Terms of Surrender (8 page)

He should have been out the door on his way home to another night of Slany-induced wet dreams and a cold shower by now, rather than playing at work at seven o'clock in the evening.

He listened to the phone ring a few times before her outgoing message came on.

"This is Kate. I'm on an extended leave of absence, and indefinitely unavailable. If you're
calling about a freelance-related issue, my apologies for any inconvenience. If this is about a
personal issue, I will get back to you when I return."

Extended leave of absence? Indefinitely unavailable?

So this was the message to which Thorpe had been referring.

Nick frowned as the beep prompting his message sounded. He wavered over whether or not to leave a message before finally settling on something brief and to the point.

"Hey Kate, this is Nick Vega. I was just a little concerned about your not showing up for today's shoot. I hope everything's all right. Give me a call when you get a chance." He hung up, his gut churning.

It had plainly been Kate's voice on the outgoing greeting—smooth, certain, and unforced—but something about her message just didn't sit right with him.

Something in his gut tightened at the idea that Lorraine Lennox was happening again.

Ten years ago, he'd gone out with Lorraine a few times at a firm he'd worked at briefly in New Jersey. She'd disappeared after a holiday party shortly after he'd left the company, the news coming to Nick through a mutual acquaintance.

He had to admit, Lorraine's disappearance and his own departure looked fishy, which the cops also thought when they'd tracked him down to question him.

They'd questioned all the men at the company, as well as the women, questioned anyone who'd had contact with Lorraine, but this fact hadn't stopped Nick from feeling like a degenerate stalker when the police grilled him about her whereabouts. Nor had he felt any more innocent when Lorraine's father tracked him down at his new place of business and confronted him about his daughter's whereabouts.

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Terms of Surrender

Security had taken care of Mr. Lennox, escorting and banning him from the premises, but it didn't make Nick feel any less culpable, even thought he knew he had nothing to feel guilty for.

Maybe what happened with Lorraine was why he had such a bad feeling about Kate. Two women—granted, ten years apart—had disappeared after he had dated them.

That didn't look good for him at all, but he didn't let it stop him from planning to go to the police if Kate didn't show up soon. He could do no less, especially since it seemed he was all Kate had. Everyone else was buying that extended-leave story hook, line, and sinker.

At least Lorraine had her mother and father to look out for her.

Kate had no such safety net. There was no one he could call who might know what was going on or where Kate was, no one to refute or corroborate that message he'd just listened to.

Nick thought he remembered hearing something about Kate going out with Bill Remeni, one of the graphic designers, the other night. He hated putting any credence into office gossip, hated more the idea that Kate was meticulously making her way through the men of
DMT
.

Not that he expected he'd ruined her for all men at the agency, just that he'd made an impression enough on her for Bill Remeni to be a step down for someone like Kate.

Sure, they had the business in common, an interest in the artistic, and Remeni seemed like a decent enough guy, but other than that, what could Kate see in him?

Nick didn't think Remeni was anymore inclined to settle down and have kids than he was—in fact, seemed less inclined than Nick and more interested in sowing his twenty-three-year-old wild oats, so Nick couldn't see a reason beyond a casual fling for thirty-three-year-old Kate and Remeni to get together.

Nick couldn't fathom why that thought punctured his chest with slivers of possessiveness, but he resolved to ask around the office about Remeni and Kate and see what he found out.

* * * *

Wanting to believe it was just friendly chatting, after-work cool down, but knew better,
knew Ms. Breeze was in heat, and Nick was on the prowl.

The man didn't know what was good for him, that Slany Breeze was as far away from
what he needed as a coat for a polar bear.

God, it was agonizing, waiting for them to finish up whatever they were doing in there,
knowing the lust that hovered in the air whenever the two of them were together.

Why couldn't Nick feel for someone who'd been around so much longer, someone who
cared about him so much more, and not just for his hot body and mind, but his soul?

Sighing, coming to the conclusion that
DMT's
golden boy was just as blind as all men,
couldn't see past the pair of breasts and the round ass that
she
had been flaunting in Nick's face
since she'd first arrived.

39

Gracie C. McKeever

Maybe it was a good thing Slany Breeze had come into the picture, significantly shaking
things up with her arrival.

Soon Nick would know, had to know that he was loved by someone more worthy than the
Breeze bitch. Soon, Nick’s true love would come out of the shadows to make sure he knew.

* * * *

So, he had called, couldn't wait to check on one of his many past conquests.

He'd known the lover boy wouldn't be able to resist.

Usually, he didn't take other men’s leftovers—admittedly, an unrealistic expectation in this day and age of promiscuity and good-for-the-goose ideals—especially not when the man was in such close proximity. Especially not someone with whom he shared a common past. But the relationship between Vega and Kate, if you could call an association based on physical pleasure alone a relationship, was long dead, and Vega would never recognize or connect him now to the awkward, skinny undergrad he'd been back in Syracuse, or the long-haired, brown-eyed creative he'd been in New Jersey.

When he got right down to it, Kate Delaney was just too tasty a morsel to resist, despite the remote risks of being recognized, the perfect irony of her solitary existence and orphaned upbringing too inviting to pass up.

Most of the women he chose were in similar situations in one aspect or another: single; an only child, orphaned, not close to, or outright estranged from their parents; or selective in and not active on the dating scene. Just enough elements that not too many eyebrows would raise if his trainee disappeared for a day or several.

Unlike one of his first, who had a pit-bull construction worker for a father who wouldn't let his daughter's disappearance go unaddressed. Or Slany Breeze, who had more familial ties and friendships than he was comfortable with. A risk he was willing to overlook, however, as his Slany was worth it.

Just went to show, it paid to be visible, half-way social, and have a family. Never knew who was stalking you, or when another's curiosity and concern might come in handy to save you.

He punched in Kate's password and listened to Nick's message one more time, debated whether to let Kate hear it, then finally discounted the idea. It would be too much of a distraction for the poor girl to deal with. She needed all her concentration and energy for her upcoming training. He was a task-master, and would brook nothing less than her total obedience and focus.

It had been difficult enough in the first place to convince her to leave that message, had taken several recordings under his careful direction before she'd completed a greeting he could live with and finally settled on the current version.

God, she was stubborn!

A definite character flaw for his purposes, one he was going to have to breed out of her.

He went to the fridge in his totally renovated, stainless-steel kitchen, grabbed a cold bottle of water, opened it, and drained half as he made his way towards the basement.

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Terms of Surrender

He'd briefly considered having a beer, but he wanted a clear head for this prelude, wanted to enjoy every nuance of her reactions and realizations, ready to settle in for a night of instruction and perhaps a little play. He didn't want to become too dull a boy, nor did he want to overload Kate with too much mental moil and toil on her first full day with him. Of course, how rough or punishing he was with her depended entirely on how his trainee took to her lessons. It was up to her how much discipline he meted out, his mercy resting totally in Kate's hands.

He unlocked the solid, reinforced steel door, then closed and locked it behind him. He was compulsive about security, especially after one of his very first women had taken him by surprise and almost escaped up the stairs and out the door before he had been able to recover, snag her by an ankle, and subdue her.

Lorraine Lennox had been a graphic designer with a company in New Jersey—the first agency he'd connected with after college—when he'd taken her, his first official trainee, his second fortuitous link with Vega after college.

Lorraine had been a learning experience in so many ways, more wily and resourceful than he could have ever imagined, his first real challenge.

He still had the half-inch scar over his right eye from the two-by-four she'd used to brain him, a constant reminder of how sloppy he was in the past and how far he came from the raw tyro fumbling around in the dark, trying different approaches and techniques after he took his very first.

She
was a coed with whom he'd gone to college, more creative and colorful than the art and design classes they'd taken together at Syracuse University, a hot little number and a freaky slut who'd almost succumbed too easily.

He sneered now, remembering Mari Constantine, how much she'd enjoyed the things he'd done to her, almost too much.

She'd been strictly an experiment, almost a spur-of-the-moment thing he'd gotten out of his system since then. She was good practice, showed him what he liked in a woman, what he wanted and needed in a trainee, but ultimately, not enough to keep his fancy more than a week, not worthy of his training program.

Since Mari, he'd been very meticulous about bestowing the honor of his training program, putting his sights on women like Lorraine and her kin—capable, classy, comparatively chaste women he would have a time breaking.

Lorraine was the main reason he used as many restraints as he did now. Not just shackles, but electronic and chemical restraints.

His favorite in the latter category was nitrous oxide.

He loved watching the various ways a body reacted under the influence of this wonderful little anesthetic agent. It was capable of inducing deep levels of anesthesia if an adequate oxygen concentration was maintained, but it had its other uses. It also induced a state of behavioral disinhibition, analgesia, and euphoria, all of which were propitious outcomes and came in handy when managing a particularly difficult trainee.

41

Gracie C. McKeever

Once in a while, he indulged in recreational use of the agent on himself, as it helped ease the pain of his migraines, but only once in a while. He knew the dangers of excessive or prolonged use and had no intentions of jeopardizing his health for the pain relief and high.

There had, however, been some incidents involving a couple of his trainees, totally unavoidable episodes of asphyxiation and irreversible brain damage from hypoxia that had occurred, the unfortunate results of his trial-and-error phase. He'd had to try the drug out on someone to figure out its best uses and how effective it would be in his training program after all.

Since he had gotten more adept at administering nitrous oxide—on himself and others—

he kept a large and tidy supply of the agent, several tanks full, in his basement, for when the occasions arose for him to use it. Not that he used it often in his program, but he liked to have it around as a nice change of pace and an alternative for his trainees, instead of always shackling, tasing, or completely putting them under with chloroform.

He heard Kate as soon as he reached the middle of the long staircase, bucking and straining on the bed and screaming behind the tape over her mouth.

When would she learn?

He shook his head, tsk-tsking as he made it to the bottom of the stairwell, and sauntered across the plush, tan carpeting.

The basement was more a self-contained apartment than anything else, complete with its own kitchen and bathroom. He had outfitted it accordingly with a big-screen TV, brown tweed sectional, matching recliner, two cherry end tables, and a coffee table. All the comforts of home, every furnishing an exact replica of what was in the living room of his large farmhouse above, except for a king size bed, small, fully-stocked refrigerator, and a large worktable.

A far cry from what had been here when that old bat, his Aunt Priscilla, had left the house and its sizable surrounding land to him nine years ago.

He hadn't realized he'd made such an impression on her during his five-year stay with her after his parents had died, supremely surprised when he found out she had included him in her will and left him everything—house, money, and substantial real estate holdings. His Aunt Prissy seemed like the type to leave her fortune to a bunch of cats, rather than the unpopular orphan son of her only brother.

The size and seclusion of the house were perfect for his needs, though he'd overhauled most of it, making considerable necessary changes and improvements since he'd moved in, thanking his aunt daily for her generosity, and for dying at such an opportune time.

Despite her final magnanimity, Priscilla had been as mean and abusive as his father, as gutless and unresponsive as his mother. And like his mother, she'd been a firm believer in religion holding the cure to anything that ailed a body, even if the body was a hapless ninety-pound, pock-marked, four-eyed weakling with braces and no friends to speak of. Like going to church faithfully every Sunday and praying for strength had made his father accept and love his own flesh and blood, his namesake. Like church had prevented him bullying his son, calling him names and challenging his manhood in front of his macho male friends or other mixed company.