to happen. Unbeknownst to the evil Miss Hardwood, when Flanagan and I dug Miss Moorehead's grave, we added an escape tunnel. We dug a second six-foot deep hole inside the rickety old shed which was located a dozen feet from the grave. From there, we dug a tunnel connecting the second hole to the grave. We scattered the excavated dirt from the second hole and tunnel across several acres of pasture so that, unless someone discovered the false floor in the shack, nobody would ever suspect our subterfuge.

My job in this masterful plan was to hide in the hole under the shed before Flanagan and Miss Hardwood arrived with the coffin. After Flanagan and Miss Hardwood lowered the coffin into the grave, covered it with dirt and left the grave site, I would dig out the bit of loose dirt which separated the tunnel from the grave, open up one end of the modified coffin and drag Miss Moorehead to safety. The sedative we provided was guaranteed to keep the recipient comatose for two to three hours. By the time Miss Moorehead regained consciousness, she would be safely in our backwoods hide out and would have no recollection of being subdued and then buried alive.

Yes, there was always the chance that some asshole in the city council might tell Miss Moorehead they were going to kill her during the meeting. If that happened, it would give her a brief period of foreboding, but I found that extremely unlikely. The last thing you want to do before killing someone is tell them it's coming. That's taught in assassin 101.

People do desperate things when they know the end is near. They might lash out without regard to their own safety and possibly injure the assassin. Or, more frequently, run like their life depended on it, forcing you to chase them. And for those victims who didn't succumb to either "fight" or "flight", you had to put up with the crying and begging. The smart assassin found a way to make it swift and clean.

If I was advising the Merryville council on how to efficiently eliminate Janis Moorehead, I would have them calmly tell her that blackmail is not acceptable, have her arrested on the spot (they already had two crooked cops on hand) and then, as they cuffed her, stick the needle in her arm, through her blouse if necessary. Miss Moorehead most likely wouldn't know what was happening before she passed out.

But I wasn't on the city council. And those that were, obviously knew nothing about the proper way to kill someone.

The first thing that went wrong was actually Miss Moorehead's fault, but I certainly couldn't blame her.

Let's pick up the action about midway into the fateful meeting. The mayor, five city council members and Raven Hardwood are all in a small courthouse conference room, interrogating Miss Moorehead about her relationship with me and why I'm buying all the available real estate in town. Flanagan is standing by at the courthouse loading dock next to a cargo van with the coffin inside, and I am at the grave site... thirty miles from the courthouse.

At this point in the conversation, the mayor, Miss Hardwood and most of the city council have heard enough and are ready to do the dirty deed... ready to kill Miss Moorehead for supposedly blackmailing them. But one of the council members was getting cold feet.

"Can't we just swear her to silence?" the lone dissenting council member asked.

"With what we've got planned." the mayor said. "Not likely."

"But people will report her missing and start a police investigation."

"Nobody's going to miss her," Miss Hardwood said. "Her parents are dead. She doesn't have a boyfriend or any siblings. We'll spread the rumor that she's run off with Mr. Seiman and, in a week, nobody will remember that Janis Moorehead ever existed."

"And don't worry about the police," added the mayor. "They aren't likely to investigate a crime they committed."

"But what about her client? Seiman. Won't he say something?"

"There's no cell phone reception where he's going," the mayor said. "We've got eyes on him right now. Mark Seiman will be gone before she is."

Which was a total lie. The only two people who knew my location were Flanagan and Sixty-nine. The mayor was just blowing smoke up the doubting council member's skirt to make her agree to his plan. Unfortunately, Miss Moorehead believed him. As soon as the mayor threatened my life, Miss Moorehead screamed "Mark run," directly into her dolphin entangled pearl necklace/transmitter.

I will never forgive myself for what happened next.

As dense as the mayor and city council might have been, it didn't take a trained intelligence agent to figure out Miss Moorehead was wearing a wire. The mayor immediately brought in the city's two most crooked cops and ordered an "all cavities strip search" which revealed the highly advanced electronic gear hidden in Miss Moorehead's vagina and anal cavities.

I only heard part of the action, the part where they tore off Miss Moorehead's clothing and forcibly removed the hidden electronics. That was enough to know where it was heading. Only later did I confirm that -- once they had her naked, restrained and bent like a pretzel on the conference room table -- some asshole figured they might as well gang rape her before they killed her.

Too far away to intervene, I immediately called Flanagan.

"It's going south," I told him. "I've lost coms with her. They've discovered the wire and I think they're going to rape her."

"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

"Go up there and make them stop."

"I will if you insist," he said," but think about what that means. There's already two armed cops in the room. I'll have to take them out before I deal with the rest of the council. Shouldn't be a problem, but then both of our covers will be blown, and we won't be able to continue the mission."

He didn't say that the Company had already written off the entire population of Merryville as expendable. He didn't mention it because he knew that I knew. We had no choice. We had to let them do whatever they wanted with the completely innocent blonde realtor and hope she survived the experience.

"Fuck," I yelled over the phone. "How did this get so messed up?"

"Not your fault. Nobody could have foreseen these people being this screwed up. All we can do is make sure they eventually pay for what they're doing."

Rather than wasting my time mentally flagellating myself over what was happening to Miss Moorehead, I spent the next ten minutes planning what I would do to those who were responsible for her rough treatment.

"She's alive," Flanagan said when he finally called me back. "Janis is in the back of my van and we're enroute to the grave site. She's out cold, but that's from the sedative. I don't see any bleeding or obvious broken bones. They left some bruises here and there, but nothing serious as far as I can tell."

"Is Miss Hardwood still going to help you bury her?"

"Yeah. She's five minutes behind me. Suggest you stay hidden until we get Janis buried."

"You're sure she's okay?" I asked. "Maybe we shouldn't bury her."

"As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with her physically," Flanagan said. "She might be an emotional wreck when she wakes up, but that won't be for another two hours. There's nothing we can do until then so we might as well continue as planned. You said it yourself... the mission depends on Raven thinking Janis is buried alive."

"Just because it's true doesn't mean I like it."

"I'll give you a call when it's safe to get Janis out of the coffin. I promise."

Forty-five minutes later, I spied the dust trail of Flanagan's van as he exited the dirt road and traversed the field towards me. As soon as Flanagan drove up to the grave site, I exited the shed and threw open the back door of the van.

"You sure you should be out here?" Flanagan asked. "What if Raven shows up early?"

"I thought you said she was five minutes behind you."

"She left the courthouse five minutes after me, but she's driving a Porsche and I'm in this piece of shit Chevy van."

"Just let me take one look at her."

"Understand. One quick peak and then help me get her out of the van and onto the ground. With two of us lifting, there's less chance we'll drop her."

I lifted the lid of the casket and was somewhat relieved by what I found. Her chest was rising and falling with regular breaths, her pulse was strong and, despite what she had just been through, she looked peaceful and oh so beautiful. Sleeping Beauty waiting for her young prince to kiss her.

At Flanagan's urging, I closed the coffin lid and helped him muscle it out of the van and onto the ground. I had just disappeared back into the shed when we heard the throaty roar of Miss Hardwood's Porsche approaching.

Afraid that Miss Hardwood might come into my shed to escape the sun while Flanagan did most of the work, I stayed in the hole under the false floor the entire time. I could hear but not see what they were doing. It took what I thought an inordinate amount of time for them to lower the coffin into the grave, attach the ventilation and water systems, cover the grave with dirt and depart.

I checked my watch when Flanagan finally called to say both he and Miss Hardwood were clear of the area, and I could start my rescue of Miss Moorehead. It had been two hours and fifteen minutes since Flanagan first called to tell me he had Janis and was headed my way.

That's when I realized the immensity of our second screwup, this one entirely my fault. The Company provided sedative was designed to keep a normally sized human unconscious for a period between two and three hours. Considering that Flanagan's call happened at least five minutes after Miss Moorehead received the injection, if she wasn't already coming around, she soon would be. If there was anything worse than getting raped by a gang of lowlife small town politicians, it would be waking up in a coffin.

I grabbed my digging tool and attacked the last foot of dirt like a miner digging out of a cave-in... desperately trying to get through the twelve-inch barrier of soil that separated me from Miss Moorehead's coffin before she came to. I only got a few inches into my task when I heard a voice coming from the other side. Although I couldn't quite make out what was being said, it seemed to be a woman's voice and, instead of the scream or panicked cry for help I expected, it sounded conversational. As I continued to hack away at the compacted dirt, I remembered something Flanagan told me when we were making the required modifications to the casket.

"Raven wants to leave a message for Janis in the coffin," he said.

"Like a letter?" I asked. "Won't it be too dark to read?"

"No, not a letter. She wants a recorded message that will come on when Janis wakes up after the sedative wears off."

"How do you do that?"

"Shouldn't be too hard. We put Raven's message on a digital voice recorder, hook it up to a motion detector and program it to play back a minute or two after it senses Janis moving around the coffin."

"Seems like a waste of time since I'm going to get to her before she wakes up," I said.

"Yeah, but Raven doesn't know that."

"Sure. Why not. If it makes Miss Hardwood buy into the plan, go ahead and do it."

That conversation happened three days before I found myself six feet underground trying to get to Miss Moorehead before she woke up. As I decreased the amount of dirt between me and the coffin, I was better able to hear the voice and soon recognized it as that of Miss Raven Hardwood. Unless Flanagan's system malfunctioned, which it rarely did, hearing the voice of my dark-haired realtor meant that Miss Moorehead was conscious.

I redoubled my effort, spurred on by my desire to save Miss Moorehead the agony of hearing the vile things her nemesis was saying.

"Now that you understand why you're going to die, let's discuss how," the evil realtor's voice said.

I finally reached the coffin and started the arduous task or clearing the excess dirt from the corners while the recording continued to explain Miss Moorehead's plight.

"An inch above your head, right over your lips, you'll find what looks like a rubber dildo. I know you can't see it but take my word for it. It's a perfect replica of Mark's cock, except instead of shooting out massive amounts of cum, it's attached to a fifty-gallon drum of water. Whenever you get thirsty, all you've got to do is suck on that cock and water will stream into your mouth. We wouldn't want you to die from dehydration."

I tried to yell over the voice to let Miss Moorehead know she wasn't alone, but as soon as I opened my mouth, it was filled with the dust and dirt from my excavation. Not wanting to pass out from lack of oxygen myself, I continued my task in silence.

"We also don't want you to suffocate," Raven's voice droned on. "That would be way too easy. Again, you can't see them, but there are ventilation tubes at either end of your new home. A battery powered fan, recharged every day with solar cells, will ensure you have an adequate supply of oxygen."

Why in hell did I let Flanagan install this nasty message, I thought as I fought to remove a grapefruit sized rock that was blocking one corner of the coffin.

"I hope you last a long, long time. Most people can live without food for three or four weeks. With all the excess fat on your body, you might survive for a month. Starvation. That's what will finally kill you. Because I'm betting you don't have what it takes to die of thirst when an ample supply of water is just an inch from your lips."

I finally pried the rock free and was moving it out of my way when the recording reached its end.

"Goodbye Janis. Think of me these next few weeks, your last on this earth. Think of me sleeping in a soft warm bed with your man cuddled by my side. Think of me spending all the commission money you were supposed to get. And, by all means, continue thinking of me as your mind slowly slips into insanity. My only regret is that I won't get to hear your screams... nobody will."

Miss Hardwood was wrong on several accounts. She would never cuddle with me in a warm bed. She would never spend any of Miss Moorehead's commission money, or any of hers. I would make it my duty to ensure Miss Moorehead's mind stayed sharp and, unfortunately, somebody did get to hear her scream.

I did.

As soon as Miss Hardwood's final message stopped, Miss Moorehead screamed like a woman being drug through the gates of Hell. Hearing her panicked voice initially heartened me... because it let me know she was still alive... but also broke my heart... knowing that the reason for her primordial cry for help was entirely my fault.

I was almost there. The dirt and rocks were shoved aside. All I had left to do was release two pins on the top of the coffin which allowed the headboard portion of the casket to swivel down, giving me access to the woman inside. As I worked on this task, Miss Moorehead's initial scream turned into anger.

Raven Hardwood was the main subject of her ire, but the list of people she vowed to haunt after she died included the mayor, city council, entire Merryville police department... and the final curse was specifically directed towards me.

"... and you Mr. Mark Seiman. You said you cared for me... said you were on my side. Well prove it. Come rescue me. Prove those weren't just a bunch of pretty words used to get into my pants. If you come get me, I'll be yours for as long as you'll have me. But if you don't come... if I die in this coffin... I will forgo heaven and sell my soul to the devil for the express privilege of haunting you for the rest of your days."

That's when the oaken barrier between the two of us finally rotated down, giving me access to the coffin.

Miss Moorehead shrieked like a little girl who just had a tarantula drop onto her nose.

"I'm going to hold you to that," I said after grabbing a lung full of coffin air (which was surprisingly fresher than 'dirt tunnel air', my compliments to Flanagan's ventilation system).

"Mark?... Oh my God. Did they capture you too?"

"Not a chance. Now lie still while I get these handcuffs off you?"

"But how... Where are we? Did Raven lie? Am I not in a coffin?"

"I promise to answer all your questions as soon as we get out of this hole," I said as I fished the cuff key out of my pocket.

"I'm really in a coffin?... in a grave?"

"All in due time. Now please hush. The air in the tunnel is full of dirt, dust and who knows what kinds of left-over farm chemicals. I don't want to rescue you from the grave only to have you succumb to pneumonia."

"We're escaping through a tunnel? Is it a long one? How far do we have to go?"

Apparently, a person who was buried alive and convinced she will never see the light of day again... said person is unable to quit talking once she knows she isn't doomed. Instead of answering her questions, I released the cuffs, grabbed Miss Moorehead by the wrists and drug her completely naked body out of the silk lined coffin and into the dirt filled tunnel floor.