“Bring her here,” said Tom as her shuddering breaths evened out.
John picked her up and carried her over to Tom. He gently deposited her on her feet next to the wheelchair. Kate’s skirt was still tucked up in front, exposing the brown curls covering her cunt.
“Let me just do a preliminary cleaning before you leave the room,” Tom said as he picked up a tissue from the table. He gently spread her pussy lips open and wiped the still-oozing cum from her cunt. Mike got up from the floor and joined John in holding Kate while Tom tenderly cleaned between her legs.
“You’re okay, Kate?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine, Tom. Just fine.”
“Are you ready to go upstairs with Mike and John now?”
Kate exhaled roughly and then nodded her head. “I’m ready, Tom.”
“You’re sure? You’re going to submit to them and follow their instructions, no matter what?”
“Yes, Tom. I’ll submit to them and follow their instructions, at least for today.” She smiled at the raised eyebrow and grin he gave her.
* * * *
Tom watched them exit the room. There were no regrets about what would happen between them sexually today. He wanted and needed it to happen, and would have been there with them every step of the way, watching and participating. But, suddenly, there were other things going on that needed to be dealt with, too. He needed to have a meeting with John and Mike and tomorrow might not be soon enough. Things were happening that he had never anticipated. Very dangerous things. Frightening things. And he needed a few minutes alone to consider what needed to be done and how it should be handled.
Tom locked the wheels of his wheelchair and picked up the footrests. He carefully levered himself upright and walked unsteadily to the cabinet where his brandy was kept. Tom was only a light social drinker, but this morning he needed a restorative shot, badly. He poured some into the bottom of a glass and drank it down in one swallow as if it were medicine.
There was still a lot of pain as well as a decided limp when he walked. For over two years his physical therapy had been primarily to keep the muscle tone and flexibility of his injured leg and arm while his spinal cord slowly healed. In the last few weeks his therapist had insisted he had progressed so far that he could, and should, walk with his crutches or his cane, which he had been using only in the therapy room or in his own room when he was alone. He couldn’t bear to have anyone watching as he stumbled and staggered. Pride was a stone-cold bitch, he acknowledged to himself.
The surgeries scheduled in six weeks would be, hopefully, the last needed to correct some additional nerve and bone fragment problems which had arisen recently with both his arm and his leg. But even the thought of the surgeries couldn’t compare to the shock he’d had this morning. Tom poured more brandy into his glass.
“Not going to offer your
best buddies
a drink of your special stock of brandy, Tom?” John lounged against the doorjamb, deep slashes of color highlighting his cheekbones and anger flashing from his eyes.
“Tom! What’s going on? You can walk?” Mike looked stunned.
Tom stared down at the brandy swirling in his glass, briefly shut his eyes in pain and frustration, and then downed the brandy in one gulp.
“Help yourselves. My special stock of brandy has always been available for my ‘best buddies.’ Always will be.”
“That’s it? Help ourselves?” John shook his head in disgust. “Damn it, man, we don’t deserve to be treated this way. We’ve been there for you, whenever you needed us. Yet you don’t trust us with the fact that you’re not wheelchair-bound? That you can walk? Well, maybe Mike and I should walk, too. You apparently don’t need us anymore.”
“I hope you won’t walk away,” said Tom quietly as he slowly and painfully limped over to the table, removed some papers from his pocket, and threw them on the table. “There was an envelope on my pillow when I got back to my room this morning. I thought it was from Kate. I was wrong. I think you’d better read the messages.”
“What about me, Tom, do I get to read them, too?” Her face was paper white as she stood in the doorway, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“Oh, Kate, love! What happened? I thought you were safely gone. I wanted to keep all of this from you, I wanted to protect you and keep you safe.” Tom paused for a moment. “But maybe there is more safety in knowledge than in ignorance. Will you trust me and let me explain about the papers and this?” Tom swept his arm down toward his legs and then limped haltingly toward her, his eyes beseeching as he held out his hand to her.
“Always, Tom. I trust you. I have always trusted you.” Kate bypassed his hand and walked into his arms. “The only problem was I decided to detour into the powder room for just a minute or two. When I came out, I could hear you all in here. What’s going on, Tom?”
“Goddamn fucking son of a bitch! You found this on the
pillow of your bed
this morning?” The absolute horror in John’s voice was chilling. “Damn it, Tom, you sleep so lightly, I can’t believe anyone could get within five feet of your bed without you being aware of it.”
John suddenly stopped. “When you got
back
to your room this—” He looked at Tom, then at Kate, and his eyebrows rose almost comically. Then he looked back at the paper in his hand and said angrily, “Damn it, man, I checked the security system last night before I went to bed. No one could have bypassed that system.” John paced back and forth, dragging the fingers of one hand through his black hair in frustration, as Mike pulled the papers from his other hand and started reading.
Moments later Mike shook his head in disbelief and threw the papers back on the table. “Hold on,” Mike said as he pulled a small, black instrument from his shirt pocket and punched in a series of numbers. “Let me run a diagnostic on the system and see what we come up with. No, nothing. All clear. The system has not been tampered with, nor has it been bypassed or shut down. Nobody could have gotten in here last night, or this morning. Give me some time to get the video replays from the security cameras outside, and we’ll see what they show.”
“What about the pool?” Kate asked as she turned in Tom’s arms to face John and Mike. “Is that sliding glass panel part of the security system? You know, the one that lets you swim from the inside pool to the outside pool in the summer. I know it’s usually locked into place in the cold weather. But, maybe someone could have cut a hole in the glass, couldn’t they?”
Dead silence met her words. For a moment no one moved, and then Mike looked at John, nodded, and took off for the pool at a run. John was already on his cell phone, calling in some of the investigators from their base office.
Kate walked to the table and picked up the papers which Mike had thrown down. At her horrified gasp, Tom limped heavily to her side, rivulets of sweat now running down his face. He’d been on his feet way, way too long, especially without a cane or his crutches.
“Kate! Sweetheart, don’t worry. John and Mike are here and won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” Tom’s voice was strained. He started to put his hand on her shoulder and noted that his fingers were trembling. He fisted his hand and fought against the tremors.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Tom, sit down. You’ve overdone things, as usual,” said John, his voice both distracted and worried. He scooted a chair behind Tom and grabbed his good arm to help him into the chair.
“Tom, I’m not worried about myself. It’s you! It’s you and Mike and John,” Kate cried as she knelt beside his chair. “This madman said he deliberately ran the car into you.
He tried to kill you
. And he’s been watching you. Here in the house. He’s been watching you when you take therapy! Tom, there are no windows or even doors with windows in that room. He says he’ll take out your bodyguards one by one before he gets to you and me. Tom, let’s leave! I’ll go anywhere with you. The four of us can go to Europe, South America. Anywhere. Let’s leave everything and just go. You’ll go, won’t you, John? And I’m sure Mike will go, too. Yes. That’s the answer. I should go pack.” She looked up into Tom’s face and then John’s face.
“You won’t go. None of you will go, will you?” she said dully as she placed her forehead on Tom’s thigh.
“Kate! Oh, Kate, love,” said Tom as he stroked her hair. “We’d never be able to do anything without constantly watching our backs. It looks like we’re not even safe here at home. Even if we did leave, we’d never really be free. We’d never be able to come back home without having that threat hanging over our heads. We’ve got to face this now and find out what the devil is going on so that we can put an end to it. If we don’t, I have a feeling things will escalate to a very dangerous level.”
“He’s right, Kate. We couldn’t come up with anything at the time of the accident. Stolen car, no driver, no prints, no motive we could see. But there has to be something we’re missing, some connection somewhere.”
“You mean you knew it wasn’t an accident from the beginning?”
“Tom just had a feeling, Kate. There was nothing concrete. Nothing we could even investigate. But, this time, we’ll find all of the answers, I promise.”
There were several minutes of silence. “Is anyone going to call the police?”
“I think we need to let John and Mike do their preliminary investigation before we get the police in on this. Confirmation that the automobile crash was deliberate and the threats in those notes will certainly have to be put on record. But only after the M-G team has done their initial investigative work-up.”
“Okay. We’ll stay,” Kate said with deadly calm. “But you’re going to have to get me a gun and teach me how to use it properly. That is non-negotiable! If I never have to use it, fine. But if it comes down to me having to shoot some asshole who’s trying to kill the men I love, well, don’t think I won’t use it because, trust me, I will. Now, what’s our next step?”
“Excuse me, Tom,” said John as he pulled Kate to her feet and into his arms. “The next step is that I have to kiss our fierce warrior princess.” His lips claimed hers with a blazing passion that sent waves of shocking desire throughout her body. As his tongue plunged into her mouth, he rubbed his huge erection against her belly. John’s hands moved to Kate’s breasts, squeezing and kneading them. Kate could literally feel her knees become weak with unexpected desire. She reached up and ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, then nipped at his full bottom lip. His loud moan reverberated in her mouth, and their kiss took on a whole new dimension of eroticism.
“Can’t tell you how sorry I am to interrupt, but we’ve got real problems we need to discuss,” said Mike as he walked into the room.
“Sorry, Kate,” John said with regret. “But we will finish this later, trust me on that. Fill us in, Mike.”
“Well, I can tell you that there is no hole cut into the glass panel in the pool. However, I couldn’t get to the bottom to see if someone had removed part of the bottom and could slip underneath the panel. But by visual examination, it looks as though the panel goes completely to the bottom of the channel and there was no water on the pool room floor. So, I’d say that area is okay. However, the team is on the way as we speak, and we can have them check it out more thoroughly. Mark and Carolanne expect to be here shortly. Trey and Connor stopped to pick up some equipment from headquarters, so as soon as they load up, they’ll be on their way, too.”
“But, Mike, what about the therapy room. This guy seemed to be able to watch Tom as he worked out. Did you find anything there?” Kate grabbed Tom’s hand as she waited for Mike’s reply.
“No, Katie, I didn’t. But when the rest of the teams get here we’ll be able to check out all light fixtures and switches, heating and air-conditioning ducts, or any other place that might conceal a camera. I thought it best to wait until we had some backup before showing too much interest in anything down there. I don’t know if there are cameras or other electrical devices remoted to an off-site location, or if there is a receiver here in this house.”
“Here! What do you mean here?” Tom cried in alarm.
John jumped in. “He’s right, Tom. You must have three or four rooms in our wing alone that are unused, as well as quite a few in your own wing. If the cameras are remoted to a recorder in one of the empty rooms, all this guy would have to do is wait until we’re out of the house, pop in and extract the recorded disc, and replace it with a blank one and leave. Somehow this asshole has managed to gain access to the house without being picked up by our security sensors.” John began pacing back and forth.
“The first thing we have to do is an electronics sweep of Tom’s bedroom and the bedrooms on either side of his. Since he obviously managed to get into Tom’s room, it’s likely that he left some type of camera or voice recorder there. Not only that, but I want that physical therapy room checked out thoroughly. We should be able to contact the contractor who built the room and get a list of the employees he used as well as the blueprint.”
“We’ll need a list of all personnel who have, or have had, access to this house,” Mike said as he rubbed the back of his neck distractedly and then rolled his shoulders. “We know most of them, having lived here for so long, but maybe there is someone else, someone we’re not familiar with. We’re going to need a list of past employees, too. And even the ones who did the attic renovation, we’ll need to know their names, as well.”
John came up behind Mike and put his hands on Mike’s shoulders, his thumbs digging, seeking out the knots of tension. Mike groaned in pleasure.
“Relax, Mike,” said John. “Mark and Carolanne should be here in just a few minutes, but we still have to wait for Trey and Connor, since they have the equipment we’ll need. Why don’t you sit across from Tom, and we’ll see if he will tell us why he’s kept his physical progress such a secret from us.” John followed Mike to the desk and stood behind his chair, his hands kneading the tight muscles of Mike’s shoulders and neck, his eyes coldly locked on Tom’s.