Our Only Hope, Chapter 04 free porn video

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WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

All characters involved in sexual activity in this story are over the age of 18. If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2019 by The Technician.

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Chapter Four

The Monty Brothers

The freed captives remained quiet as we rode to the safehouse. Maybe their rescue hadn’t quite yet sunk in, or maybe they– like me– weren’t sure their rescue was complete. From the outside, the safehouse was actually a run-down commercial building of some sort, but we couldn’t see that from inside the windowless back portion of the van. What we could see, once the van was pulled inside and the door opened, was that we were inside a large garage area that looked like it might have been a small warehouse at one time. All outside windows, even those up high on the walls and in the ventilation skylights on the roof, had been painted over with a translucent white paint. There appeared to be an office area partitioned off in one corner, and what was possibly a store area just beyond a large double door on an inside wall. Two men were waiting next to where the van stopped. Alongside them was a table with blankets, coffee, and sandwiches spread out on its surface.

Master Randolph and Master Bouchard, who had removed their masks, immediately wrapped blankets around themselves and stood next to the table with a cup of coffee in their hands. I didn’t recognize Master Bouchard at first, but as soon as he began to speak, his Québécois accent identified him for me.

Despite the rather cool temperature in the garage, slave ines refused a blanket until Master Randolph realized what she was doing and said, “You may clothe yourself.” She then eagerly grabbed one of the olive drab blankets and pulled it over her shoulders. She opened a second one slightly and dropped it to the concrete floor so that she could stand on it.

The other two freed female captives seemed to still be in shock and huddled near the door of the van, obviously still very fearful. Natasha walked over and handed them blankets, saying something to them in Portugese. She called to one of the guards and then pointed to the women. “These two,” she said firmly, “Give them clothes. Give them money. And take them wherever they want to go... within reason. They are more or less willing slaves of Master Rodriguez’s club.”

“Make sure they are fed first,” Boris added. “And don’t risk your men taking them to their home or anyplace that might be a trap.”

The guard nodded and spoke to the two women in Portugese. They followed him out of the garage. As they were leaving, Natasha called after them, “Don’t let them see the outside of this building.”

The guard called back something that sounded like “Yeah.” It might have been “Da.” In any case, Natasha paid no further attention to them, but instead wrapped poopsie in one of the blankets and handed her a cup of hot tea.

Once everyone was sure that the two women were gone, slave ines said flatly, “They were spies.” She shrugged her shoulders and continued, “They were only doing their Master’s bidding, but they were still spies. The small collar on the black-haired one must have been a bug... or at least a signaling device. If any of us tried to talk about what was happening she would reach up and touch her collar. Then the guards would rush in and use shock sticks on us to shut us up.”

“Mistress Aleana was with us for a while,” Master Randolph said. “I think she was taken earlier than us because she was here when we arrived.”

“They put her against the wall for a whole day tormenting her with the shock sticks,” slave ines said slowly. “They did something else to her after the late show. I don’t know what it was because they had already taken us down and put us in our cells in the basement.”

“I know what they did,” I said bitterly. “They stuck a sign in her mouth that said, ‘W, you are our only hope.’”

“Ah,” Master Bouchard said, “that explains a few things.”

When we all looked at him, he began, “I was taken almost a day after Master Randolph. They evidently missed me at my country house.” He paused, “I was visiting my sister and her husband when four gunmen forced their way into their home. Just before they arrived, I received a text that had been sent to the entire Shadow Council.” He raised his hands in a typical French gesture so that they were more or less forming a ‘V’ in front of his chest. “It shouldn’t have come to me, but...” he continued in a slightly higher-pitched voice, “... I was only recently elevated to a seat on the Inner Circle.”

“What’s the Shadow Council?” I asked quickly.

“Each of us,” Master Randolph explained, “has someone whom we are mentoring to possibly take our place on the Inner Circle of Masters and Mistresses. Should something happen to us, they take our place until a new member is formally approved– usually them. Should something incapacitate the entire Inner Circle, the Shadow Council is authorized to act until a new Inner Circle can be appointed.”

“OK,” I replied, then asked, “What was the message?”

“It told them,” Master Bouchard explained, “that the entire Inner Circle had been kidnapped and presented a ransom demand.”

“Which was?”

“You, W,” he replied, “... dead or alive.”

“What was their response?”

“I do not know,” he answered. “I had just read the text when the men burst through the front door. I threw my phone under the couch and surrendered to them. They told my sister and brother-in-law that they would kill them and their family if they told anyone what had happened. Twenty-four hours later, I was here.” He shrugged and made a wry face, “Though none of us are really sure where here is.”

“Mistress Aleana knew,” slave ines said slowly. “She recognized Master Rodriguez. I don’t know if she saw him without his mask or recognized his voice, but she knew who he was. She tried to tell me, but the spies kept her from saying anything.”

“Did she tell you anything?” I asked. “Maybe she worked it into a different conversation somehow.”

“They didn’t let us talk to each other much,” slave ines said. “The longest she ever got to talk was when she was talking about movies.”

“What did she say?” Master Randolph, Master Bouchard, and I asked excitedly in unison.

“She asked me,” slave ines responded, “what my favorite movie was. She said hers was something called Romancing the Stone. I’d never heard of it, but she said that if I watched just two minutes of it, I would know why it was her favorite.”

“Boris!” I called out. He responded, “Got it!” and ran to the van.

Master Randolph grinned and said, “Never play any of those trivia games with Mistress Aleana. And especially don’t bet her anything. Trust me, she will literally wop your ass.”

A few minutes later Boris returned with a small tablet. “I only downloaded the first three minutes,” he said. “It’s a sappy chick-flick adventure film from the 1980s starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. It starts out with her narrating a romance book her character is supposedly writing. I think this is the important part. It is almost exactly at two minutes into the film.”

He turned the tablet so we could all see it and poked something on the screen. A line of cowboys was riding across the screen while Turner’s voice said, “If there's one law of the west it's 'bastards have brothers'.”

“Take off his mask!” I shouted as I ran over to the open door of the van. Master Rodriguez was still lying unconscious on the floor.

“Do any of you recognize him?” I asked forcefully.

When I got a unanimous negative reaction I turned to Boris. “I’ve never seen him before, but there is something about him that looks familiar. Find out anything you can about Dominic Rodriguez. It would seem that the Inner Circle– and I– have done something to his family.”

“On it!” Boris shouted as he climbed back into the van. A few minutes later he came back out. “I had already run everything on him,” he said slowly, “so it was just a matter of putting it together. He doesn’t have any brothers and his father was an only child. He never married and there is no mention of any children.” He paused a moment and then said, “There was a sister. Her name was Sharon. I can’t find much about her other than the fact that she evidently moved to the US and married a man by the name of...”

“David Barrow!” I said forcefully, interrupting him.

“Yeah! How’d you know that?!” he responded in surprise.

“You weren’t in on the final stages of that one,” I said to Boris, “so you never heard their real names.” I could see recognition beginning to dawn in Master Randolph’s and slave ines’s eyes. “Sharon and David Barrow were the couple I always called ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’”

“Bonnie and Clyde?” Boris repeated. Fear was obvious on his face and in his voice. “... the Volkov Kollars’ Bonnie and Clyde?!”

“Dominic Rodriguez needs to disappear permanently,” I said firmly.

Natasha began walking toward the van. “I can arrange that,” she said harshly.

“No!” Master Randolph yelled. Then he said much more calmly, “There are other ways. He can be detained at The Society’s island prison with his sister and her husband. There will be a trial. It will all be legal.”

“Can you arrange that?” I asked. “If they had the names of the entire Inner Circle and the Shadow Council, they are working with someone on the inside. There is a traitor among the members of the Inner Circle.”

“I have other channels,” Master Randolph said. “I can arrange for Master Rod to be transported to the island. In fact, that is probably the safest place for Master Bouchard, slave ines, and myself to go until this is resolved. I can give you the names of a few trusted people, W, but for the most part you are going to have to work alone.”

“Why me?” I asked, trying not to sound as pissed off as I really was.

“The Society has a traitor within it,” Master Randolph said, slowly shaking his head. “Anything we try to do will be thwarted by that unknown person. Only someone working from the outside can act without being immediately found out and betrayed.” He reached up and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m afraid,” he continued, “that whoever wrote that sign was speaking the truth. W, you are our only hope.”

“I’m with you,” Boris said.

“As your tech nerds from a safe place,” Natasha added. “Daddy has only so many favors to call in.”

“Then let’s get back to Shangri-la number three,” I said. “You can work from there. Besides, I don’t know where to go next.”

“Clyde... David,” Boris said, “must have a couple of brothers who are as nasty as he was. Now that I know what I am looking for, I... and my friends... can track them down.”

***

Two days later we were again at Cabo Frio Airport. Boris, Natasha, poopsie, and I boarded one of Natasha’s father’s planes to return to my bald knob fortress. Master Randolph had arranged for one of his corporate planes to take him, slave ines, Master Bouchard, and the firmly bound Dominic Rodriguez to The Society’s island prison. The prison is actually a legally-recognized facility that is inspected regularly by international groups. The few prisoners there are treated well, but The Society– and the courts of several nations– have determined that such sadists and psychopaths can never again be let loose on the “normal” world.

Fourteen hours later we were once again in the control room housing area of my mountain safehouse. Boris was conversing with his friends and trying to uncover the family history of David Barrow, if that was his true name. Natasha was in the guest sleeping area with her beloved poopsie. Slave poopsie was a very happy and talkative young woman once she became convinced that she was indeed now safe. It was almost like having a small puppy following you around, happy to see you and willing to give you unconditional love. Natasha’s mood was also greatly improved.

It took Boris almost a week, but one evening just before sunset, he ran out to where I was working on a personal laptop yelling, “I found him! I found him! I found him!”

He set a tablet on the table next to my laptop. David Barrow’s face– or a much younger version of David Barrow’s face– was staring out at me. “William Monty,” Boris said triumphantly. When you captured him, the police ran a DNA check to see if he had committed any other known crimes.” He scrolled the screen to a chart with a bunch of lines and circles and pointed to one that was filled in with flashing yellow. “But they didn’t do a forensic familial DNA search like I did.” Boris put his finger on the flashing circle and said, “That’s his mother. She had five sons, and she abused them all. They were taken away from her and raised in the foster system.”

He scrolled some more. “Because they were older, and had psychological problems, they were never adopted.” He paused and then continued, “Evidently they got back together as they aged out of the foster system. Their names are Walter, Weston, William, Woody, and Wyatt.”

“A, e, i, o. y,” I said flatly. “She must not have been able to think of a W name with the second letter ‘u’.”

Boris coughed nervously and said, “Actually, she did. Wulf died at age three. The father abandoned them right after Wyatt was born. Evidently another son every eighteen months was too much for him.” He again coughed and continued, “After that she was a typical struggling single mother with two jobs. She had left Wulf and the youngest at home in the care of their older brothers. Something happened and he died. That’s evidently what sent her over the edge and why she started really abusing the others.”

“With name choices like that,” I replied, “I think she was pretty close to the edge to begin with. But there is a certain irony to it all.”

“What do you mean?” Boris said, looking confused.

“The W brothers,” I replied “have declared war on W.”

“Yeah,” Boris said softly, “and on me and Natasha and the entire Inner Circle.”

“I think you all are just collateral damage because you helped me,” I answered.

“Did they go after Lacy?” Boris asked. “She helped you bring down Bonnie and Clyde, too.”

“She was law enforcement,” I replied. “I don’t know if these crazies want to go up against that or not.”

“They are going up against The Society,” Boris said forcefully.

“But they have a traitor working with them,” I replied. “And they know that The Society won’t go to the authorities unless there is no other option.”

“Like us,” Boris said. His voice was tinged with anger.

“Like us,” I replied. Then I gave Boris one of my best smiles and said, “You’ve done good work, so far, Boris. Now, can you and Natasha tell me where these scumbags are?”

A cry of “Boris!” brought us running back to the computer area. Natasha had a video queued up on the big monitor. Across the bottom of the video was what looked like a baseball scoreboard. The top row was marked with a large W, the bottom row, an M. There were boxes for five “innings” with a “1" in the first box. On the right side of the screen the score showed W-1, M-0.

“This was just posted on the dark web,” she said flatly, then she triggered the video to play.

“They know we know who they are,” Boris said. “The home team is M for Monty.”

“Start the video,” I said, trying once more to contain my anger.

Once again, it was the image of bound woman. This time it was Mistress Tenesha, wife of Master Tyrone, Grand Master of the Inner Circle. Her ebony black skin was shiny with sweat. It might have been oil or something that had been sprayed or rubbed on her, but the drops on her face were definitely sweat. She was wrapped backwards over a large barrel-like device with slats of wood every several inches. If it didn’t have a naked woman wrapped around it– it would have reminded me of an oversized lobster trap. Instead, since it had a support axle in the middle of it, it reminded me more of those large round barrels they use for contests at a local fair that they rotate around to mix up all the entries before ***********ing the winner.

Like such a barrel, this one could apparently also be turned to any position. Currently it was positioned so that Mistress Tenesha’s head was on the top. That meant that her body was curved back around the barrel with her lower legs on the bottom and her feet slightly past the bottom curve. It was only because her body was stretched so tight from where her wrists were bound to where her ankles were bound that she did not sag away from the slats of the barrel.

A myriad of black wires led from a small control panel that was sitting on a stand alongside the barrel to which the Mistress’ body was strapped. Each of those wires terminated in a small, square patch that was attached to some portion of her body. In addition, wires led to a large cap of some sort attached to each of her nipples. Several wires also led between her legs, apparently connected to something inserted in her cunt and ass.

A voice offscreen said cheerfully, “Welcome to the Monty Brothers music video channel. Today we have an old favorite accompanied by one of our favorite singers, Mistress Tenesha White. This song is dedicated to one of our favorite watchers, W. And remember, W, even though you might not be able to understand her, the name of this song is, ‘W, you are our only hope.’”

The voice suddenly became very harsh and flat. “You can save them by turning yourself in to us. Just text your current location to this number.” A phone number appeared on the bottom of the video. “Verify yourself by giving the derisive name you used to describe my brother and his wife.”

A loud song with a pounding bass guitar beat then began. The controller box was evidently synced to the song because small blue lights began flashing in time to the music on the electrode pads on Mistress Teresha’s body. Evidently the cunt and ass dildo electrodes were synced to the guitar. Their brighter red lights flashed exactly in time with the beat and intensity of its driving rhythm. Mistress Teresha began screaming, her screams modulated by the guitar’s repeating riff. That continued for perhaps two minutes and then suddenly ended with a loud, crashing explosion of cymbals and drums. A bright, white light flashed near the top of the Mistress’ cunt. It continued to flicker slightly as the ring of the cymbal slowly died away. From her response, I assumed that white light was on a clit clip electrode. Sweat was now dripping off her entire body.

After the loud song ended, a very soft slow dance song of some sort began and the voice again spoke. “As you know, W, at low levels these electrodes can be rather pleasurable. But to help our captive Mistress with her time of pleasure, we are activating the vibrators in the dildo electrodes.” He laughed. “If she responds the way she did the last time, the first of our slow dances should last almost an hour.” He laughed again. “This Mistress,” he said between laughs, “is as good as any slave at holding back her orgasms.”

The voice turned harsh again, “How long will you let her go on like this, W? Surrender to us now. Call the number on the screen. If not, our original offer still stands... if you can find her... you can free her...” His voice became almost a snarl as he ended with, “... or die trying.”

“Is that live streaming?” I asked Boris.

“Yes... no,” he answered. “It’s live streaming, but it is echoing a different site that is echoing a different site that is echoing a different site that might be playing a recording of some sort. At least, I’ve traced it back that far. Who knows how many different sites he is using before going public on this darkporn site.”

“So we can’t find him.” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Boris replied. “If he keeps using the same music– and if you are willing to drop some bits– I think some of my friends might be willing to put in the effort to trap the initial upload or the source of the live feed.”

“How many Bitcoins do you think it will take?” I asked.

“It has to be a really good prize to get a lot of them involved.” Boris answered. “Can you go with five?”

“$40,000,” I said slowly. “That kind of money transfer might attract the attention of some IRS or DEA people, but yes, I can put that kind of money into Bitcoins. It might be a bit difficult to explain on my expense account when I bill The Society, but I can make it work.”

Actually, it was Boris who made it work. I opened one of my on-line accounts and authorized the funds. Then he did the actual purchase of the coins and set them up as a prize in his weird contest. Whoever delivered the originating IP first would get the unlock codes.

“I’m afraid the net is going to slow down slightly,” Boris said sheepishly after he finished announcing the contest to his darkweb friends. He waited a few seconds to enjoy my look of confusion and then said, “Five Bitcoins is a lot of dark money to offer as a reward. So right now there are half a million sniffer bots scouring the web for the telltale signature of that audio. Its going to overwhelm some of the nodes and slow down normal traffic.” He shrugged, “That happens anyway once in a while when a bot program is badly written... or if it is too well-written and sophisticated and goes rogue.”

Anticipating my question of “How sophisticated are these bots?” he grinned at me and said, “You really don’t want to know.” He then relaxed slightly and said, “Now we wait.”

***

I don’t know if Boris or Natasha got any sleep overnight, but I did. As usual, I was up around two am and checked the computer area. Boris was slouched in his chair still dressed. I didn’t check if he was really asleep. There was no need to wake him if he was. If one of his hacker buddies wanted to claim the prize, I assume there was some sort of alarm that would waken him.

I went on up to the biggest of the fake shacks topside. It was warm, so there was no need for anything more than what I was wearing in bed. Usually I sleep nude, but sharing the housing area with Boris and Natasha prompted me to dig a pair of pajamas out of my dresser.

When I got to the end of the tunnel, I was surprised to see that the lower and upper hatches were already open. I expected to find Natasha in the shack, but instead found poopsie leaning out one of the open windows looking at the stars and the lights of the cars on the highway below. There was enough moon and starlight to nicely illuminate her perfect little heart-shaped ass.

She startled slightly when I came through the hatch. “I’m sorry, Master W,” she said quickly, “I will leave immediately.”

“No, poopsie,” I said with a smile, “you can stay here. I just came up to see something that wasn’t electronic.”

“And something that wasn’t your friends in pain,” she added.

She came over and stood next to me. I keep forgetting how small she really is. She could probably walk under my outstretched arm. She hugged me around the waist, her head pushing into the base of my ribcage. “I’ve never thanked you for saving me from that man,” she said as she rubbed her naked body against my front.

“It was the jaguar who saved you,” I said, trying to sound firm and trying to keep nature from doing what nature does when a naked woman– even a very petite naked woman– rubs her tits against the top of your crotch.

“But you were the one who helped them,” she said, now very intentionally sliding her entire body across the front of my pajamas.

“I don’t think either of us should be doing this,” I said softly.

“Mistress lets her kukolka play with other women... or men,” poopsie said, pressing harder into my groin. She looked up at me, freed my now turgid member from my flimsy pajama pants and added, “... as long as it is not Master Boris.”

Some day my rational mind is going to win the argument with my natural impulses in a situation like this, but this was not that day. She flicked the tip of my prick with her tongue and then turned and leaned out the open window, balancing herself on the wooden frame. She had to almost jump to pull herself over the frame at the waist. Her toes were a couple inches off the floor, but her cunt was at just the right height.

I grabbed her waist to steady her and slowly pressed my prick against her slit. I could feel the moisture lubricating the tip as I pushed slightly further in. “Go ahead,” she said breathily, “I’m bigger than you think. I use large dildos on myself... and sometimes my mistress uses a large strap on.”

I slid in much more easily than I expected. As I slowly pushed myself fully in, poopsie began a low moaning wail that got louder and more shrill as I started to move. It was surreal. I was fucking a pint-sized slave draped over the sill of a fake shack on the top of a big, round, stone mountain while the stars shone overhead and cars drove through the valley below. If anyone in those cars had their windows open, I wondered what kind of animal they thought they were hearing as poopsie’s continuous wail rose and fell in pitch and volume.

I usually try to be a gentlemen and let the lady finish first, but tonight that wasn’t really my decision. With her body draped over the high window sill, poopsie couldn’t move back against me, but she was somehow pulsing her cunt and milking my prick as it moved in and out. Just before I reached that point of no return, her wail suddenly became an extremely shrill shriek and her legs flew up to grab me around the waist and pull me tightly into her crotch. I tried to keep my hands from pinching her little asscheeks too tightly as I erupted within her.

She continued to hold me by the waist with her legs, as I stood lightly stroking her ass and back. After several minutes, I pulled back out of her and she lowered herself back so that her feet were on the ground. “We both should have gotten specific permission from your Mistress,” I said softly.

“But you both needed each other,” a soft voice said from behind us.

“How long have you been...?” I started to ask, but Natasha cut me off with a low laugh, saying, “Since a few minutes after poopsie’s screams woke me up.” She reached out and stroked poopsie’s head. “She’s a real screamer,” she said. “I’m always waking the neighbors.” Then she looked up at me and said, “And yes, she has permission to relieve her tensions with other men.”

Her voice got somewhat firm as she added, “... but she is supposed to check with me first to see if I approve of the man... or woman.”

Poopsie dropped to the floor, bowing low in front of her Mistress. “I’m sorry, Mistress,” she said in a slightly shaking voice, “I assumed that Master W was OK since you trusted him so much.”

“As I said,” I said softly as I looked down at her, “we both should have asked.” I looked back up at Natasha and added, “But sometimes things just happen.”

“There will be no punishment,” Natasha said. There was still a touch of anger in her voice. “But at least one of you needs to check with me before this happens again.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I answered.

I expected her to say something about not calling her Ma’am, but instead she said flatly, “Boris has something,” and turned to go back down into the mountain.

***

When I got back down into the control center, Boris was typing furiously on his keyboard. “Be there. Be there. Be there!” he was muttering loudly.

Poopsie, Natasha, and I stood silently alongside him until he stopped and sat there panting as if he had just finished some great effort. “Well?” I said.

“We got him!” he answered. “Actually, I think we got two of them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This isn’t what I expected,” he answered, gesturing toward his monitor, “but I think Basilisk_2005 just won himself five Bitcoins.” He turned to give me– or perhaps Natasha– a quick smile before continuing. “The video feed was routed to hell and gone around the internet and was double-encoded for some of the jumps. That meant it was truly impossible to trace back to its origin. But Basilisk_2005 found another way. That little snake hacked into the NSA’s copy of all of the node traffic for the past week.” This time I was sure he was looking at me, “You wouldn’t believe how big their server farm has to be to store that kind of data,” he said. The wonder was evident on his face and in his voice. He shook his head and then returned his focus to the monitor. “In any case,” he said, “approximately three days ago, this IP...” a line of information on his screen started flashing, “sent a darkweb email to this IP...” another line began flashing.

“All the email said,” Boris said firmly, “was ‘This should do what you want.’ It was signed, ‘Little Brother.’”

I looked at him silently. “There were two attachments to that email,” he said firmly. I could see his cursor move to the edge of the screen and click on something. The music with the heavy, driving beat suddenly blared from the speakers of his workstation.

“That’s the first attachment,” he said emphatically. Then he clicked on a second icon at the edge of his screen and the softer music filled the room. He looked at me with a very determined look on his face. “I think Wyatt Monty sent this music to one of his older brothers. I don’t know if it is Walter, Weston, or Woody, but he is located in Los Angeles near LAX.”

“And where is Wyatt?” I asked.

“Davenport, Iowa,” Boris answered. He held up both hands palms toward me and said firmly, “Don’t ask. I have no idea what a man like this is doing in Iowa.” He started to say something else, but instead slumped slowly forward, falling out of his chair.

I moved forward to catch him, but Natasha was faster than I was. She grabbed him around his shoulders and turned him so she could lay him out on the floor. “He does this,” she said, sounding both angry and concerned at the same time. “He drives himself for hours... or even days... until he gets what he wants... and then his body just shuts down for a while.”

She looked up at me. “Put him to bed,” she said. Her voice was somewhere between an order and a request. “I,” she continued, “will find out what Wyatt is doing among the cornfields of Iowa.” As she sat in the chair which Boris had just tumbled out of, she added, “.. and I will find out which of his brothers is holding Mistress Tenesha... and where.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said as I lifted Boris up off the floor and threw him over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if he was unconscious or asleep or a mixture of both, but Natasha had said he did this, so I just arranged him on his bed. As I was taking off his shoes and covering him with a blanket, poopsie came into the room carrying a tray. On it was several cans of cola, a stack of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and several sandwiches of some sort.

“He will need this when he wakes up,” she said softly. Then she looked up at me and said, “He’ll be OK. He does this all the time. Sometimes Mistress gets so angry with him. Other times she cries and puts him to bed. It depends on what he was working on.”

Her face became almost blank and her voice got almost dreamy as she continued, “He thinks he is protecting Mistress and me. He thinks you are, too, so he will do anything you ask him to do, no matter how much it takes out of him. Please don’t use him all up. It would make me very sad. And it would make Mistress very angry.”

“I promise, poopsie,” I said firmly, “I won’t use him up. But he– and you and your Mistress– will not be safe until we have tracked down the Monty brothers and whoever it is within The Society that is helping them.”

She gave me a soft smile and left the room. I waited until she had disappeared down the hallway before taking a very deep breath and turning to leave. There have been many occasions where people have accused me of not having a conscience. That was not the case now. My conscience had stood before me and spoken to me in all her weird, naked glory. Natasha didn’t have to worry about me doing anything else with poopsie. From now on, she was my Jiminy Cricket and no matter how much Pinocchio’s nose grew the next time she tried something, I was confident that my rational mind would win the argument for a change.

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END OF STORY

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