Posted by critmk on May 10, 2003 at 08:03:20:
To view the PICTURES that go with this novel, open a new window to my briefcase at
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/critmk/lst?.dir=/Sisters+novel&.view=t
I uploaded them more or less in order of appearance. Enjoy.--c.
Sisters
a story by critmk
Chapter 5: High-Risk Business
I heard the elevator door open around the corner, and then two female voices.
“Gayle, thanks for getting me this job. After the divorce, it will be good to be around family every day.”
“What are sisters for? We needed an office manager, Marian. You’ll be great at it. And with the kind of work we do here, we need to keep it in the family. We don’t need anyone testifying against the firm.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m a little nervous about that. I’ve never done anything illegal before. But the money is so good…”
“Relax, big sister. The lawyers are very careful, and those Russian mob guys never bother us – we send them their cut, and everything’s cool. You’re perfectly safe.”
I got a look at them as they turned the corner into the corridor leading to Kennet and Sikes: a pair of slender, leggy brunettes in business suits with no blouses.
Marian looked to be early 30s; she wore a white linen number with a belted peplum jacket with three-quarter sleeves, nude hose and black ankle-strap heels. Her thick, light hair turned down to her shoulders in elegant waves.
Gayle was maybe 24. She wore black, chunky-heeled sandals and dark, crosshatched hose. Her purple skirt was very short. The matching four-button jacket was snug. Her dark brown hair piled saucily atop her head.
They paused as Gayle unlocked the office by punching in a combination on the keypad. I hastened to the door as soon as Marian was through it. Just before it latched, I stopped it with my foot.
One of them must have made a joke; I heard Gayle laughing as I drew my 9mm from my shoulder holster and screwed on the silencer before I pushed through the door.
She was still laughing when the first slug hit her, in the inside of her right thigh just beneath the hem of her skirt. Blood began coursing down her leg immediately. Three more in quick succession – in the belly to the right of her jacket closure, the center of her left breast and the middle of her forehead – threw the girl back over her ultra modern steel desk. Her head and her limp arms hung over the far side; her glasses slipped from her hand onto the floor. Her legs, spread to reveal a strip of deep purple lace between her legs, dangled over the near side.
Marian, wide-eyed with shock, stood a few feet to my left. She stared at the dead body, and then turned to me. She started to tremble; she could barely speak for gasping.
“My sister... you killed my sister…”
“Yes, that seems to be a theme, lately.”
The poor woman was utterly confused. She opened her wide, pretty mouth, but no sound came out. She tried again.
“But why? She was just the receptionist.”
“Well, that’s business for you. It’s a cut-throat world. I’m afraid I’ll have to kill everyone who works here.”
I pointed the gun at Marian’s crotch. That’s when she stopped grieving for sis and started worrying about her own skin.
“But…. I just got here! You don’t have to kill me – I don’t know anything!”
“Yes, I overheard,” I said. “So – isn’t it time you did some work around here?”
She was more puzzled than ever. I waved her toward her sister’s body.
“Put that dead slut out of sight, in the conference room.”
She looked back and forth at me and at Gayle in horrified panic.
“No, I won’t do it!” The words came out in a torrent of sobs. I was losing patience.
I grabbed a fistful of jacket between her tits and slammed her into the wall. I pulled her skirt up and jabbed the barrel of the gun hard into the V of her white panties. I put my face close to hers and hissed: “You will do exactly what I tell you to do.”
Marian seemed to shrink as I spoke. She nodded weakly and walked unsteadily toward her dead sister. I peeked out the door; no one coming. Good.
Marian recoiled from touching the corpse. I holstered my gun and sidled up behind her and took her hands in mine. I ran them under the dead girl’s skirt and over her tits and gripped her throat over the wound there.
“See, baby – a little blood on your hands won’t kill you. Now get her into the chair.”
It was comical to see the delicate Marian yanking futilely at Gayle, whose body flopped and rolled and turned as if refusing to cooperate. I could have watched that all day, but I didn’t have all day. I threw her into the chair myself.
“Now roll her into the conference room.”
Marian managed that, though she had to stop and pull Gayle up by the shoulders several times to keep her from tumbling onto the floor.
The office had a small executive powder room. I made Marian get some paper towels and wipe up Gayle’s blood.
“OK, one more job and then you can take the rest of the day off.”
Marian was numb, now, ready to do whatever I told her to do. I taped the door open. It was time to retrieve the dead blond I’d left in the public ladies’ room off the corridor.
She was as I’d left her, seated on the toilet with her panties around her ankles. The tie with which I’d strangled her had left a faint bruise around her throat. I grabbed her by the hair and threw her onto the floor.
“Loop her tie around your wrist, Marian. You’re dragging her back to the office.” She did as instructed, mechanically. The sight of this consummately classy brunet slipping and straining on the terrazzo, overage dead schoolgirl in tow, amused me no end. But we ran into a bit of a snag as we passed the elevators.
The door opened. An exquisite Italian woman in a high-fashion suit and stiletto heels emerged, along with an Asian in a shiny purple blouse and leopard-print mini.
The sight of Marian struggling with the dead blond greeted them.
“That’s Hillary, from our office,” the Asian said, about the strangulation victim Marian was towing. She was weirdly matter-of-fact with that statement, but then the whole situation was weird. We all stood there for a long, awkward moment, as if no one could figure out what should happen next.
Finally, something did happen: The Italian woman took a slug between her breasts, fell back against the wall, slid down it and died. The quick-thinking Asian chose not to wait for an elevator and bolted for the fire escape; I had left the large window access to it open when I’d entered earlier that morning.
I shot her in the back and she fell through it, down the steps to the next level. She was half-seated, grasping at some ornamental ironwork and trying to pull herself to her feet. Her long black hair had fallen out of the bun she’d had it in. Only one button of her blouse remained closed. Part of her purple bra was showing, and a bit of belly. She was in pain. Blood trickled from the left corner of her mouth.
I shot her in the throat and blood surged from the wound and down between her tits. She let go of the iron and settled, dead, into a sitting position. I decided to leave her there; good a place as any. I pitched the dead Italian woman down there, as well, and closed the window to the fire escape.
Marian stood in a daze through all of this, the tie taut between her hand and the slightly lifted body of its late owner. I opened the door to Kennet & Sikes and she dragged the blond through to the conference room. She left the body on the floor next to her dead sister, who was still in the chair.
Marian stood staring blankly at Gayle when I stepped into the doorway behind her.
“Turn around, Marian.”
She did. She looked at me and said, distractedly: “My first day… this was my first day.”
And her last. I had relished the thought of killing her from the first moment I saw her. Marian was just my type: beautiful, elegant, sexy in a subdued and subtle way, expensively dressed. I had an overwhelming desire to kill her and fuck her, and because of the craziness Barbara Laufer had unleashed in me, I was now going to do just that.
Marian’s whole body spasmed when I shot her in the solar plexus, between the second and third buttons down her white jacket. She clutched the wound with her right hand; blood trickled between her fingers. She struggled to maintain her balance as her knees began to buckle.
I shot her in the hollow of her throat and she fell back onto her seated dead sister. Gayle’s head lolled as Marian’s pretty legs made slow, token efforts to find footing on the floor. He nylons made a pleasant low hiss when her thighs rubbed together.
The two of them started to slide forward out of the chair. I arrested the motion by placing the barrel of the 9mm firmly against the center of Marian’s left breast. She looked at the black steel silencer and then into my eyes.
Her brown eyes went blank when I pulled the trigger. Bright red heart blood flowed through the ring of the large black powder burn in her jacket when I pulled the gun away. I stepped back and watched the dead sisters slide from the chair in slow motion, onto the strangled blond on the floor.
In a sexual frenzy now, I grabbed Marian by her ankles and pulled her from the body pile. Even as dead weight, her body was light; I lifted her easily and threw her across the conference table. With a switchblade, I cut a long slit down the center of her skirt, exposing the tops her stayup hose, three inches of naked thigh and snow-white English lace bikini brief.
I sliced her panties off roughly, leaving a cut across the marked tan line inside her left hip. Her pubic hair was shaved to a thin strip.
I yanked her to the edge of the cool, polished mahogany table and spread her legs. I took in the musky perfume of her still-warm pussy, then gently tongued her to part her labia and moisten her for penetration. I unzipped and pushed into her. As I fucked her, harder and harder, her head rolled on the table, her arms flopped and her legs swung from the knees. I ripped open her jacket, exposing a structured, white lace demi-bra with a large, bloody, burnt-black hole in the left cup. I cut away the center strip of fabric and freed her sweet, perfectly formed 34B tits.
The bullet had obliterated exactly half of her small, pointed left nipple. Her areole were tiny – no larger than quarters – and very pink. The harder I fucked her, the more violently her breasts jiggled. By the time I finally came, I was lifting her off the table with each stroke.
I was spent and breathing hard when I pulled out of her and zipped up. Then I realized that in my lust, lack of planning and lack of sleep, I had made an unforgivably idiotic mistake.
The blinds in the window in front of me were open. A hotel was across the street. A woman stood on the balcony directly in front of me, and she appeared to be gazing right at me.
I flung Marian onto the two other bodies. She sprawled across them on her back and her legs fell open, revealing a pussy overflowing with semen. A lovely sight, but I had no time to enjoy it just then. I had to nail that woman on the balcony before she called the cops.
I removed the silencer from the 9mm for better range and accuracy and stepped to the window. The woman had binoculars, now. When she took them away, I realized that it was Barbara Laufer.
My cell phone rang.
“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying your work – I certainly enjoyed watching you work over that brunet in the white suit. But aren’t you being just a little careless?”
Her tone was ironic and amused. It hit me then how reckless and ruthless this woman was – moreso even than I was – and how far ahead of me she seemed to be on everything.
“How is the operation going?”
“I’m afraid some bystanders have become involved,” I answered. “But I think it’s under control.”
“I hope so. Jack,” she said. “How many dead so far?”
“Three bystanders, the new office manager and the receptionist.”
“That’s not a very good proportion. Do try to kill the right people for the rest of the morning. I’d hate to see you hauled away by a SWAT team. I’d much prefer to have you in my bed tonight, telling me all about your busy day. In detail.”
She fell silent for a moment. I saw her pick up the binoculars again, but now she was looking at the street.
“As much as I’m enjoying this little chat, as your employer I must instruct you to get back to work. It seems to be starting time at Kennet & Sikes. Try to care of business and quit thinking with your dick. And Jack -- close the damned blinds.”