Savages Recruit Page 3

  He pointed in a random direction. “No, you live a couple of blocks from here, remember?”

  “I do?” Zora appeared to think about that for a second as she gazed at his finger.

  “Yeah,” Savage grinned. “This is Montgomery and fifth. You want Montgomery and eight.”

  “Fuck,” she swore emphatically.

  He laughed and squeezed her shoulder. “I can give you a ride if you want, me and my partner just finished work,” he offered.

  “A ride?” A faint suggestion of suspicion passed over Zora’s features, only to be replaced by an unmistakable wave of nausea. Savage got out of the way just in time to avoid the contents of her stomach being regurgitated at high pressure and speed onto the concrete. “Yeah, I guesh I could take a ride,” she slurred once her stomach was empty.

  “Cool, right this way,” Savage offered her his arm and ended up shouldering most of her weight. She smelled foul, but at least she didn’t offer very much resistance. By the time they got to the truck and helped her into the front seat, she was already slipping into what Savage knew would be a dammed heavy sleep.

  With their cargo safely stowed in the center of the cab, Savage and Brian secured her by flanking her, Savage on the driver’s size, Brian on the other. “Well that was a lot easier than it looked like it was going to be,” Brian said with a crooked smile.

  “Sure was,” Savage agreed as he started the truck. “She’s going to have a hell of a headache when she wakes up.”

  Brian shook his head. “Kind of dumb to go drinking when you think somebody is on your tail.”

  Savage was forced to agree, but he was hardly surprised. In his experience, smart people did stupid things all the time. In fact, smart people were sometimes more prone to doing stupid things than their dimmer counterparts. “I guess she didn’t really think we were on her tail, I guess she thought she’d mess with us,” he surmised.

  With a low groan, Zora slumped over in her seat and ended up with her head in Brian’s lap. He looked down at her, his nose wrinkled in distaste. Savage chuckled at his misfortune as they made for base. He was rather pleased with himself. After all the waiting, it had been a very smooth capture indeed and now he had the foul mouthed Ms Matthews right where he wanted her.

  ***

  Zora awoke to a bright light and a pounding sensation that was reminiscent of a gorilla trying to escape her skull. The stream of profanity that poured out of her mouth would have been enough to turn the air blue if profanity had such a power. She sat up gingerly, realizing that she had no idea where she was. At first this was not overly concerning. Zora often woke up in new and interesting places and most of the time she rather enjoyed the experience. Occasionally somebody would offer her breakfast or a cup of coffee.

  Looking around at her surroundings, it seemed unlikely that she would be getting a cooked breakfast. The room was sterile white and the bed she laid on had the thinnest, most uncomfortably mattress in the world installed on it. Was she in jail? No, it was too clean a room for that and it was devoid of other desperate figures. She was entirely alone. Listening for some kind of clue, she heard nothing. The silence itself was unsettling in the extreme. Were the walls padded perhaps? Had she ended up in the loony bin? It seemed to be the most logical explanation. Looking down at herself she saw that she was no longer wearing her usual clothing. Her jeans and sweatshirt had been replaced with white scrubs. She looked like she came with the room, she thought to herself, momentarily distracted by her sense of the inane.

  “Well this cannot be good,” she muttered to herself, sitting up slowly. The door to the room was a white affair with a slot in it, the sort of slot you might pass a tray of institutional slop through to a prisoner. Pulling the sheet around herself, Zora contemplated her situation. Panic was beginning to rise.

  The sound of bolts being shot back in the door brought with it simultaneous shots of anxiety and relief. Her eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when she saw who walked through the door. He was tall, he was handsome, and he was smirking in a way that made her want to punch him. “You!” She exclaimed, pointing at him as if he might not know which ‘you’ she was referring to.

  “Me,” Savage agreed. “Do you remember who I am?”

  “Of course I remember,” Zora snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Some say that stupid is as stupid does, Ms ‘I jumped out of a window then got blinding drunk’,” Savage replied in dry tones.

  Scowling furiously, Zora expressed her outrage. “You’re behind this, aren’t you? Where am I? What have you done with me? Where are my clothes?” Her voice rose to a fever pitch.

  “You vomited all over your clothes,” Savage said mildly. “It was thought that sleeping in them might be unpleasant for you.”

  “That doesn’t answer my other questions,” Zora replied shamelessly, brushing aside the news that she’d been a filthy wreck in front of this man who even now was making her stomach quiver with the slightest raise of his dark brow. He was so composed, so serious. It unsettled her all the more. “Did I commit some kind of crime?”

  “No,” Savage shook his head. “But we needed to talk to you and as you were unwilling to do that at your place, we figured things might go more smoothly at ours.”

  “Okay,” Zora agreed. “What was so important?”

  “It’s complicated,” Savage said, drawing a metal chair up opposite the bed. He lowered his bulk into it with surprising grace for such a large man. Zora watched him carefully, wondering what could possibly be going on. “Let’s start with a few questions for you first. Why did you run?” The question was delivered quite calmly, almost conversationally.

  “Because there were strange men at my door and one of them broke it down,” Zora shrugged. “It struck me as concerning.”

  Savage looked skeptical. “But you didn’t go to the police. You went out drinking.”

  “Have you been to the police lately? They’d have asked me to fill out a form and gotten back to me weeks later,” Zora said cynically. “I went to the bar because I figured it was better than hanging out on the streets. Then one thing lead to another.”

  He nodded. “Do things often lead to other things where you and alcohol are concerned, Ms Matthews?”

  “Sometimes,” Zora replied suspiciously, looking about her. “Is this some kind of intervention then? Did my mother send you?”

  “Your mother did not send me,” Savage said, a smile quirking at his lips. “And no, it’s not an intervention.”

  “So what’s with all the questions? Who cares how much I drink?” Zora was quickly becoming very defensive indeed. She was not stupid and she knew very well that she often drank too much, but drinking passed the hours and made her mind stop thinking so hard. Drinking was like visiting a relaxing resort of the mind.

  “You have a skill,” Savage said, changing the subject abruptly.

  “Okay,” Zora shrugged.

  “It’s a skill we might have a use for.”

  Still befuddled, Zora shook her head at him.“What skill are we talking about? I assume its not my cooking skill.”

  “Or your housekeeping skill,” Savage agreed far too readily for Zora’s liking.

  “Is it protocol to mock people you’re trying to get to help you?” Her tone was acidic in the face of what she was sure was a very dry wit.

  He ignored her question and fixed her with a direct look. “Zora, you have an aptitude for numbers. An aptitude for making very quick, very complicated calculations.”

  So that was what they wanted. A walking talking calculator. “Eh,” Zora shrugged. “It’s a party trick. You’d be surprised just how useless skills like that are in the real world.”

  “The real world?” He turned his head slightly in inquiry.

  “Yeah, you know. The 9 to 5.” Zorah waved her hand casually. “A nice rack is a better asset than being able to solve for x.”

  Savage’s jaw dropped slightly. “I know, shocking isn’t it?” Zora smirked, enjoying his
obvious discomfort.

  “Your attitude is shocking,” he said severely. Surprised at being chastised for the way she spoke, Zora sat back and frowned. His censure had made her feel bad and she did not like feeling bad at all.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to help you,” she said icily. “May I leave now?”

  Again he ignored her. “We’re going to run a few tests over the next few days…”

  “No,” Zora said obstinately. “I want to go home.”

  “..In the meantime, you’ll stay here,” Savage continued as if she had not spoken.

  Looking about the place desperately, Zora tried to appeal to his better nature. “In a white room with nothing to do? Is one of the tests seeing if I can be bored to death?”

  He gave her one of those chillingly stern looks. “You’re in detox.”

  “Detox? I’m not a drug addict.”

  “Alcohol is a drug.”

  “But not a real one.”

  “It is very much a real one, Ms Matthews.”

  Spurred by the note of condescension in Savage’s tone and her continuing inability to get her own way, Zora’s irritation was turning to outright anger. “This is ridiculous. I want to go home.”

  “That’s not possible.” Savage made the announcement, stood up and walked out of the room without another word. Zora stared at the closed door open mouthed as the bolts shut back into place. This couldn’t be right. She’d been abducted against her will.

  Furiously, she tried to think of some way to get out of the room. Ignoring her pounding head, she got out of bed and began walking around the small room, looking for some way to escape. There was no obvious way out, except through the bolted door. A dome in the middle of the room was probably a video camera, she figured. The notion that she was being watched whilst she paced around like a rat in a cage irritated her immensely. She picked up the chair and used it to stab towards the hard plastic dome. The dome didn’t give way, but after just a few seconds of attempting to destroy it, the door to the room opened, a uniformed man walked in, plucked the chair out of her hands and then walked out again without so much as a word.

  Deprived of the only thing in the room that wasn’t bolted down, Zora sat back down on the bed and pondered her predicament. Clearly there was no way out unless they decided they wanted to let her out. Clearly they needed her for something. She smiled to herself as a plan began to formulate in her mind. It was simple. So simple. Savage wanted someone who was good with numbers, did he? Well she was about to put on the best addled mathematician act anyone had ever seen. He’d chalk it up to her so called drug abuse and she’d be free to go on her way.

  Sitting back on the bed, Zora forced herself to be calm. Nothing would be gained by throwing a fit and acting like a mad woman. They’d just keep her there longer and probably do horrible things if she angered them enough. Instead of fighting the situation, she laid down and tried to get as comfortable as possible. If you couldn’t beat them, you might as well fall asleep whilst they worked out what to do with you.

  Chapter Three

  A mechanical voice echoed through a shadowy room lit with a single light. “x2 - 10x + 26 = 0. Solve for x.”

  Zora drummed her heels against the metal sides of the desk she was sitting on and pretended to think for a moment. She was wearing a fresh pair of white scrubs and after several days in Savage’s clutches, she was already beginning to look a great deal healthier. The dark circles under her eyes were fading and her skin, finally free of the make up she regularly caked on was beginning to get something of a healthy glow about it. “Uh. Forty Two?”

  “Incorrect,” the voice droned emotionlessly.

  Zora barely contained a wicked smile. “Really? Well, my math really isn’t what it used to be.” She tapped the side of her head. “Dead brain cells and all.” When there was no response, she continued speaking into the darkness. “Must be all those terrible drugs I was drinking.”

  Outside the room, behind a two way mirror, Savage growled. Zora knew what was going on. She’d not been told that he was monitoring these tests, she’d not been told anything at all, but she was looking towards the mirror with a knowing smile as if she could feel him there. Leaning against the control table filled with monitors and buttons, resting his weight against the knuckles of his fists he growled. “She’s doing this on purpose. She’s giving the wrong answers deliberately.”

  “Why would she do that?” Lieutenant Beedlesworth, the technician asked as he adjusted a dial and took a few notes. He was a studious man with thick square rimmed glasses and a mustache that always appeared to be right on the brink of filling in nicely. The idea that someone would deliberately give incorrect answers on a test was beyond him.

  Before Zora could continue to taunt her captors, Savage switched the speaker off and turned his back to the room, his arms folded across his chest. “Because I made the mistake of telling her why we wanted her. Now she’s trying to throw the tests so she can go home.”

  “Oh.” Beedlesworth frowned. “That invalidates the process. This data is useless.” The disappointment in his tone was heavy. “The subject needs to be either unaware or cooperative, Captain.”

  Savage nodded. “Take a break, I’ll call you when she’s ready to cooperate.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  When Beedlesworth was gone, Savage took control. The first thing he did was to turn off the cameras and microphones that recorded everything. The second thing he did was to turn the lights up. Behind the mirror, Zora blinked and looked around as her eyes readjusted to the increased light levels. Looking at her grimly, Savage unbuttoned his shirt sleeves and rolled them up, exposing his muscled forearms. It was time to teach Ms Matthews a long overdue lesson.

  She smirked when he entered the room. “Captain Savage. I’ve missed you these past few days,” she said in a tone dripping with smarmy self possession. She didn’t bother to get up, instead she remained in a seated position on the table, her hands gripping the edge of it. Her casual body language screamed contempt for him.

  “Ms Matthews,” Savage nodded, keeping his cool. It would not do for her to see how frustrated she was making him.

  “Can I help you in some way? I am after all, here to help,” Zora smirked. A sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to wipe the smirk off her face rose in Savage, but he contained the impulse.

  “You can help me by applying yourself to the task at hand,” he said calmly. “It is clear that you are deliberately giving incorrect answers.”

  “Me? Never!” Zora gasped, then grinned. “It’s just all those years of alcohol have dulled my poor little mind. See, I never had anyone to lock me up and throw away the key before so my mind has atrophied.”

  “Zora,” Savage spoke with a low, authoritative tone that brought her up short. The smirk faded. When he wanted to be, Savage could be very intimidating indeed. His natural features lent themselves to a severe expression and when his patience was tried, the determined, chiseled angles of his face were accentuated all the more. “This is not a game. This is potentially a matter of life and death for many, many people. You need to start cooperating or you will not enjoy the consequences.”

  She looked at him, her eyes widened, and for a moment he thought he had convinced her. But her wide eyed expression quickly collapsed into a pout. She hopped down from the table and turned away from him, clearly unwilling or unable to face him anymore. “It’s not my problem,” she said petulantly. “I want to go home.”

  Unwilling to allow her childish behavior, Savage grabbed her by the upper arm and swung her around to face him. “I am beginning to grow tired of you wasting my time,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

  “Let go of me,” she spat. “Who gave you the right to put your hands on me?”

  “I’ll do more than put my hands on you in a minute,” he warned her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, little girl, that you are about to get the thrashing of your life.”

/>   Zora stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “I’m hardly little.”

  “Compared to me you’re tiny,” he growled, pulling her closer so that she was forced to crane her neck to make eye contact with him.

  “I’m not going to do what you want,” she declared rebelliously. “I don’t care what you do.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Savage said grimly. Without further discussion, he sat down on the chair Zora had rejected in favor of the table and yanked her over his lap. She squealed with fear and outrage, but he ignored her cries. The room they were in was sound proofed so that the subjects inside it would not be distracted by noise from the outside and so that recordings would be crystal clear. The sound proofing also meant that nobody would hear what was going on in the exam room. She could shriek and howl all she liked and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to him.

  His jaw set firmly, Savage wasted no time in pulling the scrub pants down. She wore no panties, so her rounded, creamy cheeks were exposed and vulnerable in an instant. They were quite nicely toned, he noticed, probably from all the climbing out of windows Zora was given to. She was kicking and thrashing about like a wild thing, cursing and doing her best to escape his grasp, but with no leverage she was unable to achieve anything besides scissoring her legs wildly and hobbling herself in her pants as they slipped further down her shapely thighs.

  With grim satisfaction, Savage raised his hand and brought it down, open palmed across her cheeks. The loud smacking sound it produced, followed by Zora’s shriek of pain was music to his ears. From almost the first moment he’d set eyes on her he’d wanted to do this. She needed a good spanking more than any woman he’d ever known and she was going to get it from him.

  He repeated the treatment fast and hard, slapping one cheek then the other. Her quickly reddening cheeks wobbled and jiggled under the onslaught. He knew that his fast approach was preventing the full impact of the spanking from being felt, but it would settle in later, and that was what he wanted. In this moment he wanted nothing more than to impress upon Ms Matthews that she was his to command. As she wriggled and wailed, he continued the sound spanking, reddening her cheeks to a bright cherry color.