Savage's Woman Read online

  Things seemed too good to be true. And indeed, they were too good to be true. The moment she walked through her front door and smelled the scent of lemon citrus cleaner she knew something was terribly wrong. Ms Wright had cleaned the place from top to bottom. Not in a 'let me help you tidy up' way, but in a 'this place is now mine' sort of way. It was a possessive sort of clean. Zora did not like it.

  She found Ms Wright in the kitchen, halfway through the pile of dishes Zora had been letting pile up in a decaying monument to despair.

  “What are you doing here?” Zora asked the question bluntly.

  Ms Wright wiped her hands on a tea towel. “I'm living here. You need some company.”

  “You're living... here.”

  “Yes,” Ms Wright said. “I will be taking the spare room.”

  “Okay,” Zora said. “Well, if you're living here, I'm moving out.”

  “You are certainly not,” Ms Wright disagreed. “You will be living a decent, clean life. You will be assisting in the data center each day and you will have a seven o'clock curfew which will only be waived if you are needed to work longer hours.”

  Zora held up her hands and waved them in the air, as if she could bat away Ms Wright's barrage of rules. “Martin Holt was just telling me I don't have to go to any of his shrink sessions. He was saying I can...”

  “Mr Holt is in charge of your working life,” Ms Wright said. “I am in charge of your personal, private life. So I suggest you go and get ready for bed.”

  “Hmmm, no,” Zora said. “I'm sort of a night owl. And you're sort of not my mom. I don't need someone micromanaging my life.”

  “I disagree,” Ms Wright said. “You seem to be a perfect candidate for structure and routine. I intend to impose both. Lights out will be 9:30 pm tonight. In the future, if you behave yourself, I'll consider extending that by a hour.”

  Leaving the battle of bedtime for the moment, Zora changed the subject to address a point of perhaps greater concern. “What is all this about me working?”

  Ms Wright gave her a firm look. “It's time you made yourself useful, Ms Matthews. You have skills. You will use them.”

  Zora opened her mouth to argue, but shut it again when she realized that what Ms Wright was saying actually played pretty nicely into her own plans. There was power in data, and there was a lot of data in the data center. Five minutes in there would be more rewarding than fifty years stuck at home.

  “Okay,” Zora agreed. “I'll work. But I'm not going to have a bedtime. That's ridiculous.”

  “Sleep is the most important thing in anyone's life, Zora. You will get a full eight hours every evening.”

  “I know sleep is important,” Zora said. “I'm not an idiot.”

  Ms Wright pressed her lips together firmly, as if she were clamping back her disagreement with that statement. “Knowing something is important and acting on it are two separate things. It's obvious that you've never had to adhere to a healthy routine. I intend to make sure you stick to one whilst I am here. You might find you like it once you know how it feels to be rested and well fed. And if you don't, well, you already know you don't like how the paddle feels.”

  “Nice speech,” Zora said. “I'm getting a lot of those today. Here's the thing though. Last time I let you have your fun, but I don't think I want to play that little game again.” It was a bluff, really. Zora was fairly certain Ms Wright could have broken her in two if she wanted. Still, there had to be a place for bluster and bravado. There just had to be.

  “Oh no,” Ms Wright smiled. “The MPs are always a call away if necessary. I'm sure none of them would mind ensuring your compliance if necessary.”

  A pout slipped onto Zora's lips unbidden. Ms Wright was right, dammit. When it came right down to it, she could do practically anything she liked. And what she liked was corporal punishment.

  “So is it a kinky thing for you? Or....”

  “Ms Matthews!” Ms Wright snapped her name. “I'll thank you not to read anything into my use of the paddle. I use it because I believe in it. I believe in its efficacy. I believe in its importance. I believe it is the best and most direct manner of imparting discipline. And I believe your Captain Savage believes the same things.”

  “That's a whole lot of belief,” Zora said, rubbing her head. It still hurt. It was probably going to hurt for a while. Her three-day bender had taken its toll. The older she got, the harder it was to bounce back from the things. Having been on an extended dry spell didn't help her tolerance either. Truth was, she wasn't up to fighting with Ms Wright. She was only up to one thing… lying down as soon as possible.

  “I'm going to bed,” she said. “Not because you want me to, but because my head is going to shatter into a million pieces if I don't right now.”

  Escaping Ms Wright's occupation of her and Savage's house, Zora went to the bedroom. She flicked the light on and screamed. It was horrible. The bed was made. Not just made. Changed.

  She stormed out of her room. “Where are my sheets?”

  “In the washing machine,” Ms Wright said. “What is the problem?”

  “How dare you take my fucking sheets!” Zora snarled the words. “They were my sheets! Mine!”

  Ms Wright gave her a very stern look. “Ms Matthews, you are hysterical.”

  Zora ran to the washing machine and opened the lid to see the sheets smushing around in sudsy water. Her sheets. Hers and Savage's sheets. The ones that had smelled of him, but would now smell only of detergent and fabric softener. Ms Wright had unwittingly obliterated every last trace of Savage in the house, leaving Zora with nothing but clean sheets and an empty heart.

  She let out a sob of despair and slid down beside the washing machine. She then proceeded to curl up in a ball and cry to herself. Ms Wright followed her and tried to make the crying stop, first with threats, then with more threats, but in the end she could do nothing. Zora cried herself to sleep there on the floor, waking only when the machine went into its spin cycle half an hour later.

  Exhausted, hung over and in the depths of despair, Zora dragged herself back to her bedroom and lay down in the bed that no longer felt right at all.

  ***

  The next day, Zora had to go to work. She was already familiar with the layout of the data center having been there on her own reconnaissance. It was much more interesting with people working there, owing to the sheer amount of data displayed on the banks of screens.

  She wanted to be disinterested, but it was impossible to be disinterested when all around her information was flashing by. The keys to the world were displayed for her to see, and in the small moment of time between being ushered into the room and given something to keep her busy, Zora had absorbed enough information to keep her interested for quite some time.

  The work she was given was stupid busy work, report collation. It was obviously supposed to take all day to complete, but Zora had it done in about half an hour. She spent the rest of the morning watching, learning, soaking in every little detail. There were ten analysts working, each of them completely immersed in current missions.

  “Ms Matthews, please get on with your work.”

  Ms Wright interrupted Zora's learning with an irritating question. She loomed over Zora's little corner desk, looking all imposing and grim, her hands twitching no doubt with the need to use a paddle.

  Zora picked up the file and slapped it down on the corner of the desk. “It's done.”

  She didn't like playing her card so early in the day but Ms Wright's annoying questioning just begged to be put down.

  “It is not done, Ms Matthews.”

  “I think you'll find it is.”

  “I was told that some of this couldn't be done without a computer and you don't have access to one yet.”

  “And yet it's still done.” Zora folded her arms over her chest and smirked. “Have it checked if you like. Get Martin Holt to look at it.”

  “I will,” Ms Wright replied, and if he's not happy, you and I will have a little
chat.”

  A few minutes later, Zora sat smugly by whilst Martin Holt examined the fruits of her labors. “Ms Matthews,” he said, surprise clear in his tone. “This is good.”

  “Of course it's good,” Zora said, letting her arrogance flow through her. “I did it.”

  He glanced at her, then back at the work. “They said you had a mind like a machine, but I never expected work like this out of you.”

  “Well they didn't kidnap me and steal my entire life because I do an okay job,” Zora said, resting her head on her hand in a way that made her cheek smush and her mouth go all askew. “And I'm even better in the field.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Zora said. “The mercenaries never let me out because I would have run away, but I did a mission with Savage before that...”

  “The nuke mission, yes. I've read the file. I've been having a hard time reconciling the woman who performed that mission and the one I've seen up until this point.”

  It felt good to have impressed Martin Holt. Zora liked the feeling. And there was more goodness on the horizon. After watching several operators scramble around a data set for hours on end, Zora had finally had enough.

  “Your target has already gone,” she said, interrupting their sharp chatter and strident mutual disagreement. “He left at Wednesday, 9 am on a commercial liner to Iran.”

  They ignored her at first. So she repeated the words. They ignored her again.

  “The dude is sipping Mai Tais with Ahmadinejad,” Zora said. “Poolside, probably.”

  “Will someone shut her up?” Finally a bearded young man acknowledged her existence.

  “Actually, I think she might be right,” his colleague said, an expression of delayed comprehension passing over his face.

  “How?”

  “It's obvious,” Zora said. “Look at the numbers.”

  There were a lot of numbers to look at. There were vast swathes of the things pulled from databases across the nation. The numbers represented phone calls, transactions, every bit of information that could be pulled, including the grocery loyalty card receipts detailing the subject's preferences in toothpaste and other personal toiletries.

  “He can't have gone anywhere,” the operator said. “All accounts are still active. The phone is still in use. The credit cards are still being shopped with.”

  “Yeah,” Zora said. “But not by him.”

  “The call print hasn't changed. The shopping patterns are the same. It must be him.”

  “No,” Zora said, shaking her head emphatically. “Well, yes, the call print is the same and the shopping patterns are the same. In fact, they're precisely the same. The new shops are repeats of past shops jumbled up a bit to make it look as if the same user is still active. They're randomized, but not perfectly. Look. The past eight weeks in a row, the dude has apparently bought a 60 pack of toilet paper. What's he doing with all that toilet paper? Stockpiling it?” She shook her head. “This data is being spoofed. Your mark is gone. Long gone.”

  “Dammit,” the chief operator swore. “She's right.”

  “How can this data be spoofed?” One of his team asked the question, quite bewildered by the notion that the data itself might be corrupted.

  “Whelp, if these people are smart, someone's probably going to the store, buying whatever crap they're told to and then giving it away,” Zora suggested. “That's what I'd do. This is the problem with tracking data and not actual people. It's that, or you have a breach somewhere further up the food chain. Hard to tell.”

  “Well aren't you just the expert now?” Another one of the operators sneered. “Who are you anyway; I thought you were an intern?”

  “Yeah, I'm an intern,” Zora laughed. “Want me to get you some coffee? Or should I maybe do your job, seeing as you seem to suck at it?”

  “There's no need to be rude, Zora,” Ms Wright intervened. “Apologize to the man.”

  “Sorry,” Zora apologized quickly. She did not need everyone in the room knowing what Ms Wright would do if she didn't behave. “Sorry you suck.”

  The last part just came out before she could help it. It was not the wisest thing to have said, and it certainly wasn't going to win her any friends. She dodged Ms Wright and ran out of the room before justice could come crashing down on her behind.

  Zora took refuge back in her home base, having temporarily forgotten that her home base had become Ms Wright's base too. She locked the front door and spent the afternoon watching television and eating chocolate pudding. It was the first afternoon she'd enjoyed in a long time and it was a pity it had come to such an abrupt end with Ms Wright unlocking and subsequently walking through the front door at precisely 5:05 pm.

  “Hello, Zora,” she said, putting her sensible handbag down on the kitchen table. “You were notably absent this afternoon.”

  “Yeah,” Zora agreed. “I had to come back here and catch up on some data.”

  “What data was that?”

  “It turns out that there was this lady who had been with her boyfriend for five years and she was pregnant, but he didn't believe it was his because they'd been in an open relationship. So they did a polygraph and it turned out that it wasn't even hers! She was secretly being a surrogate for...”

  “That sounds suspiciously like a day time talk show,” Ms Wright interrupted.

  “It was,” Zora said. “It really was.”

  “So you think that it is acceptable to insult your co-workers, leave early and spend the day watching trash television?”

  Zora snorted. “I did more work in the two hours I was there than the rest of them did all day long and you know it.”

  “That isn't the point, Zora.”

  “The point isn't getting work done? Wow, I must have really missed something,” Zora said, going heavy on the sarcasm.

  “The point is that you can't simply leave whenever you feel like it. And you certainly cannot be rude to those you work with.” Ms Wright sat down in the armchair that was Savage's and patted her lap. “Come over here.”

  “I'm not coming over there,” Zora frowned. “I haven't done anything wrong.”

  “I've just explained what you did wrong,” Ms Wright said patiently. “Now come here.”

  “I don't want to.”

  “Very well,” Ms Wright replied. “If you do not want to come over here, you can go to your room. Lights out will be two hours earlier this evening.”

  “Seven-thirty? I'm not going to bed at 7:30,” Zora laughed. “You can't possibly enforce that.”

  Ms Wright stood up and moved threateningly across the room toward Zora. Zora took evasive maneuvers and retreated to her room, which was not the same as being sent to her room. Not at all.

  Once there, she had to admit that she had been cornered in her own damn house by a woman who wasn't even supposed to be there. There was no television in the bedroom, nor was there any form of computational device. There wasn't even so much as a book.

  Zora realized that if she didn't go out and face the stupid music with Ms Wright she was going to be stuck in her room all evening long, bored out of her mind.

  Unless...

  She looked toward the window, then walked toward the window and discovered that it was still fully operational. Chuckling to herself, she clambered out and dropped onto the soft grass outside. Ms Wright clearly still didn't know who she was dealing with.

  Zora made her way into the Fort Thistle town center, bought herself a burger and a milkshake and quietly gloated. It was ridiculous really, the way they treated her. Who did Ms Wright think she was? A governess or matron or something similar, Zora supposed.

  She wished she could complain to Savage, but she knew damn well Savage would side with Ms Wright. He'd probably be mad if he knew she was disobeying the woman. Then again, he'd probably expect as much from her too. She was still mad at him for leaving her, even more so for leaving her with people who put her through the same disciplinary rigors as he did. It wasn't fair.
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  When she was done with her burger and shake, Zora made her way back home, climbed back through her bedroom window, shed her outer clothing and got into bed. It was early, but she was tired and she didn't fancy an altercation with Ms Wright.

  Chapter Eight

  Just as she shut her eyes, there was a soft tap at the door. It subsequently opened and Ms Wright put her head into the room.

  “I hope you enjoyed your dinner, Zora.”

  Zora clamped her eyes shut and pretended not to hear the woman.

  “I'm well aware that you're awake, and I'm well aware you just returned,” Ms Wright said. “Fortunately for you, you behaved yourself whilst you were out, so I'll let this slide. Good behavior is rewarded, Zora.”

  Turning onto her side to face the woman, Zora looked at Ms Wright. “No,” she said. “It's not. I did really good work today, and what did I get? A lecture and threats and confinement.”

  “Have I paddled your bottom, young lady?”

  “No,” Zora said, glad for the darkness in the room. She hated it when Ms Wright spoke so bluntly.

  “Would you say then, that I am showing you some leniency?”

  “I guess,” Zora admitted, wrapping an arm around her pillow and pulling it down toward her face so she could be partially hidden by the soft stuffing. The bed felt large and empty without Savage. It had only been four days and she didn't know how she was going to get through however long she had left without him. The fact of the matter was, it didn't really matter if Ms Wright didn't paddle her; she was still going to be in pain all night long.

  The door opened a little wider and Ms Wright reached for the lamp. A soft glow was cast over the room when she turned it on.

  “Are you all right, Zora?”

  “Yes,” Zora said, pushing her face into the pillow so that the cracking of her voice could not be heard through the muffledness.

  “You're missing Captain Savage, aren't you?” Ms Wright said. “Try your best to hold it together behavior wise, and I will see what I can do about getting you some contact with him.”