The XXX Files Season Two (Episodes 5-8) (20 page)

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I got carried away.”
 

“Was it Willow?”
 

“Yes,” she admitted, her eyes puzzled. “How did you know?”
 

“You might have been with her. For real.” He smiled. “Was I there?”
 

Courtney smiled back. “Yes, but clearly it was a fantasy since you fucked me for like an hour without cumming instead of shooting your spunk like three times.”
 

“Well,” Brad agreed, “that was definitely a dream. And I wasn’t there at all.”
 

“Maybe that’s why you didn’t say anything?”
 

“Ha,” he laughed. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
 

“How about you?” she asked, her face worried. “What happened when you went to see Willow?”
 

Brad started by telling her how Willow begged him to quit the case, swearing that sources were dropping like flies all around her. “What else?” she asked, then just as Brad was about to ease into his confession, Spatz called out, loud from the living room. Brad wanted to give the asshole a Bigfoot sized hug.

“I got it!” he screamed.
 

Brad made a mental note to buy every one of his books. “I’ll be back!” he said, then slipped out of the bathroom, leaving the question sitting on Courtney’s lips.
 

He went into the bathroom where Spatz was staring at his screen and burning fingers across the keys. He looked up as Brad sprinted into the room, repeating his declaration three times in a row, growing more excited by the repetition. “I got it,
I got it
, I GOT IT!”
 

“Alright Spatz, time to make yourself worth knowing,” Brad said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
 

Spatz tilted the screen toward Brad and said, “Here it is. We have several password protected docs and one video feed. Bad news is that the docs are encrypted, and the key won’t be generated for another 24 hours — dude was paranoid as fuck — but the good news is that the video feed can be accessed immediately.”
 

“Great,” Brad said, his heart beating faster. “So what are we waiting for?”
 

“Nothing,” Spatz said. “I was just waiting for you.”
 

Spatz pressed play just as Courtney came into the living room wearing ass hugging jeans and a charcoal gray camisole with white lace trim, her cheeks still flushed.
 

“What are we watching?” she asked, slipping behind Brad then tucking her hand down the back of his pants, slipping her finger in between his cheeks, then rubbing the tip up along his asshole.
 

He flinched, shook her from him, then turned and gave her a WTF? with his eyes. “We have the footage from Thaddeus’ apartment,” he said. “Hopefully in a few minutes we’ll see the shooter.”

Courtney and Brad huddled together, standing behind Spatz as he scrolled through minutes of dead footage, maybe an hour, until he stopped at Thaddeus talking on the phone.
 

“I got the info you asked me to get,” Thaddeus said on the video, “and you said to call you
as soon
as I had it. You wouldn’t want this to wait until morning. Besides, I
have
to tell you now.”
 

A few seconds of silence then, “Not over the phone. I need to tell you in person. Can we meet?” followed by, “Now, Hammer. It has to be
now
.”
 

The next few minutes were thick with anticipation. Brad could feel sweat beading his forehead. Courtney threaded her fingers harder into his as Spatz panted like a dog and stared at his screen.

The three of them held their collective breath as a shadowed figure crept through the living room, slowly making its way around the fridge, gun drawn, back to the camera. There were too many shadows to see the figure’s face, but there was something familiar about it, almost eerie. Courtney felt it too, judging by how she squeezed Brad’s fingers hard enough to turn them purple.

The cameras switched, and the figure stepped into the light. Thaddeus looked up, eyes widening first in recognition, then in shock.
 

Spatz froze, Courtney gasped. Brad bit his lip hard enough to send a drop of blood to the hardwood floor.
 

No fucking way!

Courtney cried out, “What the fuck?”
 

It was Cooper.
 

He pulled the trigger and sent a clean shot into Thaddeus’ forehead, waited for him to fall hard to the ground, then turned and walked from the apartment with shockingly calm steps. The camera followed, until he walked out the front door, leaving Thaddeus no longer breathing and the apartment in nothing but shadow.
 

“What the fuck?” Courtney repeated, softer the second time.

“I have no idea,” Brad said, already storming toward the door. “But I’m about to find out.”
 

Courtney was a step behind him, but Brad turned, held up his hand and said, “No, I need you to stay. Keep an eye on Spatz, and don’t let him leave.”
 

Brad turned to Spatz. “I need you to download as much as you can in case something happens to the feed, and make copies. Now!”
 

“You got it,” Spatz said.
 

Courtney stood open-mouthed as Brad flew from the door.
 

XXX

CHAPTER 6 — Brad Hammer

Brad raced to Cooper’s, running three red lights and nearly plowing through an old woman crossing the road as he barreled down the road in his Lincoln. She stood frozen, her eyes giant, illuminated by the Lincoln’s headlights as she held a bag of oranges in each hand, though Brad couldn’t see where she got them — there were no stores anywhere in sight — or why she was out walking the streets in the early predawn.

He swerved around the old woman, then up onto the sidewalk where he raced for half a block until he tore back into the street.
 

Fuckin’ A.
 

Willow in his head, screaming, telling him to turn back, though Brad had no idea if she was in his head or his imagination. That made him think of Courtney convulsing in the tub.

Since when are Willow and Courtney getting together?
 

Brad pulled up to Cooper’s in record time, killing the engine and charging from the car — across the lawn and up to his porch, then through the door after a hard heel against the wood to smash it open.

Brad tore into Cooper’s place; pitch black and smelling sour.
 

Everything seemed ... wrong.
 

“Cooper!” he screamed, creeping through the house, gun held in front of him, waiting for his boss to attack.
 

Cooper wasn’t a man Brad wanted to fuck with under the best of circumstances, and these were clearly the worst. Everyone who had ever worked under Cooper had their own legend about the salty fucker, the most famous, or at least the one Brad heard most often, took place just before he joined Division 69, and from what Brad understood, was the reason for his recruitment.
 

It was back in the mid-‘90s. Cooper was on patrol in Siberia with a dozen other men when they were ambushed by three dozen enemy soldiers guarding a silo where they were building some sort of fuck ray designed to incapacitate enemies through “severe arousal.” Cooper was hit dead in the chest with the prototype and struck with a fatty hard enough to pound a nail through a sheet of solid steel. Miraculously able to think through his giant throbber, Cooper ordered his patrol to get the fuck out of Dodge. Figuring he was done for, and still sporting a General Sherman-sized sequoia, Cooper managed to move
into
his enemy while the rest of his men retreated, mowing down a handful of soldiers on his way into
their ranks. The rest of Cooper’s patrol were nailed by the prototype one by one, but all grew so enraged by their fatties they were unable to think. Cooper managed to bring down the entire outfit singlehandedly, destroying the silo and the fuck ray inside it. He was immediately scooped up by Division 69, where they rewarded his bravery with a Division-staffed fluffer dedicated to his relief, who milked him dry for almost 48 hours straight.
 

That hero was the opposite of the man Brad found on the balcony, staring out at the city with his eyes bugged out, gun in hand as his pale, white face glistened with sweat beneath the blue glow from the fluorescents above.
 

“Cooper,” Brad called quietly as he stepped toward his boss.
 

Cooper turned toward Brad, narrowing his eyes as if trying to remember something important. A look of sudden recognition washed his face then, like lightning, he raised his gun, aimed it at Brad, and pulled the trigger.
 

Brad’s reflexes were already the best in Division, and he swore the Red Breath made him faster. He saw the crazy in Cooper’s pupils before he raised his hand, and spun out of the way, ducking behind a large ficus.

Cooper fired until his gun was empty, apparently too crazy to aim. His first bullet stood a chance, all that followed hadn’t a prayer.
 

Brad darted out from behind the ficus, pulled his trigger once, and sent Cooper flying from his chair. His back made an uncomfortably loud snap against the wooden railing, making Brad think he would fall into the garden below. Instead he lay in a crumpled ball as his blood coated the balcony floor.
 

“I want answers,” Brad demanded, standing above Cooper, aiming his gun in the middle of his forehead.
 

Cooper’s eyes were still wide, mostly confused, and in no way dangerous. They looked lost and scared and without any hope. He said nothing, shaking his head, letting it bounce up and down like a bobble head.
 

Brad leaned down, pushed his barrel hard into Cooper’s forehead and repeated his demand. “I want answers, Cooper. Why have you gone off the rails, and who in the fuck are you working for?”
 

Cooper took forever to speak. Brad gave him space since knowing he was working his answer.
 

Cooper’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as his eyes slowly drifted back toward the center. After what felt like forever, he shook his head and whispered, “You don’t want to know.”
 

Brad assured Cooper that he did, and that he’d be putting a bullet in his forehead if he didn’t feel like sharing.
 

“That would be mercy,” Cooper said.
 

“Then I won’t use the bullet in your brain,” Brad said. “I’ll shoot each of your kneecaps and let you bleed out. I’m not leaving here until I know who you’re working for, and why in the fuck you did what you did.”
 

Cooper swallowed, whispered a string of nonsense Brad couldn’t decipher without a decoder ring, then — through a moment that almost resembled sanity — his eyes cleared and his voice settled. Almost calmly he said, “It’s out of control, Hammer. All of it. Everything. And it’s getting worse by the day.” He swallowed. “I can’t do it anymore. And I’m tired of covering for Helix. Tired of covering up for the bosses. I just ... I just can’t do it.”
 

“Do
what
?”
 

Cooper ignored him. “Most of all,” he his voice cracked and he started to sob. “Most of all, I’m tired of the experiments.”
 

“What experiments?”
 

Cooper looked at Brad like he was crazy, and the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile. “You really don’t know?” he whispered.
 

“Know what?”

Cooper laughed, like he was batshit insane, pulled a tiny pistol from inside his coat. Before Brad could recognize, let alone respond to, the threat he raised it to his temple and pulled the trigger. A puff of red mist exited through a meaty flap in his head, followed by a pound or so of gore.
 

Brad screamed.
 

What the fuck?

Cooper’s body had barely hit the wood before Brad was fleeing the house and racing back toward Courtney and Spatz, thinking
oh, my God; oh, my God; oh, my God
the entire way home.
 

Brad burst through the front door calling their names, but both Spatz and Courtney were gone.

TO BE CONTINUED...

IN SEASON THREE — COMING SOON

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I love being nasty.
 

I’ve written millions of words. The dirty ones, without exception, are always my favorite.
 

I write erotica because it makes people
feel
, and making people feel is my favorite thing to do.
 

Before I started writing fiction as Lexi Maxxwell, I was a full-time copywriter. I produced page after page of
seemingly
boring copy. But the truth was, that copy wasn’t boring at all. Smart copy is designed to drive a reader to action, that means that all of it is in some way designed to make you feel
something
.