Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

"We'll take care, ma'am. Does he have a gun? We need to know that," Cori said. Again the woman signaled the negative. "Do any of them?"

"Not my husband. No, no one. I don't think there are guns." As Officer Douglas pulled her to him, she focused on Cori. "Let me go in. Let me go. I will tell him you need to speak. He will come out here if I ask him... Please...I am his wife. A woman can do this."

Cori and Finn weren't listening.  Hunter was taking the woman away and her voice was nothing but a cry in the wind. The detectives moved toward one another. Finn reached behind and took out his gun. Cori's hand disappeared under her jacket. Suddenly, they heard Emi's voice raised in a cry of absolute despair.

"Don't hurt him."

The detectives ignored her because there was no promise they could give. As Cori and Finn took the first step inside the building, the woman's voice rose again.

"Enver! Enver!" Finn and Cori looked back to see she was struggling and howling with every step she took away from the building. "You don't understand."

"I'm thinking it won't be a tea party we find in there," Finn said.

"You reckon?" Cori answered and gave him a nod.

They released the safety on their weapons.

3

"O'Brien," Cori said.

"I hear it."

He took one more step up, and put his back to the wall. Cori took two steps and mirrored him against the opposite one.  They were almost at the top of the short flight of metal stairs. It ran through a narrow entrance to the front door of the unit. The door was a work of art. Voluptuous, naked women cavorted on a pale blue background. Brass Art Deco sconces fashioned into graceful, scantily clad women hung on either side of the door. Their faces were raised toward the globes of crackle glass that they held above their heads. The light from the fixtures glowed deep yellow against the grey walls.

While the concrete was soundproof, the door was not. Through it the detectives heard muffled sounds of rage followed by muted responses of collective terror. Whatever was going on inside was not being played out up against the door, and that was a good break. Still, Cori kept her voice low when she asked:

"Locked?"

Finn shook his head. Given the woman's distress when they confronted her, it was unlikely she had stopped to lock the door.  Letting go of his gun with one hand, he held up three fingers on his other, and pointed at the door.  Cori nodded, but he paused and waited through a sudden stretch of quiet. It was only when they heard the angry sounds again, that Finn started his countdown.

One finger...

Two fingers...

Three...

In one motion he took hold of the knob and swung the door open. Bursting through first, he went right; Cori, on his heels, went left. Both raised their voices, identifying themselves as officer of the law, only to fall silent in the next instant. They had fallen down a magical rabbit hole into an alternate universe: exotic, erotic, eccentric.

They were in a giant box of a room that was half the size of a football field. The concrete floor had been shellacked to a high shine. The walls were left rough and met a ceiling that rose a good twelve feet off the ground.

Where Finn and Cori made their stand was empty space. At the far end of the huge room there seemed to be living quarters, and in the middle sweeping sofas upholstered in silvery grey silk created two halves of a big circle. Deep, high-backed chairs covered in white and black leather were scattered about. A glass coffee table as clear as arctic ice and as big as a skating pond was in the middle of it all. On top of the table, Cori's consciousness noted bowls of fruit, chocolate, and condoms. Wine glasses were tipped over and broken.

Finn only had eyes for the people scattered throughout the room. Men in tuxedos, women half naked, and everyone masked. It was a macabre collage of faces that looked like golden goats and silver bulls. The women's eyes appeared wicked behind swaths of lace. One naked lady wore a headdress of purple plumes and diamonds. Four men and six women cowered and cried, starting forward as they tried to escape only to scurry back when the raging man in their midst took note.

The giant of a man cried out in a language Finn had never heard before. He paced right and left, his hands flew to the side of his head, pulling at his long, grey hair. He swooped down and cleared the table with a swipe of his long arm, sending the crystal flying. But it was the next moment when the room spiraled into a hellish cacophony of screams and pleas, that Finn saw what was coming.

"Knife!" Finn called and pushed off from his crouch.

He crab-walked, keeping his back to the wall, arms extended, the crazed man in his sights. Cori did the same on her side of the room. But the angry man, the insane man, had no care for anything or anyone. Before either detective could get a clear shot, he grabbed a woman off the couch by her hair and threw her to the ground. In that split second, the people in the room went from fear to panic. The men stumbled over the furniture, saving themselves in the face of  danger. The barely dressed ladies fled leaving the woman on the floor to her fate.

"Hands up! Drop it!"

Finn locked on to his target, but each time he thought he had a clean shot the man moved. Finn was aware of the other people in the room, but saw them only as blurs of flesh and feathers, golden masks and black jackets. He holstered his weapon, knowing he could not afford to make a mistake by firing and hitting someone who made an unexpected move. He