Rete and Trident Vol. 02 - Pt. 02

This is part two of a seven-part story. See Author's note of Rete and Trident Vol. 2 - Part 1 before reading this.

***

Chapter 5

Olivia and I sat in front of Assistant Undersecretary Matt Gilbert in a safe house he'd set up.

As I briefed him on what we learned in Cameron's house. Olivia let me do all the talking.

"What the investigators will find is a murder and double suicide," I reported. "Naeem Carter was strangled with a red silk ribbon by Vance Cameron and John Phelps. They both had abrasions and fibers on their hands that will show they did it."

I made eye contact with Olivia, who nodded back at me. That had been her idea. She'd been the one to talk Cameron and Phelps into giving Carter a quick death. It was very smart. The apparently motiveless murder double suicide would be confusing as hell to investigators.

"Phelps shot himself with a pistol," I said. "He stuck a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. He was not coerced. The powder, prints, and physical evidence will show that."

I offered John Phelps the choice between hanging himself and shooting himself. After pulling on the silk ribbon while Naeem Carter died, he wanted no part of strangulation. Setting him up to shoot himself was tricky. You can't just hand a captive guy a loaded and functional gun. After quite a bit of wrangling, Olivia and I cleared the room and let him pull the gun towards himself with a string. When he got the gun into his hands, he untied the string and did himself in. One thing I did not expect was that it smelled godawful. It was beyond nauseating.

"Cameron hung himself. Cameron was into strangulation in a big way. He had a whole rack of nooses in his torture room. Cameron hooked himself up to a noose that was attached to a winch. He pushed the buttons in the winch controller, lifted himself a foot off the ground by the neck, and then dropped the controller to the floor. He strangled himself."

"Was that you two?" Gilbert asked.

"No," I said. "He did it to himself. He traded that in exchange for the right to send an apology email to his daughters. He invented a cover story that the three friends got into a fight. He confessed that he and John accidentally committed manslaughter and they both killed themselves in remorse.

"He dictated the note to me and I typed it into his laptop by tapping on the keys with the eraser side of a pencil. If he smuggled an encoded message in his text, neither Olivia or I saw it."

"Did you take sufficient precautions to make sure you didn't leave evidence?" he asked.

Olivia and I both nodded.

"So, switching topics. Let me see if I understand the organization's structure," Gilbert said as he pinched his nose. "The structure is three columns of cells. Each column has thirteen men: four three-man cells, and a leader. The members inside the cell know each other, but not the members of the other cells. The only one who knows everyone in the column is the column leader. The three column leaders form a leadership cell and the only guy who knows the identity of everyone in all three columns is the leader of the leadership cell?"

"That is correct," I confirmed.

"The organization co-opted the counter-espionage operation of the country to hide the activity of their own agents?" he asked.

"That is correct," I replied. "Every woman that they leveraged into spying for them, the ones they call 'Owls', are all listed as official assets of the FBI's counter-espionage team. If anyone gets suspicious of them, the FBI counter-espionage team steps in and says 'hands off my asset'."

Gilbert nodded. "And you think that the Darden county folks stumbled onto the Glaukopis operation?" he asked.

"I think they figured it out. Remember how I mentioned the seduction specialists? The ones they call 'Albas'?"

Gilbert nodded.

"Cameron said their organization bought two new women in the last five years. He said McKee complained that they had to switch shipping companies and alluded to supply chain problems because of that. I think that the Darden county crew probably ended up being their new shipping company. They are the best outfit for human trafficking on the east coast, right?"

"Yes!" he said with excitement. "That would tie everything up in a neat bow, wouldn't it? Secretary Bollard wants to know how a local smuggling operation got control of our counter-intelligence apparatus in the worst way. I'm going to put Radhika on it."

"Radhika?" I asked.

"She's one of our new up-and-coming analysts," explained Gilbert. "She is a data-science nerd from Carnegie Mellon. We've had her going over the Darden County Ledgers. She's been great at extracting meaning from the chaos."

He made some notes and reviewed things he'd written earlier.

"Tell me about this banking operation again," he said.

"Most of the Owls accumulate quite a lot of money off shore. They can declare their foreign assets to the IRS and pay taxes on it if they want to. Most choose not to. If they don't declare it, getting the money into the US banking system later is a problem.

"They could transfer it in and declare it as income later, but the IRS will ask where the income is coming from and might get suspicious the women are dodging taxes on undeclared foreign assets.

"The Glaukopis set up an operation to help these women access their money. They can transfer money into an account with Glaukopis, then Glaukopis will issue a payroll payment into the Owl's bank account as if they are an independent contractor. They even issue 1099s during tax season."

"What kind of services are these women providing?" he asked.

"Marketing advisory panel," I replied. "These women are nominally paid to give marketing advice. The company is called MarCat. Their logo is a purring cat on a window overlooking the ocean. They actually sell marketing services and run it as a real business. We looked it up. There's a building here in town."

"You've got to be kidding me," Gilbert laughed.

"They also run an ATM service for cash. An Owl who needs cash can transfer the money to her handler. The handler gives her the cash for a few percent. They cap a withdrawal at $3,000 to prevent the Owls from triggering Federal notification in case they deposit the cash into the bank. That's why Cameron had so much money in his safe. He was keeping the ATM money for the cell leaders."

***

Assistant Undersecretary Matt Gilbert looked over his notes and asked, "So, what's your next play? Where do you plan to go from here?"

"We took a few pieces of actionable intelligence," I noted. "You want to hear options?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Option one is a decapitation strike." I said.

"So, you would target McKee next?" asked Gilbert.

"McKee and Steve Chen," I nodded. "McKee is the head of the organization. Steve Chen is the leader of the third column. Chen, Cameron, and McKee were the leadership cell. If we take out all three members, we've decapitated the organization. The rest of the Glaukopis members are only supposed know the people in their immediate cell. As far as Olivia and I can tell, there isn't any fallback measure that would allow the organization to regroup. That would put a stop to their activities and it would make them sitting ducks."

"When would you do this?" he asked.

"Ideally, before the bodies of Cameron, Phelps, and Carter are found," I said. "There's no telling when that will happen."

Gilbert said, "You don't seem so hot on this idea."

"It is the logical move, but it will be harder than it sounds," I said. "We've surveilled McKee. He lives with his wife in a luxury condo off the Potomac near Georgetown. His wife is a high-end lawyer and travels a lot. She's never home and he's a homebody when she is out of town. The place has security guards on premise, doormen, and there are cameras out the wazoo. We'll never get in there without being positively identified and recorded.

"He only leaves the condo to go to work. He's got an official driver who works for Treasury. Hitting him in transit during rush hour would require a miracle," I said.

"What about the other guy?" Gilbert asked.

"We haven't surveilled Steve Chen yet," I replied. "He lives in a place called Brookmont which is near Bethesda, Maryland. His youngest kid is still in high school."

"What other options are there?" he asked.

"Option two: Cameron mentioned to us that McKee has two guys negotiating to obtain a behavior-control drug from a supplier. Cameron said that this was their plan for co-opting Deputy Director Rosa Mullins. They would put her under the influence of the drug and then gather material to blackmail her."

"Did he identify the guys?" asked Gilbert.

"Terrance Smith and Mehul Srinivas," I replied. "They're both high level negotiators at the Department of State. They were both grads of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown."

"Where are they going?" he asked.

"Cameron didn't say," I replied.

Gilbert hastily scribbled some notes.

"You propose to stop them?" he asked.

"I don't think allowing these guys to obtain a behavior-control drug is a good idea," I replied.

"Agreed. Do you have any other options?" he asked.

"Option three: we know that they have at least four of these Albas. The Albas have been conditioned to be under control. The guys in Glaukopis don't know these women personally, but they know who the Albas are. If we can co-opt them, we can use them as lures to draw these guys out."

"How do you propose to co-opt them?" Gilbert asked.

"The Glaukopis identify themselves with glow-in-the-dark tattoos. We recovered a container of their trick ink." I pointed at it on the desk where it was sitting next to the hard drives and the other things we retrieved. The only thing not on the table was the money. Gilbert told us to keep it and use it for operational expenses.

"So, you get yourself tattooed up like one of the members and then take control of the women?" he asked.

"Exactly," I replied. "That blue thumb drive contains video of their rituals. I'm pretty sure I can mimic it. "

Out of the corner of my eye, Olivia's face became a mask of disapproval. She couldn't bring herself to watch the videos. Their rituals could be described as ceremonial sex torture.

Gilbert nodded. "I like that. It is simple, direct. and it doesn't require more people to be involved."

"You have to tell him," Olivia said.

I glared at her. "No!" I replied.

"Tell me what?" Gilbert asked.

"There's another play here, Assistant Undersecretary Gilbert," Olivia said.

"What's that?" he asked.

"We can put the Alba tattoos on me. I can be the lure and we don't need those other women to be involved," she said.

"No!" I repeated forcefully.

Gilbert asked me, "Why not?"

"The Albas are masochists. They get off from being tortured. What happens if she falls into the hands of these guys?" I asked. "They will torture her mercilessly thinking she's one of them. I couldn't believe the tortures those women were enduring."

Gilbert asked his daughter, "Riley, are you sure you're up to that?"

Disdainfully, Olivia said, "Don't call me Riley! Riley is dead and buried. You saw to that." The bitterness and anger took both Matt and I aback.

"At your insistence, my name is Olivia now. If you blow my new cover, I will make you regret the day you were born."

Her changed attitude about her cover made me want to laugh.

"The question stands," he said.

"I am up to it," she insisted.

When I started to speak, she cut me off. "We've talked through this, Will," she said authoritatively. "If either one of us falls into their hands, we're fucked. You keep telling me that you plan exit routes, but you don't plan for total failure, because there's no point in that."

I didn't respond.

Gilbert asked, "Do we even know what the tattoos on the women look like?"

I picked up one of the folders and flipped through the contents. I found two full-page photographs and handed them to him. It was a series of pictures of one of the women standing under a black light in a darkened room showing front and rear. The owl tattoo filled up her chest and the wings extended out onto her arms. The eyes of the owl were where her breasts would be and weren't tattooed. The detail work on the feathers was incredible. The other picture showed the tattoo continued onto her back. The back tattoo showed the back of the owl. The tail of the owl extended down to where a woman's tramp stamp would be.

"This was on a thumb drive with all sorts of graphics which are patterns for the artwork," I said.

"I don't like this idea," he pronounced. "We have no idea if a tattoo like that could be removed. Olivia, do you really want that to stay with you for the rest of your life?"

"Shouldn't you ask that of Will also?" she asked.

"I don't like it," declared Matt Gilbert. "If you feel like that is something you need to do, I leave it up to your mission commander. Will has the final say."

"What do you need to make the tattoo gambit work?" Matt Gilbert asked me.

"The ink has an expiration date two years from now, so that ink is probably still usable. I'm not sure if we have enough. We may need a new batch of it. We'd also need an artist. We need someone who is very good. The quality of the tattoos on those guys was pretty amazing. Whoever was doing the tattoo would have to keep their mouth shut. They're going to want to market the ability to provide glow-in-the-dark tattoos."

"Okay, I'll run these by the Secretary and we'll prioritize and get some tasking for you. In the meantime, surveil McKee and Chen and try to identify a way to get to them. Any questions?"

"Any word on that training you promised?" I asked. "Olivia needs instruction and there's only so much I can teach her." Gilbert smirked at my double meaning,

Gilbert shifted in his chair. "The retired asset who is supposed to train you has been given your contact information," said Gilbert. "He is on the hook to contact you. I have been asking about this just about every week. My counterpart at the CIA told me that the asset is extraordinarily skittish. The asset doesn't stay put and moves around a lot. Be patient and let him come to you."

***

Chapter 6

"Where are you going?" Olivia asked me. She was stunned that I was dressed to go out. We were at our apartment in Crystal City. It was one that we used a couple of days a week.

I looked at her. She'd just started cooking. She was making her stir fry, which had been one of my favorite meals back when we were happily married.

I decided to tackle this head on. "I have a date tonight. Sunny and I are going out: dinner and dancing. I'm spending the night in a hotel. I'll be back tomorrow."

"But I was cooking for us," she said. The look she gave me stabbed me in the guts. She was hurt. Not just a little hurt, she was devastated.

"We talked about this last week in the van," I said. "We need to disentangle."

"So you're just going to leave me and go to another woman? Just like that?" she asked.

"How else would it happen?" I asked, wondering yet again what her expectations were.

"I thought..." she sucked up a sob. "I thought we had reached an accommodation in the van last week," she said. "I thought that meant something to us."

"I've explained to you repeatedly that there is no more 'us'. I've been trying to explain that to you for weeks and weeks," I said.

"You are really going to be unfaithful to me?" she asked. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

"Riley, when you were shacked up with Mark Litton on Emerald Isle, you were there two nights and three days. Tell me, how many times were you unfaithful to me? How many times did you and Litton fuck? Seven? Ten?"

She did not answer, so I picked up my shoulder bag and started to leave. She moved to stand in front of the door.

"Please don't go," she begged.

I gently moved her out of my way and left.

***

Sunny and I had the time of our lives on our date. We had reservations to a restaurant run by an association of family farmers. The food was amazing and Sunny was looking radiant wearing a little black dress and a pair of sexy pumps.

The amazing chemistry that we had from our very first meeting had only grown stronger as we got to know each other better.

As we dined, she regaled me with stories about her work and her clinic hours. She was working towards her Physician Assistant degree at George Washington. This semester, her classes included about twenty hours in the emergency clinic at the GW hospital.

She started telling me a funny story about an event that happened with a patient in the emergency room that day. Her account featured what I figured where dead-on impersonations of at least three of the participants, and it was so funny she had us both in stitches. We caused a bit of a scene in the restaurant. I hadn't laughed that hard in years. At the end of that story, as I was coming down from the exertions of our laughing, and my stomach lightly ached because I'd laugh so hard, I looked at Sunny and saw her in a new light. She was beautiful, sexy, radiant, comfortable in her own skin, and she was clearly filled with joy and delight simply because she was spending time with me. My heart skipped a beat. It was undeniable at that point that I was falling for her.

***

We danced at a little club that was little more than a large room above a bar. There were maybe 120 people there and the place was packed. The clientele consisted of young professionals and they played a good mix of electronica and pop stuff that appealed to the late twenties crowd. We only danced for about twenty minutes. We were both so hot, we were basically fucking on the dance floor. A bouncer asked us to cool it, so we left.

***

I rented an Air BnB that was two blocks from the club. The doors were unlocked using a cell phone app and Sunny was all over me while I tried to thumb in the code to get the door open. When the door unlatched, we stumbled into the place, laughing. The place wasn't anything special, but it had a nice king sized bed, and the luxury sheets were clean. It was all we needed. I dropped the blackout curtains in the bedroom windows and I picked Sunny up and threw her on the bed. She loved this and hooted as she flew through the air.

We'd met several times for sex over the last few weeks and just as in all of our previous meetings, we fucked like crazy. We screwed for nearly an hour in a crazed frenzy. I never went soft in between my two ejaculations and I never really stopped. Sunny was like a volcano for the whole experience. She came very hard and very vocally half a dozen times.

When we finally lay sated and exhausted, the room was pitch black except for the LED glow of the alarm clock on the night stand. This part of the city was already quiet when we left the bar. Now, all I could hear was a clock ticking in the next room and the sound of our own breathing.

"Will, have you ever had sex that good before?" Sunny asked me quietly.

I smiled even though she couldn't see it. We'd had this exact same conversation after every time we'd hooked up.

"You know I haven't," I replied. "I can't explain the chemistry we have, but it is incredible."

"What was making love with your Ex like?" she asked. This was a new question. She'd never asked that before.

I decided that honesty was the best policy. "My Ex is an amazing lover. She was skilled, passionate, and invested. Before we fell in love, we'd fuck with a crazy intensity. After we fell in love, well, the intensity wasn't as high, but the love made it incredibly rewarding. If we could have kept even half of that intensity going for the rest of our lives, I would have died a happy man.

"Did the intensity drop off before she started cheating on you?" Sunny asked.

"No," I replied. "That's what made the betrayal hurt so damn bad. If I had neglected her, or if the flame died, or if we were having relationship problems, I could understand what she did. We were happy. At least, I thought we were happy. We were getting along well and our sex life was as strong as when we first met. There wasn't a reason for her to seek pleasure elsewhere."

"Did she change after she started cheating?" she asked.

"Her attitudes changed. She went hot and cold. Some days she'd practically rape me. Other days, she'd tease me and play head games with me."

"What kind of head games?" she asked.

"She'd give me most of a blowjob and then stop right before the end," I replied. "She did that several times. Sometimes, say on a Tuesday, she would wear lingerie around the house and say, 'you have to wait for Friday'. She mixed this in with handcuffs and bondage. It was all dominance play. She was trying to get me worked up so she could manipulate me. I'm not certain, but I think her lovers were giving her instructions on how to screw with me."

"Did you find this hot?" she asked.

"For me? Not at all," I replied. "It lacked honesty and it felt cruel to be forced to wait when we were both in the mood. I put up with it because it made her crazy with arousal. Fucking with me put her in the intense headspace we had when we first met. In retrospect, after I learned of her cheating, it really pissed me off. I suspect she was getting off with her lovers on the days she refused me and that's what aroused her."

"Do you know what made her fall?" Sunny asked.

"If I had to attribute a root cause, I would say she fell in with the wrong crowd. She was slowly seduced by toxic people," I replied. "I warned her to stay away from those people. but she didn't listen. They were coworkers and I didn't have a way to keep her away from them.

"Do you think you could ever take her back?" she asked.

"I wish I could. If there was a way to swallow my pride and just accept it, I would. At the point in time she started cheating, she meant everything to me. Everything. The betrayal was so deep and so comprehensive, however, I just don't think I could ever trust her again. Her behavior during the cheating was so impulsive and bat-shit crazy.... I just don't think it is possible."

There was a long silence. "How is our sex different from the sex you had with your Ex?" she asked.

"The sex we have, Sunny, is the best I've ever had. It is much more intense and in tune. The chemistry is there, but the difference is something you don't like to talk about."

She looked at me for a long time. She said, "I'm sorry, Will. I am just trying to be honest. I feel friendship. I feel kinship. I feel a deep connection. We are definitely very much on the same sexual wavelength. God, the sex is amazing, isn't it? I just don't feel the spark of love. Do you?"

For an instant, I felt like a deer in the headlights. How do you say 'yes' to that question when it is asked that way?

"Not really," I replied. It made me feel like a coward.

We kissed for a while. I got the sense Sunny was doing it to see if she could make herself feel something more than sexual attraction. I went with it and before too long, the fire had been rekindled back into flame. She reached for my cock and found it was rock hard.

She rolled over on top of me and mounted me from above in one quick motion. "Fuck, Will," she said with a groan. "You are the God of Cock. Fuck me, God of Cock. Please, fuck me."

Sunny had never really talked in bed before, but she did that time. She kept up a steady patter based around the term 'God of Cock'. I'm not going to lie, it was very erotic and it made me feel pretty good that was how Sunny thought of me.

After a couple of minutes, Sunny neared her orgasm and said, "Make me come, God of Cock! Oh, I'm coming!"

I prepared to give her a really strong thrust right when the orgasm hit her. I felt her first spasms when Sunny's head snapped back and she summersaulted backwards off of my legs. She popped right off of me so hard I thought she was going to rip my cock off. It was so sudden and unexpected it was startling.

I heard a huge thump as Sunny hit the floor and then there were strange grunts. I heard sounds of a physical struggle. I was trying to figure out what in the heck was going on.

I called out into the dark room, "Sunny? Are you okay? What happened?"

I heard a choking sound. I reached for the side table lamp, trying to get some light into the very dark room.

I groped for the lamp looking for the switch when I heard Olivia's voice call out, "He's mine!"

"Olivia?" I asked out loud.

I found the switch on the base of the lamp and twisted it. I saw Sunny on the floor with Olivia kneeling over her. Sunny, of course, was buck naked. Olivia was in street clothes-- jeans and a blouse. She had one hand on Sunny's throat and her other hand had a fistful of Sunny's hair. It was such an unexpected sight, it took me nearly ten full seconds to process it and figure out what I was looking at. Both women were blinking to try to adjust to the light.

Sunny kicked up with her leg savagely, and her knee connected with Olivia's crotch. I heard Olivia grunt in pain. Sunny was suddenly a flurry of moves and then Olivia was face down on the floor wondering what just happened. Sunny quickly stood and pinned Olivia's head to the floor with the sole of her foot. Sunny was angry.

I had no clue that Sunny knew martial arts, but she did and was clearly an expert at it.

"Olivia, what the fuck are you doing here?" I asked.

Olivia started to cry. "I'm trying to keep this skank from stealing my man," she said plaintively.

"Olivia, you do her an injustice. Sunny is no skank. She is a lovely woman. She's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's incredibly discreet, she's a hell of a lover, and she is fiercely loyal. In a million years, she'd never cheat on her husband."

This statement had the effect that I calculated, she began to weep inconsolably.

"You have no right to be here," I said. "Sunny's going to let you up. When she does, I want you to get up and leave."

"No," said Sunny authoritatively. "Will, she's been here watching us the whole time. She had to have been," said Sunny.

I looked at her and it was clear Sunny was a step or two ahead of me on this one. I realized she was right. Olivia didn't know my plans, which meant she wouldn't have known where this Air BnB was. I was only carrying a burner cell that didn't have location services enabled, so she couldn't have tracked me here. She had to have followed us here, which meant she'd followed us to the restaurant and to the dance club first.

"How'd you get in the door, here?" Sunny asked Olivia.

"It didn't close all the way and it didn't latch," she replied. "I pushed it open."

"She must have liked watching us fuck. She only interfered when I started calling you the God of Cock," observed Sunny.

I considered this and realized she was right. I was impressed with how quickly Sunny came to this realization.

I looked at Sunny, who was smiling at me. "Apparently, she took exception to the fact that I gave you her boyfriend's moniker."

"No!" shouted Olivia. "That's not it! I have no boyfriend. Will is < b>my husband. He's not your God of Cock. He's mine!"

She struggled again. Sunny responded by putting more of her weight on Olivia's skull, which made Olivia stop fighting.

I scoffed at Olivia. "I was never your 'God of Cock', Olivia, or you wouldn't have jumped so easily into the beds of others." I was really angry. I was partly concerned and partly amused before, but having Olivia acknowledge her physical relationship with PT Hill and that fucking kid instantly drove me into a rage.

Sunny looked at me. "She has been watching us for more than an hour, so she must like to watch. I say that if she wants to watch, we let her." said Sunny. There was amusement in her voice.

"How do you propose to make her watch?" I asked. "We don't have anything here to restrain her. She'll either leave or interfere."

"Take her pants off while I have her pinned in place," she said.

I climbed out of the bed. I took off Olivia's socks and shoes and then unbuttoned her jeans. They were damp with sweat and I had to work to pull them down to her knees. Olivia's skin was radiating heat. She was literally hot to the touch. The smell of Olivia's arousal wafted up. I looked at her panties and the crotch was soaked. I was gobsmacked. Watching us had really gotten her worked up.

Sunny started laughing. "God, she smells pretty gamy, Will. She must be very turned on," said Sunny. Olivia literally groaned in humiliation.

I pulled her pants off.

I suddenly had a thought. "Where's your purse, Olivia?"

"Right outside of the door," she replied.

I grabbed her purse and went through it. It was the same model of bag as the one she took to the rave minus the pony bling. Her pistol was in the slip pouch. I checked the bag, but she had nothing that would be useful as a restraint.

Sunny was suddenly commanding. "I'm going to take my foot off your head. When I do, I want you to kneel. Take your blouse off and your bra. Give me any problems and I will beat the shit out of you. Understood?"

"Yes," Olivia replied.

Sunny took three quick steps back. Olivia got up to her knees. She took her blouse off. She made eye contact with Sunny the whole time, radiating a malicious rage. She had on a blue bra which matched her panties. She unhooked the front clasp and took it off. Her nipples were erect, which caused Sunny to look at me and smirk.

Sunny said, "Throw them to me." She held out her hand.

Olivia threw the bra and shirt at her.

"Now the panties," said Sunny.

Olivia looked at me in a silent plea to interfere.

"I'm not getting involved. This is between you and her, Olivia," I said with finality. "You broke into this place, violated her privacy, and physically assaulted her. You need to make amends to her, somehow."

"Panties," demanded Sunny impatiently while extending her hand. She waited about ten seconds and said, "We don't have all night."

Defeated, Olivia pulled her panties down to her knees. Her crotch, which she'd kept waxed, was swollen and almost purple. Her clitoris was erect and protruded from her lips. Her crotch was coated in a thick mucus-like arousal fluid, which was dripping down from her crease into her panties. She was as aroused as I'd ever seen her.

Olivia was well aware of the display she was making. She blushed beet red.

"Like that?" Olivia asked.

"All the way off," said Sunny with glee.

Olivia slumped down onto her butt, swung her legs in front of her, and pulled the panties off.

"Back to your knees," commanded Sunny. Sunny went back to her knees. There was resignation in her posture. The arousal mucus started to drip freely from her.

Sunny held out her hand again in a "throw them here" gesture. Olivia threw them spitefully. Sunny caught them and held them out so I could see.

Sunny started laughing raucously and said through her laughs, "It's like that Ali Wong punchline: it looks like the bottom of a birdcage."

I looked at Olivia. She couldn't meet my eye. She was totally humiliated. At the same time, if anything, she was more aroused than before.

Sunny said, "Now we put her clothes under the mattress."

I barked out a laugh. This was a brilliant idea. Olivia couldn't leave without running naked into the streets and she couldn't get at her clothes until Sunny and I got off the mattress.

I lifted the mattress off of the box spring. Sunny carefully laid out Olivia's clothes on top of the box spring so that they wouldn't get wrinkled. I threw Olivia's purse into the space underneath the headboard behind the mattress and set the mattress back down. I was highly amused.

Sunny made eye contact with me and said, "Now, we fuck." She said it with a growl and a ferociousness that I'd never heard from her before. "I want to show her what the God of Cock does to me."

My cock had sagged during the drama, but was instantly erect again. She pulled me by my cock onto the bed. She crawled to the middle of the mattress on her hands and knees. "Fuck me doggy, Will," she begged. There was a tremor in her voice as she said it. I quickly crawled up behind her.

I got a good glimpse of her pussy from behind. She was just as aroused as Olivia was. In fact, it was pretty clear her whole body was trembling. I got right behind her and ran my hand over the taught muscle of her butt. "Are you OK?" I whispered. She said, "I will be once you start fucking me."

I nested the tip of myself into her entrance. She was boiling hot-- much warmer than she was before. Her lips and entrance were so swollen they felt hard. I leaned forward and whispered into her ear. "This really has you excited, doesn't it?"

The look she gave me made me shiver. "Like you wouldn't believe. I'm melting. Please don't make me wait." The tremor in her voice doubled.

I raised back up and unceremoniously buried myself into the hilt. "Uhhhhhhh" she groaned out. It was as loud as a scream, but it was definitely a groan. The feel of her was amazing. She was molten hot and was so swollen and gooey it felt like I'd stuck my cock directly into heaven. She immediately orgasmed just from the insertion.

I looked down and all the way through her orgasm, Sunny was looking directly into Olivia's eyes. Olivia was staring right back into Sunny's eyes. She wasn't blinking. Olivia's face was a combination of anger, humiliation, and extreme arousal. I'd never seen her nipples that erect and she'd dribbled out a legitimate puddle of her arousal fluid on the floor between her knees. She was shaking in her own need.

After another dozen strokes Sunny said in a trembling voice, "Olivia! Watch Olivia! Watch! Uuuugggh Fuccccccck!"

Sunny came. Her vaginal spasms were so strong they were startling. They almost milked me into an immediate orgasm. I had to stop moving and concentrate pretty hard not to lose it. I was so turned on, I was lightheaded. I felt my cheeks burning and my heart was absolutely pounding.

When Sunny asked for this, the idea of fucking her in front of Olivia was not something I thought I would enjoy. I thought I would feel conspicuous and guilty that I was humiliating her. I actually wondered whether I would be able to physically perform. In the moment, however, I was having zero problems. The experience was among the most erotic I'd ever had. Sunny's extreme arousal and her overall reaction to the situation had me nearly in a frenzy. I loved Olivia's apparent distress and her reaction of extreme arousal took away any guilt that I would have felt. She obviously wanted this to happen. Her arousal was unmistakable. I felt like a monster, but that feeling only made me want to fuck Sunny more.

To buy myself some time, I reached around Sunny and grabbed her tits. Sunny moaned deeply as I lightly pinched her brown cone nipples between my index and middle fingers.

"Oh, Will. It feels so fucking good!" Sunny was trembling bodily again.

"I'm going to go slow and hard, Sunny," I said.

I slowly withdrew to the point where my head was outside of her entrance. I pushed it back in and the same time I pulled her back into me by her tits. Sunny groaned and said, "Harder. Fuck me harder!"

I pulled back out again and pulled her back into me as I thrust pretty hard. I did this a bunch of times and each time, I felt my balls slap her clitoris and she shivered and moaned again. After a couple of minutes of this, Sunny begged, "Harder, please!"

I pulled back out again and this time I pulled back very hard with her tits at the same time I bucked my pelvis. The head of my cock poked her cervix pretty hard just as I crushed her tits with my palms. Sunny erupted into another orgasm. The noise she made was as if she'd been demon possessed.

Olivia gasped audibly

Everything on the bed was suddenly soaking wet. Olivia groaned and shivered when she recognized what was happening.

Sunny's pussy again tried to milk me into oblivion. To hold on. I stopped for more than a minute while Sunny came down off of a monster orgasm, trembling, spasming, milking, and groaning. I ran my hand lightly down her goosebump-covered back, causing Sunny to groan. "Oh fuck, Will!" said Sunny. "That felt so good, I think I just peed myself. Wait, did I just squirt? Fuck! I didn't know I could do that."

The brief pause helped me settle back down. I let go of her tits and held her hips. I resumed thrusting at a quick pace which caused her heavy breasts to swing back and forth perfectly opposite to my thrusts. Sunny absolutely loved to have her tits swung like that. "Will you look at me, Olivia?" asked Sunny. It was a very soft request. "Will you look right into my eyes?"

Olivia locked eyes with Sunny. Olivia was so aroused, she looked lost. The lights were on, but no one was home.

Sunny moaned again and her voice suddenly raised. "Don't touch yourself. Just watch. Please."

I looked over and Olivia guiltily moved her hands away from her crotch. There were streams of arousal fluid dipping down from her that were like melted cheese stringing out from a pizza slice.

Sunny and I fucked for another twenty minutes. Each time Sunny orgasmed, Olivia would shudder and Sunny would demonstrate vocally just how incredible it felt. I could feel an energy circulating between the two of them. Sunny was most definitely getting off on being watched by Olivia. Olivia was getting off by... well, I wasn't sure what it was, but she was clearly on fire.

Finally, when I couldn't hold out any longer, I said, "Oh, fuck Sunny!" I then exploded into her. I will never forget the look of aroused anguish that filled Olivia's face. Somehow, the anguish she felt made me feel completely vindicated. I could remember thinking to myself, "Take that, you heartless, selfish, cheating bitch!" My deep anger surprised me and it multiplied the ferocity of my orgasm. I pumped what felt like a gallon of semen into Sunny. I could feel squirt after squirt erupting down my cock into her waiting pussy. The semen squeezing out of her as I continued to thrust. The pleasure was all consuming.

When I grew soft and fell out of her, Sunny sexily crawled over to the edge of the bed in front of Olivia and asked, "Do you want to see? Do you want to see his come in me?"

Olivia's face was filled with indecision. She was disgusted and embarrassed, but she was also so turned on, she wasn't processing correctly.

Sunny laughed a short mellifluous laugh. Olivia's indecision delighted her. Sunny positioned herself on the edge of the bed and held her knees together to hide her pussy.

She slowly opened her knees, revealing herself to Olivia. Olivia's eyes were fixed on Sunny's vagina, which was dripping and dribbling out my ejaculate.

"Do you want to taste?" Sunny asked her gently. "I'll let you taste his come right out of my pussy. You can if you want, but I won't force you."

Olivia's indecision multiplied. She was simultaneously humiliated and disgusted, but there was no mistake that she wanted to. Sunny waited patiently with a smile on her face.

Olivia seemed to snap out of her fog and she shook her head twice. It was a minute gesture, done with reluctance, but there was no mistaking it.

"You're lying," said Sunny kindly. "You want to and I offer it to you." Sunny slowly spread herself to show that her sex was covered with my sperm and arousal fluid. "Don't be shy."

Olivia was physically trembling. I could see that she wanted to so badly, but the last vestige of dignity in her was holding her back. I suddenly saw the resolve in Olivia's head break. With a pitiful moan, Olivia quickly crawled forward and lightly licked right at the entrance of Sunny's vagina. She then formed a scoop out of her tongue and lapped the remaining deposit in one large slurping lick.

After she took it. Olivia suddenly sat up again. Her face was covered with arousal fluid. She looked so aroused and so confused at the same time.

"Did that taste good?" asked Sunny.

Olivia nodded like a child would.

"Do you want some more?"

Olivia nodded minutely. Sunny grabbed Olivia's hair and guided where she wanted to be licked clean. When Sunny was satisfied she was cleaned, she pulled Olivia off of her.

"You're pretty good with your tongue, Olivia. Would you like to pleasure me that way?"

Olivia froze as she fought to consider this. After a moment, she shook her head minutely twice. "Suit yourself," Sunny said kindly. She made Olivia kneel upright again.

Sunny extended her left leg and her foot suddenly hovered in the space below Olivia's crotch between her thighs. Olivia gasped and shivered. She leaned forward slightly, trying to contact Sunny's foot with her crotch.

"You look incredibly aroused, Olivia," said Sunny. "Do you want some relief? I'll give you some relief if you want." Sunny punctuated her sentence by raising her foot slightly and flexing her toes. She lightly grazed Olivia's vulva with her toe, Olivia groaned and goosebumps sprouted from her belly to her thighs.

Sunny dipped her foot and lightly touched her big toe down into the now-substantial pool of grool that collected below Olivia's crotch.

Sunny raised her moist big toe in front of Olivia's face not even an inch in front of her mouth, "You're really aroused by all this, aren't you?" asked Sunny. "I can help you with that."

Sunny wiggled her big toe. "Want to taste yourself?" she asked. She did not push it into Olivia's mouth. She was making Olivia decide for herself. Olivia, almost without thinking, bent forward and took Olivia's big toe into her mouth. She sucked at the toe and shivered at the sensation and the humiliation of it all.

Sunny giggled delightedly. "Do you want me to stop teasing you, Olivia?" she asked. Olivia repeated her minute head shake. Sunny turned to me and whispered, "Your wife is so aroused she isn't even there, is she?"

I whispered back, "No. I've never seen her like this."

"My God, this has me so fucking hot," she whispered back. Sunny wasn't lying. She was so aroused, she was trembling.

Sunny lightly touched Olivia's neck with her big toe and lightly dragged it down to Olivia's nipple. Olivia moaned shockingly loud.

"Olivia, do you want some relief? I can give you a release if you want it." Sunny offered kindly.

Olivia gave a minute nod this time.

"What do you want, Olivia? Do you want my toe?" she asked.

Olivia shook her head again. She looked at me.

Sunny made eye contact with me and raised her eyebrow. I shook my head and said. "I'm with Sunny. You weren't invited here tonight, Olivia."

Sunny surprised me by looking somewhat disappointed. She quickly shook it off, though, and turned back to Olivia.

"I guess that's out. So, you can either have relief by my toe, or you can tend to yourself after you go home. It's your pick." Sunny pitched her vocal inflection to make it sound like she really wanted to get Olivia off by her big toe and that she would be disappointed otherwise.

The dilemma on Olivia's face was difficult to watch. She was so horny she would have done almost anything, but some last vestige of her pride was forcing her to resist Olivia's offer. She gave the minute head shake again, but there was a look of hope on her face that Sunny would relent and offer something else. I knew Olivia very well and there was no mistaking that she was silently begging Sunny to make her another offer.

Sunny either didn't pick up on it, or ignored it. She flexed her big toe and made contact with Olivia's nipple again. Olivia moaned. Sunny lightly dragged her big toe down Olivia's belly, pausing to lightly tickle the belly piercing that Olivia got as part of the rave caper.

Olivia's skin was now covered head to toe with goose bumps. She was leaning forward to maximize the contact. When Sunny's big toe got down to Olivia's pelvis, Sunny planted her big toe firmly against Olivia's pelvic bone, an inch above her crease.

"Do you want my big toe, Olivia? I would love to help you that way," Sunny said gently.

Olivia groaned in dismay. Sunny made eye contact with me. She was amazed and beyond delighted. We both sensed that Olivia was close to breaking. I was morbidly curious as to what would happen.

"It would feel so good, Olivia. You know it would," Sunny said in a teasing voice. To punctuate her point, Sunny lightly brushed her big toe right down Olivia's crease, an involuntary moan, almost like a howl erupted from Olivia's mouth.

"Please!" Olivia practically shouted.

"Please what?" asked Sunny.

Olivia's face was a mask of humiliation.

"Please," she begged. I could instantly see that Olivia wanted her to just do it. She was dodging responsibility for the decision.

Sunny must have sensed this too, because she said, "All I have is my toe. Would you be willing to have my toe pleasure you?" asked Sunny.

I could see tears start to roll down Olivia's cheeks. I was about to put a stop to it, but Sunny shot her hand out and pressed it to my chest to hold me back.

"Yes," said Olivia with anguish. "Please pleasure me with your...." Olivia swallowed and said, "Please pleasure me with your big toe." As she said it, she was utterly defeated.

The smile that erupted on Sunny's face was triumphant. This had been a very low-conflict battle of the wills, but it had meant something to both of them. There was no doubt that Sunny had won. She was ecstatic. Olivia was devastated by her own decision.

Sunny quickly moved her toe down so that it was just below Olivia's clit. She pressed it in and held it still. Olivia was suddenly rotating her pelvis to grind her clit in against Sunny's toe.

As she ground against Sunny's toe, Olivia erupted in another shivering moan. I'd never seen her that aroused. She wasn't herself. She wasn't anything. She was simply an object whose sole purpose was achieving pleasure by the only means available: Sunny's toe.

Olivia reached out to hold Sunny's leg still.

"No," Sunny replied gently. "You may not hold onto my leg. All you get is my big toe."

Olivia dropped her arms and shivered again in humiliation. Olivia was ramping up and was very close to orgasm. Even a drunken frat boy could have read signs that obvious. Olivia was frantically grinding now and got right up to the edge of orgasm when Sunny suddenly withdrew her toe.

Olivia's anguished, "Oh!" expressed her disappointment so eloquently, it made me laugh out loud.

"I'll finish you off, Olivia. Don't fret," said Sunny in a conciliatory tone. "I've got an idea. Get on your hands and knees. Face away from me."

Olivia quickly dropped down to her hands and spun around to comply. Olivia's pussy was so aroused it looked purple and distended. I could practically see it throb in response to her driving heartbeat.

"Face to the floor," commanded Sunny.

When Olivia obeyed, Sunny positioned her foot so that it was just touching Olivia's sex. Olivia moaned loudly.

Sunny smiled and asked, "That's better contact, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Olivia breathlessly.

"Yes what?" asked Sunny,

"Yes, Ma'am," replied Sunny. Sunny made eye contact with me while stifling a laugh and rolling her eyes.

"No, Olivia," said Sunny, "I'm not your ma'am, your mistress, your mommy, or your slave owner. I have a name. I want you to use it. Call me Sunny," she prodded gently.

"Yes, Sunny," replied Olivia.

Sunny said. "I will hold mostly still, so you can move back in any way that you want. Push back against me."

"Yes, Sunny," said Olivia. She did so and groaned at the contact.

"You now have control," said Olivia. "You can make the contact how you want. I've angled my foot so you can fuck yourself with my big toe if you want," said Sunny.

Olivia explored by pushing back further. Sunny's big toe slipped into her vagina and a groan escaped from Olivia's mouth.

Sunny's small toes were resting against Olivia's clitoris. Sunny wiggled them and Olivia let out a massive trembling moan.

"Oh God! Oh God!" said Olivia.

"This is your show, Olivia. You're in control," said Sunny.

For the next minute or so, Olivia fucked back against Sunny's foot. As she drove herself back, she rotated her hips and did all she could to maximize her pleasure. Sunny was utterly entranced with the display. She would periodically make eye contact with me and Sunny was almost as aroused as Olivia was. She started touching herself.

Sunny suddenly said, "You're a beautiful woman, Olivia. Your ass and hips really are quite amazing. You are stunningly sexy. I can see why Will was so crazy for you."

Goosebumps suddenly appeared on Olivia's ass. Without thinking about it Sunny reached out with her left hand and rubbed her hand across them.

Olivia groaned almost in a growl. She started frantically bucking back against Sunny's foot and within three massive backwards thrusts of her ass, she came like an absolute freight train. I've never seen her orgasm that hard before. She screamed out and spasmed so hard, she completely lost control. The position had forced Olivia's cheeks apart and I could see her anus opening and contracting closed furiously as she frantically tried to drive Sunny's big toe deeper into her pussy.

Seeing Olivia's display, made Sunny orgasm massively too. She squeezed her thighs shut around her own hand and bucked her own hips. This caused her leg to spasm wildly, which made her foot jerk against Olivia's pussy, which caused Olivia to erupt a second time, though not as strong as before.

After some untold seconds of bliss, both women more or less collapsed. Sunny dropped down onto her back and luxuriated in her languor.

Olivia collapsed down to the floor and began to weep inconsolably. If I had to guess, this was part relief and was also part self-disgust and humiliation.

When Sunny became aware of Olivia's crying, she sat up. "Why are you crying?" she asked.

"I'm fucking humiliated," Olivia blubbered.

"Stop, Olivia," Sunny said gently. "Don't be like that."

Sunny turned to me. "Will, can you get her up in the bed?"

I walked over and picked up Olivia and set her down on the bed next to Sunny. Olivia refused to look at her. She was utterly humiliated. Sunny reached out and hugged her, which was almost like spooning. The embrace didn't look sexual. Sunny was just trying to comfort her. "Hush, Olivia. Just settle down and hush. You needed relief, so I gave you relief. It was no big deal."

After a few minutes, Olivia finally settled down and said. "I'm so humiliated. I'm disgusted with myself."

"You needed relief, Olivia," Sunny replied. "You chose to get relief. No one held a gun to your head. Everything you did was something you chose to do. I don't think you should be humiliated by the choice you made, but if your choices humiliate you, Olivia, you need to make different choices."

Olivia started blubbering again. Sunny simply held onto her for a while.

When Olivia settled down, Sunny said, "I bet you could use a nice hot shower. Go take one. While you get cleaned off, we'll get your clothes out. You can get dressed and go."

"What about Will?" asked Olivia.

"He's spending the night with me," said Sunny. "Wasn't that perfectly clear from the beginning?"

Olivia looked stunned, but when she thought about that, she just nodded. She stood and went into the bathroom. I heard the shower start.

"Can you help me move the mattress, Will?" asked Sunny

We moved the mattress and pulled Olivia's clothes out.

Sunny took the clothes into the bathroom. After the shower stopped, I could hear them talking in there for a long time. Olivia emerged first, apparently feeling better. She would not make eye contact with me, however. She picked up her purse, nodded to Sunny and was gone.

Sunny crawled into the bed and curled in next to me. "I think she's going to be okay," she said with a yawn.

"You two were in there talking for at least a half hour. What was going on?" I asked.

"Part of it was that she was humiliated by her actions and decisions tonight. She was trying to process them and I tried to help her. Most of it, however, was just girl talk," said Sunny.

After a silent minute or two, Sunny said, "You didn't warn me how pretty she is. She's beautiful. She's supermodel thin, too."

"She's very pretty, that's true," I admitted. "What is that phrase the English use? Is it 'Handsome is as handsome does'? I have first-hand knowledge that despite all her external beauty, Olivia has some ugly spots on the inside."

***

Chapter 7

The waitress set an amazing stack of big fluffy pancakes down in front of Sunny. "Those look amazing," I said. Sunny smiled and made eye contact with the waitress. "You see that scoop of butter on the top? Can I have two more just like it? Thanks."

The waitress was back in a minute and Olivia put an entire portion of butter on top of each pancake in her stack. I'd never seen so much butter used on a single order of pancakes before. By contrast, she was extremely parsimonious with the syrup.

"I see you're judging me. This is my one vice," she said with a mock defiant glare. "I don't drink coffee. I work out in the gym every morning. I bust my butt in the Dojang three days a week. I'm on my feet all day at work. If I want to have an order of pancakes with an entire stick of butter, that is my prerogative. How dare you!" she said in an arched tone.

"That's your one vice?" I asked skeptically.

"Do I have another?" she said with her mouth full of buttery pancake.

"How you treated Olivia last night wasn't a vice?" I asked.

Sunny did something unexpected: she blushed. "I'm not going to lie, Will. That was the hottest thing I've ever been a part of. It was even better than the molten sex we have every time we get together."

"What about it was hot to you?" I asked.

"She was so horny she was incapable of making her own decisions. I got the sense in the moment that she was really getting off on being humiliated. Didn't you?"

"I agree that she seemed to enjoy the humiliation," I replied.

"I immediately sussed out that she wanted to be forced into degradation," said Sunny. "She either wanted me to just do something or she wanted to be forced to do something. I think that she wanted it that way so she would be absolved of the guilt of what she was doing. You know, so she could say later that she was forced, or at the very least pushed into it?"

I nodded as I ate another bite of my omelette.

"My instinct told me to hold out," Sunny explained. "All I did was give her choices. She could choose to humiliate herself or she got nothing. Did you see how that turned her on?"

I laughed. "You're not wrong. She was so horny her brain wasn't working. It was like she was a zombie with the mental acuity of a four year old."

"Well, all I did was invite her to humiliate herself," said Sunny. "I forced her to choose and gave her absolutely no moral cover. She had to choose the degradation she wanted and when she realized that, she fucking ignited. I got the sense she was so horny she would have done anything as long as it humiliated her. I seriously think she would have done literally anything: eating off the floor, drinking piss, sex with strangers, or even incest. She just needed to be offered the opportunity to do it."

Sunny didn't look like she was done. She was building herself up to something so I didn't interrupt. After she swallowed a huge bite of pancakes, she smiled. "Oh. My. God. The power I felt, Will! I suddenly got a flash of guilt that I was being cruel to her, but just as I thought that, I had this crazy realization right in the moment-- my cruelty simply served to make her experience better. The crueler I was, the harder she'd orgasm.

"Then when I finally did talk her into deep degradation, she was utterly explosive. Did you see how hard she came on my toes?" Sunny waited for my answering nod. "It was so erotic. You wore me out fucking me last night. After you were done that last time, I was certain I had nothing left. When she came that hard, it made me come almost as hard myself. That experience is going to stay with me a long time." Sunny shivered as she said it.

"What was the deal with trying to comfort her?" I asked.

Sunny shrugged. "It seemed wrong to me that she was horrified she'd degraded herself. What she did clearly got her off and she had a great time. If that wasn't the best orgasm she's ever had in her life, I'll eat my hat. Does it seem right to you that she should be so deeply ashamed of something that gave her such carnal bliss?"

"Prior to last night, Sunny, I would guess the best sex of her life was probably a threesome she had when she first started cheating on me. I was not in on that threesome. She had a lot to be ashamed of there," I replied.

Sunny nodded and gave me a placating gesture. "You're right. Cheating is bad. Was she cheating last night, though? Was she doing anything wrong?"

I laughed. "She broke into our room uninvited and physically assaulted you."

"Well, that aspect was bad, but we subdued her and kept her there after we had her under control."

I gave her a doleful smile. "Correction," said Sunny. "I subdued her and kept her there, didn't I? Still, the point remains that because I made her do that, the fact that she was watching us fuck was by definition not something she had cause to be ashamed of."

"Why did you want her there watching us?" I asked.

Sunny, who had been leaning forward as she ate suddenly leaned back. "As soon as I saw how pretty she was, I was hella intimidated, Will."

"You were intimidated by her?" I said in total disbelief.

Sunny suddenly looked vulnerable. I wanted to take her into my embrace and rock her like a little girl.

"Olivia's 'white girl pretty', Will. You don't know what it's like. The pressure to conform to beauty standards is crushing on young women. Being in the sorority made me perfectly aware of that. The most beautiful women in Korean culture are grown-ass women who look like twelve-year-old girls."

She gestured to her breasts. "I didn't look like a twelve-year-old when I was twelve. I don't have a Korean body and I don't have a white girl's face. It makes me so damn... vulnerable all the time."

I gently scoffed at her. "You're utterly gorgeous, Sunny. Every white girl I've ever met would have killed for your figure, Olivia included. You have the greatest ass I've ever seen and you've got at least a cup size on Olivia. Your face is beautifully sculpted. Your cheekbones are to die for and, my god, you've got the biggest eyes on a woman I've ever seen." She pressed her lips together and made that quirky smile I only see when she's really pleased. It was an adorable gesture. Something about the way I said what I did made her feel good.

"You also have to know that I've never had sex as good as we had last night before we realized Olivia was there. Olivia is not nearly as sexy to me as you are," I said.

This too got the adorable smile response.

I took a chance. "That was what having sex in front of Olivia was about, right? You wanted her to see that you were better than her."

Sunny blushed a deep red. After a second of introspection, Sunny simply sat up straight and defiantly pointed her chin at me. "That's exactly what it was about. I wanted her to see me do something for you that she could not do herself. I felt powerful, like a goddess. I got off on that big time. You saw how I was."

"You are a goddess," I agreed. I nodded and lifted my mug of coffee to her in salute.

"Here's the thing, though," she said. "You were banging me like a screen door and she was staring at me. I stared her down to put her in her place. You know what? While we were in the middle of that, I realized that was exactly what she wanted me to do. It was as clear as day that she was begging me to take over and force her to get involved. We didn't use words and we didn't have to. Did she ever take the initiative in bed with you?"

I shook my head. "She'd make it known she was in the mood, but she was usually passive with me. She pretty much left it to me to decide what was going on. Did I tell you about the handcuffs?"

She nodded.

"Well, the handcuffs thing was the first time she was aggressive with me," I said. "I liked that. Not because I like to be submissive, but because it was such a welcome change of pace for her. Later, when I figured out that she was just following the orders her lovers were giving her, I was disgusted by it."

"Well, I certainly got the feeling that she was trying to silently communicate with me. I think she was trying to tell me that she was submissive and wanted me to take charge of her," said Sunny. "What I was trying to communicate to her is that it had to be her choice. I wasn't going to bully her into submitting. She was going to submit to me on her own volition. We kind of got a battle-of-the-wills going. It made me hot, Will. I thought for sure she was going to ask me to join us, but she wrestled with it too long. After we were done and I got her to pleasure herself on my toe? That's when she chose to give in."

I shrugged. It wasn't clear to me at the time what was going on. "You seemed disappointed when she asked for me and I declined," I observed.

She took her time eating a couple of bites of pancakes before she replied.

"You told me she did bisexual stuff when she was cheating on you," she stated.

"Yes I did," I replied.

She gave me a smile and shrug that so eloquently communicated her desires while actually saying nothing, that I had to smile. "You are enough for any woman, Will," she was quick to explain. "Don't think it's because you aren't meeting my needs. It's more like a bucket list thing, you know?" She was looking at me to see how I would take that.

"Just you and another woman, or...?" I asked.

She just smiled again and shrugged. I could see she didn't have a plan or a scheme. "In the bathroom, I was asking her about her experiences," Sunny confessed. When she saw my negative reaction she clarified, "With other women."

I raised my hand. "I don't need to know."

Sunny nodded. "We also talked about accepting who you are. When I was in college, I was pretty socially active and I was in a sorority with a party reputation. I hooked up a lot. I had a lot of fun doing that. I grew up in a traditional Korean household and such behavior was simply not done. I had a hard time with shame and self image. I thought I was a slut. One of my sorority sisters saw that I was struggling and worked with me a long time to accept that I was doing something I wanted to do. Taking ownership of my sexual decisions got me out of the cycle of shame. I was trying to do the same for Olivia."

"You were trying to get her to accept who she is?" I asked, confused.

"Yes."

***

I walked into the apartment associated with our Archer identities at ten AM.

Sunny had a PA school shift at the hospital and had to bail, so I went home to the apartment for the inevitable confrontation. That night, we were staying at the apartment we got for the Archer identity. It was the largest of the half dozen apartments we'd rented and it was the one we both thought of as home. Olivia and I agreed to always spend Sundays there.

I walked in expecting a knock-down drag-out fight. Instead I found a contrite Olivia who was incredibly apologetic for what she'd done to interfere with my Saturday night date. She acknowledged every fucked-up aspect to stalking us during the date and interfering with it. She asked for my forgiveness and swore up and down that it would never happen again.

After that, she started asking questions about my relationship with Sunny.

"You two have an amazing chemistry together," admitted Olivia. "I've never seen anything like it. What is your relationship with her?"

"We are friends with benefits," I replied. "We have an unusual rapport and connection. It is incredible and unique, in my experience."

"Are you two exclusive?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we are bareback exclusive. We are bareback with each other, but we wear protection with people other than us. She may be hooking up with others, but as we aren't exclusive, that's none of my business."

"You hooked up with me bareback," she observed. "In that van on the night of the rave."

"Yes, but I knew for a fact you were clean," I replied. "I saw the medical report that stated you were cured of the chlamydia infection you got from your Darden county adventures."

This made her gasp. She hadn't known that I read her medical reports.

That's when she asked me, point blank, if I loved Sunny.

"Olivia, you were in the apartment and spying on us while Sunny and I discussed that very topic," I replied. "You should already know the answer. Please don't waste our time."

Olivia tried to defend herself by saying that Sunny and I could have been lying to each other. I gave her a withering stare and said, "Unlike some, neither Sunny or I lie to our partners."

This made Olivia sniffle, but she held it together. "I promise you, Will. I will never lie to you again."

That's when Olivia started asking me about our relationship. "What are we to each other?" she asked. I reiterated that we were DHS agents and partners. I said that although our official cover with the DHS had us as husband and wife, we were just coworkers.

That's when Olivia asked, "So we aren't exclusive?"

I was wondering why she was going over the ground we'd already rehashed a dozen times. "Absolutely not," I insisted.

That's when Olivia sprung her carefully-laid trap. She looked me full in the face and asked, "So you aren't angry that I licked Sunny's pussy?"

She maneuvered me so I couldn't be mad for what she did with Sunny.

"Well played," I said. "That was clever as hell, Olivia," She beamed a smile as I said that. "But it wasn't necessary. You had nothing to worry about. I was not mad about what you did with Sunny up in that rental apartment. That was between you and her. If that was going to bother me, I would have prevented it from happening."

"So you don't mind if I date?" she asked. In that context, it became as clear as day she was implying that she meant that she would date Sunny. I laughed and said, "I didn't ask your permission to date Sunny or Laney. I don't expect you to ask my permission to date anyone either."

That was not what she was hoping that I would say. Dropping Laney's name, which I had never done before, had the desired effect and she backed off.

Shortly after that our sat phone rang. Olivia's dad wanted to get in touch with us in a hurry.

***

As we ate a lunch consisting of the best takeout Pad Thai I ever had, Olivia and I watched the video on Gilbert's laptop. It was a video of a briefing done by a young analyst named Radhika that I'd heard Undersecretary Gilbert talk about. Her briefing was on traffic analysis of the suspected communications between Vance Cameron, Burton McKee, and Steve Chen.

Using Carnivore and a geospatial intelligence system I'd never heard of, Radhika was able to find prepaid phone accounts that had a 100% collocation rate with the government-issued cell phones used by Cameron, McKee, and Chen. They had a very high confidence that these were the burner phones they used to communicate with each other.

The young woman methodically went through all of the text messages those three phones sent to each other for several years. Chen and Cameron never sent each other texts. Instead, they only texted with McKee. The messages were ostensibly about sports game results and at face value appeared to be stats being passed back and forth between fantasy league addicts.

Radhika, however, managed to crack the code they were using. In the briefing, Radhika methodically went over the code and was able to use it to do a meaningful decode of every single text message sent between the three people.

During the briefing, Secretary Bollard, who was not shown in the video, started peppering Radhika with questions. Radhika had an effortless command of the material and a ready answer for every question that Bollard asked. It was a very convincing briefing.

Gilbert ended the video and minimized that window. "Secretary Bollard has a strategic goal now: she wants to learn the scope, breadth, and reach, of the Glaukopis organization. The only way to do that is to perform a coup and take it over by replacing the leadership. She wants you to decapitate the organization by neutralizing McKee and Chen. If that is successful, we'll use the tattoo gambit. You will slowly contact the individual cells and you will pose as their new column leader. This will allow us to watch the activity happen, and the data flow through the organization."

I nodded. I understood what he was asking, but it was a big task and would be a huge stretch.

"Won't it be obvious that I'm not a civil servant?" I asked. "I'm not the kind of guy that the Glaukopis would bring into their organization."

Matt Gilbert laughed. "You technically are a civil servant, Will. You have been since you came to work for me. You are in the clandestine service, so it isn't publicly known, but you are. We've been looking at the current Glaukopis roster. There is a member that came into the organization out of clandestine service with the FBI. It only happened, however, after they were brought back into public service and they became official FBI.

"We're generating an alternate identity set for you. You will be a person emerging from long-term clandestine service with the DHS. My desk is being bumped up one level. I'm being promoted to undersecretary and you will be assigned as my right hand man with my former rank of assistant undersecretary. You'll be the youngest assistant undersecretary in the DHS, but you are in the general age range. It will be a public posting and your new identity and your pictures will go up on the DHS TOE, org charts, and public-facing websites."

"What if people recognize me?" I asked.

"We're going to do some appearance work on you to keep you from being recognized. We're sourcing that along with the tattoo artist we need. We'll cover that later," said Gilbert.

"Once you are established as legit civil service, we'll then have you make contact with the cells in the role as their replacement column leader."

"To make the plan work, we needed someone senior enough to make it look reasonable," said Gilbert.

"Who'd they sucker into that?" I asked.

Gilbert shrugged and said, "Me. This is the crazy shit: I've been ordered to impersonate the Glaukopis leader. They're going to tat me up too. They will use me as the guy who liaises with the external contacts. An undersecretary at DHS would be senior enough to have that role, I would have access to all sorts of information, and I've been working for the federal government my entire adult life. My cover will be pretty unassailable."

"So the Secretary wants us to decap the organization. Any parameters to that?" I asked.

Matt minimized the video window then brought up a screen shot of a message. "This came in last night. It was sent from Chen to McKee. Decoded, it means Chen ordered a hundred thousand dollars from McKee. They are going to meet tonight at 10:00 PM. After such messages, the government phones of Cameron, Chen, and McKee all converge on a single location."

Gilbert advanced to the slide to a map with a location circled. "This location is in a back alley behind a commercial district in Adams-Morgan. This building in front of the alley was built in the nineteen teens and was used as a commercial bank until the nineteen sixties. The building has been redone and refurbished several times since then. Currently, the building is being used as the headquarters of MarCat, which if you will recall is the marketing organization used as a fig leaf for the activity of the Owls."

Olivia and I made eye contact and nodded.

He advanced the slide to some photographs of the location. "In the back alley, there's a small fenced off area with parking for two large bucket trucks. The fence is twelve feet with a razor wire top. Pretty standard site security for an unattended area. On the other side of the parking spaces is a concrete structure with a roll up security door. The plans for the city show that there are four indoor parking spaces big enough for large pickups. The outside is badged as if it is property belonging to Verizon. There is some external equipment that makes it look like there's a cell tower housed there, but there isn't a cell tower within five miles of the place. That is artiface.

"We speculate that the Glaukopis vault is in the building at this location. There was a 1920s-era consumer bank in that location when the building was repurposed in the sixties. The bank contained a very large vault and we doubt it was ever removed. We do know that McKee never goes there alone. He always meets either Cameron or Chen there. We speculate the vault requires a combination and two keys to open. This was not an uncommon arrangement for the bank vaults of that era. Secretary Bollard wants you to get in there with McKee and Chen and get them to open the vault for you."

"This meeting is at ten o'clock tonight?" I asked. "That doesn't give us much time to prepare." The rave caper took me weeks to plan. I purchased the van. I set up throw away identities. I developed personas for us that would allow us to blend with our environs. There wasn't a risk that I didn't consider and even with all that prep, the op had still gone sideways anyway. Tonight we'd utterly be flying by the seat of our pants.

I tamped down on a burst of fear and tried to think about what I would need to know. I wondered how vigilant McKee and Chen would be, so I asked, "What is the status of the Cameron house? Do McKee or Chen know he's dead?"

"The families of Phelps and Carter reported them missing last week, but no one put them together with Cameron. Cameron's kids asked the police to do a wellness check. The police discovered the bodies two days ago. The address was on some sort of list and the FBI came in and took over the scene immediately. It was done discretely, and the print and TV media never picked up on the crime scene.

"The bodies were a week old at that point and were badly decomposed. Their families were told that they found bodies and suspected it was them, but that they needed DNA confirmation. They were told nothing about the circumstances. The agent running the investigation for the FBI is not a Glaukopis member. As counterintelligence assets are need-to-know, the FBI guys probably think Cameron is an asset and so they're just keeping everything off the radar. We don't think word of Cameron's death has made its way to McKee or Chen, but you need to be extremely cautious just in case."

***

Chapter 8

After we left Matt Gilbert's safe house, Olivia and I drove straight to the commercial strip in Adams-Morgan. There was a coffee shop facing the building labeled MarCat. That's where we wanted to go to hang out and get a feel for the neighborhood. It was easy to see that the neighborhood was very diverse. There were lots of ethnic and specialty shops from Vietnamese to Ethiopian. There were dozens of businesses built into the basements of old brownstones. It was also diverse from an income perspective. The younger people tended to be tattooed hipsters who wore funky clothing and were all about self-expression. The older people looked like they were blue collar but comfortable. Thankfully, I didn't feel conspicuous at all.

We couldn't find a parking spot near the coffee shop. Luck was with us. I took two random turns and ended up in the alley behind MarCat by accident. Right there, we found an empty city-marked parking space that was about 100 feet away from the fenced-in parking area and the roll-up door at the back of the MarCat building. The spot gave a perfect vantage of that whole part of the alley.

I started the video recording on my phone and put it into my shirt pocket. We walked past the building on the way to the coffee shop and Olivia did her part by stopping to adjust her shoe. I adopted the face of the put-upon spouse and let her use me to support herself while I had a look. I saw all of the fake cell phone equipment and the Verizon badging. There were no cameras at the back of the building. I was careful to do a slow three sixty to look for other cameras. I didn't see any others in that section of the alley.

When we went into the coffee shop, it was not table-service. You were supposed to order at the counter. The table right in front of the window was open. It was perfect because I could see the front of the MarCat building from there. I told Olivia to get a coffee for me, and ran over to claim the table.

Olivia walked over to the barista, who was a young Hispanic woman, who I guessed was chapstick lesbian. She was slender and boyish and had a pixie haircut. She was wearing a dress that emphasized her breasts and showed some cleavage along with makeup and a bright red lipstick. One of her ears had an array of piercings along the top of the ear. The messaging of her appearance was complicated, but her apron had a rainbow embroidered on it next to her name. That seemed definitive to me.

As I waited for Olivia, I watched a group of five well-to-do women gather in front of MarCat. They walked in together. I shuddered as I realized these women were Glaukopis Owls.

Eventually, I realized that Olivia was taking a hell of a long time to get us two cups of coffee. I looked over at the counter and she and the barista were engaged in a lively conversation as the barista put the finishing touches on an actual porcelain cup of coffee. They looked like old friends who had known each other for years. Olivia thanked her and carried the coffees over to our table.

She set a very large mug down in front of me. It was a latte with a colored rainbow design in the foam. I looked at Olivia in confusion. "The barista was a talker. I had to come up with a cover on the fly. You're Steven, my gay bestie. You aren't out yet, but it won't be long now."

I looked over at Olivia's cup. The barista adorned the foam with a heart with an arrow through it. Olivia proudly showed it to me. "Isn't that amazing?" she asked. "Jade is quite the artist." She pronounced Jade with an H instead of a J and it sounded like "HAW-day". This was Jade as pronounced in Spanish.

I looked over at Jade, who was looking over at me to see my reaction. I had a moment where I tried to think of what a gay bestie would do. I blew an air kiss over at Jade. She took a bow from across the shop.

As we sipped at our lattes, Olivia and I chatted about the neighborhood while we watched several women come in and out of the MarCat building. After a little while, a couple of hipster women bustled into the coffee shop and sat down next to us, carrying bags. They were both wearing vintage clothing and loudly started talking about what they were able to find and buy while they trawled through the vintage clothing stores. Olivia caught my attention and gave me a wink.

She politely interrupted the women and started asking about the vintage clothing stores. Within five minutes, she was sitting at their table and they were in full on fashion discussion mode. After a few minutes, all of their coffee cups were dry.

Olivia walked over to the counter and bought them all a refill on their coffees. I was facing the register now, so I saw it all happen. Olivia was involved in an energetic conversation with Jade. I knew Olivia well enough that I could tell she was flirting simply by her posture as she stood before the counter.

The barista leaned in and whispered something to Olivia. Olivia gave out a shocked laugh, which she quickly stifled. As they stood up straight and tried to look inconspicuous, the barista pointed to the woman in the horn-rimmed glasses with her chin-- the most Hispanic of all gestures. Olivia smiled and when she paid for the coffees in cash, I saw her drag her fingertips across the back of the barista's hand. The barista blushed beet red. Olivia said something to Jade and they both laughed.

Olivia carried the refills in their porcelain cups over to the ladies' table. Before too long, Olivia was spinning out a story to her new friends that she was relocating to the city. The best place she found to live was around the corner, but she wasn't sure about whether the Adams Morgan neighborhood would be safe at night.

The two ladies instantly poo-pooed her concerns. "Oh, honey," said the hipster woman wearing the horn-rimmed glasses. "We call this neighborhood 'AdMo'. Our beloved AdMo is perfectly safe at night. This is one of the best areas for nightlife in DC." This led to a prolonged discussion about which night life spots were popular, and most importantly, where to find parking for them.

Olivia asked about Metro access. The woman in the horned-rimmed glasses frowned. "You can take Calvert street west, cross the bridge over Rock Creek, and get to the Metro that way. It's about a 15 minute walk. That station is on the Red Line and on weekends it can be a long time between trains. You're better off using the bus system or getting an Uber if you can afford it."

The ladies noticed the time and had to go. Olivia thanked them profusely and bid them goodbye. "That was good," I said. "Exceptional intel on the neighborhood." Olivia flashed a smile.

I went to the bathroom. When I came back, a young guy who looked like a street hustler was accosting one of the coffee shop patrons. He was holding out one of those advertising flyers xeroxed onto bright colored paper. The patron was basically ignoring him. As I walked past, he turned around and intercepted me. He looked Hispanic. "Excuse me sir," he said in unaccented English. to get my attention. He shoved a flyer into my hand. I looked at it.

The flyer was covered with an amazing drawing. It looked like a Mexican Style mural. At the top was an elaborate depiction of the La Calavera Catrina-- the Mexican skeleton woman. The Catrina at the top was holding a large restaurant-style tray, loaded down with what appeared to be Tamales and Hamburgers. She was standing in front of a large tent, in which dozens and dozens of Catrinas were eating and dancing and partying. The drawing was incredible. The amount of whimsy and artistic flair in it was astonishing.

As I looked at the drawing, the young man began to shower me with the pitch that there was going to be a pop-up event that evening in Adams Morgan. His cousin Lupe, who he said was a famous cook in foodie circles, was going to be selling her signature burgers and tamales at a tent three streets over.

I interrupted him and spoke in Spanish. "Who did this drawing? This is magnificent," I said.

"I did," the young man replied in Spanish in a somewhat bewildered way.

"This art is phenomenal. I don't believe José Posada himself could have done better."

The second I mentioned Posada, the young man straightened up and his jaw dropped. Speaking to him in Spanish and dropping that name told him I wasn't just another ignorant Güero. He was suddenly extremely pleased.

"Do you sell originals?" I asked again in Spanish. The guy was shocked and said. "Sure!" He gave me a card. His name was Joaquín Atlapexco. His card had a small picture of a skeleton on it and a couple of links to websites including DeviantArt and a vanity URL that was his name. The card also said, 'Commissions Accepted'.

"Tamales and hamburgers?" I asked. "Are they flavorful?"

The young man took my phone from me without asking, snapped a pick of the QR code on the flyer. The website that came up was from a local paper's review of Lupe Atlapexco's cooking. The paper noted that she trained under three very illustrious chefs doing different types of cuisine, but her passion was authentic Haustecan flavor profiles. The reviewer described Lupe's tamales as so good they were life-changing.

"Will there be a lot of people?" I asked.

"We sell tickets for menu items. We start selling tickets at 5:00 PM. We usually sell out of tickets in forty minutes or so. We start serving at 8:00 PM. Lupe likes to serve later in the evening because it makes people hungrier. People usually start lining up to buy the tickets at 4:00 PM. If you want to try it, you need to get in line early," he said.

After considering something, he said quietly, "I sell the tickets, so if you want to do some pre-sales, I can sell you some tickets right now if you buy at least $100 worth." I ended up buying tickets for two of every one of their menu items. It was about $140 dollars. I gave it to him in cash.

As I turned to sit down, I noticed that Jade the barista had taken my seat and that she and Olivia were chattering away like they were old friends. From across the room. I could see quite a lot of flirting bouncing back and forth.

"What the hell is Olivia playing at?" I wondered to myself. It was the opposite of good operational security.

I looked over at the counter, and another barista had taken Jade's place. I looked at my phone and it was ten minutes after 1:00 PM. I was guessing that there was a shift change and she was no longer working.

I walked over to the table. Olivia said, "Spill, bestie! Who was he? He was very cute!"

I blushed red at the implications of her question. This, apparently absolutely sold to Jade the concept that I'd found someone I was interested in. Jade was delighted at the prospect of witnessing a budding gay romance. I could tell from Olivia's expression that she thought it was the funniest shit she'd ever seen.

I made a show of trying to keep my dignity. "That young man was named Joaquín and he's quite an artist." I rejected the temptation to say it with an affected tone of voice. Despite using my normal tone of voice, it came out sounding prissy.

Jade and Olivia shared a meaningful look.

"Sweetie," I said making eye contact with Olivia. "Can we speak privately for a minute?"

She stood up and I walked her to the back. I tried to keep a smile plastered on my face, but my eyes radiated laser-beam heat. Even so, I turned us so our faces wouldn't be seen by Jade. "What. The. Fuck!" I said quietly but emphatically.

Olivia instantly looked alarmed.

"We've talked about this, Olivia! Rule number one of cover is not to choose a cover that you don't know anything about. I don't choose a cover as a symphony musician or a pro athlete because I don't know shit about either one. In case you haven't noticed, I don't know shit about how to impersonate a gay guy. As a gay woman, Jade's going to have forgotten more about gay people than I will ever know. It was like telling a pro golfer that I was a pro golfer too. That was absolutely fucking stupid and reckless."

Olivia looked abashed, but I continued to glare at her. "You haven't even bothered to tell me your cover name. Pull your shit together! What did you tell her your name was?"

Olivia was embarrassed. "Kimsu," she said. "I told her I was Kimsu Theron."

Kimsu Theron was the name of the woman who'd tempted Olivia into cheating on me and ruined our marriage. The woman was a snake. The fact that Olivia aspired to role play that she was Kimsu enraged me.

"What the fuck?" I whispered at her through clenched teeth in absolute exasperation. I fought to control my temper. "Not. Very. Fucking. Smart."

"I'm sorry Will...."

"Shut up, Olivia. Listen to me carefully. I want to keep the parking space we have. I'm going to go get one of our throwaway cars. I will use the Explorer this time."

Over the last month, I bought a few cars off of Craigslist for cash and had the owners sign the titles over to me. I didn't bother to register the title transfer for any of them at the DMV. I insured them by going to a local insurer and prepaying for a year using cash and one of our throw-away cover identities. The Explorer was at our two-bedroom apartment in Cathedral Heights and was probably the closest of our apartments to Adams Morgan.

The choice of the Explorer meant we were going to use the Bob and Suzy Everette identity for this caper. Bob was the registered owner of the Explorer.

"I'm going to take a bus to get it. I will be back in two hours. Meet me by your car. I want to pull into the space as you pull out of it. I will coordinate by phone. Understand?"

She nodded.

"We will then go prepare for tonight," I replied. "Our cover is going to be Bobby and Suzy Everette. We're going to be hipsters who are in Adams Morgan for a pop-up foodie event tonight. While I'm gone, give some thought to your cover, Okay? Plan out what you'll need. For God's sake, Lose Jade. Don't fucking cultivate witnesses."

She nodded.

"If Jade senses I was pissed off at you, tell her I was mad at you for outing me. Steven is in the closet and you should have fucking known better, Kimsu." The way I said her cover name was scathing.

I turned and left the coffee shop by the rear door so that I didn't have to walk past Jade. I didn't want to show her I was enraged.

***

I found a bus that took me over to the national cathedral. I only had to wait a few minutes. The bus ride only took fifteen minutes, so I went into the apartment, grabbed my alternate identity and the keys to the Explorer. I drove back. Instead of the promised two hours, I was only gone for just under an hour.

I drove around the streets near the MarCat building for ten minutes or so to familiarize myself with the streets there. I then called Olivia. The phone rang ten times before it went over to voice mail. That wasn't like her at all. She usually picked up in the first two rings. Miffed, the message I left was, "Call me."

As soon as I hung up, Olivia called me back. "Hello?" she asked, out of breath and sounding distracted.

"Where are you?" I asked.

After a long pause in which I heard breathing and a moan, she said, "You said two hours. It's only been an hour."

"The bus was quick. We have things to do. Where are you? " I asked.

"I'll be down in fifteen minutes," she claimed and hung up.

Nearly forty-five minutes later, I saw her walk into the alley from a direction opposite of the coffee shop. She was carrying bags and looked harassed. She climbed into her car and threw her bags into the back seat.

She pulled out and I pulled right in. I locked the Explorer and got into her car. As I sat down, I noticed something was wrong. She was stiff and self-conscious. I looked at her. She was blushing. Her hair was mussed, her eye makeup was smeared, her lipstick was gone, her blouse was buttoned incorrectly, and she smelled like pussy.

I was instantly enraged. I fought to control my breathing for several minutes while we sat there and the car idled. I saw different shades of red and after a while, the anger passed over me and through me.

I heard Olivia ask with a trembling voice. "Will? Are you okay?"

I looked over at her. She was in abject fear.

"Drive," I said. My tone was flat and controlled.

"Will, I...." she started to say, but faltered.

"Drive. The. Car. Away. From. Here," I demanded.

She pulled out of the alley and onto a city street. "Right at the next light," I said.

After that, instructed her through a few more turns until we were on a major road that would take us back to the Archer apartment.

We drove in silence for the first ten minutes or so. After I was pretty sure I could keep my temper, I said in a flat expressionless calm, "Your face smells like pussy."

She blushed, but did not respond.

"Is that what your conception of what 'Lose Jade' was supposed to mean? To go down on her?"

This actually made Olivia angry. "Jade was really nice, attractive, and she came onto me. I had the time and we shared a moment. I have needs, Will! You've refused to meet them and you made it quite clear that I'm on my own! If you can get your needs met from Sunny, I can get my needs met from Jade. You don't have a right or a say in who I fuck or when!"

We were pulling up at a stoplight, when she stopped, I waited for her to make eye contact and I said, "Fuck your needs." I said it so softly, she could barely hear it over the noise of the traffic.

"What did you say?" she asked.

"Fuck your needs, Kimsu." Once again, I said that name as scornfully as I could.

"In case you haven't figured this out," I fumed, "in less than eight hours we're going to commit a double murder a quarter mile from where you just hooked up with a complete fucking stranger. How the hell can I get through to you that our lives and futures are at risk? Do you have any idea the shitstorm that's going to come down on us if we get caught? Do you have any idea of the risks you're taking by hooking up with a woman who works across the street from our fucking crime scene?

"Now that you've pleasured Jade, she's never going to forget you! Never! She'll be able to see you walking out of the murder scene and know that it's you from a mile away. She can give an absolutely accurate description of you, down to what you look like with your fucking shirt off. Were you in her apartment? Did you leave hair or fucking DNA samples there?"

Olivia looked horrified and stunned. None of this had occurred to her.

"Even worse, you used the name of one of your past murder victims as your fucking cover name," I said in a withering tone, "The name 'Kimsu Theron' is distinctive and almost unique. If Jade ends up speaking to the cops, you just linked yourself to your murder-spree past. That wasn't just stupid. It was positively fucking suicidal. If shit goes sideways on this caper like it did on the last one, we may end up having to eliminate Jade."

She covered her hands with her face.

"Jesus, Olivia," I exclaimed. "If you have needs, then wait until we're at a safe house and miles away from a fucking crime scene. Find someone worthy, get to know them, and then do whatever the fuck you want. Don't just hook up with the first barista who gives you a line. For God's sake, this is exactly the kind of impulsive shit that destroyed our marriage. Only this time, it isn't just our marriage that is on the line, it is our very lives. You've got to be smarter than that."

She was silent for a long time. After she pulled into our space in the Archer apartment parking deck, she said, "I'm sorry Will. That was impulsive and stupid and I'm not quite sure why I did it. It felt nice to feel attractive and to be wanted by somebody."

She waited for me to respond. When I didn't, she continued. "You're totally right. It wasn't worth the risk and I should not have done it. I humbly apologize that my impulsive decision making put you at risk. That wasn't fair. I'll do better next time. I have no regrets, though. Jade was an amazing lover. I don't regret that part at all."

***

I got our pistols out of the gun safe, checked that they were clean and functioning correctly, and carefully loaded them. I pulled out a couple of the salt sprayers that were disguised as inhalers and a couple of the tranquilizers disguised as Epipens. They had been invaluable during the rave caper and I thought it was a good idea to bring them again.

Olivia stepped out of the bedroom. She was dressed up in 70s vintage clothing. The top was a white nylon halter top. The front had a deep V neckline, and showed a lot of cleavage. She was wearing a pair of seventies-era Jordache jeans with elaborately embroidered rear pockets. A pair of cowgirl boots rounded out her outfit.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"Vintage clothing store this afternoon while I was waiting for you," she said. "Jade talked me into it."

"Can you tie my back please?" she asked. She turned to reveal that her halter was backless and tied in place across her lower back with a cloth strap.

As I tied it, I asked, "Aren't you going to freeze to death in this?"

"It's supposed to be warm tonight," she said. "Upper sixties until late. I've got a jeans jacket that goes over this."

"I got you a shirt and a belt that goes with this. I think you'll like it. Wear it with your boot cut jeans," she said.

The shirt was a seventies-era wrangler brand embroidered Western shirt. It looked like it had been stolen off of the set of Smokey and the Bandit.

The belt had a metal buckle the size of a coffee saucer that had the seventies logo from Coors Beer embossed into it. There was also a careworn black cowboy hat to complete the ensemble. The audacity of the costume made me laugh.