Archive of Our Own ^beta

The slideshow bulb flashed, illuminating the faces of the agents of the dim room. Behind their tables, they either showed disgust or a tired sense of complacency born from months of witnessing the same thing that was flashing before their eyes.

A crime scene was projected on the wall. It was a mass of limbs, and processed like a meat factory with shards of bone sticking up. The lumps of muscle and skin were so dessicated, they didn't even seem like they belonged to a human. A pig, or something. A mass of human flesh like roadkill.

"Does anyone know what happened to this man?" Blared a loud Long Island accent.

The accent belonged to a tall, slender woman in a neatly-fitted suit and tie, who was clicking the projector quickly from photograph to photograph.

A number of people murmured their dissent.

"He was put through a trash compactor alive."

The woman was severe in all manners of the term, from her pressed black waistcoat, to her tense shoulders, to her straight-ironed black hair that stopped just below her elbows, and her sharp bangs cut vertically just above her furrowed eyebrows. Her face was long and sculpted, with severe cheekbones and an equally long nose. She spoke rapidly and confidently, her voice a sharp, professional timbre as she flicked to the next picture. Her dark eyes darted from person to person, never staying on one face for too long.

"And this man?"

A severed head wrapped in duct tape. 

"Reuben Cooper. Mouthed off to Billy Murphy once on the street."

A man shot in the head, curled and stiff in the blood-stained trunk of a car.

"Jack Giorlando. Decides to strike out on his own and undercut the Campagna Family's drug business. Red's Merry Men did their friends on the North End a favor and took him out. Not before beating him and burning him with cigarettes for three hours first."

A long-dead man in a clawfoot tub. This one had its skin sloughing off in layers, like cooked pork. The water was floating with fat and tinged sewage.

"Brian Dennehy. Arms deal gone wrong. Met 'em at Molly O'Donaghue's. Found two weeks later, throat slit in his bathtub."

The senior FBI official observed the class with narrowed dark eyes, her long, black eyebrows etched in a frown.

"These are the men we're dealing with. These aren't what we're used to. These people are not cosa nostra. They have no honor, no code of conduct. These men are a roving band of serial killers."

The projector flashed again. There was a group of mugshots staring out at the room. 

The woman pointed to one, of a thick-jawed man with pitch-black hair and a mole on his lower cheek. 

"William Murphy. Enforcer. Right-hand man, and no laughing matter. This son of a bitch has been Red's friend since they were shoplifting at grocery stores, and followed him into Vietnam. If there's a murder Red thinks is too dirty for him, Billy Murphy does it."

Then the woman smartly rapped the largest photograph.

This one was of a handsome, narrow-faced man with freckles scattered over his face. In the fuzzy black-and-white mugshot, his eyes showed up light against the background.

"Him. Red O'Malley. He may look like Robin Hood, but him and his Merry Men are anything but. They've been terrorizing Boston for half a decade. This is the man whose house we're raiding. This is the man who did all this. I don't want you to forget a single. Still. Image." She rapped her knuckle on the projector. "Now get out, get suited and get ready. God willing, we'll nab him tonight, and he'll never see Boston again except from out his prison cell window."

As the agents filed out, Supervisory Special Agent Janet Kaminsky-Beale turned to her understudy, Senior Special Agent Gregory Whelan. "This is it, Greg."

Greg squeezed her bicep. "You did a hell of a job. Gave those agents a quick lesson and hammered it into their head. Maybe we'll get lucky and some nervy newbie will shoot 'im if he sees him coming round the corner."

Janet chuckled and affectionately punched his shoulder. "C'mon. Somebody could hear us."

They all filed out of the FBI Center into armored cars, towards South Boston, and all Janet could think about was whether Kate would pass her college finals.

The house was derelict, in a rotting area of South Boston where boarded-up houses were as common as crows on powerlines. 

Rows of crumbling brownstones hemmed the FBI vans in, between the peeling two-and-three-deckers. They reached a stretch where brick factories puffed clouds of gray smoke into the autumn air, then caught sight of their target.

It could have been any one of the houses that surrounded them, but it was one that didn't stand out. It blended in perfectly with its dull, faded sky-blue hue worn rough by the years. The porch had a sad flag hanging from it. It was utterly unremarkable.

And that was why they were raiding it.

They knocked first--a few token raps, warrant in hand, then on three, they kicked the door down.

The silent house was immediately filled with dozens of uniformed personnel, black-helmeted and clutching shields. Tables were upended, vases of flowers shattered on the floor. The interior was small and bare, a typical house for the neighborhood. The walls were knotty pine--thin enough so that the smallest whimper could escape. Red had to have some quiet neighbors.

The SWAT team cleared the house in minutes. It was completely empty. Rifles swept small, shabby rooms with threadbare furniture and ragged lace curtains, waiting for someone to leap out of hiding with a pistol or baseball bat. Nothing.

Janet tailed them, cursing. She had her hair up in a bun, and was wearing a dark green tactical vest. "The basement! Get to the basement!"

A cellar door was busted in, hanging swinging off its hinges. The sudden silence that fell over the SWAT team made Janet's heart leap.

She pushed through the crowd, and froze at what she saw.

A clean, perfectly empty cellar, with neat lines of freshly-built shelves on the walls.

And a newly-paved floor.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!"

"Calm down, Jan." Janet hated how deadpan Greg could be sometimes. He lit a cigarette, the flare illuminating the deep shadows under his eyes.

Janet leaned against the peeling outside of the house and watched as the agents buzzed from the house to the police vans. "I want you to dig up that damn basement!" She shouted to them. "Sift through every inch of dirt, make sure that not even a knucklebone gets through. I want the heavy duty machines in here! The forensics team! Pronto!"

"You're getting worked up, Janet." Greg used her full name, an indication of how much he was worried about her. "Let's hit Smithy's and get a bite to eat. This night's been too much of a fuckin' disappointment."

An hour later, they were bundled up in Smithy's Diner in a window seat, as cars roared past the dark road beyond their window and sirens whined in the distance. Gregory ate a chicken-fried steak while Janet steamed over a cup of black coffee.

"I just can't believe it. We've been tracking these people for months. Tapping them for months. And just as soon as we put our plan into motion--we did get the right house. Right? A two-story blue house with a brick porch down Meriwether Street. The deed's in Red O'Malley's sister's name, for Christ's sake. This is the fucking place, it has to be, all the witnesses described it, even the ones who flipped. And the basement…" this made tears bead in her eyes, and she slammed her fist on the linoleum table, making her coffee ripple." There goes my fucking raise."

The O'Malley cellar was an urban legend. Or, had been. Be good, kids, or Red O'Malley will put ya in his cellar , said with a wink and a jaunty laugh by the mothers of Southie. What they didn't know was that it was a torture chamber and burial pit for corpses all the way back to the beginning of Red's career, when he had been fired from his meatpacking job and decided that instead of a steady job, all a disaffected Vietnam vet needed was a pair of thick knuckles and some cunning to corner Boston's ruthless underworld. 

Pieced together from surveillance and witness statements, an image emerged of a dank, subterranean chamber where both torture and burial were carried out routinely. As a punishment, to settle a score, or to attain information--countless men met their death on Meriwether Street. And when they heaved their last breath, they were buried deep beneath the dark, blood-impregnated soil of the cellar. Flesh rotted and bones were piled feet high, decaying for years. It was a perfect nab for the FBI, and could have put every member of his Merry Men into Schuylkill Prison for life.

"C'mon, Janet. Order something. People are starting to stare." Greg was still cutting calmly into his chicken fried steak. Her old friend had an unflappable demeanor and almost superhuman ability to keep calm despite the circumstances, one of the things that greatly came in handy in the FBI. Just being around him and hearing his voice calmed her down. Janet sighed and picked up the menu.

Gregory Whelan was younger than her, but no less professional, with a tall, compact frame and square shoulders. He wore a natty gray suit freshly laundered each day by his wife, with a dark tie tucked in front. Underneath was a bulletproof vest, which he wore even on trips to the subway shop-- you can never be too careful, Jan.

He had a broad, handsome face, almost boyish save for the brush of facial hair over his upper lip. He had strong, hard brown eyes, and had taken his aviator frames off to sip his coffee, putting those eyes on full display as they focused on her. "We got a rat, Janet. We'd been stakin' out the house for weeks, and when we bust in, there's nothin' there."

"A rat? This is the FBI, Greg, not the Boston PD. We don't have rats in the FBI."

"What other explanation could there be?" He scraped a bit of breading with his fork and leaned forward. "This is Boston. Everyone's got relatives all over the damn place. Could be as easy as a janitor seeing something he shouldn't have. Or…."

He paused. "That Southie broad we just hired."

"Michelle Clancy?"

"Yeah. She's from the same slums as Red and his Merry Men. Same housing projects. And we all know how close those ties can be." Greg swigged the rest of his coffee. "Think about it. We hired her just as the investigation was starting. Everything lines up."

Something still nagged at her mind. "I don't know…"

"Give it some thought. Hey, Jan. Tonight's been a shitshow, but tomorrow's another day." 

Gregory patted her arm, his kind brown eyes crinkling. "Get something in your stomach and go home to your family."

A crooked smile spread over Janet's face. "What the hell would I do without you, Greg?"

"Die," he replied, cracking a rare grin, and wrote off their check. And they laughed, snatching a moment of lightness among the miserable failure of the last few months of their lives.

Janet undressed, sliding off her suit.

Her tight sweat-stained dress shirt peeled off, letting her breasts and ribcage breathe free. Then came her coat, and the untangling of her tie, and then wrestling with her belt until her slim pants gratefully fell down to her ankles.

Her house was quiet. Janet had stayed at work late and had nothing to show for it. She'd been months on the assignment, and had barely any time to tend to her family.

She just didn't want to bring the stress home with her. This was her only sanctuary.

Janet Kaminsky-Beale lived in a modest two-story home in a quiet suburb of East Boston. The roof was flat and paved tar-black, and provided the eaves all they needed to drip down the pipes beside her bedroom window and wake her up at all hours of the night. Coming home, she always loved how the moonlight glinted off the roof, like pure obsidian.

There was an upper deck where they barbecued with their neighbors and watched their kids splash in the pool on the other side of the street. There was a freshly white-painted porch. Flower bushes lined their gate, offering roses for passers-by to pick. It was surrounded by a latticed iron fence around the property, and her husband mowed the yard religiously every Saturday. 

Janet loved East Boston, its slow, caring cadence and its quietness and the smiles of neighbors. It was a good place to raise her children.

The bedroom was just as it had always been--painted blue, because Cal liked it like that; but he had given in to a pink dresser and wastebasket, because that was Janet's favorite color. It was more bare than she had remembered--but she had always thought that it was bare since she moved the children out of the room and the toys and bassinets vanished. Just an armchair, dresser, and a small vanity. The rug was sea-green, cerulean and soft as it padded under her bare feet.

Janet dressed silently in her nightgown and slipped into their queen bed under the covers. The feathers inside the duvet crushed under her as she shifted close to her husband. She heard his soft breaths in sleep.

As their bodies met, Cal slipped his arms around her waist. Whether it was an unconscious movement, she didn't know, but the way his thumbs rubbed gentle circles around her hipbones made her smile all the same, and she drifted into blissful, loving sleep, cradled in the arms of her husband.

"Mom, where are the Cocoa Puffs?"

"You shouldn't be eating that sugary shit, Kate. How about some scrambled eggs?"

Kate puffed out her cheeks in that way that reminded Janet of herself when she was a little girl. "C'mon, I stayed up all night studying for my exams!" 

Janet hid a smile and tossed her the cardboard box.

"Pass. Your. Exams. And then we can go to Miami."

Kate's face brightened. Their annual mommy-daughter vacation to Florida was a highlight of her year, and they had been doing it since she was seven. They would hit museums, kayak, go hiking in the Everglades, and when Kate was younger, go to Disneyworld. Nowadays, they would forgo Disneyworld in favor of getting drunk and silly together in the hotel bar.

"As long as you don't play that awful 70's music the whole car trip."

"Hey, The Seekers are a hundred times better than that bullshit Bowie glamor-rock you listen to."

"It's glam rock. And Bowie is a God, so don't take God's name in vain!"

Whereas her son Lawrence was the spitting image of Cal's father, Kate was a perfect mix of her and her husband. She had Cal's round, chubby-cheeked face and light auburn hair, blessedly free of his male-pattern baldness; although she had taken to wearing it in that atrocious new feathered hairstyle that was all the rage these days. Janet privately thought made it look like someone took a feather duster to their hair. She hadn't changed her hairstyle since 1973, and was happy with her long, straight dark locks.

Kate's eyes were quick and black under thinly penciled eyebrows, and her nose was as straight as an arrow, set over grapefruit-pink lips pursed in an eternal pout. She'd had those lips ever since she was a baby. She had always been crying about something, and only quieted down when her mother took her in her arms.

Janet was privately very glad Kate had decided to attend college so close to home. Lawrence had left home for Cal-Tech, and other than weekly phone calls, they didn't see much of him lately. It might have just been a mother's instinct to keep her children close to home, although as she chided herself, you're going to have to let go sometime.

The tall, dark-haired woman took the carton of milk out of the refrigerator and slid it over the table to her daughter. The autumn sun shone through their pulled lace curtains onto their plastic pumpkin-patterned tablecloth that she still hadn't changed since last Halloween. Janet was wearing a pair of tight bell bottoms and a sunshine-yellow halter top that stopped just above her belly. Two jangling wooden earrings of the sun and moon dangled from her ears.

The kitchen door creaked open, and Cal shuffled out in slippers. He opened the refrigerator door and bent in. "Do we have any turkey bacon left?"

"Nope. Sorry. Only pork bacon. And you know I don't eat that shit anyway, so you'd better use it up."

"You know I need to lose weight, Jan!"

Janet grinned and pinched his waist. "Don't worry, hun. You know I love every bit of you."

Cal had been watching his diet, but had always tended to a wide, solid figure with a wider smiling face. She used to joke about what a pair they made at their wedding--her tall and thin as a broom, and him looking, according to Jan's mother, like "a railway brakeman who beat up all the other applicants for the job". He still had his tall, solid figure and a dusting of golden-red hair on his head, and more importantly, that smile she had fallen in love with. When he smiled, the edges touched his cheekbones and dimples appeared on his rosy cheeks.

"Hey, Jan, you're wearing the earrings I got you!"

"That's what you notice?" Janet swivelled her hips and indicated her flat, tan belly.

"What's new here? I see that every day and get to kiss it every night." Cal slapped her hindquarters in response, and she burst out laughing.

"Ew, stop it, Dad! Not in front of me, I'm eating breakfast!" Moaned Kate as she finished up her bowl of cereal. 

"How's the case going at headquarters?" Asked Cal as he shook out the bacon into the pan.

Janet clenched her teeth. "Not… good."

He cast her a worried side eye. "...should I avoid the newspapers for a few days?"

"Probably. We fucked up royally and the Boston Globe is going to get their dirty fingerprints all over the story." She wiped a mug with a dishrag, and heard a chair scrape from behind her.

"Mom, I might be late for dinner today. Imogen and I are going out."

"Oh? Where? You know I don't like that girl. She's a bad influence." Imogen Kelly was a Southie girl through and through; hard-bitten and tough-talking with a harsh, cigarette-hoarse accent and garish mascara applied to her eyes like a raccoon. Janet had met her once and disliked her immediately. 

"Just out. We're going to a, um, bar."

"A bar?"

"Mom, don't get puritan on me. We go to bars all the time. And, like, remember Florida? We go to bars there too. Remember that bar with the--"

"Okay, okay," said Janet hurriedly, giving her mischievous daughter the stink eye. The less said about the dive in Jacksonville where scantily-dressed men paraded on the bartops and roped her drunken self into dancing with them, the better. Kate would probably be ribbing her about it on her deathbed. "As long you're not going to a disco or strip club or nothin'. And be back before nine."

"I'm a grown woman, mom!"

"You're nineteen, is what you are. Listen to your mother," reprimanded Cal, screwing open a jug of orange juice to swig from it.

Janet ruffled her hair and smiled. "Just be careful. OK, Katydid?"

At the mention of her nickname, Kate's face broke into that wonderful, familiar sunny smile. "I will, momma. I promise."

As Kate shrugged on her fringed denim jacket and left the house, Kate let out a sigh and turned to her husband.

"This job is getting to me. I can't wait to retire. Just… it's exhausting me in a way that it didn't used to. I don't look forward to going to work anymore. Everything's an uphill battle, and you have to feud with your superiors to get the smallest things done. And they're fat cats in office chairs who haven't so much as stepped a toe in the field. They have no clue how it really is."

"Maybe when you do retire, we can move. These Massachusetts winters are getting to me. Somewhere sunny sounds good. Florida?"

"Hell no! Not with those palmetto bugs," laughed Janet, although the seed of consideration had been planted in her mind, and she privately thought later that day, maybe a house on the seashore wouldn't be so bad.

Kate felt bad about not telling her mom that the bar was on the South Side. She still felt a tickle of unease in her belly, even as Imogen strode confidently ahead. 

Kate would have been horrified to be seen in public with her brown roots showing through her hair like Imogen did. But Imogen didn't care. She didn't care about what anyone thought of her, and Kate achingly admired her for that.

Imogen and Kate had met outside of Boston College--Kate a prim sorority sophomore waiting at the bus stop, Imogen a hard-up, hard-speaking white trash broad with a tight blouse and tighter daisy dukes. They clicked immediately, and Kate had been immediately enraptured by the outspoken girl. Imogen was streetwise and clever, with a whip-smart sense of humor and curly, peroxide-blond hair.

"Ovah there," Imogen announced, pointing to a derelict building between two tenements. It was made of red brick, and bullet holes scarred the storefront. The door was propped open with a dingy wood doorstand.

It had a neon sign flashing MOLLY O'DONAGHUE'S in the smeared window. Several letters had burned out, leaving it to spell M LLY O'DON GHUE. Kate followed Imogen in, strangely thrilled at entering such a dangerous and low-down place. 

The inside was no better than the outside.

The ground floor was clearly that--and by the dark staircase leading upstairs, she guessed that the building had also been a tenement once. She wondered whether there were apartments above or not--this was Southie, and everyone was crammed in like sardines.

Imogen slid down onto a polished, chipped chair facing an equally chipped and polished table near the bar counter. "Hey, Doug!" She called to the portly bartender, whose apron was stained so much that Kate wondered if its original color had been camoflauge. "Where's Patrick?"

"He'll be back soon," he shouted back.

Imogen huffed and sank into her seat. Kate timidly looked around the bar. Behind the bar was a huge glass cabinet, behind which were dusty, half-filled bottles.

There was a tricolor Irish flag hanging above the bar opposite an American one. The stools lining the bar were ripped leather. The wooden walls were lined with pictures of sports legends, the Red Sox and Celtics in mid-swing and diving onto the diamond and making a touchdown.

Kate felt small and very out-of-place in the tavern, with the thick cigarette smoke lingering above the heads of the denizens whose heads were bent over the bar. A sucking noise sounded as beer glasses were filled with froth from the beer tap.

The men were really a different story. Hard-bitten men, dangerous men, the men that Mom warned her about. Scally caps tilted lopsided on their heads, shabby coats covering dingy white shirts and suspenders. Boots caked with mud, and faces lined and suspicious. Their eyes glittered as they talked to each other in low, dangerous voices, and occasionally, their eyes focused warily on Kate.

"Um, when can we leave?" Asked Kate.

Imogen snapped her gum loudly. "When that cocksucking motherfucker Pat comes back and explains just what the fuck his Boston ass was thinking when he decides to be fifteen minutes late to meet his own girlfriend."

Kate timidly looked around at the bustling pub and huddled against the wall. Maybe Mom was right. 

"That gawd damn man of mine," groused Imogen, picking at one of her false eyelashes. "He says he's gonna have a date with me and then instead he's off tucking Benjamins into some whore's thong. I should leave his ass in tha dirt."

"Hey, girls!" Called a broad Southie accent from behind them.

Imogen looked behind her shoulder. "Hi, Red. Shoulda guessed I'd see you here."

Two men slid into the chairs opposite them. 

One was wiry and musclebound, wearing a loose, sweat-stained gray sweatshirt and a ball cap with Boston Celtics emblazoned across its front. He was shorter than the other man, with long red hair that brushed his collarbone. His face was densely thatched with freckles, and his face was narrow and sharp-chinned as a crow's beak, in a way that pleasantly reminded her of her mother. He had dancing, robin's egg blue eyes and a wide, warm smile.

"Name's Red." He grasped Kate's hand tightly and squeezed it. His sleeve rode up, and she could see the beginnings of tattoos on his bicep.

"Nice to meet you," said Kate, grasping his warm hand back. She felt like she had heard his name before, but her mind couldn't pinpoint it.

"That lug beside me's called Billy. He don't talk much." Red elbowed the man in the ribs. The man beside him was taller and broader than Red, wearing a leather jacket and fingerless gloves. He had short-cropped dark hair and pale skin that made his hair show up even blacker. He had his head down, so she couldn't see his face well.

"Whatcha doin' here, Imogen?"

"Pat's supposed to be meeting us, but that was half an hour ago. Useless mothafucka."

"I'll talk to him," promised Red. "His whole family's no good, I swear to Christ."

Imogen pulled out a cigarette, and Red held his hand over the table with a lighter. The flame flared in the dark inside of the tavern.

"How's the missus?" Asked Imogen.

"You didn't hear? We're on the outs."

"Again?"

"This time for good. She found some lawyer she's clinging to like glue. They're gettin' married in December."

"Shit, Red. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. That cunt was a bad apple. All my girls were. Just downlow white trash scum to their core. They wanted to leech off me, then moved on to easier pickings."

A waitress came by with short, curly red hair and heavy bags under her eyes. "The usual?"

"We have a guest here. Four Guinesses, spread 'em around," said Red, waving a bill between two fingers. Soon a platter of tall, bubbling dark beers sailed over to them.

Imogen and Red talked animatedly, as people who had known each other all their lives do. The man beside Red was very quiet, his fingers folded under his fingerless gloves. Kate felt herself focusing on him as he sipped his tall, foamy glass.

Kate looked down at her own glass. She felt bad about drinking without telling Mom, and her coat was sweating under the armpits.

What the hell, she thought suddenly, and took a sudden draught of the dark, bitter beer, her gaze fixing on the black-haired man.

Irish instrumentals from the tavern radio cut their way through the haze of smoke. The man tilted his head up slightly, and then she stared into his eyes, and they took her breath away.

For a moment, all she could focus on was his mole.

It threw off the symmetry of his face, that dark splotch under one cheekbone. Above it hovered two black, soft eyes like liquorice, and she could almost sink into their warm depths. They were incongruous with his heavy jaw and square forehead--he looked like a thug, with his hair cropped to leave his hairline straight and severe above his brow. 

But she knew better. She saw it in his eyes. Those quiet, unreadable eyes, dark as earth and so gentle.

Kate's face heated and she buried her face in the head of her beer, until his voice rumbled, "Where ya from? You don't sound like you're from Southie."

Kate snapped her head up to meet the dark-haired man's gaze.

"I'm from East Boston," she said. Her voice felt trembly in her throat. She tried to straighten her back and look more mature. "Im-Imogen and I are friends, we were just, just stopping by." 

Imogen clapped her on the shoulder and leaned her head to bump against Kate's. "Give the gal a break. She hasn't been here befoah."

Red laughed. "She's lucky she has a broad like you to show her the ropes."

The black-haired man's eyes were still inexorably fixed on hers. The bubbles of Kate's Guinness snapped and popped just like her belly did. 

"I didn't catch your name."

"K-Kate," she said automatically. "I mean, Katherine. Katherine Kaminsky-Beale."

The table went silent for a second.

"Oh, lassie," laughed Red. "Your mama's famous 'round these parts. You need to be careful sayin' your name in broad daylight."

Katherine's body erupted in panicked prickles. "I'll leave," she said abruptly. "I'm sorry, I really am! I'll get out of here, I mean, I have somewhere to be--"

Red smiled wryly, and his muscled wrist, wrapped in a weathered watch, went to cover her slight hand.

"Don't worry sweet'eart. You'll be safe with Billy and I. We'll make sure nobody fucks wit'ya."

Red's voice was comforting and made her trust him immediately, as he patted her hand.

"They better not fuck with Kate," trumpeted Imogen. "She's my girlfriend and I'd bare-knuckle anyone who would."

"Calm down. How about another round?" Red clicked his fingers in the air, and another waiter emerged from the bustling bar. Soon they had more tall, foamy glasses in front of them. Kate hadn't even finished her first.

"Kate's a cute name," said the black-haired man--Billy. "It fits you."

His eyes were still boring into hers, and his voice made her tongue scramble. "M-my mom calls me Katydid," Kate giggled a bit.

Billy smiled kindly, making his eyes twinkle. "That's even cuter."

Kate was wrapped up within him, and felt a rebellious desire rise in her body, spreading out until she met his smile with her own. "Thank you. So are you."

"Hey! PAT! TOOK YOU LONG FACKIN' ENOUGH!" Imogen's voice blared, distracting the whole table.

A scrawny boy with slicked-back hair and an ill-fitting zoot suit that testified to pure overcompensation swaggered down the aisle. " 'Mo, I'm so damn sorry. Let's hit the downtown strip, OK? I'll make it up to you."

"You had better fackin' make it up," Imogen seethed, slinging her rhinestone purse over her shoulder. She started in on Patrick hard as they left the bar, and Kate made to follow them until a hand on her own drew her back.

"Can I get your number?" Billy's voice was as gentle and shy as his eyes. 

It was forward, Kate knew, and for a moment she recoiled and wondered whether she was doing the wrong thing, but the man slid a scrap of paper over to her. His fingers lingered above her knuckles, butterfly-light touches that made her throat and belly clench.

"S-sure," she stuttered, and Billy met her eyes and smiled, and her whole body went wonderfully numb.

The house was comfortingly dark except for the glow from the TV. Janet's eyes focused on the fuzzy screen, where a man in a doctor's coat was arguing passionately with a woman in scrubs.

Janet and Calvin had watched General Hospital together religiously since their marriage. Even if they argued, that evening they would plop sullenly onto the couch to watch the newest misadventures of Luke and Laura. 

Janet's head was resting on Cal's lap. Cal was snoring, his hand still wound in her hair. She loved when he would stroke her hair. He had never been like her other boyfriends, who were clumsy and yanked her hair by accident. He had the most gentle hands, and no matter how calloused they were, she loved how they felt against her cheek.

A matching, smaller snore came from opposite the room. Kate was curled up on the big chair, her knees under her chin as she slept soundly. Kate always rolled her eyes and complained about the lame soap operas her parents watched, but inevitably ended up sneaking out onto the armchair to watch with them.

A shrill buzzing noise yanked Janet from her doze. She groped for the phone on the side table. "Hello?"

Greg's voice filtered the receiver, breathless and excited. "Jan, get over to headquarters right now. We picked up Red on a weapons charge. We have him right where we want him."

Janet jumped, and as Kate whined and stumbled into her bedroom and Cal woke up, she replied, "I'll be there in half a minute."

The Turner Center was cold and empty at this time of night. Blank steel walls and empty hallways and rooms devoid of anything but a coffee station and rows of stacked paper cups.

Her suit had been in the laundry, so Janet had hurriedly pulled on a sweater and some slacks. But even through the wool, she could feel the chill. She wasn't sure whether it was her, or the air conditioning.

Greg was waiting by the interrogation room. By the circles under his eyes and his crumpled suit, she assumed that he had been here since the wee hours.

"Give me the rundown, Gregory."

He handed her a sheaf of files. "We found an unlicensed firearm in his trunk on a routine stop. That's not the good part."

As Janet read through the files, a slow smile spread over her narrow, stern face. "The international angle--this'll scare him good." She reached up to squeeze his stubbled cheek.

"There's… one other thing, Jan."

"What?"

"It's the director, that scrawny fuck Schmidt. He said to offer him a plea deal."

"What?" Blood was rising to Janet's cold face, and she could so clearly imagine Schmidt's liver-spotted, goateed face with the glaring placard over his Armani suit. Sneering over his desk and handing down his clueless, supercilious decisions.

"He said to offer O'Malley a plea deal. He's gunning for the Campagnas, the real higher-ups, the capos. If O'Malley wears a wire--if he snitches about the dagos, then we can get him into witness protection and drop the charges."

Janet's fingers flexed. "You tell him, Greg, you tell Schmidt to kiss my ass. Red O'Malley is a dangerous criminal, he's killed more people than both you or I know of. He's a career sadist. We can't let this fucker get away, we need to him off the street--"

Greg slammed his fist into the wall. "God damn it, Jan, that's easy for you to say! You don't have to deal with Schmidt's bullshit! You can just tell me what to do, and I go to his damn office, and I get the brunt of it. I'm just the middleman, and you don't understand what that entails! It means I get to put up with all the shit and get nothing in return!"

His outburst silenced her. Janet gnawed the inside of her cheek, casting her gaze towards the interrogation room door.

"Greg, I'm sorry. I really am." Guilt was sinking into her chest. Greg had never had an outburst like that before. He had always been even-tempered, the rock to her fire. She was speechless in front of her best friend's blazing confession.

"I didn't mean to say that," said Greg finally, and his entire body crumpled like the air going out of a balloon.

"No. You--you're right. I'll ask him if he'll wear a wire. Maybe we can nail him on other charges. It's all right, Greg." For a moment, her hatred towards Red of the last few months had vanished, and she felt nothing but guilt.

"It gets… so hard. Janet, I'm sorry." Was it just her, or were his eyes more sunken than usual? His chin covered with unshaven stubble? 

"Shush, Greg." She reached out to him and comfortingly gripped his arm, rubbing her thumb over the fabric. "Like I said, don't worry about it. We'll get something sorted out between us. Hey, maybe we'll get a promotion if we kowtow to that old fucker, you know?"

He nodded and swept his hand over his forehead. His glasses were slipping. "I worry about you too, you know, Jan. Be careful in there, alright?"

The inside of the interrogation room was cozy. The walls were made of soft wooden planks, and the curtains were purple crinkled paper, drawn softly over the bulletproof windows.

Of course, the seats were still metal. And each had a handcuff rung attached to the seat.

Red O'Malley was sitting behind the table, one arm thrown lazily over the desk, his other hand worrying his chin. He flicked his eyes up to her when the door creaked, and shot her a grin.

"Hello, Mr. O'Malley. I'm sorry for the wait." Janet extended her hand to shake his hand, and he met her grip with his strong handshake. "Nice to meet'cha." He had a gravelly Boston accent, deeper than she had expected from his almost feminine facial features.

Janet sat down opposite him, with her filing folder under one arm. She set a paper cup of coffee on the table. "Drink up, O'Malley. You're going to need it. S'gonna be a lawwwng night."

Red didn't look like what she had expected. She'd seen him on plenty of surveillance videos and mugshots, but he seemed different in person--skinnier, smaller, without the menace that cloaked him. It was immediately clear why he was called Red, and what part of Boston he was from--the man practically had a map of Dublin on his face, as if the shamrock tattoo on his bicep wasn't enough to give him away. 

His hair was that peculiar vivid scarlet that was threaded with gold. It almost reminded her of Cal, except that it was a deeper color, like the hide of a fawn with its red sheen. It was long, longer than she had expected, with strands reaching down to tickle his chin. It was tied in a loose ponytail in back.

He was a rare redhead that tanned well, as she could see by his muscled chest and equally muscular arms. He wore just a sleeveless white shirt and tight jeans--they really had picked him right off the street. His tank top showed off his ink, and he had a lot of it. She made out the faded patterns of the four-leaf clover she had noticed on his lower bicep. On the other arm was the beginnings of a word she couldn't make out.

Red had clusters of light brown freckles scattered over his broad, dimpled cheeks, and his scrunched nose. When he smiled, his teeth were a little crooked, but in a charming way. He radiated geniality, and it threw her off as she paged through his file, filled with torture and murder.

"First, let's get some things down. Your name is Thomas Liam O'Malley. You were born in 1954 in Boston, Massachusetts."

"Last time I checked."

"And what do you do for a living, Mr. O'Malley?"

The redhead took out a beaten-up red lighter and flicked it, lighting the tip of a cigarette. The NO SMOKING sign glared in the background. Over his tan chest, a golden crucifix dangled free.

The smoke made her throat itch. She couldn't abide smokers.

"Three things an Irish boy can grow up to be in Boston. A cop, a criminal or a priest. And I don't like to take orders… not even from God." 

He flashed her a sly smile. Red's smile was so mischievous and bright, like someone who had the air of the class clown. But there was something beneath his smile that immediately put her on guard. His ambience was working-class and rough, from the wrong side of Southie ( as if there was even a good side), squarely shanty. Not even approaching lace curtain.

Janet redirected her attention to her file folder. The earliest pages were black-and-white photographs of Red, one as a child seated between his parents. His freckles were even more vivid in that picture. One was a blurred black-and-white shot of him at his old meatpacking job, wearing a leather apron. His hair was short and mussed, and he was hanging an arm over the neck of a friend as he smiled at the camera. The last one was his high school yearbook--with his short-cropped hair and white popped collar, he looked like a different person entirely.

"You're getting a bit of a reputation," Janet said as she ostentatiously flipped through the photos. He was not as under the radar as he would like, and she wanted him to know that.

"So do you, Janet."

"Pardon?" Janet was knocked off guard. She hadn't told him her name yet.

"Got a reputation. Specially in Southie. And it ain't a good one, I tell you that." He was more rawboned now than he was in the photos, more weathered, with the ink on his arms faded.

"Well, how 'bout that." Janet said forced a smile and went back to her files. Ingratiate, ingratiate.

"Yep. Ja-net Kaminsky-Beale. Did you do that, uh, feminist shit where you hyphenate your name?"

"I'm proud of both of myself and my husband. We have an equal marriage." 

"Sure." A sly smile that was blatantly unimpressed. Scumfuck. Pure Southie trash. She could practically smell the salt of the wharves on him.

"Mr. O'Malley, I understand that--"

"Kaminsky. Polack name, right? What parta Boston you from?"

"My father was Czech. My mother was Irish. I grew up on Long Island."

"Long Island, huh? I gotta lot of friends there. What part of Ireland your mom's folks from?"

"She never talked about it. She came here to look ahead, not look behind." The unlike you was present but unsaid.

The temperature of the room was dropping, thanks to her. Shit. She needed to kiss his ass a little.

"You certainly seem like a Boston boy, Red. I could tell you were born and bred here."

She expected him to take it as a compliment, but he wasn't smiling. "South Boston, alright. We call it God's Country. Every dirty bar and inch of cracked sidewalk." And cellar. "I know Southie better than the back of my hand." 

Then he suddenly, disarmingly smiled again and leaned back, putting his elbows behind his head. "So you're a New Yorker, huh? 'Round when did you come here?"

"Quite a few years ago. Boston was a good choice to raise my children. It's more peaceful here. The crime wears on you in New York City."

"I bet. And that's why you came here? Just to come knee-deep in Boston crime?"

Janet forced a laugh. "Fair play, Red."

She was trying to butter him up, and he seemed to be relaxing more. His shoulders weren't knotted anymore. He flicked his head to the side, like a horse shaking his mane, to get a lock of red hair out of his eyes.

"Mr. O'Malley, do you recognize this man?" She slid over a photograph.

His electric-blue eyes flicked downward, then came back up to rest on hers. He rested his chin on his calloused knuckles. 

"Yeah, that's Brian Dennehy. Used to hang out on Dorchester Avenue. Cheapest motherfucker I ever met. Man could squeeze a quarter til the eagle screamed."

"When did you last see him?"

"It's been a while. I figured, maybe he went on a skag bender and vanished til he sobered up. He got into that black tar in 'Nam and never really kicked the habit."

"I see. You served in Vietnam, too, correct?" She flipped a page of his files. "Dishonorably discharged for violent tendencies with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. You assaulted a superior officer?"

"Ah, that's all bull-sheet." He laughed. "They just didn't like my attitude. I don't like to take orders, see? I'm the kind of guy who gives them. And my commanding officer, he got a stick up his ass about it. He made the whole thing up."

"Of course." She tried to sound understanding, but he was getting under her skin. "About Brian Dennehy. You say--"

"You got any kids, Janet?"

His question came out of left field so suddenly that she was rendered mute.

"Kids. You look old enough to have kids. I have kids, but their mothers won't let me see them."

Janet stared down at the wooden tabletop, her thumbnail worrying the edge of the cardboard folder. She couldn't afford to fuck this up. She needed to keep him off his guard, get details, get him to wear a wire.

"Yes, two. They're in college."

"College, huh? You're older than I thought. I don't mind that. I love older women. My first wife was seven years older than me. Even looked a little like you. Had that dark hair; dark, dark hair."

The redhead's hands covered hers, his sweat-slicked palms clenching around her knuckles. His eyes were manically bright in the light of the bulb, and when they met her own, she felt sickened, like when she hit a bump in the road and her stomach leapt.

"You're being… unduly familiar with me, Mr. O'Malley," she, trying to keep the coldness from her voice.

"Which side of your family do you get your hair from? Your mom's? Or your dad's? You look like Black Irish to me. You know what they say, they go dark early, but age so fast, and that black hair fades to white."

Red had leaned forward over the table, until strands of his hair tickled his shoulders. His hot breaths spiraled over the table, caged in the flat wooden boards of the false, jaunty room. His eyes were as blue as as whalehide, eager as a yearling dog.

She felt his hand creep onto her thigh, and kicked him away, shifting her chair farther away from the table. 

"I'm not very interested in answering that question, Mr. O'Malley. This is a formal interrogation."

"Hey, we're all friends here, aren't we? You're asking me all these questions, about my service, my job, blah blah, why can't I ask you a couple?" Red gave that flashing, charming smile, his dimples deepening and his eyes crinkling at the edges.

This interview was spiralling out of control. 

Janet could smell his musk. His face was gleaming with sweat over his tan freckles. His shoulders were tense, and his sleeveless shirt was stained with spreading pools of sweat. She could make out a tattoo of the edge of an animal's horns just under his collarbone.

She knew now that it was not about the interrogation anymore. It was about her.

"My first wife cheated on me. What goes through a woman's mind when she cheats?"

Janet swallowed, but her throat was dry. 

"I wouldn't know."

His vivid blue eyes twinkled with predatory mirth. His neck tensed, and his red lips pursed in a strange affectation of a sucking kiss. She was glad she couldn't see beneath the table, where she was sure his tight jeans were hiding the lump of his rock solid erection.

"I bet you run around on your husband. No one stays married that long before their mind starts wandering. I bet you'd like to give a nice young buck like me a ride, huh? I bet that's all you been thinking about since we've been sitting here." He grabbed her wrist under the table and pulled it towards the rough denim of his jeans.

His boorish action made any dribbles of restraint disappear from her brain. She yanked her hand away, and her voice went dead cold.

"Don't flatter yourself."

Janet snapped open the files. 

"That gun you were picked up with, Thomas, wasn't registered. And you're a felon on probation. Owning an illegal firearm on probation, especially with your charges… that's an automatic ten to life, isn't it?"

The dynamic had shifted, and Janet was the queen of the room, the Federal Bureau agent, the one who held his fate in her hand--as she had all along.

"It's very interesting, really, how we tracked that firearm we obtained from your trunk. The serial number was scraped off. But we at the FBI, we have ways of scanning the metal. We're a government entity. We have all these fancy machines, Thomas."

Janet leaned forward, the tips of her long dark hair curling over her cheekbone. Her face was sharply, rawly eager, and for a moment no different from Red's.

"And that unlicensed gun, we managed to trace to a whole shipment. That landed in Londonderry, Northern Ireland on August 7, 1982."

Red's smile was frozen on his freckled face. His fingers, nails busted and worn, scraped the tabletop as he pulled his hand into a fist.

"C'mon. When does the other guy come in and play the good cop?" His voice was still bright and jaunty, but starting to take on something distinctly veiled.

"And those guns… just happened to fall into the hands of a certain paramilitary squad in Fair Eire. Aiding and abetting a terrorist group...those are some stiff charges, Red. Federal charges. Could even be international charges. No witnesses to intimidate. No cops to pay off. Just one cold, hard serial number… tracked halfway across the world."

His coffee was growing tepid.

The silence stretched on.

"You have no idea who you're fucking with, cunt."

Red's voice had lost its playful Boston lilt, and turned utterly guttural.

"Oh, I do. I've been dealing with men like you for years. You think you're the first chicken I've plucked? You are, however, the stupidest, letting yourself get caught like this. I've talked down bigshots and scumbags in Long Island interrogation offices, and none of them would be caught dead doing a stunt like yours. An unlicensed gun in the trunk and you decide to speed drunk down Chelsea Avenue? Really?"

He said nothing. She wondered if reality was settling over him, but the brute hatred in his blank blue eyes spoke to only a trigger loathing towards the woman ruining his life--what little of a life he had.

She flipped out another photograph--this one in full color. "I understand you're good friends with Joey Campagna. At the very least, close acquaintances. Now, there's a way out of your situation, Thomas."

Janet took a deep breath. This was the hard part.

"We're willing to offer you a compromise. Give up everything you know about the big boys and wear a wire. Give us some damning stuff. Something that can put Joey Campagna away for life."

"Yeah?" Red said. She waited for him to go on, but he didn't.

"We'll be willing to put you and your family in witness protection. All charges against you will be dropped. Everything you've done--whatever it is--" she had to keep the white-hot rage from surfacing "It's all water under the bridge, at least when it concerns the federal government."

Red said nothing. She would let him mull over it. Her job was done. She'd sold out.

"I'll leave you to think it over. You're free to go--but your gun isn't. And we reserve the right to press charges against you at any time." With that final warning, Janet pushed her chair back and exited. She didn't look back, but could feel the stony silence. It bothered her, strangely, in a way she'd never been bothered before--not even the mafia capos in Long Island unnerved her this much.

That Sunday, Janet's life ended with the jaunty vocals of Karen Carpenter filtering from the radio station.

Kate was having a slumber party that night with some friends, so Janet and Cal made a date out of it, bought some wine, and had a pot roast. Janet lit a few candles, and husband and wife sat down for a quiet, romantic dinner.

Janet wore a slinky, backless velvet dress that left her shoulders and long, slender neck bare. It clung closely to her figure, outlining her curves. The sleeve straps lay low on her upper arm, revealing her slim shoulders.

"That dress looks beautiful on you, Jan. I can't believe you still fit into it."

"Hell. I still fit into my old wedding dress. If only you still fit into your old tuxedo!"

Cal matched her laugh. The wine was dark and sweet and heady, and was already making her tipsy. The pot roast tasted more rich and delicious with every forkful.

The sweet song from the radio lilted through the room. "The love that I've found, ever since you've been around, your love's put me at the top of the world…"

"Gosh, remember our first date? At Le Cirque? I wore the dress there. It was the first time you ever saw me in it. Cal, your jaw damn near dropped to the carpet!"

"I couldn't believe how beautiful you looked. Janet, like a movie star coming into the Golden Globes. Not that you aren't just as beautiful today!" He added hurriedly. "Your hair was curlier then, it just fell in a waterfall of tumbles over your shoulders. You had on that red lipstick you used to wear--that color always looked so good on you. I felt so unworthy--I just wanted to kiss your feet."

Janet's face was heating up, and for a moment she was looking over the white tablecloth of Le Cirque into the eyes of her new boyfriend Calvin, who had a face so handsome and sunny he could have been a movie star himself--in a wild west flick, masculine and confident but so gentle and loving.

"It was so expensive," Janet said looking down at the faded velvet. She remembered exactly how much it cost--fifty dollars at the department store. "But I figured--you'd been scrimping and saving so much to get a reservation for a table at Le Cirque. I knew you'd paid top dollar just for me, so I wanted to do something for you too. I wanted to impress you. I wanted to be someone you'd be proud to have by your side."

Cal folded his hand across the table, over hers. "I've been proud of having you by my side ever since. I couldn't imagine anyone else. I love you, Janet."

"This wine really is going to our heads!" Janet laughed, abruptly withdrawing her hand. "Don't think your sweet-talk means you can get out of your share of doing the laundry, Cal!"

"If I hadn't found your tampon on the edge of the sink, maybe I'd have done it already," he shot back, and then they both laughed until the wine was gone.

Janet slunk over to his seat and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "Since Kate's gone, do you want to make a night of it?" She murmured into his ear. She snuck a hand under his dinner jacket and caressed his neck. She closed her eyes as he turned around and pressed a warm, familiar kiss to her mouth that melted her insides immediately.

Then the doorbell rang--once, twice, thrice, shattering the ambience of the room with its insistent, panicked ringing.

It was then accompanied by a frantic pounding at their door, accompanied by a bellowing voice that she recognized immediately as her best friend's.

"Jan! Jan! Come quick! It's Red, Red and his gang! They've done… Jesus Christ, you won't believe what they've done! It's an emergency!"

Janet had never heard Greg's voice so panicked, and in a thrill of horror she dove for the door, knocking over a table and upsetting her glass of wine.

"Greg, are you all right?" She yelled as she fumbled with the lock. "Are we in danger? What did they--"

The door slammed in with such a heavy force that it smashed into her nose.

For a moment her brain tuned to white static. Her face erupted in searing pain, and when she came to, her gaze was so blurry she couldn't see who had stepped in the house.

Until she heard the voice.

"Nice place you got. I guess that fancy FBI job pays out the ass, huh?"

Pure ice crept along every nerve in her body. She staggered up, holding her hands behind her for balance, and they hit the table. Her glass of wine upset, tipping over to spill over the tablecloth.

There was Red O'Malley, in those same jeans they had picked him up in three days ago. He wore a weathered, torn buckskin jacket over his white shirt, and heavy leather boots that smeared mud onto her clean rug. He had his hands shoved into his pockets, like a delinquent. When he caught her gaze, he smiled in a broad, cruel grin. His teeth were very white against his tan face.

Behind him she heard the trampling of boots and murmurs, then one man after another filed in. Battered coats and lopsided, tartan flat-caps. Stained t-shirts and suspenders digging into their shoulders--and hard-worn cruel faces she recognized immediately from a litany of mugshots. 

Red's Merry Men. 

They crammed her clean, homely living room with their dirty presence. Her carefully polished linoleum floor, her rug.

And beside Red--

"Greg, what are you doing?" Her voice was high and quavering, like a little girl's.

Something in the wind has learned my name

And it's tellin' me that things are not the same...

Karen Carpenter's joyful voice sounded as dissonant as carnival music as Greg stepped forward, his eyes fixed on hers with a terrifying, uncharacteristic light illuminating them. 

He was dressed casually in chinos and a long-sleeved white shirt, the way he often was--the way he often had been when attending her childrens' birthday parties, or when she had attended his. Their kids had always gotten along great, just as good as their parents had. His hair was mussed, curling brown and past his chin.

"You really had to ask me that question?" Said Greg, his voice grindingly slow.

"Mr. Whelan?" Said Cal from behind him. "What's--who are these people? What's--"

She heard a movement to her side. One of Red's Merry Men darted forward and intercepted her husband, who had lunged out of his seat. Cal's voice was cut off with a sudden yelp. The man--a younger one, with a dirty blond mullet and round glasses that reminded her of John Lennon--had jammed a pistol into the back of his head.

Janet made an instinctive running leap towards her husband, but a hand on her dress collar yanked her back, tearing it down one side. She could feel the chill of his ring against her neck.

"You fucker, Greg," she blathered uselessly. The betrayal was starting to sink in, against every fibre of her body believing no, Greg wouldn't do something like this. Not Greg. He's the only damn man I trust in the whole department. "It was you. You were the mole. You were the fucking mole that ratted us out to the Merry Men. You gutless cocksucking fuck, Greg, you just--"

"Just what?" Said Greg in a peculiar voice. "Just started to look out for myself? You always take my credit. I knew once the report would be filed to the higher-ups, it would be bigshot Kaminsky-Beale who got the pats on the back while I slaved away unnoticed."

She was quiet for a moment, and before she spoke, he spat, "Nothing to say, huh? I didn't think so. It's always about you, you, you."

"No, I swear to God, Greg," she tried to reason. "You're my friend. I care about you, we've been together and had each other's backs through thick and thin. We've been friends for years. Our kids play with each other! I just tried to get you a promotion!"

"It's always about money with you. Always was. Even when people who worked their asses off under you to catch the bad guy stayed up weekends and holidays, put themselves in harm's way, did everything they could to get justice, you were always crunching numbers, angling for that raise. Everything for that raise, huh, Janet?" Greg was standing by the green armchair, Katie's armchair, and sunk into it with one motion. He switched on the lamp, and it bathed his features with orange light that deepened the shadows in his forehead and nose bridge.

Janet's heart was falling down a pit. "That's not true. Please, Greg. Greg. Don't do this--"

"Pick up the phone, Janet." Red's voice was deadly. He gripped her hair hard. "Pick up the phone, or your husband's first. You're second."

Her chest was ballooning outward and inward as she tried to suck up enough oxygen. Terror was setting in everywhere she looked--her living room filled with demons, and her, the FBI Agent, the senior crimefighter, who didn't even have a fifteen-dollar revolver to her name right now. It was like she was watching a movie--one of those B-movies that Kate liked so much, about robbers or monsters that broke into homes--except she was starring in it.

Blood dripped steadily from her nose to trickle down the hollow between her breasts.

Red escorted her towards the black dial phone hanging on the wall, and crushed the side of her face into the wallpaper. "I want you to call whichever palooka runs the evidence room and tell him to release the gun you took. Tell him it was an unlawful seizure, you forgot to read me my Carmen Miranda Rights or something, and tell him to give my gun back. Every single fuckin' thing they got from me. You hear me?" He shook her so hard her teeth rattled.

Janet numbly reached for the receiver. She began to shakily dial.

A hand slipped under her velvet dress. She felt his heaving, heavy body behind her, crushing her into the wall. 

"Hello?" Moira's bored voice filtered through the other end. Probably five coffees into her night shift.

"Hi, Moira!" Her voice was too strained, and Red closed his fingers around her nipple and yanked it. Trying not to cry from the sudden pain, she forced herself to calm it down. "This is Janet. It's about the gun we took from Red O'Malley."

"Yeah? What about it?"

Red had let go and was now caressing her nipple, as if to make up for his previous abuse. He gently tickled it with his finger, going in slow, gentle circles. Her nipples were hardening. His erection was pressing through his tight jeans to rest on the small of her back.

"We--we--we took it under duress. I just got off the phone with the courts, and we have to release it from evidence." Janet still kept her voice compliant. 

Red groped her with his hot, sweaty hands, going from her breasts down to her thighs, which he took greedy handfuls of. And then down between the cleft of her legs, where his fingertips sought out her quivering clit that no one besides her husband had been allowed to touch. Not even her early boyfriends, gangly and eager, had ever gotten as far as a peck on the lips. But Red's fumblings were making a slow, heady heat build in her stomach as her small, tender nub was rubbed. Her pussy was burning up, and she wanted to scream--whether in pleasure or misery, she didn't know.

Moira snapped her gum, the sound like a guncrack in her ear. "After that stroke of luck, huh? That sucks, Jan. Who knows. Maybe there's still a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Cal's choking, guttural pleas were static background noise. 

"I hope so," said Janet.

"Okay, I'll send it down to the collection office. Have a nice night, Jan."

"Have a nice night," Janet said, and her voice pitched up just enough to notice, and for a moment she prayed that Moira would, until the dial tone rang in her ears.

It's over, she internally wept as Red withdrew his greedy hands from her ripe body. They'll leave now. I did everything they asked. Just as long as they leave my family--

"Get down on the sofa, slut." Red's voice was merciless. Cal had been released, and was sobbing spasmodically, his broad shoulders hunched over in defense. Janet grabbed his hand and pulled him protectively towards her. She settled them on the sofa, watching the men like a fly would a spider.

"This is over, right?" Janet begged, as she and Cal huddled together on the sofa. She held his hand in hers, comfortingly squeezing it. "We gave you what you wanted."

Red laughed loudly, as did the rest of the men in the room. "Over? Over? This is just the beginning. You threatened to take a man's freedom away." His lips and teeth curled in a sudden, wolflike movement. "And there is nothing worse you could have possibly done. You deserve to be punished much more than this."

Red and his Merry Men stared them down silently. Torn suspenders and pants that might have been bell bottoms at one time; leather jackets and faces that spoke cruelty with every harsh feature. 

Red's teal blue eyes capered over her body--the sleeve of her dress was ripped and falling down to reveal a slice of bare, sun-kissed breast and tummy. She fruitlessly tried to shield herself from the surrounding hyenas that devoured her body with their eyes.

"You work out a lot. I can tell," Red said conversationally, by the way his intense blue eyes skimmed appreciatively over her small, compact muscles. He had a good half a foot on her and ten pounds of muscle, and she felt like they were boxers stepping into the ring as they met each other's eyes. 

"Fuck you," she said, her arms hugging her chest, her much-loved velvet dress torn and draped across her half-naked trembling body.

"You're from Long Island, am I correct?" Red sneered. "Not South Boston. Not even East Boston. Some nice, rich suburb, I bet. You have no clue how it is here. You just file your papers and deride us like we're scum. You're going to learn, tonight."

Your love's put me at the top of the world.  

The song ended, and one of the men clicked the radio off.

In the heavy silence that followed, Red sat down between the married couple. He put his hand on Janet's exposed leg. She clenched her thighs together.

With one hand, he gently slid her other velvet dress strap down to reveal her plump breasts to the hungry eyes of the room.

Janet had a nice figure, and she could tell he liked it. His rough hand fondled her teats. "I could tell you weren't wearing a bra, that night you interrogated me. Your nipples were standing out like pencil tips. I knew you wanted to fuck me."

"You fucking cocksucker, get your hands off my wife!"

She heard a roar, and her eyes snapped open. Cal had lunged for Red, but was stopped by another hand gripping his neck and gun pressing to his face.

A tall, dark-haired man was holding the gun, a man with eyes as dead as a shark. Janet recognized him immediately. His dark, close-cropped hair. The way he loomed to the ceiling. That damn mole under his cheek. She'd seen all of those in video surveillance and mugshots. But never face-to-face.

Billy Murphy, Red's second-in-command, brutally shoved the barrel into her husband's mouth, and Janet heard one of his teeth crack. 

She desperately reached for him, but Red yanked her back by her long, dark hair. His puffing breaths washed over her nape. Janet turned to face him, and he latched onto her mouth. He had foul breath. He smelled like hell's kitchen. She gagged and shouldered him away.

Murphy manhandled Cal into a chair that one of the men had dragged in from the kitchen. Another man tore the rope tassels off their curtains and tied Cal to the chair, pulling so hard that the ropes bit into his neck and stomach. Another stuffed a rag into his mouth. Janet met her husband's eyes and told them, with her own, that everything was going to be okay, no matter how false both of them knew it to be.

Red's hands were still sliding down her trembling, sweat-slicked thighs. His index finger trailed teasingly over a lower lip, gathering the moisture on his work-calloused fingerpad.

Red took her chin and jerked her lips to meet his once more. His tongue darted into her mouth, small and warm, before he pulled away and trailed his mouth up her pale nape. He laved slowly up to her ear, the surface of his tongue scraping her skin. She held up her legs to force him away, but she could feel his hard pectorals flex against her knee as he shifted closer.

"Janet… Janet, Janet, Janet." He seemed to like how her name tasted in his mouth. She felt him smile against her neck. "Wouldn't it be funny if your kids came back in the middle of me raping their mother?" He murmured coyly into her ear, and she broke.

Janet latched her teeth onto his earlobe and bit as hard as she could. She shook her head from side to side, like a dog, sinking her teeth so deep they bit through his flesh and her teeth ground together through his earlobe.

She could taste blood as he jerked backwards and let out a shrill yell. The yell quieted quickly--Red's men were around him, after all--but he stilled and quieted, eyes like blue fire. His hand clenched to the side of his head, where a stream of blood ran from his missing earlobe.

He reached out, hooked a finger through her earring, and tore it out in one movement.

The earring thudded to the ground, stained with blood. The carved faces of a sun and moon grinned blankly into the ceiling.

Janet clutched her torn earlobe, the side of her face erupting in searing pain. Her ear was ablaze, sending shards of agony piercing into her skull. The blood was warm against her palm.

Dark eyes met blue, both filled with enmity.

The two stared each other down. The room was in disarray--the room where she had raised her children, where Katy had learned to walk, where she had poured cornflakes for Lawrence and heard him push the bleeping buttons on his toy phone over and over until it drove her insane--it had been turned into a living nightmare before her eyes.

The red-haired man slammed her harshly onto the sofa. She tried to struggle up, splaying her legs, and he took advantage to force himself between them.

Janet could feel the rough denim against her thighs, and the hard, forceful lump that pressed insistently against her. She fought back, lashing her arms and legs out, but she was soft from too many days behind the desk. With his wiry muscles born from fistfights in Boston bars, he subdued her easily.

There was a clinking on the other side of the room. One of Red's men, an older man wearing a battered fedora, had opened her liquor cabinet and was swigging from a bottle.

"That's Saint-Estephe!" Janet howled indignantly. "Put that down! It's 1929!'

"Jimmy, you fucking drunk," laughed someone. 

Red yanked her by the hair to face him. His face was like a laughing jester. He forced another kiss on her, hot and gagging and wet, and clicked a pocketknife out from his jean pocket. 

He was tall, and spider-limbed as a cranefly. He seemed young--too young, like a boy who would catcall from the skating rink, his body not filled out under his baggy clothes. But glint in his eye and every movement of his spoke to an aged, rough-lived lifetime.

The candle she had lit for her husband and her was still flickering. Red caught her eye in its light, and his face was flushed. His hair was loose and shaggy around his shoulders, and his collarbone showed sharp underneath his pulsing neck. 

He slid the knife from her torn earlobe to her chin, tracing a line of blood over her trembling jaw. "Janet, I can see you shaking like a leaf. But your pussy's all wet. Why is that, I wonder?" His hand snaked between her thighs, slowly stroking the froth that had gathered on her pussy lips. His thumbs worked between her legs to push her lower lips open. He gyrated her hips around, showing her spread slit to her husband and every man in the room.

Janet looked away from him, and met Greg's eyes. She wordlessly pleaded, but they were hard and unmerciful, gleaming like dark pools in the lamplight.

Red ducked his head between her thighs, shoving her dress further up to reveal her bare cunt and taut midriff. Janet had thought she and Cal would get lucky tonight, and had forgone panties. Now it just added to her humiliation.

Ten pairs of eyes fixed on her slit as Red licked her. His tongue was flat and slick, and made a tremor run up her backbone. He laved along her, slowly rising up her pink cunt until it reached her clit. He sealed his mouth on her, sucking on her nub. An electric pulse went straight to her womb with his caressing lips. 

Her throat constricted as he slid his tongue inside of her and curled it upward. He molded his lips onto her as if in a deep kiss, flattening his tongue over her surface. The tips of his red hair tickled her thighs. 

He smiled as he pleasured her. He devoured her in a way only a man who has had his share of women would. He knew exactly when to flick his tonguetip, to dig into her wet depths and steadily pleasure her sensitized insides.

Her nipples were pricking in front of ten men. She was panting, sweating, betraying herself in front of her husband.

She felt a hand yank her face to the side. Gregory was kneeling beside her, his fingernails digging into her head. 

"I would have left her for you," he said quietly.

"What are you talking about?" Janet burst out.

"Last year. After the conference in Chicago. The hotel room."

A distant, half-formed memory swirled in the depths of her brain. She stared at Gregory hard, until--"Oh, God."

"Remember now? Or are you done pretending?"

"We were drinking, Greg! I don't--you promised, we both promised that it would never happen again, that it was a mistake, that's all it was!" Her words were tumbling out in a rush, tripping over syllables.

Red had risen on his haunches over her, and was regarding this new occurrence with a curious glee.

"You acted like I didn't exist the next morning. You completely threw me under the bus--you never gave a damn about my feelings!" Greg snarled back.

Janet tried not to look at Cal. She forced herself to keep her eyes off of him. "For Christ's sake, what could I have done? You're married, Greg! And so am I!"

"And I said I would have left my wife for you!"  There were tears in Greg's eyes, and his jaw was gritted and taut, clenched so hard she could hear his teeth grind together.

He pulled her head towards him in one swift movement, and captured her mouth in a deep, smoldering kiss. She could taste hatred like bitter salt on his tongue.

A ringing punch to the side of Gregory's head made them separate. "You had your fuckin' chance, lover boy. Now get out of the way." Red's voice was quiet and deadly in the way of a man who had become very tired of the proceedings.

Greg was wiping drool from the corner of his mouth, but even though he was staring at Red hatefully, he backed down.

Red turned to her again, his face sly and light. Every word he uttered dug the dagger deeper into her heart. "I guess you were lying when we spoke that day. You really do like riding younger bulls." He crudely gripped his erection under his tight jeans.

Red brushed a lock of ginger hair behind his ear and dove between her thighs again. He licked her like an eager dog, expertly spearing his tongue between her lips. The slick tip of his tongue found her clit. Her heels dug into the sofa and her throat arched, and in the middle of her building pleasure, she caught Cal's gaze.

He wasn't crying, or shouting. His face was utterly blank. The sweeping betrayal--Gregory of her, and her of her husband--was settling over the room. Janet felt like the center of the universe, a black hole pulling him down with her. She saw his face as if it were the day he lifted her wedding veil and kissed her, those eyes that could twinkle like stars but were now dull as pits.

There would be no new normal after this, and Calvin would never look at her the same way again, and twenty two years of marriage had meant nothing, and she would never get it back.

"Take me away." There was a dull screaming in her ears that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "I don't care. I'll do whatever you want, just take me out of here!"  Suddenly snot was running from her nose and she was screaming, because nothing in 10 years of the FBI could have prepared her for this, for her entire life to crumble around her.

Red smiled indulgently. "How about we finish this off in your bedroom?" 

"Yes, yes, we'll go to the bedroom, I'll do whatever you want with you!" Every single ounce of self-respect had left her body. Janet didn't even care how desperate she sounded anymore--desperate for a dirty criminal to fuck her.

He gave a mocking bow and said snidely, in faux-medieval tones that clashed with his accent, "Whatever m'lady desires."

"Are you really gonna fuck her, Red?" Said Lennon Glasses. He sounded annoyed. "I thought we were just gonna be in and out. My girl's waiting for me at home."

"Keep cooling your heels, Davey. I've been waiting a long time to get my hands on this bitch. Have some fun with her husband if you like, rough him up a little. I'm going to take my time savoring her sweet cunt. This hot-pussied slut deserves a good fuck after so many years with that fat son of a bitch." He tilted his head towards her husband, whose whole body was still limp and sagging in his chair. Cal's eyes were wide and marbled, somewhere very far away.

Red pulled her up by her neckline and shoved her, wordlessly telling her to lead the way to her bedroom.

Janet stumbled over her carpet on the way to the bedroom, and her leg knocked into Cal's knee. She looked down, and saw a spreading black blotch down his pants leg. He had pissed himself.

A violent, inconceivable rage erupted inside the despairing depths of her mind. She knew she was losing her mind, but couldn't stop herself.

Janet mindlessly lashed out with her heel, slamming it into his shin. What are you pissing yourself for? You're not the one getting raped. What the fuck did you do to fight back? What kind of husband are you?

Red burst out laughing. "Even old, bred-out mares can still buck, huh?" He slapped her haunches as he forced her into her bedroom. "Let's see how you face a real stallion."

Her bedroom was only dimly lit by the streetlights outside, but she could see the empty space that had once been occupied by the bassinet that Kate and Lawrence had slept in all those decades ago. Red pulled the beaded wire of the lamp on.

It's my family and I's bedroom. The bedroom my husband and I have slept in together since we were married. That's our bedroom. I nursed my children here. She thought of Kate and Lawrence, and the simple vision of their sweet faces right now sent her plummeting into a wreck so deep she nearly went blind.

Red pushed her onto her floral sheets, then sat up and shrugged off his buckskin jacket and shirt. He had a lot of ink--his flesh was deeply marked, the painted canvas of a hooligan. Over his muscular, taut arms and chest, she could make out his harshly-needled tattoos so much clearer in the glaring lamplight. On his arm was the green shamrock, dull as faded pond scum. On his other upper bicep, she could finally make out the words stitched onto his flesh-- Saigon '71.

Just under his neck, on his upper chest, was the outline of an ox skull, eyes blackened and dead and horns reaching from shoulder to shoulder. And on his gleaming, sweat-soaked pectorals was a slavering black dog with its endless maw open to show spiralling spikes of teeth. 

Red's whole body was a tapestry of brutality as he moved and gyrated in the dim light of the lamplight. Under the snarling dog were a pair of sharp hipbones, and beneath that, a thin strip of red hair revealed by his half-unbuttoned fly. She could see the hard outline of his arousal beneath the skin-tight jeans, his painfully erect shaft that leaked precum to stain the denim.

"I never thought you'd be this pretty," he said, startling her. His calloused fingertip brushed her tensed-up pussy lips. "I really never thought I'd dig you as much as I did. You really do look like my first wife. She had legs for miles and hair down to her ass." He was looking at her very closely, his sky-blue eyes narrowed and trained on hers. "She was my babysitter. We used to fuck for hours when I was a kid. I used to eat her kitty until my jaw went numb."

He took a deep, lustful breath. "I love the smell of pussy. And I can smell it right now, breathing out from your cunt in thick waves. You just need a nice fix of hot cock to sate you and keep you happy." His voice was pitching up in excitement.

He was fingering her hard now, his fingers coming out slick, and he rubbed his thumbnail against her clit, making her body spasm with want. Her hips unwillingly chased his touch as he pulled his hand back. He showed her wetness on his hand. "Someone's a Debbie Desperate. You're really juicing after my cock, aren't you?" 

Janet felt boneless and limp, and barely reacted when he took her legs and fitted them over his shoulders. He pushed his jeans down below his waist to reveal his dick. It was long and thin, like him, but the way it bulged and strained made her realize with a feeling of doom that she was in for a long, hard night.

In one movement, Red sheathed himself in her so deeply she felt the air in her lungs expunge with a gasp.

He didn't let herself adjust for a moment, but immediately started hammering his length deeper into her. His hot breath washed over her face, and she gagged. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head and buried her face into her pillow. She desperately inhaled the familiar smell of the pillowcase. Please let it all be over soon.

He gave up and began thrusting into her again. His hard, tan hips thrust forward mercilessly, one after another, forcing his cock roughly into her unprepared depths.

Her sensitive insides tightened around his hot, pumping length, and prickles erupted deep in her belly. She had never been mounted so roughly before--not even by her husband. There was a certain thrill to it that she tried to extinguish, but which rose to her nipples and lips and came out in a muffled gasp.

She heard him laugh softly, and he bent over to press his face against hers. His throat was a rumbling purr against her ear. 

"Are you on the pill?"

His words made her realize quite suddenly how raw and bare the head of his cock was, rubbing against her insides, and of how full of seed his cock was, ready to pump its fertile warmth into her womb.

Her silence was all he needed.

"I bet it's cause you don't fuck your hog of a husband. He looks like his little pecker wouldn't get as stiff as a pencil. I bet you two stopped fucking as soon as you popped your last kid out. I never stop fucking, Janet. Never. Maybe an infusion of nice young sperm will get your withered ovaries to act again." His hair was sticking to his shoulders, the wetness of his sweat turning his golden-red strands into the color of dried blood. "Always knew. When I met your gaze across that table. You were a slut givin' it up to everyone. Guess your new FBI boytoy didn't take it that well."

Her chest convulsed. She choked on a strand of her hair and spat it out of her mouth. It tasted slimy and long in her throat.

He bent his head over until cherry-bright locks of his hair fell to brush her quivering breasts.

His chapped lips roughed the sensitive tips of her teats. He sucked one into his mouth, twirling his tongue around one nipple, and then the other one. Red's hot breath blew over her cold chest. He kissed her berried nipples and worried them with his teeth, took them in his pursed mouth to nurse them. 

"Did you breastfeed? Your tits are still firm for havin' kids," he said, his voice appreciative and surprised.

His words broke through the vortex of horror and pain she was falling into, and his warm, suckling mouth blossomed into an involuntary memory.

The last time Janet had nursed had been in the same shadowed room two decades ago, on the same bed that was being violated on. Janet had been freshly-married, nervous with two toddler children. Kate had been weaned only a few months ago, and she had been moved into her own bedroom next door.

She was crying something awful--she had always been a colicky baby. But this time, Kate had been sobbing nonstop for two hours. Janet lay in bed beside her husband, who was sleeping like a rock, listening to her daughter whine and sob from the next room.

Every molecule in her body ached to get up and go comfort her daughter, before common sense prevailed and her mind whispered she needs to learn her mama won't always be there to pick her up. She needs to learn to sleep by herself.

But the more she howled, the more tense Janet became, wide-awake and staring at the moon outside of her window. Her breasts were swollen and hard, panging with repressed milk. 

Finally, she got up. The hem of her silk nightgown fell below her knees. She went into Kate's room.  By this time, her daughter's whole little body was hot and flushed. The doctor's office didn't open until the next morning.

She cradled Katydid's little body against her own, burning like a furnace. The little girl still wailed no matter how much she cradled and shushed her. Her little body was burning up and her flushed cheeks were wet with tears. 

Janet realized her own cheeks were now wet with tears. Her mind and body were screaming with worry and love for the mite in her arms, her only daughter, her little baby.

Out of desperation, she pulled down the strap of her nightgown and offered her daughter her breast. Kate latched on to her mother eagerly, suckling the long-restrained milk from her breast and soothing the ache in her milk glands.

Her little eyes drifted closed. Kate wasn't crying or fussing, just clinging onto her mama and taking comfort from her body in that primordial way infants do. Janet let her head fall over to curtain them with her long locks of dark hair. 

She took her own primordial comfort in the small, precious being in her arms, knowing that she would grow up someday, she would never be able to do this again, that Kate would never be her baby like this ever again. 

She never wanted to let her go.

Red's hot, lustful nursing on her breast spurred her into a final fit of sobbing, the destruction of her most precious true, sweet memory fragmenting her brain to pieces.

She lashed out like a dying she-wolf caught in a trap, writhing suddenly and throwing him off balance, while blindly searching for a weapon.

Her hand closed around the Ruger in her bedside drawer.

The entire room erupted in dark, thrilling panic as she brought out her gun. She aimed it at his head-- this was it-- and this nightmare would forever be in the past. A sickening wave of pure, blissful emotion washed over her violated body.

But as she cocked the barrel and clicked the trigger, she belatedly realized that the first bullet was not in the chamber.

Red smiled.

He looked like a demon in that moment--a demon out of hell, whose smug face told her that she was shit out of luck now, and had blown her chance to end this once and for all.

In one fluid, brutal movement, he tore the gun out of her hand and violently threw it away. It clattered to the far side of the room.

"Nice try. What FBI agent doesn't keep a loaded gun next to her bed? You women are so fucking stupid. You fallow-eyed bitches think life is like one of your romance paperbacks with some bodybuilder posing on the cover. You don't want to admit that men like me exist. Men who want to hurt women, and do. You're gonna learn. You're gonna learn right now."

He caressed one stiff, pale pink nipple in the pads of his rough hand, deceptively gentle as he coaxed it to a peak. He drew patterns in the slick sheen his saliva had left, around her nipple. The pleasure made her quiver. The insides of her breasts felt like they were being tickled with a feather.

Then in one movement, he gripped it in his fingers and yanked it so hard the slow, tickling pleasure vanished in a swoop to be replaced by pure, searing pain.

The agony erupted along her shoulders and speared deep into her chest, and it came out in a long, shuddering howl.

There was an answering, muffled cry beyond the door. Cal had heard her. A heavy thud cut off his wails. One of the men had hit him with a pistol.

He leaned forward to slaver into her mouth. "Guess hubby's getting a little uppity. How do you think he feels hearing this? Hearing the bedsprings creak? I wonder if he thinks his wife is getting fucked so well she can't help but scream like a cheap whore getting reamed out." He smiled against her mouth.

She sucked up as much saliva as she could, and spat into his face. "Fuck you, you dirty mick," she said, her voice nothing but silent contempt.

His face blushed in splotches of furious vermilion. "You don't know when to fucking shut up, do you? You snooty FBI cunt. Your ancestors came over in steerage just like mine. Thinking you're so much better than us when you're just a woman, some government spook who's never lived a day on the streets. You never think a man can just come into your cozy suburban life and wreck it."

Janet suddenly smiled. "I am better than you."

Red blinked as he looked down at her, her dark hair spread over the pillow, her face covered with blood and saliva, and yet smiling a very strange smile and looking at him with dark, shadowed eyes, like he was a bug crushed under her foot.

"You're a fuckup," Janet said in that same calm, dissonant voice. "A useless, white trash drop out. All you're good for is mopping floors. The sum of your life is scourging the streets of Boston with other lowlifes, getting into fights in bars, and killing other degenerates like yourself. You're a pit bull off its leash, and you're gonna get put down like the scum that you are one of these days. Your whole life is a fucking disaster, Thomas. Can't keep a job at a god damn meat factory. Even the army kicked you out, how pathetic is that? Your baby mamas don't even want you near your kids."

She sat up, straight-backed, and spat her final words right into his frozen face

"You wish you could be me, making money and coming home to a family who loves me. You can rape me as many times as you like, but you'll never take that away from me. And you'll never, ever have anything resembling that in your life."

The silence settled over them like a long shadow. She could hear the vague, muffled conversations of the men beyond the door. She could see Red's face, still and pale with his freckles standing out; the way his face dripped with sweat that ran down his narrow jaw and onto her flat, quivering stomach.

Except it wasn't sweat, she realized.

He drove himself into her so hard she screamed again. Her hands curled into fists until her nails wore lines of purple into her palms.

His engorged prick was hammering at her insides, forcing its way like a battering ram. He was gutting her with his enormous erection. He slammed his hips in a steady, furious rhythm, destroying any pleasure that was slickening her walls, before suddenly pulling himself out. His cock was wet and dripping against her thigh--from her juices, but also from the precum that was seeping out of his cockhead.

He gripped her tear-and-mucus-stained jaw and yanked it to face him. His eyes were blazing with misery and tears.

Words spewed behind gritted teeth from his long-rotted mind. "How bout I raise our kid to be an evil, piece-of-shit killer just like me? Put a son in your belly and have it turn out just like its daddy. All those years you spent fighting people like me just vanishing with the first psychopath that pushes out of your womb."

His eyes were dead blue, like a hundred thousand fathoms. His hair was completely loose now, pooling over his neck in ragged scarlet puddles. The black, sweat-soaked sheen in the eyes of the ox bore into her own as his body jackknifed inside of her. He screwed his sinewy hips deeper and deeper, until something twanged in the pit of her womb.

Janet unconsciously arched her back to fit in the scoop of his hips as a low fire burned along her insides. Janet remembered her wedding night--the thrill of Cal's cock in her, exploring her virgin insides the way every woman dreams of. The way he treated her, gently, with kisses and love and soft touches spoken breathlessly between the beautiful pain of her lost virginity.

The bed creaked as Red slammed his body into her as hard as he could, spearing his length into her vulnerable womb.

Janet couldn't help but remember his own words, gonna put a child in you, and remembered that she had gotten her last period last month. She was forty-four.

She had been expecting to hit menopause for years, but hadn't.

Her numb body was beginning to be overtaken by a slow, hot lust she had never felt before. It was the creation of the red-haired gangster who was beginning to pant himself.

Her small, neglected clit began to pulse at his animalistic thrusts. The softness of that little nub was obliterated by the pulsing, veined erection of this brutal man.

Red steadily worked his body over her.He pumped deeply, brutally, and that spark that lit deep in her womb became a bonfire, and her insides were twisting into a knot of ecstasy.

He sniffled hard, and as if to make up for it, heaved so deep she felt an involuntary scream strangle from her throat. The scream started off painful. But then the building pleasure in her body snapped in one crashing tidal wave of pure bliss, and her scream became the loud, wanton moan of a whore who had been driven over the edge of euphoria.

She heard distant cheering beyond the door.

Her ankles snapped together above Red's muscular shoulder blades, involuntarily urging him closer to her. He reciprocated, falling forward and crushing her body underneath his. He crushed his lips to hers at the same time, his tongue ravaging the insides of her hot mouth and thrusting as hard as he was thrusting inside her.

Janet's back arched, her nipples standing out in hard, tender bullets. As her orgasm began to slowly dull, she noticed that his hip movements had become shaky. And that he was panting harder and harder. 

Her mind snapped into a horrified reality. "Stop!" She wailed. "Get off get off--" 

She lashed out with her legs, kicking and writhing against his rock-solid body in a desperate attempt to foist him away and pull his throbbing cock from the depths of her cunt.

But it was too late. His cockhead swelled, buried in her clenching walls, and seared her insides with his seed. Her slim shoulders arched backwards, as did her backbone as the hot semen coated against her walls. She gave a muffled scream into his mouth, and he ferociously sucked her mouth into his deeper, the suction so hard her tongue went numb.

Then he let go of her mouth to suck in a gasp, and rolled over to collapse beside her.

Janet lay absolutely still. She didn't know what to think. She didn't know what to feel. Her mind was a plane of blankness. His wetness was soaking into her, into her quivering walls, into her waiting womb. When she moved her legs, she felt his fertile seed seep out of her opening.

She didn't know how long it had been when he finally rolled over. The sky outside was still dark. 

He had sucked every molecule of saliva out of her tongue, he had pumped every last dribble of seed into her overflowing womb, and now he had rolled over and stared at her with puppyish adoration--bushy-tailed and bright-eyed, as if he hadn't been sobbing a moment prior.

Janet saw the tan of his sun-kissed skin in the lamplight, and felt the smooth tickle of his hand as he slid it over her flat midriff-- etched with the faint, time-worn scars of pregnancy.

He drew it upward to caress her small, apple-sized breasts, and her nipples pucked, red and sensitive.

Then he leaned forward, the tips of his hair brushing her shoulders. His eyes were childishly crystal blue. He ran his tongue along the curvature of her slender body, kissing just above her belly button. The whisper of his tongue against her skin made a shiver brush down her spine. It teasingly tensed just above the cleft of her pussy, then drew away. 

Red withdrew and slowly slumped to lean against her side. He wriggled his hips to mold them into hers. His young, muscular, slim chest pressed against hers, and she felt the thud-thud of his heart against her shoulder as he murmured into her ear.

"When was the last time you were fucked like that?" Red said. He bit her earlobe gently, then caressed it with his tongue. The strange, sensitive lave washed over her in a numb ambience.

Janet stayed where she was, arms crucified and flung out to her sides, staring up at her ceiling that had lulled her to sleep for years.

"I know about your daughter," he whispered in her ear.

The chill jolted into her veins like shards of icicles. She jerked her head to face him. He was resting the side of his head on his wrist, long strands of hair coming loose to spider across his face and tickle his morbid smile.

His eyes bore into hers. "She's a naive little thing. Big eyes. Just like yours."

Her throat was in stasis, frozen like a tube of ice.

"Katydid. Cute name, too."

Her daughter's precious nickname escaped from his vile mouth in a cruel twist of his lips.  He gently ran his finger over the loose strands of her hair across her shoulder.

Janet thought of Katydid sleeping over at her friend's house, her light eyelashes closed tight. Her precious daughter, who had no idea what what her mother was going through.

"I'm getting a little tired doing all the work. Why don't you make it a little easier on me?"

He turned over and laid down flat on his back. His cock had hardened again, erect against his solid abdominal muscles.

She stared at him wordlessly, then mounted him. 

Her orgasm was still settling into the corners of his body, and her clit flared when she pressed down on him. She curled her legs around his taut waist and slid him inside herself, feeling his length penetrate her semen-slickened walls.

"Oh, you're a pro, I can tell. Your pussy is squeezing me like a vice. A woman's body doesn't lie. I heard you moan, Janet. You're enjoying every second of this."

His voice was deceptively gentle as he stared up at her with coy, faded blue eyes. Behind his hooligan's appearance was a glimmer of manipulative intelligence, and worse, one that took satisfaction from her humiliation. 

Janet bent her head down until her dark hair fell to sheath them in a curtain. Her eyes were totally blank as she flattened her thighs against his waist, moving her hips rhythmically. She was blindly making love to him, out of fear of what he would do if she didn't. Her entire body was a compact bundle of animal instinct, of protecting her family at all costs.

She didn't know how long she rode him. The dark-haired woman noted distantly that his penis was hardening like rock inside her. His hips lifted the last few thrusts, giving the last of his seed into her waiting channel. 

When she came to, he was resting his russet head on her shoulder. His breaths were soft and breathy and content. He was warm against her, and the mattress under them was warm from their bodies.

That warmth reminded her of her husband, and them lying together day after day and year after year, so comforting after a hard day chasing the dregs of humanity. She thought of Cal. Janet grasped on to the memory of her husband, although it was windless now, and slipping through her fingers.

Then Red took her by her hand and pulled her up. She staggered to her feet, sperm bubbling and running down her legs.

His red hair was messed in such a way that had he been her son, she would have scolded him and ran a comb through his hair before school. His face was sunny and bright and utterly sadistic. 

"We've had our little wedding night, haven't we? Let's greet our adoring admirers."

The room they emerged into was raucous. Cal was bleeding from his face, his glasses shattered. Bruises were blooming over his slack face. Red's men were swigging bottles and laughing, and didn't settle down until Red came out from the bedroom.

Red stepped up to Cal, clad in nothing but his tight jeans. His muscles heaved with the remnants of his vigorous lovemaking as he locked into her husband's eyes.

"Your wife never came so hard or screamed so long," he said in the settled silence. "I know you heard it. I bet she'd look ten years younger if you rode her as often and as hard as I do."

The Irishman stepped closer. "You should suck your wife's slime off my cock, so you know how much she creamed under me." He pressed his denim bulge against Cal's screwed-up, sobbing face. Red's face was a grimace of malevolent satisfaction. His blue eyes danced as he thrust his cock into her husband's broken visage.

Janet tried to meet Cal's gaze desperately, looking for a single iota of comfort and familiarity in this night of blasted nightmares. He refused to look her in the eyes

"Just kill me now," said Janet, her stomach bottoming into a pit she could never claw herself out of. "Just kill me now and get it over with."

Red laughed, his voice like the muted call of a hawk. He addressed Cal.

"I'm not done with your wife. She's going to be very much alive, although she'll probably wish she won't be soon. Here's some advice for you--file a missing person's report immediately, so that you can remarry as soon as you can when she's declared dead in absentia. Don't worry--" Red patted his cheek, face etched in a cruel smile. "Like I said… we're not going to kill her, but you're certainly not going to ever be seeing her again."

Cal was still staring at the wooden floor, his eyes dull. There was nothing beneath those eyes she loved, just an opaque film of blankness.

Red took Janet by her torn, semen-stained velvet dress and yanked her to the door. 

Red shoved her into the chilly October air. The chill washed over her warm, heated skin, sending every remnant of the pleasure she had experienced vanishing deep into her body to be replaced by creeping ice.

Her residential street was quiet. Their neighbors were all asleep. The far horizon was tinted with the glowing orange promise of a new day.

There was a shabby looking car parked in front of her beautiful house. The license plates were stripped off the back of the car, and its rusty tan paint job was peeling.

Red grabbed her head and ducked her into his car--the insides were shabby and the leather seats were torn. The car started with a cough.

Janet stared out the window, committing every crack in the road, every blooming flower on her rosebushes, every one of her neighbor's houses to memory.

Every memory she'd had in her beautiful house, her beautiful neighborhood. She knew she would never see them again. She would never see Cal again. She would never see Lawrence again. 

She would never see Kate again.

Red thrust himself beside her, one hand going down to finger the apex of her thighs, the other wandering up to squeeze and pinch her sensitive nipples. "It's gonna be a long ride," he whispered in her ear. "How about we enjoy ourselves some?"

Billy Murphy was the last one out, after Gregory Whelan.

The dark-haired man stood still in the quiet, destroyed room, staring at Calvin Beale. He had lost his gag, and drool was dripping from his mouth. His pupils were dilated. He was absolutely catatonic.

Billy casually strolled over to the shelf where they kept their family pictures. A gradual procession from chubby babies surrounded by toys, happy toddlers on the laps of their grandparents, and fresh-faced smiling graduates tossing their caps in the air.

He skimmed them with his merciless black eyes. Billy picked out a picture of Kate as a little girl, smiling brightly and hugging a newly carved pumpkin. It wasn't a good job, as the jack o' lantern's smile was lopsided and its eyes cockeyed, but Kate was pleased as punch, beaming towards the camera.

"You have some cute kids," he remarked to Cal. Then he dropped the picture on the floor and stepped on it, crushing the glass beneath his boot.

"If you tell anyone what went on in here tonight," he said quietly. "We'll come here and do the same thing to your little Katydid."

Then Billy turned and walked out. His boots echoed down the hall towards the door. Then there was a creak, and the snap of a door shutting.

And the house was utterly silent.

Kate came home to an eerily empty house.

She noticed it peripherally. The living room was cleaner than it should be. There were no half-filled glasses on the table, no books face-side down on the sofa, and the television was silent.

Mom's jacket, her FBI jacket that she laid over the lace doily cover of the sofa every day, was gone.

"I'm back, Dad!" She called to her father. By the clatter in the kitchen she could tell he was present, but he didn't answer.

"Reba and I had a great time. She has a Nintendo, and we played Super Mario all night. Can we get one? It was so fun. Also, her mom works at the breadshop beside the FBI center. Does she know Mom?"

It took her a long time before she realized her father wasn't listening to her.

Kate wandered into the kitchen, still feeling unsettled. "Where's Mom?"

Her dad was making scrambled eggs. His spatula flipped them, brown and burned. Mom never burned her scrambled eggs.

"She's gone to Ohio on another assignment. She won't be back for a while." Dad's voice was cold and peculiar.

Kate saw, in the sunlight, harsh bruises against the side of his head. His face was turned away from her.

"Dad, what happened to you?" 

"I fell down the steps," Dad answered shortly. He shoved the spatula hard, the iron scraping against the pan with a harsh sound. 

"Well, when's she coming back?" Kate pressed, confused. Mom wouldn't just up and leave without telling her, right?

"I don't know and I don't care."

Her father's dead voice made something inside her freeze and plummet. He never talks about Mom that way.

"Okay," Kate said hurriedly. "Um, is the trip to Florida still on? I mean, we're still going, right?"

"No," Dad said, his tone making clear their conversation was over.

Feeling very much out of sorts, Kate walked into her bedroom and lay down. She stared at her poster of David Bowie on the wall; the sunlight filtered through the curtains, making it gleam. He was posing, head flung back as he played his guitar, eye closed under the multicolored painted lightening bolt covering his face.

Kate still felt weird. She felt like those people who argue with a loved one, and then they go and get into an accident and die, and then that's the last thing they ever said to them--something stupid, like I hate you, or you forgot to pick up the laundry, and then they have to live their whole lives without them knowing that their last conversation was some dumb argument.

What was our last conversation? Did we argue? Kate resolved that whenever her mom came back, the first thing she would say was that she loved her.

Then Kate virulently shook her head. Mom was fine. This was so dumb. She was just on another assignment, she was always on some FBI assignment, she'd be back in a couple months. You can be so overdramatic, Katydid, her mother laughed in her mind

She went to put in her favorite Josie and the Pussycats cassette into her walkman, but was interrupted by the sudden ringing of her bedside phone. She picked it up.

"Kate?" Oh, my god. It was him. The beautiful man from the bar. Billy!

"Hi!" Her voice was too high-pitched, and she kicked herself.

Billy chuckled deeply under his breath. "Ever since I saw you at Molly O'Donaghue's I couldn't get you out of my mind. If it's all right with you, do you want to meet up there again and make it a date?"

Kate's face was flushed and hot as fire. "I--I--yes, yes, I'd love to! I'd love to see you again!" 

He gave another devastatingly sexy chuckle. "How does this weekend sound? Sunday, maybe around 3? At Molly O'Donaghue's?"

"I'll be there!" Kate fervently promised, and when they hung up, she fell backwards to flump on her bed. Her heart was in her throat, thumping in excitement, and her blush was spreading down her neck.

She was meeting him. For a date! She turned over and buried her face in the pillows, squealing and giggling.

Oh well, she thought to herself. Florida was kind of lame. Kate was getting too old for mommy-daughter trips, anyway.