She’s Kind of a Curse of Mine...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The door only opened again over three hours after they had closed it.

 

The two girls held captive in that hotel room were exhausted from their own efforts of freeing themselves. One of them knew how futile it was to try, the other hadn’t believed when she had been told about the ‘Gordian knots’ the giantess who had tied them up like to use on her prey, and both were drenched in their own sweat (in spite of the temperature of the room had been kept in an agreeable setting).

 

Three persons entered the room, three Asian women wearing the very same blue navy suit and shades. One of them, the one in the middle of the trio that now stood in front of the two pleading girls (and the only one wearing a ponytail), just nodded and the other two sat at the edge of the large bed both nude captives were laying on, cut the ropes holding them in a loose hogtie almost in synchrony and, with care (but also force), made the two friends stay now side by side on the bed with their bare behinds totally exposed to the two syringes that the ponytailed woman held in one hand.

 

They, of course, tried to protest.

 

But each girl found a ‘steel claw’ (disguised as a human hand) now making pressure over her own taped lips while a knee was now keeping her bound legs unable to be lifted. The ponytailed girl just crossed her arms with an annoyed expression in her face.

 

Then she sighed, loudly, and spoke to the captives.

 

‘We mean you no harm. We could easily ensure your unconsciousness over the next three or four hours with a punch or a blow, and just one at that. Instead, the drug I will now administer is very safe, a little prick and before you can properly feel any pain (as small as it will be) you will be ‘out’. Then you will be moved out of here and we will deal with what happened with you. So, please, stop with the fuss…’

 

The buxom brunette was the first to relax, to the point that the woman holding her allowed her to move her head towards the blonde. She merely nodded and, after sighing quite audibly, the incredibly bosomy girl followed her friend.

 

Both girls were inside one of the large travel bags that had been kept out of their visions (so they wouldn’t freak out even more) in a couple of minutes, and outside them (while safely strapped to their places and finally freed of any restraint) inside a limousine less than ten minutes later. They were still out as the doctor (and four nurses) that would tend to their needs took them to their rooms about one hour later.

 

 

 

Save for the bed she was resting on, a couple of chairs in front of it and a large TV strapped to the wall behind them, the room she awoke in was all white and bare.

 

She barely felt dizzy before she sat cross-legged over the bed. The next moment the door (there was a door in that room?) opened and a doctor (a black woman in her 40’s) entered, warned her to not touch her and checked her while ignoring all her questions, but when she grabbed the older woman’s arm (to have some answers) the doctor shook her head, while looking at her with very disapproving eyes.

 

‘Your friend is fine and all they want is some answers’ the woman said minutes later, while the last of the three nurses that had barged in the room as soon as she grabbed the doctor’s arm left it. To Noelle, now once again reduced to an impotent and mute captive it mattered little. It was her first experience with a straitjacket…

 

And this one looked anything but a ‘regular’ model. So many buckles! So many straps!

 

So TIGHT!

 

And the built in ballgag wasn’t small either… How did they called it? A ‘harness’ gag?

 

‘Look, I don’t know if you’re going to stay here for a few more hours or a couple of months, or more. But you have to understand one thing. You do as you are told to. You can be the most valuable ‘guest’ we have, you can be the biggest **** we have to deal with, but if you don’t follow that rule… we will treat you like that, or worse. So…’

 

Now the women’s heads were but inches apart.

 

‘…obey me next time, deal?’

 

Noelle sighed, and nodded, and the doctor wiped away what was left of her tears before she left. Noelle then spent fifteen minutes trying to adjust to the straitjacket and the gag as she mustered the courage to stand up. And just as she did it…

 

‘Oh my god!!!’

 

...the TV went on. Jenny was alright, sitting at the edge of a bed that was just like the one behind her, but flanked by the two blue suited dames that had held them a few hours before. Now the one on the right (who had long black hair) was covering her friend’s lips with her left hand, while the one on the left (to Noelle) was holding down the blonde’s bound wrists. They were the only restraint she had over her body.

 

They were the only anything she over her body actually.

 

She looked at the woman on her left and nodded, and she now could rest her crossed wrists over her lap on her own will. Then Jenny turned to the other Asian woman.

 

‘This time we will pretend that it did not happened. Remember, only when someone speaks to you, or you will be gagged (and restrained) in a most unpleasant fashion, to the point your friend end up looking like she’s enjoying her current ordeal.’

 

Jenny nodded, and the woman’s hand was off.

 

‘As you can see, she’s fine. I told you we mean no harm to… What? What just…? Sigh… Did you have to gag her like that?’

 

The voice was coming from a speaker that was invisible to Noelle’s view.

 

‘Alright, fine… Miss Hammond? In spite of your current… situation… I assure you that we, ALL OF US, mean no real harm to the both of you. In fact, if not for a certain… how can I put it? A peculiarity in your personal finances is the reason behind the fact that both of you are not in the same room, absolutely free of any form of restraint or impediment and negotiating, with me of course, the terms of your silence about today’s events. Rest assured that, in exchange for your silence, no threat shall be made against any of you or your families. But… there is that… ‘peculiarity’. Do you understand me?’

 

Of course she did, she knew exactly about what the ponytailed woman was talking about! And she was ready to talk about it!

 

Of course, given her current status, her efforts to explain that to her captoresses caused a giggle to be heard from the hidden speaker. And Jenny’s wry smile was really…!

 

‘I understand that you are ready to talk?’

 

She nodded.

 

‘Would you feel better if you could keep seeing your friend as you tell me what I want?’

 

She nodded again.

 

‘You BOTH understand that she won’t be allowed to hear what you have to say, or use her lip-reading skills to acknowledge anything, right?’

 

Both girls nodded. But since Jenny almost protested as the buckled blindfold was being put in place, a long white scarf was wrapped endless times around her head and between her lips, until a very complicate knot was tied. She almost protested again, but then the women whispered something in her ears at the same time.

 

And Jenny sighed and resigned herself to spend a long time gagged and blindfolded.

 

Meanwhile, the same three nurses that had placed the straitjacket and harness gag over her body were back to Noelle’s room. And with Noelle’s full cooperation it didn’t took them more than five minutes to leave the room while Noelle stood in the middle of the bare room, hands bound behind her back, hobbled at her knees and with a strip of white microfoam tape of her lips, while Jenny’s restraints were being augmented…

 

‘But… is it really necessary to keep her gagged? And unpacked to boost? (…) Alright, fine… Miss Hammond, go sit on the bed. It might take like twenty minutes for me to arrive… there where you are being held. Please…’

 

And Noelle obeyed. It took more like an hour, during which Jenny ended up tightly frogtied on the bed behind the now smirking blue suited women. But finally there she was, this time she was dressed in a black suit and had another couple of assistants with her. One was Asian and the other was a brunette like her (albeit also the second tallest woman she had ever met), and both were dressed in the same blue suits like that the others flanking Jenny wore. The tallest woman in the room undid the knot and Noelle’s hand were now in front of her. ‘Ready?’ she asked and the tape was peeled off.

 

‘Our hostess know that she is not allowed to record anything, nor hear anything but, to be on the safe side, if there is anything… any name… that you feel like it would be better that you didn’t say it loud…’ – The other assistant handed her a small notebook with square paper pages and a pen – ‘…write it down and hand the page to my friend. I just want you to wait a little more while we finish our preparations…’

 

And even another assistant entered the room. This one was also Asian and was the tallest one of the lot so far. She brought a tripod in the room and left, she reappeared with a camera that she placed on the tripod and the smaller Asian assistant took rein of it, aiming the camera at the only nude woman in the room and making some adjusts. Meanwhile the tall Asian reentered the room for the last time, giving to the woman in charge of the situation (and Noelle and Jenny’s fate) a black tablet and then positioning herself behind her… boss? Superior?... while she apparently was in touch with somebody else through a hidden mike and an earpiece. To Noelle it looked like she was in charge of the transmission of her… confession? Statement?

 

What did you put me in this time Mattie?

 

‘Everything’s ready?’ – The Asian assistants barely nodded to her and the black tailored woman turned her attention to Noelle – ‘Miss Hammond, what can you tell us about the events that led you and your friend to… end up the way we found you both?’

 

‘Well… me and Jenny, Jennifer Kent, we are models and we work on fairs and sports events. You know, if you want to sell something and want an ‘eye candy’ wearing something revealing, but that kids can be allowed to look at, to help it happen… we are the kind of girls you hire. And this looked like an ordinary job. Just another auto show fair, and we were hired to promote… well you know that…’

 

The tall brunette, who was sitting on the bed right at her left side, was making her feel uneasy. The black suit woman nodded and she stood up, walking backward a few steps.

 

‘Anyway, from the first day something odd started to happen. Many of the girls, and also of the men, hired to work at the auto show started to report the same symptoms, nausea and stuff, nothing serious so they had to be rushed to the hospital, but serious enough so they had to be replaced. They say that it was something in the water of the faucets in front of the locker rooms but…? Anyway, the women who replaced me…’

 

‘Please miss Hammond, keep a timeline.’

 

‘Well, today started as usual, Jenny and me got ready to go to the show, but as we arrived at the place where it was being held there was this person, a woman, wanting to talk to us. We had barely parked our car and she was by our side, flashing a badge at us, it looked like a real one, and said that she need to talk to us, but that she couldn’t do it in public. Jenny and me looked at each other, and then she started to call us by our names and say stuff that you kinda expect that Feds…’

 

‘Feds? She presented herself as a federal agent?’

 

‘Well, she was dressed more in a casual fashion, but the badge looked real and she had our dates of birth and birthplaces right, spoke like she had all the right to speak with that authority and… we fell for it. Hook, line and sinker…’

 

‘Did she identified herself as ‘Special Agent Ursula Baylor’?’

 

‘How do you know that?’

 

But all the other women in the room just smiled at her.

 

‘Oh, right… anyway. Jenny and I followed the ‘agent’ to the hotel across the street. We entered and went straight to the elevators, and went to the room ‘701’, and as soon as she closed the door behind us, she pulled a gun at Jenny and me. And then Mattie…’

 

‘Mattie?’

 

Noelle paused and took a deep breath before she answered in a single blow.

 

‘She’s the reason behind all those payments! It’s the payments right? The payments in my bank account that aroused your suspicions about me. Every time she pulls a job when I am around, I end up bound and gagged for a few hours and with some hush money in my pocket! From the people she stole from!’

 

The outburst surprised all the other women in the room, even the two flanking Jenny in the screen (could they have ‘read’ what she had said?).

 

‘All four times?’

 

‘Actually, they were five.’

 

‘Including the third… hush payment?’

 

‘Yeah, all of them…’

 

There was an awkward moment of silence.

 

‘Alright, you’ll get there. But then… Mattie?’

 

‘She hates to be called like that, even a nickname such as ‘Mad Marbury’ is better than Mathilda ‘Mattie’ Marbury to her, and that’s her name!’

 

‘Ok, ok… but then the special agent pulled a gun at the both of you and she appeared?

 

‘She, and the others, were hiding in the bathroom… come to think of it, it must have been a bit crowded in there… Anyway, Mattie showed up and with her three other dames, two of them had their guns drawn at us as well. Jenny was about to let out a huge scream and I jumped on her. My left hand over her lips and the right one clenched around her left wrist. I begged her to stop it, to relax, it was ‘Mattie’ (and I said it out loud…), my ‘curse’ as I call her, and we were in for some cramps and lots and lots of rope marks, but that’s was all. She looked at me, and then at Mattie and relaxed after a while.

 

One of the women, the one that replaced Jenny (a redhead with the same bust size), handed me a couple of folded hankies and I put one inside my mouth and Jenny followed me, next she handed strip after strip of tape and I placed them all over my pursed lips, one over the one before. Jenny copied me and then came the order that we were both dreading to hear, ‘Undress!’, just like that. The funny thing was that as Jenny and I obeyed, so did two of the women! As they put on our clothes (minus the undies, fortunately), first Jenny, then myself, were told to take the undies as well and then subjected to Mattie’s overkilling ties. One after the other they left, and when she finally finished binding me, she whispered in my left ear: ‘Mattie? Curse?’. I was expecting a spanking or the likes, she just patted (very lightly) my behind and chuckled, and then she left us. We did try to get free but only when hours later…’

 

For the next minutes she gave her captoresses all the details she could remember about the ‘special agent’ and the other women, especially that sardonic black haired **** who had replaced her, and when she was done came the inevitable question…

 

‘Alright… now, could you please tell us more about your special relationship with…’

 

‘It’s NOT! It is not a…’ – and then she felt the hand of the brunette over her shoulder.

 

‘It’s not a… a…’ – now the brunette’s hand was clamped over her lips.

 

‘We… I got it. My bad, my bad and poor wording. Please accept my apologies’ – and the black suited woman bowed to her for a full minute.

 

She composed herself, nodded almost unperceptively and the brunette returned to her place. After a moment of uneasiness, Noelle started to tell her tale.

 

‘It all started nine and a half years ago. At the time, I was living in ********, it’s not a beautiful place, nor a bad one. It’s… livable, but the apartment that I shared with a friend of mine called Eve was a dump. A dump! And it was small too. And then one day Eve comes to me and tells me that her parents are due to arrive in town in like two (or less) hours, and guess where they will be staying? But she had this alternative…’

 

And she wrote a name in a square sheet and handed it to the smaller Asian assistant, who handed it to the woman in charge. She obviously recognized the name…

 

‘So, you know him?’

 

‘Y-yes…, I mean, strictly in a business fashion…’

 

But she wasn’t fooling anyone… Gritting her teeth, and trying not to think on how much her superiors were laughing at the moment, she gave each and every one of her subordinates the sternest look she could give.

 

They would giggle and laugh (a lot!), later, and probably assault her with all sorts of questions; they were her friends after all; but now…

 

‘If you need to know that much, yes, I slept with…’

 

‘Of course…’

 

The woman raised an eyebrow in a most disturbing way.

 

‘I mean, Eve told me that he was the ladie’s man par excellence, but while he had no racial preferences, he was only attracted to the ‘really beautiful ones’, and like you, Eve was a real ‘model material’, not that I didn’t punched her shoulder when she told me that, because of that, I had nothing to fear from him…’

 

The joke brought a smile to the black suited woman’s face.

 

‘Flattery will get you nowhere. Now, where were you?’

 

‘Well, she called him and he was about to leave for South Korea. They talked and talked and talked and I was, sort of, hired to be his house sitter. Not that he needed one, but he had ‘promised’ to Eve that if she ever needed anything… and what the hell, the bastard also had a little fantasy to indulge with…’

 

‘A little… Oh, you’re talking about… his attraction to…’ – And she realized that she had talked too much, she almost begged Noelle to not finish the phrase…

‘Handcuffs? He told me that, if there was a thing that he had never managed to make a woman do, which was quite surprising, was to make them wear those gold plated…’

 

She almost could hear her superiors’ laughter!

 

‘So, what the hell? I agreed to wear skimpy clothes, sexy & slutty ones, even string bikinis, while I was around the house. And put on around my wrists, and ankles, one or another item of his collection. And, from South Korea, thanks to his connection to the feed of the security system, he could watch and enjoy the show…’

 

All women were now looking at her with a weird look in their eyes.

 

‘Oh, please! The alternative was to stay a whole week sleeping on Louise’s sofa, she was a friend of us that lived a couple of floors down, that is if Louise’s big Broholmers (they were in three!) hadn’t left any flea on it. Otherwise it would be the floor! And I was going to get paid for the housesitting and was allowed to ransack the fridge! All for some restriction of movement, as soon as I arrived home from the work (except when I was in the kitchen or sunbathing), and some exposure from my part…’

 

The weird look seemed to have been plastered on their faces.

 

‘So… a week passed, I enjoyed it the fullest and got all my stuff packed to return home the following morning. That’s when the unexpected happened, I got a phone call from him. The negotiations had been successful for both sides, and very agreeable, so much that he had been convinced, by the representative of the other side, to enjoy an extra day (on her dime) in… I can’t recall the name of the place; it’s a resort or the likes. But in any case, he was there and was going to stay there for another day (or two), and I could hear a woman giggling so I said: ‘Fine, I’ll stay another day. But I hope you’re worth it…’ And what happens? The girl grabs the phone on his side and tells me: ‘Oh he is, you can count on that!’ and the phone went dead. Chuckling I thought for a moment or two about undoing my bag. But why would I do that? So I made a very late dinner, took a bath and went to sleep with my hands cuffed in front. And, at about half past one…’

 

‘She was there?’

 

‘Yes. Her whole big hand was covering my lower face, the other one held my hands above my head and she looked so intimidating. ‘Here’s the deal, love, your boss is flying back to the states as we speak, so he can’t tap into the security live feed of this place right now, and won’t be able to do it for the next hours. We can do whatever we want to with you, but all I want is to make sure you can’t speak or move as we do what we came to do. Cooperate and you’ll be fine’. Twenty minutes later, she was still tying me up!

 

“She has this… thing about trying to recreate the Gordian knot that I’ll never understand! There was a whole big mass of rope, made of knot upon another knot tied upon another knot and so on, holding my ankles crossed, another one was doing the same with my wrists and she was making another one to connect both masses! But, after another twenty minutes, she was finally done. So she sat on the bed, after she removed her shoes, and watched some sport show. That was her job, ‘take care of the housesitter’, and that was she was going to do, watch over me, while her partners did what they had to do. Of course, all I could do was to pray that they didn’t found out that he was not inside an airplane at the moment… but they did.’

 

‘How?’

 

‘When he called me, he used my own cellphone number, not his house’s landline (which was bugged), so they did not know about his change of plans. He later told me that he had three very pleasant hours, and they both went to sleep. And when Mattie and her partners broke into his house they had but one target, his safe. And when they broke into it, the alarm on his notebook went nuts. He and the girl were awakened and, since the deal both had brokered was the target, somehow, of the breaking in…’

 

‘I know the story you’re talking about… is that what he told you?’

 

‘Yes… to me and…’ – and she wrote another name that was handed to the black suited woman. The new revelation stunned the woman completely, to the point when Noelle asked ‘Why?’ she answered it without hesitating.

 

‘She was part of the whole thing.’

 

‘What?’

 

Cursing herself, no matter how incredible was the info she had just received she should have kept her mouth shut!, the black suited woman nodded to the brunette, who walked behind Noelle and trapped Noelle’s arms with her left one while handgagging her with her right hand. In the meantime, the black suited woman was typing furiously into her tablet. A conversation followed and only after nearly ten minutes she looked back at the brunette, nodded once more, and Noelle was freed from the tight embrace.

 

‘This name you gave, do NOT repeat it out loud, are you sure it was that person?’

 

‘I might not be the biggest fan of news channels, but I can recognize…’ – the brunette took a step forward in a very intimidating way – ‘…but I can recognize that person anytime I am wake up in a room with… that person sitting by the bed! I swear!’

 

‘Are you sure?’ – she nodded, and the black suited woman resumed her furious typed conversation, totally ignoring everybody else around her. When she, apparently, was done she looked at Noelle with very determined eyes – ‘You and your friend will be given money for your trouble, but there’s an extra, a sizeable extra, for you if you give me the most detailed version of your meeting with that person. All my assistants will leave us alone and no matter what the phones and cameras in this room will be turned off, regardless of the way it is achieved it shall be done, even if that means we overpowering everybody in this place, you will talk to me and only to me. Do you understand me?’ – Noelle nodded and somebody asked through the speaker if that was really necessary, it was… so the voice told the black suit gal that ‘accommodations’ would be have to be made in the following minutes – ‘And if you want to know that much, the petite Korean girl that was the broker for the other side was in league with those who hired Marbury. She honestly expected that the raid in his house had already happened days before, when she invited him to the resort, sometime… during the… intercourses… she must have realized how big her mistake was, probably she asked him about the housesitter or…, but for whatever reason that happened, she didn’t manage to get in touch with anyone who could have warned Marbury. So when the laptop started to buzz the alarm that his safe had been broken into, she tried to pull a gun at him…’

 

‘But then why did he said, to that person, that the resort had been his idea?’

 

‘Most likely? He didn’t want to ruin her reputation, which, considering the kind of being she had as clients at the moment would mean a slow and agonizing death to her.’

 

‘And she pulled a gun at him?’

 

‘Who is the one who’s obliged to tell a tale to the other here? We still have to determinate if you were, or not, in cohorts with Mathilda Marbury!!!’

 

The look in her eyes… Noelle gulped and looked at Jenny… had she dozed off?

The women answered her mute by showing her a syringe… Oh well, at least that way there was zero chance of her learning anything that she shouldn’t…

 

Noelle nodded at them and resumed.

 

‘Well… the laptop warned him of the invasion, he got in touch with his boss on this side of the Pacific, and anything that they could have pretended to achieve with whatever they found in his safe was nipped in the bud. At some point around 3:00 AM Mattie noticed that I was losing it, and got intrigued, all that because of her overkilling ties? That was a bit too much! So she took my gag off, calmed me down and asked me what was going on. And then she put the gag back, threw me on the bed (she had placed me sitting on her lap) and ran to tell her buddies. There was a lot of commotion and someone broke a small chest during a fight between Mattie and who knows who else, and then Mattie came into the room, she looked very disheveled and had a torn in her T-shirt, she grabbed the pair of handcuffs I was wearing when she grabbed me and put me in a new hogtie with it. And then she left. Like thirty minutes later, a bunch of commando likes dudes invaded the place and I fainted… When I awoke, they were both by the bed. Him and that person. I swear it was… that person.’

 

‘You’ll give me the details later… Next?’

 

‘I had to sign a contract, and got 30K for my silence, and then two years passed. By that time I was dating a loser. Good looking guy, more or less that is, that thought that he was ‘God’s gift’ to all women of the world. We went to this place in the Texas seaside, my last hope to make ‘it’ (the still birth relationship between us) work and, one morning he awoke feeling ‘bad’. We had some errands planned for that morning and he insisted that I should go for it, alone. He really thought that I would fall for his act… so I left and went to a café nearby, took my time drinking some hot tea, bought a ‘disguise’ (a cheap T-shirt with the poster of a Bob Hope movie and some shades) and went back to the hotel like half an hour later. He was kissing this gal… she had breasts the size of Jenny’s, but those were SO FAKE!!! Really ridiculous ones. And they were kissing and chatting and I didn’t knew what to do, so I turned around and returned to our room, crying the whole Mississipi. I was such a wreck that I was having trouble with the magnetic key of my room, can you believe I passed my credit card like ten times before I realized my mistake? And when I finally grabbed the key and opened the door… I was airborne! The same bear claw that had awoken me years before was back in its place over my lips, and the way she so easily lifted my whole body from the floor!’

 

‘And why she did it? Was she looking for some sort of refuge or the likes?’

 

‘No, no, not that. She told me, and the plastic bagged lady, the whole thing a while later. The hotel was a bit classy and stuff, and the conglomerate that owned the company that owned it was in the process of trying to take control of another (and much smaller) conglomerate. They tried all the dirty tricks in the book and, in the end, it was all in the hands of this chubby fella of the board of the targeted company. He had the casting vote and he had gained a new secretary a few weeks earlier.

 

“Angel face, conservative to the core and so… tempting. Eventually they made it up to the bed of a shady motel, and it was like having sex with an iceberg. After a couple of fruitless attempts, she ‘confessed’ her secret to him; she was deep into ‘force fantasies’, she couldn’t have it other way if not like she was being brutally raped. It took some cajoling from her part, but soon she had recorded about a dozen or so sexual intercourses and in all of them it did looked like he was the dirtiest, *************est and *********est rapist you can ever think you’ll ever had the displeasure of hearing/reading about.’

 

‘And they were going to use those videos to force him to vote for their side?’

 

‘No. They decided to add insult to the injury. They had it all planned to the tiniest detail. The meeting that would decide the fate of the conglomerate was going to happen two days later, so ‘all of a sudden’ two members of the board that were in their pocket invited all the others to a weekend in that hotel, I said that it was owned by the guys that had caused so much trouble to the company the past months, but it was through such a maze of front companies that no one would ever found about it in time. At the same time that I was fumbling with the electronic key, actually my credit card, the CEO, the chubby guy and the two crooked members of the board were about to arrive on that floor through the elevator. The two crooked guys would take the other two to a room were ‘Angel Face’ (I never knew her real name) and like ten goons would be waiting for them, and under the threat of some guns and brass knuckles both the CEO and chubby guy would be forced to watch Angel Face’s ‘fantasies’, who would then give the men a preview of her interpretation as a ‘rape victim’ and, just for you to see how much of an idiot ‘chubby guy’ is/was, during the ‘fantasies’ he had (more than once) implied the CEO as another abuser of ‘Angel face’! The sale of the conglomerate, for a fraction of its actual value, would be more than assured with that…’

 

‘But…?’

 

‘Well, the CEO and all male members of the board were fooled by ‘Angel Face’, the lone female member of the board on the other hand… so she started to dig here, dig there, called in some favors with serious folks who got in touch with even more serious folks who did their own digging and… a couple of days before the ‘weekend trip’ she took the CEO, who happened to be her grand-uncle, to a ‘night at the opera’. Can you imagine Mattie watching an opera?  Well, she was there, with who knows whom else and they gave the old guy everything with all the proofs they had dug to back it up. Angel Face’s real name and horrible rap sheet, the link between the hotel and the conglomerate, who was crooked at the board and…’

 

‘They had proofs of the conspiracy?’

 

‘They had a video of the nastiest ‘intercourse’ between chubby fella and Angel Face, not the original but they knew where all the originals, and the copies, were being hidden in like two or three states. They had the whole shebang!’

 

‘So what happened?’

 

‘The CEO hired Mattie and whoever was with her on the spot, money was not the problem! As long as the conspiracy was over by Saturday noon they could do whatever it was necessary to get those videos off the hands of his enemies, as for Angel Face… well he wanted her to get a special treatment. So, Saturday morning came and Mattie, and who knows how many others, were all posing as being interested in the beaches of that place while registered at that hotel. Angel Face was waiting for the meeting to happen in, say, room ‘69’ (I know, lame joke). Right in front of it was room ‘68’, and I was staying with that ******* at the room ‘66’. Mattie and the others were based at the room ‘68’. About thirty minutes before my little problem with the key, there was a glitch in the camera feed of the corridor, and Marbury and the others used it to take the room ‘69’ by assault. How do they did it I don’t know, but there was barely any struggle, no shooting and they had a dozen captives, including the only one that was a woman. However, they needed to make sure that she wasn’t in the room when the CEO and the other three showed up. The idea was to cause another glitch in the surveillance system, this time a bigger one.

 

‘While Angel Face was taken to the room in front of the one she was staying in, some guys (never knew how many) would ran to the stairs and make it sure like she had probably been shanghaied outside the hotel minutes after the CEO locked himself in the room with its new captives. And the CEO was already in the elevator, and was arriving, and they needed a small window, of no more than thirty seconds, to cause some ruckus by the stairways to make it look like she had been taken to another floor of the hotel, but there was this stupid brunette crying a river and unable to get out of the way! So, Mattie took a peek at the feed of the security cameras and…’

 

‘Did it work?’

 

‘Like a clock! While I was paralyzed with fear in Mattie’s grip, we all heard a stampeded leaving room ‘69’ and making a lot of noise by the stairway, next four men appeared as the two crooked guys led the CEO to his trap for them under the excuse that they had found ‘a witness’, ‘a very good one!’, and ‘What’s going on at the stairways? Such noise!’, and then the door of room ‘69’ opens and close and only then Mattie’s pressure over my mouth and torso was loosened. It was still ‘the season’, so the hotel was nearly full, so the search for ‘Angel Face’ had to be done as discreetly as possible, while dozens of patrons left the hotel… meanwhile Mattie had gagged me with a towel and forced… well she just had to tell me to take off that bikini, and I did so. She tied me with the bikini and stood waiting. She had no intention of telling me anything, she was going to ‘bribe me’ somehow and leave like a couple of hours later, but about half an hour later somebody broke into the room.’

 

‘The fake busty gal that… (…)? She was a hotel burglar?’

 

‘Yes and worst. Suddenly she was inside the room and heard me mewling, she carefully approached the bed where I was laying, ‘hogtied’ since that seems to be part of my curse, and suddenly she’s the one who’s airborne and fighting in Mattie’s clutches. But then… ‘Mawbuwee?’… ‘Diana?’… And then they’re hugging and laughing and chatting and such. They were friends from ‘back then’, they grew up together and hadn’t seen each other for more than a decade! And that’s where they had met again!’

 

None of the others in the room seemed to believe in her.

 

‘I am telling the truth!!!’

 

‘We’ll check that… in the meantime…?’

 

‘Well, five minutes later ‘Diana’, pouting like there’s no other thing that she could do, and there wasn’t actually, allows herself to be bound and gagged by Mattie. She had received an order through an earpiece and ‘Orders are orders…’ so Diana looked at me, then at Mattie and told us that she had coils of rope in her purse and that Mattie was not going to ruin another bikini of hers! So, Mattie grabbed the coils of rope and uses them on her and me! And after that she was done she was like ‘My… I just can’t believe in it!’, ‘After all this time!’ and ‘If we could only chat in peace…’. As the time passed she started to get a bit agitated, until she said ‘**** it!’ and freed Diana, and removed most of my bonds. As she was doing so, Diana told us what she was doing inside my room. To put it simple, the bikini and the extra sized breasts they barely held were but a decoy, attracting the whole attention of her victims, whom she lured into her room, drugged as they looked and groped and…, and cleaned their rooms while they snored on the floor of her own. Apparently she also had fell for my ex-yadda yadda that he had lots of money (I was paying for everything!!!) while she prepared him a shot. So she had come to plunder and… She then noticed that I had been crying, quickly realized the reason behind them and then she started to talk to me about what my ex had told her about me.’

 

‘And you…?’

 

‘Hours later, when I was checking out of the hotel, he finally woke up and met me in the lobby. And I so kicked him there! Too much attention attracted in my direction, but it helped me to explain my obvious nervousness to the person who was making too many questions about my sudden lonely departure. Diana showed up and made another scene, transformed into a childhood friend of mine who had just realized who was the guy who had been hitting on her since day one! And slapped him again and again while I entered the cab that took me and her, and Angel Face, out of the hotel…’

 

‘You…?’

 

‘After like a couple of hours they had a problem, they had taken too long to prepare ‘Angel Face’ for her trip, and needed a new way out of the hotel. Moreover, I was like the perfect ‘way out’. Mattie was told to tell me everything, and she did so. Since Diana was within earshot she heard it all. I was the most inconspicuous person they had…’

 

‘And why did they pay you 95K?’

 

‘Five thousand in various bills and the rest was deposited in my bank account, we made a scene to the camera as to make it look like they were comforting me as I left the room and, suddenly, Mattie had something to show me in her room. They threw away all of his clothes to make room for her in his large trunk, that I had bought for him. Next the made another full round of ‘exposure as to why you should helps us kidnap a person’. They even showed me one of the videos… GROSS!!! Minutes later I thanked God before I kicked him and Diana jumped in and gave all the explanations that the attendant could think that he had the right to have, while I took care of placing the trunk in the cab, whose driver was an ‘associate’ of Mattie, as she closed the tab. We went straight to the airport, where the CEO’s best buddy’s private jet was waiting for us and, during the flight, Mattie got the confirmation that the plan had beard fruits. Eight hours later the authorities of Delaware, who had been wanting to talk with ‘Angel Face’ for over a decade, got a tip and found her balled up inside a seedy motel room…’

 

‘And the next time?’

 

‘I got my third ‘hush payment’ for the third and fourth times I met Mattie, or rather, she met me. They happened with but hours of distance between each other. Less than five actually. At the time, well you must know to whom I was working for at the time…’

 

‘Damsels for Hire? Or do you call it Damsels, Inc.?’

 

The knowing smiles and looks in their eyes… so condescending and… annoying!

 

‘What’s wrong with that? I made bad decisions, followed the wrong financial advisers on TV and newspapers and lost half of my life savings. And, through a friend of a friend of a friend… I am not lying, my friend’s name was called John, his friend’s was this tall gal called Petra… Petra something-Slavic-with-too-few-vowels, Petra’s was Monsaint, Phillipe Delon Monsaint, a Canadian guy who introduced me to their HQ in LA… My first experience as a ‘Damsel’ was a disaster! But I ended up working for them for three years. I had bad days/night at work and I had good days/night at work. And I had that unforgettable night when… Let’s start from the beginning… You know who paid me that much right? (Oh well…) She has quite the indomitable reputation, but the truth is that she was one of the few clients I had that I spent more time doing the tying and gagging than receiving it. She could wrap me up for presents as fast as those three nurses did, but she did… she does enjoy much more being on the receiving end…’

 

‘That is not unknown to us.’

 

‘Oh… well… She booked me six times, and that was the last one. I arrived at her place, I had the ‘Evil Detective’ costume with me (just a black Fedora hat, a black overcoat and some black skintight stuff), she was already dressed in her poor heiress persona but she insisted that we chatted for a while. I felt that there was something wrong and she told me that she feared that that night was going to be one of the few nights when she hadn’t managed to leave her job at the door. So she left alone for like an hour, I ate a good dinner that her assistant prepared for and was told to get ready, I heard she and her assistant talking and defining the ‘finishing touches’, the assistant left as she was talking to the phone with someone called ‘Rose’ and soon… I was ready to wreck havoc over the fate of that… Ok, ok, (…) sorry. Anyway, she was stunningly beautiful in her 40’s white dress, like she really belonged to that era; I started to tie her up to a sturdy chair, took my time and made sure that at least two of the three cameras recording it weren’t obstructed by my body, finishing with a multi-knotted black ‘detective’ gag and… we both froze as we heard her applauses. I turned around and there she was, dressed for a ‘night work’ in a more practical fashion than mine (she wore boots, I was wearing high heels and such) and with the rope already in her hands. The weird part? The way that she was looking at Mattie…

 

‘She knew Mattie? As usual, I ended up hogtied, this time finally fully dressed and with my heels still strapped and tied to my feet, in front of the ‘heiress’. Ma… Mattie told me that we needed to stop seeing each other like that, patted my… and stood up and left the room. The way that she looked at me… and then Mattie was back, and was carrying the assistant (as thoroughly bound as I was) in her arms! De… the assistant ended up hogtied, less stringently than I was (she’s not that young anymore…), at my side. Mattie then removed the ‘detective’ gag and made a few questions to the lady of the house, it was all about an old document, a confession that some guy or guys made like 70 years ago and for some reason it (the confession) was still relevant today. Later I would know that she and whoever had hired Mattie…’

 

‘Why do you keep calling her ‘Mattie’?’

 

‘It’s that, afterwards, after the events of that night, she handed me Mattie’s file, all the stuff she had collected about ‘my regular captoress’… I’ll get there…’

 

‘We know about their professional relationship… Are you telling us how it started?’

 

‘Probably… It’s not something that she or Mattie would tell me. But in any case, in the file, like thirty pages of it!, was the fact that Mattie simply abhors her own name and especially the diminutive of it. And since every time we met… she ties me up, tight… and such... Oh, I know, it’s childish… But I spent months correcting myself every time I thought or spoke of her and thought/said ‘(Mad) Marbury’ or ‘Mathilda’… Thus…’

 

‘It got stuck in your mind… I understand. But you were saying?’

 

‘Well she and whoever had hired Mattie wanted the confession. She got it, the other part stole it somehow, she stole back, they re-stole it, and it went back and forth for like ten years! It was, honestly, the seventh time that document was going to be pried from her hands! Which explained how and why she was so cool about it. She gave Mattie the location and combination of the safe where it was being held, she was more concerned with Mattie finding the pictures and movies with her…, Mattie regagged her with strips of tape and four minutes later she was out, all the while I was wondering how would I explain Mattie’s attitude toward me and why the assistant was so calm and blinking at us. Ten minutes later we got it, we heard the door opening, and I was introduced to the Williams sisters’ unknown mean sister… She was so imposing…, she still is.’

 

‘Are you talking about the woman known as the Black Rose?’

 

‘Yes. She’s a retriever, right? Things had happened like that, well… that’s what they told how it happened so if it didn’t… There was this other thing that had been stolen from a good friend of… she. She had the Black Rose’s number and arranged a meeting between her assistant and the Black Rose, something else caught their attention but after they had managed to deal with that, she was ready for some pulp fiction peril with me and the assistant was ready to leave the manor to meet the Black Rose… if that’s not what happened I couldn’t care less, not my problem. What matters was that Mattie had already broken into the estate, she was hiding inside the garage and was ready to pounce on the assistant, and the assistant came into the garage talking to the Black Rose. Then the alarm that the estate had been broken into appeared in the screen of the smartphone she talking, the assistant (that woman has ice in her veins!) pretended that it was some annoying person trying to get in touch with her, but she actually realized that there was someone with her in the garage. She dismissed the ‘annoying person’, actually a code phrase to the Black Rose ordering her to come to our rescue, and finished the call. And got reduced to a squirming captive by Mattie in like thirty seconds…’

 

‘You know that they lied to you, don’t you?’

 

‘Of course they did! But I don’t care, ok?’

 

‘Nor it is relevant for us… for now at least.’

 

‘So, the Black rose showed up, free them both (but following an order of hers left my bonds and gag untouched) and received the order to go after Mattie, she simply asked if she could charge them ‘the usual for emergency jobs’ (?), and they nodded. And there was I, hogtied at their feet and she explained to her assistant that I knew Mattie, the assistant knelt by my side and helped me to kneel, then she took my gag and I told them about my previous meetings with Mattie. ‘Noelle… I have no reasons at all to not trust in you, your story seems very reasonable, but I wouldn’t have reached the status I now enjoy if I didn’t took any precautions. You said that you got paid 100K to keep your mouth shut the 2nd time? What about the same pay if you agree to my terms?’ and she explained them to me. Better than have me mummified to a post or the likes she would drug me. We would all walk to a guest room, more like a cell since it didn’t had any windows, I would sit on the bed and drink a glass of water spike with… something that would ensure that I slept for three or four hours. They would remove my bonds and leave me alone, and while I slept, they would check on my story and give any help they could to the Black Rose. If I was telling the truth I would awake free of any bonds and with a 100K paycheck, if I was lying she was going to teach me not to lie to her.

 

‘So we went to the ‘room’, I sat on the edge of the bed, drank the glass of water and awoke four and a half hours later. The Black Rose had been successful and I was totally clear, because ‘B.R.’ had not only retrieved the document, but also grabbed Mattie’s own notebook! The password was, according to… her, ‘ridiculously easy’ to break, and Mattie had some sort of a diary in it… It was in code, but she had already wrote about her latest ‘meeting’ with her ‘favorite lusty brunette’ when she was taken down… and they had checked about the previous ‘meetings’. There were pictures and pictures of bound and gagged chicks, their expressions and eyes… so frightened! None of them was from any website she knew of, and they all looked like they were for real… Name a race, an age and a bust size, and Mattie probably would have a picture of a gal like that in that collection. I was… well I wasn’t admiring the pictures, they were ‘for real’ not staged ones, and they were so many!, but I was looking at them. Then the Black Rose shoved her smarthphone in my face. The roles had been reversed!’

 

‘It was Marbury?’

 

‘Down to her bra and panties and LOTS of black electrician tape, looking up with rage filled eyes at the Black Rose as she took the picture. She told me that she had used a taser. She knew a lot of fighting stuff but with a killing machine like Mattie… she hadn’t many chances so she had used a taser. The Black Rose gave me a lift to my home like twenty minutes later, she told me how she had done that and I told her about my previous meetings with Mattie. As I had requested before I left her place, she sent me a copy of the picture of Mattie’s plight. And that was what I was looking at when I entered my apartment around 1 AM that night. I can still recall it…’

 

Noelle raised her left hand and held an imaginary phone with it.

 

‘Keys on the right hand, phone on the left one, I lock the door without seeing what I am doing so enthralled I am by the picture that is so delightful to look at, and when I finally lower the phone…’ – and she ‘lowered’ the phone in her left hand – ‘…there she is, Mattie, inside my own apartment, inches away from me!’ – She sighed and at the black suit woman – ‘Do I need to tell you that I never felt so scared in my life?’

 

‘That’s a bit too obvious… (…) And Marbury’s reaction when she saw what you were looking at? Did she… hurt you?’

 

‘No. She just said ‘strip, completely’ and grabbed my phone. I took all my clothes and she went down to business. That was, easily, the strictest way she ever bound me, and she would repeat it before the night was over!, but she had a reason for it. She took me out of my apartment with me inside a sports bag! It was a large one, but still… if you ‘google’ ‘extreme hogtie’ you will get an idea of what she did to me. So… rope around my legs, and around my arms and around everywhere else! After she was done, but before she put me in the bag, she took a picture of me, sent it back to her as a reply of the email she had sent me with Mattie’s picture, and turned off the phone. As soon as we entered her pickup truck she opened the bag and made sure that I had room to breathe…

 

‘The ride was uneventful, she listened to some country songs and parked the truck at a motel, she had checked in before she went to my apartment, and it was lights out for me as she carried me to her room. She took me off the bag, removed like half of the rope and rearranged my bonds so I could sit on the bed. Seeing how I was terrorized to be with her, she asked me if I had seen the pictures, I nodded, next she asked if the Black Rose had told me about the ‘nickname’, I nodded again and she opened one of the many suitcases she had piled up at a corner and grabbed a notebook. ‘You know, only a fool would write down a diary about her criminal activities using the real names of the people she meets while doing so, especially if she writes about her victims! For example, the rich heiress you tied to that chair for me? I call her ‘The Shrew’, after a movie with Liz Taylor that I just love to watch again and again. The so-called ‘Black Rose’? She’s T.I.M.S., after a song by that Brit duo,,, ‘Thorn In My Side’.

 

‘So, here I am writing down my latest exploit in which I just met, for the third time, a brunette gal that is simply delicious to be seen while bound and gagged… how should I call a gal who was wearing a T-shirt with a Bob Hope stamp on it when I grabbed her…? Hmmm…’, by now she was holding me airborne by my armpits, and then she smiled and took me to the bed. ‘Here, take a look…’ she said, and with me now sitting on her lap, with the notebook over my own lap, as she sat on the edge of the bed, she worked her magic. The pictures were real, but the tears filled eyes, horrified and desperate looks and everything else weren’t. There was this picture of a pair of Latina girls standing side by side in a bare room in string black bikinis, and both were smiling. In the next one they had been submitted to kneeling hogties, the view was from the rear and both were looking over their shoulder at the photographer, and they still smiled. In the next picture, they had been cleavegagged with strips of black cloth, and one looked more annoyed than anything else while the other one was excited. She opened one, two, three image editing softwares, and when she was done the bored/excited expressions were gone and the desperate pleas that replaced them was… compelling! ‘I really like to see a terrorized captive, but that doesn’t means that I have to be a… to the girls I pay to be my captives. And here’s the thing: I am going to take another picture of you as my captive, and it doesn’t matter how do you look at me as I snap the photo, she will see you as I want you to be looking like…’, another ‘rearrangement’ followed (which left me on my belly over the bed), she took the picture, edited it so I could look even more scared than I was (although I wasn’t feeling as much as I did a few minutes before), but before she sent the picture, she sat by my side, whispered ‘don’t try anything’, and had my lower face held quite viciously with her left hand as she asked for a pizza…’

 

Although they did their best, Noelle could see that they were as surprised as she had been that night. She asked for a glass of water before she resumed.

 

‘Anchovies with cheese… Next she turned on my smartphone, as expected, there were like a dozen messages from her, so Mattie sent the doctored picture, and right away there was an answer. Mattie wanted her other notebook back, she agreed to give it back to her (plus half a million dollars) for my immediate safe release. The money thing was unexpected, as Mattie had not asked for it; then they discussed how the exchange would be made and other stuff. The confession was all but forgotten by both parts. Next she took me to the bathroom and made me kneel inside the booth, and went back to the room and sat on the bed, waiting. I hadn’t a good angle, no matter how I twisted, but her weird humming did attract my attention (as I tried futilely to produce any kind of slack in my bonds) so I was at least trying to look at her when there was a knock at the door. Oh yeah, she had vividly reinforced my gag, to the point that I was barely hearing my own muffled whimpers, so she had no reason to fear me giving away my presence. So she opened the door, I heard a weird sound and then she said (a bit too loud) ‘Rubber soles, ******!’, there was a brief fight (of which I barely saw glimpses of) and, minutes later, when she brought me back to the room, the Black Rose was lying on the floor, unconscious and bound in the buff, she was only gagged (as overkilling as I had been) minutes later, when she came to. In the meantime Mattie enjoyed the pizza and soda Black Rose had brought with her as part of her disguise (she paid a hundred bucks to the delivery guy to get the box and his cap). When she was done, and me and Black Rose knelt on the floor face to face (I was kneeling over the pillows of the bed due to the difference of our heights, but I was still facing her breasts…), she did some dental hygiene, sat on the bed and waited holding my phone in her left hand and Rose’s in the other one.

 

‘And she called Mattie on Rose’s one. The first thing that she did was to demand that Mattie put the phone on the speaker mode. ‘You know what I am looking at, Ms. Marbury?’ she asked before she answered it herself. ‘A paper bag, a large and big and strong one. The kind you’d use, as I did, to fill it with one million dollars in one hundred bills… By the way, did I mention that this bag has a twin sister?’’

 

‘She ransomed you both, for a million apiece?’

 

Noelle couldn’t help but blush.

 

‘Yes. She said that she wanted a picture of both the Black Rose and me, and told Mattie to not send her any other digitally altered picture. Mattie did so, and they talked about the pictures (and the models) in Mattie’s collection, some hidden documents that she had managed to discover, but hadn’t looked at (and was forbidden to do so in very harsh terms by Mattie), the document that had caused all that (Mattie couldn’t care less about it) and Mattie’s captives’ well being (she didn’t like to see the bruises on Black Rose’s body, but then Mattie lifted her blue shirt and took a pic of the many bruises Black Rose had given her below her ribcage… and sent it to her) and it was all settled. She insisted that she didn’t wanted to see any other altered picture, no matter how good Mattie was at it… and Mattie told her that if she wanted that much she would be able to see it in less than one hour. Minutes later I was back in the sports bag, while the Black Rose was inside a travel bag (the kind you use to move out of town in a good way), she carried us both at once!, then she placed the bags inside the truck, paid her bill, went back to the truck, drove to an alley, took us out of the bags, strapped us in the pickup truck back seats, and drove us safely back to her place. It was probably that night that she and Mattie made some kind of deal, I don’t know. In any case, we arrived, we were out of the truck, we were out of the ropes and gags’ power and I was suddenly crying in her arms. While her assistant gave the Black Rose a massage and all three women had a ‘business discussion’, she took me upstairs, helped me have a bath and made me wear some spare clothes (actually one of the ‘not-for-long-asleep-damsel’ costumes, a blue set of silk pajamas), and gave me, again, a glass of water with the drug that would put me to sleep, and then she went downstairs to deal with Mattie and the Black Rose. I was her guest for a whole week, she handled everything with ‘Damsels for Hire’ and even managed to have a shrink dropping by twice, and insisted that I accepted what she called ‘a just compensation for that stupid dance!’…’

 

‘The ‘saga’ of the confession that had caused everything?’

 

‘Yes, it was a thing between her and her aunt, or was it cousin?, or… and it was over as it should have been for years… She burned down that thing, in front of me.’

 

‘And that’s how you ended up with one million dollars in your bank account?’

 

‘Yes, and one month later she had to make a quick ‘pit stop’ at my hometown. My father was in need of part of it, but he has such a thick skull that I had to beg her to ‘come in’ and explain what had happened to him. And the bold face lie that she told my whole family! I had agreed, for a million dollars, to play a decoy, the eye candy portion of it, in a ‘big ruse’ she had played on the ‘competition’ of a serious business. But I had signed a confidentiality contract so I couldn’t give him any details of it, or I would have to pay her back the double, but he could relax because all I had done was to be an eye candy. And dad… oh dad… ‘But a million?’, and she answers: ‘I guess I’ll have to tell them’, I didn’t knew where she was heading but I followed the clue and started to shook my head and mouth ‘no!’ over and over again in a ‘desperate’ way. And she: ‘I would have gladly paid the double since my personal profit alone was fifty times that!’’

 

‘I guess that family reunions must have been… interesting… ever since.’

 

‘Oh, I passed it around. Dad, mom, my sisters, our little brother, uncle Jay, uncle Pete and auntie Louise… plus some money for my cousins and hometown friends. After I bought my own house I should have spared something, but at least I had my own roof now… And they needed it… Anyway, it was only one year later that I learned about the ‘deal between Mattie and she. I had long left ‘DfH’, but once a month… The ‘Evil Detective’ strikes again! I must have bound her (and a dozen of girls, from the DfH and other agencies) in all the rooms of that place! And then one night, after her assistant had left to see her boyfriend and ‘The Heiresses’ (she had hired a pair of blondes to pass for her younger sisters) were securely tied up to chairs in the library and cleave-gagged, the phone rang and I picked it… and it was Mattie. And she did not recognize my voice. I have not been the ‘Evil Detective’ ever since that night… I just returned to the library, undid a few knots over one of the blondes’ arms, gave her Mattie’s message and left the place. It took me another meeting with Mattie to finally start to answer her calls.’

 

‘And this last meeting was…?’

 

‘A little above two years after the two that happened that night. And you know why it happened? Because of a window! Because of a stupid window!!!’

 

‘A window?’

 

‘Yes. A couple of friends were enjoying a week of paid vacations in Hawaii, but somebody had to feed their cats (two Siamese ones); guess who agreed to do that? They lived in an apartment in the 9th floor in *******, right across a building where Mattie’s target was located. What it was I don’t know, the building had like a dozen or more places like law firms, trading companies and the likes, and she smelled a rat in the job she had been hired to. So she told everybody that she would be coordinating things from ‘that vacant apartment’ on the 12th floor across the street, but then she placed hidden cameras facing the corridors of the 9th, 10th and 11th floors, and saw me leaving a very suitable apartment three floors below the one she said she would be… the next day, when I dropped by to feed the cats… she was already inside it, and had already installed herself. The ‘action’ would only happen past midnight, and it was almost 7 PM when she stormed out of the closet of my friend’s bedroom, grabbed me, threw me on the bed, and had me zip-tied and gagged under it in less than two minutes. She served me dinner around 9:15 PM, and punished my lame attempt at screaming with a packing that left my cheeks bulging to their fullest, before she used the ace bandage and ropes after she undressed me. At around 10 she allowed me to… you know… and then she took my gag and we started to talk. I was still mad at her and Mattie, and she found it amusing! And of course it infuriated me, which earned me another version of the ‘maxi-full gag’ as she calls it. But she talked and talked and talked, and by the time she had to retie and regag me… ‘Showtime!’ as she called it after cinching that tight knot at the base of my skull… I don’t fear her anymore, nor do I hate her anymore… I just don’t want or like to meet her because I know that I’d be in the middle of something illegal and big and…’

 

‘You are NOT telling us everything that you know, like who paid you the last hush money and why. Your private… matters are of no concern to us…’ – started to admonish the black suited girl in front of her, but Noelle just shook her head.

 

‘But I did tell you. I told you that she had smelled a rat, and that she had talked to me while she awaited ‘Showtime!’. She did not gave me the name of the place where she aimed those binoculars she produced one moment before she remembered to blindfold me. I was already back to another tight, but bearable, hogtie and very well gagged with a sponge, a scarf and four strips of blue tape, and now also blindfolded. She coordinated some action like in the movies’ – and Noelle closed her eyes as she told them what she had heard that night – ‘Number One and Two… move! Number Three… wait… wait… ok, you can move now! To your right! No, to your right! Grab her! Silence him! Number One, restrain them, all of them, do it. Good. Number Two, Number One’s real name is Special Agent David Tyllsen, would you mind to conk him now? Number Three, do you have it? Yes, that’s it! Number Two and Three check everybody’s ties; the one on the far right has her hands free. Alright, the escape routes ‘A’ and ‘B’ are compromised so use the ‘C’ one. Good luck gentlemen…’

 

And she reopened her eyes.

 

‘I think I know of what incident you are talking about. Do you remember the address of that building? Write it down please.’ – There was no gleam or anything that could indicate recognition from the black suit woman’s part, but she folded the piece of paper before she put it inside her breast pocket – ‘And you are sure that she said ‘Good luck… gentlemen?’ – Noelle nodded, and the black suit woman laughed hard and long.

 

‘Let me guess, she loosened some knots on your bonds?’

 

‘No, she injected something in my… behind. When I awoke dawn was breaking, I was free of any form of restrain, with all my clothes back on, minus a large strip of tape over my lips, over which she had written ‘Before anything, call me on…’ and there was this number, it took a while to realize she had written it with my lipstick! But I called her anyway and she said that ‘they’ would get in touch. At the same time, there was a knock at the door, I opened it and they entered the apartment pushing me aside, with one of the making me face the wall as another one searched me and the others in the process of turning my friends’ apartment upside down. And all wore those letters… FBI…’

 

‘So the last hush payment…?’

 

‘Came from them. The only thing I was carrying with me, aside my car keys and wallet, was my cellphone. Thirty seconds after they had barged in it started to ring, two of the agents grabbed me and held and handgagged me as one of them answered the call. And she and Mattie had a loooooooong talk, halfway through she looked at me, still being held by her two subordinates, and said ‘Get her outta here!’, but then she immediately said ‘Hold on…!’, and then a long series of ‘But! But!’, ‘I am NOT going to do that!’ and ‘You want what?’, and like twenty minutes later she closed the call. Mattie was calling from Mexico, while watching the whole action from another camera she had installed in my friends’ apartment. I know that she blackmailed the feds, but with what or why I don’t know. All I know is that I was interrogated for hours, and had to tell them a true (but heavily edited) version of all my previous meetings with Mattie, before a young guy with ‘lawyer’ written in his front entered that room with…’

 

‘A confidentiality contract? Why did you break that one or the others for that matter?’

 

‘Please don’t tell that the next person who will come through… wherever that door is located is a federal agent, it’s not going to be one, is it?’ – The faces of all the other women had the same ‘oh come on!’ look now – ‘So the fact is that a bunch of ladies I have never met, and don’t look or act as if they’re some sort of law enforcement officers of any kind, are holding me and my friend in what looks like a medical complex, whose location I don’t have the slightest clue about, and who seems to know a lot more than I would like them to know about my finances and life. You want the truth, or else, and I don’t want to know what do you mean with ‘or else’! I don’t know what’s going to happen to me when they learn that I broke the confidentiality, but I will deal with that AFTER I am out of here with my friend! Is that clear?’

 

‘Perfectly. Do you have any idea why there was the need of a confidentiality contract?’

 

‘Mattie told me… a lot about why she was there that night, she never told me what was her target, but she told me… stuff.’

 

‘Like?’

 

Noelle used almost all of the square papers of the notebook to write everything she could remember. To her it looked like a bunch of pieces of a puzzle that had no discernable picture on them, to the black suit woman they made a lot of sense.

 

And once more she laughed heartily, but then somebody wearing white (that was all that Noelle could actually identify in the newcomer) broke into the room. The tall brunette’s hands were over her eyes before she could see more, and she felt a gentle but firm pressure over her lips coming from a small pair of hands as the brunette warned her to cross her wrists behind her back as if they were tied.

 

‘One moment please… Miss Hammond, are you fluent in Japanese?’

 

The hands were off her lips, and tying her hands as she answered.

 

‘Not really, just a few words and phrases… Sayonara, domo arigato, katana, baka...’

 

And, as the pressure over her lips was back, and her hands were now tied to rope which in turn was tied around her waist, both the newcomer and the black suit woman started a furious ‘conversation’ in what really sounded like Japanese to Noelle.

 

They argued, sometimes very harshly, sometimes almost screaming at each other, and then it looked like they were talking to other people (through their phones?), but it was obvious that both were reaching a deal now.

 

‘Can they hear me? (The next time you hack into my computers…) This one? Attention please, all the security details that are heading or are close to the security headquarters will back down, all of you. Resume your previous assignment. Emergency status is, from this point on, revoked completely. I repeat. Emergency status is revoked, effective immediately. To the security detail imprisoned in the security headquarters, I’ll ask for a little more patience from your side. I know it’s awkward, even shaming, to be a captive in your place of work, especially if you are part of the personnel whose job is to ensure the safety and secrecy of this place. Ladies, I am authorized to tell that a compensation, equal to TWO YEARS of your regular pay, for every one of you, shall be deposited by our secretive allies as a form of compensation for the disturbance they created today. The restraints will only be lessened to a minimum that can satisfy their needs of no interference or acknowledgement from your part, but I am afraid that it might take another hour, or more, before you are all able to see, talk and move again. While the whole situation is happening, the support expected from those who are now captives of our allies will come from them, our allies. That is all…’

 

And they were back to the Japanese language. The conversation was brief, and now all the other women in the room (including those two holding her) were laughing. She heard the ‘woman in white’ leave the room, then the one handgagging her left, and now she could see the tall brunette leaving the room as she carried the tripod.

 

But at least she was free of any restraints now… (And so was Jenny)

 

‘What was that laughter all about?’

 

‘Due to what she called ‘an incident’, probably what you will be thinking in a minute, the presence of men in the security headquarters of this place, where the monitors of the security cameras are all located, is restricted to a minimum. Let’s say that you and your friend are not the only captive nude women this place has now... The only man assigned to monitor duty at this hour went to the WC one minute before my subordinates stroke, so now he’s the only one of them who is not restrained and locked with my subordinates inside the security headquarters. But because of the bonus I agreed to pay all those ladies, he’s making quite a show displaying his rage about his ‘bad luck’…’

 

‘Really?’

 

‘Quite the show! He probably will be demoted because of it…’

 

‘And now…?’ – Noelle asked after smirking.

 

‘And now I want everything, to the tiniest detail, that you can remember about the moment you awoke and found Jeb Norbertson sitting by your bed… Are you sure…?’

 

‘One of my biggest regrets was that I had an invitation for his ‘Farewell to Myself’ party, the one that he gave a couple of days before he started his prison time, but I did not attended it! And I won’t gonna tell you why I did it!!!’

 

‘As if I care to know why you deliberately missed such a great party… Yes, I was there…’ – And, as she gave her captive/witness a sardonic smile, she grabbed a black smartphone from inside her suit and aimed it at Noelle  – ‘Shall we start? (…) Please, tell us everything you can remember about that morning after you awoke…’

 

 

 

 

 

MINUTES LATER, INSIDE DR. SHEILA HANNIGAN’S PRIVATE OFFICE

 

‘Oh no… rubber soles?’

 

‘Exactly.’

 

‘And… what happens now?’

 

‘Now? Both you and your assistants will put their feet back in the ground, after you remove your shoes that is, and then you will stand up and start to undress. You can keep your underwear on. While me and my colleagues tie you up, don’t worry, we are as professional as you are in that field, but while you are being tied up…’ – and the only one of those six grinning blue suited young women that had positioned herself besides a doctor (and all three of them still kept their feet airborne), took a step forward – ‘…she will be checking on you private computer. Please, you three are quite ridiculous the way you are now… So, ladies, your shoes please…’

 

Sheila Hannigan looked at Dr. (Amelie) Ross and Dr. (Oona) Newman, sighed audibly and nodded. And then she grabbed her left shoe…

 

Had been the trap that obvious? She had pretended to agree with those ‘ninja dames’ demands, as if she would allow to become a virtual (or authentic) prisoner in her own office (although she knew that, had she went along, they wouldn’t touch her or restrain her in any way)! She knew that even if the trap was successful there wouldn’t be reprisals worth of her fear so she had given the order to Ross to prepare it.

 

There were exactly seven different ways to electrify the floor of her private office, and Ross knew four of them. She and the doctors entered the room as if was usual for them to have so many Asian ‘guests’ with them inside it, she asked to check on something in her computer and all three women sat on the only chairs that were insulated in the room.

 

And when she had given the command for the circuit to be closed…

 

Now she and Ross (a meek blonde girl wearing a very classy set of lingerie) flanked the taller and bustier Newman – not really well endowed, when compared to some of their captives, but among all women in the room… - quite the sexy red set, so she had plans for ton… of course! Today was Angelo’s birthday! But… such a tiny thong? Oona…).

 

‘Is it really necessary to do that?’ – She asked the one that seemed to be in charge now.

 

‘Tie you up?’

 

‘No, force us to undress…’

 

‘Your secretaries are in the second room on the left, buck naked aside tied up. Why? This is what we found hidden in their clothes, including the underwear…’

 

And the only one that wasn’t busy tying the trio of doctors showed them quite the collection of small blades inside a jar! To all three women they were a novelty.

 

‘You did not knew about them?’

 

‘We knew that they had been given ‘security measures’ of their own, but we assumed that that meant self-defense classes and even escapology ones… Ouch!’

 

‘Sorry about that, really. Mariko, another genuine ‘ouch’ from her part and you’ll do the ride back in the buff and in a more restrained fashion, is that clear?’ – The girl who now seemed to slow down as she wrapped some rope above and below her breasts nodded, she turned back to Sheila – ‘Now… Please, could you give us…’

 

‘The password?’

 

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and though only Sheila had heard it before, all knew to whom it belonged. The petite girl in front of her looked up, searching for something in the ceiling. By the time the doctors had strips of blue tape being carefully smothered over their lips she managed to find it. And looked straight at the camera…

 

‘Am I speaking to the Duchess di Vespusiano?’

 

‘Of course, Ms. Fumiko Nagima.’

 

The revelation that her real name, as probably as all the others’, wasn’t a secret anymore barely startled the girl. Instead she smiled as the doctors behind her were now being gagged with loop after loop of carefully smothered black tape.

 

‘So you were behind it…’

 

‘I am already in touch with your superior in Japan; we probably will have to have another business dinner in a few days to settle it all. But for now… I would like that my participation in this issue still be a secret…’ – Fumiko looked at the others and then back at the camera, and nodded – ‘While for you, Sheila, and you, Dr. Ross and Dr. Newman, I believe that the ‘extra’ your captoresses will be paying to the security gals and your secretaries will have to be, in your specific cases, tripled…’

 

Sheila took a mental note to sternly admonish Amelie due to the gleam in her eyes, ridiculous! And then she looked at Oona…

 

‘We will gladly pay it. We have wanted to know the truth behind… that incident for almost a decade now, so such a real buy price to be paid is… well, nothing to us.’

 

‘Very well. Sheila, I’ll call you as soon as this is over. I am watching the whole thing, including through the cameras that she knows about but has no knowledge of their location nor access to. And I have two teams of specialists ready to strike, one there where you are, the other at your headquarter in LA. Is that clear?’

 

All women in the room nodded.

 

Not that Sheila or the other doctors were, in any way or shape, some kind of control freaks. But they were actually despising to be forced to sit on their butts on the floor, side by side with their backs against the wall, with so much rope over their limbs in a ‘fashion’ similar to the one their most troublesome ‘irregular clients’ (as the doctors called their unwilling patients provided, mostly, by the Duchess), and even some of their ‘regular ones’, were to be put under during part of their stay at the clinic.

 

But all they could now was try to relax and be comfortable somehow…

 

If, at least, Noelle’s (now useless) deposition wasn’t (obviously) bound to last!

 

 

 

 

 

The meeting happened in Osaka five days later.

 

All that the Duchess had to do to avoid a more serious questioning from miss Himiko (and her successor) was to point out some of the ‘weird incidents/interferences’ that had happened to some of her operations, or to her subordinates’ private lives, which she knew that had been caused by their organization and the dinner became another long series of indirect attempts of one to pry a secret (or many) from the other (and vice versa)… None of them was successful, but at least the food was good.

 

As for Noelle Hammond and her weird relationship with Mattie ‘Mad’ Marbury…

 

 

 

 

 

NINETEEN MONTHS LATER

 

‘Hold on a second… are you trying to tell me that…?’

 

‘They were the ones behind the mildly poisoned water. At about the time my associates were replacing you and your extra-racked friend over there, those same girls that took you who-knows-where after they found you and… What’s her name again?’

 

‘Jenny.’

 

‘The very same ones, or their associates, were replacing the whole lot of girls set to promote that Chinese car company whose stand was next to yours. I can’t give you many details, but they, and not me or any of my associates, were the ones planning a heist (won’t gonna tell you what it was) that required the ‘old-trick-of-forcing-many-unexpected-replacements-of-the-personnel-working-at-a-car-show’ for their plans. But, thanks to those gals who passed for you and Jenny, the whole lot of Chinese-American models and their replacements ‘shared’ a back room while me and my buddies stole it.’

 

‘Oh… Thank you. I was kinda wondering what had really happened that day, I know that you actually kidnapped someone…’ – Marbury raised an eyebrow in an unhappy way – ‘…but I don’t know anything about who he or she was, just that the whole thing was about a kidnapping. Not a robbery. So stop treating me like…’

 

‘Alright, alright… now open up.’ – And as she picked the nerf ball…

 

‘Wait!’ – She sighed audibly – ‘Just… promise me…’

 

‘Girl, as soon as the guy does what he’s told to do, you’re free. All three of you.’

 

‘Just… promise me that this nightmare (for them) is NOT because ‘The Shrew’…’

 

‘Why don’t you ask her next time ‘The Evil Detective’ has plans for the ‘Heiress’?’

 

‘That fantasy was ‘old & aged’ when she finally got courage to call me once a month as she was used to… Now we’re more usually spies in Cold War scenarios…’ – The look in her captoress’ eyes! – ‘Coronel Tatyana Ivanova, of the Washington-DC branch of the KGB. Nice to meet you… you filthy imperialist capitalist criminal!!!’

 

‘Well, commie girl, you know your puppy eyes have zero effect on my professionalism, and she told me that she had told you exactly what she only hires me to do…’

 

And she kissed Noelle’s right cheek from behind.

 

‘…so stop avoiding the inevitable and say ‘Aaaaaaahhhh’?’

 

Noelle sighed, pouted while nodding, and opened her mouth very wide. ‘Mad’ Marbury ‘shoved’ the ball inside it and then started to wrap the elastoplast around her head after the lips were pursed. Noelle took another good look at Jenny and Lucille.

 

They looked fine, for two topless and bound (and gagged & deafened & blindfolded) girls that is. Just like she (once more!) would be in a few moments.

‘Mattie’ was putting the earplugs now, and soon the trio of friends, who just wanted to have a ‘Girls Night Out’ but, thanks to whoever Lucille was dating at the moment and needed to be convinced to do anything Marbury’s bosses wanted him (Or her? With Lucille you could never know for sure…) to do that night, now would have to endure a few hours (hopefully) inside that room wherever they were now. Hmm…

 

As the blindfold was being strapped she took one last look at the creepy (dark, dusty and bare) room the ‘triangle’ made by the three chairs they had been tied on and to was located. The ride inside that van (‘sharing’ a bare mattress) hadn’t lasted long…

 

Where could they actually be being held? Where this… back room of a garage (?) was located? Still within Sand Diego County limits? Still within California limits?

 

Oh well, she just hoped that she wouldn’t have to have another business-as-usual ‘meeting’ with the knot-crazed giantess (who was kissing her other cheek now, as she always did!) to find the truth about her current situation!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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