FREELY GIVEN
She is awakened at noon by someone knocking at the door. She slips on her housecoat and peeks out the front window. All she can see is a red van with the words express delivery on the side and she heads to the door slipping her pistol into her pocket as she goes.
“Hello.”
“Hi there, I have a package for Miss. Wren Robbins.”
“That’s me.”
She takes the box and signs the young ladies digital clipboard and locks up after she leaves. Wren looks at the box a bit suspiciously at first then finds the return address. Norman James, attorney at law. She opens the box and finds another box and a letter.
“My dearest Wren,
I have done a lot of thinking since our last meeting. I need you in my life, I know you have seen me in the club watching you from across the room. My heart has never felt so empty or missed anything more than it misses you right now. I would like you to accompany me tomorrow night. I have checked with your uncle and I know you are off and he knows of my plans. In the accompanying box you will find all you need for our evening. If you wish to join me please be ready to leave at five o’clock Saturday afternoon. If you do not wish to join me then simply hand me the box when I arrive and I will never enter your personal life again.
Norman James.”
She pulls out her phone and turns it on for the first time since she escorted Norman out of the house. It immediately shows voicemail messages but she ignores them and calls Norman’s office.
“Hi Sheila, is Norman there?”
“I thought you must have fallen off the face of the earth. I’ll get him for you but I’m warning you he is in a right foul mood lately.”
“This is Norman James, how can I help you?”
Wren quickly catches on that Shelia didn’t tell him who was on the phone. So in the softest sexiest voice that she has perfected by flirting with the men at work she starts to speak to him.
“Yes, I sure hope you can. You see I received this box by courier, a few minutes ago, and I am trying to reach the sender to let him off the hook as to what my response will be.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say I am deeply and passionately in love with the sender but, I have changed and I hope he still feels the same when he realizes just how many changes there have been.”
“Wren, I am fully aware that I am in love with both you and the Predator.”
“We will go with you then and we will resist the temptation to open the box until tomorrow afternoon. In the meanwhile we will leave you with this thought, we have seen you each time you have come into the club and each time we have wanted to be with you and leave with you. I love you and I want you.”
“I love you too Wren, I’ll see you at five then.”
Wren goes back to bed after clearing Norman’s many attempts at reaching her. She wakes-up around five-thirty, showers and dresses.
“Well at least there is no need for black right now, at least not until after I take care of Bob.”
Wren throws a bag of clothes in the car and leaves her house. She drives over to Bob’s job and checks out the lot. Sure enough there is his Pacer at the far end of the lot. He isn’t in it so she knows she has to wait until he is off. She drives over to the Casa across the street and gets in line.
After dinner she drives over to the mall and roams the stores just killing time. She knows the furniture store doesn’t close until nine so she figures she has to be back by eight forty-five. In one of the shops she finds a swimsuit she really likes. She hadn’t bought a new swimsuit in several years and seldom wore them since the incident when she was fifteen years old and her Mom had thrown such a fit at Springdale pool. Everyone there was looking at her standing just outside the locker room and, just because it was a Rio cut bikini.
“What are you wearing! What kind of a total whore are you!”
“It’s just the bikini Grandma bought for me.”
“Just a bikini! You’re naked! In public! I thought I raised you better than that!”
“Mom! What’s the big deal? It’s just a bikini!”
“Don’t you talk to me that way young lady! You march your self right back into that locker room and get dressed we are going home!”
“Fine!”
Wren picks out three different bikinis: a traditional deep blue, a Rio in hot pink and a very daringly low cut brick red thong that is almost too small.
“Mom would die if she saw these especially the thong so I guess it’s good I haven’t spoken to her in almost ten years.”
She tries them all on feeling very glad that she had got her Lakota fathers darker skin and not the pale skin that most redheads have. She likes the looks of each and buys them all. Knowing her Mom would’ve hated them makes her like them all the more. She leaves the shop feeling in the best spirits she’s felt in sometime.
She has an idea as she is walking through the mall, and goes into several shoe stores and finds a pair of high heeled sandals that pretty closely matched each of her new bikinis. The thought of how much of a whore her Mom would think she was for wearing a bikini with heels only makes it that much easier and that much more satisfying.
She heads back out to her car with a devilish smile on her face and drives back over to the furniture store. She waits in an adjacent parking lot with a clear view of the Pacer. After about thirty minutes Bob walks up to his car. She holds the remote waiting for him to get in. He fumbles with his keys then gets in and shuts the door.
Wren puts her car in gear, starts to drive away and hits the switch. Instantly the Pacer disappears in a massive fireball. She drives down Lindbergh turning onto Watson and a little ways up Watson she pulls into a busy parking lot. Out at the very edge of cars where she figures only employees would be parked she changes into her basic black ensemble.
Less than half an hour's drive puts Wren in front of Adam’s apartment building. Driving slowly through the lot she checks out the area. It is pushing eleven so she feels fairly comfortable entering the building and having a look around. She parks her car a couple of buildings over and goes in. Soon finding his room at the far rear corner. She goes back outside and starts around the building and finds that the parking lot doesn’t go around the building. She studies the building carefully keeping in mind where his apartment is in relation to where she is. Her walk around the building leads her to finding a set of balconies leading straight up to his room.
“Perfect!”
She moves a table under the lowest balcony then climbing on top pulls herself up to the second floor. Then standing on the railing while bracing herself against a column she reaches up and pulls herself to the third floor and drops down on all fours.
She slowly checks through the door for any sign of light or movement, there is none. She grabs the handle and with no surprise finds it unlocked, she slips inside and closes the door. Quickly and quietly she moves over to a door on her left. It is a small bedroom setup like an office with Wren’s stereo sitting in the corner. There is a small walk-in closet and an attached bathroom but no Adam.
She goes back to the living room passing an opening that makes up a breakfast bar to the kitchen on her left as she goes to the other side of the apartment. She enters the bedroom which is much darker than the other rooms have been, really it is an almost absolute darkness. Wren can feel a slight dread in the darkness as a childhood memory of being in her trunk comes rushing back to her. She stands but a second as she reminds herself that it isn’t really that dark. Now with great care and caution she maneuvers around the room noiselessly without bumping into anything. As she slowly creeps closer and closer to the bed her eyes adjust to the light and she gets the uneasy feeling that she is being watched but looking around she doesn’t see anyone. When she turns back toward the bed she realizes Adam isn’t there. This is weird because she would have sworn he was there just a moment ago. She reaches down and feels the bed. It is still warm.
“So, hide and seek is it? I’ll play along then.”
She finds a small lamp by the bed and turns it on. It doesn’t make a lot of light but it does help. Next she looks under the bed. Nothing but dust and shoes. The closet, and the bathroom both yield nothing. She heads back toward the other bedroom and halfway across the living room he jumps out from behind the sofa. She pulls a quick shot that misses as he sees the dot on his chest and ducks fast.
Wren moves towards the sofa and he scurries out from behind it and starts around toward the bedroom.
Another shot and another miss.
Now he surprises Wren and runs straight at her. She steps aside and instead of hitting her square on he just grazes her, catching her with his right arm causing her to drop the pistol as he uses his momentum to swing himself around behind her pulling her jacket down and binding her in the process. He wraps his hands around her throat and starts to squeeze as hard as he can.
Wren can hardly breathe as he chokes the life out of her. Then almost whispering in a deep husky, foul smelling male voice he starts talking.
“Won’t Clarence be proud of me when I call him in a few minutes to tell him you're dead? When I call and tell him I took out the Predator.”
Wren, can not free herself but she does manage to move her left fist up to his stomach, she cocks the jacket gun and fires. The force of the recoil at that angle spins her around twisting the skin of her neck as he releases her. Now she was facing Adam.
He is now holding tight to what is left of his abdomen as he falls to his knees, blood pouring through his fingers screaming with the pain of his disemboweling. The acrid smell of blood mixed with the sulfur of burning gunpowder and the stench of human waste hangs heavy in the air as she looks down at him.
“Somehow, I don’t think you’ll be calling Clarence any time soon.”
Her next shot is directly between his eyes and his blood curdling screams stop instantly. Quickly Wren heads out the balcony door climbing over the railing and stopping short when she realizes in her haste she forgot her pistol.
She rushes back in and finds it as someone starts banging on Adams door yelling, asking if he is alright. She holsters the gun and runs back to the balcony, almost throwing herself over the railing as she makes her way back to the ground. She quickly recomposes herself as she goes behind buildings to avoid being seen as she heads back to her car.
Once at her car she takes a look around to make sure no one is watching her. She opens the trunk and finds a rag she keeps just in case she has to change a flat tire, wipes off as much as she can from her hands then takes off her entrails soaked jacket turning it inside out as she puts it in the trunk. Then quickly tosses both guns in with it as she adds her now sticky, blood soaked tee shirt to the pile. This leaves Wren standing in the middle of the parking lot in her black satin bra and jeans. Now she can hear a police siren rushing down the street towards her. She grabs an old beach towel, slams the trunk lid shut and rushes around the car. She opens the driver's door as she sees the police cruiser entering the lot, throws the towel over the seat, sits down and leaves as she sees the officer enter the building knowing her work here is done.
Wren goes straight home from Adam’s apartment. The whole way home she contemplates if there are better ways to claim revenge and protect other people from becoming innocent victims.
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