Our Only Hope, Chapter 07

Chapter Seven

The Blue Deuce

It was almost four in the morning before I got out of Davenport after making sure that Wyatt Monty was securely strapped into one of the seats of a small business jet owned by one of Master Randolph’s companies. Once the pilot and I were both satisfied Wyatt would be a peaceful passenger for the many hours that it would take to get to The Society’s private island prison, the pilot reached into a large pocket on the side of his jacket and pulled out a thick manila envelope. “Mister Burroughs said you would be needing this for expenses,” he said as he handed it to me. “The bills are not new and not in numerical sequence,” he added, “but they have been thoroughly laundered.”

I must have looked confused because he quickly said, “Literally laundered… they have been dry cleaned, washed in detergent, and freshly pressed.” Not waiting for my question of why, he explained, “Almost all high denomination money in this country has traces of cocaine or other drugs on it. There’s no danger, except from some cop who is looking for a reason to run you in or take your money. Then they do a field test on your cash and surprise, surprise, they find you are carrying ‘drug money,’ which they can confiscate and/or use as a reason to arrest you.”

“Tell Master Randolph thank you for his thoroughness,” I replied.

“Don’t mix it with your regular cash,” he said quickly. “Cocaine dust transfers easily.”

“I will remember that.” I said. Then I asked, “Anything else?”

“There are also two messages,” the pilot said. “Message one: ‘Get these bastards– especially the traitor.’ Message two: ‘I expect to see the eighty-thousand on your expense account against your expenses.’”

“Tell him I will do my best… for both,” I said as I turned to go back to my Jeep. I waited until the jet was in the air before leaving the airport and starting my trek to Los Angeles.

It is one thousand, eight hundred, forty eight miles from Davenport, Iowa, to Los Angeles, California… at least, that’s what my map program told me. It also said that it would take twenty-seven hours, which doesn’t count eating, sleeping, or taking other necessary bio-breaks.

When I am totally on my own for weeks at a time– which occasionally happens for personal or business reasons– I tend to revert to my natural sleep rhythm of awake four hours, asleep two. When force-driving long distances, that becomes awake three hours, asleep one. I can do that because I can fall asleep almost instantly anywhere, anytime.

I possibly could have done the whole twenty-seven hours in one giant, caffeine-fueled step, but I would be too zombified to be effective for much on the other end. So I decided to three-one it to Las Vegas, rest up there, change vehicles and identities, and then make the four-hour jump to LA.

Having been in Vegas many times, I knew several good hotels at reasonable rates– for Las Vegas– that had good beds and excellent wifi. I would need the bed to catch up on sleep and be my best for whatever was happening in LA. I would need the wifi to make full use of my techno-nerds Boris and Natasha, who were probably getting less sleep than me as they searched for anything they could find out about The Blue Deuce and Wyatt’s brothers, Walter, Weston, and Woody.

As I was driving, Boris would occasionally update me on important things they had found, which wasn’t much. His voice sounded tinny and almost insect-like in my bluetooth earpiece as I drove down the road. I was past Salt Lake City and heading for Vegas when he finally started talking about The Blue Deuce. According to him, it appeared to be a legitimate exotic club catering to the BDSM community. He rated their data and system security as “damn good,” meaning neither he, nor Natasha, could hack into it.

His voice took on some excitement as he described the club’s four-level membership system which was openly advertised on their website. The first level, called “First Floor,” was public with performances and displays by members and by paid professionals. The second level, “Second Floor,” was semi-private. Again there were performances and displays, but you had to be a verified member to join that level and had to be a member or guest of a member to attend anything going on there. “Third Floor” was all private, invitation-only rooms. And “Fourth Floor” was… … Boris had no idea what Fourth Floor was.

He actually used those exact words. “I assume the levels correspond to different floors in the building the Club is in,” Boris said in disgust, “but I have no idea what in the hell Fourth Floor membership is.” It really irritated him when there was something that was truly hidden from his investigative talents.

“So,” I said, “the Fourth Floor must be a super secret, invitation-only portion of the Club. I’ll just have to figure out a way to sneak up there from the Third Floor.”

“I would love to see that,” Natasha said with a laugh.

“Why?” I asked, trying to hide any anger or frustration in my voice.

“Because, W,” Boris said firmly, “there are only three floors to the building that The Blue Deuce is in.”

“Oh?” I said. I didn’t bother trying to hide my surprise. “I’m almost at motel one,” I said flatly. “I’ll check with you by wire in a few hours.”

I was actually approaching a somewhat run down Motel Six in a less desirable part of town where I checked in using the same identity that I had used in Davenport. I paid for a month and said that I would be in and out a lot so they shouldn’t worry if I was not in my room for several days at a time. I then sanitized my keys, IDs, credit cards, and driver’s license. Once I was sure they bore no fingerprints or DNA, I left them in the little safe in the hotel room.

With my Davenport identity safely locked up for possible future use, I was ready to go. I had stopped at a long-term storage place out by the air base and put any un-needed equipment and armaments into storage. What I needed, I could carry with me in my suitcase and not draw attention to myself.

From the motel, I took an Uber to the Strip. From there, I caught a cab to the Boulder Station Casino, and finally a Lyft to a friend’s business on the edge of town.

Bernard was a special friend who– for an appropriate amount of money– would use his special talents and connections to arrange a different vehicle… and a different identity… for me to use while I was in LA. He was not cheap. It was going to take a significant bite out of the eighty-thousand in expense money in addition to several large, behind-the-scenes money transfers, but the vehicle was impressive and the ID was Witness Protection quality. It would stand up to any background check I might run into, up to and including Homeland Security. Two hours later, I finally checked in at my hotel.

I used my encrypted virtual private network to check for messages. There were at least a dozen of them… all from Boris and all marked extremely urgent. I opened the first one and it said, “Stop the Jeep. Get out! Run!”

A quick check through the remaining messages showed them getting more and more urgent finally switching over to “W? Are you there? Are you still alive?”

I replied to the last message with “What the hell is going on?”

“Someone hacked your Jeep,” Boris replied. “I got a burst from my safety program that tipped me that someone was trying to take over control of your brakes. Then I got booted off the system as they took over everything. I was able to reconnect about an hour ago, for just an instant but then everything switched off… and I mean everything! When I heard the news stories, I thought I’d killed you.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked.

“Turn on your TV,” was the response.

I turned on the set in the room and the first local station that came up was doing a live feed from a familiar-looking run-down Motel Six. The anchorette was standing with the police cars and fire trucks in the background and saying, “It would appear that the owner had just gotten into the vehicle…” She looked at her watch. “… thirty-four minutes ago, when the explosion occurred. He was killed instantly by the force of the explosion which was powerful enough to blow windows out of most of the rooms in the motel, injuring twenty-three others.”

“We knew the identity I used to get Wyatt was probably compromised,” I typed, “and they probably had the Jeep on surveillance videos. Sounds like the bomb installer did something wrong.”

“No,” Boris said, “I did. I forced a reset to regain access to the Jeep’s computer. That must have over-ridden whatever it was that they were using as a detonator. I killed a man.”

“Are you sure what you did was an hour ago?” I asked.

“Of course,” Boris replied. Even texting back and forth, I could sense that he was insulted that I had questioned his time line.

“According to the TV, the explosion occurred only a little over one half-hour ago,” I said. “You didn’t do it. They probably knew you were connected in some fashion and shut it all down an hour ago to keep you from discovering anything when they planted the bomb.”

I paused for a long moment as I raced through the events of the afternoon in my mind. “I left the keys in the room safe,” I typed. “Those safes have a master key that overrides the combination. Someone was probably working with the motel cleaning staff boosting cars from unsuspecting tourists or construction workers in town to work on the stadium. They just picked the wrong damn car to boost.”

A new person entered the conversation. The identifier said “NAT:” so I assumed it was Natasha. She said, “They’ve identified the body from your Davenport IDs. They think you’re dead. We need to make the most of that.”

“Work behind the scenes,” I typed, “and make sure that the body is buried locally. After the dust settles we can reach out to the family so they know what happened. Nobody deserves to die like that.”

I found myself shaking in anger. Collateral damage sometimes happens. I try to avoid it if at all possible, but my anger wasn’t because of the accidental death of a bystander in my truck. For that matter, the dead man wasn’t exactly a bystander. He died in my place because he was trying to steal my truck. I didn’t like that it had happened, but in a way, it was a risk of his occupation. His death bothered me, but it was the blast itself that angered me. It was a much larger explosion than was needed just to kill me. Either they were very incompetent or they didn’t care who else got hurt. If they were able to override Boris and keep him shut out, they were not incompetent. So they just didn’t care. And that made me very, very angry with them.

“New video,” Boris typed and a video appeared on my screen. The video contained the familiar baseball-looking scoreboard at the bottom. It was still beneath Mistress Tenesha, Master Tyrone’s wife and a member of the inner circle, but her torment had changed. She was now strung up tightly in a naked ‘X’ in the middle of what looked like a nightmarish modern art sculpture intended to depict the earth or some other planet. The globe seemed to have been sliced into a dozen or so flat sections which, overall, formed a sphere around her body with at least a hundred jagged slices of metal aimed toward her like inverted mountain peaks pointing toward the middle of the giant globe.

The individual slices of the globe must have been charged with high voltage, because every few moments as the globe rotated, a blue arc would jump from one of the peaks to her skin. When that happened, the blue-white flash of light would reflect off the sheen of perspiration covering her black skin. From the tension in her body between strikes, it appeared that she thought she could keep from being shocked by holding her body totally tight and as far away from all of the peaks as possible.

Maybe that was how it worked. Maybe the voltage was always the same and whenever she relaxed slightly, her body would sag just enough to get close to one of the mountains. Then with a loud snapping “Zap!” a high-voltage arc would jump to whichever portion of her body had gotten too close. As she screamed and thrashed from the pain, additional zaps from different mountains would strike other parts of her body until she was finally able to hold still and hold all parts of her body a sufficient distance from the steel stalactites.

Maybe it worked that way… or maybe she was just supposed to think that was how it worked as she lewdly exposed her taut body trying vainly to stave off the pain of the miniature lightning strikes. Despite my rising anger, I had to admire whoever had designed this particular instrument of pain. I knew several Masters– and their pain slut slaves– who would love this terrible machine. The fact that the Monty brothers were posting a video of its use, however, meant that they were trying to increase pressure on the Shadow Council.

Below the video, the scoreboard now had three “innings” filled in. The W team had two runs listed– one for Master Dominic and one for little brother, Wyatt. The M team– the home team– the Monty Brothers– had one run, but that run was tallied in the third inning with a large number one that covered the zero in the W team’s score and even spilled out into the image area. In the remaining squares for the M team, the words, “Game Over!” were flashing.

Beneath the scoreboard was a white caption area which read, “W is dead. We have no hope.”

“Just got a message from Master Bouchard,” Boris typed. “He is still getting the texts intended for the Shadow Council. The ransom is now five million US for each hostage. They didn’t give a deadline, but they included the video of Mistress Tenesha and promised more like it as time passes.”

“OK,” I typed back. “I guess my next step is to get to LA and scope out The Blue Deuce.

***

If you leave Las Vegas at exactly 11:45 in the morning… and it is not a weekend or a holiday… and there are no accidents or other delays… you can get to LA in four hours. Just about any other time of the day, or if there is even the slightest delay, you will be on that god-awful stretch of road for six to ten hours. I lucked out and arrived at my hotel at 3:30, beating the GPS time by fifteen minutes. Hopefully that small victory was a portend of larger victories to come.

As I held out my keys to the valet, I said as firmly as I could, “This looks like a restored ‘69 Mustang. The body is… but inside it is a modern Tesla power system. Do you know what that means?”

He looked at me rather blankly and I continued, perhaps a little more harshly that I had intended, “That means it accelerates like an electric race car because it is one, and…” I dropped the keys into his waiting hand. “… it costs more than your life insurance policies are worth.” I gave him my best glare and finished with, “Now, do you understand?”

His eyes opened wide and he stammered out, “Yes, sir. I understand. I will dive it very carefully and I will park it in the VIP area with the wide parking places.”

I smiled at him and handed him two twenties. “I appreciate that,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

In a way I was sincere. I really didn’t want anything to happen to that car. Assuming I was alive after all this was over, I was hoping to do a transfer purchase and add it to my personal collection. An electric muscle car is practically unique and I didn’t want some punk smashing it against the back wall of a parking deck because he didn’t expect it to accelerate to 60 mph in less than twenty feet. But I wasn’t truly letting my personal wants and feelings interfere with the task at hand… at least not very much. I was mostly trying to make sure that the valet remembered me and remembered my face so he could describe the scary, powerful, rich man with the strange, expensive car to anyone who asked about me.

***

One of the advantages of working without a plan, or at least with a minimal plan, was that you can more easily take advantage of opportunities as they arise. The totality of my plan was to get to LA, find The Blue Deuce, and hopefully be led to one or more of the Monty brothers. The Deuce had a website which gave good directions, etc, but I needed more of an in if I were to find out anything rapidly. And then, right after I checked into my room, an opportunity presented itself like a sign burning in the night sky.

Actually, it was a sign burning in the night sky. I had chosen this hotel because of its proximity to the club, but I hadn’t expected to see a giant, revolving, blue deuce of clubs hanging in the night sky about three blocks from my hotel window. I waited a respectable period of time and walked back down to the desk.

“Pardon me,” I said as I approached the desk, “but I noticed a giant rotating sign from the balcony of my room that looks like a blue two of clubs. What is that?”

“Oh,” the desk clerk said, quickly sizing me up, “that is The Blue Deuce. It is a rather exclusive exotic club… if you are into that sort of thing.”

“You mean a strip club?” I replied.

“Well,” he answered, still speaking carefully, “it is more than that. It caters to men– and women– with exotic tastes… kinky… expensive… exotic tastes.”

“I’m both, sometimes,” I said, trying to sound more interested. “Is it private? Or could I drop by to check it out?”

“It’s not exactly private,” he answered, “but it helps if you have an invitation.”

I made a fifty appear in my left hand. “Could you arrange such an invitation?”

He took the bill and said, “Consider it done, Mister…”

“Guthrie,” I replied, “Harold Guthrie, owner of Guthrie Tool and Die of Manchester, Ohio. I’m going to be traveling here a lot over the next couple of years and I might find such a diversion… interesting.”

Two hours later, I was handing my keys to the valet at The Blue Deuce with a warning similar to the one I had given the young man at the hotel. Since I didn’t need him to remember me, all I did was make sure he realized that there was a powerful electric car under that classic Mustang exterior.

The Blue Deuce was definitely not run down or slip shod. There was no cover charge, per se, but I had to purchase a “visitor’s membership” for two hundred. I was told the visitor’s membership could be converted to a First Floor membership merely by paying for a year’s dues, but no dollar amount was mentioned.

Once the paperwork was complete, I was escorted to a table by a young woman dressed in a nicely-cut pair of dress pants and a white, ruffled shirt like you would see under a tuxedo jacket. “Your servant will be with you shortly,” she said pleasantly. “She will take care of all your needs.”

While I awaited my servant… I noted that she said “servant” not “server”… While I awaited my servant, I watched the display with took up most of the center of the room. There were six men and six women bound somewhat tightly in naked Xs on a big carousel that was slowly rotating. Three of the men and three of the women were bound facing inward, the others were bound facing out. A man in tight leather pants and what looked like paratrooper boots was riding inside the carousel, walking from person to person fondling them, or stroking them, or lightly whipping them with a soft, multi-strand whip. A similarly-dressed female was walking around the outside of the erotic merry-go-round doing the same thing. For me, the oiled breasts on the female were much more interesting to watch than the oiled chest and abs on the man, but there were some women– and men– present who probably had a different opinion.

At first I thought the twelve bound individuals were perhaps slaves being trained to hold back an orgasm, but then I heard one of the men cry out, “Please! Please! Make me cum! Make me cum! Take me all the way! Don’t torment me like this!”

A pleasant voice next to me said, “Master Mark and Mistress Angela are experts at this. They can hold all twelve of them right on the edge until just before closing time.” She gave me a cute smile and said, “Their cries around one am start getting rather pitiful.”

“You must be my servant,” I said, matching her smile. “What is your name?”

She was not wearing a name tag. In fact, she was not wearing anything. Her mousey brown hair had been cut short and hung close to her head. It and her eyebrows were intact, but below the neck she was completely bare, there wasn’t even a slave collar. Her breasts looked firm and natural, but her slit had that porn star, clean clam look that normally requires some help from a skilled plastic surgeon. I’m not sure when it became fashionable for women to not have labia protruding from their cunts, but someone must have said it looked sexier for the clam to be more than clean-shaven. It had to be pre-puberty smooth. I don’t mind some meat showing out of the taco, but I had to admit on this particular young woman the effect was sexy.

“My name is servant,” she said sweetly. “What may I bring you? We have a well-stocked bar as well as a kitchen capable of preparing various snacks.” She paused a moment and then asked, “Would you like a menu?”

“No,” I replied, “I’ll just have a bourbon on ice.” I paused as if thinking and then said, “Make that a double.”

I really wanted a dark ale, my drink of choice when I’m working, but I wasn’t W tonight. I was Harold Guthrie from Manchester, Ohio, and Harold Guthrie drank bourbon. For all I knew, the servants had been told to be on the lookout for anyone ordering a dark ale. Covers have been blown for less important details.

The servant returned a few moments later with the drink on a tray. She did not set it on the table, but instead bowed low in front of me in a curtsy-like movement and presented the tray to me.

After I took the drink, she remained in her difficult position and said, “If you need anything else, Sir, just press the servant call button on the table.”

I said, “Thank you,” and she gracefully rose to a standing position and sauntered away. Her pert ass bobbing as she walked away was at least as interesting as the floor show in the middle of the room.

I watched the edging demonstration for about a half hour before pushing the servant call button. “How may I help you, Master?” she said a moment later when she appeared at the table.

“I could use another bourbon on ice,” I replied. “And is there something more… exciting in the way of a floorshow?”

“There are two other displays,” she said with a smile. “I could arrange for a different table. Would you prefer to watch a display of orgasm control or perhaps some exquisite Kinbaku-bi.”

“I’m sure both are quality shows,” I answered, “and I’m sure that the Kinbaku Master will weave his ropes– and his slave– into a beautiful presentation. But I’m looking for something a little more… active.”

“It is Tuesday night,” she said matter-of-factly. “The better acts are on weekends… actually Thursday through Sunday night.” She then bowed slightly and said in a slightly sultry voice, “There are more active shows on the Second Floor… and the Third Floor, but those would require upgrading your membership.”

“How much would that cost?” I asked.

“A Second Floor membership is six thousand dollars per year. Third Floor is eight thousand,” she explained carefully. “First year is payable in advance.”

“Wow,” I said softly. “That should keep out the riffraff.”

“Precisely,” she replied, now bowing even lower. “Part of what you are buying is privacy.”

“How much privacy do I get for ten thousand?” I asked, lifting her head so I could look her in the eye.

Her composure almost broke for an instant, but then she said calmly, “That will get you full access to Second Floor and Third Floor, but Fourth Floor access also requires an invitation from a member.”

My guess on the dues must have been accurate. I decided to push my luck even further. “Master Wyatt said that wouldn’t be a problem,” I said firmly, “as long as I was willing to pay for two year’s membership up front.”

She grimaced. “He keeps telling people things like that,” she said sharply. “His brother will not be pleased.”

“Wyatt didn’t seem to be the sharpest tack in the box,” I said with a sigh, “but that Lady Anaconda was one of the best dancers I have ever seen. And Wyatt said that the Fourth Floor combined her looks and skill with the more exotic things I was looking for.”

“I will have to check with Master Walter,” she said and padded off into the darkness. A few minutes later, a dark figure pulled the other chair away from the table, spun it so its back was against the table, and sat down. Two even darker figures stood directly behind him.

“Where’d you meet Wyatt?” he asked gruffly, “… and when?”

“A week or so ago,” I answered, “at his club in Davenport, Iowa.” I shrugged slightly and continued, “It’s a real dive and he’s sort of a sleaze, but he had this really fabulous dancer at his Friday night, after-hours show. He joined me at my table while they were setting up some equipment for the second half of the show.” I laughed slightly, like I was remembering something funny, and said, “He was still wearing that ridiculous turban he used during Lady Anaconda’s act.” I paused. “Anyway, he told me that his brother ran a really classy club out here in LA called The Blue Deuce. Since I was coming out here on business, I remembered the name. I’m going to be coming out here a lot over the next two years, so I asked about full membership.”

“What were the names of his bodyguards?” he asked, looking me full in the face. I could see the family resemblance. I was most likely talking to Walter Monty.

“Names of the bodyguards?” I said slowly. “How in the hell would I know the names of his… Wait a minute! He called them Bill and Ted in his act. Was that their real names? They looked like ex-fighters or something. Real muscle heads.”

“Did you hear what happened to Wyatt?” he asked slowly, shaking his head while he spoke.

“Did the police close him down?” I replied. “He was a lot closer to the line than Daisy Dooks, and he wasn’t as strict about things that might be interpreted as prostitution. That sort of thing eventually gets you in trouble.”

“Something like that,” he replied. Then he let out a deep breath and said, “Sorry about the third degree. I’ve had to be real careful lately.”

He slid a small key card across the table to me. “You check out and your credit card has already accepted the twenty-thousand for a two-year membership. Use this card in the elevator after midnight. It will take you to the Fourth Floor. If you have a slave or a sub, they can get in as your guest as long as they are naked and on a leash… and you are willing to offer them up if needed.”

“Sounds like my kind of club,” I said with a smile and tipped my glass toward him. He said nothing else but rose and walked out of the room, closely followed by his bodyguards.

As I watched him disappear into the dimness, something was bothering me. He didn’t seem to fit in with the overall ambience of The Blue Deuce. The club was dimly lighted, but its design and decor were basically bright and open. Walter Monty was dressed in gray-black clothing and overall seemed much… darker than The Blue Deuce. Clubs usually reflect their owners. Perhaps the Deuce was a legit club owned by someone else that Master Walter pressured into fronting for his Fourth Floor.

I had a couple hours to wait, so I decided to check out the other two floors. The Second Floor was divided into three rooms. They were labeled “Bondage,” “Submission,” and “Discipline.” The Bondage room was what you would expect. There were a variety of bondage implements. One Saint Andrews Cross was occupied by a raven-haired beauty with obviously augmented tits. She was firmly strapped at the wrists, the elbows, above her breasts, across her stomach, around her thighs, and around her ankles. There was a short board sticking up from the intersection of the cross that just reached the top of her head and allowed a thick strap to go around her forehead and hold her head firmly in place. Every few moments she would struggle against the straps and then moan in passion. The juices were flowing from her cunt and dripping onto the floor.

About three feet in front of her, facing her, was a man with equally black hair who was strapped in an identical fashion to an identical cross. His prick sticking straight up in front of him signaled that he, too, was enjoying his captivity.

A male voice alongside me said, “The show gets really interesting after midnight. I will release Mister and Misses Smith and they will fuck each other silly right there on the floor between the crosses.” He laughed slightly. “They come in here four or five times a month.”

“To each his own,” I answered and walked over to the Submission room. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but wasn’t surprised by what was there. In one corner, a fully-dressed woman was seated in a chair with a naked man at her feet. He was kissing and licking her naked foot and caressing her other foot which sported a six-inch stiletto high heel.

“Show me your devotion,” she said roughly and the naked man turned so that he could lie face up at her feet. She used her naked foot to play with his cock and balls for a few moments and then brought the other foot up so that the stiletto heel was pressing against his ball sack. “How much do you love me?” she asked in a mocking tone and he spread his legs wide. She pressed down with the high heel so that the stiletto pinned his scrotum to the floor. When he cried out, she laughed and pressed harder.

There were three other people seated in the room. Two were women, one of whom had a naked man up under her full dress, nuzzling and licking at her cunt while she lightly tapped his ass with a long-handled black leather crop. The other woman was likewise involved, but it was a female who was buried in her twat and she was using a whisk flog as encouragement. The seated man was fully dressed in what looked like a formal jacket and pants. His zipper was open and his prick was in the mouth of a naked female. As she bobbed up and down on his stiff organ, he was saying in an almost mocking way, “Now, now, Karen, I know you can do a better job than that.”

The remaining Master in the room was standing against one wall fully dressed. A naked female was licking his shoes, including the soles. “If you do a good job,” he said sternly, “we will go to dinner.” Then his voice got very harsh, “If you do a bad job we will go to the punishment room.”

I took that as my cue to check out the Discipline room. For the most part, it was set up for play punishment. The whips and paddles hanging on the walls were all rather lightweight.

The room contained two upright Saint Andrew’s Crosses and one horizontal version. There were also two spanking benches and a medieval-looking rack. The only item occupied was the rack, which held an oriental woman. A man– perhaps her Master… or husband… or lover– had moved the gear mechanism until she was pulled very, very tight. He was now tormenting her with a feather. She would scream and beg as he lightly ran the feather under her arms or across her feet, but would moan and buck when he ran it across her dripping slit. I watched as he repeated those motions five or six times before speaking.

“When you can’t stand it anymore,” he said firmly, “and ask me to fuck you, I will take you right there on that terrible rack.” As I said, it was primarily play punishments.

The Third Floor was divided into four private rooms. There was a sign alongside each room that could be changed from “Available” to “In Use.” There was a second sign which could be turned to say “Restricted.” Supposedly my Fourth Floor membership allowed me to still enter, but the only room occupied did not have the Restricted sign in place so anyone with Third Floor access could enter to watch.

There were loud yelps coming from the room, so I decided to see what was happening. In the center of a totally-mirrored room, a young woman was bound face down over a very familiar-looking slatted barrel. It had been turned so that her feet were just off the ground. That meant that her head was basically at the top of the barrel staring at herself in the reflections in the mirrored walls. She probably had the best view of her naked ass of anyone in the room. Her ass was red from where it merged into her back to well into the top of her thighs. There were also a half-dozen or more dark purple caning stripes across one or both asscheeks.

A middle-aged man was standing next to her wielding a very thin cane which flexed back and forth as he whipped it rapidly in the air. He would stand alongside the crying woman whipping the cane back and forth until it sounded like a huge angry bee was buzzing around the room. Then when the young woman was least– or perhaps most– expecting it, he would suddenly make one of the motions just a little larger and the tip of the cane would sting the girl’s asscheeks or the full cane would slam across her entire ass. When he did that, she would scream loudly and thrash in her restraints, shaking the slatted barrel and moving it slightly on the floor.

After two or three minutes of this, he stopped to lightly massage her ass. When his fingers dipped slightly between her legs, she let out a deep, shuddering, moan. I had no doubt that if I stayed around long enough, I would be able to see her cum from the pain of the whipping. I had seen enough, however, and decided it was time to return to the hotel and share information with Boris.

***

The first thing Boris said when I told him that I had an elevator card to take me to the Fourth Floor was, “W, I swear to you, there is no Fourth Floor on that building.”

“What about a basement?” I asked.

“There is no basement under that building,” Boris replied. “The elevator pit is the only thing under the First Floor.”

“Boris, I have a question,” I typed.

“What?” he responded.

“The elevator is at the back of the building,” I said. “Why are there two doors on the elevator?”

“Son of a Bitch!” Boris typed a few moments later. “I just pulled up the original designs for the building. When the building was first built, it was supposed to be offices and there was a private parking area beneath it on the hillside. After it became The Blue Deuce, The lower land was sold off and a strip mall built there. The mall building covered over the old entrance and the current designs don’t show it.”

“What is in there now?” I asked.

“Several small shops,,” he replied. “But the floorplan of the stores filed with the city doesn’t match the layout of the building visible in the satellite view. There is a huge blank area in the back behind Millie’s Dress and Fabric Shop that butts right up against the hillside.”

“Who runs that?” I asked. “The fabric shop?”

“Checking,” Boris replied. After a moment he again gave me a “Son of a Bitch!”

“What?”

“The manager of Millie’s Dress and Fabric, and the owner of the strip mall, is Mrs Montgomery Walters. According to driver’s license and other records, she doesn’t exist.”

“I think we found The Fourth Floor,” I typed. “Now all we have to do if figure out how to get the hostages out and hopefully capture Walter Monty.”

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END OF CHAPTER

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