Deep Undercover: Endgame A-12
I am Master’s perfect slavegirl.
Master has many slavegirls, of course. He’s also perfect, and he knows how to take silly girls like me and get them to see how much better our universes are with him at their center. But out of all of Master’s slavegirls, only one had the brains, beauty, and talent to be his number one.
That’s me!
It’s not something I intend to ever take for granted. I won’t let anyone take my place at the top. When Master tells me to do something, it’s my sacred duty to ensure that I’ve carried out his commands exactly. That means leaving nothing to chance, or leaving any witnesses behind who could lead the police back to Master’s mansion.
A little switch clicks inside my brain, and I that the you will not it is in your purse, Tara, until it is time is actually the same wicked-looking pistol I used to murder Paul. I unzip the top and peer inside. Sure enough, there it is, waiting for me, just as Master intended.
There’s no silencer. This isn’t the type of neighborhood where gunshots go unnoticed, but I must do as I am told. I will eliminate any loose ends. Madame Franz may no longer be one, but Master’s command was very clear. No loose ends. The girl hiding in the back is a dangling string, and she needs to be snipped.
First things first, though. I need to get Master’s prize back to him.
Megan is currently sitting with that prize. Madame Franz is slumped forward, her head resting on Megan’s shoulder, eyes closed. Megan is whispering sweet hypnotic commands into her ear, and Madame Franz responds to each one with a little nod. By the time we deliver her to Master, she’ll be so out of it that the drugs won’t be necessary. It’s all going perfectly, thanks to me. After all, Megan wanted to kill her! What a stupid plan! To swoop in like gangsters, guns blazing, leaving Madame Franz lying in a pool of blood while we peel out of the parking lot? We’d have deprived Master of a beautiful slave and gotten arrested ourselves, leaving him down three beautiful slaves. Including me, his favorite!
Thankfully, Master put me in charge of this operation. “Megan, it’s time to listen to me and obey.” Obey me? No, obey Master, right?
She takes a break from nuzzling the brunette’s ear and focuses on me. She doesn’t say anything. It’s like I’ve got her hypnotized. “You will take Madame Franz back to Master,” I tell her. “You will take her car. I’ll catch up with you when I am finished here.”
Megan looks at me like I’ve just asked her to travel through time. Her face scrunches, breaking the trance. “Master told us to bring her back to the mansion, Tara. Us, together!”
“Yes, Master was very clear. You’re the hypnotist and I’m the muscle. You did your job, and now you need to let me do mine.” Why is she so dense? When I fire that gun, half of Santa Monica is going to be reaching for their phones. I can’t risk having a dozen cops cutting our escape before we get our target out of here.
“But, Tara, we—”
Ugh. I love Megan because Master demands it. And because she’s beautiful once you’ve stripped her of all of that ugly baggage she used to carry, like her free will, and her attitude. It also helps that she’s got a great body, and for a girl who just learned how to screw other girls, she’s pretty good in bed. Yesterday afternoon will be burned into my happy little brain for a long, long time.
“…just make up plans on our own. I specifically heard Master say…”
That little voice in my head again. Almost like a command. Something Master put in my brain, just in case something like this came up. I know what I need to do.
“Megan,” I say, my voice deepening to emphasize my concern.
“…have to do anything but bring Marta back to… what?”
“You will always obey me.”
Her pretty blue eyes, half-concealed by hair, widen and glaze over. She stiffens and sits up, letting Madame Franz sink into the chair beside her with a soft moan. Megan is looking at me like I’m the center of her universe.
Somehow, that feels right. Like the way it should be. The way Master intends it to be. Me at the top, ordering the other slavegirls around, the way a loyal assistant must.
Megan seems to agree. “I will always obey you,” she drones. “I will always obey you.”
“You will take Madame Franz to her car. You will take her purse and her car keys. You will drive her straight back to Master’s house. You will think only of obeying my command. Do it now.”
“Yes.”
God, she looks so hot when she’s this receptive and open. If I still had free will, I’d pause for a wild three-way with the two of them. Madame Franz has an incredible ass. Maybe we could pull the girl hiding in the back into it, too. Another present for our wonderful Master.
“Yes, Tara.” Now it’s her turn to break my trance. “I must always obey you.”
“When you arrive at the mansion, you will tell Master that I am carrying out his orders because I am his perfect slavegirl, and that I will return shortly.”
“Yes, Tara.”
Has she always been this secretly submissive? I’m really hoping that’s the case, because that threesome is going to happen the moment we get Madame Franz properly aligned.
I lick my lips, and blow my little submissive doll a kiss. “Good girl. Now, go.”
The fact that I’m eyeing her like a producer with a casting couch goes unnoticed. She bends over—another great ass, by the way—and begins to yank Madame Franz to her feet. I pirouette and return my attention to the back rooms, one hand on the doorknob, the other already inside my purse. No alarms. The girl must be trying to wait us out, hoping we’ll leave soon.
A stupid mistake, and her last.
I turn the knob.
I’ve only been hunkered down in this room for five minutes, and the New Age music is already starting to drive me nuts. Pan flutes and gongs for fuck’s sake. How can anyone find this relaxing? It’s getting me worked up, and I’m already worked up enough to carry me through the next month. I palm my piece with my left hand and wipe my right on the sheet covering the massage table. My palms are sweaty and this is no time to fumble a quick draw.
On Tara, Paulie. You’re talking about shooting Tara.
I swear to God, that’s the end of this P.I. business, if it comes to that. I’ll spend the rest of my life selling vacuum cleaners in Bismarck before I spend a day in LA without my partner.
The suspense is killing me. It’s taking longer than expected, which tells me that something’s not right. No screaming, no yelling, no gunshots, thank Christ, but plenty of delays. Brainwashed Tara isn’t the kind of person who dallies, but she’s doing exactly that now, and it worries me. If she hops into the car with Megan and Marta and zips back to the Hills, I’m fucked. The cops aren’t going to give a shit and it’s a suicide mission for one man to-
Clunk.
That’s the sound of a door swinging wide and hitting the wall. Tara’s on the move, and I’m being hunted.
The gun goes back into my right hand, finger hovering above the trigger.
I know I’ve been to this spa a dozen times, but it was always as Cassie, which means I’m flying nearly blind. Not that a bimbo like Cassie would have noticed key details like the best hiding places or likely ambush spots, stupid girl that she is.
It’s a short hallway, wide, like an office building. There are two doors on the left, two on the right. A helpful “Office” sign is posted next to the far room on the right. The other three rooms are for massages and therapy and coaxing top-secret Navy intel out of hypnotized bimbos. All three doors are open; all three are dark. I pause, hoping to hear something, but whoever is back here has gone to ground and is smart enough to hunker down. I’m going to have to hunt for them, room by room.
Office?
Probably. It’s the only door with a lock, and it’s the only door that’s currently closed. If the girl is hiding in there, she’s counting on that lock to save her from me, and if I wasn’t a devoted slavegirl, she’d probably be right.
But if she’s barricaded in the office, she’s not going anywhere. I have the time and the means to do a sweep of the place, starting with the other door on my right. It lets me be thorough, something Master will very much appreciate when I tell him the whole story. The thought of it makes my skin turn red and my cunt tingle. I’m already a little wet down there. Watching Madame Franz drop into trance was… hrmmm. I may have to frig myself on the drive home.
Just a little.
Maybe more than a little.
But first…
I draw the gun from my purse. It feels good. Like it’s always been a part of my hand. With it, I will carry out Master’s will.
With the way my luck’s been trending these last few weeks, I expected Tara to walk straight into this room and spot me immediately, gun drawn and finger on the trigger. So it’s to my great relief that she instead makes a mistaken turn into the room across from me. Unfortunately, that’s the only break I’m going to get. She still has the gun. She’s still brainwashed. She’s still ready to send me to the morgue.
This is how far things have turned to shit—I’m peering over this massage table with my gun pointed at the back of my partner’s head. It’s not the best angle. Chances are good that I’ll drop her with one shot, but not fatally, and then I’ll have to decide whether to execute her or leave her writhing on the floor until she bleeds out. There’s no way I’m going to do either. The only way Tara’s going to catch a bullet is if it’s my absolute last fucking choice.
I blink away the thought of dead Tara and refocus on the currently living version that’s stalking me. She still has her back turned, standing just inside the doorway. She’s moving her arms up and down, probably looking for a light switch, and she so engrossed in the task that she’s left her six completely unguarded. She’s no more than twenty feet away from my hiding place.
The pan flute reaches a crescendo as I make my move, low and fast. I’ve got the Colt in my hand, but only as a club. Tara will bitch me out for buffaloing her like this, sure, but she’ll live.
Ten feet to go.
Apparently I’m also a dumb bimbo for assuming that fucking light switches should be on the fucking wall, preferably right next to the fucking door. That’s not the case in this room, or probably anywhere else in this stupid building, leaving me running my hands up and down like I’m feeling up the wallpaper.
Fuck it. I’ve got a gun and she doesn’t. I hold my breath and listen for signs of life—crying, whimpering, shuffling, anything—but all I hear is a pan flute playing in the background.
I’m about to back out of the room and try another one when I catch the muffled thump of footsteps on carpet. They quickly drown out the music and thud closer. The fucking girl!
Instinct screams at me to turn and face my attacker. But it’s too late for that. She’ll be on me before I can get fully around. My training kicks in—all of those self-defense classes!—and I twist my body and keep my knees bent. And wait.
Even if she knows what’s about to happen, she’s moving too fast to stop herself. She slams into my back like a fender-bender on the 405 and keeps rolling forward, the momentum carrying her over my right side and shoulder as I half dodge, half flip her to the ground. There’s a loud crunch, and the crack of splintering wood.
Turns out she’s a big girl. Tall, too. I was expecting someone fragile and petite, not a linebacker for the Rams, and our mutual collision sends me stumbling into the room head-first. I reach out with my free hand and manage to grab the padded edge of a massage table. It’s enough to keep me from sprawling out on the floor and allowing Little Miss Cornerback to brain me with a Tibetan prayer bowl.
They say that time slows down during fights, but that’s a lie. Everything is happening so fast. I’ve got the vision and legs of a barfly. if I didn’t have a Master’s command to obey, I’d be planning a dash to the nearest exit.
But Master owns and commands me, and there’s no way I’m going to let him down now.
Keeping one hand on the table, I raise the other and squeeze the trigger.
I didn’t expect Tara to flip me.
One second I’m about to tackle her and knock her out and the next I’m sailing through the air like a kamikaze without a plane. A flimsy IKEA sideboard arrests my progress and absorbs a good deal of the blow. Thank God for particleboard! Something sharp manages to jab itself into my left shoulder. It hurts like a motherfucker but it also chases away the stars swirling around my noggin.
“That went well,” I cough out.
I blindly reach for the edge of the smashed shelf above me and instead grab a handful of cloth, which turns out to be a placemat with a half-ton of massage crap sitting on top of it. The entire collection slides off the shelf and comes down on the aforementioned noggin. I duck and cringe, more out of instinct than self-preservation, and that’s when the gun goes off.
When someone shoots at you from a distance, it doesn’t feel real. You hear the gun crackle, and you can almost sense the bullets whizzing by you, but it all happens in a logical way. You have time to react, to plan.
But when Tara fires her Ruger a foot away from your head, it’s a different story. It’s like sticking one of those fireworks the kids bring back from Tijuana under your pillow and lighting a match. The bang is enough to stun both of us. My ears immediately fill with TV static. The slug digs itself into the wall behind the sideboard, leaving a choking trail of ozone and plaster dust.
I reach for the shelf again—this time, successfully—and hoist myself to my feet. I’ve got momentum on my side, regaining my footing precisely when Tara is struggling to keep hers. She is used to shooting .22s and the 9mm’s recoil, combined that one-handed shot, sends her reeling backwards.
The massage table is between us. I grab it with both hands and give it a shove. It’s the size of an aircraft carrier and weighs twice as much, but fear and adrenaline are wonder drugs, and it starts to topple over after a second of animalistic shouting and grunting. My shoulder is killing me and my Colt has fucked off to God-knows-where, so this table’s the only weapon I’ve got left.
It does the job, the edge catching Tara in the small of her back as she tries to scamper away. She shouts as loud as I did—probably louder, given how much my ears are still ringing—but it’s no use. I press down hard on the overturned table before she can push it away, pinning her to the floor. Her Ruger has ed my gun off in the shadows. It’s over.
Well, almost over. Did I mention how often I forget that Tara is extremely athletic? Reality sets in quickly as she manages to push herself, and me, and the table off the ground. She turns her head and, for the first time, realizes that she’s been had. The rider she’s trying to buck off isn’t an innocent, helpless customer. It’s a very familiar face.
“Paul??? The… fuck???”
The shock robs her of her strength, and her forearms collapse, pinning her to the ground again. I’m expecting her mouth to form a big round ‘O,’ but Avery’s got his claws too deep into that beautiful mind of hers, and she responds instead with the nastiest, evilest scowl I’ve ever seen a person make. Like she’s just been caught by the bastard son of Hitler and Ted Bundy.
Right now I have two options. The gun isn’t one of them—finding it means letting Tara loose, and I know exactly how that will end. The smart option is to go for the knockout punch. I’ve currently got the altitude and the leverage to land a good punishing blow, even without the Colt.
“Just in case it still works, though…” I say to her, as if she has the slightest clue what’s going through my head, “Seven six five…”
She growls like a trapped possum. “You fucking bast—”
“…four three two one.”
I wasn’t the most attentive student in school, so I couldn’t tell you what the odds are as far as tossing a coin in the air and having it be heads each time. But I spend enough time at the tables in Vegas to know that every individual toss is a 50/50 shot.
So when the trigger hits Tara exactly the way it’s meant to, it lets me know that Avery Berman didn’t get a chance to burn it out of her when he had the chance, and also that I’m probably not going to die today.
“Oh, shit.” Cassie looks around the room, at the floor, at herself, at me. Her eyes widen. “Shit! Where the… where am I? And what the fuck is this music?”
I want to hug her. “Avery sent you and Megan to nab Madame Franz,” I cough out. That sideboard really did a number on my shoulder. “The trigger still works.”
“Can you… OW! Can you get off the table, please?”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” I’m over here crushing her. I take a step back and try to help, but Cassie knows how to put Tara’s fine body to work, and she quickly wiggles free.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head after a brief once-over. “Just shaken up and scared, and really getting tired of this crap.”
I point to the door. “Good, because we need to move fast. You took a shot at me. That means that every blue-haired Karen in Santa Monica is dialing 911 right now. We need to grab Megan and Marta and get the hell out of here.”
“Got it.” It’s a little insane. Imagine coming off an epic all-night bender to find yourself dressed to kill and a guy telling you that the cops are about to land on your ass. You’d have questions. Hell, I’d have questions. Cassie has none, just as simple ‘got it’ and she drags herself to her feet on unsteady legs, like a baby deer.
“Guns,” I tell her. We’re both going to need them. The room isn’t that big. I point to the far corner, where there’s a rattan stool and an ugly water fountain. “I think yours slid off over there.”
I’m right about that; Cassie finds the Ruger in seconds. I find my Colt—in the wreckage of the sideboard—about as quickly. “Come on.”
She swipes the Ruger and, after considering sticking it in her waistband, chooses to continue holding it. “Where are they?”
“Lobby.” I’m already out the door and running for the front. Megan’s not going to have a gun; that’s what Tara was for. All I have to do is run in, detain them until Cassie can take control, and…
“Fuck!”
The lobby is empty. It’s a safe bet that the entire building is empty. Empty except for myself and Cassie, with the SMPD about to swarm the place with guns drawn. Megan must have heard the shot and hustled the both of them out.
Someone looms over my shoulder. I tense, ready to fight, but it’s only Cassie, still confused and curious. She scans the room. “Did she run away?”
“Yes. Goddamn it!”
We’re hosed, but not completely. Tara’s Porsche is still parked right where she left it. I’m parked a good eight blocks away. That means that Megan’s got Marta’s car, and we’ve got a set of wheels that can play catch-up.
I spin to face her. “Do you have the keys?”
“Car keys?”
“Yes!”
She digs into her purse, coming up with a single key on a fob. “Got em!”
“Fantastic.” I sprint for the door. It takes Cassie a moment to catch up, but she’s right behind me as I throw it open. We can hear the sirens getting closer.
“You’re driving,” I tell her.