The Sex Slave's Final Punishment (BDSM Erotica) (6 page)

But the real mystery is this:

If he is alive and well, why why why go
through such pains to conceal his whereabouts and identity?

What does he have to hide?

2

Since we are operating on a shoestring
budget, I fly coach class to Missouri. I have never been to
Missouri before. I stop in St. Louis for the night, soaking in the
culture and dining on the best ribs I have ever eaten, topped off
by the best bread-and-butter pudding in the world. It was
advertised as such too: ‘THE BEST BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING IN THE
WORLD’, even though the joint was just a lopsided Mexican shack
which looked as though it could collapse at any minute.

But I’m not here to sightsee.

The next morning, I rent an Avis car. It is a
Chevy HHR with a well-maintained engine – which means it doesn’t
cough up enough smoke to choke my tailgaters.

I set out on my journey. I am a careful
driver – careful to abide by the speed limit, that is. I don’t have
a GPS. My reporter’s budget doesn’t allow for that . . . yet. I’m
navigating completely by roadmap. The kind you can fold by its
creases.

I like being on a road trip. My parents used
to take my brother, Mikey, and me on cross-country expeditions. We
went to Yellowstone that way. And the Grand Canyon. And Niagara.
OK, so we like water.

Funny I should mention ‘water’, because it’s
going to figure prominently in my adventure real soon.

I stop at a roadside diner for lunch. I order
a cheeseburger and ask for the fries to be held. I have my map
spread out on the table, and the waitress takes a peek.

“Looking for someplace?” she asks.

“Yes.” I jab my finger on a very tiny speck
on the enlarged map. “It’s this town called Kelowna.”

She scrunches her freckled face. “Don’t know
it. Must be off the grid. But Brett there probably knows more stuff
than I do. Brett’s my manager. You want to talk to him, honey?”

Wouldn’t hurt.

“Sure.” I make to get up.

She waves me to stay seated. “Don’t you move
your ass, honey. Brett will be here in a short while.” She winks.
“He’s got an eye for the pretty ones, and you’d be right up his
alley.”

I smile, waiting for the predatory Brett, who
is a fat, middle-aged guy whom I wouldn’t look at twice unless he
had an extra-huge zit. So maybe, yeah, he’s got a thing for ladies
who wouldn’t find him attractive in a million years. Maybe he’s got
a rejection complex. Flirt with girls you can’t have, they reject
you, and you’ve got exactly what you need to reinforce your loser
image.

“Hiya, little lady,” he says in that faux
cheery voice of his. “Betty here’s been telling me you’re looking
for Kelowna.”

“Yes. Know the place?”

“Drive past it every two months when I go
visit my kids. They live with my ex.” He snickers. “Takes me all of
five minutes to go through Kelowna. It’s just one main street, and
there’s that. Population’s less than three thousand.”

“Indeed. Why would anybody want to live
there, do you think?”

“Beats me.” He shrugs. “Mostly the older
folks are left there. The new generation moves right out as soon as
they can get a driving license. There’s an eccentric old
millionaire who lives up there though.”

I prick my ears up. “Oh?”

“Yeah. He lives in a big house on a hill. He
hardly comes to town, and who can blame him, seeing as Kelowna’s
deader than my ex mother-in-law.” He laughs at his own joke. “He
has a butler, can you believe? A butler who does his groceries and
errands, as though he’s some sort of British lordling. And when Mr.
Bigwig comes to town, he’s dressed like the Blues Brothers – all
dark glasses and trench coats.”

“What’s his name?” I think I know it, but I
want Brett to say it.

“Beats me,” he says again. “I’m just telling
you what I hear, little lady, when I stop for lunch at their diner.
Always pays to check out what other folks are serving.”

I say carefully, “His name wouldn’t happen to
be Ethan Greene, would it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I pay my bill and tip the waitress
generously. Well, as generously as I can afford to. I return to my
rented car and continue the long trek to Kelowna, home to Ethan
Greene for the past ten years.

I think.

Well, if I’m wrong, I would have wasted a
shitload (OK, a shoestring load) of my newspaper’s money, and
Sharon Contralto might decide not to give me that raise I’ve been
aiming for after all. But no pain, no gain.

I hope I’m right.

*

It’s dark when I finally pull into Kelowna. I
know it is Kelowna because a signboard saying ‘KELOWNA, 10 MILES’
with an arrow pointing ahead is illuminated by my headlights.

I drive on. Sincerely, I have no idea where
I’m going to stay in Kelowna. As far as I could Google, there are
no hotels, no inns, and no homestays. It’s a virtually dead little
town, kept alive by a pencil factory, which has branched out to
making pens (good for them).

Worse come to worse, I can always drive
twenty miles south to the nearest town, Aberdeen, population ten
thousand. At least that one has a Ramada Inn I can shell eighty
bucks a night for.

Armed with more hopes than plans, I trawl the
dark road that leads to Kelowna. Houses begin to spring up –
leached in the twilight of all color. No one is around. At least,
they are not out in the streets. What’s this about small towns?
People retire early for the sheer boredom factor? The houses start
to crowd closer. Sycamores grow in profusion, until I am right in
the middle of what I believe is Main Street.

If it can even be considered a Main
Street.

Brett was right. If I wasn’t looking out for
it, I might have missed it entirely looking for something longer,
wider and more interesting.

Main Street is populated by a couple of
restaurants, neither of them swanky, and the usual grocery stores,
launderettes, banks and others. Most of them are closed, except for
the restaurants and the grocery stores. I had just stopped for some
ribs and fries (yeah, I know, I should really watch my diet now
that I’m hitting twenty-seven) at five o’ clock, and so I don’t
feel hungry anymore.

At least out here in the Main Street, people
are walking around, doing ‘people in small town’ stuff. OK, I know
I sound derogatory, coming from a big city and all, but I do notice
the differences. People are slower here, less in a rush to do
something or be someplace. People are nicer. Kinder.

I think.

I park the car just outside a grocery store
that looks well-lighted and decently populated. The residents seem
to be homogenous here. All white. I enter the store and a bell
jiggles above me. The cashier looks up. He’s a youngish man with a
baseball cap worn backwards. He wears a football jersey that says
‘39’.

“Excuse me, but I’m from out of town.”

“I can see that,” he drawls, smiling and
leaning upon the counter.

Gawd, why does every man I speak to here seem
to want to flirt with me? It’s not as if I’m exceptionally
stunning. I’m pretty, yes, and I’m a blonde. That seems to count
for a lot. But I’m hardly catwalk model material. I’m too short,
for one. And my brown eyes are too large and close together. My
tits are too small, but maybe they like anorexic models these days,
who knows.

“I was wondering where I can stay for the
night. In this town, I mean,” I announce.

He opens his mouth to proposition the
obvious, and then thinks the better of it when he sees my face.
Outside, thunder rumbles.

He says, “You visiting anyone here?”

“Well, sort of.” I’m hesitating to mention
that I’m a reporter. Some people don’t like reporters. I opt for a
half-truth. “There’s someone staying here that I’m looking for. His
name is Ethan Greene.”

At the mention of that name, the cashier’s
face visibly blanches.

“Uh, why would you want to meet with
him?”

“I have some business with him that I would
like to settle. No, I don’t know him. But it’s private business on
behalf of a . . . corporation.”

It is true. My newspaper belongs to a
Newscorp entity. My eyes drop down to the cashier’s nametag. It
says ‘RICK’.

Rick says, “We don’t really have a hotel
here, Miss, being a small town and all. We used to have some rooms
above Hayley’s Eats, but since the factory got downsized and all,
there haven’t been many folks coming here. Most of them stay out at
Aberdeen. It’s just twenty miles down, right around the
corner.”

I would never understand why so many
Mid-Westerners consider a distance of twenty miles to be just
‘around the corner’, but maybe it’s all that wide open space that
throws everything into abject perspective.

“So there’s nowhere here to stay at all? No
boarding houses? No rooms for let, even if it’s just for a couple
of days?” I flash him my most pleading, widest-eyed look, which
used to cause considerable damage with the guys in college.

“Well, I stay with my Mom and Pop. We have a
guestroom if you’re looking. My Mom is real generous. She won’t
charge you a cent.” He’s looking me up and down in that
elevator-style ‘check me out’ I’ve become used to.

“I’ll pay for it, thank you very much.” That
way, I don’t have to be beholden to anybody. I have always been
supremely independent and I intend to keep it that way.

Outside, large drops of rain begin to spatter
upon the pavements and awnings. I turn to the glass windows in
dismay.

“It happens,” Rick says apologetically.
“Listen, I don’t get off until eleven. But I can call my Mom and
ask her to expect you if you want to take me up on my offer.”

I figure that his offer will still stand at
eleven o’ clock, seeing as I’m probably the only visitor in
town.

“OK,” I say reluctantly. Especially as the
rain is coming down now in torrents. I don’t think I want to drive
all the way to Aberdeen in this downpour.

“Great.” He beams.

A customer comes to the counter and puts down
a six pack of Budweiser. I wait as Rick totes up the till. I’m not
finished here. I want to find out why the name ‘Ethan Greene’
evokes such a reaction. The customer, a sixty-something gentleman,
eyes me up and down as well before going out into the awful
weather.

“So what’s up with Ethan Greene?” I say
casually.

Rick’s plain features grow dark. “I don’t
really know,” he mutters. “It’s only what folks have said. I
haven’t personally met him, seeing as he hardly ever comes out of
that mansion of his.”

“He lives in a mansion?’

“Yeah, up the hill. The hill is called Pine’s
Lookout and it’s private property.” He leans over and his voice
drops an octave. “It’s a real creepy place. No one wants to go
there. The house itself used to be haunted, my Mom says. When Ethan
Greene bought it, he moved right in and locked himself up in there.
Hardly anyone sees him. When he comes down the hill in that big
black car of his with the blackout windows, he doesn’t stop here on
Main Street. He goes right out of town. Where, nobody knows.”

“Maybe he’s gone to the nearest Kmart,” I say
lightly. “You don’t have a Kmart here, do you?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “His butler or housekeeper
or whatever you want to call him comes here a couple of times a
month to pick things up. But he’s not real friendly like either.
His name is Jeffrey. Doesn’t talk much.”

“Maybe Ethan Greene is secretly Batman,” I
jest.

Rick doesn’t laugh. “Maybe. But he’s no caped
crusader for justice, if you ask me. A couple of years ago, a trio
of kids from Aberdeen went up to Pine’s Lookout on a dare.”

A tiny shudder creeps up my spine. OK, I know
it’s the atmosphere, but still –

“They chugged up in their car, even though we
warned them it was private property. Nobody really knows what
happened that night, but those kids never came back here to Main
Street. They fled back to Aberdeen faster than you could say
‘Halloween’. What happened up there, none of us here ever found
out. Those kids weren’t telling.”

I make a mental note to check this story out
in Aberdeen.

“But surely someone must have said
something,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Then there
was that funny incident four years back with the police.”

My ears prick up like antennae. “Police?”

“Yeah.” Rick is clearly enjoying himself,
claiming my attention like this. “They came around to Main Street,
asking about some hooker from St. Louis who had gone missing. Turns
out her pimp says she went with someone who fit the description of
Ethan Greene.”

“What happened?”

“The police went up the hill looking for him,
but they came back empty-handed.” Rick sounds disappointed. “Hooker
was never found.”

“Maybe she absconded with someone else.”

“Or maybe . . . just maybe . . . ” His eyes
gleam.

I laugh uneasily, spooked despite myself.
“Maybe you’re reading too much into all this.”

I don’t know, but for some reason, I have
this awful image of the hooker’s dead body being buried in an
unmarked grave behind the Pine’s Lookout mansion that I have yet to
lay my eyes upon.

Come on, I tell myself. This is David Kinney
we are talking about, or whatever name I think he goes by now.
Ethan Greene might not even be David Kinney for all the clues in my
sleuthing. I might have been kidding myself this whole trip. Ethan
Greene might turn out to be some psychopath who is permanently
holed up in his mansion, kind of like the mad scientist in Edward
Scissorhands.

“Folks don’t talk without a reason,” Rick
warns me. “Say, you hungry? I’ve got a break coming up in fifteen
minutes. If you want to grab a quick bite – ”

“No thanks.”

He seems disappointed.

“I’ve already eaten,” I add.

“So . . . you wanna wait till eleven when I
get off . . . or do you want to go find my Mom? I can call her
right now.”