Part Three
“There has got to be a better way to break a woman.” Cherie wrinkled her nose at the burning smell in the air.
Sam laughed and pressed the cattle prod into the crease of the woman’s groin. She had been stripped of her business attire before she had been tied to the chair.
The metal chair.
This job was requiring Sam to keep careful control of herself and her hands as she pressed all the weak spots of this woman’s self-control. Men, at least the smart ones, folded when Sam brought out the needle nose pliers. This woman was a negotiator, and had been trying to negotiate her way out of trouble. Three holes in the side of her leg- blood oozing through the bandages. (Sam wasn’t going to let her bleed out before the information was retrieved.) They had moved to electricity, which Sam wasn’t particularly fond of- she liked her craft. She didn’t want any connection between her jobs.
Electricity tired a body out, however. It is especially hard not to give into fear when your heart is pounding out of your chest. If you aimed for the joints, the bends of the body, the victim would press into the shock- locking itself around its torment. Sam pulled back her cattle prod (upgraded and hooked up to a generator).
Cherie bent down and took the woman’s chin in her hands, cupping her face like a mother might do with a child.
“I am not going to remove the gag.” Cherie crooned. “I am going to let my new friend hurt you. I know you have information about my merchandise.” Cherie smiled gently. “I don’t care.”
Cherie dropped the woman’s face and nodded to Sam. The woman’s pulse was still under two hundred beats per minute. Sam got back to work.
--
The woman’s name was Margret T. Cole. She was a midlevel employee at a Vought subsidiary, named for an old and retired superhero. There were a hundred of such companies. There were thousands of people like Margret. The company Margret worked for, in particular, was an accounting and logistics firm that dealt with the charitable donations of different Vought accounts.
It was slightly surprising that a company working for Vought would need forty to sixty automatic weapons- especially when there are superheroes on call. In fact, it had taken a significant amount of research for Cherie and Sam to find out the company had shelled out money to the two kids who snuck in and stole the crates out of the old subway tunnel where Cherie was hiding them.
A different company had shelled out money for the hitman who murdered the guards, but Margret’s company didn’t hide its trail as well on those payments.
They didn’t need to do anything to the two boys. Cherie had given them a lecture on the worth of their work, told them how much they should have been paid, and sent them to a friend in Maine. The hitman was a little harder to handle. He had a bakery in the Bronx and Cherie took two bites of one of his pastries and fallen in love. However, one of the men guarding the guns had been a good friend and tattooed Cherie, Frenchie, and Jay’s soulmate marks.
Cherie was getting sentimental in her old age.
Sam had followed the leads up to several different companies. Still, all had connections to this Margret’s particular division, and the e-mails around the dates the boys and hitmen were hired were two days later than the employee performance reviews of both of the middlemen by Margret. Both of them had poor performance reviews and were on the verge of being fired. Both disappeared three days after the guns had disappeared.
Cherie still didn’t have her guns, she was out four hundred thousand, and she was pissed- not to mention Frenchie had left the enterprise running to her. If the drug trading weren’t basically running itself, Cherie would have his balls- soulmate or not.
Something was going on with him.
Sam, at least, was proving to be an asset. Cherie had promised to pay off her debt for three jobs, doing whatever the job needed. Sam had agreed, conditionally.
Cherie had no problems with the conditions, not anymore. Sam could dress herself up and get into any building she wanted. She knew which computers to hack into, and which person to press for information. She was, in Cherie’s mind, the perfect investment.
She was also very good at getting information out of people by more physical means. Which was, according to rumor, why she was in the business in the first place.
It was why Cherie opened this opportunity in the first place.
Margret was looking a bit worn about the edges. Her hair was eschewing, and lines of white eyeliner made long lines in her foundation.
“If you have anything to ask her, you need to ask her now.” Sam said. She turned on the cattleprod’s safety and set it down, before she pulled on a pair of plastic gloves.
Cherie nodded and snapped her fingers under Margret’s face. Margret focused with a start. Her dead eyes came back to life.
And desperation was not so prominent that it hid the light of a true mastermind. Cherie pulled out the gag.
“Would you like to die slowly or quickly?” Cherie asked, as apathetic as she could be with so much money on the line.
“Slowly.” The woman’s voice was ruined.
“I can make that happen. Where there is life, there is hope- oui?” Cherie would also choose a slow death.
“Ou- yes.” Margret looked a bit taken aback. “What would you like to know?”
“Why did you take my guns?” Cherie asked. The motive was important to establish- it made all the other answers conform to some sort of logic.
“I heard about it from a friend down in-”
Sam slammed down her heel on one of her bare feet- leading to a quick, cut off yowl.
“Try again.” Sam’s voice was friendly.
“We needed guns to protect a shipment.” Margret said. “We couldn’t buy them from our usual supplier.”
“Who is your usual supplier?” Sam asked.
“A couple of old Army Veterans out on-“
Sam slammed her heel on Margret’s other foot.
“Try again.”
“Outfit in Jersey.” Margret sad.
“Run by the Connelly’s?” Sam asked, interested.
Margret shook her head. “Alt-Right group. IRS flagged us when they saw payments going to them. They were raided by ATF before our shipment was to arrive.”
“Shipment of what?” Cherie asked.
“Officially, medical supplies.” Margret tried to shift, but nothing was going to make the electrical burns stop hurting. “Unofficially? I haven’t the faintest clue. I do know that the driver is supposed to blow up the transport before letting the Supes see it. Now and then there is a person transported, too. We are supposed to think it’s a cadaver.” Margret groaned softly. “But they have a pulse monitor hooked up to most of them. Sometimes it’s a kid.”
“Human trafficking?” Sam asked skeptically.
“Medical experimentation,” Cherie said dismissively. “Where do the transports go?”
“I can get you the shipping manifests.”
“Sweetheart.” Cherie takes out a joint. “We made sure you couldn’t, not looking like that.”
“When does the next one leave?” Sam asked, pulling the needle nose pliers from her belt.
“Tuesday-”
“What time?”
“Three, four in the morning.” Margret’s voice died as she watched Sam mess with the pliers.
“How do you want clean-up handled?” Sam asked. “I don’t want to leave-”
“I take care of my people.” Cherie said. “There won’t be any evidence that you do not want to leave.”
Sam nodded, slowly. The pliers made a whirling sound- and a crackle of electricity went through them.
Cherie was impressed by the fight Margret put up, but in the end it didn’t help much.
MVMVM
Sam sat in the back of Cherie’s beat up taxi, resting her eyes.
“I heard you favor Dilaudid.” Cherie said. A small bottle was pressed into her hand. “Free of charge, so you don’t off yourself before the next two jobs.”
Sam didn’t open her eyes. She groped for the side of the door, rolled down the window, and tossed the bottle out of the window.
“So straightlaced.” Cherie said. Sam opened one eye to see Cherie putting away a kit, syringes gleaming in the light. “I thought we might have some fun together.”
“I am not a fun person,” Sam said. It was one of the truths she held onto. She wasn’t a fun person. She was an electrician. She wasn’t the kind of person who got ‘kept.’ Robin was-
Well, Butcher was her soulmate. It was easier to be Butcher’s soulmate. Robin would have never spoken to her after what just happened. Butcher would at least kill her before he shunned her. Sam knew that already.
“I will need Serge to pick up the guns,” Cherie said, crossing her legs. Sam tried not to notice how Cherie’s leather pants hugged her thighs. It was no use though. Sam closed her eyes again.
Back when she was still with Micheal, and she was trying to claw them out of debt- she would start a blazing row with him after sessions like this. She would get him to take her as hard as he could, scratch him till the rest of her nails broke from something other than torture. Then she would curl up in bed, he would go stay with his mistress. It left Sam to curl up and cry for the next three or four days until Micheal returned home and kicked her out of bed. Sam was almost positive Cherie would fuck her until she couldn’t move if she asked.
But she wasn’t sure if she could stand to see another person’s back as she burst into tears again.
“What do you do, then?” Cherie asked. “You are very methodical- your work is well known. How do you finish a job?”
“I cry in bed.” Sam answered without thinking, then winced. No one wanted an honest answer, or at least on that wasn’t ‘drinking.’
“Ah.” Cherie said. “I take it you haven’t had the opportunity a lot these days.”
“No.” Sam paused. “Robin, Hughie and my soulmate, she had an aunt that worked nights. She let me sleep in her room now and then. I usually saved those nights for after I had jobs.”
The smell of a cigarette filled the car, and Sam heard a window go down.
“So Robin knew what you did?” Cherie asked. The sound of her voice rolled over Sam, making her relax.
“No, at least- she knew something.” Sam took a deep breath in, feeling all the stress crawl into her back from the smoke in her lungs. Her asthma tightened her chest. “Wouldn’t have given me the time of day if she knew all of it.”
“Can you keep yourself together for tonight?” Cherie asked professional. “Or do I need to find you a quiet room and a bottle of wine?”
“I’ll be fine,” Sam said like she had any other choice.
MVMVMV
Cherie had gotten several associates to the docking station ahead of time. Sam had altered the logs, so that everyone thought their shift was switched to a different one, while the manager saw the original schedule.
Neither Cherie, nor Sam, were in any shape to pull off ‘middle-class mother of four.”, but they had a decent impersonator coming.
The impersonator (for a flat three thousand) would sign the papers that needed to be signed as Cherie’s associates would take the place of the armed escort. Cherie and Sam would ride in the back of the armored vehicle until the appropriate time, knock out the driver, and strip the vehicle of everything of value-
Even if there was nothing worthwhile in the van, which was doubtful, the van itself could be repurposed to make sure no one ever stole Cherie’s guns again. Frenchie could disable the explosives. Sam could squeeze the driver for any information they could sell.
(Cherie operated on cash only and found taxes to be optional- she hadn’t considered it worth the money or risk before the guns were stolen.)
The plan worked perfectly. There was an opaque glass coffin in the middle of the truck, child sized. There was a small screen giving vitals. Cherie was not overly concerned. Children had and would survived worse. If all else fails, Cherie will drop the Child off in a Vought building and security will take care of her. Small metal lockers lined the sides of the truck- each fitted with a key.
Cherie and Sam were riding quietly in the back, aware any sound could mean their immediate death.
They were watching the GPS that showed them South West when they hit a bump and Sam’s shoulder hit one of the keys.
And then an alarm started going off.
“Shit.” Cherie started picking the lock to the back of the van as Sam started messing with the wires attaching the key to the alarm.
The armored car started picking up speed. Cherie could see the GPS flashing their speed. 120mph, 140mph.
“If we are too close to the city, Supes will be called in.” Sam whispered. “Driver doesn’t want that either.” Sam disconnected a green wire.
And the coffin lit up. Inside, Cherie could see a small little girl wrapped in restraints.
Her brown eyes were wide and panicked.
There was a line of blood from her arm, where the needle had been ripped out. The front of her trousers was dark, where she had been scared and not able to do anything. She twisted her head back and forth, but she couldn’t even move her head.
“Can we open the case?” Cherie whispered. “She’s going blue.”
“She’s safer in there, than out here.” Sam whispered.
“She can’t breathe!” Cherie said.
“She’s panicking. Once she passes out, she will be able to breathe again.” Sam said.
“Samantha.”
“On your head be it.” Sam opened the side of the coffin to see a mess of wires. She pulled several out and started clipping them.
The coffin went dark.
“That was the wrong wire!” Cherie hissed.
Sam grunted. The coffin gave a loud hissing noise, and the lid came off.
Cherie quickly began undoing the restraints.
“You need to keep those on her.” Sam said. “If this thing crashes-”
Suddenly the whole world went sideways. Cherie bashed her shoulder against the side of armored car. More alarms started going off, but Cherie didn’t care. Sam was midair next to her.
Then gravity came back.
Sam threw up on herself.
“If this thing crashes,” Sam repeated, yelling over the alarms. “That’s gonna be the only thing that keeps her safe.”
“We are still sinking.” Cherie said.
Sam scrambled for the GPS.
“Yeah, looks like we hit water.” Sam’s voice was slightly panicked. “Get the kid out.”
“We can’t open the door with that much water pressure.” Cherie pointed out, but she didn’t see any reason the kid had to be tied down.
“No, we are gonna blow it open.”
MNVN
Sam burst out of the water with a huff, Cherie appeared about ten meters out with the kid. Sam swam out. The kid was suspiciously silent, but her eyes were scrunched closed. Good, she had listened.
“I want to renegotiate the terms of my employment.” Sam said, probably a bit too loud. If she hadn’t burst an eardrum, she’d be surprised.
“Only if you can get me another Armored truck.” Cherie shouted back.
Sam shivered. Cherie’s associates had spotted them by then, judging by the idiot waving an automatic weapon in the air.
“Serge is never to hear of this.” Cherie said.
“Yeah, lets not tell a soul.”
Sam poked the kid, so she could open her eyes. They’d probably permanently damaged her hearing- but it was better than being permanently dead. They started paddling towards the waving idiot, cold and miserable.
And Sam didn’t notice the injured driver on the opposite shore, or the crew pulling up debris.