THREE TIMES A LADY (6 page)

Claire Bishop spoke for the entire group without hesitation.  Clearly, the role of unquestioned leader was one she was used to occupying. 
She
’d been the alpha dog before Nicholas had arrived on the scene, and from the look of things she wasn’t quite ready to relinquish that lofty position just yet.  ‘Hell yeah,’ she said.  ‘Let’s go.  Where are they?  I’m bored and it smells like shit back here anyway.  Who in the fuck would ever eat anything from
McDonald’s
?  Fucking gross.’

Nicholas closed his eyes while he pretended to consider her proposition – just long enough to have all the girls practically
panting
for his answer.  Nothing more than a pack of scared little puppies looking for some direction.  For a firm hand to guide them.  Looking to be
told
what to do.  And, much like dogs, Nicholas had learned, women were laughably easy to train.  Except for one, of course.  But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

Nicholas opened his eyes again and looked directly at Claire this time, pointedly ignoring the others.  ‘We can’t
all
go,’ he said.  ‘I’ve got some drugs close by, but I don’t want to attract any attention.  If my parole officer sees me he’ll know something’s up and then I’ll be in some real deep shit for sure.  He’s already pissed off at me as it is.  I don’t want to give him any reason to break my balls any harder than he’s already been doing.’ 

Pointing directly at Claire’s wonderfully developed chest to single her out, he added, ‘
You
can come with me if you want, but your friends will have to stay here until we get back.  It’ll probably take an hour or so.’

The probation lie scored more points.  And why not? 
All
the cool guys were in some kind of trouble with the law, weren’t they?  Of course they were.  Who in the hell wanted to date Lawrence Welk when you could be seen making the rounds with James Dean?  Still, Claire Bishop creased up her pretty face at the suggestion.  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, giggling nervously and clearly a little less certain of her position at the top of the pecking order now.  ‘Like I’d ever go anywhere alone with you.  I don’t even
know
you, for Christ’s sake.  For all I know, you want to rape and kill me, you fucking sicko.’

Nicholas pressed his lips together into a tight line.  Not a bad assessment there, actually.  Not a bad assessment, at all. 

You’re absolutely right, Claire
, he thought. 
I probably
do
want to rape and kill you.  As a matter of fact, that’s
exactly
what I want to do to you.  Luckily for you, though, that’s something of which I’m quite incapable.
 

Out loud, he said, ‘Whatever.  Suit yourself.  Have fun with your stupid pot.  Try not to get too high on that shit, all right?  For your information, though, it’s probably oregano if you bought it over on the east side.  But again, whatever.  Give me a call when you grow up and want to try out some of the good stuff.’

Turning on his heel, he then sauntered away as casually as he possibly could.  It might have been a risky gamble, but he knew that he needed to push in all of his chips now, even if it meant losing all his money in the process.  There was no other option now.  He’d passed the point of no return. 

A flurry of hushed whispers sounded behind him.  A moment later, Claire Bishop called out to him again.  ‘Hey, wait up!’ she yelled, running to catch up with him.  ‘I’ll come with you but we have to hurry.  We have to be back in, like, half an hour.  Missy’s driving and she said that’s all she’ll wait for.’

Nicholas turned around and smiled at the girl.  Bowing at the waist, he swept his right arm gallantly toward the bicycle rack forty feet away, motioning to his beloved Schwinn.  ‘Great,’ he said.  ‘C’mon.  I’ll give you a ride over there.’

Thankfully, the girl didn’t protest any further, which meant that Nicholas was that much closer to finally becoming a real man.  About goddamn time.  He’d already waited a
very
long time for this day to arrive, and he certainly didn’t want to wait a single moment longer now than he absolutely needed to.  Already standing on the ledge of full-blown manhood, he was ready to leap. 
Wanted
to leap.  ‘Cool,’ the girl said.  ‘Let’s go.’

Nicholas’s heart skipped rope in his chest as he unlocked his bicycle and offered her the seat.  He’d ride standing up – the same way he’d ride
her
in about twenty minutes or so.  ‘Your chariot awaits, my dear,’ he said.

Ten minutes later – having darted through the heavy traffic barreling down Lincoln Road with Claire Bishop’s long hair streaming behind them in the stiff breeze – they finally made it to the butcher’s shop across town.  Nicholas concentrated on controlling his shaking hands as they stood underneath the striped awning out front. Reaching into the front pocket of his shorts, he produced the illicit key he’d copied at the drugstore a few days earlier and slipped it into the lock before opening up the door for her and stepping to one side.  ‘After you, my dear,’ he said, trying mightily to disguise the heightened anticipation in his voice.  ‘My stash is in the back.’

Claire Bishop looked up at him, surprised.  ‘You
own
this place?’ she asked.

Nicholas shrugged.  ‘Something like that, I guess.  My family does.’

Claire lifted her perfectly plucked eyebrows and entered the building.  Wordlessly, she kicked the door closed behind him as Nicholas entered after her. 

Turning around to face him, the girl immediately stepped forward and raised herself up on her tiptoes to cover his mouth with her own, smearing her bright red lipstick roughly across his lips and darting her small, pink tongue into his mouth.  Obviously, Claire Bishop knew what the deal was here, and so did Nicholas. 
Cash, ass or grass – nobody rides for free.
 

Nicholas cringed against the foul taste of marijuana smoke on the girl’s breath as she pressed her body tightly against his; her baby-fat breasts leaving an impression he knew he’d still be able to feel an hour later.  An impression he knew he’d still be able to feel a
lifetime
later. 

After several interminable moments of the disgusting lip-lock, Nicholas finally broke the kiss and stared down hard into the girl’s half-lidded blue eyes; searching them with his own.  ‘You want this, baby?’ he breathed.

The girl groaned and ground her hips even harder into his pelvis.  ‘Oh, yes, daddy.  I want it so bad.  Give it to me.’

Nicholas smiled and tightened his grip around the little slut’s slender waist, inhaling deeply through his nostrils and enjoying the way her cheap perfume tickled the tiny hairs lining his nose.  Twisting his lips into a smirk, he said, ‘Are you absolutely
sure
you want this?  I don’t want you crying rape on me later on.  I could do some real serious time for that kind of shit.’

Claire narrowed her big blue eyes and shook her head.  ‘Never, daddy.  I’d never do anything like that.  Just give it to me. 
Please.
’

So Nicholas did. 

Claire Bishop never even felt the syringe loaded with Rufinol slide into her carotid artery.  Ten seconds later, the date-rape drug caused her to go as limp as a rag doll in his arms.  Then again, you couldn’t rape the willing, now could you?

Easing the girl’s body down to the ground, Nicholas rested her head beneath an old gray Army blanket from his father’s days in the military before making his way over to the front window to make sure that the blinds were closed, smiling broadly as he went.  Once again, it seemed, the time had come for some
real
fun inside the butcher’s shop, and he didn’t want an audience for this.  Private moments like this one called for private settings, and he couldn’t think of a location any more private than this.  The location that had raised him since birth.  The location that had shaped him into the full-grown man he was about to become…

A man with a face that only a
mother
could truly love – not that Claire Bishop – stupid clueless whore she’d clearly proven herself to be by coming here alone with him today – wouldn’t be giving it her very best shot in the next ten minutes or so.

Dana awoke four hours later to the sound of the pilot’s deep voice coming over the intercom. 

Letting out a soft yawn, she stretched her arms high overhead in an attempt to relieve some of the stiffness that had settled in during her long nap, at the same time trying her best to avoid elbowing the elderly scarf-knitter seated to her right square in the mouth.  Not the sort of favour you wanted to pay forward, after all.  Thankfully, mission accomplished.

Dana put her hands back down into her lap and yawned again, even more deeply this time.  Blissfully, she’d managed to fall asleep somewhere over Nevada, which had made the long plane ride back home a bit more bearable – not that dreaming about the night your parents had been brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of your shocked and disbelieving four-year-old eyes could ever be considered
restful
. 

Dana shook the remaining cobwebs from the attic of her brain and tried to concentrate on the pilot’s words as they crackled over the intercom.  Even though the man was speaking in the same monotonous tone all pilots used, the words he was saying didn’t sound normal to her at all.

‘… and since we’re experiencing a minor technical problem with the landing gear at the moment we’ll be bypassing Hopkins International and touching down at Burke Lakefront Airport instead.  As the holding pattern over Hopkins is already full anyway, this will give us just a little more time to iron out the kinks.  Nothing to worry about, folks, I assure you, but I wanted to keep you in the loop.  More in a bit.’

Dana sat up straighter in her seat and looked around the cabin at her fellow passengers.  Like most Americans, anything out of the norm on a plane immediately slammed her mind back to the horrifying events of 11 September 2001, when Islamic extremists had slaughtered more than three thousand of her fellow citizens by plowing hijacked commercial airliners into well-known American landmarks stretching along the eastern seaboard of the United States from New York City all the way down to Washington, DC. 

Dana tightened her grip on the armrests at her sides and glanced across the aisle.  The rumpled businessman who’d elbowed her in the back of her head a few hours earlier was tilting back his head and finishing off the last of his latest drink, a glossy sheen sparkling in his badly bloodshot eyes.  From the seat in front of Dana, little Bradley asked his mother, ‘Are we almost home yet, mama?’

The woman’s voice sounded almost as frightened as Dana felt on the inside.  Still, to her credit, the woman tried to play it off.  ‘We sure are, honey.  Shouldn’t be too much longer now at all.’

‘But I can’t see my daddy when we get there because he got dead, right?’

Through the crack in the seats, Dana watched a sad look flash across the woman’s face, and she empathized with her at once.  Because Dana had seen the exact same look on her
own
face in her bathroom mirror each and every morning for the past thirty-five years now, ever since the night she’d watched her parents viciously murdered by a deranged madman who still haunted her dreams to this day.  ‘That’s right, baby doll,’ Bradley’s mother answered softly.  ‘Your daddy died, but he’s always looking down on you from heaven, so you need to remember to always be a good boy, even when you don’t think anyone’s watching you.’

Bradley sighed audibly, further bruising Dana’s already-bruised heart.  She bit down hard into her lower lip and felt her eyes well up; not knowing how much more bruising her heart could possibly take.  As things stood now, her heart had already been lumped up worse than an overmatched prizefighter who’d just gone fifteen lopsided rounds with a Muhammad Ali in his prime.  ‘What does my daddy do in heaven, anyway?’ the little boy asked.  ‘Is he still a baseball player like when he was with us?’

The woman nodded and tousled her son’s hair.  ‘Yep, he sure is, slugger.  More than that, he’s the best baseball player in all of heaven.  Even better than Babe Ruth, some say.  Your daddy and Babe Ruth play on the same team, you know.’

‘What team do Babe Ruth and my daddy play for?  Does my daddy still play for the Cleveland Indians?’

The woman smiled gently.  ‘Nope.  Not anymore, buddy.  Your daddy was traded to the Angels, so that’s the team he’ll play on for the rest of for ever now.’

Heartbreaking as the conversation was for her to listen to, Dana felt infinitely thankful for the mental break it provided, however brief.  Looking out her window, ten miles to the east she saw perhaps a dozen airliners circling the bright-blue skies above Hopkins, each taking its position in the mile-high queue and waiting its turn to land.  

Dana checked her watch.  Burke Lakefront was located fifteen miles west of Hopkins.  The DC-10 in which they were flying had a maximum speed of six hundred and ten miles an hour, though Dana guessed they were only doing about five hundred miles an hour right now.  That should give them approximately one minute until they made it to Burke Lakefront, a small commuter airport usually reserved for personal aircraft and corporate jets.