The Wrangler: The only thing standing between the beautiful kidnapped heiress and death was -- The Wrangler. (5 page)

Now the ropes were making her feel that way. She was helpless because of them, and with the guys lying directly atop her in missionary position and her legs spread so wide, desperately struggling just to breathe, she felt it, she felt it more intensely than she ever had in her life before.

She enjoyed these sensations because unlike many people who were physically small, she'd never really felt small. Not like her father, a short man whose success in the business end of biotech had clearly been a result of his attempts to make up for all the shit he'd caught as a short man. As the daughter of a really wealthy short man, she'd always been conscious of having all kinds of advantages over those around her. She'd been so well treated generally that she'd always looked at big men as erotic opportunities and little else.

Now it was she who was the erotic opportunity, and something deep inside her, something so primeval that it was unmindful of all the pain and fear she was feeling, responded to the way these men used her, making her body bend and sway in its ropes like a tree being lashed about in a windstorm, with her ankles being pulled back by the ropes after each forward thrust and the ropes tightening on her shoulders as he put his weight on her. And with every withdrawal she felt the rope securing her shoulders to the head of the bed tightening.

With every stroke she felt her helplessness, not only from her ropes but from the weight of the man pressing down on her.

Instinctively, she wanted to draw her legs together and wrap them around the man who rode her, not out of affection but out of a desire for self-protection, like a bullrider clinging to a bull. She instinctively wanted to wrap her arms around him for the same reason and also because they were extremely uncomfortable tied underneath her. And her legs were tied wide apart, almost in a split, and the best she could manage was to bring her knees slightly together. All her arms could do was writhe uncomfortably in their ropes with all the weight pressing down on her, so they did that. She could arch her back on each out stroke, bringing her head and butt toward her rapist, so that when he thrust into her again, she had some room to yield, could cushion the impact of his body just a little bit, which was somehow much better than not at all.

It was something that she did strictly for comfort, but it was undeniably like participating in sex. Perhaps that was why she felt the groundswell of an orgasm building up within her. It rose and rose and rose and rose, like a tidal wave coming into a long, shallow shore, sucking up all her thoughts and feelings like a tidal wave sucking all the water out of a harbor.

And like a tidal wave, the orgasm was inevitable, a wall of feeling that rushed over her, drowning her in a surging, roaring rush of ecstasy. She cried out, as much in surprise and bewilderment as ecstasy, that she should be feeling such a thing as this, right here and right now, with the cold dread of death still coiled in the back of her mind.

Maybe that fear of death made her orgasms more intense. Certainly, it made them different.

The orgasm was not only intense, it was prolonged. When her captor pulled out of her, she was still orgasming, writhing and moaning helplessly while love juices trickled down her thigh.

"What a twisted bitch!" said the Agent as he walked back into the trailer's living room, zipping up her pants. "She came like a motherfucker!"

"Oh, she was probably faking," the Man said, grinning.

"No, she wasn't," the Agent said. "I could feel her pussy muscles grabbing on to my dick. No way to fake that."

"I useta know a hoor who could fake that," said the Cleaner. He was an older guy who was full of stories. "Made herself a ton of money."

"Yeah, 'cause she was about the only hoor in the Tri-state area who could do it, right?" said the Agent.

"Got me there," said the Cleaner, grinning.

"I heard some of 'me cum when they're raped," said the Wrangler. "Don't mean she loves you or anything."

"But it does mean I done her good and proper," the Agent said smugly.

"That it does," the Wrangler agreed. He didn't really think that was necessarily true, but he wasn't disposed to argue the matter. If the Agent wanted to believe that sexual prowess was a factor in this situation.

"Well, now that you got her warmed up, she's probably ready for a real man," said the Man, grinning, as he rose and headed into the bedroom."

The Man rode Christine hard. She didn't really notice it being all that different -- from her helpless position, it was all fairly brutal. She had spent much of the time between the Agent's assault and the Man's moaning and writhing and twitching helplessly on the bed as the aftershocks of the orgasms passed through her body. She was shocked at the intensity of the orgasms, and shocked that she was having them.

When the Man started in on her, the orgasms started right up again, just as powerful as ever. It was horrible to feel her own body betraying her so, but it did sorta go with the horribleness of everything else that had happened to her lately.

Just before he came, the Man reached over to the speaker and flipped it off. In doing so, he moved the telltale that the Wrangler had placed next to the speaker. The Man did not notice that he'd moved it, as intended.

And suddenly, the white noise was gone. Christine could hear again. But she did not like what she heard.

"Enjoy it while ya can, baby," said the Man. "I don't mind you hearing me because ya know what -- I'm gonna kill you. I'm not letting you go. You won't live to see the sun rise. Not that you could anyway with that thing on your head."

Chapter 2

The cold dread coiled in the back of Christine's mind suddenly blossomed into an intense, screaming wave of fear.

He was going to kill her! He was going to kill her! And there was nothing she could do about it.

The orgasms she'd been experiencing as she was fucked were fused with the fear and horror that suddenly flooded her, into a kind of horrorgasm, fear and ecstasy combining into an unholy medley of emotion like nothing she had ever felt before.

The Man flipped the switch on the CD controller back to "on" and the white noise flooded Christine's ears. She didn't notice. She was too overwhelmed by emotion to notice.

After the Man withdrew, Christine just wanted to curl up into a ball. But she couldn't, she had to stay splayed open, held by the ropes, wide open for the death stroke which she now knew was going to be aimed at her.

She wanted to scream, and perhaps she did -- she wasn't sure if the screaming was just the feeling in her heart or an actual sound. What difference did it make, since she was gagged?

It was the most horrible moment in her life -- to feel so threatened, yet so exposed, so helpless and so violated.

Christine's inner turmoil didn't register on the Man. He knew she was terrified, as he intended. He liked that. She oughtta be terrified. So should a lot of people.

The Wrangler came in after the Man left, to "check the knots" as he told them. It was his job, so they accepted it. Actually, it was to check the telltales he'd set. The Wrangler noted immediately that the telltales by the CD player were disturbed. The Man had been dicking with the CD player. Almost certainly, it had been to turn it off so he could tell the captive something, as the CD made no sound that anyone but Christine could hear.

And almost certainly, it was something the Man didn't want the Wrangler to know about, as everyone had been warned not to dick with the CD player, and why.

Which meant the Man didn't care if Christine knew what his voice sounded like. That might be because he didn't think at all likely that he would ever wind up in a lineup for this job.

But much more likely, it meant that the Man didn't think Christine was ever going to be in a position to listen to him speak in a lineup, because he intended to kill her.

All of these thoughts flashed through the Wrangler's mind in the scant few seconds after he noted the CD player controls had been disturbed.

The Wrangler found the thought disturbing, and not just because he generally disagreed with killing captives unnecessarily. Killing Christine just for the hell of it made no sense. The Wrangler's whole job was to ensure that they didn't have to kill her unless the ransom deal fell through. The only way it did make sense was if the Man planned to kill Christine along with others, say, the Wrangler and the Cleaner. That made $500,000 worth of sense, which was a great deal of sense.

These thoughts were not evidence of great deductive powers on the Wrangler's part. He'd set the telltales with the thought that he might find something along these lines. He'd ben set up before, and had learned to set limits on his trust for his partners in crime. Once the telltale was triggered, it was a well-trodden path to the conclusions he'd reached.

None of the Wrangler's thoughts showed as he left Christine's room and rejoined the group, after finishing his check of her restraints.

Just as the Wrangler finished making his check on Christine, a cell phone rang. It was a very particular cell phone, enclosed in a double-paned plastic housing that sealed out exterior sound with a speaker at one end and a mike inside it. The mike was plugged into a jack that ran to a computer. The computer was running a speech synthesizing program.

The Cleaner pressed a button and typed the word "hello" into the keyboard.

"Hello," said the speaker next to the phone.

"This is Arthur Willock, what have you done with my daughter?" asked an angry, frightened voice on the phone.

"Your daughter is safe for the moment," the Cleaner typed.

"You have to let her go immediately," Willock ordered, very much the CEO.

"Whether your daughter remains safe or not depends on whether or not you do as we say," the Cleaner typed, ignoring the CEO's order. "You have to bring $2 million in $100 bills or smaller to Bloody Marsh Park on St. Simon's Island at exactly 4:25 p.m. tomorrow. Put it in a waterproof plastic bag and dump into the water from the causeway bridge leading to the park, then drive away."

"Two million dollars!" exclaimed Willock. "I don't ... I can't ... it's impossible by 4 o'clock!"

"We will give your regrets to your daughter when we kill her, then," responded the Cleaner. "We will also kill Christine if we see anyone but you at the drop. We will kill her if the bills are marked or if they are sequential. We will kill her if there are any tracking devices in the bills. We will kill her if you try any tricks of any kind with us. If you do exactly as we say, you will receive another call which will give you your daughter's location, where she will be waiting for you, unharmed. Remember, four o'clock, two million dollars, the bridge on the causeway leading to Bloody Marsh creek, sealed heavy-duty plastic bag. Good-bye."

The Cleaner did not wait for any confirmation from Willock, he just hung up. They did not care what Willock had to say, and they did not want to stay on the line long enough for a trace to their cell tower.

"Well, the clock is ticking," said the Man. "Guess it's time to go fishing for dollars."

"Fine," said the Agent.

A few moments later, the Agent, the Driver and the Man headed out for St. Simon's Island. The drop was a good six hours away, and St. Simon's was just 90 minutes away, but they planned to spend the next few hours perched in a rental condo watching the marsh to make sure the cops didn't arrive early to set any traps. If they saw any sign that cops were coming in to observe, they would make a call to the Wrangler and the Cleaner, who would kill Christine and leave. The Agent, the Driver and the Man would then leave the island as well. The job would be considered a bust. The Agent, the Driver and the Man would hook up with the Cleaner and the Wrangler and sit in a motel room and watch local news for the inevitable story about the kidnapping, and as soon as they heard or read a story that indicated the cash was not picked up by the kidnappers, they'd be on their merry ways.

Without independent confirmation, the Wrangler and the Cleaner couldn't trust the others not to abscond with the money. Of course, they could abscond with the money before hooking up with the Wrangler and the Cleaner, except that the Cleaner had connections with the Philadelphia mob and all he would have to do is make a phone call and the Philly mob would collect his share -- and everybody else's along with it, and probably kill a few of them while they were at it.

The Wrangler hadn't been all that worried about any double-crosses when he signed on for the job -- the payday seemed big enough to make everybody happy. He'd known the Man had an ego thing going, but he figured pulling in as much as the rest of them put together would take care of it. He hadn't realized that the Man was one of those, "It is not enough that I win -- others must lose," kinda people. And by "others" substitute "everyone."

If he'd known he would never have signed on for he job. Ah, well, live and learn.

As soon as the Man, the Driver and the Agent had left, the Wrangler turned to the Cleaner and said, "We have to get out of here pronto."

"Why?" asked the Cleaner.

"The Man is planning to kill us," said the Wrangler. "I figure the smartest, easiest way to do that would be a bomb planted here. Could happen at any minute."

"How'd you come up with that?" asked the Cleaner.

The Wrangler explained about the telltale on the CD player and the chain of reasoning he'd followed.

"I'm gonna need a little more than your word about the telltale here," said the Cleaner.

"Fine, want to ask our guest what the Man said?" the Wrangler proposed.

"Yeah," said the Cleaner. "'Course then she'll have heard our voices."

"We can just yell over the white noise," said the Wrangler. "That should disguise them pretty well.."

"Fine," said the Cleaner. They headed into the bedroom without further discussion. The clock was ticking.

Christine felt a slap on her thigh. Then she heard a voice, very near her, shouting over the white noise.

"Christine, nod to answer me," shouted the Wrangler. "Did anyone talk to you while he was fucking you?"

Christine had felt a sheer spark of terror at the slap on her thigh -- she was literally floating in a sea of fear, certain that at any moment, she would be killed. But terrified as she was, she nodded "Yes." The terror had a strange emotional numbing effect on her. She was so overwhelmed by the fear that she didn't have any emotion or thought to spare, so she responded unthinkingly.