Collision Course, CH 05-06 (Patreon)

The self-storage company is located outside of Phoenix. It’s a large lot, designed so a box truck can drive to a row of units to load and unload. The smallest unit is the size of a single-car garage, the largest one easily fits five. I own three adjacent single-car units, each under a different name and automatically paid from accounts belonging to people now only alive electronically.

I enter the code the company provided me when I purchased the first unit that lets me through the gate surrounding the lot. My lockers are in the center of the row. I unlock the door on the left, the one attached to someone who looks like me, even if there is nothing else to like us. I drive the Chevelle into the open space. By the time I close the roller door, the keypad inside the locker is ticking down through the last fifteen seconds. I wait five more before entering the code to deactivate it.

This pad is connected to the blocks Semtex I set along the walls of the three units. Entering the wrong code will detonate them. Entering the right code, but outside the valid five-second window of the countdown will do the same.

Another reason, outside of its size, I picked this location is that the security system is old, without off-site storage. He goes to a small hard drive with only enough capacity for twenty-four hours of recording, and with an algorithm that overwrites the oldest data with the newest. The day I need to blow this place, there will be no evidence of my presence left.

I turn the lights on, and they illuminate my workspace, which encompasses all three storage lockers. I discreetly removed the dividing walls over a year, taking out the cut-off sections and disposing of them at a recycling center. Within weeks, the metal was shredded and set to be reused. I was careful in how I prepared this location because this is where all my operations begin.

I undress and leave my clothes, along with my desert eagles and harness, in the Chevelle. It isn’t because of how hot the locker is, but because these will not be the clothing, weapons, or vehicle I will use during this operation. These are my personal items, as careful as I am in removing all traces of myself from everything I use, these had the highest chances of taking a skilled investigator to the reservation.

The center of the space is two workbenches. One’s drawers contain a variety of tools, from what is needed to repair my vehicle and maintain weapons to a jackhammer. The other contains electronic equipment and the tools to turn them in what I’ll need for an operation. When time allows, and the tools needed aren’t beyond my skills, I prefer building everything I need myself. It’s the only way I can be certain everything will work.

On the far wall is a locker, which I open. It is filled with weapons, not one of which can be traced to me. I took them from a variety of criminals I have encountered over my life. Keeping them to use on an operation is simpler than disposing of them.

I take a harness, put it on, and secure two desert eagle in its holsters. I also add three magazines. Wearing two guns registered to different criminals will be difficult to explain if the police catch me with them, but if they have caught me, they will be the least of my problems.

I should only carry one, but I like the redundancy.

I open the safe, solid steel, electronic keypad of my own design with double security, and take out the military-grade computer. I set it on the work desk, connect it, and power it up. Next to the safe, I unlock the filing cabinet.

To get into Liaison, I need to be a member. Since it’s unlikely I can find a member who looks enough like me to take their place, I will have to get Asir to insert me into their membership system. The question is who will I be.

The filing cabinet contains every identity I have built over the years; that I haven’t had to destroy due to exposure. As well as enough termite to melt the cabinet, its content, and whoever is trying to break into it.

Each identity is based on a real person, someone alive when I created it. Each is subtly altered so that superficial searches will show the social life of my version of the real person. Only the wealthy are members of a place like Liaison, so I bypass the identities, not meeting that requirement. Being poor isn’t often an advantage, but it doesn’t mean it never is.

Asir has already provided me with the current list of Liaison’s members, as well as basic information on them. Seventy-two percent are Arizona, twenty-one from the United States, and the last seven from the rest of the world. I discard the identities based in Phoenix. The possibility someone at Liaison will have come in contact with the persons they are based on is too high. I also discount identities from the other continents. Being from so far will draw too much attention to my presence there.

I settle on Benoit Thibault. A successful pastry chef and restaurateur with two restaurants in Montreal, one in Quebec City, as well as a chain of pastry stores slowly expanding into Ontario. As America’s favorite cousin, Canadians are considered inoffensive and polite, nearly incapable of causing trouble. He will do for this operation.

Born in Trois-Rivieres, moved to Montreal for school. He met his wife there and settled. Benoit is white, but doctoring pictures taken from his social sites was simple enough I didn’t need help doing that. I check the date on the file. Three years old.

I spend the next hours scouring Benoit Thibault’s real online life and document everything Asir will need to update. These include the restaurant he opened in Toronto, as well as the six stores in the same city. He now had a daughter and a son. Every picture shows him and his family to be happy.

I forward the information to a server, then text the information from the phone I picked up where Asir instructed me to on the way in. I then destroy it.

Now I need to dress Benoit. The version of him I will be, who would be a member of a place like Liaison, but isn’t what he will wear there. That requires some research.

Pastry, I decide, is about precision and imagination. Running a restaurant is about image. Gray slacks and a white shirt speak to neatness. The silver belt and canary yellow make him someone unafraid to think outside the norm, and the blue pinstripes suit jacket wraps the ensemble in respectability.

“Bonjour,” I tell my reflection as I adjust the tie. “C’est Benoit, Benoit Thibault, Oui, Ca fait un bout que j’t’ast pas vue.” My French is rusty. I hid in Quebec City for three years after my first escape from prison, and passing unnoticed there required I master the language. Fortunately, Montrealers speak as much English as French.

“Hey, Ben oui. I’ve been good. How about you? Call me Ben.” So long as I maintain a noticeable French accent, no one will question it.

The next step is justifying my visit to the wonderful city of Phoenix, Arizona.

* * * * *

It’s nine in the morning when the taxi drops me off at Sky Harbor. I paid him a thousand dollars in cash not to record this trip. I can’t do anything about the GPS, but he was logged out of the taxi network, so this is personal time. As he drove, I dropped enough information to hint I was in the country illegally and that my destination was Philadelphia. Something about a relative coming in from Jamaica.

In the airport, I buy a smartphone from the electronics store, then head to the lockers to pick up the package the Locksmith prepared for me. A SIM chip with all of Benoit’s phone history goes into the phone, the package into the travel case. The history is mostly real, with a few hints inserted to show Benoit has had affairs on multiple of his trips outside of Montreal. The credit cards I carry, with their history, support the trips as well as the business conducted with women selling their bodies for pleasure.

Someone at Liaison will look into Benoit’s history, and they will see a man who has no issue paying for his pleasure, despite being apparently happily married.

The rental car from the airport let is a silver Nissan Maxima, and my first stop is a tailor. Benoit needs proper attire from a place like Liaison. The expectation might be that he will end up naked and sweating, but he must be well dressed before that. I spend five-figure on the suit and ensuring it’s ready before the end of the day.

Then is lodging.

Benoit is in the city to attend a cookware show. Those aren’t what the owner would normally attend, but as a man looking for excuses to travel away from his wife, it works. The convention hotel is booked, but there is one two blocks away that is expensive enough Benoit would stay there.

With Benoit’s stay settled, I need to take care of an aspect of this operation that will affect me. Being among men who will offer themselves to anyone present will strain my control unless I am already sated. I leave Benoit in the hotel room and drive around the city looking for a young man who will help me work out my sexual tension.

* * * * *

I find my candidate in the bad part of the city after rejecting a series of available men as too old, too broken, or too willing. I need him to have a fire in his eyes, to still have some spirit left. Otherwise, this will be a waste of my time.

I find him with his pimp at his side, and it is he who approaches when I lower the passenger window, not the boy. A sign he is still disobedient, willful. Next to him, the boy glares hate at me and I smile back as I discuss prices with the pimp. This close, considering how this life tears at them, I place the boy at eighteen or nineteen.

I want him for the rest of the day. The pimp mentions a price. I take out twice that and say I will not be gentle. The pimp grabs the boy’s arm as he goes to back away and beams as he said that for that kind of money, I can return him broken for all he cares.

He has sealed his fate.

The boxes are quiet. This is an operation. Emotions have no place here. I still act at being human and speak to the young man. He doesn’t respond, but that’s fine. This isn’t about him telling me lies. It’s about his body language answering my questions.

When I mention family, he shudders; not people he wants to see again. When I tell him about places I’ve been to, he relaxes. He’d like to be away from here. He glances at me before looking away when I mention Vancouver. A place he’d like to go to.

The motel room is how I set it. A place a man of means would come to for illicit pleasure. A suitcase by the wall, a briefcase on the small table. On the bedside table, he notices the box of condoms first, tensing, and a bottle of lube second.

It only sinks in now that I paid to use him for an extended period, and the box means there will be more than one intercourse. One will not be enough to sate me. It has been a few months since the last time I’ve had sex.

I take off my shirt without him noticing, fixated on the box of condoms. And throw it on the bed; he startles. He stares at me; the scars covering my chest and arms. My body wouldn’t support the story of me being a restaurateur if I bothered to tell it to him. It tells the story of a man who has endured violence. If he is adept at reading people, he might see that I have endured some of what he has.

I too have been used.

The memory of the prison guard shoving me against the laundry table is old, but it defined enough of who I am that I keep it. The feel of his cock, covered by a condom and lube, pushing into me. The pain, the pleasure that ensued. If I hadn’t understood in that moment this was a tool for me to use to control that man, the odds are I would have ended up like this boy. Instead, I withheld myself from that guard until he gave in to my demands.

I obtained books from him. Psychology, sociology. Things he was happy to give for access to my ass, things my father never bother covering in his version of raising me. That first year in prison became one of learning and killing.

Unfortunately for this young man, the fact that I have experienced the dread he is feeling doesn’t mean I will be gentle.

He watches as I take off my pants. My legs are as scarred as the rest of my body, but that isn’t what he looks at. He swallows and looked up at my face. He searches for a sign he can get out of this. He doesn’t find it. I see the determination to resist spark. I watch it die. He is at the edge. Any day, a man like me will come and smother it completely. I may be the one to do it, although I hope not.

“Naked, on the bed.” My voice is cold, Passionless. This is about need, not passion.

He obeys and lies on his stomach. He doesn’t want to see what is about to be done to him. It’s cruel, but I flip him on his back. I need to see his face. I need to see his reaction to the monster that will take him.

The box containing my lust finally rattles as I loosen him and slick him with a finger, then two, then three. It wants to be unleashed, but I ignore it; now is not the time. This is the one kindness I can offer him, and I will do so. His only reaction is a whimper when I rub his prostate. Was it pleasure or fear? He may not even know himself. He may even be straight.

Pimps don’t care about their product’s preferences. Only that they perform as instructed and bring in money.

I don’t care about his preference either. I can’t. I can only hope that my payment will make up for how I treat him.

When he no longer tenses as my fingers move inside him, I know he’s physically ready. I stand at the foot of the bed and wait until he opens his eyes. As he looks at me, I allow the box to open a crack and I instantly get hard.

His eyes go wide as he looks at my cock, but it isn’t the size or the knowledge that me taking him will be painful that puts the fear in his eyes. No, he’s looking at my face before it happens. The need he can see there, the want. The utter lack of care for anything that isn’t my satisfaction.

And that is only with the box cracked open.

I remove the chains from in, and I am merciless when I use him.

* * * * *

I am silent as I drive away from the motel. Sated for the first time in months. The box isn’t even vibrating under its chain. The young man’s head rests against the window, barely awake.

By the time I was done using him, he no longer reacted. He had retreated into a part of himself that allowed him to survive the assault. He was listless as I guided him to the shower and the same as he exited.

I hope I haven’t destroyed whatever resistance he had left, but that’s out of my hands now.

He is so out of it that when I stop, he doesn’t understand where we are.

The airplane flying over the building, low and climbing, makes the car shake, and he looks around at the people entering and leaving the airport; the cars disgorging more people. When he looks at me, it’s with questions rather than fear.

He is coming back to himself. There is still hope.

I hand him a manila envelope. I prepared part of it while he was unconscious on the bed, moments after I was done with him, the rest while he was in the shower. “There’s a passport, a confirmation code for a one-way flight to Vancouver, British Columbia, and a cash card containing ten thousand dollars. There’s also the address to a house where a couple will take you in while you find your footing.”

He looks at the envelope, at me, then at it again. I give him time. To force him to hurry will take the choice out of his hands.

“I don’t understand,” he finally says.

“This is your way out; if you want it. Learn the name on the passport. It’s your new name. The couple at the address will have the rest of what you’ll need to complete your new identity and they will help you get used to it.” I pause. “Or I can drive you back to your pimp.”

“But the things you did?” he shudders. He may not be able to be touched again after me. Not intimately.

“I did what I needed.” I crack one of the boxes so my contrition feels more real and I can’t help the sigh. “I’m sorry for that. I’m not… well-adjusted.” I nod to the envelope. “That’s my way of making amends.”

“But why me?” the tone is nearly a whine. Tears are forming. Why couldn’t I have picked someone else to use like that? It’s demanding.

The truth is what I give him.

“I picked you because I believe you have enough spirit left to break out of this life. You’ll never be whole again, and some of that is because of what I did, but you can patch as many of the cracks as possible, and in time, you might be able to pass for normal.”

He clutches the envelope to his chest. I crack another box so my smile has warmth to it.

“Looks like you made your decision. I need you to get out of the car. I have work to do.”

“I could.” He hesitates and looks at me with hope. “If you want me.”

I could take him with me, that look says. He’d let me do anything I want. He would give himself body and whatever’s left of his soul. It’s the part of him that is tired of making decisions. Of having to endure the consequences of them. I could take that away from him.

“No.” My voice is hard as I put a mental hand on the box telling me how good it would be to have someone under me whenever I want. It isn’t lust. It’s something darker. “If you stay in the car, I’m driving you back to your pimp. I used you. I am done with you.”

He shrinks in on himself. “I’m sorry.”

Cracking another box open, I sigh. “I know. I’m not someone you want to be around. I’m giving you a way out. You take it or you don’t, that’s your decision, but either way, you’ll never see me again.”

He opened the door, steps out, then stops halfway to closing it. He leans in. “Who are you?”

I shrug. “No one who matters.” His expression demands me. “I’m the monster who will haunt your dreams for a long time.”

He hurries to close the door and step away.

“Crimson!”

Fuck. Almost made it out of the office without her noticing. I glance at my desk. I know it’s clean. Not only did I put everything away, but I wiped the tracking software of what I don’t want documented. And it isn’t like I do anything too criminal during business hours.

The problem is with the tone she uses. That ‘I know you did something and you’re going to admit to it this instant’ tone. I don’t know anyone who can hear it and not feel guilty about something.

“Yes, Ma’am?” I answer, turning to face her. I don’t smile as she grits her teeth.

“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s boss.”

“Sorry, boss. What can I do for you?” would it be too much to promise to get it right next time? I’d be lying, but still.

“You can tell me where you’re going.”

“Home,” I reply and a part of me screams that she knows. She found my hidden drive on the server, got someone good enough to get through my encryptions, and she knows all my plans. “Where else would I go?” that idea she knows everything doesn’t terrify me. It should. She’d call the cops, the FBI, possibly the NSA. She would stop me. Someone would finally put an end to the lives I destroy. It doesn’t matter that they deserve it. I’m no better than they are by destroying them the way I do.

“It’s six O’clock,” she says, tapping the man’s watch on her wrist, just as the minutes on the digital clock behind her flip to three.

Of course, she doesn’t know. This isn’t about the laws I break. It’s about breaking patterns I took a long time establishing.

I can go on destroying the jerks that no one cares about, the perverts assaulting ‘not your child’. The criminals with so much money no one else can deal with them. Who else but someone as bad as they are will keep them from harming anyone else? What does it matter what’s left of me by the time I’m done?

Who’s going to care?

I put my plight out of my mind. I’m not playing martyr. I’m simply a man who understands what he’s become in his quest to avenge the innocent.

She taps the watch again. It’s old, a wind-up model. Too big for her wrist. I don’t know its history, but it’s there. Why else is she wearing it?

“Are we no longer shutting down at six?”

Her eyes narrow as she studies me. “Who are you and what have you done with my Bart Crimson?”

I smile. “Oh, I locked him up in the dungeon he keeps in the basement. I’m his good twin. He’s working himself to death, you know. I figured that if he wouldn’t do it on his own, someone had to step in. I’m thinking that I’ll hire a few masseuses, get a jacuzzi installed down there, you know, make sure he’s pampered to death, well, back to a semblance of life.”

She manages not to smile, but her eyes can’t hide her amusement. Kat’s a hard-assed woman, but she cares. She just doesn’t want us to know.

“Get out of here, before I tie you to his chair and force you to do all that work he’s killing himself doing.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” I’m out of her reach before my words register.

“Stop calling me that!”

At the security desk, Nadine eyes me suspiciously as I swipe my ID.

“Someone die?” she asks.

“Not yet,” I reply as I place my hand on the scanner. Maybe I need to start leaving at normal hours.

“Funny,” she says dryly. Nadine’s only a little shorter than I am, but much broader. Her muscles stretch the security uniform she wears. It isn’t for show—she is strong—but it is to hide something. As menacing as she is, she loves romances and fries at every happy ending, as well as the ending of Bambi. Every time she sees it. Her husband loves to tell the stories of her getting drawn into the movie when their three-year-old son puts it on and how she bawls her eyes out by the end.

I would kill a man who took pleasure in using my sentimentality—if I had any—to make fun of me. If I was a better man, I’d kill him for her. Make sure there was a large insurance policy first, and that it was an accidental death. She wouldn’t have to feel guilty and she’d have all the money she’d need to raise their son on her own.

My car’s one of the few left; a gray Malibu. One of the most dependable cars, according to a bunch of websites I looked at before buying it, in the safest, most neutral color in existence. Exactly what a security-conscious security expert would own, right? My research says it is, which is why it’s the car I own. Hi, I’m Bart, just a normal security expert. I mean no one any harm. Please, just forget you ever saw me.

I drive exactly three miles over the speed limit; when the traffic even moves that fast. When I started this, I kept to the limit, but that causes the people behind me to honk before they passed me. It got tiresome. The twenty-mile drive takes nearly forty minutes. Another reason I usually work late. No traffic to deal with when I go home at two in the morning.

My house is a nice six-bedroom place at the line between El Mirage and Surprise. It has a large fenced-in yard that’s hell to maintain, or so the gardener tells me, even though all the plants are low water types. It’s one of those places on a cul-de-sac that you can’t get without shelling out seven figures.

Of course, there’s no way someone like me, on a security expert salary, can afford a place like this.

It’s why I’m not the one paying for it.

I would love to destroy dear old dad for what he did to me, but that would be revenge, not justice. Kicking me out, even the way he did it, isn’t illegal. I might question my family’s morality, but I can’t question that they aren’t criminals. So, I punish them in small ways. Like having them pay for the house.

It was simple to slip into their bank, give myself access to all that money, and make sure living wasn’t a problem while I went about administering my brand of justice.

It’s petty, I know. And if hurting them was the goal, adding this house to their portfolio would have failed. I’d have to pick one of the high-rises downtown for them to even notice. I picked this house because of how stereotypically normal the neighborhood is; all lower upper-class, mostly well-tanned white people with a smattering of other nationalities. The other reason is the large wine cellar the previous owner had built under the house for his wine collection.

The collection left with them, but the cellar is still there. Nice, cool—well, cooler. This is Phoenix, after all. But any degree lower I can get is one I’ll take advantage with it comes to managing my computer’s temperature.

The Malibu fits nicely between the Camaro and the BMW in the three-car garage. Those two are the crimson I prefer, but they are both lower-priced models. Something more in keeping with the neighborhood, rather than what I can—my parents—can afford to get myself.

I shower, then eat a light meal. Tonight isn’t the night to load myself on carbs. Food coma isn’t a good thing when infiltrating a club involved in human trafficking. With that dealt with, I need to address how I’ll get in.

My usual way involves sitting at my computer, getting into their membership database, and adding my name to the list, but not tonight. For Liaison, I don’t need to add myself to their membership list; my little brother is already a member of the club.

Raphael Sebastien Crimson is everything I am not; much to dead old dad’s delight. Business-minded, serious, and, most importantly, straight. He married the girl mom picked for him and had three beautiful children. Their well-curated Facebook page shows just how perfect his family is.

My younger brother is also an adulterer, and dear old dad pays a lot of money to make sure no one finds out the Raphy has slept with every female model that ever set foot in the city. I’ve traced eight illegitimate kids he’s had. Those mothers are now rich and living far, far away from Phoenix.

I’m pretty sure dear old dad would love to cut Raphy’s cock off, or get him a vasectomy, but that would mean no chances of a large family, and dear of dad loves himself large families. So he keeps paying the right people, in the right places, so Raphy can keep on fucking whatever girl he wants and no one finds out.

My younger brother’s two years younger than I am, and we look enough alike it doesn’t take much for me to pass myself off as him. I do it as rarely as I can; I don’t want girls draping themselves over me, reaching into my pants, just on the off chance they can hit the jackpot by getting pregnant. Even if I was into girls, they’d be disappointed by dear old dad’s reaction to finding out I was the father.

About the only time I’ll endure being my brother, is then I’ve had to infiltrate one of the city’s numerous sex clubs. Raphy is a member of all of them. Of all those in the state, actually. Dear old dad prefers my brother gets illegitimate kids far from Phoenix. Makes the job of hiding them easier.

I take the copy of his driver’s license out of its hiding place, as well as the credit cards linked to his accounts, his library card, republican membership card. In short, anything I need to prove I am Raphael Crimson. I could ruin my brother’s life by sleeping with guys as him. I even considered it, but Gramp talked me down. After all, Raphy did nothing to me. He was only fourteen. All he did was stand there and let it happen.

Vindictiveness is one of my many flaws.

On to clothing.

Liaison isn’t the kind of place you get in wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Even if it was, Raphy would never be caught dead in something so blue-collar. To do an exact Raphael Crimson, I’d have to have invested nearly half a million dollars in building a wardrobe. Fortunately, a place like Liaison will accept something cheaper and I can do a reasonably good Raphy ensemble under a thousand.

I go with a chocolate brown suit, teal shirt; no tie. I will not wear one of those to save my life. A bit of gel to give myself a tousled look, and I look good. I smile at my reflection, unbutton the top one. Now, I look great.

I consider contact lenses. Raphy’s eyes are gray while mine are blue. Is it worth enduring those when the only place I might need them is the front door? How much attention is the bouncer going to pay to that? Will they even ask for ID? I forgo the contacts and move to the dresser.

Most dressers have underwear, socks, undershirts; those kinds of things. Mine has handguns. A whole lot of different ones. I don’t expect trouble, but I do poke my nose where I have no business, so I do expect it. The problem Liaison poses is that I’m going to be frisk. It isn’t the kind of place where they’ll risk letting someone enter armed. It means something small that I can sneak in.

I take the Bersa Thunder. Anything bigger and it’s a bulge I’ll have trouble explaining. I’m not small where it counts, but there are limits as to what will be believed. I grab a roll of medical tape out of the medicine cabinet and I’m good to go.

The car is one place I can’t match Raphy. I could get an Aventador like he has. That’s not the problem. It’s how distinctive it is. I show up in one, and word will circulate. If word reaches my brother his car’s been spotted without him in it? Well, without him knowing he’s in it, there’s going to be trouble.

For this, the ZL1 will do, nowhere near as pretentious, but it is a vibrant red. With the top down, it’s a joy to drive. I fill six travel mugs with coffee. Reconsider and add three more before heading to the Camaro. I want to take the time to enjoy the drive.

Instead of the direct route, I take the sixty west to the three-o-three, that to the seventeen, south to the one-o-one, that east until it loops to the ten, and that west to the club.

The Camaro purrs as I let it loose on the highway. The speed climbs ever higher without losing stability. I glance at the readout as it passes seventy. Next to it, the detector tells me there aren’t any cops around and I grin.

My foot pushes down, the speed goes up. Seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five. I down my third travel mug, throw it to the floor. Ninety-five. I let out a scream of joy as it passes a hundred. The cars I pass are blurs.

I could have been a race car driver in another, better, life.

One-ten. One-fifteen. I feel around the passenger seat for a travel mug. This kind of pleasure needs a proper drink. I glance at the seat to locate one, look ahead and I curse at the rear of two cars I’m about to slam into.

Foot on the brake, hands on the wheel. The Camaro skids nearly out of control. A car passes way too close as I fight for control. By the time I have it again. I’m driving fifty-five and I’m laughing like a maniac.

Oh, the adrenaline’s good.

The GPS tells me to turn around to get the seventeen. In my excitement, I lost track of where I was. I reach in the passenger side footwell, where all my travel mugs ended up, and on the third try, I have one that isn’t empty.

I take the next exit to turn around and do my best to keep my speed at three above the limit for the rest of the trip.

* * * * *

The building housing Liaison doesn’t look like much; brick front, dark windows so no one can spy on what’s happening in those rooms. Cameras at the corner. Places like this don’t like advertising.

Parked in the lot, among other expensive cars, I do a quick look around. The Camaro might be the cheapest one here. I pull my pants down, lift my balls and place the Bersa against my left thigh as high as I can manage, then tape it in place. I let my balls drop and pull my pants up. I’m careful in zipping up, then exit. I have to adjust a few things before I can walk, but I just look like a very well-endowed man now, not one carrying a gun.

Walking isn’t comfortable.

There is no lineup. It would attract too much attention. If someone needs to wait, they have a room for that. The man by the door can’t be more than two generations away from his gorilla ancestry. Big barely starts to describe him.

“Name?” he asks in a tone so bored he might not be entirely awake. So much for security. Is the gun visible under his open jacket even loaded? I wouldn’t trust him with a loaded gun.

“Raphael Crimson.” I pull the wallet and make sure he can see the stack of bills in it as I take the driver’s license. I holding with a finger over the eye color. No point in taking a chance. He glances at it, my face, then scrolls through his tablet before pulling it away.

“Spread-em,” he instructs as he gets off the stool.

I sigh as I put the license away. Raphy only lets a guy touch him like this when it’s the price to pay for quality pussy. Not that he needs that quality. Three of those rich mothers were nothing more than women he picked up at coffee shops. My brother has tastes, but when it comes to women, it’s more about the looks than the worth.

The only reason he bothers with places like these is the ease of access. My brother isn’t often in the mood to hunt. He’d rather be handed the girl he’s going to bed.

Leg spread, the man pats me. He cups my exaggerated package and I moan. I can’t help it. He looks up at me and I smile.

“Oh, yeah,” I say breathlessly. “I’m that happy to see you.”

He rolls his eyes and keeps his hands away from my crotch as he continues the pat-down. Raphy might get an odd welcome next time he shows up here.

“Enjoy yourself, Mister Crimson,” he says, opening the door for me.

“I will,” I reply.

I will, but only after I find a restroom to get that gun out of there and to an easier place to reach. Not to say how damned uncomfortable it is right now.