Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes

XXIII

Monday, 2230

Jack closed the door to his condo, after seeing Jimmy and Grace to the elevator. Veronica was waiting for him as he re-entered, and once again he was mesmerized by how magnificently beautiful she was as she walked to him and kissed him with tender affection. Her very dark, almost jet black complexion contrasted so well with the white color of her elegant, casual dress, and her tall and perfectly proportioned body caught the attention of every facet of his sex drive. Her alluring curves had the liquid grace of mercury as Jack's eyes so naturally focused on her slim waist, noting the wide and smooth, round slope of her fertile hips and soft, prominent ass before his gaze traveled compulsively along her flat stomach and svelte ribs to the gentle, hypnotic swell of her large, round breasts, and up along her graceful neck to her heart-shaped face. Her large eyes were so incredibly expressive and framed by her long black lashes that even after doing so for easily the thousandth time since he first met her, Jack knew he could spend the rest of his life looking into them and never feel satisfied that he would ever fathom the deep beauty of mortal possibility she inspired in him. When she smiled before kissing him, he felt the world shift and his heart shuddered at the unconditional love he felt for her.

Veronica always loved the moment when Jack came back home, to their home, and reveled in the crooked, mischievous smile he showed her, enjoying the way the corners of his jade-green eyes crinkled from his smile, and how square and handsome his jaw looked in perfect compliment to his high cheekbones and strong neck. She thought his looks were the perfect hybrid of Sam Worthington and Paul Walker, with the former's eyes and nose, and the latter's jaw, chin, neck and shoulders. She'd had a wonderful time meeting Jimmy and in particular Grace, and had felt a strong connection to many of the same issues that Grace dealt with as an immigrant, a mature woman in love with a somewhat younger man, and more specifically, a man who was a recent combat veteran. Veronica looked forward to her next chance to socialize with Grace.

"That was nice, Jack. I really feel like we're a couple now, and not just in that confused limbo of great sex, desperate circumstances and unguided love." She said, feeling her smile return to her lips. She paused for a moment, gently trailing her fingers across his stubbly cheek before continuing. "Do you really think I'm 'pure,' and 'perfect'?" She asked, referring to Jack's heated conversation with Jimmy.

Jack replied without hesitation. "I do. Sweetheart, you're the most decent human being I've met in a very long time."

She looked down at the floor and broached something with him she'd discussed before, but only as an aside to the topic of conversation. "But I was a whore, Jack. Do you still think I'm pure and perfect?"

"We're all whores, Ronnie." Jack said. "You just did it for a much less selfish reason than most of us."

"You know what I mean. Is this going to be an issue between us? The fact that I had sex with other men for money, and that I let other men touch me, in the club, for money?" Her extremely dark skin prevented Jack from noticing her flush response, but her demeanor became demonstrably self conscious.

"Sweetheart, it won't be an issue between us."

"So, you forgive me for doing that?"

"There's nothing to forgive, Ronnie. I didn't know you then, I didn't love you, you didn't cheat on me. You wouldn't be 'you,' today, without your past. Besides, what makes you think I didn't do anything similar? Maybe I should be asking you for forgiveness." He said, and his smile confirmed her suspicions that he was joking.

"Jack, you're the last man I would ever imagine taking money to let anyone, especially men, touch you."

"You're right, there. I hate a man's touch." He said, kissing her and holding her close to him. He felt himself becoming aroused at her proximity against him, and he could feel the heat beginning to build in her face, and hear her begin to softly moan through their kiss as Veronica's own desire began to build. Somewhere in his consciousness, a reminder began ticking louder and louder, finally he remembered that he still had to download the video footage from the cameras he'd mounted. If he didn't do it tonight, they'd hit their 48 hour limit and either shut off or begin to record over the footage they'd already recorded. Jack couldn't remember which would happen. He reluctantly stepped back and broke off their kiss.

"Sorry, Ronnie. I have to go out and run an errand..." He could see the disappointment in her face, but she nodded and moved her hands down from his shoulders to his waist.

"Will you be gone long?" She asked, smiling and biting her lip playfully, looking into his eyes and angling her pelvis toward him.

"Maybe an hour or two, at most."

"It can't wait?" She asked, putting his hands over her breasts, and then moving her own hands inside his pants, past the waistband of his boxers and took hold of his hard cock and large scrotum from which he'd had the decency to clean the residue of their earlier, intense sex, with wet wipes in his guest bathroom, earlier in the evening.

"Ronnie..." he said, closing his eyes and enjoying her touch and the knowledge that as she squeezed and stroked him, she wanted him. He opened his eyes, forcing himself to focus on getting out and downloading the accumulated video footage he'd recorded since emplacing his cameras two days ago. Jack knew if he didn't leave now, he'd very easily spend the rest of the evening indulging in his need for... He looked into her eyes and loved the combination of raw sexual hunger and the coy, 'come hither' playful expression.

He reluctantly, gently pulled her hands out of his pants and interlaced his fingers with hers and kissed her lingeringly. "I promise, I'll be home as soon as I can..."

Veronica sighed theatrically. "It's cruel to spoil me with a long weekend of repeated, good sex and incredible orgasms, and then make me wait for more..." She pouted.

Jack smiled and traced his finger along her face, from her temple down to her chin. "It's not too long of a wait, we did have sex before Jimmy and Grace showed up." He reminded her.

XXIV

Monday, 2349

Jack had just finished downloading the video footage of the last of three cameras he'd mounted facing Desperado's parking lot. He was on the top floor of a four story parking garage, and this garage had been fortuitously located along the South side of Desperados in such a way that from the Northeast side of the garage, he could view the club's rear parking lot, while the Northwest side of the garage allowed him to surveil the club's front parking lot. "Waste not, want not." Jack reminded himself, using the camera's app to reset the memory to continue recording over the earlier recorded footage. He also readjusted the magnification of the cameras, zooming each of them in just a bit, and focusing on the front parking spaces. He'd decided to not use the drone to download the video footage unless he couldn't get access to the garage, as at this time of night, the whine of the quadcopter's rotors would stand out against the otherwise largely quiet, Monday night. Friday and Saturday nights may be louder, but as this was in effect, the end of the (long) weekend and the night before the beginning of the work week, it was quiet. Except for the uneven shuffling of footsteps Jack heard approaching him.

"Fuck." Jack said, putting his phone back in his pocket and noticing the unbalanced and filthy looking man approaching him. Jack had noticed him shuffle up the stairs from the opposite side of the parking garage, and had hoped the man was just looking for a quiet corner out of the wind in which to take a shit, and perhaps he had; but then he apparently noticed Jack, and felt another opportunity presenting itself.

"Hey man, you got any change for the bus?" The shabbily dressed and filthy looking man, likely a tweaker, called out from where he'd stopped, six meters away from Jack, to size up the situation. Jack knew this moron had no need of the bus, as they'd stopped running almost two hours earlier. The man intended to at least try and rob him. While Jack was certain he could kick the shit out of the tweaker, he didn't want to do so in the parking garage, and thereby possibly bring law enforcement attention to the garage, which may uncover his cameras.

"Did you hear me, you preppy mother fucker?!" The obnoxious tweaker asked, not moving any faster, but smiling menacingly through his discolored, no doubt stench-ridden teeth. He was now only three meters away from Jack.

"Sure, follow me." Jack said with a smirk, turning around and jogging to the stairs leading down, eventually to the street. He was glad he'd not parked his car in the garage, but rather down the street, taking advantage of the free streetside parking after 8pm on weeknights. He wondered if the junkie was following him, as he'd not heard him begin to descend the stairs, but then relaxed and smiled cruelly as he heard the layabout, worthless junkie-thief begin to pound his way down the stairs.

"Get back here, Todd!" The junkie shouted, derisively pronouncing the name 'Todd,' figuring Jack to be the epitome of an effeminate, limp-wristed suburbanite.

Jack heard the out of shape lout stumbling down the stairs after him, and as he reached the ground level he paused and made sure the pipe-monkey would catch up with him.

"Give me your fucking money, you faggot!" The turd shouted as he began to descend the final half-flight of stairs to the ground floor.

Jack smiled toothily and flipped the man off, shaking his fist slowly left and right, making sure the junkie saw him, and then walked casually around the corner of the garage, into the alley he knew lay between the garage and a mostly vacant commercial office building. In particular, Jack knew there were no cameras and only a broken streetlight over the alley. As he heard the pathetic thief huff his way toward the alley, laughing and taunting him for choosing to run away down a dead-end street, Jack felt the welcoming return of his rage that had nearly spilled over that evening when Jimmy had challenged him about how he intended to deal with Dante, the drug dealer from whom Veronica ran and ended up in Jack's condo. As had been the case most of his life, Jack's rage never really dissipated, it just compacted within the core of his personality, fermenting and waiting for a time when he could channel it, and hopefully control it.

"I'm going to take your money," the self-assured junkie warned, "and then I'm going to fuck you in the ass, and piss on your face while you die!" He continued his threat.

"Come get some." Jack said, twisting his neck first left, then right, eliciting a pleasing sounding crack as he walked forward and moved much quicker than the cocky junkie could have ever imagined, and far faster than he would have been able to deal with, even were he sober.

Jack was four inches shorter than the junkie, who seemed to be white or perhaps Latino, possibly once in good shape or even an athlete, but that had been at least 8 years and 60 pounds ago. The fool had not even squared himself into a fighting stance, and took Jack's hooking left jab directly on his chin. The blow twisted his head and he did not see Jack's body unwinding as he slammed the junkie with a hard right fist to his solar plexus.

"Huhhh..." the junkie wheezed as he bent forward and sank down to his knees, his hands holding the empty air over his damaged diaphragm. His head had just fallen parallel to the surface of the street and he'd just begun to take in his first shaky breath of air when Jack swung his right leg forward and drove his knee savagely into the Junkie's face, shattering his nose with a sickening crunch, and slamming him backwards onto the rough pavement. The junkie lay on his back with his arms stretched out to his sides, his head and shoulders poked out beyond the alleyway into the weak, yellowish "bug lights" of the old fashioned, sodium streetlights. The man, only semi-conscious now, began to moan and simperingly whine. "Help... someone, help me..."

Jack smiled cruelly as he bent down and grabbed the Junkie by his ankles, noticing the surprisingly clean and new looking Adidas sneakers he wore over his scratchy, malodorous socks. "Probably stolen." Jack mused, his mind preternaturally calm as he roughly yanked the man back into the alley, his shoulders scraping along the pavement and his head bouncing from the speed with which Jack manhandled him. Jack felt relaxed and at peace with the hell he prepared to rain down on the drug-ravaged, human effluent. He had not felt this kind of calm acceptance to commit heinous violence since the night he'd discovered Veronica in his closet, and had almost shot her to death through his closet door. Jack said nothing as he roughly hauled the junkie up to his feet and then slammed him hard against the wall of the office building. He studied the squirming junkie for a moment, feeling his contempt for the formerly mouthy bully, kindle into a hot rage for the coward that hid behind the vile bravado the thief had hurled at Jack less than three minute earlier.

"C'mon, meat! Get some!" Jack shouted at him, harkening back to the taunts he remembered welcoming him as a new infantryman to his first platoon by referring to him as 'meat,' the truncated version of "dead meat," "new meat," or some other derivation that served to make clear he'd been just another faceless replacement, unworthy yet of a personalized and always demeaning nickname.

Jack was inwardly pleased as the overmatched lout trembled and blubbered in fear from the force of his voice and the depth of the anger he projected. Jack didn't care if the junkie's cowardice was an act to distract him or genuine, pusillanimous weakness, he began to beat the thief in earnest, landing blow after blow, punches and kicks, regardless of the junkie's futile attempts to retaliate or enraging pleas for mercy. When the walking skidmark would double over or turn away from the onslaught, Jack used his elbows and knees, going after the man's stomach, neck, jaw, kidneys, ribs and crotch. When Jack finished, the junkie lay facedown on the street like a discarded, overflowing diaper; the tweaker was unconscious and Jack's knuckles were sore, his arms and legs shook with accumulated adrenaline and he felt energized as he'd not felt in months. Until Veronica had come into his life and offered him an alternative source of fulfillment and contentment, Jack was only truly happy when he was lost to the violence-dopamine reward feedback loop of giving into his rage and inclination for combat. He basked in the endorphin-fueled high of a long overdue fight, and inhaled deeply of the night air, noting the smell of gypsum from sheetrock dust, the stink of stale beer on the sticky concrete beneath his feet, the metallic scent of blood, the musky odor of sweat and testosterone and the fetid stench of urine coming from the junkie after he had emptied his bladder (deliberately or otherwise).

Kicking the fuck out of the tweaker, particularly after he'd threatened Jack so brazenly with extreme violence and the promise of emasculating humiliation, had slowly conjured some far darker aspect of Jack's personality than he'd felt in years. He felt it shift within his psyche and begin to assert itself within his mind, replacing his hot, Martian rage and lust for combat with a cold, inexorable sense of purpose and detachment from any human kinship with the junkie-thief-loser. Jack felt the dark cloud of disinterested contempt spread through his mind and reinvigorate the tired muscles of his arms as he reached down and took hold of the junkie's tangled, greasy mullet of shoulder length hair and dragged him by his head and neck to the curb where the sidewalk met the street. He could feel the junkie coming to consciousness from the pain of his stretched scalp, and he could hear him whining and quietly sobbing.

Jack dropped him like a sack of ripe swine entrails at the curb, feeling nothing as the junkie's face and chin bounced off the sidewalk. He bent down near the junkie's head and growled, coldly.

"Open your fucking mouth."

The junkie lay where he was and attempted to remain motionless, but screamed when Jack reached out and began to twist his ear, feeling the vessels in his ear pop and begin to heat the ear with the flow of blood from torn veins ruptured beneath his skin.

"Open your mouth, you filth." Jack hissed, and reluctantly, the junkie did so.

"Not there, asshole; open your God-damned mouth over the curb. Put your fucking teeth on the sidewalk like you're going to bite the curb." Jack commanded him. "Do it, you piece of fuck, or I'll twist your head off your neck and leave it on the pavement for stray dogs to lick clean."

The junkie was sobbing uncontrollably and defecated upon himself, but slowly and with a great palsy in his arms, moved so that his open mouth straddled the sharp corner where the horizontal and vertical planes of the curb came together.

"Don't move." Jack said, as he stood up and lifted his right leg, pulling his knee almost to his chest, but ultimately he did not stomp on the back of the Junkie's head. Instead, at the last moment before he committed a brutal homicide, something flickered within his mind and he paused as his consciousness shifted and he slowly regained control over his dark impulses. Jack quietly lowered his foot to the street, and closed his eyes as he breathed deeply, six times, in and out, and felt his faculties return (mostly) to rational thought. The junkie continued to sob but seemed to have exhausted his bowels. As Jack opened his eyes, he became inescapably aware of the choking, hot stench fresh shit, which was nearly overpowering, even in the open air of the alley. Jack contented himself with bending down and squatting on his ankles, and backhanded the junkie on the left side of his face, hitting him hard, with the back of his left hand, shifting the junkie's teeth an inch or two to the right, gratingly along the cement. Jack heard the man cry out in severe pain as his teeth scraped along the pavement, no doubt some of them breaking and cutting his gums.

"He'll live." Jack thought as he stood back up and walked away from the wreckage of a wasted life for whom he had only contempt and no mercy to give.

XXV

Tuesday, 0047

Jack returned to his condo and, not seeing Veronica waiting for him on the couch, took from his stinky, green duffle bag a small, wrapped box that he'd kept hidden since he returned from running errands on Saturday. He lay the wrapped box on the kitchen counter where he was confident Veronica would see it the next morning. Then he quietly washed his hands at the kitchen sink, thoroughly scrubbing the dish-soap along his knuckles before drying them and striding purposefully to his bedroom. He found Veronica waiting in bed for him, naked but with the comforter pulled up over her breasts and tucked under her arms. She lowered the book she'd been reading, Jack's worn, dog-eared paperback copy of 'The Dogs of War,' by Frederick Forsyth he'd "borrowed" from one of the MWR libraries in Afghanistan, at least a year ago.

"Hey, Jack!" She said, setting down the book on the bedside table and smiling at him warmly. Her expression and demeanor conveyed that uniquely feminine variety of sexiness, a combination of sleepy and aroused, her hair tousled, her eyes heavily lidded. Jack felt a mix of protective affection and desire for her, and began to undress. He'd just stripped off his pants and tossed them into the hamper (hoping to stop Veronica from seeing the bloom of blood and mucus on the pant legs over his knees) when Veronica walked up to him, naked and eager for his touch.