5PM (19 page)

Hannah returns and looks at me with a sympathetic smile. “Sorry for not telling you more before today, but I couldn’t risk the chance you might blow the operation if I mentioned your wife had been a suspect. Some time ago, I infiltrated the Praying Mantassassin group, but purposely let them work out that I was still on the side of the law. I’m not just a uniformed cop, Terry. I’m a senior detective and I’m actually just a few years younger than you.”

“But you look like a twenty-five-year-old.”

“I have great genes and take excellent care of my health. And for what it’s worth, I’ll never forget that Saturday afternoon.” Her smile is a cheeky one. “I’ve called for an ambulance. They shouldn’t be long, but this is a rural property by their standards and might be half an hour away.”

Isaac and my mother return, and she cries as she notices my injuries. “Thank God you’re alive.”

“Thank Hannah that I’m alive. We have a lot to talk about, but I want you to go with the kids and Hannah while I wait for the ambulance.”

“Terry, I can’t just leave you here,” Hannah says.

“Yes, you can. I need some time to myself and I don’t want my kids subjected to these sights any longer.” I look at the dead bodies of Emily, Lauren, Ed, and Joe. “And the threat has been neutralised.”

“I have both Talissa and Brittany handcuffed in the squad car. I can’t fit all three of you in the front.” Hannah looks at my kids.

“Take my car. The keys are in my pocket. Mum, please take the children outside.”

Mum looks at me and nods. She knows Hannah is one of the women I had an affair with recently, so I don’t know how happy she is I want a quiet word with her.

Hannah comes over and sits next to me while Mum leads the kids outside. When they disappear from view, she whispers in my ear, “I know a lot has happened today, and you need to digest what occurred with Talissa and that she isn’t the woman you thought she was all these years. But if you want to catch up some
time, you still have my number and I’ll wait for you.” She bends down and gives me a kiss, and despite everything, I don’t want her to remove her lips from my own. “Hold on, Terry. The paramedics will be here soon and those two bitches in the back of the cop car aren’t going anywhere. I’ll take your mum and kids safely back to your place, and everything will be okay. I’ll stay with them for as long as they need.”

“Thanks, Hannah, for everything.” I do my best to pull off a smile, despite the growing agony my body is in.

And like that, they are gone. I know the threat is not in fact neutralised. I will most probably never see those four people again, but I’m okay with that, and as I hear the familiar sound of my car’s motor start up and then slowly dissipate down the driveway, I close my eyes.

* * * * *  

There’s a rumbling
in my pocket, and I pull out my phone. There’s a message for me—
‘Let’s play a game of hide and seek, Terry,’
and I don’t need to see the sender’s name to know who it’s from. I push up and try to stand, but the lack of strength in my left leg from the bullet wound prevents me from getting to my feet. I only napped for a few minutes, but I feel slightly revitalised.

Using my one good arm, I use it to pull myself along the ground, heading for the room I grew up in as a child. I don’t see the point in trying to call anyone. The ambulance and no doubt more police should already be on their way. I want my mother and children well away from here. The going is slow, and with each dragging action, my good arm quickly tires from the demands of the workload placed on it.

But I keep moving. If I don’t, there is no hope for me. Before I discovered Talissa’s true identity, I would have been quite happy to die today— but my children need a parent despite my thoughts a few minutes ago of being okay with dying. And I continue my journey to my childhood bedroom.

So here I
lay between the concrete slab of the foundations of this place and the wooden floorboards. Growing up as a teenager, I had discovered this great section of the floor I could lift up and hide things in, most notably the nudey magazines my older brother used to buy me. But now it’s I hiding beneath the trapdoor, flat on my back and taking quiet breaths, which is hard considering the dust in the air making its way to my nostrils with each breath I draw.

With blood leaking from my body via the gunshot wounds, my head thumping like my brain is trying to smash its way through my skull and thoughts of giving myself up to my enemy, I concede the only reason I would desire to survive this day is a chance to raise my children. But maybe their life would turn out better without me.

Knowing my marriage had been nothing but a lie doesn’t ease my conscious on my sins from the last few days. When I commited those deeds, I was still in what I thought of as a normal marriage.

The heels click and clunk on the timber throughout this old house, the echoes carving through the deathly silence and cause my heart to beat faster.

I can barely move, and as soon as this mysterious hunter finds me, my life will be over. They wouldn’t put so much effort into planning the whole week’s events and hiring a group of professionals to play their part if they didn’t want an end result.

I hang onto my consciousness by a thread until the footsteps advance my way. For a split second, the noise stops, and without the ability to see what’s around me at present, I can’t be sure where this person is standing right now. My face coated in a mixture of sweat, dust, and splattered blood from the shoot-out in the kitchen, I feel a whole new level of dirty. My efforts in keeping my breathing silent feel in vain as dust particles begin to tickle my nostrils. Just one sneeze and my hunter will instantly know where I am.

The clunking resumes, and on each occurance in which a heel taps the wooden floor, I fear the end is near. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. The steps continue until the noise stops so close, I can hear the person breathing. Who is it? And what have I done to attract such a monstrosity and all I’ve endured the last few days?

Light pierces through the woollen blanket, now the only thing hiding me as the trapdoor creaks open, the sound of it crashing to the floor within a couple of seconds.

This is it—the moment of truth as I feel the covering of the blanket leave me, and I squint through the late afternoon sun shining directly into my childhood room.

I can’t believe who I see standing near me with the look of a successful predator.

“Kate? Why?” I ask the redheaded workmate who’s aiming her long barrelled pistol at my face.

“You think you’ve known me a long time, but you really have no idea who I am, do you? Even after all these years of working together, you still don’t recognise me from the day you fucked my sister when she was drunk and high. You and Roger drank with her, and when you went for a toilet stop, Roger got her high on coke. Did you know she was so high when you were banging her senseless? Did you know I walked in on you when you were doing her doggie style in her bed? My older sister, who took care of me from the age of fifteen when my parents died in a car accident, was forced to sign the forms to sell the family house that was our only form of security. But you didn’t care, as long as you and Roger got those jobs with our now deceased boss, you had no reason to give a shit.”

“You’re Leonie’s little sister?” the realisation smacks my forehead like a mallet. Leonie’s name on the title deed to her family home had been the last obstacle in Phelps’s quest to sell all five properties that needed to be demolished to make way for a major apartment development worth millions of dollars. The word on the street had been Phelps had also been on the receiving end of a cash settlement if he could keep the total outlay below a certain figure.

Roger knew enough about Leonie to be able to get her to drink with us at our usual Friday afternoon drinking spot, and back then, he had the occasional intake of the white powdered nose candy. I refused to ever try it, on account of my tendency to fall victim to any type of addiction. “And all this time, I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

She nods her head. “Oh, yes, I’m gonna fuck you, but most of all, I’ve been waiting for this day to fuck you over. Did you know my sister, the only person I had left in this world, slit her wrists a month later when she realised she signed the fucking form you put in front of her when she had been in no state to sign a damn thing?”

“I’m so sorry, Kate. I had no idea back then about anything but getting myself in the hottest real estate firm in the city. But I’m not like that now.”

“You stupid prick. That doesn’t bring Leonie back, does it?”

I shake my head.

“But it’s okay now, Terry. After I have my way with you, you’ll get to join her, Roger and Phelps. And once I’m done with you, I’ll put a bullet in Talissa’s head, too. You don’t think I saw her sitting there in the back of the cop car next to that tall blonde skank?”

“You’ve had this all planned for a long time, haven’t you?”

Kate smiles and nods.

“So why didn’t you just kill me? You had so many opportunities over the years,” I say to her.

“I’ve been saving myself for you, plus I had to make you suffer. I had to make you think you had done the worst thing ever to your wife by sleeping with three other women. Sleeping with a fourth wasn’t part of the plan but worked out well, anyway.”

“But why? Knowing Talissa was a retired part of a hit squad, why did you need to have them slip me drugs that would make me so horny, I would easily fall to the demands of my dick?”

“To make you suffer from the guilt, to torment your mind, and then once you turned Emily down, it was time to strike. It got you fired from your job and caused further anguish when you had to tell your wife. Like I said, it had to be slow to make you suffer, and I intend to make you suffer a little bit more…” she aims the gun low, “by shooting the part of you which caused so much trouble—after you put it in me first, of course.”

I close my eyes. “Look at me. How do you expect me to perform in my condition?”

Kate takes a hand away from her pistol to dig through a skirt pocket. Pulling out a coin purse not unlike the one Emily had, she smiles. “You’re familiar with the first pill Emily gave you? Once you take one and I undress, I just need you to lay there while I do what I want with your cock.”

“Did you kill Phelps?” I try to change the subject while she pulls a pill from the little purse.

Kate shakes her head. “Emily’s work. My only demand was that I would be the one to kill YOU!”

“And it’s quite a clever plan. I’m impressed. But there’s something you need to know. I wanted you, Kate. In fact, I think I always have—ever since I saw your sweet, innocent face look at me pumping your sister. I’ve been hiding it for so long, but in truth, I’ve always wanted to bend you over your desk and smack that big ass of yours and fuck you from behind until you scream my name. You’ve been giving me those signals for years, and I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to act on our urges.”

She bends down and holds the pill above my face. “Open your mouth.”

I obey, and it falls to the back of my parched throat and I gulp it down. I try not to cough as it travels down my throat like an indigestible rock. The results almost instantaneous, I feel a stirring inside my pants while my body’s tired waves begin to dissipate.

“Come on, Kate. Let’s get this show on the road and allow me to treat you like the naughty girl you have hidden inside you. I can help release the real you, turn you into the goddess you want to be. I want to be inside you, filling you with my big, hard love gun while I fill my hands with those big fucking tits of yours. Hurry up and rip your skirt off, Kate, and your shirt, too. I’m injured so I don’t know how long this burst of energy will last.”

“Don’t you get any ideas of getting away from me. Be thankful you get to go out fucking,” she says as she starts to unbutton her blouse with one hand.

I unbutton my shirt, an almost mirror image of her actions as she stares straight at me, the look on her face blank. Her hands move as if she’s in a trance. My body aches, and although the bleeding is slow from both wounds, I feel the stickiness of my own blood as I move my good arm.

Both my shirt and hers are fully unbuttoned, and she moves her weapon from one hand to the other as she drops her shirt over each arm at a time. Her black bra designed for practical use rather than visual appeal does a great job of supporting the twins that are sized in proportion to her body.

If someone would have told me two weeks ago, I’d be having sex with the frumpy red head from work, I would have died of laughter. She’s let her guard down by wanting to have sex with me, and if she gets down here where I’m hiding, I might have a chance to wrestle the gun from her. With my limited strength only slightly revitalised, I pull my trousers down to my knees. The pill’s effects already kick in, the excitement building inside my jocks as she releases her skirt from her hips and stands in front of me in her matching underwear.

The air remains silent. No one else is around and the salvation of blaring sirens still can’t be heard. It’s up to me and me alone, broken and sore. And if I’m going to go, it will be with a bang. Still looking up at Kate, I see her bra fall down her arms, and those big saggy breasts stare at me in their full pale glory.

“Take your underwear down, too,” Kate says, her pistol still shaking as it points at my manhood.

Kate may not be that attractive, but she’s still female and she’s near naked and the almost magical qualities of the pill seem to have fully kicked in. As I pull my jocks down to my knees, my excitement is fully exposed to her prying eyes. I was right—she has always wanted me. The eyes don’t lie, and the hunger I see in hers could consume me in one bite.

She steps down into the opened trapdoor, standing in just her panties and heels next to my wounded leg. Putting her hand on one hip, she pushes down the side of her panties while that damn pistol is still held in her other hand. Swapping hands and pushing on the other side of her panties, Kate soon has herself on full display to me and lets those big black panties fall down to her ankles. She steps out of them and walks to my hips, placing a leg on either side of me, and then gets down to her knees.

Her hand reaches down and grabs my hard member, guiding it inside of her as she lowers herself to my crotch. I close my eyes and picture Hannah straddling me, which should feel wrong given I’m still legally married to Talissa. I feel the tight wetness and there’s no denying how good the virgin tightness of Kate feels. She bounces up and down quickly, and as I move my good hand, my finger feels around and I rub her gently, which she responds to with a deep moan. I’ve been told before I must have a compass in my finger, and the way Kate moans louder with each bounce and rub, I know I have her getting close to the edge.

Opening my eyes, I see she has her head tilted back, her spine arched, and those huge tits look as if they’ll hit me in the face. The gun is no longer pointed directly at me, and I know if I’m going to make a move, it needs to be now. She starts to scream and her head tilts down as she looks into my eyes. Her body’s shaking, and I can feel myself about to shoot my load into her when she presses the gun to my forehead. She stops and parks herself while still on top of me.

“Fuck, that was good, but now it’s time,” she says and pulls her finger back on the trigger. “I’m the true personification of the praying mantiss.”

I don’t care. Her tight vagina feels cosy and if I die, then what better place to be? “Do it, please, baby,” the words come out of my mouth as I reach my own climax. The energy I felt returning to my body after I took the pill begins to drain already.

She smiles at me, and I return a matched expression, a euphoria that dabbles in a mixture of sexual satisfaction and being so close to the end of my life. A thundering gunshot fills the confined space of the bedroom, and the world goes black.