His Favorite Girl (6 page)

"Well congratu-fucking-lations," I said.  "Look at all you've accomplished."

"You think it's
my
fault?"  His voice cracked.  He was close to tears.  "Do you realize what these discoveries could
do
for the world?"

"What, there's not enough sex in the world already?  Not enough rape?  Child abuse?  What the
fuck
good could the Libido Drug possibly bring?  Tell me, Mr. Genius."

"I'm not talking about the goddamn Libido Drug."

"The Love Drug is any better?  It feels great, yeah, but it's not
real
.  I'm sure plenty of lonely people would love to spike a drink and turn their secret crush into their star-crossed lover, but it's
wrong
.  It's a
lie.
"

Patton still sat with his eyes closed.

Brian was shaking his head and laughing.  "People who know nothing sure do have a lot to say."

"Let's have it, then," I shot back.  "
How would you run this company?  Would the Love Drug be available over the counter or by prescription only?  Let doctors determine how desperate people are on a case-by-case basis."

"You really want me to tell you?"

"Brian," Patton said, the first he'd spoken since his strange blow-up.

"You're right, you know
," Brian said.  "The Love Drug could never be marketed.  It
would
become a tool for brainwashing, I agree.  Besides, the military would seize the patent as soon as I filed the application."

"Okay
. . . so then what would you do?"

Brian paused and looked to
Patton, obviously anticipating an interruption, but it didn't come.

"I'd
spike the water supply," he said hesitantly, slinking back in his chair as though afraid Patton might hit him.  They'd obviously discussed the prospect before, and Patton was clearly against it.

"What water supply?"

"All of it.  All the drinking water in the world."

I found myself strangely intrigued by this idea.  The scale and scope of it.  The ambition.

"Chlorine . . . fluoride . . . why not add something beneficial to the mix?" Brian said.  "Think about it.  No brainwashing, no spellbinding.  Everyone just wakes up in the morning feeling a little happier, a little more generous, a little less inclined to hurt others.  Criminal minds experience guilt.  Politicians desire to be honest.  World leaders hesitate to order bombings.  The violent discover peace and compassion within themselves . . ."

"Is it even possible?" I asked.

Brian shrugged.  "Spend enough money and you can accomplish just about anything."

"I'm a little shocked, to be honest."

"Well, it's not exactly normal dinner talk."

A burst of laughter escaped Patton's lips, and, watching him fight to regain his somber expression, I felt the tickle of laughter rising in my own throat as I said, "No, Brian, I mean I'm shocked at you."

"What do you mean?"

My speech was broken with giggles.  "A fuck
ing philanthropist by day and an uninvited gynecologist by night."

Patton crossed his arms on the table and buried his face, laughing hysterically.

"I don't get what's so damn funny," Brian said.  His face was turning red.

"I'm just teasing you," I said.  Then I formed a V with my index and middle finger and said, "Peace, brother."

Patton's head rose from the table and he fell back in his chair guffawing to the point of tears, pausing only to gasp for breath.

"Fuck both of you," Brian said, standing so fast his chair tipped back and crashed to the floor.  I was laughing so hard I didn't realize he was leaving until the door slammed shut.

When the laughter settled, Patton and I looked at each other, still smiling, and it dawned on me.

We were
finally alone.

Patton let out one final chuckle, then said, "You gonna take your coat off now?"

I glared at him--at least I tried.  When you feel giggly inside, trying to make an angry face fails miserably, so I stood, kicked my chair back, and reached to loosen the strap around my waist.

Then I stopped.

I couldn't take it anymore.

"Okay, I gotta ask.  What's up with the eyes?"

"More of Brian's work," he said.  "He figured out a way to dye irises.  He did his own eyes himself.  That should tell you something about his dedication."

"Damn, really?"

Patton nodded.  "Yep.  Brian comes out with these wild-looking eyes one day, and Sean and I couldn't resist."

"I've never heard of an eye tattoo."

"Pretty bad-ass, huh?"

"Um,
yeah
."

He shrugged, and I could no longer resist the urge to attack him.  Arrogance pissed me off, but sometimes, in the right context, it did much more than that.

"I'll be right back," I said.

I fast-walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind me.  Standing in front of the mirror, I checked to make sure I didn't have food stuck between my teeth.  Then I opened the medicine cabinet
and used some of his mouthwash, even though we'd both eaten the same fish.

My mind returned to this afternoon, stuffed in a dusty air duct spying on his conversation with Flora.  Any doubts I had about him had dissolved in that moment.  There he was, alone with a cloned copy of the most attractive girl I'd ever seen, she professing her love, him remaining steadfast and loyal to me.

That much integrity deserves a reward.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my vial of the Libido Drug, filled the dropper, and held it over my tongue.

No.  You don't need it.

It occurred to me that we'd yet to make love without it.

I was supposed to take it every day, though.

I wanted to take it.

My hesitation became my decision when I felt a drop hit my tongue.  Did I squeeze the dropper?  Did the glass tip touch my tongue?

Now my head was swimming, my body warming up.  The duster felt itchy on my skin.  I quickly screwed the lid on the vial, put it in my pocket, and flung the duster to the cool tile floor.
  Observing myself in the mirror, I started adjusting my see-through top, then my thong, and became transfixed by the sensation of it.

He's waiting.  Go.

Though the effect of the drug was still as intense as the first time, I was gaining more control over myself.

I shut off the light, opened the door, and stepped out.

Patton stood at the kitchen island pouring two glasses of wine.  He'd taken off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt to expose a wife beater underneath.

He glanced at me, then did a double-take, spilling some wine in the process.

I wandered over to him slowly, drunkenly.  When I reached him I stopped short.  Looked up at him, tilted my head, batted my eyes.

He reached out
with both hands and cupped my cheeks, then came in for a soft, slow kiss.

When he pulled back, his face showed alarm . . . sadness . . .

I brought my fingertips up his left thigh until I found his erection, clenched it tight, stepped up to him, reached around and grabbed his ass.  His hands went around to the back of my head.  One grabbed a clump of hair and the other reached far down my back, pinning me against him, and in this way he hugged me for as long as he could stand, me massaging the bulge in his pants, his face hovering just above mine, our lips almost touching.

Almost.

Then they touched and in an instant he scooped me off the floor, spun around, lay me flat on the kitchen island, and ripped my thong off with a single jerk.

I stared up at the recessed lighting, feeling his strong grip on my legs as he spread them apart.

The last thing I fully comprehend was his hair touching my inner thigh.

Then all my senses dissolved into ecstasy.

─Good Girl─

FLORA AND Liu were asleep when I returned.  It was just past midnight.  Patton and I had exhausted ourselves to the point of passing out, and I awoke in a panic, an image of James on top of Flora burned into my brain.  Perhaps I'd dreamt it.

W
ith the girls sound asleep and seemingly safe and sound, I decided to take the opportunity to explore the vents some more.  In the daytime, protected only by the excuse of taking a bath and needing alone time, I was sure to eventually get caught.  Better to get familiar with Clifton's labyrinth-in-the-walls at night so my daytime travels would go faster.

Changing quickly and quietly into shorts and a t-shirt, I tiptoed around the bed to the kitchen, where I grabbed my flashligh
t from the drawer I'd put it in and headed to the shower room.

I made
through the vents and into the doorless room without taking a wrong turn.  Stepping out onto the wooden staircase, I started to climb up to Level D but hesitated when I poked my head up through the dropped ceiling.

Level D was a bad idea.  Seven classrooms with
thirty Favorite Girls each?  That was two-hundred and ten sleeping infants, children, and teenagers.

In
the quiet of the night, my movements were sure to wake somebody.

Why not try Level B
? I decided.  Maybe I could spy on Brian a little, if he was still awake.

I
descended the staircase and used the flashlight to find my way to the trap door.  Opening it quietly, I took a deep breath and started down the rope ladder.

I was okay u
ntil my whole body was submersed in darkness.  Then I started to sweat and panic welled inside me until my feet touched another wooden staircase.

My knees were shaking so I sat down for a moment atop the staircase and shone my flashlight around.

This room was identical to the one above it.  An open vent at my back, but otherwise no exit.  Floor powdered with drywall dust.  Though I couldn't see it, I assumed under this staircase was another trap door, this one leading to Level A, which had two sections inaccessible to one another: the dark, moldy utility area where Clifton lived in isolation, and the section with the Showcase Hall, my office, Bob's office, and the elevator leading to Your Favorite Gem.

The elevator.

The
exit.

I felt exalted just to consider the unlikely prospect of escape, and it was enough to shed my fear of the dark for a few minutes while I daydreamed of making it out of here and taking Flora and Judy with me.

And Patton.

But in the interest of making that fantasy a reality, exploring
Level A would have to wait for another day.  Tonight my time was limited.  I was already tired, and I wanted to know more about what Patton and Brian were planning before I made the bold decision to venture into Clifton's territory and risk being discovered.

I turned around and
stuck my head in the open vent shaft behind me.  It looked the same as the other two floors, with a fan to the right and darkness to the left.

Yawning, I wiggled my way into the wall.

Crawling in the dark gave me plenty of time to think.  The first few vent covers I came across led to pitch-black, silent rooms.  Pretty soon I had to force myself to think about other things just to abate my fear.

There was so much to process
, so many events of late I hadn't even fully absorbed that I had to mull them over one at a time.

Mr. Shriver wa
s trying to take over the world, for starters.

Okay.

Probably a good idea to skip that particular nugget of information.  The weight of it might send me crashing through the air duct into some dark crevice from which I would never escape.

The third drug.  Brian had confirmed it
existed with a nod and a smile.  Libido, Love, and what?  What could he have invented--or discovered--that was more intriguing than synthetic bliss and synthetic adoration?  What could be so worthy of secrecy?

Why didn't Patton want me to know?

Brian wanted to tell me, but Patton had stopped him.  This was where I got confused.  It was also where I started to fear something terrible, something much more dangerous than the Libido Drug.  If Patton didn't want me to know, he must think my feelings for him would change.  I hoped like hell that wasn't the case, but I had to know, one way or another.

Maybe I would see Brian in the morning as I passed through his apartment
to go to work.  In Patton's absence, he might spill the beans.

As I made my way past another da
rk vent cover I thought of Judy and the bruises on her back.  With Mr. Shriver gone, maybe Brian would let me see her.  I wanted to know who was hurting her and I wanted to make it stop.  If I could manage that, maybe Judy could answer some of the questions Brian or Patton refused to answer.  After all, it was Brian who said she was "essential to the research."

What research he meant, I had no idea.  He might very well have been bullshitting Mr. Shriver just to save Judy.

Then there was the one-legged soldier to consider.  I'd meant to ask about him at dinner, but the conversation had gotten so heavy I completely forgot.  Who did the soldier work for?  The FBI?  The military?  Did anyone have a clue?

It didn't make sense.  The lives of potential clients were investigated at length
.  This company had proven itself capable of nearly anything.  In one fell swoop, Sean had found Flora and me over a hundred miles from home, murdered two police officers, disappeared my husband's body, and still made it back to headquarters in time to slit a few throats.  If Sean could do all that in a day, how could he have let a spy in the building?

I was exhausted, mentally and physically.  Maybe I should have just crawled in bed and gone to sleep.  Ev
ery vent cover looked out into darkness  A nerd like Brian probably got up with the roosters, eager as he was to start his work day, which meant he probably went to bed before ten.

This was pointless.  Going down to Level A might have proved interesting.  If anyone was awake right now it was
Clifton, though he would be more likely to discover me in the walls than anyone.  I didn't want to imagine what he would do to me.

Still, there was the Showcase Hall, and more importantly the room it wrapped around, where lab techs or nurses monitored the Favorite Girls in the display cases.  I wanted to see that room.  I'd caught a glimpse of it when Kate and I came upon Mr. Shriver's bloody and beaten son Jacob in the Frog Girl display window, the back wall of which was actually a door.
  I had yet to meet the employees who worked in that circular room.  The ones who fed, bathed, dressed, and cared for the available Favorite Girls, the ones who arranged them in the display cases and removed them after a purchase.

For all I knew, they never left
that station.  True slaves to the company.

And Mr. Shriver's son had been one of them.

That was another story I wanted to know more about.

I decided to call it quits, except I'd been so lost in my thoughts
that now I had no idea where I was.  The first step was to back up until I reached the last intersection I'd come across, then do a turnabout, backing into the unexplored duct and going back the way I came.

When I reached the next intersection, I
had to guess which way to go: left or right?  Luckily I made the correct choice, then again at the next intersection.  Up ahead I could hear the fan blowing.

And something else.

A breathy voice, directly to my left.

Without thinking, I shined
my flashlight at the vent cover and my heart started pounding as I realized what I'd done.  I turned the light off and stiffened up, afraid to move, waiting to hear the voice again, certain I'd given myself away.

"Yeah.  Suck it baby."

Brian's voice.

He wasn't alone.

"Fuck yeah, that's it."

I breathed a sigh of relief.  He was preoccupied.  He hadn't seen the light.

"Slower . . . slower you dumb bitch. 
That's
it.  There you go."

In spite of my anxiety, I couldn't help but allow my hatred of him to resurface.  Some poor girl--some poor
employee
--giving him head in the dark, and he didn't have the decency to be nice to her.

I would love to see this piece of shit out in the world, at a bar, maybe, trying to pick up women.  I'd bet all of Ted's money the only girl Brian could land was one who had no other option.

"Come on, get your mouth around it," he said.  "It's not like it's that big."

I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh.  At least he was honest.

His breathing intensified.

"You know what to do, right?  Don't fucking nod!"

I was going to lose it.  I started to crawl away, but what he said next made me stop dead in my tracks.

"Tomorrow's a big day.
  Mr. Shriver will be gone.  Slower.  Slow
down
, Judy, damn it!  Just because I don't say if for a while doesn't mean you should speed up.  You're going to learn to do it the way I want, understand?"  A pause.  "See?  You didn't nod.  You're learning."

My heart was trying to be
at its way out of my chest.  I'd held my breath for so long my lungs were hurting.  I blew the air out slowly, then inhaled open-mouthed so I wouldn't make any noise.

"Good girl.  Good girl."

I imagined him stroking her hair as he said that and it made me nauseous.  I was powerless to stop him. I couldn't even tell Patton without explaining how I knew, and that meant giving up Clifton's labyrinth.

I couldn't do it.  It was too big a risk. 
I needed to explore the rest of the ducts, find out if they might possibly lead to escape.  Some small part of me still held back one-hundred percent trust in Patton.  I couldn't hand myself over to him completely.  Not in this place--at least not yet.

I would have to take care of this problem myself.
  No longer would I ask to see Judy in the morning.  I would demand it.  And Brian was going to oblige, whether he knew it or not.

"Anyway, like I was saying,"
he continued in the darkness.  "Mr. Shriver will be gone, along will Sean's guards.  After they take him to the airport, they've got a big job to do.  All the men from the party I told you about, remember?  It's time to dispose of some of them.  Sean's guards have to deliver each of them home one by one and stage a natural death.  It's brilliantly intricate.  If evil.  Wow, baby.  Look how good you're doing.  I might actually come tonight after all."

He stopped for a moment, I assumed to enjoy
his blowjob.

"And I imagine Sean will be preoccupied tomorrow as well."  The sinister laugh that followed almost made me gasp.  It didn't even sound like him.  I could feel
goose bumps forming all over my body.  "So starting tomorrow, you'll get a break from the beatings, since Mr. Stump Dick will be out of town.  And you will go to Melissa and tell her what's been happening to you.  You'll cry.  You'll let her embrace you.  And, if we're lucky, she'll do something very, very stupid.  Now speed it up and finish me off.  I can feel it.  I can feel it."

Silence ensued, and out of it rose the sound of him breathing through his teeth, faster and faster, until finally he grunted and exhaled.

"Did you swallow it?"

"Yes," Judy said, her voice as cold as I'd ever heard.

"Go over there and turn on the light."