Tears And Blood

Jennifer.

Cat steps off the bus and looks at the total full on crush of people that a major metropolitan bus terminal holds. She spots a surveillance camera tucked in a corner, pulling the brim of her hat low over her eyes, she takes off into the crowd.

Cat enters a small complex where there is nothing that identifies the person who lives here. White bare walls, a table with one chair, a single bed and along one wall, a cabinet. On the window sill a single Cataleya orchid hovers over the floor as Cat waters it.

She opens the cabinet along the wall to three computer screens. Two of them are divided into quarters and show various views of the building entrance, the lobby, the stairway, the elevator, and the hallway. The third screen is dark, until Cat hits a button and music fills the apartment. Music with a heavy sensual back beat as the screen pulses and glows in time to the beat.

Cat's body responds to the music, moving sexy, her shoulders rolling and her hips swaying. Cat sashays across the open space, like a stripper strutting her stuff as she sheds first her blouse, then her jeans, her lingerie, until, by the time she reaches a free standing opaque cylinder of a shower with an opaque shower curtain, she is completely nude.

 Like a snake shedding a skin, she lets the water divest her of everything that came before.

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"Since each and every one of the victims was a professional bad apple... We've narrowed motive down to payback or preemptive." Ross stated as he pinned up Rizzo's picture on a wall filled with twenty two other deceased, all with words and a CATALEYA ORCHID imprint on their stomach's. He turns to face his team.

"Rizzo here..." He points to Rizzo on the wall, "The most recent, was done to keep him from talking. Alexa Milshinova..." Points to a gorgeous dead woman with the word GRIFTER on her stomach, "...made a career of getting intimate with big stakes gamblers out of Vegas and then taking them off and sending them to meet their maker. D'Angelo James..." Points to a huge black man with USURPER written in white letters across his chest, "...tried to take over the heroin trade in Houston from..." He points to two Mexicans, identical twins, one with PAY written on his chest, the other with the word BACK... "The Gemini cartel. Their crimes are self explanatory, if you can read. Now I know some of you are thinking whoever is doing this makes less work for mother. And since there's no collateral damage, why are we wasting valuable manpower and resources on the case? And since until now, there has never been a clue to go on, why go on? But with this last killing..." He holds up a stack of folders from his desk, "We have one. As we go to the video tape." He hits a button and the video replay someone  walking a unconscious guard through the door. "We can't see the assassin, but we can see..." He freezes the tapen and points to the time mark on the tape, "The time. 2 AM. Which means our perp was in the station at...I don't have to spell it out for you." He begins to hand the folders out. "These are the names, phone numbers and addresses of everyone with a pulse who entered that police station before two AM. Cops, criminals, clerks, janitors. Everyone. One of them is our target. I want each of you to locate the ten people in the folder you've been given. I want a complete dossier on every one of them for the last ten years of their lives. Run down every lead. Check out every story. Our killer is out there. And we're going to find him. Before he kills again."

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DANNY DELANEY, preoccupied, a pleasant, easy going, good looker at 28, closes the door, and walks to the entrance of his low slung apartment building. He puts his key in the door but finds that it is unlocked. He pauses, then enters. Danny enters his darkened apartment and goes to turn on the switch...

"Don't move." Danny's hand freezes. He stands very still. "Take off your shirt."

"Do I have to?" Danny asks, hesitatanly.

"Now." Danny complies, "Turn around." He does. To darkness. And then, a match is struck, a candle is lit and standing before him, in garters, thigh highs, a very sexy bra, and fuck me pumps is...

"Hello Danny. Hello Jennifer." Cat closes to an inch of him.

"You should have called."

"Why?"

"I could have been out."

"I have a key."

"I could have been late." She begins to kiss him, lightly around the mouth.

"I've got nowhere to go."

"It's just..."

"Just what?" Cat interrupts but then continues to kiss him lightly on the neck...

"You show up whenever you want to..."

"And then we have the most incredible sex. Ever."

"I know. I'm just saying..." He fumbles for the words, "Wouldn't you like to go to dinner sometime?" She keeps nibbling.

"Uh-uh. This taste good enough."

"Or a movie?" Tracing her tongue across his jawline, a quiet moan escapes his mouth.

"No. They put me to sleep."

"So let's pop in a DVD and you can spend the night here?" She stops and looks him in the eye.

"Would you like the key back?"

"No. I just want to get...I don't know..."

"Closer?" She asks, interrupting him, looking him in his eyes only for a few seconds as silence falls over them... until she resumes nibbling on his neck.

"Yes. Closer." She runs her nails down his chest, slowly, teasing. Her hand finds his groin. What she finds makes her smile.

"Is this close enough?"

"...Yes..." She gently lowers his hands to his sides and holds them there while kissing him deeply. Pushing him down onto the floor, she lowers herself on top of him. A small moan escapes his lips as she takes him inside her.

Danny wakes to the the sun's ray peeking through his curtain. His face holds the smile of the memory of the night before. He turns his head, lazily to the pillow beside him... but it's empty.

"Jen...?" Danny calls out as his eyes scan the room for anything of hers that could show she was still here but she wasn't...

Cat was gone and Danny's smile fades.