Welcome readers. This is another story featuring Detective Penelope Bishop who we have met before in my stories: Cop Town Girl, Sleeping Beauties, A Dish Best Served Cold and All The Pretty Girls. Penelope is joined by Jennifer Jones, the heroine of my story Click Bait. These two gorgeous, hard-headed, trans-women are working on different sides of the law trying to solve a terrible crime and a criminal conspiracy. I’m sure they are going to have their ups and downs.

Michele Nylons

January 2022

Penelope Bishop could smell the shipping container long before she and Silvia Bickle got anywhere near it. The container sat in a desert arroyo beside a gravel road. It was banged up and looked like it had toppled off a truck and had just been abandoned.

“Two vaqueros found it and the rancher called it in. Nobody has opened it and you can guess why,” Penelope said to Silvia as they approached the container with handkerchiefs covering their mouths and noses.

Even though Penelope had doused her kerchief with her favourite Dior Poison perfume it couldn’t stop the stench of decomposing flesh from invading her olfactory senses. It smelled sickly sweet and rancid at the same time. Cloying was a word that came to mind.

“You know that it’s not going to be cattle carcasses inside that can don’t you?” Silvia said through her mouth covering.

“Why haven’t they just declared it a bio hazard and sent in a hazmat team?”

“Because somebody suspects that a crime had been committed. That is not a refrigerated container and you can guess as well I can what we’re going to find. The good news is that if we find what I suspect we are going to find, we can declare it a crime scene and hand it over to the FBI and get the fuck out of Dodge,” Penelope replied.

“You’re mixing your metaphors or whatever,” Silvia said as they stopped next to container.

“Technically it’s a cognitive glitch but that doesn’t matter; look at that,” Penelope pointed to a 36-by-24-inch door cut in the side of the container sealed with a padlock.

Penelope was dressed in black leggings, boots, a flannel shirt, fur-lined denim coat and a Stetson. Her sidearm was holstered on her hip and she carried a black ripstop nylon tool bag. Silvia was dressed in jeans, boots a Carhartt coat and a watch-cap. Her firearm was in a shoulder rig.

It was cold in the desert in January this early in the morning.

Both women usually wore skirt-suits or pantsuits to work because they worked for the City Balwyn Police Department’s Special task force operating mostly around the city and suburbs of Balwyn. Balwyn’s Chief of Detectives Gary Rasmussen had tried to pass the shipping container case onto the Texas Rangers or the Department of Public Safety CID but no one wanted to touch it until it was confirmed that a crime had actually been committed and as the container had been dumped on the very edge of Balwyn PD’s jurisdiction, Penelope and Silvia and been handed the shit sandwich.

Penelope took a camera from the tool bag and took pictures of the locked doors on the front of the container and the door cut in the side. Typically shipping containers are fitted with lock boxes designed to tightly wrap the padlock. This minimises access from bolt cutters to reduce the risk of theft and break-ins. Lock boxes are specially made with thick gauge solid steel, making them extremely strong and tamper proof.

This container had no such device. It was fitted with two ordinary looking heavy-duty padlocks fitted to the steel bars that incorporated a cam-lock system to keep doors fastened shut. The cam-locks tightly secured the doors in place. Each of the two doors had two handles that allowed one person to open the doors as well as lock them in place. Of course it was impossible for anyone inside the container to open the doors.

If there was anyone inside the container they had no way of getting out because the small door cut into the side of the container was also padlocked

Penelope struggled with the bolt cutters but eventually cut off the padlocks fitted to the front doors.

“Ready,” she signalled to Silvia.

Silvia nodded. Both women had removed their kerchiefs from their faces and the stench was almost overpowering.

“One, two, three!” Penelope called and the women swung off the steel bars and worked the cam-locks to open the doors.

They pulled the doors open wide and stood in front of the container peering into the shadows. Penelope took a flashlight from the tool bag and trained it inside the container.

“My god!” Sylvia sobbed.

Penelope stood there speechless, quietly counting the number of bodies lying on top of the ratty suitcases and plastic bags full of belongings. There were sixteen of them.

Sixteen young women.

Despite the early onset of decomposition Penelope could see that the women were all young and all white and all dead.

Penelope went back to the 4WD cruiser they had commandeered from the motor pool and fired up the satellite phone and got a secure direct line to Gary Rasmussen and told him what they had found.

“Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he slammed his fist on the desk.

“You and Bickle secure the scene. I’m passing this on to the DPS, the FBI, or anyone but us. We are not equipped to deal with this shit!” Gary sighed.

“I’ll get back to you soon. Don’t touch anything, leave it to the Staties or the Feds,” Gary sniped.

“I’m a long time out of academy Gary. I know what the fuck to do,” Penelope sniped right back and hung up.

Silvia was standing in front to the can, her hands by her side, the stench forgotten. Tears streamed down her face. Penelope walked up beside her and put her arm around her friend and they both cried silently and prayed for the souls of the sixteen dead girls.

*****

Three days later Penelope Bishop entered the conference room at Balwyn Police Plaza. She was wearing a charcoal skirt-suit with a crisp white blouse and heels. Despite her signature heavy makeup she looked strained. Her weight had fluctuated over the years and she had battled with the booze on and off but she had been sober for a while now. She was far from skinny but she carried her weight well and was mostly lean except for her bosom and buttocks, both of which had had work done on them over the years. She wore her hair down and despite having ticked over forty years of age she still turned heads with her long legs, blonde hair and big green eyes.

Sitting at the head of the conference table was Gary Rasmussen and arranged around the table were four other men. Standing behind one of the men was a young woman. The woman piqued Penelope’s interest because she looked just like Penelope did when she was younger but her build was diminutive.

The woman appeared to be mid-twenties with striking glacial-green eyes and coiffed, cherry-red hair with copper highlights. She stood just about five feet tall and weighed around ninety pounds with a school-girl body shape with narrow shoulders and hips. She was dressed in a black power suit, heels, and nylons and had killer legs.

The man who was seated at the table behind whom she was standing was just as interesting.

He had remarkable blue eyes set in dark sockets, a long elegant nose, chiselled cheekbones and a narrow chin. His skin was dark and tanned and he sported a well-manicured black beard; his hair was long, thick, black and lustrous. His frame was well muscled. Penelope could smell his cologne from across the room. It was exotic and pungent; his full lips were parted in a smile that displayed perfectly white teeth. Every part of his exposed skin except for his face was heavily tattooed.

The man seemed vaguely familiar.

Penelope knew the man sitting beside the tattooed man from the FBI Field Office in Austin. Special Agent Tim Morrow had replaced Special Agent Bradley Wilson who had been Penelope’s second husband. Tim wasn’t as smart as Bradley but he was a good officer of the law. Sitting beside Tim was another big man in a suit who looked trim and muscled with a flat-top haircut and trimmed moustache that just screamed law enforcement and finally beside him was an older man with trimmed grey hair, wearing expensive reading glasses and a three-thousand dollar suit. He exuded authority.

Penelope could almost taste the testosterone in the room.

It was obvious that the big man with the grey hair was in charge despite Gary Rasmussen sitting at the head of the table inside his own Police Department building.

“Take a seat Lieutenant Bishop so we can get started. Around the room please,” the grey haired man kicked things off.

Gary Rasmussen introduced himself followed by Penelope, then Tim Morrow. Flat-top introduced himself as Special Agent Dan Murphy of the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division. The tattooed man and the woman standing behind him said nothing.

“I’m Assistant Director Mike McConnell and sitting beside me is Mister Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich,” the grey-haired suit introduced himself.

“You’ve got to be shitting me! What the fuck is he doing here?” Dan Murphy pushed back his chair.

Tim Morrow bristled but remained silent and Gary Rasmussen just shook his head.

“I know… I know but strange times calls for strange bedfellows,” Mike McConnell made a palm-down calming gesture.

“First off some facts please Special Agent Morrow,” Mike turned to Tim who opened a thick file in front of him.

“The container opened by Lieutenant Bishop out in desert to the north of here began its journey in La Havre France and was unloaded in Altamira, a port city on the Gulf of Mexico. Official records then become a little hazy but we know that the truck carrying the can crossed the border into Brownsville Texas at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station Los Indios Free Trade Bridge,” Tim began.

“Tracking on the can was lost until it was found abandoned beside a dirt road by the two hired vaqueros looking for strays from a nearby ranch. The unnamed dirt road winds through the Chihuahuan Desert and joins Route 87 south east of San Angelo which is where we suspect the truck would have continued its journey using the national highway system.”

“We have been unable to determine the container's final destination as the shipping records have been tampered with. What we do know is that whoever is behind this operation is organised and professional,” Tim read from his folder.

“Not organised and professional enough to look after the sixteen young women trapped in the container,” Penelope interjected bitterly.

Mike McConnell raised his eyebrows at Bishop and it was enough to silence her.

“Go on Morrow,” he said.

“We haven’t identified all of the young women found in the container. Of the few we have identified, their ages range from eighteen to twenty five. They all originated in the Slavic States. Interpol has helped out. It appears that they were promised domestic work here in the US provided they were willing to enter as illegals. There is no doubt that once they were in the can that they were being trafficked as sex workers,” Tim continued.

“Several of the girls displayed evidence of sexual assault trauma and their passports and whatever documentation they might have had with them must have been confiscated by the traffickers as it wasn’t found at the scene.”

“The container was shipped on the MV Arno Starlight, registered in Majuro; which means nothing because The Republic of the Marshall Islands is just a flag of convenience. The shipping company claims the can was legitimate cargo and they have the paperwork to prove it. The inventory is listed at antique furniture.”

“The voyage took twenty five days and the can was better equipped than many of the earlier soft-top containers used by people smuggles, with electric lights and fans hooked to car batteries as well as preserved produce, bottled water, canned juice and four 30-gallon waste receptacles.”

“The 36-by-24-inch door that was cut into the side of the container and then hinged on the inside was designed to allow access and egress during the voyage and as a means of escape if necessary. The cracks were concealed with an epoxy-type substance and the door was painted to match the container’s exterior. Four deckhands on the MV Arno Starlight found the access panel and helped themselves to the girls inside and put the lock on the door. The Mexican Federal Police currently has the deckhands incarcerated pending charges once their DNA is matched to girls’ bodies,” Tim Morrow closed his file.

The room was silent for beat.

“How did they breathe?” Penelope asked.

“In fact, since the metal boxes aren’t air-tight, enough air seeps in through the doors to allow people inside to breathe, though the stench from human waste, spoiling food and unwashed bodies in almost-unbearably tight quarters is by all accounts overwhelming,” Tim replied.

“No shit! Well how did they die?” Penelope continued.

“It looks like the girls arrived safely in the USA, except for having to endure what they endured during the voyage of course. What happened next was simply tragic. It looks like the can simply fell off the truck on the shitty road and rolled down into the arroyo. Shipping containers are secured to a truck using four ISO twistlocks located one on each corner. The driver locks the can to the truck or trailer's flat deck or chassis. In this case the truck was likely not fitted with the twistlock system or the driver didn’t lock them,” Tim explained.

“Some of the girls died as a result of the impact and the rest died of exposure. The container was an oven during the day and a freezer at night,” Tim shook his head.

“You mean the people smugglers just left them there! They made no attempt to free the women trapped inside!” Penelope was incredulous.

“Ok that’s enough background,” Mike McConnell interjected.

“The United States Attorney General has directed that this case is to be handled by a multi-agency task force. Special Agent Tim Morrow from the FBI, Special Agent Dan Murphy from the Texas DPS CID and your team from the City of Balwyn Police Department’s Special Task Force,” Mike pointed at Gary Rasmussen.

“Wait? Why are we involved? Surely the Feds and the Staties will take it from here?” Penelope interjected again and Gary gave her a withering look.

“On the contrary Lieutenant Bishop. The AG had read all about your illustrious feats of law enforcement and daring do and has appointed you to lead this investigation,” Mike said smarmily.

“He likes the idea of a Federal task force being led by local law enforcement,” Mike smiled.

“The people like to see small Government taking the lead over big Government; it’s an election year,” the smile became a grin.

Penelope knew that she and Gary were being handed a shit sandwich despite it being coated with honey. If the investigation turned to shit Balwyn PD would carry the can. If the investigation was successful it was guaranteed that the Feds and Staties would take the glory.

“Ok. Happy with that I suppose but I still wanna know what that murdering fuck is doing here?” Dan Murphy pointed an accusing finger at Dmitriy Yakovich.

“As I said: strange times calls for strange bedfellows. As most of you know Mister Yakovich has indictments pending in the Federal Courts for people smuggling and other RICO predicates. However these indictments have yet to be proved in a court of law and we are long way from doing so. As an act of contrition Mister Yakovich has offered his services to assist with the investigation. Without of course admitting to any of the allegations, Mister Yakovich admits that some of his business partners may have extensive knowledge of how people traffickers work,” the sourness in Mike McConnell’s voice was evident.

“I personally do not engage in such sordid activities. But if I did… and I emphasise… IF I did, it would not be carried out in such barbaric ways,” Dmitriy Yakovich said quietly.

“Let’s call Mister Yakovich’s support to the Task Force… a Bureau Service shall we?” Mike said bitterly.

“If I’m heading up this task force I don’t want some Russian Mafia goon working with me,” Penelope spat.

“On the contrary Lieutenant Bishop, I’m Ukrainian by birth but an American citizen and I will not be working with you. I am loaning you my most important asset. My personal assistant and most trusted business confidante, Ms Jennifer Jones,” Dmitriy reached behind and patted Jennifer’s hand which rested on the back of his chair.

Penelope looked nonplussed.

“Meeting adjourned ladies and gentlemen. I’ll leave it to Gary to get the task force up and running and be aware that you have the full might and resources of Attorney General’s office for this task. Don’t fuck it up!” Mike McConnell stood and shook hands with everyone in the room except for Dmitriy Yakovich who had taken Jennifer Jones aside and was talking earnestly to her in the corner of the room away from everybody else.

Those who did not need to be there left the room and Penelope went and sat next to Tim Morrow to look at his case file when Dmitriy Yakovich walked past and patted Penelope briefly on the shoulder.

“Give my best to Jaylene Foster,” he whispered in her ear and left the room.

Jaylene Foster was Penelope’s lover and there was no reason for her to know Dmitriy; but he obviously knew about Jaylene. He was just letting Penelope know how far his tentacles reached.

Penelope shivered and turned her eyes to the diminutive but striking Jennifer Jones who was standing against the wall openly appraising Penelope. Penelope stood up from the table.

“How can you work for that monster?” Penelope sidled up to Jennifer and the women evaluated each other carefully.

“You might say he saved my life. He certainly saved me from a fate worse than death, as they say… but it’s not. Nothing is worse than death,” Jennifer replied emotionlessly.

“You’re still a baby; what would you know about death?” Penelope countered.

“You’d be surprised,” Jennifer offered a grin that could be interpreted as evil.

“So what qualifies you to join my task force?” Penelope got to the point.

“I have a law degree and worked as a judicial clerk for a Federal judge whilst earning my master's degree and passing the bar exam. I was two weeks away from completing my training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Because of circumstances that I’m not going to explain right now I didn’t complete my training, but I did work undercover,” Jennifer replied.

“The undercover work involved exposing a sex trafficking ring. My investigation was not successful but I learned a lot,” Jennifer paused to inspect a fingernail.

“Why didn’t you go back to the FBI academy and complete your training?” Penelope asked the obvious question.

“Yes, well, as I said, I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that I have worked for Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich as his personal assistant for three years and whilst I generally don’t get involved in day to day mundane tasks in the trenches so speak, I have a working knowledge of how those trenches operate,” Jennifer said.

“So you know how human trafficking works because your boss is involved in it,” Penelope replied cattily.

“He sat right here at this table and stated that he is not personally involved but he knows people who are,” Jennifer ignored the innuendo.

“And you don’t get involved in his dirty work,” Penelope smiled sarcastically.

“I didn’t say that. I said I seldom get involved personally. But if I do, the dirty work gets done… properly… and efficiently,” Jennifer returned the smile.

“I hope you have a permit for that weapon,” Penelope nodded at the very slight bulge in Jennifer’s jacket where she carried a Walther PPS M2 9mm in a shoulder rig.

The operating mechanism of the Walther was the same as the Glock that Jennifer had been issued at Quantico with some notable advantages: it was a 9mm and the FBI had recently returned to using this ammo. It was a single-stack 9mm that is only one inch thick which made it easier to conceal on Jennifer’s petite feminine body.

A spare six round mag was easy to conceal in a deep pocket or a holster if needed and she could carry an eight round magazine in her purse and use it to provide additional length to the grip plus additional firepower for tactical situations.

“Oh Lieutenant Benson, really? Texas has some of laxest handgun laws in the US. But yes, I have conceal and carry permits for every state that issues them,” Jennifer patted Penelope on the shoulder and Penelope recoiled.

“I don’t know the specifics of the deal that tattooed freak made with the DOJ but don’t think we’re going to be confidants or colleagues. This isn’t high school, just because we both have green eyes doesn’t mean we’re going to be girlfriends,” Penelope turned her back to walk away.

“Yes we both have green eyes. We both have dicks too,” Jennifer quipped.

Penelope spun on her heels and drilled Jennifer with her eyes.

“You provoking me Ms Jones?” Penelope stared down at the pretty little woman.

“On the contrary Penelope; I’m merely stating the truth,” Jennifer smiled up at the woman towering over her and then walked away.

******

“How did it go my precious?” Dmitriy was lazing on the sofa in the penthouse suite of the Balwyn Hilton Hotel.

He was freshly showered and naked except for a white silk robe and Jennifer could smell his body lotion and cologne. Despite the long day Jennifer felt her loins stir.

Jennifer paused at a lowboy and took off her weapon and holster rig and put down her handbag.

“Come sit beside me and tell about your day,” Dmitriy patted the space beside him on the sofa.

“Let me shower first,” Jennifer came over and stood behind the sofa and rubbed his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.

“You know I sometimes like it when you’re dirty,” Dmitriy smiled and physically lifted Jennifer over the sofa and plonked her down beside him.

He was a powerful man and Jennifer liked it when he sometimes threw her around. Most of the time their lovemaking was slow, kind and considerate but sometimes it was wild, abandoned and dangerous.

Dmitriy cuddled Jennifer and kissed her neck. She turned sideways so he could kiss her mouth.

Dmitriy’s hand slipped inside her blouse and he undid enough buttons so that he could free her perky breasts from the cups of her brassiere. Her nipples hardened to his touch and Jennifer gasped and wriggled her tongue in his mouth.

He smelled of expensive cologne and tasted of mouthwash which only served to remind Jennifer that she hadn't bathed since her morning shower and was not douched.

“I’d really like to shower and prepare myself,” Jennifer whispered in Dmitriy’s ear and nuzzled his earlobe.

“I’d really like to fuck you right now then you may do whatever you want until I need you again,” Dmitriy whispered in Jennifer’s ear and nipped her earlobe making Jennifer gasp.

There was no arguing with Dmitriy when he was in this mood and Jennifer resigned herself to her fate. That said, her cock had sprung free and was tenting her panties.

Dmitriy picked Jennifer up like she weighed nothing and plonked her down in his lap facing him. He kissed her and tweaked her nipples and she reached into Dmitriy’s robe and raked her nails down his hairy chest and pinched his nipples. Dmitriy bit Jennifer’s lips as his hand snaked under her skirt and found her erect and leaking precum into her silky nylon panties. He grabbed her cock and squeezed it hard.

Jennifer responded accordingly. She could feel Dmitriy’s cock prodding at her ass through his robe and she reached down and grasped it and began to stroke it. She was rewarded with an effusion of pre-ejaculate which she used to lubricate his cock as she fiercely kneaded the huge veiny appendage.

Dmitriy reached inside Jennifer's panties and took a handful of her pantyhose in his grasp and ripped them open, exposing her puckered bud. Jennifer wished that there was some form of lubricant available other than Dimity's precum and spit but he was impatient and he wanted what he wanted.

He spit on his hand and wet his massive organ as best he could and then he lifted Jennifer up out of his lap and lowered her down on his manhood, easing aside the gusset of panties.

Jennifer stifled a scream as Dmitriy’s glans stretched her sphincter.

Dmitriy held her there, letting Jennifer get used to the girth of his cock as it pierced her anus. He kissed her hard and she reciprocated and put her hands around his neck so that she had a little control as Dmitriy forced her down, impaling her on his throbbing cock.

The pain was almost unbearable but at the same time it was exquisite. Dmitriy had taught Jennifer that pleasure and pain are often closely linked, especially in the boudoir.

Jennifer groaned but she kissed Dmitriy harder, biting his lip, her nails raked his back as he drove his cock deep into her unclean anus.

Not that it mattered to Dmitriy. He enjoyed fucking Jennifer this way. She had entered his suite exuding power and control, a beautiful young woman with flaming red hair, dressed in a power-suit and Christian Louboutin heels. Full of confidence and vigour and now he had ripped open her blouse and her nylons, smeared her makeup over her face and had her impaled on his massive organ and had her begging for him to stop whilst at the same time she encouraged him.

Dmitriy held Jennifer by the hips and fucked her hard, rising his ass up off the couch to ensure every sinew of his mighty cock filled her anus. Jennifer put her knees on both sides of Dmitriy’s thighs and hung onto him, scratching, biting, begging him to stop; begging him not to.

Her natural excretions were providing sufficient lubrication so that Dmitriy’s cock deep inside her was no longer intolerable. She began to meet his thrusts, driving her crotch down as he drove his upward.

She kissed him again, driving her tongue into his mouth and he returned her kisses. He ripped off her suit jacket and tore open her blouse and his fingers cupped her globes and tweaked her nipples. Jennifer struggled out of her tattered blouse and ripped off her bra and guided Dmitriy’s face to her bosom.

He lapped at her breasts with his tongue and then used his lips and teeth; alternatively biting her nipples and then suckling them. The pleasure and pain radiating from them joined with the deep ripples of pleasure that Dmitriy was invoking from her tight anus. Her sphincter was stretched wide and his glands pounded on her prostate.

Jennifer’s cock was rampant and her panties were saturated with pre-ejaculate.

Dmitriy let go of Jennifer’s waist and pushed her down on his rampant cock. He reached into her panties and grabbed her throbbing organ and squeezed it as he deposited his seed deep in her bowels.

Jennifer ejaculated. Ropes of hot semen splashed on her skirt, on Dmitriy’s chest and everywhere else as her ass clenched tight around his throbbing monster cock and her anus filled with his seed. A mixture of Dmitriy’s semen and Jennifer’s excreta dribbled from her sphincter and fouled her panties and pantyhose.

This excited Dmitriy further and he threw Jennifer down on the couch and fucked her harder until she nearly lost conscience. Dmitriy came again, blasting another load of hot cum deep inside his pretty transgender assistant. He stroked and squeezed Jennifer’s penis until she felt raw and begged him to stop.

She lay underneath him, her legs over his shoulders, her back arched, his face hovering over hers, staring into her icy-green eyes and was rewarded with what he wanted to see. Her compliance was replaced by defiance and her eyes turned cold and she began to fight him off.

Dmitriy capitulated and climbed off Jennifer. He pulled her into his lap and put his arms around her and cuddled her and told her how much he loved her. He stroked her hair and softly kissed her cheeks then her bruised lips. Jennifer let him cosset her and she returned his soft kisses and caresses.

After a while she disentangled herself from his embrace and went into the kitchen and came back with an oversize black plastic garbage bag. She stripped and used her tattered blouse to clean her ass then she put everything she had been wearing except for her high heels into the garbage bag and Dmitriy gave her his soiled robe which went into the bag too. She sealed the bag and dropped it on the kitchen floor for the maid to take away the next day.

Both naked, they walked hand in hand to the shower where they lathered up each other’s bodies and excited each other again.

But this time the sex was tender and loving. Dmitriy had satiated his need for dominance.

Jennifer understood Dmitriy’s need but at the same time she felt a little disgusted with herself every time he did it like that. It wasn't that often but it was often enough for her to wonder how deep Dmitriy’s love for her really ran.

*****

The next morning Jennifer arrived at Balwyn PD and was issued with a temporary pass and signed into the building. She found her way to the Special Task Force office and found Gary Rasmussen, Dan Murphy, Tim Morrow and a young woman around her age all sitting at desks sipping coffee while Penelope Bishop set up her crime wall and addressed the audience as she did so.

Everyone was wearing dark suits except for the young woman that Jennifer didn’t know. Their suits were all variations of charcoal and navy-blue, Penelope and Jennifer both wore skirts and the men would argue later which of them wore the shortest.

Gary welcomed Jennifer curtly.

“You know everyone else; that’s Alice Leasingham assigned to the special task force from CSI,” Gary indicated the curly faired, freckle-faced young woman wearing skinny-jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and Nikes.

“Where’s your Armani, Louboutin's and big Glock on your hip,” Jennifer quipped.

“Don’t believe that bullshit you see on TV. I don’t wear Armani or Prada nor can I solve a case by putting a hair sample into a machine that will give you the perpetrator’s name, current whereabouts and shoe size,” Alice smiled back.

Jennifer liked her already.

Gary Rasmussen stood out front and addressed the audience.

“Steve Edwards and Silvia Bickle are down in Austin giving evidence in a prolonged murder trial so what you see here is the task force. Penelope is in charge. Dan represents the CID and Tim is our liaison with the FBI and through him to Interpol. As has been stated I’ve seconded Alice to work the forensics and she has direct liaison with the other agencies forensic teams,” Gary didn’t even bother with a good morning.

“I’ll leave you to it. Play nice,” Gary left the room and closed the door.

“She does not carry a badge and had no legal authority to question or detain witnesses, conduct due process or even use police stationery as far as I’m concerned. She sees nothing unless I approve it first and she will not be granted access to the case files,” Penelope pointed an accusatory finger at Jennifer.

“Why is the bitch even here?” Dan Murphy snarled.

“Because the head of the US Department of Justice says so,” Tim Morrow interjected.

“As the Federal reprehensive here I have to insist that Assistant Director McConnell’s instructions are followed…” Tim tried to continue.

“Fuck that!” Dan Murphy growled.

“Let me finish Tim. Although I agree with Penelope that Ms Jones is to be provided with only the minimum amount of information necessary and that all of that information is to be vetted,” Tim completed his statement.

“But won’t that make it nearly impossible for Jennifer to assist us?” Alice Leasingham spoke up.

“Exactly!” Penelope smirked at Jennifer.

“Now let’s us real law enforcement officers do some real police work,” Penelope dismissed Jennifer and went back to her crime wall and began to talk to the others about the case.

Jennifer was bemused by the whole proceeding and took a desk at the back of the office as far away from the others as possible.

Although some considered crime walls to be archaic, Jennifer was actually impressed with how Penelope had laid out her wall which included: a timeline of critical events, facts, notes, maps, interrogations, and photos of people, places, and evidence and assumptions yet to be proven. By studying the wall the investigation could be progressed systematically.

Jennifer studied the wall and listened to Penelope intently. There was no doubt that Penelope was an excellent investigator. Jennifer had done her research and given her unique position she was able to access information not legitimately available to most people.

Penelope was such a good investigator that several times in her career she had got so close to the perpetrators that her life had been in danger and she had been physically and sexually assaulted. That much stress on a person who was also a transgender woman had consequences. Penelope had burned up two marriages and numerous emotional entanglements and had food, alcohol and sex addictions to control.

Jennifer admired Penelope as much as Penelope loathed her.

The task force broke up into investigative teams and left Jennifer on her own. Penelope’s crime fighting technique was to study her crime wall and look for the missing pieces of information that tied the case together and to allocate requests for information to her team to find the missing pieces. Then it was then a matter of rinse and repeat until the case was solved.

Penelope had assigned Dan Murphy the task of leaning on the Mexican Policía Federal to obtain access and to interview the four deckhands from the MV Arno Starlight who were currently being held in a prison in Altamira.

Tim Morrow was to light a fire under Interpol to find out the name of the company that had recruited the girls.

Alice Leasingham was to re-examine any forensic evidence that might assist with the investigation and to use her cyber-investigative skills to find out how the shipping company had manipulated the paperwork relating to the container and to find out its final destination.

Jennifer pulled out her super-encrypted laptop and equally secure wifi hub and went to work using Penelope’s requests for information as her directives. During the day she went outside to the privacy of the smoking area to make several phone calls.

The task force went to lunch together but Jennifer was not invited. She found a diner nearby and ate a salad whilst continuing to work. The task force worked until late into the evening.

“It’s late and there really isn’t anything open other than The Longhorn. It’s a cop bar but the food is good and the beer is cold,” Alice Leasingham approached Jennifer Jones as the others were packing up.

Jennifer looked up from her laptop and smiled.

“Do you really think Penelope and the others want me to tag along?” Jennifer smiled sweetly as she began to pack away her things.

“Hey! Don’t talk to her! I told you she has no standing here!” Penelope scrambled across the room looking angry.

“She’s part of our team Penelope and please don’t talk to me that way,” Alice puffed out her chest.

“Fuck that! She works for a criminal who is probably in bed with the people smugglers, that is if he isn’t ultimately responsible for the crime,” Penelope towered over Jennifer.

“An alleged criminal, Lieutenant Bishop,” Jennifer looked up at Penelope and smiled sweetly.

“Thanks for the offer Alice but I’ll keep working tonight and I might be able to offer something tomorrow,” Jennifer closed her laptop bag and picked up her handbag.

“Working on what? I told you that you have no standing here,” Penelope growled.

Jennifer just smiled, picked up her things and left the office.

“Don’t feel sorry for her Alice. She might look like a kewpie doll but the man she works for is trash and therefore so is she,” Penelope turned back to Alice.

“Trash who has intimate knowledge of people smuggling and sex trafficking. We’d be silly not to use her contacts in that world,” Alice stood chest to chest with Penelope.

“And yeah she does look like a kewpie doll. I kinda wanna cuddle her. She looks cute and all lost and alone,” Alice grinned and broke the tension.

“Yeah… Bride of Chucky cute,” Penelope grinned back at Alice.

Jennifer laboured all night, working the phones, sending email, chatting online. By six-thirty the next morning she was exhausted but the evening had been fruitful. She changed into lycra tights, sports top and running shoes and put on a fanny-pack and hit the running the track around City Park. She saw Penelope running past the fountain with Jaylene Foster.

Jaylene was closer to Jennifer’s age than she was to Penelope’s. She was pretty and tall with long dark hair, long legs and breasts that were too perfect to be anything but augmented. Jennifer knew that Penelope and Jaylene lived together and that Jaylene was also a trans woman who used to be a prostitute. She smiled to herself. Who would have thought that three beautiful transgender women would be in such close proximity, although Jennifer tried to make sure that Penelope didn’t see her.

Jennifer kept running out of the other side of City Park and over to Police Plaza where the rent-a-cop at the door checked her credentials and her ass as she breezed past. She made her way to the task force office and unlocked the door using a small lock bump and dropped the package she had put in her fanny-pack on Alice Leasingham's desk. She left the building and ran back to the Balwyn Hilton Hotel where she had continued the lease on the penthouse. She showered, closed the curtains, turned out the lights and went to bed.

Penelope called her task force to order at eight o’clock.

“I notice our bureau service colleague is absent. No loss. Let’s go around the room shall we,” Penelope was wearing her signature short-skirted business suits but today it was bone with a red satin blouse; quite flashy.

Dan Murphy stood up and addressed the room.

“The Mexican Federales are playing hardball despite our Memorandum of Understanding regarding cross-border crime. They’re still holding the four Pakistani deckhands from the MV Arno Starlight in prison in Altamira. The MV Arno Starlight was about to sail when the men were arrested at our request but the Federales are denying us access to them,” Dan began, reading from his notes.

“The deckhands are being represented by some fancy lawyers out of Mexico City and are refusing to cooperate. Fuck knows where they got the money for that kind of legal horsepower,” Dan explained.

“All the Federales would tell me is that one of the deckhands had been transferred to hospital after being seriously assaulted and possibly tortured. They say they are looking into it,” Dan shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

“Tim, do you think the FBI might have more luck pressuring the Mexican authorities?” Penelope asked Tim Morrow.

Tim shrugged his shoulders and stood up to give his report.

“I haven’t had too much luck finding out any more about the girls or the agency that recruited them. For background you should be aware that the selling of young women into sexual slavery has become a growing criminal enterprise in the Balkans and as many as 175,000 young women from the former Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe were sold as commodities in the sex markets of the developed countries in Europe and the Americas last year.”

“Sixteen women in a shipping container is a drop in the ocean as far as they are concerned,” Tim sighed.

“Alice you must have something… please?” Penelope said, crestfallen that her investigation had stalled so quickly.

Alice Leasingham had plugged her laptop into the huge video screen that was affixed to one of the walls of task force office. She fired up the screen and began her presentation.

“These are the sixteen young women whose bodies were found in the container,” Alice pointed to the screen with a laser pointer.

Beside the picture of each of the women were their name, age, last known address and a short biography.

“They were all recruited out of an office Kyiv belonging to a company called Belarus International Services which purports to recruit women to work as nannies and domestic staff in Europe, the UK and the USA.”

“These women were recruited with the expectation that they would be working in the USA in placements arranged by Belarus International Services. They knew that they were entering the US illegally through Mexico and would be confined in the container to do so.”

“They agreed to the terms of their employment contracts and agreed to turn over half of their wages to Belarus International Services once they began working. This is not an uncommon practice.”

“What they didn’t know was that they had in fact been sold into sexual slavery and would be lucky to keep a pittance of their earnings. They were to be delivered to a Bratok in the Reznik crime family of the Russian Mafia. The exchange was to take place in a truck stop just off Route 87 five miles north of where the container was found in the desert.”

“The four-eighteen-year-olds had already been sold online on the dark web,” Alice brought up screen shots showing pictures of the four girls dressed proactively.

“The rest of the girls would likely work in brothels owned by Reznik,” Alice closed the tab and brought up another.

“One of the Pakistani deckhands found the trap door in the container onboard the MV Arno Starlight during routine rounds just after the ship sailed from La Havre. He told his friends and they threatened the girls with being exposed as stowaways unless they consented to sex. The non-virgins consented and the four virgins consented only to oral sex.”

“The Pakistanis were granted bail late yesterday evening organised by their lawyers out of Mexico City, most likely through payoffs to the Federales. Three of the deckhands were found shot to death an hour after they were released from prison and the fourth was suffocated in his hospital bed.”

“The most likely scenario is that Alexi Reznik is cleaning up the mess and removing any witnesses. Alexi Reznik, also known as The Jackal, has been able to operate almost unnoticed in the US because he is careful. His Bratva is responsible for a number of diverse and profitable activities including: human trafficking, racketeering, drug trafficking, extortion, murder, robbery, smuggling, arms trafficking, gambling, fencing, prostitution, pornography, money laundering, fraud and financial crimes,” Alice read from a printed sheet of paper.

“Reznik is likely very angry that the shipping container was abandoned in the desert with the girls still inside it because of the consequential attention of the press and law enforcement agencies. The electronic paper trail for the shipping container ends at one of his subsidiary import companies so it is highly likely that Alexi Reznik is ultimately responsible for the girls being in that container but proving it will be difficult,” Alice completed her summation.

Penelope, Dan and Tim sat there open mouthed and amazed.

“You found out all of that by yourself in less than twenty-four hours?” Penelope sounded astonished.

“I found out none of that. The information was provided to me on a USB thumb drive with a printout of all the information inside a package left on my desk. It would appear that Jennifer Jones dropped it there this morning,” Alice couldn’t conceal the smug look on her face.

Penelope grabbed her coat and handbag and strode purposefully out of the office. She was fuming.

Penelope used her credentials to gain access to the penthouse floor of the Balwyn Hilton and hammered on the door of Jennifer’s apartment until Jennifer answered the door. Jennifer’s flaming red hair was in disarray and despite the shower she had taken before going to bed some of her eyeliner and mascara had smudged around her eyes. She was wearing pink satin babydoll pyjamas and had put a white silk gown over to answer the door.

Penelope barged into the hotel room fuming. Jennifer imagined she could see plumes of steam coming from Penelope’s ears and supressed a smile.

“Don’t smirk at me you pompous bitch!” Penelope threw her coat and her handbag onto a lounge chair.

“It looks like you’re staying a while so I’ll send down for coffee,” Jennifer said, picking up the handset.

Penelope walked in angry circles around the lounge area fuming; so angry that she was having difficulty putting her thoughts in order. Finally she spoke.

“You some kind of smartass getting Alice to do your dirty work?” Penelope spat.

“I told you that I seldom get involved in dirty work but if I do, the dirty work gets done properly and efficiently. You gave your team requests for information that they were never going be able to obtain or at least not anytime soon using legitimate means. I have my own resources that cut through most of the red tape,” Jennifer said and answered the door to the doorbell chime.

“By the way; the doorbell does work and the ring is far more pleasant than some harpy hammering on my door this early,” Jennifer quipped and wheeled a service trolley into the room having dismissed the room service attendant.

“Are you calling me a harpy?” Penelope hissed.

Jennifer just smiled at her and poured coffee.

Penelope caught sight of herself in a mirror. In her haste and anger to get to Jennifer she had not buttoned her jacket correctly and the tail of her red satin blouse had become untucked from her skirt which was askew and had ridden up. Her usually coifed blonde hair was a tangled disarray from where she had angrily pulled at it during the drive over.

Jennifer watched Penelope looking at herself in the mirror.

“And you have a runner in your nylons,” Jennifer smiled innocently and took a seat on the chaise lounge.

Penelope couldn’t help herself and looked down at the runner in her pantyhose on her left leg running from knee to ankle.

She fell into a chair and Jennifer offered her a cup of steaming coffee which Penelope accepted and took a sip.

“You do the cute little kewpie doll thing really well but I know you are nothing more than a vicious bitch working for a crazed killer,” Penelope glared at Jennifer.

“Many a man has been wrongfooted by my kewpie doll routine. Sometimes it pays to be diminutive and pretty. Most men underestimate me; much to their chagrin,” Jennifer smiled and sipped coffee.

“You’ve killed men?” Penelope asked.

Jennifer just shrugged her shoulders.

“You and I are not so different Penelope. We had a similar upbringing and had to deal with our gender dysphoria. We both chose law enforcement as our calling, it’s just that we ended up on different sides of the fence; you because of your father and me because of my employer. Also we have both been betrayed by men,” Jennifer said.

“We are nothing alike,” Penelope snapped.

Penelope noticed the scorpion tattoo on Jennifer’s left ankle for the first time. Jennifer’s skin was unblemished and creamy white and the tattoo was incongruous.

Jennifer saw her staring and smiled.

“I belong to Dmitriy,” Jennifer answered the unasked question.

“How can you belong to one man? Especially that thug,” Penelope sniped.

“You have never been one for fidelity, have you Penelope? You drove away both of your husbands with your addictions to alcohol and sex. You’ve left a never-ending trail of broken-hearted lovers. I hope you and Jaylene find happiness together despite your age difference. Perhaps because you are both trans it might work this time,” Jennifer smiled snarkily at Penelope.

Penelope resisted the urge to leap out of the chair and strangle the little red-headed hussy. The truth was that Jennifer would likely kick her ass but she would have got some good hits in before she went down.

“You know a lot don’t you? You have resources that I could never access. I take it the Pakistani deckhand that was tortured to give up what he knew was your work?” Penelope settled down and sipped her coffee.

Jennifer didn’t answer.

“Did you have them killed?” Penelope continued to dig.

“That was Alexi Reznik. Once my operatives in Mexico had the information I needed, there was no need to kill the deckhands. Reznik is covering his tracks,” Jennifer opined.

“That was Alice’s conclusion too,” Penelope put down her coffee.

“Alice is nice in a quirky Pauley Perrette kind of way. Did you ever dip your toe?” Jennifer grinned mischievously.

“Alice is a good kid. Leave her alone,” Penelope glared at Jennifer.

“They say that she helped you cover up the fact that you were raped by the Honey-Trap Killer before Steve Edwards blew his brains out,” Jennifer smiled at Penelope.

Penelope knew that only a handful of people knew that Mitch Freeman otherwise known as the Honey-Trap Killer had tied her to the bed and raped her before Steve Edwards arrived at the scene and saved her life. Jennifer had resources that Penelope couldn’t imagine.

“They say a lot of things. Not all of them are true,” Penelope countered.

She snatched up her purse and fidgeted.

“Come out on the balcony and we can smoke,” Jennifer uncoiled from the chaise lounge like a small snake and Penelope couldn’t help but be impressed with her dexterity.

She followed Jennifer out to the balcony and lit a Marlboro Menthol and drew the smoke deep into her lungs.

“I keep quitting but it doesn’t stick,” Penelope didn’t know why she felt the need to apologise.

“May I?” Jennifer extended her long fingers with red-painted fingernails and Penelope gave up her smokes.

Jennifer took one and put it between her lips and stepped into Penelope for a light.

Even with her smudged makeup and tousled hair Penelope could see that Jennifer was a beauty. She could see how men… and women… could become beguiled by her.

“We are never going to be able to prove that Alexi Reznik is responsible for the deaths of those girls. He’s too far removed and too careful. We need to set a trap and catch him red-handed,” Jennifer didn’t step away from Penelope after she lit her cigarette.

The two women were standing inches apart. If Jennifer raised herself onto her tippytoes she could probably just about kiss Penelope on the lips. They could smell each other’s perfume; they were both wearing Poison by Dior. Jennifer studied Penelope’s face which was world-weary and just beginning to show her age but she was still a beautiful woman.

“That’s a lot of ‘we’s’,” Penelope swallowed.

“I need to bring in another freelancer. One of my people. I’ll pay all the expenses,” Jennifer said.

“Really? You mean you’re not infallible? You're not some savant?” Penelope said evenly.

“We need someone with in-depth knowledge of sex trafficking. Someone who can help us worm our way into Reznik’s people-smuggling organisation and tie him to it,” Jennifer’s eyes never left Penelope’s.

“Who says I’m letting you get involved in the investigation?” Penelope studied Jennifer’s emerald green eyes.

They were like her own except for a slight bluish heterochromia in her right eye. She found it fascinating.

Jennifer said nothing but just continued to meet Penelope’s gaze.

“Ok you're in. It would be churlish and stupid of me not use your resources. But this doesn’t mean we’re friends or anything,” Penelope finally broke the gaze.

“Oh really? I was hoping that you would scrub my back; I’m just about to take a shower,” Jennifer gave an impish smile and Penelope couldn’t help but smile back.

“I’ll arrange for my colleague to come to Balwyn, hopefully on a flight this afternoon,” Jennifer said stepping back inside the billowing drapes.

“I really do need another shower to wake up and start my day,” Jennifer said leading Penelope over to her coat and handbag.

“You were up all night?” Penelope asked but it wasn’t really a question.

Jennifer just nodded. She led Penelope to the door.

“Yet you were still able to take your morning run through City Park,” Penelope turned at the door and smiled at Jennifer.

“You saw me? I thought I’d done better,” Jennifer smiled back.

“That body? Those legs and that ass? Did you really think I wouldn’t have noticed you?” Penelope leaned in, her lips almost brushing Jennifer's.

Penelope paused briefly and then drew away and continued to smile.

“You're right. We do both have green eyes and dicks in our panties. But that doesn’t make us sisters,” the smile left Penelope’s face and she turned and walked away to the elevator.

Jennifer made some phone calls and worked from the penthouse until early afternoon. She called Penelope and told her that she was picking up her specialist who she would bring straight to Police Plaza from the airport.

Penelope told Jennifer that the rest of the team would be there and as promised, they were there when Jennifer arrived with her new assistant. Jennifer introduced the person as someone who had extensive knowledge of how sex traffickers operated globally and in the United States.

Katya Kuznetsova stood a little over six feet tall in heels. A stunning slim woman with jet black hair cut into a severe bob which accentuated her deep blue expressive eyes. She had pert breasts and long legs clad in gossamer-sheer nylons. She made the simple burgundy business suit she was wearing look like high fashion. Her face was narrow, with accentuated cheekbones, a pointed chin and small nose. Her skin was pale and she wore heavy eye makeup and blood-red lipstick.

Tim Morrow and Dan Murphy were instantly attracted to her and Alice Leasingham was beguiled by her. Only Penelope noticed the tattoo of a scorpion just above her left ankle.

Katya introduced herself speaking with a faint Ukrainian accent.

“I am Katya Kuznetsova. Ms Jones has brought me here to assist you with your investigation into Alexi Reznik. I have extensive knowledge of how people smugglers and sex traffickers operate. I understand part of the deal made with the United States Attorney General is amnesty for any crimes I may or may not have committed so I can speak frankly to you,” Katya began.

“The reason that I have such intimate knowledge is that as a young woman I was sex trafficked myself. Brought to the USA under false pretences, I had already been sold to a prospective buyer who intended to use me as his concubine and then likely sell me into prostitution when I bored him.”

“This is not a common model for sex traffickers. This is a model used for special orders by men wanting particular types of young women, usually young virgins. What usually happens is that young girls either wittingly or unwittingly move across borders on the pretext of undertaking legitimate work. Those who are naïve enough to think they will be taking little Tarquin or Piper for strolls around the park and wiping their dirty asses for a few hundred a week soon have their hopes dashed.”

“I also have extensive knowledge as to how those young women are entrapped. A common business model is to use women already forced into a life of sex work to groom other young women from their home towns; to entrap them.”

“My understanding is that there was nothing so sophisticated used to smuggle the sixteen young women you are concerned with. Smuggling people in shipping containers, although high risk for the human cargo, is low-cost low-risk and high-reward for the smugglers. These girls, although they met an unfortunate end, were travelling in style. It is not uncommon for the Bratvas to put as many as thirty people into an ISO shipping container.”

“Their method of recruitment was also unsophisticated; they were not hand-picked or targeted. They simply applied for work in the US through Belarus International Services. The four virgins were identified amongst the group and would have been sold separately at a higher price than the non-virgins.”

“Even the Pakistani deckhands were not stupid enough to rape the virgins. They probably thought they could get away with having some fun with the other girls but if they fucked with the virgins there would be reprisals. That said, I’m told things didn’t work out for the deckhands too well,” Katya smiled wickedly.

Jennifer interjected.

“Katya will work for me but alongside the task force. Anything she uncovers relating to the crime you are investigating she will share freely with you,” Jennifer invited Katya to sit next to her at the back of the task force office.

“Ok, its asses and elbows time people,” Penelope addressed the room.

“We need to find the driver of the truck if that’s at all possible. We need to tie Belarus International Services to the shipping container and Alexi Reznik to Belarus International Services. It might help if we can interview some of the women here in the US who were recruited by Belarus International Services,” Penelope pointed to the gaps in her crime wall.

The task force got back to work. Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow hit the streets to follow up leads, leaving the office to the women.

Alice Leasingham came over and sheepishly approached Katya.

“The girls. The special orders as you call them. They are sold on the dark web?” Alice asked.

Katya nodded.

“Can you show me how to get to the websites? I’m the cyber forensics experts here, Alice Leasingham,” Alice offered her hand and a smile.

“Of course I can help you. You are a pretty woman under that shaggy mane and awful clothing,” Katya shook Alice’s hand and Alice blushed.

“One thing about Katya. She will always tell you the truth,” Jennifer looked up from her laptop and smiled.

Katya joined Alice at her workstation and got to work. Jennifer yawned and looked at her hand-wound, rose gold, Cartier Tortue watch set with brilliant-cut diamonds. It was a present from Dmitriy and had an inscription on the back along with an engraving of a scorpion. An offering of love, it also served to remind Jennifer that she belonged to him.

“Katya, I need to get some sleep or I will be useless. Will you be ok here? I have a room for you on the same floor as me at the Balwyn Hilton,” Jennifer said.

“I’ll look after Katya, don’t worry,” Alice Leasingham looked up from her work station.

Jennifer smiled. It was like a puppy promising to look after a rattlesnake.

“Sure,” Jennifer packed up her things and came over to Katya before she left.

She kissed Katya on the side of the mouth and Katya stroked Jennifer’s arm. Alice was bemused and wondered what kind of relationship these two women had. Penelope had also observed the interchange and also wondered what their relationship was to each other. The tattoo on Katya’s ankle might indicate that they both belonged to Dmitriy Yakovich or that Katya had at one time.

From the research Penelope had conducted on Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich using what little information was available on him; he didn’t seem like the kind of man who shared his toys.

Penelope went back to her hotel room, darkened the room and fell into bed. She was awakened by her mobile phone at eight-thirty in the evening. She answered the phone and was surprised to find it was Alice Leasingham calling.

“We’re wrapping up for the day. We’re all going to The Longhorn if you would like to join us for dinner,” Alice gushed.

“I’d be delighted. I’ll meet you there. I’ll bring Katya,” Jennifer said, using the remote to open the drapes.

“Katya is still with me. I’ll take her,” Alice said a little excitedly.

“Fine. See you soon,” Jennifer broke the connection and went to the shower again smiling whimsically.

It was her third shower today but she needed to wake up. She’d been a night owl ever since she had been recruited by Dmitriy. Most of his business was conducted in the evening. He liked to spend his afternoons in bed with Jennifer and hit the gym after and then go to work and bang Jennifer again before he went to bed early in the morning.

Jennifer slipped into a pair of sheer-to-the-waist pantyhose to hold her tuck and help her slide into her skin-tight black leather pants. She put on a yellow silk blouse and suede ankle-boots and fixed her hair and makeup. She put on a soft leather coat and picked up her purse inside of which was her Walther PPS M2 9mm pistol. She had the hotel order her a car as she didn’t want to drive.

The Longhorn was full of off-duty and retired cops, some wives and girlfriends and more than a few cop groupies. The bar was crowded, the dance floor was swinging and out back the pool tables were busy. Jennifer saw Katya and the others crowded into a booth near the front windows. She was used to heads turning as the delicate little woman that she appeared to be strode across the room to join them.

Gary Rasmussen, Dan Murphy, and Tim Morrow sat on one side of the U-shaped booth and Penelope Bishop and Jaylene Foster sat across from them. Katya Kuznetsova and Alice Leasingham were squeezed together at the end and Jennifer slid in beside Jaylene Foster and introduced herself.

“Silvia Bickle and Steve Edwards are still tied up in Austin. Felicity has arranged a series of shows at Club Caribe so she can join Steve,” Gary explained the absence of the rest of Penelope’s team.

Felicity Benson was Steve Edwards’ lover and was otherwise known as the famous drag queen Felicity Goodnite. She owned Ride ‘Em Cowgirl, a Balwyn nightclub featuring drag shows and she had once appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race.

“I’ll leave you all to it; enjoy your dinner,” Gary Rasmussen squeezed out of the booth.

He seemed happy that his task force was playing nice together and that Penelope appeared to have gotten over her animosity towards Jennifer Jones.

“Hello I’m Jaylene Foster, Penelope and I saw you running in City Park this morning,” Jaylene introduced herself with a beatific smile.

“I need to improve my tailing skills they’re a little rusty. I’m Jennifer Jones,” Jennifer returned Jaylene’s smile.

“To be fair we didn’t notice you until you were running towards the exit; your size sort of gives you away. You are this perfectly formed beautiful woman delivered in a petite little bundle,” Jaylene giggled.

“Good things come in small packages,” Jennifer smiled back.

“Not necessarily,” Penelope countered.

“One asshole I arrested and put in Huntsville sent me a nice little pink box with a pretty bow on it. When I opened it, it was full of scorpions,” Penelope scowled.

“Penelope! Why are you being so rude?” Jaylene bristled.

“Just saying that you don’t know what you don’t know,” Penelope’s scowl remained fixed to her face.

“Your friend Katya is quite exotic. I love her accent. Alice seems taken with her,” Jaylene ignored Penelope.

“That one’s no daisy either,” Penelope sniffed and sucked on her Coke.

“Ignore grumpy-bum and tell me about yourself,” Jaylene smiled.

“I’m not what I appear to be,” Jennifer caught the attention of the waitress and ordered a round of drinks including a double Stolichnaya on ice for herself.

“Penelope told me that you used to be an FBI agent and that you worked undercover,” Jaylene gushed.

“She tells you an awful lot,” Jennifer smiled.

“It’s just pillow talk,” Jaylene said innocently enough but Penelope blushed.

“You’re not the only one with secrets. I used to be a hooker until the love of my life rescued me from the streets,” Jaylene grinned and kissed Penelope on the cheek causing her blush to deepen.

“And here we are… three transgender women sitting side by side in a cop bar in Balwyn Texas. Who would-a thunk it?” Jaylene giggled and finished her Jack Daniels and Coke.

“That’s it! You’ve had enough. Let’s go home,” Penelope tried to squeeze out of the booth but Jaylene wouldn’t let her past.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got a burger coming and so have you. Today’s our cheat day!” Jaylene whined.

“Well fuck! Behave yourself and take it easy on the sauce,” Penelope said tersely.

“I always get my way. She loves me,” Jaylene smiled at Jennifer and then leaned in and kissed Penelope affectionately.

Penelope returned the kiss and stroked Jaylene’s cheek. Age difference aside, they could have been an old married couple.

Trays of burgers, ribs, tamales, stuffed peppers and bowls of hot crispy french-fries were delivered to the table and everyone began to dig in.

“I see what you mean by cheat day,” Jennifer stared at the food.

“What calories she doesn’t fuck out of me tonight, she’ll run out of me tomorrow. She’s gotta top tonight because I’m wasted,” Jaylene giggled and stuffed french-fries into her mouth.

Penelope bristled but Jennifer gave her an understanding smile.

As the booze flowed and the evening wore on people relaxed. Katya held court at her end of the table and even had Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow beguiled by her looks, her accent and her stories. Penelope and Jaylene canoodled with each other and Jennifer remained a little removed from the festivities. She glanced down at Katya and Alice Leasingham who was sitting close together. Alice was gazing at Katya with open adoration.

Then Jennifer thought about what she had said to Penelope earlier in the day about setting a trap to catch Alexi Reznik red-handed.

They needed a tethered goat to entice the jackal out of his lair.

Jennifer knew where she could get the required the goat.

Katya was not going to like it.

To be continued…

Strange Bedfellows - Chapter 2

Author:

Michele Nylons

Audience Rating:

EXPLICIT CONTENT

Publication:

Serial Chapter

Genre:

Transgender

Character Age:

Mature / Thirty+

TG Themes:

TG Elements:

Permission:

Posted by author(s)

Chapter Two – The Wolf and The Bear

In the car on the way back to her leased penthouse suite Dmitriy texted Jennifer and told her he wanted sex.

Jennifer smiled to herself. It was a good sign that Dmitriy wanted her to participate even if only over video telephony. She went to the bedroom and douched and changed into lingerie, stockings and heels and freshened her makeup. Jennifer had a dildo manufactured that exactly matched the length, girth and shape of Dmitriy’s erect penis. He had modelled for it personally and it was accurate right down to every vein and the tiny Tyson glands on the underside of his glans. She put it on the bed with a tube of lubricant ready for use.

Jennifer was far from stupid but none of her predecessors had been stupid either, including Katya Kuznetsova. But some of them had thought that they could hold onto Dmitriy by trying to encourage him to be monogamous. Jennifer knew from the start that strategy would never work; this was a man who liked to deflower virgins for fuck sake!

Jennifer was unique amongst all of Dmitriy's Girl Fridays in that she not only helped run his business empire; she was also his most trusted field operative. On his behalf she had seduced business impresarios, politicians and senior law enforcement officials to obtain sensitive information or to blackmail them. She had smuggled blood diamonds out of Africa inside her rectum. She had assassinated Dmitriy’s opponents and any other targets that he told her to. All of this without ever questioning the morality of it.

This put Jennifer in a unique but dangerous position.

Before Jennifer there had been a string of other beautiful intelligent women who had been Dmitriy’s personal assistants including Katya Kuznetsova and the girl Jennifer had replaced, Tiffany Crouch.

Dmitriy preferred to have a woman as his personal assistant and consigliere. A woman was less likely to try to overthrow him. Not that he didn’t trust his many lieutenants, but he kept them distant. His PA was dependent on him for her life and she was treated with loving respect and knew his darkest secrets. But he eventually tired of them, some sooner than others. All of his former Girl Fridays were kept under surveillance because they knew so many of his secrets and he’d killed two of his previous PAs who for various reasons had lost his trust.

The others had retired to live a life of luxury and two of them ran high-class bordellos run by his organisation. On retirement Katya had worked for Dmitriy through Vlad Volkov, a sex trafficker, finding girls to fill the ever-increasing demand for fresh-faced pretty young women. Until Katya teamed up with a Bratok named Uri Orlov and assisted in an FBI operation to insert an undercover operative close to Dmitriy with a view to bringing him to justice as part of a witness protection guarantee for Uri.

Jennifer had been that operative and Uri and the FBI Special Agent in Charge, Donald Chase, had been assassinated and Katya sold into sex slavery as a life-long punishment. Jennifer had been sold out by a corrupt senior FBI official named Mike Cole who had wiped all official records of her existence and she had no choice but to turn to Dmitriy and the dark side. And she loved it.

Jennifer knew that when her time was up as Dmitriy’s Girl Friday it would be easier for him to kill her and ensure his secrets went with her to the grave rather than to allow her to live and work for him as a brigadier, supervising his lieutenants which was what he had proposed. She also knew that the longer she remained his Girl Friday, the longer her life was guaranteed and the longer she had to arrange for her retirement and with that in mind she made it her business to hand-pick the women that Dmitriy slept with.

The first time had been opportunistic. Dmitriy usually flew in private jets but the first time Jennifer had travelled with Dmitriy overseas they had flown First Class direct from LA to Sydney Australia on a Qantas flight and when the cabin lights dimmed and most passengers were asleep Jennifer and Dmitriy had made love in his first class cocoon. When the flight attendant discovered them, rather than instructing them to stop she had taken her break and joined them; slipping out of her skirt but leaving on the rest of her uniform which Dmitriy found very kinky.

Jennifer had enjoyed the experience and had arranged with Vlad Volkov to provide her with pretty virgins for Dmitriy to deflower and she joined in enthusiastically. The frightened young girls were often comforted by having a pretty young woman in bed with them while Dmitriy seduced them. Most had been compliant but one or two had had to be restrained. It turned Jennifer on immensely to hold down the young girl while Dmitriy fucked her until she became compliant and a willing recipient of Dmitriy’s huge cock. Sometimes Dmitriy held down the virgin while Jennifer deflowered her.

Jennifer also arranged for select young women to keep Dmitriy entertained while she was away but never the same girl twice. She also made it a practice to have select young women join them in bed. Dmitriy liked to fuck young women and have Jennifer watch or participate. He also liked to watch Jennifer fuck pretty young women and Jennifer liked to do it. Dmitriy would take Jennifer from behind while Jennifer fucked the pretty young prostitute missionary. She liked it when he timed his orgasm to come in her ass just as she was coming inside the girl.

Dmitriy had a voracious sexual appetite and unlike the Girl Friday’s before her who had tried to restrict it, Jennifer encouraged it but she made sure that she remained his staple diet.

Jennifer sprayed herself with Dior Poison perfume, the only scent that Dmitriy let her wear. She didn’t need to of course, but the aroma of the perfume would add to the excitement and realism. She brought her laptop onto the bed and opened up a secure video conference channel with Dmitriy who was lying naked on their huge Venetian traditional Italian-style wooden four-poster bed with silk sheets and satin comforter. Beside him lay a pretty young blonde girl barely eighteen years of age. She was wearing only fully-fashioned stockings attached to a red satin and lace suspender belt, diaphanous red hipster panties and high heels.

Jennifer was well aware of Dmitriy’s nylons fetish and had selected the lingerie, hosiery and shoes herself for the young woman to wear. Jennifer was wearing exactly the same lingerie, nylons and heels and her makeup was identical to the eighteen-year-old’s: heavy eyeshadow, mascara and eyeliner and bright red whore-lipstick.

“Hello my love. Shall we begin? I know you’ve had a long day and you must be tired,” Dmitriy smiled into the camera which was set up at the foot of the bed and lazily stroked the young woman’s small breast.

“Take your time my love. You know I live to serve you,” Jennifer snaked a red-painted fingernail down her left leg, stroking her flesh through the silky stocking and tapping the scorpion tattoo above her ankle.

Jennifer mimicked Dmitriy’s actions and lazily stroked her own breast, causing her nipple to engorge. Dmitriy took the young girl’s hand and directed it to his groin and she dutifully took his semi-erect phallus in her fingers and softly stroked it and Dmitriy lowered his face to the girl and kissed her.

Jennifer wished she could feel Dmitriy’s lips on hers but she made do by putting her fingers in her panties and began to finger her cock. She became fully tumescent and so did Dmitriy. Jennifer stroked her breasts and her cock and was pleased to see Dmitriy looking at the screen now and then to watch Jennifer while he played with the young girl.

Jennifer didn’t know the girl’s name, nor did she want to. As far as Jennifer was concerned she was just a surrogate for her in her absence.

Dmitriy spent some time kissing the girl and playing with her breasts while she stroked him to full tumescence. Then his hand wandered down her flat belly and inside her panties. Jennifer mirrored his actions and slipped her other hand inside her panties. The girl gasped when Dmitriy opened her labia and stroked her clitoris. Jennifer fingered her puckered bud, watching the screen intently.

Jennifer could sense Dmitriy’s impatience. He wanted relief. When he was in this mood Jennifer knew to satiate him quickly so that he could then take his time and make love to her again slowly. The girl had been instructed accordingly by Jennifer and when Dmitriy pressed on her head she willingly lowered her face down to his lap and began to suckle his huge member.

Jennifer took the silicon replica-cock and sucked on it while she fingered her sphincter, lightly circling her fingertips around the puckered pink ring. The cock in her mouth felt exactly like Dmitriy’s but of course she couldn’t taste the pre-seminal fluid oozing from the eye like the girl on the screen could. The girl was suckling Dmitriy’s penis, as much as she could fit in her mouth anyway, while Dmitriy worked on her cunt. Her nipples were erect and girl was moaning sluttishly around the mouthful of cock.

Jennifer sensed what was coming next and reached for the gel-lubricant and smeared a good dollop on her sphincter. When Dmitriy drove two fingers into the girls cunt Jennifer pushed two fingers inside herself. She sucked harder on the prophetic penis as she worked her fingers deeper into her anus. Her penis stood proud above the waistband of her panties, a rope of clear precum dribbling from her glans.

Dmitriy turned to the camera and smiled. He nodded at Jennifer and she nodded back.

Dmitriy flung the girl onto her back and opened her legs wide. Jennifer emulated his actions and lay on her back with her legs wide. She stuffed a pillow under the small of her back.

Dmitriy snaked his throbbing organ inside the girl’s panties and positioned it inside the folds of her labia and Jennifer covered the silicon phallus with lubricant, pushed it inside her panties and pressed the glans against her sphincter.

As Dmitriy slowly impaled the young girl on his monstrous phallus Jennifer slowly pushed the lifelike replica cock inside her tight anus. The dildo stretched her sphincter causing little rings of pleasure to radiate from the tight muscle. Dmitriy watched Jennifer on the screen intently as he slowly impaled the girl on his massive cock.

Jennifer pushed the prosthetic cock all the way inside her anus, biting her lip at the pleasure and pain as the monstrous cock dilated her tight asshole. Dmitriy smiled at her, almost wickedly, then slowly began to fuck the beautiful young creature lying beneath him. He grabbed her stocking-sheathed legs and made her wrap them around his flanks to increase his pleasure as he fucked her at a leisurely pace.

Jennifer could hear the girl, gasping and grunting, sighing and crying with pleasure as Dmitriy fucked her. Jennifer reached for her cock and began to stroke it as Dmitriy fucked the young blonde prostitute. She thrust the dildo in and out of her tight anus, pressing the glans on her prostate to maximise her pleasure as she firmly gripped her cock and stroked it. She imagined that Dmitriy was lying on top of her, ploughing her with his huge cock, whispering endearments, smiling down at her, kissing her softly as he fucked her.

Dmitriy was doing exactly that to the young girl on the screen, regularly craning his neck to watch Jennifer. He made kissing gestures to her and smiled; the lust on his face evident. He fucked the girl harder and Jennifer worked the dildo faster and harder inside her anus and stroked her cock a little faster too. She was close to extremis. The pleasure radiating from deep in her bowels was matched by the tingling delight coming from her throbbing penis.

She saw Dmitriy grab the girl by the thighs and drive his cock all the way inside her. The muscles on his back rippled and his whole body quaked as he roared with pleasure and spent his load deep inside the young girl who cried out at as her own orgasm shook her. She writhed beneath Dmitriy's tattooed muscled body, scissoring her nylon-sheathed limbs against his body, raking her high heels on his abdomen, screaming obscenities as she climaxed.

Jennifer pressed the button on the bottom of the dildo and it suddenly began to vibrate and pulsate. She drove it deep in her ass and pushed it on her prostate as she frantically stroked her engorged member until it ejaculated a geyser of hot semen on her tits and her stomach. She raised herself up off the bed and drove the dildo in and out of her anus at a frenetic pace as her the last of her issue spattered on her belly.

She stared intently at the screen and watched Dmitriy fuck the little girl into a paroxysm of bliss as he spent his load deep in her tight cunt; his head was turned towards the screen smiling at Jennifer.

Jennifer felt a pang of jealousy but it passed fleetingly and then she was suddenly sated and very tired, nearly exhausted.

Dmitriy waved her goodbye, his cock still buried in the pretty blonde. He hadn't finished with the girl yet by a long shot but he knew that Jennifer was tired and he allowed Jennifer to break the connection as she carefully switched off the vibrating dildo and extracted it from her ass.

Jennifer knew that she should undress, shower and change into night attire but she was just too tired. She put the laptop on the nightstand, tossed the dildo aside, kicked off her heels, pulled up the covers and immediately fell asleep. She would tip the maid extra for having to deal with the soggy semen-stained sheets in the morning.

She had a busy day ahead of her: a friend to betray and a goat to tether.

*****

Katya Kuznetsova – One Year Earlier

Katya Kuznetsova had been Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich’s personal assistant and Girl Friday until she was usurped by a pretty young virgin named Priscilla Montgomery. Katya knew that the day would come when she would be replaced, just like she had replaced Liza Lawton. For three years she had effectively been Dmitriy's sex slave, working for a man who sold people, drugs and stolen property and committed crimes such as kidnap for ransom and murder at a whim and headed up his own arm of the Russian Mafia whilst distancing himself from the dirty work. It had hardened Katya.

When she was replaced, Katya moved east and set herself up in a well-appointed cottage in Southold on Long Island, hiding amongst the moneyed elite. She tried marriage for a while but it didn’t stick so she established a business scouting young virgins to pass onto Vlad Volkov who would arrange to have them abducted and sold into sexual slavery. She became immune to the everyday barbarity of it and knew that she herself was only a heartbeat away from meeting a similar fate to the abducted sex-slaves or the possibility of being killed by Dmitriy because she knew too much about him.

Katya had been in the safe house just outside Cockeysville when Uri’s car exploded the day after she had handed Jennifer Jones over to Vlad Volkov. Their FBI handler Donald Chase’s car had been involved in fatal collision on the I-95 that afternoon and they knew it was no coincidence. Uri’s car was packed with their belongings and they were trying to escape Dmitriy’s clutches.

Vlad Volkov had burst into the safe house with three other henchmen and put a gun to Katya’s head and had taken her to Dmitriy Yakovich who had viciously fucked her at gunpoint over his office desk laughing as she cried tears of sorrow for Uri. He had then handed her Vlad Volkov with instructions that she was not to be killed.

Vlad could do with her as he pleased but she was to live a life of constant sorrow and regret, knowing that her betrayal of Dmitriy Yakovich was the reason for her wretchedness.

Vlad and Katya had worked closely for years, she supplying him with victims for the sex trafficking trade but she had always been haughty and aloof, secure in the knowledge that she was protected by Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich.

“As the Americans say: out of the frying pan, into the fire but I prefer the Russian version: I ran from the wolf but ran into a bear,” Vlad chuckled as he drove Katya back to her house in Southold.

“Dmitriy has arranged for the deeds to your fancy house to be signed over to me. I think that I will live in it instead of selling it. You will work in my brothels in New York and New Jersey, not that far away, but I will have you brought to your old house now and then so you can see what you have lost,” Vlad grinned wolfishly.

Katya snaked her hand across his thigh and stroked it lazily.

“What if I give you willingly what you are going to have to take? I have a considerable amount of cash and jewels in a safe deposit box and investments in an overseas company,” Katya found Vlad’s cock erect, lying along his thigh, held there by his tight jeans.

“Dmitriy knows about your safe deposit box in the Chase Bank in New York and it is being cleared as we speak. Your shares in Rio Tinto have already been transferred to one of Dmitriy's holding companies. You have nothing Katya,” Vlad chuckled coldly.

Katya snatched her hand away from his thigh. Her position was helpless. She had nothing left to bargain with.

The two-car convoy arrived at Katya’s estate at Southold and Vlad led Katya into her house while his henchmen secured the perimeter to make sure they weren’t disturbed. She willingly opened the safe in her office knowing that resistance was futile. Vlad cleaned out the cash and jewellery and led Katya upstairs, walking behind her so he could admire her firm ass and long legs sheathed in glistening sheer nylons.

He made no pretext of his intent and threw her on the bed and fell on her.

Katya did not resist as Vlad straddled her prone body and stripped himself naked while he gazed down at her long lithe body dressed in the tight black silk dress.

He stared at her pale blue eyes accentuated by her dark eye makeup and seductive lips painted with blood-red lipstick. He had longed to kiss those full sensuous lips, to lie on top of her alabaster flesh, longed to feel those silken-shrouded limbs on his sensitive flesh as he entered her.

Vlad tore at her dress and Katya didn’t resist him. She lay prone with her limbs spread, her long legs clad in flesh-toned hold-up stockings, her shaved mound shrouded in translucent white panties, her small breasts cupped by a matching brassiere, her erect red-berry nipples visible through the sheer fabric.

He eased aside her panties and thrust himself into her tight tunnel, still moist with Dmitriy’s semen, and she wrapped her legs around him and snaked her tongue into his mouth as he kissed her.

Vlad Volkov revolted her more than any man in the world but right now he owned her and he could do anything he wanted with her. He was going to fuck her regardless so she might as well be compliant. Dmitriy had often used Katya to seduce men that she loathed but she had done it willingly because he was her master. This was no different as far as Katya was concerned. She had nothing left except her body and one single secret that she would never tell no matter what.

Vlad rutted against Katya, thrusting deep into her tight cunt, staring into her ice-blue eyes looking for signs of fear and loathing but her eyes were empty. She met his trusts and he could feel her becoming wetter, she ground her pubis against his so that her clitoris was stimulated. She wrapped her legs around his torso and he stroked them and ran his nails down them, laddering the sheer nylons.

He kissed her viciously, biting her lip, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, tasting the blood. The blood matched her lipstick and Vlad watched her lap it away with her tongue. He wanted to defile her, this woman who had always made him feel inferior, but even now in her ripped dress, her tattered nylons and bleeding mouth she stared up defiantly at him and the harder her fucked the harder she fucked him back.

Vlad was tempted to hit her; to punch her, to flail at her and make her beg him to stop but she was worth too much money to him. Despite her cold eyes he knew that she loathed him and that making her fuck him was worse than anything else he could do to her.

Vlad pushed her down onto the bed and stared into her eyes as he jackhammered his cock in and out of her bruised vagina until he could hold back no longer and he fell on her and ejaculated his load deep side her buttery soft cunt. He felt her shudder and he couldn’t tell if it was an orgasm or just disgust.

She would never tell him but it was both.

He quickly pulled his cock out of her vagina and scooted up her body so that he could spray the remainder of his seed over her pretty face and her hair. He finally got see the loathing on her face that he wanted to see and he smiled.

Vlad climbed off the bed and left Katya curled up in a ball shivering.

He had his henchmen go through her personal belongings, keeping anything of value and throwing everything else into a pile in the front garden. He had them fill her suitcases with her clothes. They were expensive and she would need them when he prostituted her out.

Vlad dragged her to the window and made her watch as everything she owned went up in smoke. Katya was left with three suitcases full of clothes and nothing else. A single sob wretched from her throat and Vlad threw her back on the bed and went down to drink her liquor cabinet dry with his four colleagues who he sent up one after the other to fuck her.

She didn’t fight them. She let them take her, using every orifice in her body.

When Vlad came at her a second time she didn’t resist. She welcomed him. She opened her arms and legs and returned his vile kisses and allowed his revolting penis to enter her and evoke wanton feelings of lust. She wrapped her legs around him and rose to meet his thrusts.

His head was buried in her shoulder so he couldn’t see her smiling.

There was one secret that she had been able to keep from Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich and Vladimir Volkov. A secret that they could never wrest from her no matter how much they tortured her.

Vlad moved Katya around his brothels across the east coast. During the day she took on walk-in customers and in the evenings she was sent out to service higher end clientele. She was too elegant, sophisticated and intelligent to just be a fuck-puppet.

She brought in more money working the high end trade, and taking walk-in customers, although demeaning, which pleased Vlad, was a waste of her talents and dangerous as she was likely to catch an STI. Katya was just too good a commodity to waste and eventually he made her the Madame of one of his high-class brothels with the caveat that she was to also service any man he sent her way.

Every second Sunday Vlad brought Katya back to her house in Southold on Long Island and fucked her in her old bed. He made her cook him dinner and stay the night, defiling her at his whim. Dmitriy wanted her to feel pain and loss and Vlad enjoyed inflicting it.

Katya made no attempt at escape, even when she was allowed out on her own, because she had nowhere to go and no money to get there. It didn’t matter where she ran Dmitriy would find her and she had a secret to protect.

Two tortuous years into her servitude Katya was awakened by the sound of muffled gunshots. Vlad lay asleep beside her in what used to be her own bedroom. Through the gloom she could just make out a petite figure dressed in skin-tight black clothing. The silenced pistol in the figure’s hand was still smoking and Katya could smell gunsmoke and blood.

Katya turned her head on the pillow and saw the two holes in Vlad’s forehead. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer and waited for the eternal darkness to swallow her up.

Instead she felt soft lips on hers; a fleeting gentle kiss.

“Don’t move. Don’t turn on any lights. I’ll be back soon,” the figure whispered.

Jennifer Jones returned with a black body-bag and had Katya help her put Vlad’s body and the blood-stained pillow and pillowcase into the bag which they zipped closed and carried down to a black SUV. They hefted the body into the trunk.

Katya was impressed with Jennifer’s strength for a woman her size.

“Make breakfast. I’ll be back soon. Two eggs, poached, wheat toast and Virginia ham. You know how I take my coffee,” Jennifer said before she drove away.

She returned fifteen minutes later in a red BMW sedan.

Dawn’s light was creeping across the horizon when Jennifer walked back into the house and sat down at the kitchen-diner. Katya put Jennifer’s breakfast in front of her and sat across from Jennifer wearing a chiffon dressing gown.

“What did he do?” Katya asked.

“What they all do. He got greedy,” Jennifer said, scooping eggs and ham into her mouth.

“I guess that’s it for me then. Make it quick or am I buckwheats?” Katya sipped her coffee.

“If I wanted you dead you would never have woken up,” Jennifer crunched toast.

“What then?” Katya was pragmatic.

She guessed she would be passed onto another of Dmitriy’s lieutenants to keep working as a Madame and a prostitute.

“You're mine now,” Jennifer said matter-of-factly.

“You're going to manage all of the brothels in the tri-state area and go back to your old job finding girls for the trade,” Jennifer helped herself to more toast and ham.

“Okay…” Katya sounded sceptical.

Jennifer stood up, her black lycra catsuit trilling on the leather seat.

She walked around the table and helped Katya to her feet.

“You treated me well at the safe house. I know that you loved Uri, even though your love was misplaced. You should never have betrayed Dmitriy. I’m sure you know that now. You are Dmitriy’s gift to me on the proviso that I never let you go,” Jennifer reached out and stroked Katya’s face.

“You were just a naïve young girl. Look at you now… still a girl but far from naïve,” Katya returned the gesture and stroked Jennifer’s face.

“I’m going to let you live here in your house. I’ll have the deeds sent to you but they are worthless really because you can never leave but at least you will have somewhere to call home that really is your own home,” Jennifer said.

Katya leaned in and kissed Jennifer and Jennifer returned the kiss but there was little passion in it.

“Your daughter can join you here,” Jennifer said coldly and Katya froze.

She had to sit down or else she would fall down.

“Did you really think you could hide her from me Katya?” Jennifer remained standing.

“Does he know?” Katya was shaking.

“Of course he doesn’t know. If he knew there is no way that she would be joining you here,” Jennifer said.

“Then how…” Katya’s question trailed off.

“I have my ways and I don’t tell Dmitriy everything. Some things are best kept just to myself,” Jennifer said quietly.

“He’ll kill you if he finds out that you are keeping secrets,” Katya said coldly.

“He’ll kill us both if he finds out,” Jennifer replied.

“You went to Europe eighteen years ago, ostensibly to audit Dmitriy’s employment agencies but you were gone nearly three months. Dmitriy didn’t care because he was already looking to replace you as his Girl Friday,” Jennifer sat down and was drinking coffee.

“You gave birth to his daughter in Switzerland and had her raised in France and then she attended a British boarding school. She’s been attending Rutgers here for nearly a year. You could have her here on weekends, it’s only a three hour drive,” Jennifer buttered more toast.

“Why?” Katya looked at Jennifer.

She had genuine tears streaking down her cheeks leaving tracks of mascara.

“Some people like to tell me that I am not a real woman and could never understand motherhood but I know what it’s like to be a daughter,” Jennifer pulled the fading photograph of her mother from a pocket inside the catsuit and looked at it lovingly then she put it away.

“Does she know who her father is?” Jennifer asked.

“She thinks he’s dead. I told her that because of my work and special circumstances that we could never live together. Children are resilient. She has been brought up that way since birth, moving from place to place, always well cared for but only seeing her mother sporadically,” Katya dried her eyes with a napkin.

“When I brought her to the US I was able to see her more often but you can imagine the difficulties… the secrecy,” Katya sighed.

“Dmitriy no longer has you under surveillance. Once he gave you to Vlad it was no longer necessary and now you belong to me,” Jennifer wiped crumbs from her mouth with her napkin.

“Dmitriy told me I was soft when I asked if I could have you if I dispatched Vlad personally. I told him that you would still live in servitude, would still be selling your body, still hating every day that you were alive,” Jennifer looked at Katya’s cigarettes on the breakfast bar and then at Katya questioningly.

Katya nodded and got up to get her cigarettes and her lighter.

“I had asked myself why you didn’t just kill yourself when Dmitriy gave you to Vlad. It piqued my interest because I knew you and I knew how proud and independent you were. I used my considerable resources to find out all about your past and of course I eventually found out about Katerina,” Jennifer took the proffered cigarette and saw Katya flinch when Jennifer mentioned her daughter’s name.

“She’s beautiful and intelligent just like her mother,” Jennifer drew smoke into her lungs and then exhaled.

She seldom smoked and when she did she took full enjoyment.

“So… your secret is safe… for now. You work for me but you no longer sell your body; that is not appropriate for a woman of your class. You will live here and if you want, Katerina can live here with you,” Jennifer took another drag of her cigarette.

“And in return?” Katya breathed her own smoke deep into her lungs.

“I already own you. There is nothing more you can give me,” Jennifer smiled at Katya.

“YA ubezhal ot volka, no natknulsya na medvedya,” Katya whispered, her icy-blue eyes locked on Jennifer’s face.

“What did you say?” Jennifer furrowed her brow.

“I ran from the wolf but ran into a bear,” Katya said softly.

“I need a shower and some sleep. Come join me in the shower and then we can go to bed,” Jennifer crushed out her cigarette.

“Fuck me on the same side of the bed where you executed Vlad. I want to laugh at his ghost while we make love,” Katya put out her own cigarette and took Jennifer’s hand and led her upstairs.

*****

The Special Task Force met downtown at Police Plaza, some of them looking a little the worse for wear and Alice Leasingham was absent. The late night at The Longhorn had taken its toll.

Penelope was wearing one of her charcoal skirt-suits and Gary, Dan and Tim appreciated the legs show. She was wearing sheer grey nylons which appeared to be holdups as the welt kept creeping into view as she reached up to point to her crime wall.

“We know that the truck carrying the can crossed the border into Brownsville Texas at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station Los Indios Free Trade Bridge. We know that the paperwork associated with the can listed antique furniture and that it was checked through US customs,” Penelope reviewed what they already knew.

“I saw that can. Efforts had been made to conceal the trapdoor but the deckhands had been in and out of the container, fucking the girls as it turns out. The door would have been found during any routine inspection.”

“Tim I want you down in Brownsville putting pressure on those Customs guys. Use your FBI credentials to scare the shit out of them. I know security has relaxed a little since Bin Laden got the chop but I bet someone down there greased that can through the system,” Penelope looked over at Jennifer for confirmation.

“Alexi Reznik likes to work in the shadows. He prefers to use silver rather than lead. You can bet he’s got people at the border crossings on his payroll,” Jennifer backed up Penelope’s assumption.

“Dan, Katya has provided us with a list of local women who were recruited by Belarus International Services. Some of them are working legitimately as domestics and some of them are working out of a strip club down in the Bridge Street free zone,” Penelope held out a sheet of paper.

Gary Rasmussen bristled and interjected.

“There is no free zone! It’s just our red light district,” he fixed his gaze on Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow, the State and Federal law enforcement operatives.

Penelope shrugged her shoulders.

Bridge Street was unofficially known as the Bridge Street free zone. The street was lined with titty bars, adult stores and greasy spoons. Visitors and locals alike cruised the street looking for something spicy. The police deliberately kept a low profile on Bridge Street but diligently patrolled the adjacent streets and were intolerant of any miscreants who attempted to bring their unsavoury behaviours outside of the delineated area. Silvia Bickle called Bridge Street an island of crud in a sea of resplendence.

Dan Murphy took the list and scanned it.

“Katya will accompany you. She accumulated the information on these women, she knows where they come from and she speaks their language. She’s acting as your interpreter if anyone questions her legitimacy,” Penelope nodded at Katya Kuznetsova who was also wearing a fitted business suit, heels and hose.

Dan seemed more than happy to be spending the day with Katya.

Gary took Penelope by the elbow and whispered something in her ear and Penelope frowned at him and shook off his grip.

“After my briefing Gary!” she whispered tersely.

“I let Alice work out of the CSI office today. Katya has given her access to some of the sex trafficking sites on the dark web and she’s searching to see if there was any reference to the four younger girls who were in the container as it’s assumed they would have been sold on the web,” Penelope explained.

“What is she doing?” Dan Murphy pointed at Jennifer Jones.

It was as if Jennifer had got the memo as she too was wearing a skirt-suit. It was dark with charcoal pinstripes, her heels were either Louboutin or Jimmy Choo and her nylons were gossamer sheer. Her makeup as usual was perfect as was her red hair. She could have passed for Penelope Bishop’s younger sister, Gary Rasmussen thought to himself.

“Good question,” Penelope glared at Jennifer who offered a bemused smile.

“I have a lead on the truck driver. He tried to cross the border back into Mexico. My operatives are bringing him here so that you can talk to him,” Jennifer offered a smirk.

“Your operatives? The same people who questioned the Pakistani deckhand in Altamira?” Tim Morrow bristled.

“They were not responsible for the consequences after the deckhands were released from prison. Reznik was going to find and silence them regardless. Who do you think paid for their Mexican lawyers?” Jennifer said offhandedly.

“I don’t like working with criminals,” Tim spat.

“My operatives are licenced private investigators. The truck driver is in their company willingly because he knows the alternative. Neither I nor Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich have been convicted of any crime nor do I need to remind you that the United States Attorney General himself has appointed me to this task force,” Jennifer replied flippantly.

“Nor do I need remind you that I have provided most of the useful information to this task force while the rest of you have run up against bureaucratic roadblocks or have been chasing your own tails,” Jennifer barked.

“Ok enough!” Gary slammed his fist down on the lectern.

“We appreciate your efforts Ms Jones. The rest of you have assignments given to you by Lieutenant Benson, who may I remind you, is in charge of this task force. I suggest you get on with them,” Gary cooled things down.

As the team stood and began to go about their assigned tasks Katya Kuznetsova mumbled something under her breath that only Dan Murphy caught.

“Lozhis' s sobakoy i poluchayesh' blokh”

“What was that?” his excitement at having Katya assigned to assist him was evident.

“It goes something like if lie down with dogs, you get fleas,” Katya smiled at him.

As Dan escorted Katya to his car she asked if they could stop at the smoking area and he agreed. They were alone and Katya smoked while Dan pretended to study his phone but really studied the tall, elegant, mature woman with the jet-black hair cut into a severe bob which accentuated her deep blue expressive eyes.

“You hate Jennifer but you are delighted to be in my company,” Katya said suddenly.

Dan Murphy blushed.

“She’s young, arrogant, a failed law enforcement officer, and she works for a criminal,” Dan hissed.

“What about me?” Katya gave him a beguiling smile.

“You’re mature, intelligent and sophisticated. You were forced to work for Dmitriy Yakovich; you had no choice,” Dan rationalised.

“We all make choices. Did you notice the scorpion tattoo above Jennifer’s left ankle?” Katya stubbed out her cigarette.

“Well, yeah,” Dan blushed.

All of the men had been checking out the women’s legs.

“Then you notice I have the same tattoo,” Katya turned her calf so that Dan could see better and he appreciated the view.

“Yeah, I saw it. I figured it was some Russian mobster shit; that Dmitriy guy is covered in tattoos,” Dan said by way of explanation.

“It means something that you could never understand. The bond between Jennifer and I is unbreakable,” Katya began to walk towards the car pool.

“You’re older than she is and appear to be just as smart. I don’t understand why she’s your boss,” Dan caught up with her.

“Jennifer has been underestimated by many men but not many of them are still around to regret that they underestimated her,” Katya leaned in and whispered in Dan’s ear.

The closeness of her body, her sweet breath on his face and the scent of her Poison perfume had the effect that Katya knew it would.

“You both wear the same perfume,” Dan swallowed as he searched for his car keys in his front pockets, using it as an excuse to hide his erection.

“We share a lot of things,” Katya deliberately let her short skirt open wide as she slid into the passenger seat.

The image of Katya’s pink nylon panties burned into Dan’s brain and kept recurring throughout the day.

Back in the office Gary had taken Penelope aside.

“How you holding up?” Gary searched Penelope’s eyes.

Gary Rasmussen had stood by Penelope Bishop during the good times and bad and genuinely cared for her almost like a father. Gary had actually been a street cop at the same time Penelope’s father had walked the beat in Balwyn.

“I’m fine,” Penelope gave him a grim smile.

“You and Jaylene seem to be getting along. I notice she got in the bag a little last night,” Gary was careful how he broached the subject.

“I’m still sober Gary. Jaylene and I have one cheat night a week. I get to eat hamburgers and she gets to drink or smoke a little weed. You want I should start writing up reports on my personal life?” Penelope instantly regretted snapping at Gary and she reached out and stroked his arm soothingly as an apology.

“How you getting on with Ms Jones? It’s obvious you don’t like her. I mean how are you getting on professionally?” Gary changed the subject.

“What she said to Tim Morrow is true. We couldn’t find our ass with both hands without her help. This Russian mafia shit is complicated and runs deep,” Penelope admitted.

“That older skinny broad she brought in is a piece of work,” Gary commented.

“You mean Natasha Fatale,” Penelope chuckled.

“All the men want to ride her and Alice Leasingham wants to be her. She may look like a cartoon caricature but I bet that bitch can bite,” Penelope sighed.

“Remember what I said about playing nice. It’s been reported up as far as the AG that we figure this Reznik guy is behind the girls in the can and now he has a hardon for us to get a pinch. He wants arrests made so that he, the Governor and the Director of the FBI can go on TV and brag about what a great job their combined task force is doing,” Gary rubbed his fingers through his thinning hair.

“We aren’t anywhere near making arrests yet and tying Reznik directly to the can isn’t going to be easy,” Penelope chewed a nail.

“Get me something,” Gary patted Penelope’s shoulder and moved off.

Jennifer sat at the back of the room watching the exchange.

Penelope walked over to join her. They had the room to themselves.

“Let me guess. The politicians want a perp parade,” Jennifer smiled at Penelope.

“How confident are you that we can tie Reznik to this?” Penelope ignored Jennifer’s question about the perp walk.

Jennifer continued.

“We will likely be able to tie Reznik to Belarus International Services. If we are lucky we can tie Belarus International Services to the shipping container and prove that the same company recruited the girls,” Jennifer replied.

“Reznik will stay under the radar and let his lawyers talk for him. He’ll claim that he personally has nothing to do with people smuggling or sex trafficking. He’ll claim that rogue elements in the company, to which he is only loosely associated, are responsible. Anyone who can tie him directly to that particular transaction is already back in the Balkans or dead,” Jennifer reached out and picked a stray fibre off Penelope’s lapel.

Penelope didn’t flinch. She stared down into Jennifer’s green eyes, fascinated by the blueish heterochromia.

“That might be enough. If we can nail the people who recruited the girls, the border guards who facilitated entry and the truck driver who drove away and left the girls to rot we will have effectively solved the crime and the men in high castles can claim their victories and we can all go back to doing whatever it is we did before this,” Penelope watched Jennifer’s face for a reaction.

Jennifer remained stoic and returned Penelope’s gaze.

The two women stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, neither of them flinching, neither of them talking.

Finally Penelope’s face broke into a smile.

“You think I’m full of shit don’t you?” she smirked.

Jennifer stepped forward and stood on her toes so that her face was so close to Penelope’s that she could taste her sweet breath.

“You don’t know me but I know you. Any other law enforcement officer would be happy to put a bow on this case just as you described it and hand it to those men in high castles and walk away and say they had done their job,” Jennifer whispered.

“But not you. You saw those girls in that can. You saw what they had endured… how they had been tossed aside like garbage. You don’t want some greaser truck driver or some vodka-soaked Bratok who sells young girls into prostitution or some smooth-tongued woman who recruits naïve young girls with promises of milk and honey.”

“You want the man ultimately responsible. You want what I want. You want Alexi Reznik. You want The Jackal,” Jennifer’s lips brushed against Penelope’s and it felt like a spark of electricity had entered her body.

Penelope pressed her lips against Jennifer’s just barely touching them and then abruptly broke contact.

“You’re no different. Dmitriy Yakovich is no better than Alexi Reznik and I don’t believe for a second that you’re here because Dmitriy is bargaining with the DOJ to have his indictments quashed or reduced. Don’t think for a minute that I wouldn’t put you behind bars if I had evidence that would put you there,” Penelope breathed.

“But… You’re right. Right now I want Alexi Reznik and I will do anything to get him. Even lie down with a bitch like you,” Penelope brushed Jennifer's lips with her own.

“You are speaking figuratively of course,” Jennifer smiled impishly.

Penelope stepped away and searched her pockets for cigarettes.

“How long until your men will have the truck driver here?” Penelope found her smokes and took them from her pocket.

Jennifer looked at her phone.

“About half an hour or so,” she looked up at Penelope.

“I’ll make arrangements for him to be taken into custody, Mirandized and taken to an interview room,” Penelope picked up a phone.

Jennifer waited while Penelope made the necessary calls. She played with her cigarettes and lighter while she spoke on the phone.

“Still trying to quit?” Jennifer nodded at the Marlboros in Penelope’s hand.

Penelope gave Jennifer a withering smile.

“Let’s go and smoke a cigarette together. I’ll buy coffee on the way and you supply the cigarettes,” Jennifer grinned at Penelope.

“I reiterate what I said to you in your apartment. Just because I’m letting you work this case doesn’t make us friends,” Penelope scowled.

“Don’t be an asshole. Come and smoke with me. I have something to discuss with you that I don’t want anyone else to hear,” Jennifer picked up her handbag and led the way outside.

Penelope appreciated the view as she watched the petite little killer walk ahead of her.

They stopped at the mess hall and Jennifer bought coffee and then they went outside to the smoking area.

“Remember what I said about Reznik being too far removed from the crime and being too careful to be implicated and the need to set a trap to catch him red-handed?” Jennifer said.

Penelope nodded.

“I have an idea. The Jackal is not going to come out of his lair unless there is something irresistible for him to eat,” Jennifer flicked ash away from her skirt.

“You going to keep talking in parables or are you going to get to the point?” Penelope said a little snarkily.

“I have a plan but I need a tight lid kept on it for now. Just you and I and probably Alice Leasingham,” Jennifer breathed.

Penelope nodded for Jennifer to continue.

“There is another reason I brought Katya here, beside her connections and knowledge of sex trafficking,” Jennifer said.

And then Jennifer told Penelope her plan.

*****

Dan Murphy drove Katya down to City Park and pulled into a lot filled with mom-cars and SUVs fitted with kiddie-capsules. It was too early in the day to hit the strip club so they intended to interview as many nannies as possible. Katya had advised Dan that approaching the women at the residences where they worked was a bad idea. Best if Katya tried to talk to them alone in the park.

The jungle-gyms, roundabouts, swing-sets and other kiddie playground equipment were filled with kids rugged up against the cold, laughing squealing and a couple of them were crying.

Their nannies sat in ethnic groups.

“Some of those strollers are as big as the fucking SUVs they're driving!” Dan commented.

“Don’t blame the nannies. They make a pittance. They are here watching the kids while mom gets her bikini wax or a massage from some big-dicked Latino masseur half her age and then goes to the tennis club for a salad and to gossip with the girls while her husband is at work chasing secretaries around his desk,” Katya said bitingly.

“Sounds like you have as much respect for the moneyed elite as I do?” Dan chuckled.

“Not so when I was the moneyed elite, but now I have a different perspective,” Katya’s accent was more pronounced.

If she had been allowed to have custody of Katerina when she was younger, wild horses would not have kept Katya away from her daughter. How could these mothers neglect their children and leave them to be raised by strangers? Katya cleared her mind and stepped out of the car.

“Let me do the talking. You look too much like a cop,” she said to Dan.

The Latino housemaids and nannies tended to be older. They huddled together wearing identical pink synthetic fibre dresses with white aprons and cheap pantyhose under their coats, almost like a uniform. The fabric was wash and wear and didn’t stain. The African nannies wore similar uniforms but with colourful scarves and had their dreadlocks piled high, held in place with bright turbans or head-scarves. There were a couple of British girls with rosy cheeks and flaming red hair wearing black and white au-pair uniforms with black tights and sensible shoes.

The Slavic women stood out. Although they were no wealthier than their counterparts, they wore their cheap clothing with style. Chic second-hand skirts and dresses, short-hemmed, showing a lot of leg sheathed in shiny flesh-toned pantyhose. Blouses and bodices opened one button too many, heaving breasts in lacy bras, heavy makeup, too much red lipstick and black mascara, hair styled but done by their friends rather than professionally.

Dan bet a lot of those soccer-moms kept a good eye on their husbands when they were around their au-pairs and nannies.

All of the housekeepers and nannies had developed the art of being able to chatter away nonsensically amongst themselves whilst keeping one eye on their charges. As soon as little Tarquin or Piper fell off the swing and started bellowing they sprang into action, soothing the kid and offering it more affection than the kid received from their parents.

“Offer me your arm. If you look too much like a cop they will clam up but if I leave you here staring at the playground you will look like a paedophile,” Katya put out her arm and hooked it through Dan’s.

He liked walking this close to her as they approached the Slavic girls.

The women immediately clammed up as Dan and Katya approached.

Katya started speaking some language that Dan didn’t understand. He guessed it was Russian or Ukrainian. Four of the girls got up immediately and walked away to settle on a bench on the other side of playground but two of them remained seated and Katya sat down next to them.

“Sit here. Say nothing,” Katya patted the seat beside her.

Dan felt like a spare dick at a wedding as Katya and the young girls chattered away in their home dialect. Katya opened her purse and brought out her cigarettes. The girls made gestures which Dan understood to mean that they couldn’t smoke while they were looking after the children.

Katya spoke some more and the women pointed to the playground and yammered.

“The boy in the red romper with the snotty nose and the girl next to him in the pink sparkly princess dress, pink tights and tiara on her head. You see them?” Katya pointed to two cute brats sitting in a sandpit playing with toys that probably would have cost him a week’s wage.

Dan nodded.

“Watch them. You’re a cop; make sure they don’t get abducted or anything,” Katya squeezed his thigh playfully.

“I’m taking the girls over to the trees for a smoke,” Katya stood; her thighs level with Dan’s eyeline.

“What do I do if they start crying or something?” Dan whined.

“Dial 911,” Katya said flippantly.

“Seriously. We will just be over there,” Katya pointed to a copse of trees were a couple of the other nannies were sneaking a smoke.

Dan sat for what seemed like three hours but was in fact just over forty minutes guarding the women’s handbags and watching the kids, waiting to be approached by park rangers for being a pervert but nothing of the sort happened. The two cute little brats played happily with each other, sharing their toys, laughing and giggling at each other’s antics. He wondered at what age the girl would become a precocious bitchy Heather and the boy would become a spoiled insolent fucktard with a soft-top ride and hardon for the Heathers. The cynic in him couldn’t help it.

He heard Katya and the two au-pairs chattering away in Russian or whatever as they approached and he turned to admire three great sets of legs in short skirts and two sets of billowing breasts; Katya’s were not billowing but he liked their compact neatness against her suit jacket.

Katya left a near full packet of cigarettes with the girls and he saw them both slip high-value banknotes into their handbags.

“What did you learn?” Dan asked as they walked back to the car.

Katya ignored the question until they were in the car.

“All of the Slavic girls were recruited through Belarus International Services. Some of them arrived on legitimate J-1 visas but most of them are here illegally. Of the illegals, some came into the country on tourist visas which they overstayed and about half of them were smuggled in,” Katya checked her makeup in the sun-visor mirror.

“The nannies are well educated and speak good English. The two girls I spoke to said that they were offered nanny positions but it was intimated that they could make more money working as prostitutes. They said that about half the girls they had travelled with were given no choice and were handed over to hard men and taken away. You can guess their fate,” Katya said matter-of-factly.

“Is common practice to lure girls with offers of legitimate work and then sell them into prostitution. Some go willingly, some are forced. But Belarus International Services needs to have a pool of authentic clients and customers to operate legitimately but most of the money they make from bringing people in from overseas is from sex trafficking,” Katya applied a fresh coat of lipstick.

“You talk about it like it is nothing. Like it is just normal practice,” Dan shook his head.

“I told you that the best recruiters are girls that themselves have been trafficked. I am no angel Dan. I made my living targeting individual girls and selling them into slavery. Do not think of me as any different to the criminals we are investigating,” Katya put away her lipstick.

She turned to look at Dan Murphy and saw the look of disappointment in his eyes.

Dan filled the seat of large sedan. He was a big man; well-muscled with a flat-top haircut and a trimmed moustache. He was handsome and rugged.

Katya leaned in and kissed his cheek and then rubbed away the lipstick she had left behind.

“I am what I am Dan. Let’s get some coffee before we hit the strip club,” She patted his knee and made a vain effort to pull down her skirt as she put on her seatbelt.

Dan didn’t know how he felt about Katya but when she kissed his cheek his hardon had returned and he had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road rather than her legs.

They drove to Bridge Street where the cleanup crews were finishing clearing away the detritus from the previous evening. In the morning Bridge Street looked tawdry, like a cheap hooker brought out into daylight after working all night. Most of the bars, strip clubs, tattoo parlours, pawnshops and fast-food restaurants were closed or setting up for the afternoon trade. Dan and Katya found a coffee shop that didn’t look too ratty and sat down in a booth.

The coffee shop was located across the road from a strip club called Supergirls where a number of girls who were recruited by Belarus International Services worked as strippers, lap dancers and allegedly as prostitutes. Alice Leasingham had done some deep digging and found that Supergirls was not surprisingly owned by a subsidiary of Belarus International Enterprises.

Back at Police Plaza Penelope Bishop and Gary Rasmussen interviewed the truck driver who claimed that he had no idea that there were young women inside the shipping container that he was carrying. He claimed that as far as he knew the container was filled with antique furniture.

His story was shot full of holes. He had no legitimate reason to be driving on the dirt road in the Chihuahuan Desert but confirmed that he was to hand the truck and container over to another man at a truck stop south east of San Angelo.

Penelope had taken a DNA swab from the driver.

“If any of your DNA turns up on or inside any of those girls you’re looking at murder in the commission of a felony and life in prison or possibly a death sentence,” Penelope said in her best threatening voice.

The driver changed his story and said that he knew that there were girls in the container and that one of them had consented to sexual congress in exchange for permission to ride up front in the cab but that he had put her back in the can when they got closer to Route 87.

He claimed that the truck he was driving was not fitted with ISO twistlocks and that the container fell off the truck while he was on a steep incline, manoeuvring around a tight switchback.

When grilled why he had left the dead and injured girls inside the locked container and driven away, the driver claimed that he had called the Bratok on a pre-programmed satellite phone that he had been given at border and the man told him to set fire to the can and drive away immediately.

It made Penelope sick that the driver had tried to make himself sound like some sort of a martyr for not burning the can as he had been instructed.

The driver was scared for his life because he knew that he would be killed by his employers to cover up their involvement in the crime. He was hired by a trucking company that would later prove to be contracted to Belarus International Services but he had only dealt with low-level peons. This was his fifth trip hauling similar cargo and he had always handed the truck over to the same Bartok he knew only as Karl. He would then hop a ride back across the border on a truck owned by the same company.

The driver had never heard of a man named Alexi Reznik; he only knew the manager of the freight office in Altamira and the tattooed man with the shaved head named Karl.

Penelope had the driver placed in a holding cell and until Tim Morrow returned from Brownsville so he could be transferred to a secure Federal holding facility pending charges. If the investigation dug up the traffickers and the driver was willing to testify against them he may be able to cut a deal with the Feds.

Back at the free zone there was activity at Supergirls. The door was open and the club was taking deliveries and then a transit van pulled up and a dozen mainly blonde young women got out of the van and stretched before they went inside.

“Getting ready for the afternoon trade,” Dan commented, nodding at the girls they could see through the grimy window.

“How are we going to play this? If I walk in there and flash my badge the girls are just gonna clam up and the manager and his goons will do the same. This is the free zone and the businesses are not used to police harassment and I don’t wanna fuck up whatever arrangement the Balwyn PD has in place,” Dan explained.

Katya was sitting across from him and their knees were touching under the table in the tight booth.

Dan jumped when Katya squeezed his thighs and Katya laughed.

“We are both wearing suits right? So we can pass as business people. What if we’re from out of town and have just made some big deal and we are out celebrating, looking for some illicit fun before we return to Bumfuck Idaho or wherever to our boring husband and frumpy wife?” Katya said placing her hands on the table.

“That might work but it’s a bit early for a celebration isn’t it?” Dan frowned.

“Yeah. We say we cut the deal over a working lunch and went out to celebrate straight after,” Katya further improvising their story.

“Ok. Let’s get lunch and then hit Supergirls,” Dan dropped a note on the table and squeezed out of the booth.

He caught another glimpse of Katya’s pink nylon panties as she extricated herself from the tight space.

They walked outside and looked up and down the street looking for somewhere decent to eat and started walking south. They passed what appeared to be reasonably decent pay-by-the-hour, no-tell hotel and Katya surprised Dan by dragging him onto the stoop.

Katya pressed her body against Dan and kissed him and he responded immediately, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her passionately. Katya could feel what seemed like a generously proportioned erection pressing against her body. She broke the kiss and stared into Dan’s eyes.

“We can go to lunch or we can kill an hour or two in here,” she nodded at the entrance to the flophouse.

“You're very forward Ms Kuznetsova,” Dan was a little breathless.

“We’re both adults. It’s obvious that you want to fuck me and I like you. I like big strong men who are forceful,” Katya squeezed his cock through his trousers.

“You're a plain talking woman,” Dan grinned at her.

“You want to go eat tacos or you want to take me upstairs?” Katya said bluntly.

Dan took her hand and opened the door to the hotel and led her to the small counter where a decently dressed young man was in attendance.

“We want a room for two hours. Something clean, decent and quiet. Also give me two of those vanity packs,” Katya pointed to a shelf displaying Ziploc baggies containing a disposable toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, shaver, liquid soap and sanitary wipes.

The man got the baggies and a room key and Katya handed over a credit card.

“I feel like a heel letting you pay,” Dan whispered.

“I’m not paying. Jennifer is paying all my expenses,” Katya smiled at him.

“Gimme two extra towels too please,” Katy smiled at the concierge who racked up her purchases on her credit card and handed it back.

Katya pushed the extra towels and the baggies onto Dan, shouldered her handbag and led him to the stairs. There was no elevator.

“I’ll lead the way. You can check out my ass,” Katya said flippantly.

Dan blushed but fell in dutifully behind her.

Inside the room Katya was all business. She passed Dan two coat hangers from the dilapidated wardrobe which had only one door, the other resting beside it, propped against the wall. She took off her jacket and kicked off her heels and unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it and clipped it to a hanger and then took off her blouse and draped it over the same hanger. She hung it up and took another coat hanger and hung her jacket on it and put in the wardrobe.

Dan had quickly stripped, impatiently throwing his clothes over the back of a chair. He lay naked on the bed.

Katya put her heels back on and turned around to face Dan who had been watching her every move.

Katya Kuznetsova was a little over six feet tall in heels and she looked absolutely amazing: a stunning slim woman with jet black hair cut into a severe bob which accentuated her deep blue expressive eyes as did her heavy eye makeup. Her face was elegant and narrow, with accentuated cheekbones, a pointed chin and small nose, her full lips accentuated by her blood-red lipstick. Her skin was alabaster white which drew attention to her full-cut pink nylon panties and the matching brassiere.

Her breasts were small but firm, her panties clung to her pudenda which had to be completely shaven because her cleft was fully delineated through the gauzy fabric. Her long legs were clad in sheer flesh-toned hold-up stockings.

Katya approached the bed slowly, teasing Dan, making him wait. She didn’t gyrate or roll her hips, she didn’t need to. Her sheer elegance was both exotic and erotic. As she got closer Dan could see the scars on her body; the type that came from being misused by men who liked to hurt to women but Katya was not self-conscious about them. She wore her scars like badges of honour.

Katya climbed on the bed and straddled Dan, pressing her lips to his and pressing her panty-covered pubis on his cock. He reached for her breasts, freeing them from her brassiere. Katya gyrated her hips and felt his cock nestle in the cleft of her sex; her nylon panties becoming damp from his pre-ejaculate and her vaginal secretions.

She dove her tongue into Dan’s mouth and adjusted her position so that Dan’s glans was pressing on her clitoris and began to slowly undulate against him. Dan stroked and tweaked her erect nipples, his cock so hard that it almost hurt. He wanted to plunge it inside this gorgeous mature woman; drive it all the way into her cunt and ejaculate. But he resisted the temptation and let Katya take the lead.

She rubbed her stocking-sheathed thighs against his tender flesh and pressed her panty-shrouded cunt on his throbbing cock as her tongue wriggled in his mouth. Katya was whimpering and moaning and Dan realised that she was orgasming. He had never seen a woman cum so quickly before.

She gyrated her hips and wriggled her pudenda, forcing Dan’s cock inside her labia, grinding it on her clitoris, her panties saturated with her vaginal secretions. She was shuddering and uttering foreign obscenities between passionate kisses. The feel of her warm sodden vagina encased in the gossamer nylon panties pressing on his cock triggered Dan’s orgasm.

Katya smiled as she felt his hot seed saturate her panties and mingle with her love juices. She drove her tongue deep into his mouth and clung to him, shaking and whimpering.

When she stopped gyrating Dan thought their lovemaking was over and regretted that he hadn't put his cock inside Katya but she was far from finished. She rolled over and dragged him with her so that he was lying on top of her. She dexterously slid her hand down between their bodies and guided Dan’s still erect penis inside her panties and raised her haunches so that he slid all the way inside her.

The feel of her tight, wet vagina clinging to his cock felt incredible and Dan felt his libido kick back into gear. Katya wrapped her arms and legs around his muscled torso, her heels raked his back as she encouraged him to fuck her. She kissed him passionately and rose to meet his thrusts as Dan fucked her with long slow strokes.

The feel of her nylons on his skin, her breasts on his chest, her heels locked behind his back and her lips on his was spectacularly arousing and Dan enjoyed every second of their lovemaking.

Katya and Dan took their time and slowly ground out their second orgasms, ensuring that they satisfied each other. They dozed after and Dan was awakened by Katya’s mouth on his penis and he told her that he wouldn’t be able to make it a third time but he did with her help.

Katya had spare panties and a new package of pantyhose in her handbag which made Dan think that she was either a girl scout or that she had intended to seduce him all along. What type of woman carries spare underwear in her handbag? He tried not to analyse it too much as he showered.

Katya had already showered and she was dressed in bra, panties and pantyhose fixing her makeup when he came out of the shower. He noticed her spray herself liberally with Dior Poison before she dressed, then she was all business.

“Let’s go and see what we can find out at Supergirls,” she said as she smoothed her lipstick with the pad of her little finger.

Katya left a twenty for the housemaid and they made their way downstairs.

The young concierge gave them a knowing grin which Katya studiously ignored and put on her sunglasses as she stepped out into the cool afternoon sunshine.

Katya took Dan’s arm as they crossed the street and burst through the doors into Supergirls. They stood for a minute to let their eyes adjust to the gloom after being out in the bright sunshine.

A burly doorman behind a cash register gave them the onceover, figured, as Katya had predicted, that they were a couple of business people slumming it on the wrong side of town. He told them there was no cover charge but there was a two drink minimum and that they each had to change a minimum of twenty dollars into singles.

Katya used her debit card and got one hundred dollars’ worth of George Washington’s from the doorman and a scantily-clad hostess led them to a table near the stage. Katya ordered Vodka on the rocks for them both and told the hostess to keep the drinks coming.

The place was half-empty or half-full depending on your perspective. The crowd consisted of businessmen and salesmen who had snuck away from work early, feverish-faced slackers addicted to the girls because they had no chance of ever getting a real girlfriend, and hard-faced working class men clutching pints of watery beer. There were only two other women customers, both skanky looking, clinging to their beefy boyfriends as if protecting them from the lure of the exotic dancers.

Katya and Dan fitted right in and after checking out Katya’s legs and ass as she walked to the table the men returned their gazes back to the stage where two scantily-clad women were dry-humping dance poles.

Dan and Katya drank their two drink minimum watching the girls perform and stuffing dollar bills in their panties and bras when the girls performed in front of them. Dan doubted he could raise a hardon even with a shit-ton of Viagra and the skinny blonde women in their Minnie-Mouse high heels didn’t do anything for him anyway. Not when he had Katya Kuznetsova sitting beside him.

Dan and Katya played their roles well, encouraging the girls to gyrate in front of them, generous with their tips. The hostess saw how they were dressed and the cash they were flashing and asked them if they would like a VIP room. Katya handed over her debit card and they were led to a small private room, elaborately furnished with a plush bench, small cocktail table, subdued pink lighting, the walls draped with colourful sheer curtains.

Two ice buckets with bottles of cheap champagne and four glasses were provided. The music was more subdued and seductive than the unce-unce-unce beat out in the main club. Two skinny blonde girls with enhanced breasts wearing see-through bras and panties and vinyl micro-mini skirts were shown into the room. They wore too much makeup and their smiles were fixed and overly-salacious, almost desperate.

The hostess looked expectantly at Dan who nodded his approval and the hostess returned Katya’s debit card with a receipt stub for two hundred dollars and closed the door to give them privacy.

One of the girls poured champagne and the other sat so close to Dan that she might as well have sat in his lap. The girls introduced themselves as Misha and Mirna, made-up names if there ever had been. They both had Slavic accents. They all clinked glasses and Mirna cuddled up to Katya and told her how beautiful she was as she stroked her thigh. Misha nuzzled Dan’s ear and plopped herself down in his lap and gyrated her bony ass.

The two bargirls had been watching Dan and Katya from the minute they entered the club, splashing cash, drinking heavily, gawking at the pole-dancers. Dan and Katya were doing a good job acting their roles and as they both had a high tolerance for alcohol they were able to act convincingly whilst keeping their wits about them.

A foursome was offered and accepted and Misha and Mirna nodded to each other knowingly. The hostess suddenly reappeared and gave Dan and Katya the onceover to make sure they were kosher. Cops didn’t run stings in the free zone but one could never be too careful. She explained that it would cost one thousand dollars to take Misha and Mirna upstairs for one hour and Dan and Katya nodded enthusiastically. They wouldn’t have got an Oscar but they acted their parts pretty well.

Katya’s card was hit for another thousand dollars and returned to her with a receipt. The hostess led them out of the VIP room and through an unmarked door behind which was a staircase. They followed her along a corridor with three bedrooms either side with a bathroom at the end. Misha and Mirna walked behind them carrying the champagne, nattering in a Slavic dialect.

Katya leaned into Dan pretending to be a little drunk and a little nervous.

“They think that we’re a couple of rubes and they're trying to figure out how they can squeeze more money out of us to keep for themselves,” Katya whispered in his ear.

Dan nodded and smiled as if she had made a lewd suggestion.

The hostess left them alone in one of the bedrooms and Misha made a point of locking the door.

“Now we have privacy we can really party,” she smiled and began to pour more drinks.

Dan climbed onto a chair and used his coat to cover the concealed camera mounted high on the wall that was aimed at the huge bed.

“Now we can have privacy,” he grinned at the two hookers who simply shrugged their shoulders.

These two rubes were not as dumb as they looked.

Katya surprised Misha and Mirna when she took an envelope out of her handbag and put it beside her on the bed. She opened the envelope and took out a wad of cash held together with a rubber band. She fanned the money and grinned at the girls.

“Ok. We can do any kind of kinky shit you want but you can’t leave any marks on us,” Misha stared at the wad of cash with abject greed.

“That won’t be necessary. I just have some questions,” Katya said in Russian and the girls looked at each other with surprise and then they looked back at the wad of cash that Katya was holding and they both nodded.

Misha and Mirna had both answered online advertisements promising domestic work in the US at a good salary. Misha was from Donetsk and Mirna was from Kharkiv. The MO was the same at both recruitment agencies. The girls were advised that waiting for a J-1 visa was only going to cost them money when they could be earning big bucks, living in nice houses, wearing nice clothes and earning a good wage.

People were smuggled into the US constantly and once they were stateside no one was going to care. ICE and the other law enforcement agencies were too busy chasing down suspected terrorists, drug smugglers and transnational criminals to worry about housemaids and nannies.

Both girls said that they were surprised at how quickly the recruitment agencies worked. Mirna was given a bus ticket to Kyiv and Misha was driven there in a van with four other girls. The girls were a little concerned when they were then driven to Serbia where more girls joined them. The smugglers continued to tell them that everything was fine and they were well treated. The van continued to the port of Dubrovnik where the girls were loaded into a shipping container.

Two of the girls refused to go in the can and were taken away by the smugglers. Eighteen young women endured nearly two weeks ocean passage in the container. They were transhipped somewhere in South America and crossed the border from Mexico and were finally freed in a warehouse facility somewhere in the US. The girls didn’t know where.

It turned out that freedom from the container did not necessarily mean freedom per se. It was here that the rough handling commenced. The girls were sorted by looks more than anything else and the younger girls were given a vaginal exam.

Two pretty virgins were taken aside and driven away in a car never to be seen again. About half of the girls, the younger better-looking ones, were put in a van and taken to a large house with many rooms. Mirna said that she and Misha were part of this group. The others were taken elsewhere and Mirna said that she had seen one of the other girls wearing a housemaid’s uniform at Walmart only a few weeks earlier so she guessed they had become domestics.

Mirna, Misha and the others were told that they would be working as prostitutes. They had no papers, no friends or family and no way to support themselves. Using a combination of coercion, intimidation and force the girls eventually submitted and were farmed out to brothels across the US.

Mirna and Misha had ended up here in Balwyn. They lived in a big house with ten other European girls. They said that conditions were not that bad, they were well clothed and well fed and even allowed out under supervision. They were encouraged to engage online with other girls from their home towns and tell them how good a life they had in the United States.

The deal was that they were indentured for two years and allowed to keep twenty-five percent of their earnings which was considered generous. They could send money home if they wanted. The Bratok didn’t charge them for board or victuals and they had a stipend for clothing.

Mirna and Misha said it was a pretty good deal and that some of the girls working at Supergirls had completed their two year ‘contracts’ and stayed on anyway, keeping fifty percent of what they earned and had moved out into the community.

Dan and Katya took down as many details as possible including the names of the recruiting agencies. They stayed with the girls long enough for the hostess to think they had participated in the activities they had paid for.

“My friend is big guy in Texas State Police and I work for the Yakovich Bratva. Keep money and keep mouths shut or my friend will have you arrested and deported or worse for you, I will have you visited by some guys who are not very friendly. When they finish with you, no man will want to fuck you. Understand?” Katya adopted her ‘moose and squirrel’ Natasha Fatale accent.

She nodded to Dan who flashed his badge at the two girls who didn’t look at anything except the wad of cash that Katya was holding.

The girls nodded vigorously, never taking their eyes off the money.

Katya threw the money on the bed and she and Dan left.

“Did you have to threaten them?” Dan asked as they made their way downstairs.

“Don’t feel sorry for them Dan. They are no longer the sweet teenagers who applied for domestic jobs in the US. They knew about the camera in the room which they use to blackmail clients but more importantly they had knives hidden under the mattress and roofies in the bedside table.”

“They would never cheat their regular customers but a couple of rubes from of out of town are fair game,” Katya said as they reached the bottom of the staircase.

“Don’t forget… I used to be just like them,” Katya opened the door to the booming unce-unce-unce of the dance music.

To be continued…

Strange Bedfellows - Chapter 3

Author:

Michele Nylons

Audience Rating:

EXPLICIT CONTENT

Publication:

Final Chapter

Genre:

Transgender

Character Age:

Mature / Thirty+

TG Themes:

TG Elements:

Permission:

Posted by author(s)

Chapter Three – The Scorpion Bitch

The late model white Ford Econoline van was parked in the Pearl Street parking area across the road from Rutgers University Athletic and Fitness Center. The van was parked next to the exit facing the fitness centre and two men sat in the front staring out the window intently.

The men worked freelance directly for Jennifer Jones and had not long ago returned from Mexico where they had used their skills to extract certain information from a Pakistani deckhand recently of the MV Arno Starlight. The questioning had taken place in a jail cell and after he was questioned the man had required hospitalisation but it wasn’t these men who had killed him. Alexi Reznik’s henchman had seen to that.

Not that the two men were averse to killing if it was required but this was simple kidnapping. The caveat being that they were not to harm a hair on the head of the person they were about to abduct. Jennifer Jones might look like a sexy little kewpie doll but they knew what she was capable of and neither of the kidnappers wanted to get on her wrong side.

"There she is," one of the men pointed to a young woman walking down 3rd Street across from the parking lot.

Katerina Walker listened to the music coming from her earbuds and thought about her mother. Her mother had used many names during Katerina’s eighteen years but she knew that her mother’s real name was Katya Kuznetsova and that she loved her.

When she was young Katerina had moved around Europe and the UK, attending good schools, being looked after by good people whom she knew her mother paid well. When Katerina turned thirteen Katya had set up a trust fund to ensure that Katerina was well cared for, which was just as well because for a two-year period her mother had virtually disappeared for reasons that she had never explained.

Other than that Katya saw her daughter fairly regularly. Katya had never fully explained why Katerina couldn’t live with her in the United Sates but she knew it had something to do with her father. He was some sort of uber-criminal or something and if people knew that Katerina was his daughter they might take revenge.

The story didn’t really make that much sense to Katerina because if her father was this uber criminal then why didn’t he protect her?

She didn’t question her mother. Katya made sure that Katerina never wanted for anything and finally Katya’s circumstances had changed and Katerina had come to the US, enrolled at Rutgers University and spent the weekends and holidays with her mother. She considered herself the happiest girl in the world.

Katerina was clad in black and pink spandex tights and matching crop top and wore expensive cycling shoes because she had just finished a spin class. Katerina's jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. She’d had it styled like her mother’s but wore it longer. Katerina was tall like her mother and had her mother’s lithe figure and long legs and the same sense of style. Where the other girls in her classes felt emancipated by not wearing makeup or pantyhose and mostly dressed down and wore sensible shoes, Katerina always wore full makeup and preferred skirts and dresses, heels and hose. She basically liked to dress like her mother.

She didn’t care that the other girls teased her for being a throwback and unemancipated, she threw back at them that they were actually slaves to popular culture and stereotypical of young women as perpetuated by the media.

"Ok, let’s get her. Don’t hurt her!" the driver pointed excitedly.

His partner gave him a withering look but just nodded. He knew that hurting the girl was tantamount to a death sentence.

Katerina approached the crosswalk weighed down by the gym bag hooked over her shoulder. The crosswalk was just down from the Rutgers University Police building but there was no sign of any cops.

The driver started the engine whilst his partner climbed into the back of the van and opened a ripstop nylon bag from which he took out a Ziploc bag with a sponge inside it. He pulled down his ski-mask and pulled on his surgical gloves, adjusting them to fit. The driver turned onto North 3rd Street and stopped at the crosswalk just as Katerina stepped onto it.

It couldn't have gone better. The usually busy street was quiet and there was no one else on the street as Katerina drew level with the van listening to her music and daydreaming, taking no notice of her surroundings. The chemical smell from the sponge was so strong that the man held it down by his side so as not to be affected.

The man flung open the door and leapt out and grabbed Katerina and put the sponge over her nose and mouth before she could scream. She struggled a little until the chloroform mixture knocked her out. He manhandled Katerina into the Econoline quickly, being careful not to injure her. He laid her down on a large mattress in the back of the van and tossed her gym bag in after her. He slammed the door closed and put the sponge back in the Ziploc bag whilst the driver drove away slowly, conforming to the speed limit.

The kidnapping had taken only seconds. It would take the driver somewhere from twenty to thirty minutes to drive to Newark Airport where a private jet waited for them on the apron.

The man in the back of the van arranged the girl on the mattress as comfortably as he could. He put a pillow under her head and spread her arms and legs wide so she wouldn’t roll off the mattress. He pulled the curtain across the windows in the back and across the driver's cabin so no one could see into the van. The back of the van became dark so he switched on the dome lights and took a good look at the girl.

The man was sweating with the exertion and he was excited from grappling with the spandex-clad young woman. Rubbing up against her tight body and small perky tits had been a turn on. Looking at the girl lying on the mattress with her lycra-clad legs spread wide and her small firm breasts heaving as she slept further excited him. The girl was pretty with her heavy makeup and black hair.

He knew that doing anything to harm this girl would be a death sentence if he was caught, but the girl was unconscious and the driver was too busy negotiating traffic. The man lived a dangerous life and had taken risks that most men would baulk at. The girl was just too pretty not to mess with and he knew that she would never know that he had messed with her.

He checked that the curtain across the driver's cabin was secure and then he dropped his pants and freed his hard cock.

The kidnappers had been directed not to physically assault the girl or harm her in any way but a little dry humping wouldn't hurt anyone the man thought as he kicked Katerina's legs wider apart and lay between them.

He kissed her unresponsive lips and nestled his cock between her legs and rubbed it on her lycra-clad mound. Her body was warm and she smelled of perfume mingled with perspiration which inflamed his desire.

He thrust against her, enjoying the feel of her cunt through the silky, stretchy layer of lycra-spandex. He lifted her legs and put them around his thighs so he could feel the sleek fabric on his skin. He pressed his body against hers, feeling the firmness of her perky breasts and kissed her nonresponsive lips, tasting her lipstick. It was exciting, like fucking a recently deceased corpse. He thrust harder, driving his cock into the supple, slinky fabric, feeling the contours of her labia. He kissed her passionately and thrust vigorously until he was finished, ejaculating his wad into her crotch.

He climbed off her and cleaned up with a cloth, wiping away any semen that had not been absorbed by her tights and then he put his manhood away and pulled up his pants. He rearranged Katerina on the mattress and made her as comfortable as possible for the short drive.

The kidnapper went back to his ripstop nylon bag and took out a plastic cartridge case. He extracted one of the preloaded syringes and found a vein inside the crook of Katerina’s elbow. He injected the contents of the syringe and checked her pulse and breathing for a while.

When he was happy that she was stable he rifled through Katerina's gym bag and located her mobile phone and switched it off. He zipped up the bag and made his way to the front of the van and stuck his head through the curtain.

“Ten minutes until we get to the airport cargo gate; is she ok?” the driver asked.

“She’s sleeping. I’ll monitor her while we’re airborne and give her the second shot if she needs it. She probably won’t. She’s tall but she’s small framed. All legs and ass with little tits,” the kidnapper grinned.

"You didn't fuck with her did you?" the driver asked.

"As tempting as the prospect is... no I didn't," his partner lied.

The driver just grunted. His partner was known to take unnecessary risks and the one person besides Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich that you didn’t fuck with was his bitch Jennifer Jones.

The kidnapper in the back of the van punched up a number on a burner phone and spoke briefly.

“We have the cargo. See you soon,” he hung up and took the battery and the sim card out of the phone.

He crushed the sim card and tossed it and the phone out of the van as it turned into the cargo gate entrance to Newark Airport, waved through by a security guard who had been well paid to let them through without any security checks or paperwork.

*****

Penelope Benson, Jennifer Jones and Alice Leasingham sat in the kitchen of a large ranch-style house on a small farm on the outskirts of Balwyn Texas. The nervous tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

Alice worked away on the keyboard of a super-encrypted computer linked to the dark web through a complicated maze of VPNs that rendered the computer untraceable.

Alice was not happy.

Neither Penelope nor Jennifer had made a comment when Alice joined them and they noticed that she had dyed her hair black, had it cut into a black bob and was wearing a short-skirted business suit, sheer hosiery, high heels and heavy makeup.

They both knew that Alice had developed a girl-crush on Katya Kuznetsova but they never dreamed she would take it this far. Alice was renowned for dressing down to do her job. The curly-haired, freckle-faced young woman usually wore skinny-jeans, long-sleeved t-shirts and Nikes. The transformation was amazing and a little disturbing.

At first Penelope had argued against including Alice in their sting but Jennifer, although adept at manipulating and making transactions on the dark web did not have Alice's forensic skills and they needed her. There were now three people who knew that Dmitriy Yakovich’s daughter had been kidnapped. The kidnappers had no idea who Katerina Walker was, nor did they care and Katya believed her daughter was safe and sound in her dormitory at Rutgers.

Katerina Walker had been in a drug induced sleep during the four and half hour flight from Newark to Balwyn airport. The two kidnappers had taken turns checking her vitals. The kidnapper who had dry-humped her on the mattress in the van wished that he had the opportunity to do it again but there was no way it was possible in the confines of the Learjet 70.

The men had dropped Katerina off at a prearranged meeting place at an abandoned gas station and Jennifer had checked Katerina to confirm that she hadn't been harmed before she handed over a briefcase containing a quarter million dollars in US currency. Jennifer had seriously considered killing the two operatives to keep them quiet but they had been loyal to her and done exactly what she had paid them for. It was difficult recruiting men who would work for her who would not, inadvertently or otherwise, leak what they were doing to Dmitriy Yakovich. His spies were everywhere.

Jennifer decided to keep the two operatives on retainer and transferred another quarter million dollars into a numbered account in Switzerland. The two operatives were directed to take a long European vacation and not return to the US until Jennifer told them to, which they were more than happy to do.

For the last couple of weeks they had been living rough and had to make do with Mexican bargirl pussy and New York streetwalkers and they had already rented an exclusive chateau in Saint-Émilion in the Bordeaux region of France and had arranged for a couple of high-class French escorts to spend some time with them.

Jennifer drove Katerina to the ranch where Penelope and Alice where waiting. Jennifer had secretly taken several hair and semen samples from Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich before he left Balwyn and Alice took a swab from Katerina Walker and went to work making a match.

Carrying Katerina to the upstairs bedroom was no easy feat but Penelope and Jennifer were both strong women. They stripped Katerina out of her sports clothes and dressed her in clean panties, shorts and a t-shirt. Jennifer thought she could smell the musky scent of semen on Katerina’s tights and she sniffed the crotch whilst Penelope wasn’t looking. Then she rubbed the fabric between her finger and thumb. The unmistakeable miasma and slimy texture of stale semen was evident.

She doubted that either of the men would have been stupid enough to fuck Katerina but Jennifer checked Katerina’s genitalia for signs of penetration. Jennifer had deflowered plenty of virgins with Dmitriy so she knew what to look for. Katerina still had her chastity.

“Assholes!” Jennifer hissed, assuming rightly that one or both of the men had dry-humped Katerina while she was unconscious.

Jennifer knew what happened to some of the girls whilst they were being transported for sex trafficking purposes and a bit of dry-humping over Katerina’s lycra tights was nothing compared to what they endured. She kept her composure but she would punish whichever of the men had broken his contract with Jennifer. It was a matter of honour and she had a reputation to uphold.

Jennifer called one of her contacts in France and told her what she needed. The kidnappers would be questioned and the offender punished appropriately so Jennifer was satisfied that the matter was closed. Examples had to be made.

Penelope had gone downstairs to work with Alice Leasingham and Jennifer was alone with Katerina. She could see that Katerina was mostly Katya Kuznetsova but she had some Dmitriy Yakovich in her too. Katerina had Dmitriy’s long nose, chiselled cheekbones and narrow chin. Her jet-black hair was likely a product of them both. There was no doubt that she had her mother’s alabaster skin and no doubt whatsoever that she was beautiful.

Katerina would be waking up soon and the lies would begin. They would lie to Katerina, they would lie to Katya they would lie to the rest of the task force and most importantly they would lie to Alexi Reznik. It would be dangerous work.

Setting a tethered goat outside the lair of a jackal seemed like an easy task but someone had to lead the goat and tie it off.

That would be Jennifer’s job.

“Katerina will be waking up soon so we need to have our story straight,” Jennifer stated the bleeding obvious.

“Gary and the rest of the task force think I’ve driven down to Austin to check up on Silvia Bickle and Steve Edwards and their murder trial. Alice is supposed to be working from the forensics unit. That leaves only you to explain your absence,” Penelope pointed at Jennifer.

“Not that I answer to anybody here but Katya thinks I’m in my suite catching up on work I need to do for Dmitriy. I’ve pretty much given her the night off and I think she intends to spend it with Special Agent Dan Murphy,” Jennifer grinned.

Alice’s head spun around and looked at Jennifer questioningly.

“Katya and Dan… really?” Alice said; jealousy evident in her tone.

“She and Dan are questioning the girls at Supergirls strip club but they had a little dalliance before they went in there,” Jennifer said coolly.

Penelope looked a little surprised but Alice looked angry.

“Why does Katya have to tell you everything that she does?” Alice said through gritted teeth.

“There are things about me that you will never understand Alice. Let’s just leave it at that,” Jennifer said as soothingly as possible.

They needed Alice’s skills so they had to keep her onside.

“Your skinny girlfriend is going to be pissed when she finds out that you kidnapped her daughter,” Penelope couldn’t help but taking a snipe at Jennifer.

“Exactly and Katya will be calling her daughter soon for their daily chat so we better get our shit together,” Jennifer waved Katerina’s mobile phone, which was still switched off, at Alice.

“Can you fix this thing so that it doesn’t ping from here but from New Brunswick?” Jennifer tossed the phone to Alice.

“Pulleese… give me something difficult to do,” Alice began to take the cover off the phone and walked back into the den which she had commandeered as her laboratory and workroom.

“We better go up and prepare Katerina,” Jennifer said.

“You act like kidnapping girls and selling them on the web is the kind of thing you do every day,” Penelope said bitterly.

Jennifer paused and gave Penelope a cold look.

“I’ve have had first-hand experience… from both sides,” Jennifer whispered.

“I know that you have been abducted and raped a couple of times yourself so I thought this might be easier for you,” Jennifer met Penelope’s gaze.

“Let’s get it done,” Penelope hissed and led Jennifer to the staircase.

Katerina was coming out of her fugue but she was still very confused. Her last memory was of being snatched off the street outside her gym. She came too lying on a bed with clean bedding in a sparsely furnished room wearing clean shorts and t-shirt. Someone had dressed her including putting her into a pair of clean cotton panties.

Katerina knew what happened to teenage girls who were abducted and she was surprised to find that she was in the company of two well-dressed attractive women.

They were both dressed in dark skirt-suits, hose and heels. The older one had long blonde hair and was tall and well-built, not fat, but well-proportioned with long legs. The younger elfin woman had coiffed red hair, a school-girl body shape with narrow shoulders and hips and a cold, calculating disposition that made Katerina a little uneasy. Both of the women had striking green eyes.

Although Katya had never told her daughter what she did for a living, Katerina knew that it involved some sort of international criminal enterprise. Why else would Katerina have to hide in Europe throughout her childhood? She knew that her father had been some sort of bigwig criminal too, so putting two and two together she guessed that her abduction was related to those facts. She knew that her mother was financially comfortable. Katya had the house in Southold New York and she had paid for Katerina’s education and lodgings whilst she had lived overseas and paid for her tuition at Rutgers and had bought her a late-model car and gave her a generous stipend to live on through the trust fund.

Was she being kidnapped for ransom?

Katerina sat on the edge of the bed and surveyed the two women who both pulled up chairs to face her. The redhead’s coat opened a little and Katerina saw Jennifer’s Walther PPS M2 9mm in the shoulder rig. She looked at the older blonde and saw the tell-tale bulge that indicated that she too was carrying a concealed weapon.

“Which one of you undressed me and put me in these clothes?” Katerina asked.

Both women were taken aback by the question.

“We both did,” Jennifer answered.

“Are there any men in the house? Am I going to be raped?” was Katerina's next question.

“There are no men and you will come to no harm,” Jennifer tried to smile at Katerina.

“Ok. So the obvious questions then. Where am I and why am I here?” Katerina said gruffly.

Penelope went over to a jug of ice water set up on a sideboard and poured Katerina a glass which she gulped down and then stuck out the glass to be refilled.

“Just sip the water for now please Katerina otherwise you’ll make yourself sick,” Penelope smiled at her.

“Where is my mother? I want to talk to her,” Katerina countered.

“All in good time. Your mother is safe but first we need to tell you a story. An unbelievable story but true regardless,” Jennifer said in a soothing tone.

“But…” Katerina was about to ask more questions but Jennifer interjected and held up her hand.

“The story will answer most of your questions including where you are and why you are here and after you can talk to Katya,” Jennifer said softly.

Katerina’s eye’s turned flinty at the mention of her mother’s name.

Jennifer had had Katerina under surveillance for some time and she knew that the beautiful young woman was independent, intelligent, opinionated, fit and healthy and had her mother’s fighting spirit. She was smart and feisty. Lying to her was not going to be easy.

“Your mother used to work for a man named Alexi Reznik. He is a bad man, so bad that some people call him The Jackal. Your mother worked for him in the people trafficking business; one of his many criminal enterprises, which includes drug smuggling, extortion and murder,” Jennifer began

Katerina’s eyes were wide but she didn’t interject. She’d always suspected that her mother was a criminal but having it confirmed was daunting.

“She was not treated well by Reznik; I’m sure that you have seen the scars on her body,” Jennifer continued and Katerina nodded.

“Katya worked for Alexi by luring young women to the US with the promise of well-paid domestic work but they were bound into sexual slavery when they arrived. A good percentage of them came willingly, knowing they would be working as prostitutes enamoured by the lure of the money and the promise of a better life.”

“She also sought out and identified local girls, usually pretty young virgins, to be traded overseas,” Jennifer paused and took a sip of water.

Katerina also took a sip of her water. Tears were rolling down her face but she held her composure.

“As I said, she was forced to do these things. It was that or she would suffer the same fate,” Jennifer resumed her story.

“Let me show something,” Jennifer lifted her left leg and rested it on the bed and turned it to show her ankle.

“Your mother has the same tattoo,” Jennifer pointed to the scorpion.

“She never told me why she has it. She told me it was a stupid mistake when she young,” Katerina admired Jennifer's calf.

“Reznik marks the women who work for him so that they will always be branded as his property,” Jennifer lied.

“None of this explains why I’ve been abducted. I always knew deep down that my mother worked with bad people, that she was probably a criminal herself. What you have told me confirms my suspicions but doesn’t tell me why I'm here,” Katerina glared at Jennifer.

“Your mother escaped Alexi Reznik’s clutches. Your mother has her house in New York but Reznik found out where Katya was living and put her under surveillance. He knows about you. He was planning to kidnap you and sell you as a sex slave to punish your mother. We got to you first.” Jennifer continued her lies.

“You worked for this Reznik man and knew my mother when she did. Did you know my father?” Katerina asked throwing Jennifer off kilter a little.

“He was a good man. Some would say that he too was an evil criminal but he just did what he to do to survive. He was Reznik's adversary; another reason Reznik wants you,” Jennifer folded some truth into her lies.

“So now that you have me safe and sound why not reunite me with my mother? Where is she? Why isn’t she here?” Katerina whined.

“Your mother knows nothing of this. I still work for Alexi Reznik. That’s how I know that he found Katya and of his plan to sell you as a sex slave. Katya was my only real friend back then and I’ve secretly watched over her but this has brought things to a climax.”

“If your mother knew that Reznik knows about your existence she would do something stupid like offer herself to him in your stead which makes no sense because he will have you both in clutches anyway. She might try and hide you again, but that won’t work either because he knows who you are.”

“The only way to make this problem go away and secure your future is to get rid of Alexi Reznik,” Jennifer said and nodded at Penelope.

“I’m Lieutenant Penelope Bishop and I’m heading up a special task force to catch Alexi Reznik,” Penelope sat down on the bed beside Katerina and showed Katerina her gold shield.

“We’ve come up against brick walls every time we think we have him nailed. Miss Jones came to me and made me an intriguing proposal that is both unlawful and dangerous. It is also unsanctioned,” Penelope squeezed Katerina’s hand.

“It obviously involves me,” Katerina breathed.

“Yes it does. We intend to tell Alexi that we have you and that we are willing to trade you but he has to take delivery of you personally. When he comes out of hiding to collect you we grab him. We have enough evidence to put him away for life. He might even face the death sentence,” Penelope smiled wanly.

“And my mother and I will be free of him forever,” a sly smile crossed Katerina's face.

Then storm clouds replaced the smile.

“I don’t understand why my mother can’t be involved. If she knew that we would both be free forever surely she would cooperate,” Katerina said angrily.

“Neither Penelope nor I have a daughter, but we have both been daughters. We have both loved people so much that we would do anything for them. But we would never put them in harm’s way,” Jennifer sat down on the other side of Katerina and she and Penelope put their arms around Katerina and hugged her.

Ten minutes later Jennifer burst in on Alice Leasingham who was working on her laptop.

“Did you rig the phone?” Jennifer asked.

“Piece of cake. When she switches it on the signal will be rerouted to a cellular tower near Rutgers U and the GPS coordinates will also correlate for Rutgers. When she makes a call it will appear to come from that same tower. If you want her to pretend she’s on the move I can bounce the signal from towers along her route and I can manipulate the location tracking to simulate the route,” Alice explained.

“I’ve left the phone switched on and it’s fully charged,” Alice seemed pleased with herself.

“Well done Alice. Get your camera and come upstairs in about half an hour; we’ll be ready to take some glamour shots,” Jennifer said.

Alice nodded but Jennifer sensed her uneasiness.

“Did you find Reznik’s personal email address?” Jennifer knew that the best way to deal with Alice’s reluctance was to keep her busy.

“Yes,” Alice sighed.

“And you have the paternity results?” Jennifer encouraged Alice to be more responsive.

“Yes. The DNA proves conclusively that Katerina Walker is the daughter of Katya Kuznetsova and Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich,” Alice sighed again.

“Alice. You can’t back out now. This is our one chance to get Reznik,” Jennifer approached Alice and stroked her shoulder.

“I know. I just wish we didn’t have to use Katya’s daughter to do it,” she whined.

“Katya and Katerina will be fine. We’ve told Katerina a few white lies is all. You saw what Reznik is capable of?” Jennifer squeezed Alice’s shoulder.

“I just wish this over,” Alice patted Jennifer’s hand.

“Soon, Alice, soon,” Jennifer took the phone and headed back upstairs.

*****

Back at the Balwyn Hilton Katya and Dan Murphy lay on the huge bed in Katya’s suite. Katya was dressed in a satin négligée and nylon stockings, her fuck-me-pumps lay on the floor next to the bed. The bed smelled of sex and Dan was lazily stroking Katya’s leg while he a sipped a JD on ice. He traced the seam of her stocking up to the welt and tried to continue on to Katya’s pink satin panties but she slapped his hand away.

Katya had called Jennifer twice and it had gone to voicemail and then she had tried to use the house phone to call her suite directly but it was switched to do-not-disturb and also went to voicemail.

She called her daughter and Katerina answered on the second ring.

“Hi mom; how's things?” Katerina sounded cheerful.

“Just fine darling. I’m still in Texas and might be here for a little while,” Katya shooed Dan’s hand away from her breast and turned her back to him.

“How’s school?” Katya asked her stock questions.

“Fine. I’m working on my position paper due to be presented to Professor Minder tomorrow so I can’t talk for long,” Katya said.

This suited Katerina because Dan Murphy would not desist and was rubbing his hard cock against her panties, pushing it into the crease of her ass while his fingers snaked inside the front of her panties trying to find her labia.

“I won’t keep you long honey, just checking in,” Katya said through gritted teeth as Dan’s finger slid inside her cummy cunt lips and found her sensitive bud.

“That’s ok mom. I gotta get back to work,” Katya said brightly.

“Me too,” Katya hoped her daughter didn’t hear the lust in her voice.

Dan had pushed his cock inside Katya’s panties and was probing her cunt, intending to fuck her from behind while she lay on her side.

“Bye. Love you,” Katya said in a raspy voice.

Dan’s cock had breached her defences and was sliding into her slick vagina.

“Love you too mom,” Katerina, said in a cheerful tone.

Katya hung up and tossed the phone away and gave out a long lecherous moan and pushed back against Dan and put her hand over his, encouraging him to increase the pressure on her clit.

“Mom’s ok. Almost sounded like she was getting some while she was talking on the phone,” Katerina giggled.

Jennifer gave Penelope a knowing look and silently mouthed Dan Murphy.

That night before Katya went to sleep she activated the phone tracking application she had planted on Katerina’s phone. Her daughter was safe and sound in her dormitory at Rutgers University.

*****

Jennifer had Alice Leasingham take some glamour shots of Katerina; nothing pornographic or too provocative, she was not going to be listed for auction. They had only one buyer in mind and the purpose of the pictures was to prove that they had Katerina Walker in their possession, prove that Katerina was Dmitriy Yakovich’s daughter and inflame Alexi Reznik's desire for her because of her beauty.

When Alice took the shots Katerina was instructed to look afraid and disoriented and in a couple of the shots Katerina held up current copies of the national newspapers across her chest as proof of life. The last few pictures showed Katerina restrained and bound to a chair. The pictures proved that Katerina Walker had been abducted but was still alive and well.

After the photo shoot Katerina changed into casual clothing and was allowed the freedom of the house but was not allowed outside or into the den. Penelope directed Alice Leasingham to keep Katerina company while she and Jennifer worked and of course Alice wanted to know all about Katya. Katerina was amused by Alice’s attempt to copy her mother’s style but she didn’t tease Alice. She loved her mother and was delighted to talk to Alice about her.

Jennifer and Penelope put together the email they intended to send to Alexi Reznik. The email would come from anonymous kidnappers who were holding the girl at an undisclosed location.

It cited that information had come into their hands that Dmitriy Yakovich had a daughter by Katya Kuznetsova that he didn’t know about and that the kidnappers had undeniable and conclusive paternity tests to prove it. The daughter was a great beauty and still a virgin. Reznik need only see the attached proofs and photographs to know the claim was genuine.

The girl was for sale for the sum of five million dollars. The reason for the asking price was that they knew that Alexi Reznik and Dmitriy Yakovich hated each other and were heated rivals and that only an agreed code of conduct that put the imperatives of business above personal feelings kept the two Pakhan’s from killing each other. If either one of them was killed by the other, the resulting gang warfare would decimate business and nothing stopped the Odessa mafia from making money.

Imagine the mental torture that Reznik could inflict on Yakovich when he told him that he had Katerina in his clutches and sent him proof that she was his daughter. Reznik could deflower Katerina and film it. He could commit all sorts of atrocities on her and send the video to Dmitriy. He could torture her. He could do anything he wanted with her and break Yakovich's heart. Reznik could kill the girl or ransom her himself once he had taken his revenge on Dmitriy Yakovich. Imagine how much Dmitriy would pay to have his daughter back even if she had been defiled and disfigured?

They put together the paternity test results and the pictures, stripped of the location metadata of course, and attached them to the email. DNA samples from Dmitriy Yakovich and Katerina Walker had been left with a reputable laboratory in Balwyn and instructions on how to collect the samples were provided. Alice Leasingham would drop them off when she left the farmhouse that afternoon.

The transaction was to remain secret until Katerina was delivered to him personally otherwise the deal was off. If he refused to deal on their terms, face to face with the kidnappers, the deal was off and they would offer Katerina to Dmitriy Yakovich or put her on the open market to the highest bidder.

Reznik had twenty-four hours to respond.

What Jennifer and Penelope were doing was ruthless, cold, indefensible and inexcusable. The gravity of what they were about to do settled on their shoulders and Jennifer and Penelope looked each other in the eyes and made an unspoken pact between themselves. There was no going back from this.

They both put their fingers on the ‘enter’ key and pressed it together and sent the email and attachments.

“What now? This your territory not mine.

“We wait,” Jennifer said coldly.

“I suggest you get some sleep, we are going to be busy tomorrow regardless of Reznik’s response,” Jennifer stood and patted Penelope on the shoulder.

“Are we really the cold-hearted bitches that I think we are?” Penelope whispered.

Jennifer leaned down and kissed Penelope on the cheek.

“Yes,” she whispered; and left the room.

Penelope Bishop was cold and it wasn’t just the weather. She had done some despicable things in her life but none as contemptible as what she was doing now. She had betrayed lovers and partners, she had killed people in cold blood, she had been a drunk and a whore: during the Sleeping Beauties case Penelope had once come out of a blackout to find herself being gangbanged by three college jocks in a cheap hotel.

She reconciled her actions when she thought about those sixteen dead girls left to die in agony in the shipping container in the desert. They had suffered horrific injuries when the container rolled off the truck and were then left to bake during the day and freeze at night. She and Silvia had smelled the stink of their decaying flesh and seen the coyote tracks around the container and the buzzards circling above.

Someone had to pay and that someone was Alexi Reznik because ultimately he was responsible. If they had to use the innocent daughter of a Ukrainian whore and sex trafficker as bait then so be it.

If she had to work alongside Dmitriy Yakovich’s personal whore and bootlicker so be it. But something about Jennifer Jones intrigued her. She was a cold hard bitch who had all but admitted to being an assassin but there seemed to be a slither of vulnerability beneath her shield of invincibility. Jennifer had said herself that they had both been betrayed by men.

She took off her weapon and put in the drawer in the bedside table then she turned out the overhead lights and checked the thermostat again. It was set to the maximum but the room was still bitterly cold. Penelope took off her jacket and shivered; she kicked off her heels, bra and her skirt but left on her slip, panties and hosiery for added warmth and pulled on the cotton nightdress that Jaylene Foster jokingly called her ‘chastity pyjamas’. She shook thoughts of Jaylene out of her head. She didn’t want thoughts of her partner sullied by what she was doing.

The bed was cold and she pulled the comforter around her and turned off the bedside lamp. She couldn’t sleep, although she was drowsy.

Her bedroom door opened just a crack and almost silently a figure slipped into the room. Penelope reached for her gun wishing she has left it on top of the bedside table rather than in the drawer.

The unmistakeable scent of Dior Poison perfume drifted her way and she knew who it was approaching the bed silently in the dark.

“I could have killed you, sneaking up on me like that,” Penelope whispered, leaving her pistol in the drawer.

“You wouldn’t have been quick enough. You should know better than to put your weapon away when you are in unfamiliar surroundings,” Jennifer whispered just a quietly.

“Do you have your weapon with you? Is it trained on me now?” Penelope breathed.

She felt Jennifer sit on the edge of the bed. She was so small that she hardly compressed mattress.

“No I come unarmed. I came to talk, not to fight,” Jennifer whispered.

“It’s too late and too cold to talk,” the hesitation in Penelope’s reply was evident.

“Not if we share our warmth,” Jennifer tugged at the comforter and slid under the bedclothes.

“What are you doing?” Penelope gasped.

Jennifer may have been small but she radiated warmth. She snuggled up to Penelope and her scent was stronger. The shape of her small body was discernible even through the flannel nightgown and Penelope could feel that Jennifer was wearing a satin full-slip and pantyhose.

“When I was younger I missed having a sister to cuddle up to and to talk to on long cold winter nights,” Penelope could feel Jennifer’s sweet breath on her neck as she spoke.

“Me too I. I cuddled up with my mom sometimes,” Penelope surprised herself with her response.

She hated this younger woman; why would she tell Jennifer her secrets?

“You hate yourself for what we are doing,” Jennifer snuggled closer to Penelope and nuzzled her face against her shoulder.

“I have no remorse about using you, your intelligence or your strategies. I have no regrets about hurting Katya Kuznetsova, who herself is a sex trafficker and I have no regrets about betraying Gary Rasmussen, Dan Murphy, Tim Morrow. But Katerina Walker is an innocent party,” Penelope sighed.

“No one is innocent,” Jennifer nuzzled Penelope’s neck.

“Everyone is expendable. I’m expendable. Dmitriy Tanas Yakovich will one day tire of me and have to make a decision as to whether to kill me or trust me; I know what I would do,” Jennifer put an arm around Penelope and wriggled her body against her.

“Yet you are devoted to him,” Penelope shivered, but not because of the cold.

“I was given two choices: silver or lead… I chose silver,” Jennifer’s voice was so soft that she could hardly be heard.

Penelope turned around so that she faced Jennifer in the dark.

“But you know that one day he will kill you?” Penelope’s lips were nearly touching Jennifer's.

“Not for sure. He has promised me that I can continue to work for him as a Brigadier within his Bratva when my personal duties to him are completed,” Jennifer replied.

“You mean when he’s tired of fucking you,” Penelope regretted being bitchy but couldn’t help but tell the truth.

“He will never tire of fucking me but he will find someone who he likes to fuck better,” Jennifer smiled in the dark.

“You said before that you and I are very much alike. That we both have green eyes and that we both have dicks, that we had a similar upbringing and both chose law enforcement as our calling but we ended up on different sides of the fence,” Penelope put her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder.

“Yes that is true,” Jennifer sighed, her lips brushed Penelope’s.

Neither woman had removed their makeup before they went to bed and Penelope could taste Jennifer’s lipstick.

“But we are also very much alike because we are willing to betray those who are close to us. I betrayed two husbands and my friends in the Balwyn Police Department; you betrayed the FBI and your friend Katya Kuznetsova. You betrayed Katerina Walker,” Penelope put her arm under Jennifer so she could cuddle her.

“We are both betraying Katerina Walker,” Jennifer snuggled up to Penelope; being held by the bigger woman was comforting.

“When you said we were alike I replied that we are nothing alike,” Penelope breathed.

“It’s not true. We are both very much alike: devoted but ruthless, devoted but cold-hearted, devoted but deceitful, devoted but willing to betray those we love. We are the cold-hearted bitches that I said we were,” Penelope was silently sobbing.

“Then let us, just this once, comfort each other as sisters in betrayal; carrying a burden that no one else could ever understand,” Jennifer licked the salty tears off Penelope’s cheek.

“No,” Penelope whispered, pushing Jennifer away.

“Yes,” Jennifer pulled Penelope back into her embrace and kissed her.

The tension that had been simmering between the two women ignited and they kissed passionately, their mouths locked together and their tongues entwined. They locked their arms and legs around each other and held each other tight as they kissed.

After fifteen minutes of passionate kissing the two women stopped to breathe.

“Do you always wear this sexy flannel nightgown to bed,” Jennifer sniggered as she pulled at the sexless garment that Penelope was wearing.

“Shut up!” Penelope pulled away the comforter and shucked out of the cotton nightdress and tossed it aside.

“You made the bed cold,” Jennifer pouted playfully.

“Shut up!” Penelope giggled and pulled Jennifer close and kissed her again.

Their limbs intertwined and delicious slivers of delight ran up their legs. They were both wearing sheer pantyhose which whispered as they rubbed their legs together.

Penelope’s full ripe bosom pressed against Jennifer’s small pert breasts and their satin slips slinked against their bodies and their nipples hardened. Penelope enveloped her elfin paramour and held her close, kissing her, stroking her and igniting her lust.

Jennifer was not used to being treated tenderly and being the submissive partner and it had been a long time since she had been with another transgender woman and she relished the feel of being cuddled and cosseted by this beautiful older woman. Both women had become untucked and their penises pressed against each other through layers of satin panties and slips.

Penelope reached down and squeezed Jennifer’s erect penis through the slinky layers of fabric causing Jennifer to gasp.

“Not yet. I just want to feel you against me,” Jennifer whispered, easing Penelope’s hand from her groin.

Penelope obliged and pressed her cock against Jennifer’s and began to grind while she kissed her and held her tight. Penelope was surprised at the length and girth of Jennifer’s cock for such a small-framed woman.

Tingles of delight ran through the two women’s bodies as their cocks caressed, their bosoms pressed together and their lips and tongues engaged. They rubbed their legs together so that their nylons caressed their tender flesh.

“I can’t hold back,” Jennifer sighed.

“Me neither,” Penelope gasped.

Simultaneously both women flooded their panties with hot semen as they ground against each other, grinding, rubbing and chafing their bodies and limbs. Their cocks quivered and pressed together through their panties and satin slips as their semen co-mingled. They kissed and caressed and whispered terms of endearment as their orgasms washed over them.

Penelope remained tumescent and concupiscent and she rolled Jennifer onto her back.

She pinned Jennifer to the bed and snaked her hand under Jennifer’s slip and inside her panties and viciously ripped out the crotch of Jennifer's pantyhose. Penelope smeared her erect penis with Jennifer's semen and slid her cock into Jennifer's anus.

Jennifer gasped and wrapped her legs around Penelope and held her close.

“Do it! Fuck me!” Jennifer raised her buttocks and encouraged Penelope to fuck her.

Penelope complied and moved her cock slowly in out of Jennifer, drawing it all the way out and then driving it all the way in, ensuring she pushed her glans against Jennifer's prostate so that she received full pleasure.

The two gorgeous transgender women fucked each other, Penelope put her hands under Jennifer's shoulders so she could drive her erect penis deep and hard into Jennifer and Jennifer wrapped her legs tighter around Penelope, pulling her lover closer as they kissed passionately.

Penelope felt her climax approaching again and she gripped Jennifer's ankles and lifted her legs up over her shoulders so she gained maximum penetration. Jennifer assisted by lifting her bottom up off the bed and sliding two pillows under her ass and wrapping her arms around the lover who loomed over her tiny body.

They kissed and writhed and wriggled against each other; their passion building.

"Oh Yes!" Penelope screamed and ground her groin into Jennifer's buttocks.

Penelope's phallus erupted deep in Jennifer's ass, her semen spewed forth flooding Jennifer's anus. Jennifer sighed as she felt her bowels fill with her Penelope’s seed. She clung to Penelope as Penelope’s cock pushed against her prostate and her silken-shrouded belly rubbed on Jennifer's penis.

Jennifer orgasmed. Her satin slip became soaked with her seed. The intensity of this orgasm was even stronger than the first. Jennifer pushed up against Penelope and drove her tongue into her mouth and raked her fingernails along Penelope's back so extreme was her release.

The two lovers kissed and caressed as their climaxes slowly subsided. Penelope unlocked Jennifer's calves from around her neck but kept her semi-tumescent penis inside her anus.

“You were wonderful,” Jennifer smiled up at Penelope.

“You were pretty amazing yourself,” Penelope leaned down and kissed Jennifer on the tip of her nose.

Penelope put her weight on her palms so she could disengage from Jennifer but Jennifer kept her legs locked around Penelope’s waist and her arms clasped around her neck.

“Don’t move,” Jennifer demanded.

“We’re both covered in cum in case you didn’t notice,” Penelope grinned.

“But if you get out of bed we’ll be both be cold. Besides, there will only be more cum to deal with later,” Jennifer smiled up at Penelope impishly.

“Really?” Penelope feigned surprise.

“Oh, definitely. As soon as I can get hard again I’m going to fuck you in the ass,” Jennifer gave Penelope a mischievous grin.

“Really? Who says so?” Penelope giggled.

Penelope was shocked when Jennifer used her strength and athleticism to flip Penelope on her back and sit astride her.

“I say so,” Jennifer leaned down and kissed Penelope and Penelope wrapped Jennifer in a warm embrace.

*****

The next day in the Task Force office it was pandemonium when Tim Morrow and Dan Murphy found out what Jennifer and Penelope had been up to.

“This is the kinda unsanctioned bullshit I knew was going to happen when the AG decreed that that thing could get involved in law enforcement,” Dan Murphy pointed an accusatory finger at Jennifer.

“No need for insults Dan,” Penelope countered, unsure what Dan meant by that thing but she had a pretty good idea.

“But you don’t mind getting involved with and putting your cock inside people who work for me… how is Katya this morning by the way?” Jennifer gave Dan a bemused smile.

Dan’s face glowed red with anger, he balled up his fists and was about to explode when Tim Morrow interjected.

“What you are proposing is career suicide if it goes wrong,” Tim said.

“And a rocket-ship to advancement if we get it right,” Penelope countered.

She pointed to her crime wall.

“We have substantive proof that Alexi Reznik is ultimately responsible for the deaths of the girls in the can. We have hard evidence that his corporations and businesses are involved in people smuggling and sex trafficking and that he owns Belarus International Services. We can tie that company to the can,” Penelope pointed to the various documents and images on her crime wall.

“We’ve got enough evidence to arrest him for people smuggling and sex trafficking then we get the lawyers and the business forensic types to nail him under RICO when they start to pull apart his business empire.”

“The problem is getting the fucker out into the open so we can arrest him. It’s nearly impossible but we have this one chance,” Penelope went around the room and looked each task force member in the eye.

“We should at least bring in a SWAT team or get more local law enforcement involved,” Dan countered.

“Reznik will know if SWAT gets mobilised or if there is any surge in police activity. We know he has people in Balwyn because someone collected the DNA samples we left for him at the lab. He thinks he’s dealing with a kidnap for ransom gang and he’s been directed to make the exchange personally and alone but he isn’t stupid. He’ll bring a small crack team to cover his ass,” Jennifer interposed.

“How do you know that?” Dan barked.

“Because it’s what I would do,” Jennifer replied.

“Alexi Reznik has taken the bait. If we get him alone and place him under arrest we can hold him and then call in SWAT to make the extraction but we gotta get him first. This is the plan that Jennifer and I are proposing,” Penelope pointed to a large scale satellite photograph of the proposed exchange site.

Beside the satellite projection were some interior shots of the building they would use.

Jennifer had chosen a place to make the exchange that was familiar to Penelope Bishop. It was a place that held bad memories for her but a place in which she had found redemption.

The abandoned warehouse north of Balwyn was perfect. It was located on the edge of a forest and had been used to store rough-cut raw timber prior to distribution to smaller retail lumber yards. It was almost isolated, located one mile down a gravel road off the highway. The office at the back of the warehouse was furnished with a rickety old metal-framed bed where Mitch Freeman had been in the act of raping Penelope Bishop when Steve Edwards blew his brains out.

There were a bunch of rusty old full-sized lockers, some filing cabinets with the drawers pulled out of them and not much else.

Jennifer had sent the location of the warehouse to Alexi Reznik who had leapt at the chance to get his hands on Dmitriy Yakovich’s daughter. He had suffered an attack of priapism as he imagined the things he was going to do Katerina Walker when he had her in his clutches. He would film everything and send copies to his hated adversary.

Alexi would then send Dmitriy weekly updates, forcing him to watch his daughter being repeated ravaged by Alexi and any other men he chose to defile her. Alexi wondered if it would be possible to find a dog trainer who would… was he going too far? No! He would pay any price and do anything to see Dmitriy Yakovich suffer.

The exchange would be kept simple.

Alexi was to come alone and he could inspect the goods under the supervision of the kidnappers. Once he was happy with the goods he would electronically transfer the five million dollars into a numbered account that had been provided to him. He could take the girl and leave.

Penelope and Jennifer had argued incessantly about who was to be present for the exchange and in the end they agreed that they would both be there. Penelope was the only one who could legally arrest Alexi Reznik and take him into custody she had argued and in the end Jennifer agreed.

After much arguing and back and forth about the details the task force finally agreed on a plan and they each went about their assignments. Penelope and Jennifer went back to the farm where Alice and Katerina were waiting.

Katerina was told the details of the exchange at the last minute and she was instructed to change into the Dior micro-miniskirted cocktail dress, sheer nylons, Louboutin fuck-me pumps that had been provided for her and to put on heavy makeup. They wanted her to look sexy to allure Alexi and distract him.

Katerina obliged and eagerly drank the cocktail that Jennifer had mixed for her to give her Dutch courage. The cocktail was laced with a mild sedative and then Jennifer administered a more powerful sedative to keep Katerina drugged throughout the ordeal.

“Why did we have to drug her; she agreed to do this,” Penelope hissed.

“Yes she did and she is almost too willing. Alexi will be suspicious as it is. If he sees that Katerina is too willing or suspects he is being duped he won’t make the deal. He will be expecting to see Katerina sedated and that is what he will see,” Jennifer checked her Walther PPS M2 and slipped it into her holster and dropped two eight-round magazines into her purse.

Penelope checked her own weapon and holstered it.

“If we fuck this up my career is over,” Penelope said as she put an arm under Katerina’s armpit ready to lift her out of the chair.

“If we fuck this up we will both end up dead,” Jennifer said, lifting Katerina from the other side.

Katerina’s high-heel fell off as they assisted her to the car in her drugged state and Penelope put it back on her foot and put on Katerina’s seat belt and made sure that she was snugly secure in the back of Jennifer’s BMW. While Penelope did this Jennifer tapped a quick text message into her phone, making sure that Penelope didn’t see her.

Jennifer and Penelope reviewed their plan over and over again during the drive to the warehouse and when they arrived at the yard the big metal entrance gates stood open. Penelope checked in with Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow on their secure radios to make sure they were in place.

The warehouse forecourt emanated an air of abandonment. The yard was dusty and weed-strewn and the windows in the warehouse were mostly broken and those that had been pushed open sagged on their hinges. The outside walls were faded and stained with rust, mould and chemical burns. The sliding door to the warehouse itself was wide open.

Jennifer and Penelope helped Katerina out of the car. She could barely support herself but with some assistance she was able to make her way into the warehouse and to the office at the rear.

It was just as Penelope remembered it. It smelled of sawdust and wood sap. The ceiling was high and dust motes floated in the air. As they approached the office a chill ran down Penelope’s spine. The windows in the office were boarded up but she could see the rickety bed with the smelly mattress on which she had been handcuffed and raped.

The old lockers and filing cabinets looked rusty and forlorn. The place reeked despair.

Penelope knew that Jennifer knew what had happened to her at the location for the exchange and while the location was perfect, it had also been chosen to unnerve her.

“You couldn’t find anywhere else to make the exchange?” Penelope huffed as she led Katerina to the bed.

“Not in the short amount of time available to me and this is the perfect place. The warehouse is set back from the forest so an ambush would be difficult and the space is wide open with little concealment. It will be just three women and one man inside the warehouse,” Jennifer’s demeanour had been cold all morning.

The warmth, affection and vulnerability Jennifer had displayed when she and Penelope had made love the previous evening had dissipated.

“We need to move quickly,” Jennifer said easing Katerina down on the bed.

They arranged Katerina on the mattress and put a pillow under her head. Penelope knew that it was not the pillow that her own head had rested on while Mitch Freeman had put her legs over his shoulders and banged away at her body. From the looks of the dried-up used condoms, cigarette butts, broken beer bottles and crushed alcopop cans, the warehouse was a popular place for kids to hang out and do what teenagers have always done.

Penelope checked in with Dan and Tim again.

“Reznik has six men concealed in the forest on the north side of the warehouse. They’re wearing camouflage and carrying high-powered rifles,” Dan whispered into his radio headset.

“Tim and I have them covered. They’re all on the north side so as not to shoot each other in a crossfire; this isn’t the movies,” Dan was his usual cynical self.

Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow had taken up position and had camped in the forest all night Ranger style, remaining undetected. They each carried Sig Saur automatic assault rifles and plenty of ammunition.

“We’re good to go,” Penelope said to Jennifer and checked her weapon a final time.

Jennifer sent another text and they pulled up a couple of rickety folding metal chairs and waited.

But not for long.

A black SUV with tinted windows roared through the main gate of the warehouse and pulled up next to the sliding door entrance.

Alexi Reznik alighted and looked around coolly assessing the place.

The Jackal had come to the tethered goat.

The instructions stated that Alexi was to come alone but as soon as Alexi and his Brigadier had the location of the warehouse where the exchange was to take place they immediately set about identifying where they could hide snipers to cover the perimeter. There was no way that The Jackal was going into a place like that without protection.

Alexi was tall and handsome with shoulder-length blonde hair and was wearing an expensive blue suit. Jennifer had only seen photographs of him and he was an imposing sight; the sort of man who might take your breath away. He was heavily tattooed and the tattoos showed on the wrists below his cuffs and on his hands and his neck.

Reznik spoke into his phone briefly and entered the warehouse without hesitation. He was a man that exuded confidence and power.

“Two women? Two charming women if I may say so but I expected I would be dealing with men,” Alexi grinned showing perfect white teeth.

“This is what you are offering?” as Jennifer had hoped Alexi was immediately lured to the beautiful young woman lying on the cot.

The first thing he did was check Katerina’s vitals. It was no use paying for something which was about to expire. Then he took a step back and took his time gazing at Katerina, his eyes lingering on her long shapely legs, her perky breasts and finally her beautiful face.

“I’ve had her DNA checked and I can see the resemblance to Dmitriy but she is beautiful, an exquisite young woman. A virgin you say?” Reznik’s smile turned from pleasant to evil in a split second.

“She is everything we promised,” Jennifer said coolly.

Reznik put out his hand stoked Katerina’s calf and slid it up her thigh stopping where Jennifer had deliberately rucked up Katerina’s dress then he slipped his hand under her skirts.

“You don’t get to play with the toy until you buy it,” Jennifer said brusquely and stepped forward and pulled Reznik’s hand from under Katerina's dress.

Alexi was surprised at how strong the diminutive young woman was.

“Very well. Let’s make a deal,” Reznik took out his phone and worked the screen for a minute.

Jennifer’s phone pinged and she checked that the five million dollars had been transferred into the account she had set up for exactly this purpose.

Penelope now had probable cause to arrest Alexi Reznik for kidnapping and trafficking. The rest of the charges related to the murder of the girls in the container, people smuggling and sex trafficking could be added later once he was behind bars and the Federal prosecutors got involved.

Jennifer had a text drafted ready to send on her phone and she tapped ‘send’.

In the forest to the north of the warehouse two of Jennifer’s mercenaries who had been keeping Dan Murphy and Tim Morrow under constant surveillance since before they arrived at the warehouse silently moved in and injected a paralysing agent into their necks and they both fell to the forest floor dropping their weapons.

The five men that Reznik had concealed with high powered weapons were shot in the head by silenced sniper rifles.

Dmitriy Yakovich burst out of one of the rusty lockers and pointed a pistol at Alexi Reznik and Jennifer Jones ripped her Walther PPS M2 9mm out of her shoulder rig with lightning speed and thrust it in Penelope Bishop’s face.

Alexi Reznik had time to scream a Russian obscenity before Dmitriy Yakovich shot him four times in the face and he fell to the ground dead.

“Your weapon please Penelope,” Jennifer waggled the muzzle of her gun in Penelope’s face.

“You double crossing vicious cunt!” Penelope spat and reached for the weapon at her waist.

“Don’t do anything stupid please. Dan and Tim are alive and well. It would be a shame if you sacrificed your life for nothing,” Jennifer said sweetly.

Dmitriy was standing over Alexi Reznik’s dead body glaring at him. He had finally killed his most hated adversary.

Penelope handed her weapon to Jennifer butt first and Jennifer took it in her left hand, spinning it in her hand so that she held it by the grip, her finger resting along the trigger guard.

“You have done well my darling. We will take my daughter with us and the Americans can fight over Reznik’s carcass,” Dmitriy kicked Reznik’s lifeless body.

“Whatever you wish my love,” Jennifer smiled at Dmitriy and with rapid and skilled precision raised her left hand and shot Dmitriy four times in the chest.

“There you have it. All done nicely,” Jennifer said matter-of-factly as she ejected the magazine from Penelope’s pistol and handed it back to Penelope.

“Here is your story. Unbeknownst to us all Dmitriy had secreted himself in the locker at the place where we had arranged to arrest Alexi Reznik. Dmitriy leapt from the locker and shot his arch rival dead before you had a chance to take him down,” Jennifer applied the safety to her weapon but didn’t holster it.

“How did he know? How did he know where the exchange was taking place and that Katerina was his daughter?” Penelope was shocked and incredulous.

A wry smile crossed Jennifer’s face.

“You set this up!” Penelope’s face was contorted with rage.

“Of course I did. But everyone gets what they want. You and your cronies not only got Alexi Reznik, you personally took out the evil crime lord Dmitriy Yakovich. You will all be heroes,” Jennifer smiled.

“You killed Dmitriy,” Penelope whispered.

“At this very moment, those lieutenants in Dmitry’s Bratva who are not loyal to me are quietly disappearing. The corpses of Alexi’s men are being removed from the forest and Tim and Dan should be regaining consciousness in about an hour,” Jennifer went over to Dmitriy’s corpse and took the things she needed from him.

“What about Katerina? What about Katya?” Penelope was incredulous.

“Katerina is coming with me and will join her mother back at their house in New York,” Jennifer smiled.

“We have all been used by men. Sometimes they treat us well and sometimes they don’t. I think it’s time to see what happens when a woman runs things for a while,” Jennifer patted Penelope’s shoulder.

“You had me send Tim Morrow down to Brownsville and had Katya distract Dan Murphy while you set this up! You knew that they would never condone using Katerina as a lure to trap Reznik. You used me! You used Alice!” Penelope’s eyes filled with tears.

“I really do like you Penelope. You are so very much like me. But if you put a magazine in that weapon before Katerina and I leave the warehouse I will shoot you dead,” Jennifer said coldly as she helped Katerina up off the bed.

“Maybe we will meet again but it’s probably best that we don’t,” Jennifer said as she guided Katerina, who was still a little unsteady, out of the office.

Penelope didn’t move until she saw Jennifer drive away.

*****

The next day Katerina was reunited with her mother at her house in New York State. Katya had flown out on a commercial flight the morning of the exchange and Jennifer and Katerina flew out of Balwyn in a private jet. Jennifer had driven from the warehouse directly to Balwyn airport.

“Mother, you need to tell me about those missing years; the years when I lived far away from you. The years you keep shrouded in secrecy. There is no need to keep them secret anymore now that my father is dead. Tell me everything about the scorpion tattoo,” Katerina beseeched her mother.

“My Katerina… they were shameful times. I did things that you will despise me for. I loved a man who was unlovable who cast me aside when I no longer pleased him and another man who brought me pain and despair because of his self-centred actions,” Katya held her daughter close.

“Tell me mother. If you don’t; there will be a hole in my life that will never be filled,” Katerina pressed her hands against her mother’s chest and looked up into her mother’s deep blue eyes.

Her own blue eyes were rimmed with tears.

Katya took a deep breath and began.

“I was born in Rohoziv Ukraine and lived there with my mother. My mother was beautiful. Beauty runs in our family but it is a curse as well as a blessing. My father left us destitute and my mother’s boyfriend beat her regularly and had recently taken an unhealthy interest in me, stealing my underwear and sneaking around my bedroom door.”

“On my eighteenth birthday I ran away from home with dreams of becoming an actress in America. I had established an online relationship with a man claiming to be a scout for a theatrical agent in Hollywood and he sent me airline tickets to America…”

Katya told her daughter everything and when she had finished mother and daughter clung to each other and cried until they could cry no longer. Katya felt unburdened and Katerina felt empowered with knowledge.

*****

Jennifer Jones sat in the heavy teak and leather chair behind the antique pedestal desk made from quarter cut solid oak timbers with ornate brass fittings. The same desk that many times she had been bent over and fucked by Dmitriy, as had all the Girl Fridays before her. It was one of the many ways Dmitriy liked to extol his power.

Jennifer had already made arrangements to have the desk replaced. The chair too. The seat had been shaped by years of Dmitriy’s muscular buttocks sitting on it and Jennifer’s small but perfectly rounded ass was not comfortable on it.

But the desk and chair could wait; at least for now. Jennifer had more pressing matters to deal with. She needed to solidly cement her position as the new Pakhan of what had once been Dmitriy’s Bratva. Her bold play in eliminating Dmitriy and his hated rival Alexi Reznik, then seizing control of Dmitriy’s Bratva, was seen as an act of decisiveness, ruthlessness and bravado by the other Pakhans who headed up the Odessa and Russian mafia in the US. But there was a power vacuum left by Alexi Reznik’s demise and the other Pakhans were fighting over the carcass of Alexi’s Bratva.

This distraction had allowed Jennifer to ingratiate herself with the hierarchy in Russia and Ukraine, whose tentacles reached into every corner of the world.

There was only one other female Pakhan. She was a Serb who headed a Bratva based in Italy which had close ties to the Italian mafia. Jennifer was not a Balkan and she was a transgender woman and she was still young but her abilities spoke for themselves. She had a loyal following and those in her Bratva who were not loyal to her were no longer around.

Jennifer knew many things but what she knew most was that money talks and so long as her businesses prospered and she kicked money up to the hierarchy in the old Slavic states they would leave her alone. She would deal with the other US-based Pakhans when they had finished fighting over the remains of Reznik’s Bratva.

Jennifer was busy and more than a little annoyed when the guardhouse called to say that she had a visitor who insisted on seeing her.

Anyone approaching Jennifer’s property on the outskirts of LA would be impressed. Jennifer had overseen improvements to the property herself during her reign as Dmitriy’s PA but in those days she had never dreamt that the house would one day be hers.

The long driveway was protected by a manned guardhouse built into a substantial brick wall which ran along the borders of the property. Inside the walls were manicured lawns, landscaped gardens scattered with marble and sandstone sculptures and several fountains. The house itself was imposing but modern and stylish. It was obvious that whoever lived here had money and was important. There were men in suits patrolling the grounds and Jennifer had doubled the guard until things cooled down. There were also gardeners and household employees going about their business. The place was busy.

Jennifer had delegated the power to deal with routine business matters to her lieutenants but she was still a busy woman. Her vision was to empower her employees and reward them when appropriate to build trust and garner respect. Dmitriy’s outdated idiom of centralising all power in the Pakhan and ruling with an iron fist was obsolete but Jennifer was not averse to using brutality when it was called for. She knew that already she was being called the skorpion suka or ‘scorpion bitch’ behind her back. She liked the name and did nothing to deter its use.

Jennifer had a valet, Peter, who doubled as her personal bodyguard but she realised that she needed a PA; a Girl Friday to whom she could delegate those tasks that required diplomacy and tact and who understood her vagaries, principals and standards so that things got done the way she wanted them done. She also needed someone who would deal with her personal day-to-day minutia like telling this thick-headed minion guarding her front gate that she was not to be disturbed.

“Olav, I left strict instructions that I am not to be disturbed,” Jennifer snapped at the intercom.

“The girl says that her name is Katerina Kuznetsova and that she is a personal friend of yours,” Olav said, his accent still thick, having recently arrived from Kiev.

Jennifer had been on a recruiting drive to replace the men whom she had needed to eliminate because their loyalty to her was questionable after the change of regime.

Katerina was no longer using the nom de plume Katerina Walker and had taken her mother’s last name.

“Have her escorted to the house and Peter will meet her at the door,” Jennifer said and closed the connection.

Jennifer had not seen Katerina since she had used her to lure ‘The Jackal’ and Dmitriy to their deaths. She knew that Katerina knew that Dmitriy was her real father and that she was doing well with her studies at Rutgers and visited her mother Katya at every opportunity. Like her predecessor, Jennifer had spies everywhere and kept a close eye on anyone who with whom she had had dealings… good or bad.

Peter brought Katerina into the room and discretely left. Jennifer was shocked at how much Katerina had grown to resemble her mother. She was even dressed the same.

Katerina towered over Jennifer standing a little over six feet tall in heels. A stunning slim young woman with jet black hair cut into a severe bob which accentuated her deep blue expressive eyes. She had pert breasts and long legs clad in gossamer-sheer nylons and was wearing fashionable business suit. Her face was narrow, with accentuated cheekbones, a pointed chin and small nose. Her skin was pale and she wore heavy eye makeup and blood-red lipstick.

Jennifer came around from behind the desk, stood on tippytoes and kissed Katerina on the cheek. She could smell Katerina’s perfume: Dior Poison, the only scent that Jennifer and Katerina wore. The same scent that all of Dmitriy’s Girl Fridays were mandated to wear.

Rather than sit behind her desk, Jennifer led Katerina to two comfortable lounge chairs and they sat opposite each other.

“You are the spitting image of your mother,” Jennifer smiled at Katerina who blushed.

“Thank you Jennifer. I know that you are busy so I’ll get to the point. I wanted to thank you for being a benefactor to my mother and I,” Katerina said.

With Dmitriy gone Jennifer had freed Katya from servitude and granted her a substantial stipend for life. To Jennifer’s surprise, rather than retire, Katya had asked to take over Vlad Volkov’s business dealings and Jennifer had agreed and made her a Bratok.

“It was the least I could do given all your mother has done for me and for what I put you through in Balwyn,” Jennifer did not feel guilty but she gave credit where it due.

Katerina looked at the piles of correspondence on Jennifer’s desk and the flashing lights on her desk phone. Jennifer’s cell phone was buzzing incessantly with incoming calls and text messages.

“You appear to be snowed under. You haven’t appointed a PA yet? Mother said the term often used was Girl Friday,” Katerina smiled and nodded at the jumble of paperwork on Jennifer’s desk.

“Katya told you about being Dmitriy’s Girl Friday?” Jennifer was a little surprised and she reached out and patted Katerina’s knee.

“Yes and all that that entailed,” Katerina said soberly.

“Dmitriy had his demands, but most Girl Fridays fared well after they were replaced,” Jennifer said a little tentatively.

“And some not so well,” Katerina said gruffly.

“I’m sorry for what happened to your mother Katerina. I’m sorry that your formative years were spent mostly without her but I have recompensed her as best I can,” Jennifer said curtly.

“Oh you misunderstand me Ms Jones. I’m not here complaining. I’m here because I want a job,” Katerina smiled.

“Don’t be silly. You have your studies to complete,” Jennifer laughed but it was cut short when she realised that Katerina was serious.

“I’m not much older than my mother was when she was brought to Dmitriy and became his PA and I’m still a virgin,” Katerina said defiantly.

“I’m intelligent and articulate and I can be ruthless; you know that. My mother has told me about the business and what she hasn’t told me I’ll be quick to learn,” Katerina continued.

“Yes all that is true but being a virgin is no longer a prerequisite,” Jennifer smiled wanly at Katerina.

“Maybe not, but surely you would like to deflower me yourself before you put me to work,” Katerina licked her lips seductively and stared into Jennifer's glacial green eyes fascinated by the light bluish heterochromia in her right eye.

“Do you know what you are asking?” Jennifer was astonished.

“I told you. My mother told me everything,” Katerina stood and straightened her skirt and kept her head bowed.

Jennifer stood and stepped into Katerina and lifted her chin and looked up into her pretty face.

“Oh Katerina… if only I could,” Jennifer pressed her lips to Katerina’s and kissed her softly.

“I’m sorry that I’m not worthy,” Katerina broke the kiss and turned away.

“Peter will escort you back to the gate,” Jennifer sighed.

She buzzed Peter into the room and he led Katerina away and Jennifer sat down behind her desk and tried to continue her work where she had left off.

“Fuck it!” she hissed.

She buzzed the main gate on the intercom.

“Tell Peter to bring Katerina back to the house. Tell him to bring her to my private quarters,” Jennifer said curtly.

A smile crossed Jennifer’s face.

She looked down and saw that she had tented her skirt.

The End

Author’s Note Thank you for taking the time to read my story now I’d like you to take a minute or two to leave a comment. It won’t take you long but will give me enormous joy as I love to know what people think of my stories, good or bad. Your loving sweet transvestite writer… Michele Nylons