Thumper smiled and gave a nod toward the bathroom while taking hold of Natasha’s ankles. “Not up there, sweetheart.” He pulled her legs down off the bunk so that she was straddling his waist, then he undid his jeans and let them drop to the floor.
“I’ll be good,” whispered Natasha. “Just let us go after.”
“Yeah … sure. If you’re real good, maybe I will.”
Natasha sat up and slowly undid the buttons on Thumper’s shirt. When he tossed his jacket and shirt on the floor, she placed her hand on the back of his head and guided his face into her cleavage as she fell back down onto the bed. Thumper felt her clutching his hair while slowly pushing his head toward her stomach.
He watched her face as he kissed and licked her navel, while pulling down the rest of her zipper before sliding off her slacks and panties. He continued to lick and taste the salt from her body, slowly working his way down to her thighs. He felt her fingers massage and scratch his head and shoulders. She took her hands off him briefly as her body twisted and she moaned. He glimpsed her fingers as she clawed and raked the bunk beside herself like a cat in heat.
“Time to put this on,” he said heavily, reaching for the condom.
“Not yet,” whispered Natasha. “You said to be good. Make it last. Do what you’re doing a little more.” She massaged his back with increasing intensity then grasped his head, urging him upwards. He licked and kissed his way back up her stomach while arching her back with one hand and pulling her bra aside as his lips searched for her nipples. He felt her fingernails rake his upper back and neck as she pulled his face deep into the side of her breast while wrapping her legs around his.
“Back off with the scratching, bitch! That…” Thumper didn’t finish the sentence. He suddenly realized that he was lying in a warm sticky pool. He pushed himself upright as a torrent of blood flowed from the carotid artery in his neck like a severed garden hose. He grasped at the thin cut running lengthways up his throat and stared in horror at Natasha. She sat looking up at him, a bloodied scalpel in her hand.
“Consider yourself fucked,” she said. “Fucked hard.”
Spots of blackness swept over him as his brain starved for blood. He staggered back a step, then lost consciousness and fell backwards onto the floor. His heart continued to beat momentarily before it, too, accepted death.
Natasha dragged his body aside and opened the bathroom door.
Marcie saw Natasha’s body awash in blood and opened her mouth to scream. Natasha clamped her hand over her mouth.
“I’m okay. This isn’t my blood. The guy’s dead. I killed him. We’ve got to be quiet,” Natasha said, taking her hand away.
“What happened?” whispered Marcie. “What’s going on? How did you kill him?”
“I had a scalpel in my jacket pocket,” said Natasha, while putting her clothes back on. “Put it there one night when I went to the clinic to help Jack. Save the talk for later. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“That man. The one who told them to put us on this boat. I recognize his voice. He’s the one … the one who…”
“The one who molested you in the cabin?”
Marcie nodded, then said, “Why would they take us?
“I’m not sure, but they didn’t hide their faces, so that’s not a good sign. I’m guessing it must be a trap for Jack and maybe Danny. Come on!”
Natasha crept forward and peered out the exit. She saw two bikers standing at the back of the house. They were both carrying rifles and talking to someone through a window.
“Two of them are in the backyard with rifles. They’ve got their backs to us, but I can’t tell if someone in the house is looking this way or not. Are you a swimmer?”
“No,” said Marcie.
“See if we can find any keys to this thing.”
Both Natasha and Marcie searched for keys. There weren’t any.
“I’ve got to chance it,” said Natasha. “They could come back any second. You wait at the top of the stairs while I slip across to the boathouse on the other side. Maybe I’ll find something.”
Natasha peeked out the exit and saw the bikers disappear, one around each side of the house. She scrambled off the cabin cruiser and scooted across the dock to a small boathouse. She cautiously opened the door and saw a high-powered speedboat parked inside. She climbed in and frantically searched for keys.
She abruptly froze when the door to the boathouse opened, then realized it was Marcie.
“You should have waited!”
“I was afraid. Did you find any keys?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should make a run for it down the dock!”
“It’s too long in the open. We’d never make it. I think —”
Natasha was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
chapter thirty-nine
Sid moved the paint and stepladder to one side, then opened his front door again and gestured for Jack and Danny to come up the steps and follow him inside. They stopped when a German shepherd came out onto the porch and started barking.
“QC! Quit barking!” Sid commanded, then said to Jack and Danny, “It’s okay, he won’t bite. Come on in.”
“You named your dog Cutesy?” asked Jack, glancing at Danny.
“Cutesy?” Sid chuckled. “No. It’s QC! Short for Queen’s Counsel. Cute, don’t you think?”
Jack exchanged another glance with Danny. They looked at the plastic sheeting in front of them and both went for their guns.
“Do it now!” screamed Sid toward his foyer. “They know!”
Jack pumped two shots through the door. The dog lunged at him, knocking him down as a rifle shot sent a bullet zinging past him into the side of the garage. In front of him, he caught a glimpse of Rolly clutching his throat and staggering back as the door swung open. He was only partly conscious that Danny was taking aim at whoever had the rifle. His attention was focused on Booger, who appeared in the foyer carrying a MAC-10 submachine gun.
Danny saw T-Bone standing at the end of the house as he took aim to fire another shot at Jack. Danny fired three shots. Only one counted, but it was enough. T-Bone fell to the ground as the bullet tore through the centre of his chest.
A barrage of shots rang out from the foyer, along with another shot from near the garage behind them. Danny crouched beside the steps and turned to see who was by the garage.
Jack lay on his back on the path and tried to protect his face from the dog’s savage attacks with one hand while firing more rounds at Booger, who let loose with a short burst of fire before leaping back out of sight. More bullets whizzed over Jack’s head from behind him, and the dog yelped and fell to the ground when a rifle bullet severed its spine.
“Take cover!” Danny yelled. “Wizard’s behind you!”
Jack’s only place for cover was in the house, and he bolted through the door while firing rapidly. He caught a glimpse of Sid running up a spiral staircase but directed his shots toward Booger, who stood in the living room and fired another spray of bullets toward Jack.
Jack dived into a shallow pond inlaid in the floor near the bottom of the staircase. He squeezed off another shot at Booger, who darted back behind the wall. Jack barely had enough room to keep his face out of the water without exposing his head above the edge of the pond. Looking up, he could see only the lower half of the spiral staircase. Rolly’s head and one arm lay in the pond. Blood from his throat spilled into the water. His other hand lay limp at his side.
Jack raised his head slightly to look toward the living room, but a rifle bullet delivered from outside by Wizard ricocheted off the ceramic tile floor and zinged past. Wizard was rewarded for his effort by two shots from Danny, who was still crouched behind the steps. Wizard quickly retreated back behind the garage.
For a few seconds, everything was quiet except for the sound of a koi gasping for life as it flopped around on the floor.
Sid then screamed from above. “Get in there! Finish them off!”