Savage's Woman Page 12

  “I understand that corporal punishment is approved for Ms Matthews, but this is beyond the pale. This isn't a spanking, this is... this is a beating.”

  “I know my business, Mr Holt,” Ms Wright replied implacably. “And I assure you, I would not have done what I have done if it was not made completely necessary by Ms Matthews' ongoing defiance and rudeness.”

  Watching Ms Wright get in trouble almost made Zora forget about the pain in her behind. Whilst Holt and Wright argued, Zora reached down and gingerly pulled her panties up, letting out a small whimper as the fabric settled over her sore bottom.

  “Ms Wright. Please get Ms Matthews an ice pack,” Martin Holt said, ending the discussion with an order.

  Ms Wright obeyed without further question, leaving Zora with her pants down on Martin Holt's couch.

  “I'm sorry, Zora,” he said. “This is not what I had given approval for.”

  “What had you given approval for?” Zora asked curiously.

  “Something much less extreme than this,” Martin Holt said. Ever the gentleman, he kept his eyes on her face, not her hot, red, pantied bottom.

  Ms Wright returned with an ice pack, which was placed in a towel and then put atop Zora's bottom. It helped quite a bit. Before long, Zora's eyes were dry and she was starting to feel almost comfortable, which was strange considering she was still lying on Martin Holt's couch with her pants down and an ice pack on her butt.

  Ms Wright had been dismissed, pending further discussion on the issue. Zora was not dismissed. Martin Holt wanted to be sure she was not traumatized by the experience.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said. He sat down in the armchair Ms Wright had evacuated, his shrink chair.

  “Ms Wright caught me looking up stuff I wasn't supposed to,” Zora admitted. “So she brought me up here and did this.”

  “She paddled you?”

  “No,” Zora said. “She spanked me with her hand.”

  “Those aren't hand marks on your behind.”

  “She used a rod thing,” Zora said. “After...”

  “After what?”

  Zora lowered her wet lashes. “After I called her a bitch and a few other things.”

  “I see.”

  Zora looked up at Martin Holt, wondering at his response. His expression was hard to read.

  “So, whilst you were being punished, you escalated the situation by antagonizing the person disciplining you?”

  “I guess,” Zora shrugged.

  “Ms Matthews, you are truly...” Martin Holt trailed off, frustration evident in his voice. “You cannot make anything easy for yourself, can you?”

  He stood up and moved across the room. Zora watched as he picked up the telephone and dialed. “Ms Wright? Yes. It's Martin Holt,” he said. “I owe you an apology.”

  Zora frowned. She'd been hoping that Martin Holt's reaction would mean a moratorium on discipline. Perhaps it still would.

  “You have a problem, Ms Matthews,” he said after hanging up the phone.

  “Thanks,” Zora said. “Your judgment means a lot to me.”

  “You really must learn to stop antagonizing people who have power over you...”

  “...And learn to be a good little peon,” Zora finished his sentence.

  Ignoring the jabs she was taking at him, Martin Holt sat back down in his chair. “I take it, by your current attitude, that you have not been overly harmed by Ms Wright's treatment, harsh as it seems to have been.”

  Zora shrugged. “This is the price I pay for being the way I am.”

  “So, in your mind, it is best to continue to act in any manner you wish to act, and any consequences arising from your actions are simply necessary evils.”

  “Yes.”

  “Allow me to ask you one more question,” Martin Holt said. “Do you think you will be calling Ms Wright names any time soon?”

  Zora mused for a second, then shook her head. “Probably not, no.”

  “I see.”

  Martin Holt sighed and shook his head. “Well, if you do feel the urge to do so, please refrain from doing it in earshot of Ms Wright. I do not like seeing you in your current state.”

  “With my pants down? Sorry,” Zora reached down and began tugging her jeans up. It was not pleasant.

  “I'm not referring to the location of your clothing,” Martin Holt clarified. “I am referring to the state of your backside.”

  “Pretty gnarly, huh,” Zora said.

  “Gnarly? I haven't heard that word since the late 90's.”

  “It suits though.”

  “It does,” Martin Holt agreed. “Tell me, Zora, what would you say to an alternative method of managing your behavioral issues?”

  “What method would that be?”

  “I think your issues could be addressed with medication,” Martin Holt said. “Just a gentle sedative.”

  “You object to Ms Wright smacking me into submission, so you want to drug me into submission instead?”

  “It's not like that, Zora.”

  It was like that. It was precisely like that. But Zora held her tongue for once and played along. If Martin Holt wanted to provide her with a bunch of psychoactive substances to do with as she saw fit, then she'd sure take them.

  “Okay,” she said, sniffing and wiping away a vestigial tear. “If you think they would help.”

  He smiled and broke out a prescription pad.

  Chapter Ten

  With pills in pocket, Zora returned to work and to the hunt for Savage. She did so kneeling on her chair and avoiding the snickers and gazes of the others, who had never seen a middle-aged woman dragged out of the data center by her ear before. Zora supposed it all looked rather bad. Then she remembered she didn't much care what it looked like and kept scanning for anything that would give her a hint of Savage's precise location. Utah was a big place, after all.

  She didn't know quite what she was going to do with the information when she found it. It wasn't as if she could just pay Savage a visit. But if she could hook into the communications for the mission, she could at least keep an eye on him in a way. She could know that he was safe. She could feel a modicum of control in a situation where she had almost no control at all.

  Unfortunately, the files she'd pulled earlier were unavailable. Someone had done a pretty good job of locking down her terminal so she could only access data very much downstream of the interesting stuff. Everything she had was stripped down, so removed from its original source that it was almost impossible to tell where it was from or what it was related to. Almost.

  They'd made her job harder, but they hadn't made it impossible. By fragmenting the information, they were hoping she'd deal with it piece by piece, but that was stupid. It was like taking a picture, cutting it into jigsaw pieces and shaking them all up in a box. Even with only half the pieces to work with, Zora could put a pretty decent picture together. And the picture was interesting. Much more interesting than she'd imagined it would be. Why, if...

  Blurp.

  Her monitor shut down. She frowned at it, pressed the power button and swore when that didn't work.

  “It's unplugged.” A man was looking at her, holding the cable in his hand. He was a narrow faced bearded type with an intelligent expression in his eyes and a smirk on his befuzzed lips. Zora estimated him to be in his late twenties, which made him a little upstart in her book.

  “So it is,” she agreed.

  “You need to quit snooping,” he said. “Snoopers get cut around here.”

  “Cut like a knife, or cut like coach cut me from the team cut?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Well aren't you hilarious,” she said. “What's your name, junior?”

  “Ted. And you're Zora Matthews. Heard you're some kind of autistic genius.”

  “Alcoholic, not autistic,” she corrected Ted.

  “Ah, I knew it was something starting with A. Anyway. Quit poking holes in my firewall.”

  “Design a firewall stronger than
thin tissue paper and I might,” Zora said, smiling sweetly.

  “Think you can do better?”

  “No,” Zora said. “But designing firewalls isn't my job. That's your job.”

  “I'm not going to enable access to you then.”

  “Fine by me.” Zora stood up. “You can explain to Ms Wright why I'm not here.”

  Ted narrowed his eyes and let out an audible groan. “I am not dealing with that old battleaxe.”

  “'Fraid you are,” Zora smiled, turned and left the data center. She was not worried about the apparent setback. Ted would soon be regretting his decision to mess with her.

  Leaving Ted to the wrath of Wright, Zora went home and made herself some toast. She was not looking forward to seeing Ms Wright again. It was never easy making eye contact with a person who'd whipped your ass so hard you had to stand whilst you snacked.

  Ms Wright had been lurking somewhere in the house and emerged at the same time Zora's toast popped up, the two events resulting in something of a palpitation for Zora.

  “Hello, Zora.”

  “Hey,” Zora mumbled, glad for the excuse of having toast to butter. She focused on the toast, trying to appear casual even as she inwardly cringed. God. It was one thing with Savage in the aftermath of a spanking; she knew what to do with him. Or rather, he knew what to do with her. But really, she barely knew Ms Wright. And she sure as hell didn't know how to deal with the feelings of vulnerability that were triggered by seeing the woman again.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thanks,” Zora replied, shoving toast into her mouth so she wouldn't have to talk anymore. It didn't work.

  “I'd like to check your bottom.”

  Zora choked on her toast. “What?”

  “That was a fairly severe session, and due to interruptions, you didn't get the aftercare you needed.”

  “Well, I'm fine,” Zora said. “Totally fine.”

  “Zora...”

  There was a note of warning in Ms Wright's voice and Zora knew that she wasn't really being asked a question. It was an order. An order to drop her pants and panties and let Ms Wright see the damage.

  It was almost worse than the initial incident, even though she did her best to act as if she didn't care, pushing her pants and panties down right there in the kitchen. “There,” she said. “Look.”

  “I'll need you to lay down,” Ms Wright said. “I can't see very well in this light and I certainly can't properly apply gel either.”

  Zora was left shuffling across to the couch, hating every nanosecond of her life. She lay down, pressing her face into the plastic covering and hoping she'd asphyxiate or something like that. She did not asphyxiate. She was painfully aware of every moment as Ms Wright made her move so that she could once again go over the woman's lap.

  She let out a deep, sad sigh as Ms Wright ran a gentle hand over her bare skin.

  “Mr Holt was correct,” she said. “You have bruised. I really should have put the gel on at the time.”

  “But you couldn't because you were getting chewed out,” Zora said, taking the one shot she had at Ms Wright.

  “Mr Holt is not entirely aware of just how firm a hand you require, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright said, unperturbed.

  She uncapped the gel and began gently dabbing it over Zora's skin. Zora found the application quite soothing, although she would never have admitted it. It was nice to be taken care of a little – even by the person who was responsible for making her hurt in the first place.

  “You're a handful, Ms Matthews,” Ms Wright mused whilst she massaged Zora's sore cheeks with a deft touch.

  “And you're a mean lady.”

  “Mean? Hardly,” Ms Wright replied. “I do what is necessary, that is all.”

  “It was not necessary to use that thing on me,” Zora said, “that extenda-whippy thing.”

  “Oh yes it was,” Ms Wright said, adding a new dollop of gel to the center of Zora's left cheek. “You, young lady, are out of control. Captain Savage would not be happy with your behavior.”

  “Captain Savage wouldn't expect me to behave any other way,” Zora smirked into the couch.

  “And he would not expect me to treat you any differently than I have done, would he? What would he have done if he had heard you curse the way you did?”

  “Well,” Zora said, wincing as Ms Wright's fingers passed over the still raised welts. “I don't know.”

  “We could ask him next time he calls,” Ms Wright suggested. “I would be very interested in hearing his thoughts on the matter. I could no doubt learn something from him.”

  “I think we should have some kind of privacy agreement,” Zora said, pushing up from Ms Wright's lap with one hand and pulling her panties up with the other. “And we should have an agreement that you don't hit me with whippy things.”

  “I can agree to that as long as you agree not to curse, swear, lie and generally make a nuisance of yourself.”

  “That I can't promise,” Zora said. She limped a little as she went back to her toast. Her bottom was still aching and tight in spite of the Arnica gel.

  “You're very resilient,” Ms Wright said. “Or forgetful. I can't quite work out which one it is.”

  As hard as everybody tried to keep Zora out of Savage's mission files, she found her way back into them. By the time she broke in, there had been a lot of game playing, some of it quite masterful. It had included several shells of firewalls, falsely planted data, partially false planted data and the actual data encoded so densely Zora managed to destroy an entire box of animal shaped cookies before cracking it.

  “Hoolllyy shit,” she swore to herself, staring at the data she'd uncovered. It was not at all what she'd expected. It was much, much, much worse.

  “Dammit, drunky,” Ted said, coming across her station. “What the hell do you have there?”

  “Nothing,” Zora said, minimizing the screen to display a game of minesweeper.

  “Don't ‘nothing’ me,” he said, reaching across to click open the tab. “DAMMIT!” He swore loudly and closed out the window, then leaned down to hiss in Zora's ear. “If anybody finds out you saw this, we'll both be dead. What the hell is it going to take to get you out of my data center?”

  “You can cover for me for the next few weeks,” she said. “If you make it so I don't have to be here, then you don't have to worry about what I'm sniffing out, because I won't be here to do it. Follow the logic?”

  “Deal,” Ted said, running his hand through his greasy hair. “Now get the hell out of here.”

  Zora was more than happy to get the hell out of there. What she'd discovered scared her and turned her stomach. Savage wasn't just chasing any terrorist. In fact, he wasn't chasing a terrorist at all. He was chasing someone much worse.

  He was chasing Tex.

  Tex wasn't dead.

  And that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it seemed to be that Tex was chasing back. She'd seen all the mission data in a very short period of time; the official communications, the mission reports thus far, the tracking of all Tex's calls and movements. The military thought that they were maneuvering Tex into a corner he wouldn't be able to escape from. He couldn't simply be arrested due to the impressive resources that were his to command, but they were positioning themselves for an assault that would extract him and allow them to bring him to justice.

  Zora knew Tex better than most of the military personnel did. And she was better at interpreting data than even their most sophisticated programs. What she'd seen in the files wasn't an operation on the verge of capturing a rogue mercenary mogul; it was a team about to be sucked into a very finely set trap.

  She had to stop it. She had to get to Savage before it was too late, but how? Obviously escaping Fort Thistle was the first order of business. That wasn't going to be simple. With Martin Holt and Ms Wright on her ass, there was barely a minute of the day not accounted for. Plus there were the guards at the perimeter, all of whom had her picture and details drilled into
them. She was known. Too well known.

  As Zora ran up the stairs from the data center, a plan began to formulate.

  She knocked on Martin Holt's door, and was called in.

  “Zora,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Do you have time to uh, talk?”

  He nodded. “Of course, come in. Do you want some tea?”

  “I'd love some tea,” she said, sitting down on his couch.

  For the first twenty minutes or so, she killed time by whining about Ms Wright and complaining about the violation of her personal space. Then she segued into something a little more serious. The point of her visit, in fact.

  “I believe that Savage's mission has been compromised. Actually, I believe that it was compromised from the very start,” Zora explained. “It's a cover, to allow Tex to take him prisoner.”

  “Tex is dead, Ms Matthews.”

  “Is he? I saw him get shot, but we left quickly. I think he survived. I think that's why Savage is out on a mission to capture him.”

  Martin Holt's brows drew together sharply. “Who told you Savage is on a mission to capture Tex? That's classified.”

  “I know it's classified,” Zora said. “I know a lot of classified things. Most of them are boring. This isn't.”

  “Oh Zora,” Martin Holt put his hand to his head. “You really shouldn't have snooped into that mission.”

  “Not feeling well?” Zora sounded almost sympathetic. “Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I just need you to come with me, you know. I can't leave this place by myself, but I can leave with you.”

  “I'm not going to help you leave,” he said, his expression alternating between concern and nausea.

  “Oh, but you will,” she replied. “And you won't have a choice in the matter I'm afraid.”

  “What have you done, Zora?”

  “It's just a sedative. Well, several sedatives really. The ones you gave me. The ones you wanted me to take. I didn't. Take them, that is.”

  Martin Holt's face turned a shade of paper white. “Zora, this is not a good idea...”

  “I disagree,” she said. “I'm going to help you down to your car and then we're going to go for a little drive. And you're going to agree to all of this because the medication you gave me isn't just a sedative. It's a synthetic version of Scopolamine, a drug designed to elicit compliance from the subject. And you just took a super dose of the stuff. You'll do everything I say, won't you?”