Chapter 9
There was cold water on her face. She opened her eyes.
Sandy was bending over her, dabbing solicitously at her face with a wet washcloth. "Wake up," she said.
She gasped and tried to pull away from the washcloth.
Then Sandy was gone, and there was a man kneeling before her. He wasn't wearing any pants, and she stifled back a groan of shock, as she saw his penis-blunt and hard-poking lewdly toward her face.
"There, there, baby," grunted the man. "Come get your dinner."
It was the thickest little thug and he was poking the blunt, purplish knob of his meaty cock against her bruised slash of a mouth.
"For God's sake," came David's voice from some distant corner of the room. "Let her go . . . don't put her through any more."
"But we've just begun," Rene said coldly. "The night is young."
Then the man clamped his thick fingers under her jaw, elevating her face so he could have a better angle. "God I've been wanting to do this since I first saw her . . . I've been having dreams . . . "
"Yes, Jackie, I'll bet you have. Well take advantage of it . . . you probably won't get another chance."
He groaned and slid his greasy tube into her mouth.
Cheryl's eyes widened in horror as she felt his swollen bludgeon gouge all the way into the back of her throat, gagging her with its fleshy thickness. He began to pump himself in and out of her mouth, holding her with the painful clamp of his fingers under her jaw-bending her neck back at an impossible angle.
"Suck it, baby . . . suck it good and maybe we won't kill you," the thug muttered thickly. Her face was stuffed with his hot sausage-she kept feeling as if she would pass out again-but she couldn't pass out in the unnatural position she was being held in.
Then she felt hands behind her-squeezing the taut melons of her sleek brown asscheeks. She uttered a choked sob that came out odd and muffled by the length of thrusting meat in her mouth. She tried to squirm away. It was horrible, not being able to look back-not being able to get out of the way-she was so horribly vulnerable.
"Oh, my God," she heard David groan. Then she felt another dick lodged in her crack, and she felt a quiver run the length of her body. There was another man back there and he was going to fuck her in her asshole.
Then he pushed it in, and she felt like she was being torn apart. The feeling was terrible, like being injured-like having a hot poker rammed up into her guts. Her body was trembling completely out of control, shaking wildly with a palsied quiver that was almost spastic.
"I think she likes it," Rene whispered. "Give it to her harder."
The man behind her buried his thick, hard erection all the way in her, and it felt like it was pushing up into her belly. She knew she was going to die, and she couldn't breath because of the pistoning shaft in her mouth. She felt that her identity, her sanity was crumbling away under the relentless pounding she was receiving from both ends. She heard a funny, high pitched whine that sounded almost like a giggle, and she realized, with a kind of detached amazement, that it came from her own mouth. The dick in her mouth was smooth and very hot, and she could taste the first little salty drip of semen at the tip. She concentrated on making him cum-licking and sucking-wanting to bring him to a climax so that she could breathe again. But the agony of the invasion she was being subjected to in her rectum was driving her wild with pain and fear-actual physical fear that she was being torn apart by the fleshy tusk that kept jabbing with inhuman relentlessness into her tortured, squirming body. She felt the man's fingers, like cool spiders, resting lightly on her warm, smooth hips, as he humped himself against her.
Her mouth felt raw from the pounding of the big banana. On each forward thrust of his beefy hips, his heavy-hanging balls would slap grotesquely against Cheryl's painfully uptilted chin. The man behind her leaned forward and caught her breasts in his hands. His hands were rough -his fingers clutched her nipples and twisted them hard. The variety of sensations was overwhelming, and Cheryl groaned like a wounded animal. The angle that her arms were bent behind her made her feel that they were about to break off like matchsticks from the weight of the man's body. He was leaning on her now, leaning all the way over so he could reach all the way under her and jiggle her raw, aching tits. He squeezed them hard, mashed them together, yanked them cruelly, stretched them like rubber.
Then she felt the thick, steaming bludgeon in her throat thicken and swell. She gagged and clung to it desperately with her bruised lips. She heard the man in front of her utter a funny, frantic little groan, and his fingers locked themselves in her hair and mashed her face hard up against his bouncing crotch. Then she tasted the first spurt of his thick, warm cream, and she thought she would choke on it. He groaned and shuddered as he pumped his great twitching pole all the way into the back of her throat, sending big hot sticky billows of his cum into her mouth. She gagged and groaned and choked on his hot milk as he slammed his body at her captive face with machine-gun speed.
At last, he fell away, and Cheryl drew a long shuddering, desperate breath of air-like someone breaking the surface of the water after a long time under.
The pain from her reamed and tortured rear entrance had lessened as she had stretched to accommodate the stiff, quivering dick which was lodged, like a telephone pole in her guts. Now there was this terrible feeling of having to go to the bathroom, as the man behind her continued to slap his hips against the ripe, upturned slopes of her brown, satin buttocks, as a beaver would slap his tail. She heard the gusts of his breath, mixed with her own frantic moans and whimpers, and she heard the obscene wet, smacking sound of his body as he fucked her mindlessly in her asshole.
She was beyond shame or fear at this point. All she wanted was for it to be over with. She tried to grind her curvy ass back against him-to bring him to a climax so that he would leave her alone. All she wanted was to be left alone.
"Play with her pussy," Rene said hoarsely to one side. "Reach under her and play with her pussy. I want her to be turned on."
The man's hands left her bobbing breasts and snaked down between her, slender thighs. She shuddered and wailed as she felt his blunt fingers probing the velvet depths of her musky slash. He stuffed two fingers up into her warm, clinging cunt and began to fuck them in and out.
She felt her body reacting-to her own disgust. A strange, sick heat was being generated by the manipulations of those fingers. She was being excited-physically-despite her pain and fear and revulsion. She felt a blinding hatred for these people for doing this to her, but she was powerless to stop it.
Then somehow, she was looking into David's eyes.
He sat stock still in the big chair. A man behind him was holding a pistol against his head. His face was white and stiff with shock. Their eyes met for just a moment. Then she felt a little wave of excitement ripple up from her belly, and she looked away and bit her lip-ashamed to let David see what they were doing to her.
"Look at her," someone grunted. "She loves it . . . the little bitch . . . she loves getting it up the ass."
"No, no," her brain screamed silently. "I hate it . . . I hate all you animals." But her body was on fire. She pressed her face into the thick-napped carpet to keep from groaning with the perverted thrill of what he was doing to her. She clenched her teeth and fought back the excitement, but she felt it rise up and overpower her.
"Oh, God, God," she whined, rolling her luscious ass back against the hard, grinding body of her tormentor.
Then his cock was exploding inside her torn rectum, scalding her bowels with spurts of his hot, sticky cum. She wailed and moaned and shuddered against him as he gouged his fingers into her gooey snatch and snorted like a stallion against the soft slope of her shoulder from the intensity of his climax.
Cheryl heard soft whimpering and opened her eyes.
She was lying, face-up, on the floor, with her hands still tied behind her. Annie was lying beside her. The blonde girl was naked, also tied.
Frank was strutting back and forth in front of them.
"All right," he said. "It's been fun. But now I want some answers. If I don't get some answers-right now, it's not going to be half as much fun for you . . . for any of you. Which one of you is the cop?" His gaze went from Cheryl to Annie, then to David and Bobby. There wasn't a sound for a good half a minute.
He continued, his voice calm and well modulated. "I know that at least one of you is working with the police. It would be simple to just make sure that nobody ever saw any of you again. But I don't work that way. I like to know things-specific things. And I know how to find out what I want to know-just how to apply pressure-the right kind of pressure to find out." He let his voice trail off ominously.
"Now I'm not completely in the dark," he said. "I wouldn't want you to get that idea." He turned, and with a lightning-quick movement, he slashed his hand across Bobby's face. Bobby stiffened and started to strike back, but there were two guns leveled at his midsection.
"For instance," Frank continued, "I know about you." He studied Bobby for a few seconds. Bobby stared back sullenly. "What I want to know is who else is in on this. I like to patch all leaks immediately and thoroughly. "Does she know?" He waved toward Cheryl.
Bobby hesitated for a moment. "No, man, she don't know a thing," he said.
"Then why has she been so . . . so cooperative. It obviously hasn't been because she's enjoyed it."
"She did it for me," Bobby said softly, looking at Cheryl. "She didn't know why. She thought I was in danger . . . "
Frank smiled slowly, like a serpent. "She's not so far off, at that," he said. "You are in danger. But where do these other two fit in?"
"They don't fit in," Cheryl spat. "They don't fit in at all. They don't have anything to do with it."
Frank mused over her outburst. Then he looked down at her and his face was almost tender. "You know something?" he said. "I believe you. I just don't think you're a very good liar."
"Look," Bobby said suddenly. "It was me--it was all me. Nobody else had anything to do with it. I've been working for the police from the start-and if you just found out about it, then you're not as smart as you think. And, if you think these kids had anything to do with it, then you're not even as smart as that. I've been passing information. They know about Mr. Big here . . . " He gestured toward Rene, who had been watching from a corner of the room without speaking.
". . . They know about him and his diplomat friends. They know about this place. They know what's been going on here-what kind of entertainment you provide for these creeps, and what they're doing here. You can do anything you want to do to me-you will anyway. I don't really care that much . . . but, for God's sake, let these people go. They don't have anything to do with anything, and you aren't going to gain anything by hurting them."
Frank smiled slowly. "I see," he said. "You know, I have more faith in your ability to lie than I do in your sister. I'm not sure I believe you that they know about anything at all. I don't think they know, because I don't think you knew anything to tell them."
"Suit yourself," Bobby said. "But what are you going to gain by hurting them, by taking them out?"
Frank thought for a moment. "What am I going to gain by letting them go? Even if they didn't know anything, they do now-they know enough to hang me."
Nothing was said for a minute.
Cheryl was aware of the tension that had settled over the room. She was also aware that despite Frank's calm, measured tones of self-assurance, he was frightened. He didn't know how much of what Bobby had said was true, and it worried him. For that matter, she didn't know how much of it was true herself. He had told her that tonight was the night that the whole thing was going to break. But how could it break now? What could happen that would get them out of this horror pit?
Frank seemed lost in thought.
Then Rene spoke. "You promised us perfect security," he said, addressing Frank. "You assured us that there was no danger in the least to our personal security." His voice was low pitched and very ominous. Frank looked up, startled.
"You aren't in any danger," he said. "He's full of lies-he's just talking a lot because we've got him cold."
"Maybe they aren't lies," Rene said coldly.
Frank looked at the captives, obviously reluctant to argue with the Frenchman in front of them.
"I think," Rene said, "that we will leave. When you've dealt with this . . . matter," he waved vaguely toward Bobby and the rest of them, "then maybe we will be able to resume our business."
"That's not necessary," Frank stammered, now visibly upset for the first time. "I have the money now . . . we can deal tonight. This . . . this is nothing. I can deal with it in a few minutes."
Rene shook his head. "No business transaction should be tainted by even the faintest shadow of a doubt," he said. "We will leave. You know how to contact me."
He turned, and, as if on a signal, the other Frenchmen in the room turned on their heels and followed him. When they had gone, Frank stood stock still for a few moments. Then he turned quickly and drove his fist savagely into Bobby's midsection. Bobby buckled to the floor, gasping and wheezing for breath.
Frank stood straight, not a hair out of place--his former composure returned in full.
He turned to the slim, dark, black thug.
"Take these three," he said. "Lock them upstairs until I think of something to do with them. "I'm going to take care of Bobby boy myself . . . right now."
Cheryl gasped in horror. "No," she moaned. "Please."
Frank didn't even look at her. Cheryl and Annie were rolled over onto their bellies-then the thickset thug pulled a switchblade knife out of his pocket and deftly sliced the bonds which had been holding their wrists together. They got to their feet. The sudden rush of blood to Cheryl's head almost made her pass out. She started to step toward Bobby, to somehow protect her brother with her slim naked body. But the thug prodded her with the tip of the stiletto blade, and she drew back.
Then she saw that David was watching everything intently. She sensed that he was about to make an attempt. But it was hopeless. The black thug noticed the direction of her gaze and followed it quickly with his own sharp, black eyes.
He raised his pistol instantly, training it on David's chest.
"This is a .357 Magnum," he said quietly. "If you make one move, mister-I'm going to splatter your blood all over this lovely room. So don't . . . "
David stared fiercely at the black man for a moment, and Cheryl was afraid that he was still going to make a try. But then his shoulders slumped, and he allowed the other thug to march him from the room, along with the two girls.
The three of them were locked in the attic. At one end of the room, there was a small window-set into a gable of the house. David immediately investigated the window, but when he turned around, there was no hope in his eyes.
"It's about fifty feet straight down," he said. "The yard is lit and there's a man with a gun out there. I don't see how we can do it."
"I wish you'd try," said the young black man, from just outside the door. "It would solve a lot of problems." David and Cheryl looked at each other. So there was a guard there too. They wouldn't even be able to talk openly.
Annie began to sob hysterically, burying her face in her hands. "Oh, God," she cried. "They're going to kill us . . . they're going to kill all of us."
Cheryl watched her, and for a moment, she almost felt drawn into the anguish that the blonde girl felt. But if there was any hope, any hope at all, it wasn't through falling completely apart. She walked over and put her hand on Annie's shoulder. Annie only wailed and cried harder.
"Why me?" she sobbed.
She looked up at Cheryl-almost hatefully. "You," she groaned, "you got me into this."
"Look," Cheryl said calmly, "I didn't want to be here either. Nobody in their right mind would want to be here-but here is where we are, and we have to do something, so why don't you pull yourself together. If we are going to die, let's don't die whimpering and crying."
The words sounded strange to her own ears.
Somehow the blonde girl's hysteria seemed to give her a hidden strength. She hated Frank so intensely that she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of breaking her down completely. She had been through so much already-what more could he do to her? Short of killing her. She felt a chill at the thought, but she fought it back, turning to David.
They looked at each other silently. Cheryl felt a sudden sadness that he had been involved. He was a sweet guy. He had helped her once, and what had it gotten him? Somehow, they had been seen together. Frank had made the connection. Of all the people to suspect-she hardly even knew him. And now it looked like she would never get to know him. She felt, for a moment, that she could have loved a man like David. She had been so stupid-lumping all men together, being afraid of them for all her life. Now she had so little time.
She stepped close to David and looked up at him. He took her in his arms. His body was warm, solid, comforting. She looked up at him, and he kissed her. His mouth was gentle, loving. She felt a terrible wave of anguish rise up inside her. She pulled away from him, fighting to keep back her tears.
There were no lights in the room. They looked at each other in the glow of the lights that illuminated the yard.
There was a shot.
Cheryl started, then sank back, groaning weakly. "Oh God . . . they've killed Bobby. They've killed my brother."
There was another shot-then a fusillade of shots. They seemed to come from somewhere out in the night-beyond the circle of lights around the house. David ran to the window.
There was shouting out in the night. Then there were footsteps somewhere down in the house. Cheryl held her breath, praying.
"It's the cops," somebody shouted. "They hit the Frenchmen."
There were rapid steps in the hallway outside, then silence. David walked to the door and pressed his ear to it. "He's gone," he said. "We might live through this yet."
There was a flurry of shots in the night, then silence. The house was alive with activity. Suddenly there was a great voice from the darkness-an amplified voice.
"You in the house! Come out. You can't get away. We've got your friends. We've got you surrounded. You have no hope. If you're not out in five minutes, the tear gas comes in."
There was a silence that was stiff with an awful tension.
Cheryl and David crowded to the window. David pushed her to one side. "Stay out of the line of fire," he whispered.
Suddenly there was a dark form on the grass just below the window . . . sprinting for a grove of trees. Shot rang out-the darkness was illuminated by many small explosions of light. The form was slammed to the ground and lay still. Cheryl could see that it was the thickset thug. There were more shots from the house.
Then there was a silence that seemed to last forever, although it couldn't have been more than two minutes.
There was a voice from the house.
"We're coming out, hold your fire!"
The bull horn resounded. "Throw your guns on the grass stand in the light with your hands on top of your head."
Slowly a group of men filed out of the house, threw their guns on the grass and stood, huddled together, peering into the dark. So far, there had been nothing visible from the house out in the night.
There was a sudden clamor in the hallway outside the room.
Then the door opened and Frank walked in, quickly closing and locking the door behind him. He had a large pistol in each hand, and he kept David closely covered. He didn't look so suave and well-composed now. His eyes were bright, his breathing was ragged.
"Quickly," he rasped. "Get over against the wall-all of you . . . I mean business."
Cheryl started to do as he ordered. His eyes were crazy. He was perfectly capable of killing them all right now. David hesitated, and she looked at him imploringly.
Frank didn't say anything more-just raised the gun, leveled it at David's face.
"All right," David said. "I'm going."
When they were all lined up, facing the wall, Cheryl heard Frank walk to the window, behind them and break out the glass with one of his pistols.
"Listen to me!" he shouted through the window. "I've got three hostages up here-and they're going to die unless you give me safe conduct out of this place. Now think about that for a minute.
Then he turned and seized Cheryl by the arm, jerking her brutally toward the window.
"You better tell them you're up here," he said menacingly. "You better tell them good and loud, or your boyfriend's brains are going to be smeared all over the floor."
He lifted the massive pistol, training it between Daivd's eyes.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked.
He thought for a moment, still holding the pistol on David. Then he moved it just a few inches to the side. There was a sudden, deafening roar that filled the room like the sound of a bomb. When the ringing in Cheryl's ears had passed, she opened her eyes. David was still standing there, unflinching. There was a gaping hole in the plaster now four inches from his face.
"Tell them that you're here, and that I've killed one of you already," Frank said. He gestured with the gun. "Go ahead, or I will."
Cheryl leaned out the window, through the jagged, broken pane of glass. The gunmen were still standing in the yard with their hands held above their heads. There was no sign of the police.
"Help!" she screamed, at the top of her lungs. "He's got a gun. He's killed one of us . . . don't try to stop him, or he'll kill us."
She turned and looked at him coldly.
He smiled. "All right," he said. "You did fine. Now get back with your friends."
She stepped between David and Annie.
"You heard her," Frank called out the window. "I'm not playing around. You have two minutes to bring a police car up in front of the house.
"If it isn't there in two minutes, someone is going to get shot . . . do you hear me? Do you understand?"
There was a hesitation. "I heard you," came the amplified voice of the bull horn.
The time passed interminably.
Cheryl stared at the wall in front of her. Every nerve seemed alive with the terror of their situation. She could sense David beside her, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. He seemed tense and poised. She ventured a glance at him, but he didn't return it. She was terrified that he was going to try to jump Frank, and that he would be shot. She wanted to tell him to go along, to restrain himself-for now. But she didn't dare say anything. Frank was like a bomb with a very short fuse. It wouldn't take anything at all to set him off. It wasn't as if any one of them was very crucial to him-he could kill one and still have two hostages left.
Then there was the sound of a car. They were doing it!
She heard Frank chuckle behind her. With a start, she realized that she was completely naked -and so was Annie. Somehow, in spite of everything that had happened, in spite of the gravity of their situation, the thought of walking out into the yard without a stitch upset her.
"Get ready to move," Frank said. "We're going to go for a little ride." Then, to David. "Can you drive? And you better answer yes, because otherwise my use for you is ended right now."
"I can drive," David said.
"I thought you could."
Then, yelling out the window again. "All right . . . now clear out. If I see a single cop, I'm going to shoot the girl . . . if I even see one . . . do you hear?"
"I hear you," came the voice through the horn. "What do we do about your men?"
"Get them out of here," Frank called back. "Get them away from here." He hesitated. "You've got two minutes to get them and clear out."
Again came the tense, protracted passage of time. Cheryl could hear voices from the yard. Then, the voices died away. Once again, came the sound of the horn.
"You're clear," came the voice.
"Don't follow me," Frank called. "The first heat I see, and it still goes about the girls. Just forget about me if you want to save their lives."
"We won't follow you."
For the first time, Cheryl began to think beyond the present situation. What would happen to them when Frank was in the clear? It seemed obvious that he would kill them. They had limited usefulness to him, and beyond that point, they were a liability. She was sure that he would shoot them as soon as he was safe. But maybe something would come up by then. She would just watch for a chance to do something . . . although she couldn't imagine what.
"Okay, turn around slowly," Frank commanded. "Now I want you, blondie to lead the way. Then you . . . " He glanced at Cheryl. And Mr. smart guy and I will bring up the rear. Don't try anything. I've got all the cards . . . right here . . . , " he waved the gun loosely. "Now move."
Annie walked like a zombie-chalk-white and trembling, but not crying anymore. Cheryl saw her move slowly out into the hallway.
Then she followed. As she emerged from the door, a dark shape caught her eye beside the door.
She stifled a gasp. It was Bobby. He raised a finger to his lips. He had a long knife in his hand.
"Keep moving," Frank bellowed from behind them. She forced herself to walk ahead, scarcely daring to breathe.
Suddenly there was a flurry of motion behind her. She turned around.
Bobby brought the knife down in a swift, vicious arc. But Frank sensed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled and dropped one shoulder, catching the blade. Then the pistol roared, a deafening explosion, spat a nasty looking tongue of fire that seemed to catch Bobby in the side-whirling him violently around, like a puppet on a string.
But before he had time to hit the floor David sprang into action with the speed and the fury of a leopard.
His foot moved through the air in a high arc-so quickly that it was barely visible. There was a sickening thwack as it connected with the side of Frank's face-splintering the bones and splitting the skin. Then, in one smooth continuation of the same motion, David drove his fist like a hard spike into the center of Frank's body. The air left his body like a punctured inner tube. He raised his hands to his solar plexus. There was a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Then he uttered a thin, weird groan as his eyes went glassy and he slid to the floor. He lay there without moving, and Cheryl knew that he was dead.
Cheryl ran to where her brother lay on the floor. There was a thick pool of blood that was spreading around him. She knelt and took his head in her hands. He opened his eyes, and she cried out. He was alive. He even smiled at her. His face was tranquil. She was very frightened. He obviously wasn't even feeling the pain.
"Quick," she said to David. "Get help . . . get an ambulance . . . "
She heard David calling out the window to the police, but she didn't move from her brother's side.
Bobby opened his mouth.
"I guess it could have been worse," he said. His voice sounded faint and far away.
"Don't talk," she said.
It seemed to take forever for the ambulance to arrive.