BUSTED!

‘Well, well... what do we got here?’ - asked Allana.

‘Wow... these are the real thing! (…) Right?’ - said Gwen as she looked at Allana and me.

I capitulated and nodded, and the look on their faces...

I had been busted, royally.

The two pictures in Allana’s hands (one for each hand) were of a young girl, in her birthday suit, lying over a bed in a very taut tape hogtie. I admit that, in my haste, I had made it too tight...

Her crossed ankles were lying against her bare behind and there was a substantial amount of tape halfway from her knees to her ankle, making sure her bent legs were kept packed. And her arms? I had wrapped a lot of tape from her elbows down her wrists! And more to keep them taped to her torso!

I had been mean to that gal that night...

The picture in Allana’s right hand showed my once captive on her right side, the picture on her left hand was pure evil, the girl’s overly gagged face was crying for real and her large (and fake) breasts were meanly squashed with much more tape than I actually would have needed to trap her arms...

But the picture in Gwen’s hands was the winner...

A selfie, taken years before this kind of picture became popular. Three faces appeared in it, the face at the center was looking at her right with obvious contempt and hate towards the masked lady. The face at her left (and whose head was being pressed against hers) was more a mix of curiosity and excitement than actually fear. Both faces at center and left were gagged with what looked like long strips of white cloth wrapped a few times over whatever was making their cheeks bulge, but to me they were still fairly recognizable, like if I hadn’t been the one putting those two in their distressing situation I would be able to say ‘this one is that girl, you know, from that place?’ and ‘that one is that girl from...?’...

And still they didn’t recognized her.

The masked face at the right? Well, save for the color of the eyes you would not be able to say anything about who was behind it. It was black and nondescript and with only two tiny holes for the eyes.

And the eyes were black as well...

‘You wore lens?’ - asked Gwen.

‘Of course, and a couple of fake ‘tribal’ tattoos that went all the way from both my shoulders to the elbows... I was wearing a sleeveless shirt with fingerless gloves in my hands so both of them had a good look at my arms... You’re going to pry me THIS story one way or another, right?’

Both cousins of mine nodded with that kind of determination I used to dread when I was five and they were eight (Allana) and seven (Gwen). I sighed a very unconvincing mock ‘sigh!’ and we went back to the table. But first I had to put the photos back inside the album.

It was the third time they showed up to hear stories about my days in the bondage/fetish industry, and as usual Gwen (or Fay as she called herself these days) went to the kitchen to provides to us three a tasty dinner while me and Allana (Irma) stood around giving as little help as she needed (she’s really that kind of person that takes possession of your kitchen and you’re glad for that...). After the Creole recipe we cleaned the table and I brought the albums... You wouldn’t believe in what kind of details they usually demanded from me! But at some point I told a very good story about why the girl ‘crudely’ tied up to a mast in a ‘basement’ was looking at me and the other naked girl (who would end up minutes later tied up ‘embracing’ the first girl) with so much anger... One of my best stories of that time mind you... and we laughed and laughed and... Gwen’s right hand hit one of the albums that fell on the floor spreading its content for us to see and catch.

Turns out that I had hidden the three Polaroids behind some pictures in that album, and when they saw the pictures that I had purposely hidden from them...

“First let me tell you one thing... DON’T be deceived! The pictures are real, the situations they show were real... and they’re both fakes. Those three are.... shall I say... half-fake. OK?’

Both women nodded.

‘Alright, it all started in 199*, when I was hired by... some guys to ‘take care’ of whoever would be found with the guy they were after. From what I know their target was some sort of lawyer or worked with something related to a law firm, and was the Casanova par excellence. The chances that there would not be a girl, even up to five girls, there with him were minimal. So we went there and, as we planned, there was this girl... taking a shower. He was right in front of a big TV, watching a basketball game and waiting for the girl to come downstairs... his house was not big but it had two stories. We stormed in and soon the guy, and my partners, were out, and I went upstairs to ‘take care’ of the girl. We had done everything as silent as possible, the guy wasn’t able to raise any alarm before my partners jumped on him and she was just singing (off key) some pop song. And I went ‘Psycho’...’

‘You mean...?’ - asked Gwen.

‘She was there, enjoying the hot water and suddenly there was me, all clad in black masked dame with a gun in my left hand behind her, she tried to scream and my right hand was all over the lower part of her pretty face. I said ‘Are you a martial arts specialist?’, twice, and she shook her head as little as I allowed her. Then I said: ‘So be a good girl and you’ll have just some ropemarks, don’t be and you’ll get ropemarks, nasty bruises all over you and two black eyes for my trouble, understood?’. Next I pulled her out of the shower and gave her a towel, I needed her dry to really tie her up (have you ever tried to tie up a wet chick?), and then I made her gag herself (with some hankies I had with me) before I took her out of the bathroom. Five minutes later we were downstairs, she was tied up right in front of the TV (simple stuff... ankles and wrists, behind her back, and gagged and blindfolded, also with strips of the towel she had used a few moments before) while I sat on the sofa. My job for the next four hours was to receive a phone call in which came the sequence: ‘Channel This, Channel That and Channel That Too’, so I grabbed the control and took three pictures of the girl, making sure that she was seen with whatever was on air on those three channels, next I went to the guy’s computer and e-mailed him the pictures. Then I was back to the sofa and to watch whatever... a 40’s movie with Danny Kaye I think... I was watching. When the four hours, and the guy’s job, were over I grabbed the chick and asked her if she needed to use... you know, and I warned her to not try anything ‘funny and stupid’, and as you can see... she tried. So I went into mean mode and took two pictures of her with her Polaroid camera before I left. About thirty minutes after I was gone the police showed up and freed her...’

‘Ok, but you said that it was all fake because...?’

‘I was hired by whoever hired me, but who hired him/her to do that job? Casanova dude. It turns out that thanks to the good old ‘attorney/client’s privilege’ he was in deep trouble. How deep? His client had put cameras inside his house! Bugged his phone! And hacked his computer! It was big deep **** and he wanted out, but couldn’t because even if he managed to prevent his client from doing whatever he wanted to do, I never got all the details, he would be disbarred! And he’s a lawyer up to this day so... he needed a cover up. Back in his law school days he worked pro bono (it is ‘for free’ Gwen) to the person who hired me. This person, who was guilty of the crime the DA’s pinned on him/her but thanks to Casanova had gotten a minor sentence, had left him with a phone number ‘just in case’. So Casanova called him/her and they set everything. We knew that we had to be ‘convincing’ in our ‘performances’, so we all acted as if it was for real. Later the guy used the footage, the cops found the hidden cameras and managed to track their source successfully, in his trial (or whatever it was) at the Bar association, since after all he did work against his client’s interest for a night... but with a good reason.’

‘But what about the girl?’ - asked Allana before Gwen could do it.

‘She had been, shall we say, the ‘bait’ for whatever trap that the client had used to get Casanova’s help. She was hot, she was great in bed and she was owing Casanova big time... So he wanted ‘a mean bitch’ to take care of her while he did all he did for ‘her sake’... and I was that ‘mean bitch’... And he helped her to don’t get any jail time along with his client, he helped her to pass through what she ‘suffered’ under my power, she was faking it by the way… so she could keep being in his good graces when her participation in his troubles was found by the police! And she was/is that great in bed…’

‘And she found out about him?’

‘Yes, but let me tell the story Gwen... Fast-forward nearly ten years. My days as a ‘bad girl’ were behind me, and my days as the ‘Hooded Nasty Gal’... (...) sigh... STOP SMIRKING THE BOTH OF YOU!... (...) As I was saying, my days as she were about to end. The person who got the company after the tragic death of the original owner knew about my past, and couldn’t stand that the relative success of the business she now owned was mostly due to a criminal that had evaded justice. She was that kind of dumb ******* idiot! Anyway, those days were about to end, but in order to honor the memory of her sister she fulfilled all the planned shoots that had been booked and keep the site open for as long as her ‘born again’ attitude allowed her to. And who was one of the models who were to be my victims?’

‘She?’ - asked/said Gwen.

‘Yup. Though her breasts were back to its original size now and she was no longer a blonde, it was her. It was a double shot, the ‘Hooded Nasty Gal’ kidnaps ‘bikini babe’ and her friend, ‘snoopy gal in daisy dukes and tank top’ goes to the rescue, only to be captured and left behind as ‘bikini’ babe’ is carried OTS (with lots of pics of her nearly bare behind) to an unknown fate... She was ‘bikini babe’, ‘snoopy gal’ was Zee Lee’s... a gal that was famous both for her looks and ‘perfect damsel’ attitude as well for the fact that she ended up tied and gagged ‘for real’ like once a month!... first job after her sister had some troubles that made Zee work to everybody that didn’t do porn. Let’s just say that, for about a year, my previous victim tried to be a fetish/bondage model, but it didn’t work out... I am NOT getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I saw her coming and fortunately I was with the hood and doing my ‘Hooded’ voice. Although it had been one of the stupidest ideas I had ever heard, the late owner of the whole thing really had wanted me to NOT be easily recognized by any of the models I would ever tie and gag, hence the ‘hooded at all times’ and ‘add a Texan accent to your voice’ rules that she paid me an extra for. So I was hooded, and doing my other voice, and she at first did not recognize me. We went to the same pool where I had ‘captured’ all those dames before her and... A few cheesecake shots before she fell in the character and pretended to be sun tanning. Then a few shots of me ‘invading’ the place and ‘attacking’ her. At first it all went well. I handgagged her, she made those big ‘HELP!’ eyes and I lifted her from the towel she was lying on and as soon as I started to bind her body... her ‘HELP!’ eyes became even bigger! And she froze in place. I looked at the photographer lady and my boss and told them that she was panicking for real but, as it wasn’t the first time it had happened, I told them to give me five minutes. Over the years I had dealt with eleven other gals that had actually fallen into despair mode right in front of me. Usually I would untie or untape them and talk to them. With her I kept the ropes on but was twice more friendly than the usual, I told her that there was nothing to fear from me, that I knew how much she was in need of the money (my boss had told me that) and other things and, after like ten minutes, she was calm enough to get the shoot going on. She was torn and scared to the core inside her, but she WAS in need of the money and there was no way I could do her any harm with all those seven people around us... and she started to plot her revenge against me.’

‘She what?’ - They yelled in almost perfect synchrony.

‘It was sooooo obvious! But then we went into character once more and she was ‘kidnapped’ by me, a couple of pictures of Zee Lee discovering her abduction and off we went, to the back of the house. Usually I would untie the model(s) in between shots, but I told everybody that I had made a bet with her and if she managed to stay put and calm, and just pretend to be scared when the photographer told her to be, through all the daylong shot, I would give her my pay for it. It wasn’t the first time I did it, and it actually granted me some good friendships, so they all just nodded or had that ‘Again?’ look in their faces. And I was silently plotting how the **** I would take myself out of that hole I found myself inside. I mean, honestly, what were the odds that something like that could happen?’

After twenty or so minutes in which Allana tried to convince us that the odds were big, and we couldn’t make her realize that they weren’t, I could continue.

‘The shots went as expected. I managed to untie and immediately retie her in a different fashion, and once when she asked for a break, which allowed the different positions of the six shots to happen, I also tied and untied and retied Zee Lee and when it came the time to the final scene... I simply grabbed her and carried her to my dressing room. The other guys thought that it was a prank of mine, since it was what I had done with the girls who had panicked when I tied them up for the first time in their lives, but I soon had her taped up to a stool in my room. She was already well tied, lots of rope all over her legs and arms and torso, but I had her pinned to that stool before anyone could realize it, and of course she started to cry as she realized how faint were her muffled cries for help. So I sat on her lap as I dried her tears and with my best voice I tried to reassure her. Yeah, she had ‘busted’ me, but she had nothing to fear from me. Once I had been a thief and many other things, but now? I was a nobody living under a false name. If I did not manage to convince her and she went straight to the police, or she called the cops as soon as I released her, I would simply disappear. And I told her to not worry to have me ‘visiting’ her one dark and stormy night... I would disappear for good from her life, forever and ever! And then I started to untie and untape her. Right on time, both my boss (who wanted to check on the girl) and Zee Lee (who wanted to talk to her) were knocking at the door. They got in, saw that the girl was shaken but was holding on and Zee Lee deciphered the whole thing first, she had been the victim of an actual crime in which she had been tied up and gagged. Of course, neither my boss (who would certainly freak out) or Zee Lee knew that I had been the one who had tied... Hmmm... Let’s call her Donna, ok? Neither of them knew that I had been the one who had tied Donna nearly a decade before, but the three of us talked to her and managed to calm her down. Next, I gave her my pay and Zee Lee invited herself to Donna’s apartment, claiming to be a great cook (she asked for a pizza since all she wanted was to talk to her), and off they went with Zee taking a ride in Donna’s car. Both Zee Lee and Donna took part in other shots, now separately, in the next week and when it was my turn to visit Donna’s apartment... I found two mikes and three cameras and Zee Lee hiding inside a closet, and the bimbo (real blonde dame with real & gigantic breasts) was carrying a gun with both hands!’

‘Donna had told her the truth?’ - asked Allana.

‘And they tried to set a trap for you?’ - asked Gwen.

‘Yes to both of you. Zee his ‘magic talk’, she really can get someone who is barely holding on a secret into reveal it. It doesn’t work all the time, but when it works... The problem was that Donna knew that I hadn’t left any proof that it was me who took care of her that night. No DNA and no fingerprints. So she needed a confession. First Zee Lee, in between and after the ‘kidnapped secretary’ shot we had five days earlier, made me a few questions that were way too obvious, and then Donna, her shot was of the ‘bound nude damsel wandering around’ kind, asked me to be at her home. And there I went, with a gizmo that ringed like a phone if he detected any mikes occupying half of my sports bag, there was another gizmo and ‘just in case’ some rope and scarves. As soon as she closed the door behind her the gizmo started to ring. I apologized and told her that I needed to take that call, I opened the bag and there it was: ‘Three devices detected’ (in that room). I looked around and recognized the disguise of a popular (and cheap) ‘spy camera’, a clock in the shape of a black cat, but kept it cool. When I was sure that there was someone hiding inside the apartment I reopened the bag and activated the scrambler gizmo inside it. Donna was right behind me, and we were both in the living room and outside the view of whoever was hiding in her room, her apartment wasn’t exactly small but not big either, so I simply shoved a scarf inside her mouth and told her to stop ******** me. A quick, but both cruel and efficient job, and she was lying hogtied in front of her own sofa. Ten minutes later I forced Zee Lee, now stripped to her panties only (I practically had to just extend my right hand and she sighed and handed her gun to me… to have her stripped and bound was even more easier!), to hop to the living room and there I rearranged Donna’s bonds to match Zee’s. Big toes, ankles, above and below the knees, around the waist (and linked to her crossed wrists) and elbows, next I tied a short piece of rope connecting ankles and wrists and left them alone, as I went to fetch us a dinner. Yeah I know, I am not a great cook, but I don’t poison those who are dumb enough to prove my food, do I? Soon both girls were lying on the floor at my feet, flanking my chair, as I had my dinner and took my time doing it. And soon both girls’ stomachs were really audible... and both were admonishing themselves and each other every time I snickered after I heard their protests... But then I grabbed Donna and put her tautly bound body over her own table and removed the gag. I spoon fed her while we talked about what had happened. That’s how I knew that she had learned the truth about the whole business because guess who talks in his sleep? But she couldn’t prove a thing and that’s why she had tried that trap. I then asked her if she was really stupid or what, and to emphasize it I looked down at mewling Zee and asked her if she knew how much a dumb girl BOTH of them had been. There was no way she could ever get me behind bars for what I had done to her. But I was a woman of my word. I hadn’t really hurt her that night, but I had warned her to not try anything ‘funny’ and she had tried anyway. Ok, I shouldn’t have taken the pictures, maybe, but still I hadn’t been mean to her or with her. Now there was I, living a new and honest life and ready to have it ruined, totally or partially, if either she or Zee Lee went to the press or the cops. So either I killed them both, which I reassured wasn’t my MO, or I struck a deal with them. She wasn’t that hard to convince, 10K and a ‘behind the eyes of the law’ help phone number and she would not say a word. So I next undid the hogtie, added some tape for good measure and placed her over the chair at my right, and used tape to trap her there. Zee Lee was way more cooperative. I undid the hogtie and had her sitting on my lap as I spoon fed her and she more listened than talked, and was too bad of an actress to try to fool me again. No money, but another phone number for any kind of emergency she found herself into. I left the apartment around 1 AM, and both dames only managed to free themselves from the ‘hug’ I put them into by morning...’

‘But...’ - and Gwen grabbed the picture that I had put back in the album, this time back into its rightful place, and showed me - ‘...but none of these dames is the one from the other two pictures!’

‘Of course. This one...’ - and I pointed at the face in the left - ‘...is Zandra ‘Zee’ Lee, this another...’ - and I pointed at the furious one in the middle - ‘...is a gal whose name I won’t tell. I am not finished yet girl, calm down will ya? Just to ‘punish’ them for the trap they trap to spring on me I left them over Donna’s bed, both wearing only panties and in that ‘mock embrace’ kind of tie. It took over a year for me to hear again about them both after that night; that had been my last week as the Hoo… her and I lost touch with many guys and gals. But one night this gal calls me and there’s this customized photo shoot that someone from Boston is paying her a lot of money to take and it’s basically… there’s quite a story behind that night… the plot was that the ‘Hooded Nasty Gal’ (STOP!) invading a pajama party (all girls were wearing white, pink or lemon green bikini-style underwear with thongs and see-throughs but…) and leaves with all their money as they are all way too tied up and thoroughly gagged to prevent it from happening. But there was a catch, in the guy or gal’s original idea I was supposed to do all the tie-ups alone and in one night, and of course the guy didn’t wanted ‘simple tie-ups’ for the girls… but ‘customized’ ones, quite into the artistic fashion without repetition and with me doing it all! It would take hours to do that! Hours that we didn’t had! So I called him/her, he/she was a big fan of mine and agreed (and liked a lot) to follow my idea. I grab a girl, tie her up and with a gun against her head I force four of the girls to tie up (rather simply) the other four, next two tie up two, one tie another and I tie up that last one before I give each girl my total attention… He agreed and we shot it all in less than half it would have if we had followed his original idea. The girls got all very thankful for my idea, and after the shooting, when all nine women were back to normal/casual clothes, we went to a pizzeria and we talked and I learned about their ‘fate’. But only after two more years is that Donna asked for my help. Simple stuff, she had dated a guy who had taken ‘spicy’ pictures of her and if she ‘dared’ to leave him... the idiot kept the pics inside a hard drive that he kept inside a shoe box inside his closet! The next morning he had to go to the dentist while she destroyed the memory with the biggest hammer she could handle all alone. She genuinely hugged me, and even told me that... never mind...’

‘What? Come on girl...’

Me and my big mouth! It didn’t take long for Gwen, and Allana, to pry it from me...

‘She told me that, if I really was into bondage, that she really wouldn’t have any problem into posing for me for free for the whole weekend! Ooooohhh... STOP IT you two! It’s not funny! (…) Not that much! Not… Oh well, it is… mildly funny right?’ – And they nodded!

‘Ok, but what about the third picture?’

‘Well, that was a bit more complicated... Zee Lee was being fooled by a ‘friend’ and found out quite by accident. Only problem was that she had been really fooled by her ‘friend’, the other gal in the picture. I don’t recall all the details, but let’s say that if Zee Lee simply cut relations with her ‘friend’ she, and her family, would lose tons of money, maybe all their life savings. So she needed to get her, and her family’s, money back before she said ‘badbye’ to her ‘friend’ (her words, not mine). I called some guys and learned about the scam and the ‘friend’ was a real pro in scamming people... I needed to knock her off her base before anything. So I planned a raid on her house. Zee’s presence there when I struck was absolutely not in my plans, and to be fair I still wonder what she thought that she was doing! I told her to avoid being there during that day and there she was! But in the end she helped me, and helped me BIG time! Imagine the scene... two friends are talking about the investments one made the other do, one is saying to the other one that her worries have no base, no substance at all, and that her profits will be ‘tremendous’... and in comes the mandatory all clad in black masked dame with a gun in her right hand saying: ‘Oh, really?’ - I said starting a round of laughter from their part...

‘You...?’ - started to ask Allana as soon as she got her breath back.

‘My plan was, originally, to simply ransack the place and find the phony stuff she had used to con Zee Lee, pretend to fall for it and either record her confessing that it was all a scam or make her tell me where she kept her profits. But Zee’s presence there changed everything... I ‘now’ knew about the scam and, with treats to both my captives, made with an empty gun, I got the password for her computer. I had called in a few favors and Jocasta, that dame from Silicon Valley, soon hacked into the computer while I rearranged my captive’s bonds. First I had made Zee tie her friend... let’s call her Heather, I made her tie her friend’s hands behind her back and made them both go to the master bedroom of the house, next I had tied Zee’s hands and soon both were lying in the same hogtied fashion over the big bed of the room. Just to ‘pass the time I made them strip naked completely, one at the time, and put them in the following fashion: Heather, who was four inches taller than Zee and about forty pounds heavier (although not all in fat), sat on a stool and Zee sat on her lap facing her. I tied and cinched a long piece of rope above their breasts and another one below them (sort of in Zee’s case), so they hadn’t much room for their upper arms which were now pinned at their sides, the cinches were for that actually standing in between the arm and the torso, and rope at the other woman’s waist and their own legs kept the forearms and wrists in place as well, their arms were as stuck as the rest of their bodies. More rope to pin Heather to the stool and to pin Zee to Heather and voilà!, two very secured captives for the price of one! I, jokingly, confessed to them that I had recognized Zee Lee as a former bondage model and couldn’t resist my urges... and that’s when I received a call from Jocasta. As predicted, Heather was going to disappear within a week, vanish from the face of the Earth. But the way she had done her thing made impossible, for the law that is, to legally point her name in the whole thing! So I saw Zee Lee, who was really starting to have doubts about me and my ‘help’ and... I pretended to have received incredibly good news. And started to take Polaroid pictures of the two, that ‘selfie’ included, as I kept congratulating myself for my good luck. When I finally ‘calmed down’ I told Zee that she had fallen into the trap of a con artist... that there was no profit at all and that, alas, if I would ever have the chance of taking a good chunk of Heather’s money... she would have to disappear...’

Gwen almost yelled a big ‘What?’, but Allana placed her right hand over Gwen’s both hands and, with only her eyes, ‘gagged’ our cousin. Then both women turned to me.

‘It took me five minutes to untie Zee from over Heather and put her on the floor of the next room, I whispered to her that the gun was unloaded and I wasn’t going to do anything to her, and I asked her if she could stand a few hours of discomfort in order to get her money back. She nodded, obviously wanting to know what was going on and what were my plans, but then I asked her if she was too good of an actress to lie on the stand in the most shameless fashion... she shook her head, so I put her in a bearable hogtie, told her to trust me (as if she had any choice) and went back to ‘Heather’... I said that I knew everything, everything!, and that now she had but one choice to avoid jail time or even the death row... because if she didn’t followed my orders that was what was going to happen: the police would find her bound and gagged in the buff and alone in her house but with the pictures of her with a bound and gagged Zee Lee tied to her lap, the police would then find Zee Lee’s corpse, next they would find that she wasn’t ‘Heather’ but somebody five states already wanted to meet in person, next...?’

‘And she fell for that?’ - asked Allana.

‘The thing was that I would rock her off of her base badly so she would not stop and think straight for any moment! Con artist, and let me teel, that lady was a big name among them! If she stopped and thought for a moment... well, I could get the money back to Zee Lee and her family, but Zee wanted her to pay for what she had done to her and who knows how many others! If not with a full confession, what does that gal has with confessions anyway?, with proofs! Smoking guns kind of legit proofs! The best part? The moment I killed Zee Lee...’

‘WHAT????’

‘At some point I saw that she was starting to cool down, to rationalize... so I needed to put her back off the tracks! So I said that I normally wasn’t into killing people, but she had millions with her and I would do anything to get a chunk of that money. So I went back to the room where Zee Lee was still writhing on her bonds on the floor, and she heard a shot, then she saw me (actually my shadow, I had checked her view point as I took the selfie) dragging something down the stairs. Minutes later I came back and told her that she was now living in a house where a murder had been committed, that I was going to take the body away but that I would be back in a couple of hours and we would have or business talk. And I pretended not to notice that she had managed to create more slack with the slack I left on purpose as I removed Zee Lee from her lap... It still took her twenty minutes to free herself and check the other room. Puddle of blood? Check. Blood? Yeah, it’s blood and not tomato juice or syrup. Missing bed sheet? Check. Bullet hole on the floor (causing blood to drip on the room below her feet)? Check. Trail of blood from the puddle to the garage, where one of her cars is missing? Check. By then she had put on some clothes, she decided to get the **** outta there and went upstairs one last time, grabbed a few pieces on her room and threw them in a suitcase, next she grabbed some papers and left home in a hurry. Then, and only then, is that Carl Dark got out of the closet in the guestroom, and carrying a still slumbered Zee Lee in his arms...’

The look on their faces...

‘I told you that I had called some guys... didn’t I? Two of them were with me when I invaded Heather’s house. Carl Dark and Patricia ‘Pat’ Loomis, and you know how those two can be stealthy when they want it. So when we heard Heather reassuring Zee about her investments Carl had the idea about the ‘maniac burglar turned killer’, the idea was that I would pretend that I was some loser who was owing too much money for the wrong people and the prospect of getting all the money I needed, only to find out that I had deposited my last chunk of hope on a scam..., well that would break me badly... I’m not sure if I managed to let it ‘slip’ enough data about me to help Heather into believing in it... but I was very convincing, wasn’t I? So after a quick conversation with the other three we set the whole plan in motion and both Carl and Pat went out to get the blood. They bought it in a butchery...’

‘It wasn’t human blood?’

‘Nope Gwen, pig’s blood most likely, maybe ox’s... Anyway, while I was talking to the overly gagged Heather, and deviated her attention from the little I had allowed her to see of beyond that room, Carl went upstairs with three big pots full of blood. He told me that Zee panicked when she saw him entering the room, but he soon was over her, holding that big hand of his... he’s 6’5” remember?... over her (now also) taped lips and whispering into her left ear that he’s a friend of mine, which didn’t worked that well to calm her down... Anyway, minutes later he had her inside the closet in a taut ball tie and kneeling on the floor facing the closet’s door, and he kneels in front of her and grabs an aerosol, aims it at her face and... The funny thing is that she told me that it wasn’t the first time she was subjected to Quick Nap... That girl has quite a jinxed star over her... But now she was out cold and I could ‘kill’ her... When I got inside that room there was this big pool of blood and I shot the floor at one of its edges, next I pretended that I was wrapping the corpse with one of the bed sheets, but what I actually dragged downstairs were some encyclopedia books (or the likes) inside four big pillows really soaked in that blood. I confirmed with Pat that the tracker she had put in the other car was working and left the house. Heather got herself free and five minutes (or even less) she was out. Carl got out of the closet with Zee still down-and-out and he took care of her for the remainder of the action, while he cleaned up most of the mess we created (minus the bullet hole). She woke up like twenty minutes later, submitted to a simple tie up, (wrist, ankles and above the knees tied firmly yet without any rudeness if you know what I mean, or any rope linking any of them to another and with she over Heather’s bed), with her underwear back on, and gagged with a single strip of microfoam tape without packing. Carl totally ignored her as he cleaned the place, he checked if she needed any ‘break’ before he left, she needed, and he retied her in a slightly tighter fashion (and now in a hogtie) before he left her. And that’s how the cops found her two or three hours later after he called them...’

‘And ‘Heather’?’

‘She ran away, in a bee line, to her base. You know how con artists have to have a place where they can be themselves and not whoever they usually pretend to be. A ‘real’ home. And that’s where she went. Just in case she got enough of her wit back to NOT do that, Jocasta was turning all her weblife inside out. But since she had a whole bunch of ‘lives’ based on lies it would have taken days for her to find the real deal. But I had managed to scare Heather well enough... so she drove all night. I and the other three that had the gizmo that told us were she was… what?’

‘How many people were working with you?’ – asked Allana.

‘Seven… they all owed me something and as long as it wasn’t Zee’s money (or her family’s), they could take anything that managed to put their hands on. The whole thing cost me about… never mind, it all paid up and with some profit, even for me. Anyway, at some point Pat checked if the ‘beep’ in my screen was her car, then it was Norman Keye’s turn and by the time it was… the third person’s turn she was arriving there. She went to her home and we gave her like ten minutes before we got in. She was having a bath… cooling down… and realizing that she had been conned… How I LOVE that phrase! I conned a con-woman!... but when I invaded the bathroom and she was in the tube… she barely flinched at seeing me. ‘Zee Lee?’ she asked. ‘Alive and well’ I answered. ‘That much blood?’ to which I answered ‘Most likely from pigs’ and then… ‘And now?’, to which the third person answered…’

‘Who is/was that third person?’ – asked Allana.

‘A man/woman’s reputation, after he/she leaves the ‘field’ is basically all that he/she has. Heather had conned that third person, conned him/her big time… if me, or any of the others, tell who was that third person… it would be much worse than when he/she realized that he had lost all his/her money…’

‘So you’re not…?’ – started to ask Gwen, and my slightly shaking head stopped her in mid-sentence.

‘So?’

‘The third entered and soon I was acting as a human shield for Heather. But after me and Pat cooled down the third we went down to business. The third was in charge of tying up Heather (and did quite the efficient, and absolutely not in the slightest cruel, job with rope and tape) over her bed while we checked and double checked everything. It was in the kitchen, under the table, that we found the hidden safe of the house. Inside it? Four hard drives with everything and more that we wanted to know about Heather. Jocasta managed to get all the third’s money back to him/her (although it took her nearly a day to succeed), everybody got a chunk from way too past successful enterprises from and when the cop’s entered the house… eight hours later… they had enough evidences to…’

‘You BITCH!’ – said Gwen.

‘Big time ********* BIG BITCH!!!!’ – added Allana.

I knew that their reaction would be that. I just knew it.

But I had made a promise, that the third person’s death the year before had turned void (but still), that I would not tell anyone about my participation, or anyone else’s, in Heather’s downfall.

Even with her being the one that had swindled Gwen and Allana’s fathers, and most if not all of their friends and buddies, of all of their life savings! And those two, now very enraged cousins, right in front of me spent months trying to find who had gift-wrapped up the woman, the very one they had wanted to find the past four years, for a small town’s police force in Idaho to find!

It took me a while to cool them down…

But, honestly, they had looked at a picture of me (presumably) and she in the same selfie! Yeah, she was gagged, well gagged, the lower half of her face gone under that looooong strip of cloth…

But, still…

Anyway, in the end they understood that, if they hadn’t heard anything about it from all the others involved in that couple of days’ activities yet, it was because my partners in that ‘job’ had a more strong adherence to their words. They quickly took notes and made plans, who was going to talk to who and when and where it would happen, and in the next month they managed to get in touch with all whose identity I slipped to them. And none of them told them who the third person was either.

Back at that moment, please?

Well, those two looked at that picture for a full minute and still held it in their hands, both the right ones, as they allowed me to speak once again… they didn’t wanted to let that picture go beyond their power! Their reactions had been as bad as I thought it would be...

‘Well… we went back to LA and split up. Oh yeah, I was forgetting. Dark had managed to convince Zee to tell the cops some stupid story… that she had gone visit her friend and found a ‘fat masked gal’ cleaning up ‘a lot of blood’ and another… masked… gal jumped on her… and she ended up as they found her… Yeah, that’s the origin of the ‘pig’s blood myth’ regarding Abby/Heather’s capture... I don’t know how or why she didn’t ended up in the news, honestly, her mom and sister gave a couple of interviews that I can recall as the ‘last victims of Abby Keeler’, but not she. She gave her testimony, she took the stand and all that, but the attention of the media was aimed somewhere else. I mean, that’s weird... isn’t it?’ - They both nodded – ‘Anyway, like a year later I am at my shop and who waltzes in, attracting all my male customers and employees’ attention?’

‘She knows your name?’ - asked Gwen finally letting go of the picture.

‘And your business’ address?’ - asked Allana as she guarded the picture in her purse, only a week later I would see it back into my album. Why it took her a week to make all those copies of it?

‘And my humble home’s one as well... I am usually invited for parties at her place, birthdays and such, and she’s a great patron every time she shows up at the shop. Who gave her the address... well that’s one of the few secrets ‘Miss Blabbermouth’ hasn’t told me yet... No... no, no, no and no!’

But when those want me to do something for them... One week later they sort of ‘crashed’ into a private dinner I had with Zee. Don’t get me wrong, Over two thirds of the gals I tied and gagged while being you-know-who were just business, two or three are big frenemies of mine (those ******!) and the rest is people I don’t mind to bump on every now and then. Zee is part of the six that I call friend. No sex-partners of any kind, two of them are big proud lesbians but I don’t swing this way, neither does Zee.

We’re just friend, ok?

Anyway, one week later Zee arrived a few minutes late for our dinner and of course those two flanked her and we spent half the time with them asking her about ‘Heather Milbourne’, at least THEY paid the bill, and the rest of the time... well, I already told you about Zee... she got two new ‘friends’ that night... that gal is that good with leaving a very favorable impression of her! And when they finally went off I had to apologize with Zee for the trap I had sprung on her...

Back, again, at that moment?

It really seemed that I had told them everything and they were just about to leave when Gwen, not Allana, suddenly looked at me and demanded to Allana that she gave her the selfie. Next she grabbed the other two pictures and opened one of the larger albums, and found the page from where I had picked those three pictures. When they had seen it, hours before, I had told them that the missing pictures were of a big ****** guy whose name I didn’t want to remember so big he was as a crook!

I did manage to convince them that I had ripped the pictures in that page into the tiniest bits possible and threw them away... until Gwen’s hand proved me a big fat liar.

Now (then) Gwen was placing the pictures in their places and found out that her hunch was right... That album was of the giant kind, for those large and larger pictures. That page had now three pictures in it... and an empty spot clearly occupied until recently by a fourth picture...

Their eyes were more efficient than any word with their accusations...

‘Well?’ - asked/demanded Allana.

So I grabbed the other ‘giant’ album of the pile and went straight to the large picture of the Halloween Party of 200* (The one I went as a convicted prisoner, zebra pattern uniform and all?) and removed it from the album. Behind it was the fourth picture, that Allana pried from my fingers before Gwen could do it, seriously... they were acting like pre-teenagers!, and soon they both asked in unison...

‘Weeeeeeeell?’

The picture was taking from a medium distance facing down a row of bound and gagged hogtied captives. Of the only man in it (at the extreme left of the picture) you couldn’t see his head, of the last woman on the right you couldn’t see her knees and part of her legs, of the four women in the middle of them you could see pretty much everything, since none of them was into ‘big & modest’ underwear...

And one of them was Zee Lee and another one was Donna... Ok... in between them was a gal that looked a lot like Zee and the fourth young woman... wasn’t so bad either.

Right…

The only one above her weight, a lot, in the picture was the gal on the right ‘corner’ of the row.

‘Zee Lee’s younger sister (the third dame from left to right) is a gal that had for years the same bad luck that Zee had, although in her case it was directly linked to her love life. She already a row of jerk, jerkier and jerkiest ‘boyfriends’ when she met one that put her in some sort of sexual slavery... he did pimp her as she was kept as his (and his buddies) captives somewhere up north... really horrible history that I don’t know the details and even if I did... Anyway. She managed to recover, found a new life here in California and even a new boyfriend... a rookie cop...’

‘And the guy was also a jerk?’ - asked Gwen.

‘Of the dumbest kind of jerks! Imagine the scene, I return here after a long day of work and who’s waiting for me inside my own home and lying on that same sofa you’re both seeing over there? Bugs Kremp. I say: ‘You better have a good reason for what you just did!’, and he? He simply grabs a brown envelope, of those big ones, that was lying in his lap and hands it to me. Inside it were half a dozen pics of Maryan, that’s Zee’s baby sister’s name, with her boyfriend. Plus some pics with her and her big sister and in one of those pictures where were they? Buying gardenias in my shop! And Bugs tells me everything. The rookie cop had managed, somehow, to steal a evidence against ‘someone’ (I didn’t asked who was paying him) and wanted to sell it ‘back’ to this person for an outrageous sum, the guy hired Bugs and Lew Collins and two others to retrieve it for less than a third of what the cop was demanding. They had already determined that either the guy was keeping the evidence, whatever it was, in his home or in his girlfriend’s one. In exactly one day the rookie was going to visit his girlfriend at her home and he and Lew and someone else, a newbie whose name I won’t tell you, would invade it. At the same time the fourth guy... forget it!... would be turning the rookie’s apartment upside down. But while they did the surveillance on the rookie they found out that his girlfriend was the little sister of ‘smoking hot Zee Lee!!!’ (Bugs have two or three of her calendars), and that she was one of MY friends. They knew that if they did the raid I was going to be involved anyway...’

‘So he asked you to be there?’

‘Of course NOT! But we talked and talked and talked... and that seemed the only solution... So the third guy ended up helping the fourth to raid the rookie’s house while I... you want details don’t you?’

‘What...’ – Allana.

‘...do you...’ – Gwen.

‘...THINK?’ – In stereo….

‘It was supposed to be just another night for the lovebirds. He and Maryan would go out and have a dinner and some dance at a club. The security system of Zee’s home was ridiculous... I could have broken in with my eyes closed! We got in and heard a discussion among the sisters. Maryan was regretting to ever tell Zee about her doubts of the future of her relationship with the rookie, Zee (who had never liked the guy) was telling her how big of a mistake she was making and we could clearly hear them from downstairs! Zee went down the stairs to drink ‘something cold’ to cool herself and was trapped in Lew’s arms before she realized it. And her eyes... her eyes!... when she saw me... I told her ‘You don’t know how much right you are girlfriend!’ and begged her to ‘play along’ as if she didn’t knew me. She hesitated and I told her that the only reason I was there was to ensure that, NO MATTER WHAT was going to happen in the next couple of hours, she and Maryan and anyone else would be safe all along. Maryan’s boyfriend was biting more than he could chew, and I would ensure that, while he got whatever was reserved for him, no one else would really suffer for his stupid actions. She just said, in a very meek voice, ‘You promise?’ and I nodded. Four minutes later, when Maryan showed up in the kitchen to continue her argument with her sister, I had already taped Zee to a stool. She had taken off the jeans and sweater she was wearing and was now with her crossed ankles taped together and to one of the three legs of the stool, her own legs had some tape over them (and some to attach her to the seat), her wrists were also taped behind her back and she had an ‘X’ shaped gag over her lips. Maryan also recognized me, and did not believed when I told her about her boyfriend’s ‘behavior’... so in her case I had to be more... shall I say... ‘efficient’?... with her bindings.’

It was true. In the picture Maryan was (along with her boyfriend) the one whom I had bound the in the most stringent way possible. Save for her all women, including the fat Latino lady, were simply lying on the floor face down with their ankles and wrists bound and linked together, there was some rope or tape here and there to make each tie singular in its way, but nothing too severe. Maryan’s body was encased in a mile or so of rope, as she had been prior to the hogtie...

‘I tried to reason with her for like five minutes, and all along she trashed in Lew’s arms, until I said ‘E-nough!’ and went into drill sergeant mode...’

‘Oh oh...’ - said Gwen as she smiled...

‘Lew had to help me, but soon she was ‘wearing’ enough rope for three of her and was bound to the stool next to Zee’s. Soon? Soon... It took me nearly half an hour from the moment I told her to strip to cinch the last knot! I looked straight into her eyes and told her that, liking it or not, before the night was over she would learn the truth about her boyfriend. Said and done, the moment I finished saying it the irritating buzzing sound that their bell made was heard. I went to check and there they were, Donna and a black model that had been ‘under my power’ about three or four times. They ringed it once more and I opened it. ‘Hey... long time no see! What have you beennmmpphhhh!!!!’ and now I had Donna and... her name was... was... Rikki! Now I had Donna airborne in my arms and Rikki was being held by Bugs. He frogmarched her to the kitchen while I spoke to Donna, I simply said that I had to be there that night and she looked at me with those inquisitive blue eyes of hers as I removed my hand from over her lips... ‘Does that have anything to do with the loser Maryan is dating?’ It turns out that Rikki was engaged with some dude at City Hall and he was FURIOUS with the disappearance of ‘the evidence’ that could take down some big time leech. Make it volcano’s eruption’s style furious! When he told her a few details, that he was NOT supposed to share with anyone, Rikki put two and two together and contacted Donna, telling her how much trouble Maryan’s boyfriend was, one thing led to another and there they were... to try to dissuade Maryan from keep on seeing him. Donna told us all that while I tied her up, after she took off her clothes, and then to one of the chairs of the kitchen (they had just two stools in their whole house!)... Rikki, now calmer but still under Lew’s mighty frame, just attempted to nod and shake her head every now and then. Next it was her turn and, since I had zero businesses with Bugs and Lew (other than tie up and take care of the girls), they left us alone in the kitchen while they went to talk in between themselves. Since Rikki’s gag was just a single and very big strip of white tape over her lips I just removed it, carefully mind you, and we talked and the others nodded and shook their heads and, especially in Maryan’s case, forgot every now and then that they were gagged. The whole thing was about embezzlement and pensions... and that’s what the last lady went to talk about with... ****! What was that guy’s name? Peter... Peter?...’

‘Pedro Juan Almendro.’

‘Right on Gwen...’

‘But... I thought... that...’ - started Allana, but I put my right hand over hers and she shut up.

‘She called him ‘Pedrito’, she was his aunt and knew what he had done and why, gambling debts or something like that. Anyway, it turns out that the evidence he had stolen would made some of her friends’ problems much easier to handle if it was back to the DA’s hands, whatever love she had felt for him was gone for good by the way she talked about him. Her words were the ones that sparked the most intense reaction from Maryan... that gal had (again) believed that she had ‘done it right’ that time with Pedro. But soon I had five ladies to deal with as we waited for Pedro to show up. By then we were sure that Maryan hadn’t agreed to hide ‘the evidence’ with her and that he hadn’t hidden it somewhere in the house without her knowledge, Lew broke one of Zee’s favorite vases while searching for it... The problem was that all five women had seen my face and four of them knew my actual name... But then Lew, of all people!, and Bugs came to the kitchen and Lew made a simple question to Bugs: ‘The one who hired you to steal the stuff from the cop... does he/she told you to warn him/her of any plan against him/her that you hear about?’, Bugs shook his head and Lew grabbed Rikki and the aunt’s purses, he checked their driver’s license and wrote their addresses in that tiny notebook he always carry with him and told them to tell everyone that I was wearing a mask, of the same lucha libre fashion he wore but all pink, all the time as we were there, and if they did that... Then he turned to me and said ‘I owe you nothing!’ and all of us, minus Maryan, nodded more or less synchronously at him. And he did owe me nothing! About forty minutes passed and there was the buzzing sound again... Thirty minutes later I took the picture after I told Pedro in the meanest way I could produce: ‘I would hate to be in your skin tomorrow morning...’ before I left. Since he was blindfolded as well he honestly thought that the picture was of him... My plan, that I told all my other captives, was to purposely leave a slack in his bonds as me and Lew tied him up while demanding to know where he was hiding ‘it’...’

‘And it was...?’ - asked Gwen, no one had ever heard about the hiding spot before.

‘In the bathroom, on the wall behind the loo, there was this fake ‘tile’ or whatever. We got a text message from the two guys at his apartment like ten minutes before he showed up! So we pretended that we still wanted to know the whereabouts of ‘that’, tied him up and took a picture of ‘him’...’ - and I waved the picture in my left hand at them – ‘...I still don’t know why I aimed the lens at them...’

‘Oh really?’ – In stereo again, and that mocking smile... but I was telling the truth!

‘Anyway... I said that we were going to ransack his apartment and I would send our client his picture as a bonus. And we left, or so he thought. The guys did, I hid in the kitchen. After four or five minutes I heard him putting his clothes back on, saying ‘sorry babe’ in a tone that didn’t matched the words and leaving in a hurry. I went to the living room and Maryan was crying the Mississipi, Zee was looking at the front door (still open) wishing that she had a death stare and the other three were looking at me as if saying: ‘And now?’. I closed the front door, went back to the living room and crouched on the floor, and then I grabbed the Latino lady’s purse, after a quick search I found a card from a law firm. I asked her if that was that was her friends’ lawyer’s number and she nodded, then I told her that ‘he’ would get in touch with him, next I told Rikki that I would visit her... soon. Finally I grabbed Zee in my arms and took her to where the purses were piled one over the other. She grabbed a phone from one the purses (not hers obviously) and dialed 911... About ten minutes later the APB on Pedro was on and they were all freed from their bonds. I had already gotten in touch with Lew, who ‘visited’ Bugs’ client the next morning and my shop four hours later. Two nights after that I visited Rikki, I wish I could have simply waltzed into her apartment, but I had checked and I knew that there were cameras in the building… So I put on a wig and a beard and strapped my breasts and it was a ‘man’ that the cameras saw entering the building and jumping on Rikki as soon as she opened the door… and they got good images of ‘him’ leaving twenty minutes later. Two hours passed, and when the boyfriend showed up, answering an unexpected text message from Rikki (sent by me of course), he found her bound in the buff inside her bathtub with torn strips of three of her towels... I had to buy her new ones and those were old anyway... and how she complained as I tied her up!... with half the stolen evidence in an envelope over the bed. Sure, the police and their CSU did quite the job in trying to find out any clue about the ‘brute’ who had tied her up, she made sure that they believed that I wasn’t the same woman who had bound her three days earlier, but of course they never got close to the truth...’

‘And when Pedro was finally arrested…’

‘Maryan was sitting in front of my door when I got home that night, she cried TWO Mississipis before I managed to put her to sleep, the next morning Zee Lee and Donna showed up and by nightfall, when I returned she was… slightly better. And of course she swore to ‘give up’ on men… one month later I saw her with a new boyfriend, who was also a jerk! Three jerks later she met her husband…’

‘Jerk too?’ – asked Gwen.

‘Noooooooo… No, no, no and no! Just a bit... not too bright IF you know what I mean…’

‘Zee and the others?’ – asked Gwen

‘She shows up every other week to buy some flowers and to have a talk with… her ‘jinx’ is now gone, but you won’t believe in what kind of mess she found herself in the middle of because of it! We are used to trade stories while we have a dinner… The other two… I haven’t seen them in over a year!’

‘That trade sories stuff… it’s like you do with us and the others?’

‘Why not Allie?’

And we finally changed the subject as they both got ready to leave, they called me a few names (but in a more sympathetic tone) as they rationalized that, due to my respect to my word, I had tried to hide those stories they had just heard just because the pictures they were linked to were on the same page of the picture now under Allana’s grasp. The next day I got a phone call from both my uncles, the first in over a decade in both cases. But as soon as I locked the door I went back to the albums…

One by one I removed the giant pictures and took out the fifteen pictures hidden by them. On top of the pile was Rikki of course, her nude body encased by those strips of cloth from her towels as she lied on her side inside her tub. Then it was Donna’s and Zee Lee’s turn, lying on their side with ropes all around holding their crossed wrists against the other’s small of her back, their big breasts squashing each other and their ‘I sorry’ pleas muffled by all that tape I had used on their lower faces…

And then it was Angie on the lawn, the Kasey triplets side by side on the floor and in the buff, the pretty yellow tape mummy called Suki, Jen lying upside down and all the others… all those who had ‘busted’ me one way or another over the years and, by any other reason, I had at some point bound and gagged as I dealt with the treat they posed to my life.

It was so dumb from my part! SO STUPID!

Who would be idiot enough to keep PROOFS of her crimes… No, to keep TROPHIES of her crimes that she had committed after, supposedly, ‘retiring’ from her life of crimes?

I was… and still am.

I put the pictures back on their pages and the larger and not so innocent pictures that I used to guard and hide them back in place as well, then I started to wonder if I would ever tell either Gwen or Allana about the other times I had been ‘busted’ by a gal whom I had met while I was still doing ‘it’.

Maybe no, most likely yes…

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