Honey Moon (11 page)

Great. Tomorrow I’m gonna die.
Her role was clear and easy-peasy. Just get on a shuttle and prevent poisons from filling lungs. She tucked one of the rings and the pill inside her mini-backpack, and braced for a long and hard ponder on how she wanted to look in that body bag.

Chapter Seven

Will I exit this dump covered in a sheet and riding a stretcher?

Four fifteen a.m. and Sam sat in a twenty-four-seven bar—a dive in the bowels of the city that he assumed was only frequented by masochists with a death wish or hardened males practiced at posturing the aura of gladiator to successfully repel predators.

Most of the dozen husky, heavily tattooed men sat on thick asses along the bar which was serviced by a mountain of a male with steroidal muscles that bulged and bunched beneath his leather outfit. Bearded, crusty, inked with formidable gang colors, all these guys screamed dangerous except for one. Ratty jeans studded with chains hung low on his hips, the younger man’s face dripped with metal and he clung to the beefy arm of a dude the size of a tank.

Bloody balls. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Sam shifted uneasily on his perch in the corner booth beside the entrance slash exit and clutched the beer he had yet to taste. No way had he expected the coordinates he’d been given would lead here. He couldn’t begin to imagine what the felon who’d picked this godforsaken hellhole would look like. To top it off, all he knew was his own alias was Ken, and the two-word clue he’d been given to spot his mark—think pink.

Pink. The color of chum in a place like this. He’d arrived a frantic ten minutes early, and couldn’t wait to run out that door. He kept his gaze glued to the table, but his peripheral vision showed each patron checking him out. It was a matter of time before someone got in his face.

He stiffened as a Neanderthal in the center of the group, his bald head sporting the ink of the retired American flag—red, white and blue wrapped around the back of his skull from ear to ear—turned to glower at him. The guy pushed to his feet and halted as the door swung open.

Every gaze spun to the entrance. Sam felt his jaw drop, along with the rest of the testosterone-laden group, as a young woman—a teenager with powdered, alabaster skin coloring—poised in the doorway. Long blonde hair, so shiny it appeared brittle and not a strand out of place, was pulled high into a ponytail that tumbled past her hips. Inhumanly bright, eggshell-blue eyes, lashes expertly painted too black, dominated her thin face.

Pouty, scarlet red lips parted, and the tip of her tongue subtly licked along them. Sam suspected every guy there, except maybe for the gays, had dicks stiffening as they imagined pushing and pounding between those lips either for as long as that delicate, porcelain appearance could take it or until skin and bones shattered and the back of her throat gave out.

He swallowed hard and joined the rest in lowering his gaze south.

Crap. Christ. Bullocks. The lady’s here for me.
Her dress—an honest-to-fuck ball gown—was hot pink with pastel pink ruffles. A pink sash cinched round her waist that was too slender to be in proportion to such a generous bust. Swinging from one hand, she clutched a replica of herself and his heartbeat thumped as he recognized it. It was a Caucasian doll, popular in the distant past until banned by women and girls worldwide for its insipid expression and unrealistic body.

Fear scuttled down his spine as she, the woman, held the doll up and its head turned—left then right, up and down, to scan the area. The bar had fallen silent, not even a murmur. All he could hear was the clatter of keys and clanking steel as men bounced to their feet, jaws slack and eyes wide. They gawked at the woman as she stepped inside, gliding like a pro on open-toed, pink and white stilettos with tufts of pink feathers along the sides.

The worry in his gut gave way to full panic as the men reacted as a group to unglue their feet. In a mass lunge, even the bartender ran for what Sam figured was the back exit. He’d crank his neck to confirm, but that’d require him to look away from the eerie toy held by the strange woman who approached him.

Neurons snapped and crackled, telling him to get his ass in gear and follow his brothers before a ten-inch doll took off like a rocket to start chomping at his face. But, idiot that he was, he didn’t move a muscle as the woman tottered closer and closer to the only fool left in the place.

“Shh,” she whispered and raised her doll-free hand. A slender finger—bright pink nail polish—halted beneath his chin and pushed until he closed his mouth.

“Know who I am?” She asked in a cooing, childish voice as she laid the doll down in the center of the table and slid into the booth across from him.

“Barbie?”
Jesus, did I have to croak like a schoolboy?

The woman laughed. “Good. And you’d be honored if I called you…?”

He cleared his throat. “Ken?” He didn’t know where to look, at overflowing breasts or the doll in the process of getting to its feet to stand on the table by itself. The gaze from two pair of huge blue eyes began devouring him. His brow furrowed as the woman mirrored the doll raising its wrist phone to click a picture of his face. “Er… That thing isn’t going to go for my throat, is it?”

The woman’s painted face went blank. “Do as I say or you’ll pray my pet aims that high. Understand?” Her soft voice had hardened, that false soprano gone.

His balls tingled. “Yes, ma’am.” He fought to stay in his seat as the doll perched its hands on its hips and the head tipped back and rotated full circle. “What—”

“Shut up and listen,” the woman snapped. “Security cams and vid-feed will only be blocked for five. Give me your arm.”

He shifted to the side, avoiding the doll as he slapped his arm across the table.

“Just hold still.” The woman laid her wrist phone over his stolen one, and surprise gave way to hopeless resignation. He’d paid what had to be the most conspicuous criminal in the world to download these programs that’d link a beaten and bound man’s identification to Sam’s genetic profile. All threads thought of, including pics changed on any site the pilot had ever used with one of Sam. Costly yet simplistic to erase a man’s existence and replace him with someone else. The doll poised, hands on tiny hips, head slowly rotating as her freaky gaze continued to scan the empty bar.

Speaking of the mass exodus. “Why’d everyone run like that?”

The woman’s eyes couldn’t get any larger. “You’re a cutie, aren’t you, Kenny-boy?” She leaned closer. “All citizens of the United Worlds understand it’s wrong, deadly wrong, to tamper with security. Any bad boy who hasn’t lived under a rock in the past few months knows if they’re recorded in the presence of a”—she winked—“tool that’s six to ten inches long, has thin to thick girth, and a pretty head that can screw with cams—it’s an automatic life sentence.”

She separated their wrist phones. Her slender fingers stroked along his arm before gesturing at the camera above the mirror behind the bar.

His breath caught as the implication of what she said sank in. Even if he, the established pilot of a shuttle, left now, raced to dodge the security rushing to their locale as this strange creature calmly sat licking her lips and seductively grinning at him, he’d be nailed along with the rest of the poor sods who’d left full drinks all along the bar. There’d be no chance to get on that shuttle—his life thrown away for nothing.

He jerked his arm up and glanced at the screen on his wrist phone. The transaction was completed. Thirty grand had left his account for another’s. “Great. Thanks. But I hadn’t expected my face over the Net this evening. Tomorrow, maybe.” Rage reared, bile splashing up into his throat. Surely he had a minute or two left. Plenty of time to smash a doll and strangle a woman.

Not a killer, are you, asshole? Get the fuck out of here
. He shoved to his feet and froze as he saw the doll had moved. It now stood in front of him.

“Have some trust, sweetheart.” The woman stood as well, stepping out of the booth. “It’s not your
actual
face that’ll surf the cyber-wave.” She came round to take his arm as the doll rose from the level of his waist up into the air to halt inches from his face. The doll’s eyes shuttered open and closed. As it floated back down, the woman released Sam and grabbed it.

“For a dick pretending to be an androgynous Ken, you did terrible.” The woman smiled, glancing at his crotch. “If you’d show off that package I think you have, they’ll never believe the images now ingrained into time-sensitive frames of those security cams.”

He gulped. “Huh? I’m not being recorded? The image of a toy is?”

She giggled. “Gosh, you’re cute. I love it when a man isn’t a total dummy.” The woman hurried as fast as those heels would allow toward the door. “Nice doing business with you. Best run before the powers-that-be wake up to the fact you’re not the doll you appear to be, and they come hunting a hot, manly man about to power up a rocket for the moon.” She paused to toss him a wink and eyeballed his crotch again. “If I didn’t swing the other way, I’d hop on that stick. You seem like a genuinely nice guy. Good luck.”

He cocked his head, gaze on her swaying butt as she exited, and shuddered. Thank Christ for lesbians. He had no desire to get any closer than he already had to a female genetically enhanced to look like that. Not while he had a true beauty of a pretend-hooker to fantasize about.

Bloody balls, asshole. Hurry after that damn doll before you’re in prison surrounded by guys.

He went for the full-out run and burst out of the door. He continued running past unlit, spaced poles with cams attached to them that may or may not work, toward a small group of people. He shot a glance over his shoulder, and relief filled his lungs as he saw nothing on his heels. One block then two, and he slowed to close in on five guys.

“Wait up,” he called out. “That you, Bruce?”

The men stopped.

“Oh. Sorry. Thought I knew you.” He kept walking.

“Yo. Man—not a good place to stroll alone,” one of them said. “Most the cams here look like they’re out.”

Sam knew that didn’t mean security wouldn’t swarm the area shortly. It’d just be after his wrist phone was gone and the blood from his slit throat had cooled.

“Spot us a C and we’ll walk you to the train,” called out another.

A measly hundred dollars?
Hell, yeah.
He halted. “How far?”

“Three blocks.”

Sam pushed up his sleeve, exposing the stolen wrist phone he wore. He swallowed hard as a stranger’s ID—Roger Moore, the pilot whom he’d bashed unconscious, lit the corner of the screen. He made sure his face remained expressionless and tapped his bank code in. “That’d be great.” He gestured the first man closer. He’d have paid ten times that without blinking an eye.

A hurried and awkward walk later, Sam mumbled, “Thanks,” to the group surrounding him and slunk ahead for the westbound train. The adrenaline rush of surviving Miss Pink had worn off, leaving his limbs heavy and sluggish. He had one more stop before he could head back and catch a couple of hours of sleep. Just his luck, a glance on the Net showed him there was a Walled-Market in the area. Open twenty-four-seven, and par for the course, the mega-outlet store filled with crap sweltering under rows of cheap, old-fashioned fluorescent lighting that made him want to gouge his eyes out, was in the opposite direction. He hurried.

No surprise, but the store was almost empty of items and customers. A big ‘Going Out of Business’ sign hung in the front window. No one with scruples concerning the planet ever went here. Most of the world shopped online, and he was amazed these last dinosaurs clung on as long as they had.

It didn’t take long to comb through the disheveled racks. He settled on a small drill, hammer and an ice pick. Despite only two other men in the place, the damn automated checkout took forever to scan his wrist phone. He’d have been paranoid, but the guy in the exit grid alongside him was pounding his fist on the scanner and swearing. He finally unclenched his jaws when he sat on the train again, no one paying any attention to him.

Back at his lair, he got right to it. Sam wasn’t inept with mechanical skills, but the ice pick was worthless, the hammerhead snapped off and it took an arm-numbing five minutes of drilling and a destroyed drill bit before the tiny case popped open.

The air in his lungs froze. Alongside clips of ammo, one legal-for-pilots handgun and coiled tripwire that’d slice a throat, lay five tiny pieces of what he assumed could be screwed together into a micro, easily concealed in one hand assault weapon that included a laser point scope for precision firing.

A search online showed him comparable weapons. All highly illegal worldwide, for police as well as civilians—mandatory death penalty without appeal if fired and life sentence if caught with even one of the parts. The weapon could be used within a closed aircraft without affecting stability or compromising the hull integrity, unless fired repeatedly into it. Minus the easily attachable scope, the .9 kilogram monster could fit in a child’s palm. The Net told him the device, labeled The Devil’s Dick or a DD, was capable of firing a hundred pea-sized bullets per clip. Each expanded upon impact to ensure maximum damage to organic structures and certain death if but one pea penetrated major organs.

He swallowed hard, pocketed the handgun able to fire a measly thirty rounds per clip of non-exploding ammo and shoved the case beneath a floorboard inside the closet. A moment later he was stripped down in the shower, the hottest water he could manage drilling on his skin trying—and losing—to cease the thoughts of the harm such a weapon could do to a man within a rocket hurtling through space.

Chapter Eight

Jenna stood in the shower, trembling. Hot water had pounded on her back for some time now, but she still couldn’t stop shaking. She’d done the unthinkable and had to pull herself together in order to deal with the buzz soon to come at her door.