Unhappily Ever After Bk. 01 Ch. 05

It appeared that Prancer had everything in hand. All I could do was remind him of the line in Robert Burns' poem, "Ode To A Mouse", which spoke of, '...the best-laid plans of mice and men...'.

"Just make sure you have a Plan B," I said to him before disconnecting.

---oooBJSooo---

It was approaching five o'clock when I walked into the ground-floor foyer of my office. Kathy was not her normal cheery self when she greeted me. In fact, she has the appearance of someone watching a friend climbing the steps to the gallows as I walked towards the elevator.

She didn't even respond to my smile. Maybe she recognised it as the smile of a man who mistakenly thought he was climbing the gallows steps simply to test the rope and trapdoor for some other poor sod.

"Ms Brown is waiting for you in the meeting room," Shirley said as I walked into her office.

I had been right. It only took me a few minutes to determine Charlie's intentions.

As soon as I entered the room, she rushed at me, throwing herself into my arms and hitting me with a tongue-filled passionate kiss. Having cleansed my palate with a glass of water before leaving the café, I could taste Todd Manyweather's cum.

I didn't resist her but slowly backed her to the large boardroom table, lifting her and laying her back over it. Working her tight business skirt up her legs and over her hips, I pulled her soaking-wet panties down her legs. They were filled with her lover's spent semen. She hadn't tried to hide her earlier activity, and there were streaks of his dried and drying cream down the inside of her beautiful legs.

As I discarded her underwear, she threw her legs wide. She was offering me a creampie treat and expected me to dive straight in and lap up his leavings. I had no doubt that she was doing this on his instructions. I also had no doubt that she was enjoying what she was doing.

I reached down, inserted two fingers into her cum-filled slutty cunt, and extracted a large helping of cream.

"You first," I said, extending my finger to her.

She lifted herself on her elbows and extended her tongue to guide my fingers into her mouth. She moaned in ecstasy as she wrapped her lips around my fingers and sucked her lover's cum from them. I felt her shudder as she swallowed it down.

She then looked at me and begged me to give her more, once again opening her mouth and poking her tongue out as a guide for my fingers. The look in her eyes told me that she was in another place. She certainly wasn't here in the room with me. I wondered whether she was still experiencing a post fuck-fest glow or her new-old lover had pumped her full of something to help her along the way to Nirvana?

'It's probably a bit of both,' I thought.

With that thought in mind, I grabbed her by the legs and flipped her over. She also had his cream leaking from her arsehole. She had certainly given him her all.

While she was lying face down on the table, I pulled both her arms behind her and, with her wrists gathered together on one of my large paws, reached around and gripped her throat in the other. I was standing between her widely-spread legs so she couldn't kick me.

Not being able to hit me, kick me or scream, I bent forward and spoke quietly into her ear.

"Do you know who I am?" I asked.

"Yes," she croaked. "You're Aaron Bourke. Stoney.

"Good. Do you remember what I told you would happen to the next woman who tried to give me sloppy seconds or tried to make me eat her lover's cum from her filthy cunt?"

She nodded her head in affirmation.

"And do you remember what I said would happen to the next woman who kissed me with her lover's cum still in her mouth?"

She nodded once again.

"Tell me what I said," I ordered.

"You said she'd be dead before she hit the ground."

"And did you believe me when I said it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then why? Why did you do it?"

"Because my master told me to," she shouted as loudly as she could with my hand constricting her airways.

Releasing my grip on her throat and hands simultaneously, I pushed her across the table. She rolled over and sat up facing me.

"Why didn't you kill me like you promised?" she tried shouting at me. "You've proven yourself to be the gutless cuckold wimp Todd said you were."

"So you'd rather obey a man who has to bully women to get his jollies? A man who is willing to let you be killed to prove a point? Well, good luck with that.

"I don't have to kill you," I said while rummaging around in her shoulder bag. "Like Sam, you're already dead to me. Your so-called master will do the physical part of the job for me in the same way Kingston will kill Sam. She already has a target on her. Todd-fucking-Manyweather is in the process of putting one on you.

"Wait here," I said after having found her car keys. "I'll be back to pick you up in a while."

On the way out, I pulled Shirley to one side. Whispering in her ear, I asked her to stay back for about an hour.

"If I've not returned by then, give Mr Manyweather a call and ask him to drive Ms Brown out to my place." I kissed her on the cheek before heading to the elevator.

I received a few odd looks as I walked through the storage section at the back of my building to retrieve my truck. Most of them came from the black-shirted security people, but the looks I received from the late-shift stores' staff were equally disconcerting. Some of them were looks of sadness. But many of them were smirks. It made me wonder just how deeply this little Führer had penetrated my business.

'I'm probably not going to know until after he's gone,' I thought. 'Then I'm going to have to spend thousands of dollars having background checks done on every member of my staff. Anyone who even smells a little bit off will have to go.'

Once I got past the rush-hour traffic, I pulled over to the side of the road and made another voice call to Prancer.

"Twice in one day," he said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?

"I want sights on that bastard, Manyweather, twenty-four, seven," I said without preamble. "And I mean sights, not just eyes. That man is a dangerous psychopath. Take the PIs off him and replace them with SAS types."

"What about Charlie?" Tommy asked.

"Charle's done. Whatever her intentions might have been when she first decided to take Manyweather up on his offer of a good fucking, she's well and truly changed sides. I proved it a few minutes ago.

"Best pull the PIs off her too. Wherever her master is, she won't be too far away. If he senses she's being followed, he'll use her as bait to suck them in and won't hesitate to kill them. As I say, he's as mad as the 'Phooey' he's trying to emulate was."

---oooBJSooo---

Charlie's magic wand was the only thing I held back when I packed her gear. Everything else went into her duffle bag, which I threw into her car before driving it up to the road and parking it outside the gate. As I'd done for Sam, I dropped her remote car key into an envelope and pinned it under one of the windscreen wiper blades. There was a better than even chance it would still be there when she arrived.

After jogging back down to the house, I transferred my portable office from the Ford to the Chrysler, topped up its fuel tank, showered and changed and headed back into town. I thought I might catch up with Brad at the King Alfred. Having a lawyer by my side would be handy if I struck trouble.

Once the gate had been secured with chains and locks, I decided to take the long route back into town to avoid meeting Charlie and Manyweather.

---oooBJSooo---

"I'm pleased I caught you before you left," I said as I sat myself down on an empty barstool beside Brad. "I've got a sneaking suspicion that I might need your help later tonight and wanted to give you a bit of advanced warning."

"You're lucky," he said. "I was just going to finish this drink and head for home."

The work crowd was beginning to thin, so we made our way to a vacant stand-up table after ordering a couple of large beers. Before we started talking, Brad called Lisa, his wife, to tell her he'd been delayed.

I didn't hear the whole conversation but got the impression she wasn't pleased. I did catch the last part, however, when she told him in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't be getting any roast lamb if he was too late home. I didn't think she was talking about food. But then again, maybe she was.

Her attitude changed when he explained that he was having a drink with her brother. She knew some of what had been going on in my life and had apparently asked him to pass his phone over to me.

"Don't keep him out too late, Big Brother. And don't send him home drunk."

"I have no intention of getting him drunk," I answered. "If I'm going to need him, I'll need him sober. As for the 'keeping him out late' part, that may well depend on factors beyond my control. As the ferryman said in the Cris de Burgh song, "There's trouble ahead".

"So far as the roast lamb is concerned, I'd suggest you keep it on the back burner. I have no doubt he'll be looking for something to eat when he gets home; regardless of the time."

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and as I glanced over at Brad, I saw he was as red as the proverbial beetroot.

"Are you there, Sweetheart?" he asked when I handed the phone back to him.

"I am," she responded. "Look out for him, please? He might be a bastard, but I still love him. And don't worry about your roast lamb. It will still be warm when you get home. Luvya."

"Luvya, too," he said before disconnecting.

"She's right, you know," he said. "You are a real bastard. I wonder if your father knew about it. That's probably why he beat you around the head most days."

"Roast lamb," I said, shaking my head.

We were still laughing when the two uniformed police officers entered the bar. After looking around for a moment, they made a bee-line for our table.

"Show-time," I said.

Before they arrived, I slipped my burner phones over to Brad.

"Call the number on the phone marked with the number 'two'," I said quietly. "He's my researcher. Let him know what is going on.

"I'm sorry I haven't had time to fill you in on what's going down. Suffice it to say, it's a continuation of what we've already discussed. Just watch my back. Okay?"

"To battles," we said together, raising our almost empty glasses in salute.

"Would one of you gentlemen be the owner of a pearl-white Chrysler sedan with the registration ABC-002?" the senior of the two officers asked, looking directly at me.

"Who would be asking?" Brad asked.

"I'm Senior Constable Mitchell Moyston," the officer said. "And my partner is Constable Kate Buchanan."

"And why would you be asking after the ownership of the aforementioned vehicle?" Brad asked in his best legalese while jotting down the police officers' details in a notebook he'd been jotting notes into when I had arrived.

"We have reason to believe that the vehicle and its owner have been involved in the performance of an indictable offence."

"Would you care to elaborate?" Brad inquired.

"Not here, if you don't mind," the senior constable answered. "But I would like to ask you to identify yourself, Sir."

By this time, the bar had become silent. Not only was everyone watching the events unfolding before them, but a few of them also had their phones out and were recording the performance.

As Brad reached into his jacket, the two police officers took a step backwards and rested their hands on their pistols. The sound of the hold-down straps being unclipped was loud in the otherwise silent room.

"Whoa back!" Brad exclaimed. It was accompanied by a sharp, collective intake of breath by the bar's patrons.

"I'm a lawyer," he said. "And I'm simply reaching into my coat to extract my wallet so I can comply with your request. Please don't shoot me.

"This is Australia, for Christ's sake. Not the good ol' U-S-of-A. And you are state police officers. Not a pair of redneck Sherriff's deputies. Besides, I'm not even black."

I sat perfectly still, trying not to laugh at Brad's antics. Others were not so stoic. The bar erupted into loud laughter at his last statement; even Justin and Addam, the two part-Aboriginal stock traders who spent most evenings in the pub after a busy day gambling with the whitefella's money.

Opening his wallet to show the senior constable and his partner his driver's licence, he handed each of them one of his cards. It simply said, 'Bradley J. Stokes LLB, Lawyer'. Beneath his name and avocation were his business address and contact details. But, Brad being Brad, he felt he should elaborate.

"Brad Stokes," he said. "Provider of legal counsel to the less-than-rich and not-so-famous. Please don't hesitate to contact me should I be able to be of assistance to either of you."

I saw the female officer attempting to hide a grin. She had a pretty face. I wondered what she looked like out of uniform.

'Stop it!' I told myself. 'You've only just escaped from two women who want to destroy you, and you're already looking for a replacement? Isn't that the prime indicator of stupidity?'

The laughter was the last straw for the senior constable. He turned to me and asked me to stand. He then ordered his partner to fit me with a set of handcuffs while he went through his spiel.

"Aaron John Bourke," he said. It appeared he knew exactly who he'd come here to arrest. "I am arresting you on suspicion of using a conveyance to transport illegal substances - namely, saleable quantities of a proscribed drug. You do not have to say or do anything but know that if you do so, it may be used in evidence against you."

After asking where I'd be taken for processing, Brad told me he'd be waiting for me when I was brought to an interview room.

"There's obviously a fair bit you didn't get time to tell me. Just keep your mouth shut until we've had time to talk."

When we came out into the street, a constable stepped out of a second police car and walked towards us. The female constable - acting on her superior's instructions - went through my pockets to find my electronic car key.

"Don't you need a warrant to do that?" I asked as she touched a few things I would have thought had more to do with a full body search than a search for car keys.

"You're under arrest," she answered. "I don't need your permission to do anything." The bitch was flirting with me.

Having found my car keys, she threw them over to the other constable, who used them to open my car. He then climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine and drove it away. The second police car followed.

'Something's wrong here,' I thought as Constable Buchannan pushed me into the back of their patrol vehicle. 'This is nothing like any of the arrests I'd seen on television. 'Unless, perhaps, for "Police Academy".'

On the way to the police station, I asked why I'd been cuffed with my hands in front of me instead of behind me, as I'd seen it done on American television shows?

"That's so you can hold your own dick when you have to take a leak," the senior constable answered. "Word has come down from on high that it would be inappropriate for me to ask a subordinate officer to assist you in that regard. And I'm damned sure I'm not going to do it.

"It became even more complicated when they decided to put female officers into patrol cars. Mind you, a few of our Dickless Tracys wouldn't mind if we went back to the old way of doing things.

"By the way," he asked. "Where did you find that lawyer of yours? He's a real crack-up. I thought he was going to ask me to shoot the two blackfellas sitting at the far end of the bar."

"Truth be told," I said, "it surprised me a bit, too. I'll bet Jason and Addam were shitting themselves, thinking that's what he'd do. Those poor lads carry the double burden of being both black and gay. But they've found a home at the King Alfred.

"I'll tell you what. If you're ever looking for a local where nobody cares about what you do for a living, who you are, or how much money you make, that'd be the pub for you. They'll let anyone in. Shit, one of the regular patrons even works for the Tax Office. I don't believe there's a bad apple in that whole barrel. Oh, sure, there have been one or two wrong 'uns come along over the years, but they don't stay long. They somehow get weeded out."

"Except for you," Constable Buchanan said.

"Except for me, what?" I asked.

"Except for you being a bad apple," she answered.

"Alleged bad apple," I corrected her. "Remember that I'm innocent until proven guilty. That being said, though, you did a pretty good job of making everyone in the pub think I'm a bad apple."

"Then we achieved what we set out to do," the senior constable said as we turned into the Central Police Headquarters compound.

The big surprise in all of this was that, apart from taking my car key to access the Chrysler and the pleasant conversation during our journey, nothing had been taken from me. I still had my phone and my wallet. I hadn't even been checked for weapons.

This had to be one of the strangest arrests in the annals of crime fighting. I was beginning to wonder if I hadn't fallen down a wombat hole and ended up in some alternate universe.

After parking their car and helping me out of the back seat, the two officers led me - still in handcuffs - into an elevator. Instead of pressing the button that would take me to the ground-floor charge rooms, Senior Constable Moyston pressed the button with the number five etched into it. He removed my cuffs during the ride, handing them to his partner to reattach to her belt.

'How does a woman with such a narrow waist manage to fit so much equipment onto it?' I wondered as we ascended to the fifth floor. 'I guess she can wear the belt a little looser than a man would have to, knowing it wouldn't slip over those beautifully shaped hips.'

'Shut the fuck up, Aaron!' I shouted silently to myself. 'What's got into you?'

I don't know whether Kate Buchanan - who was standing in front of me in the lift - could read my mind or not, but I saw her start to fidget, and her neck became red. I thought she might be blushing. On top of that, I thought I had caught just the faintest hint of a woman's scent. It wasn't as strong as I'd smelt on Charlie on Tuesday - yesterday - but it was unmistakably that same sweet aroma.

I had no idea how high the police headquarters building was, but I knew as soon as the elevator doors opened that we were breathing the rarified air of the upper hierarchy. The office to which I was escorted had no name on the door - which had also been the case with all the other doors we had passed - but when it was opened, I saw that we were entering not an office but a suite.

An attractive woman of about the same age as my Shirley stood as we entered.

"Mr Bourke, welcome," she said, extending her hand. "I'm Nancy Lane, Detective Chief Superintendent McGregor's personal assistant. Please follow me."

Before turning, she nodded to my two escorts, who moved over to a small reception area and took seats from which they could overlook the city.

Ms Lane knocked on one of the pair of floor-to-ceiling doors that led into the next room. She opened it without waiting for an answer. As we entered the beautifully appointed office, a tall, slim, distinguished-looking man came from behind his large desk with his hand outstretched.

As he came closer, I saw that he stood just a little shy of one-hundred-and-eighty centimetres (six feet) tall and had the build of a cross-country runner. He looked to be in his early fifties, but his sharp hazel eyes were those of a much younger man. This was a man who wouldn't miss much.