Kidnapped! Read online

  “My only regret is that your brother is not here to watch,” he told her. Then he swung with all the strength in his arm.

  The belt struck her squarely on the ass, made a very loud sound in the small room, and set her body jerking forward. A squeal of pain managed to force its way out around the gag.

  A red mark began forming on that soft ass as he watched. Yes! This was what he wanted. Tomorrow he would do the same thing but have a video camera record it. The recording would, of course, be sent to Sled Speed, but for tonight, the only person to enjoy this scene would be him.

  Switching to the other side, he struck again with the same results: a muffled cry, a loud smack, a jerk of her naked body, and a red mark appearing on the other cheek. Giving in to his anger, he began slashing that bare ass repeatedly with the belt, not bothering to count or really aim the blows. He struck until his arm grew tired. But that was not until he had delivered almost fifty strokes across the bare flesh. When he finally paused, the whole area between her waist and thighs was a vivid red. The pained sounds she made were delightful to his ears, as was the jerking of her nudity. Even with the heavy block tied to her feet, she lifted her legs and kicked out. Tears were running down her face to fall on her breasts. The brave girl was sobbing out her heart.

  For a long time, he simply stood there, panting and staring at that abused ass, so wonderfully swollen and red with a few bruises for decoration. Slowly he returned his belt to his pants. Walking around in front of her, he reached up to grab a breast and squeeze hard to get her attention.

  “This is just the beginning, bitch,” he hissed at her. “Just the beginning.”

  Chapter XVI

  I Google

  “Damn it! Do something!”

  I pounded on the desk of Special Prosecutor Purvis for emphasis. The paperweights and pencil holder and even his phone rattled.

  “Really, we are doing something,” he whined. “We’re trying to find Raszini. We expect to apprehend him soon.”

  “Don’t give me any of that public relations bullshit!” I told him. “You have no idea where he is, or where my little sister is.”

  “We’re working on it. Besides, we don’t even know it was Raszini who kidnapped Susan Speed.”

  I felt very much like reaching across his desk and introducing his nose to my fist.

  “The FBI, the Justice Department and local agencies are working on this. It has top priority,” he told me. I didn’t like that smug little smile on his face. I had the feeling he was hiding something from me. And I don’t like people who hide things from me.

  Before I could tell him where he could shove the FBI, Justice Department and local agencies, he added, “Why don’t you go home and let us do our work. I’ll let you know as soon as the case breaks.”

  I fear I may have cracked some plaster in the wall when I slammed the door on my way out. Actually, he was lucky. I felt like kicking the door down. Great way to relieve stress.

  All the way back to my office, my high-powered brain was in top gear, furiously searching for some way to get Susie back. Unfortunately, all it did was race in circles. Raszini had gone to ground, and in a city this big that meant there were too many places he could be hiding. For that matter, who says he was even still in LA?

  The day was as drab as my spirits, overcast and threatening rain. I wished it would. At least the rain washes away most of the smog that usually squats atop LA like a thick, ugly blanket.

  Back at my desk, I spread out all the information I had on Raszini and the recent case. It was damned little, mostly a write-up of the case that Susie did on her word processor. There was little on Raszini himself. I had no idea where he even lived; the only time I met him was at a hotel room near LAX.

  Then I remembered that the newscast said the FBI had raided his home. And there was video of these men in black SWAT suits with FBI in large white letters across the back breaking into an expensive looking house. But, if they mentioned where the house was, I must have missed it.

  Susie often tells me that you can find anything on the Internet. I stared at the computer screen in the corner of my desk. It hadn’t been on since the day Susie put it there and showed me how to turn the computer on. A real, he-man private dick doesn’t need electronics to break a case, just hard fists, a quick draw, and knowing what heads to bust.

  Someone once told me that real men don’t eat quiche. I had no idea then what quiche was, and still don’t. Some kind of sissy French food, I think. Well, using a computer to track down a bad guy is sort of the same thing: something a real private dick doesn’t do.

  But…

  I turned it on and sat there, staring at a blue screen while some kind of important messages danced across it. Then it settled down to a bunch of tiny pictures over a picture of sailboats on a mountain lake. At that point, I realized I had no idea what to do. So I did the only logical thing. Swallowing my pride, I called Ramona into my office and asked her to find out where Raszini used to live.

  It took her only a minute to find the answer. She tried to explain to me as she went but the words meant nothing. What the hell is a google? She brought up on the screen an article about the attempted bust on his house. It was sort of like reading the newspaper but you had to point a little arrow at a tiny square and press a button to get the next page. A little digging and I had an address. Fortunately, it was not too far away, just a couple hours drive up the coast to Santa Barbara.

  “You think maybe he took Susie there?” Ramona asked me. When I turned to her, I could see that she had been crying. Maybe she and Susie were a little closer than I had thought. Pushing such thoughts aside, I told her the police had already been there and found nothing. But I wasn’t looking for Susie there, instead another person. Someone who just might be able to tell me where Raszini was.

  Chapter XVII

  Video Taping

  “Set those cameras up over there,” Raszini ordered. “Make sure you get good coverage of right here.” He stood back to get an idea of the work area and make sure that the cameras would cover it well. They were digital video cameras, not Hollywood quality to be sure, but very capable of recording a scene in good quality.

  When both cameras were established on tripods and plugged in, he told the men, “Bring the bitch in.”

  Susie Speed was still naked. Her wrists and ankles were locked quite tightly in handcuffs, so walking was both difficult and painful on her ankles. Her ass displayed some blue-gray bruises and still a bit of redness and swollen flesh from the whipping it had received the night before. She was escorted on each side by a man holding her arm. In the sunlight coming through the skylights, she looked tired, as if she had not slept well, as indeed she had not. She had been left standing in the middle of a room not much bigger than a closet with her handcuffed wrists pulled up behind her. Not enough to threaten dislocation of her shoulders, but enough to keep her wrists hurting and making sleep nearly impossible.

  “We’re going to tie her up and play with her a little,” he told them. “But you guys don’t do a good job with ropes, so I brought in an expert. Stella, you’re on.”

  From the back of the room stepped forward a woman. Stella was dressed in black leather, a tight fitting jumpsuit usually called a “catsuit”. The stiletto heels of her boots clicked on the concrete floor as she walked with an exaggerated stride, one foot placed before the other, making her leather-covered ass sway from side to side. Her hair was long and straight, hanging down almost to her waist and making her look like someone’s idea of a vampire. Lipstick and dark eye shadow helped hide the fact that she was in her early forties. That did not keep the henchmen standing there with Susie from staring at the leather-covered curves. She held a riding crop in her hand and was faintly smiling as she looked at the naked woman before her.

  “Okay, Stella, she’s all yours. You know what I want.”

  Stella smiled, looking much like a cat smiling at a cornered mouse. This young woman standing between the two men was more than she
had expected – much more. When Raszini said she was beautiful, Stella had discounted his appraisal, but now she saw that, indeed, this Susie was very good looking and possessed a centerfold body. The tip of Stella’s tongue peeked out between her lips. This was going to be a fun session!

  Raszini retreated to a position behind one of the cameras.

  “Leave her here,” Stella spoke on the gravelly side. Perhaps she was a smoker, but whatever, it was not a sweet, pleasing voice. Nor did it hold the slightest hint of kindness. More to the point, it sounded like someone used to giving and having obeyed orders.

  The men let go of Susie’s arms and stepped back. Raszini nodded to the cameras and they took their positions to act as cameramen.

  Stella dragged a chair over to the center of the room, directly under some of the overhead rings and hooks. “Get over here and sit down,” she commanded.

  Susie looked confused. She had expected Raszini himself to continue her punishment, not some woman dressed like a dominatrix. Still, she had enough experience with such people to know that this woman would not tolerate any disobedience. As she began to shuffle towards the chair, she made up her mind to obey, be meek and try to avoid as much of the punishment as she could by not giving this woman a reason to add to it.

  As she began to turn around to sit down, there came a sharp crack and a burst of pain on her bare ass. The riding crop was not a serious punishment tool, but when applied over skin already made sensitive by a prior whipping, it could cause enough pain to make her jerk and yelp. She sat down on the hard wooden chair, feeling the fresh burning spot on her left cheek.

  Both cameras had begun recording the scene as Stella knelt before Susie and unlocked the handcuffs from her ankles. There were deep red marks left when the steel cuffs fell away. Quickly the ankles were re-bound, this time in white nylon rope no more than a quarter of an inch thick. Half a dozen turns of the rope around her ankles and then it was cinched down and knotted tightly. Another piece of rope was tied around this ankle bondage and also knotted, but left with most of it trailing off across the floor.

  “Madam Stella runs one of the Houses of Discipline I own,” Raszini told the man nearest him. “She’s one really mean bitch, so don’t get any ideas about hitting on her.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it, boss,” Marco said.

  Raszini went on, “She hates men, but not as much as she hates women. Something about her having an abusive mother or something.”

  In front of the cameras, with Susie’s ankles tightly bound together, she was being made to stand up. The chair was moved out of the way and Madam Stella approached Susie from behind. In her hand was a coil of rope. After removing the handcuffs from her wrists, Stella grabbed Susie’s arm and twisted it up behind her until she squealed. Then, with surprising strength, she twisted up the other arm until both hands were higher on the back than the shoulder blades. Susie was one of those girls flexible enough to easily touch her elbows behind her, but this was something else. Her arms were jerked upward until the hands were almost at the level of her neck. They were turned so that the palms faced each other, and then rope began going around the wrists, binding them tightly together. When they were tied and cinched down nicely, more rope was used around her forearms, upper arms and chest to lash her arms tightly to her body. Even if her wrists had not been tied, she would be unable to move her arms from that position. In front, the ropes passed around her above and below the large breasts. Each turn of rope was jerked as tightly as Stella could force it, and the knots were multiple and tied far from the fingers. It was as if Susie had been deprived of her hands and arms.

  “One of you bastards get over here, thread this rope through that ring and pull on it,” she ordered, pointing to the rope trailing from Susie’s ankles. One of the men looked to Raszini, who nodded approval, then he came around the camera to do as ordered.

  Still standing on her feet as the man positioned the chair next to her so he could stand on it and thread the rope through the ring, Susie realized what was going to happen. As the man pulled, her feet would be pulled out from under her and she would fall. To avoid that, she knelt down and allowed herself to slowly fall to one side. When he set the chair aside and took up the end of the rope, Susie was lying on her side. Her feet slowly lifted from the floor, higher and higher, until she was resting on her bound arms with her legs and hips totally off the floor.

  “Continue,” Stella ordered. Susie’s feet went higher, and in a few seconds she was hanging totally upside down, her head a good two feet off the floor.

  Stella knelt down so she could take a handful of Susie’s long black hair and jerked it to bring her face closer to hers. “Now we’re going to begin hurting you,” she hissed. “I certainly hope that you like pain because you’re going to get plenty of it.” She gave Susie’s hair a jerk to one side that set Susie to swinging like a pendulum.

  Positioning herself to one side of Susie, Stella brought the riding crop up and then struck downward quickly. A loud slap and Susie jerked. The riding crop had struck her breast and left a red mark on the bottom of it. There followed half a dozen strokes, evenly divided between both breasts and leaving the undersides of her breasts an angry red in color, and caused tears to begin working their way up Susie’s head.

  The brave girl tried to hold it in, but the stinging pain in her breasts made her cry. She was very proud of those globes and was becoming afraid that they might be damaged by this black-clad woman.

  “She’s just getting warmed up,” Raszini told the man next to him. “Just watch.” There was an evil glow in his eyes as he took in the hanging woman’s suffering.

  After two dozen more strikes to those breasts, this time on the fronts, and copious tears, Stella stepped back. She had been striking as hard as she could, but, as Raszini had pointed out, she was only warming up. There was a large black purse sitting to one side. From that, Stella took a short whip; a stiff handle of twelve inches in length, from which there was another twelve inches of braided leather ending with a short piece of stiffened leather. It was that stiff end that was called a “snapper” and would cause the most pain.

  Before Susie could get a good look at the whip, Stella was in position and swinging it directly at her breasts. This time there was no yelp but a good scream as Susie jerked her body back. The end of the whip had kissed the soft flesh of her nipple, sending a jolt of pain shooting into her breast.

  Through her tears, Susie could see the whip going back in preparation for another blow. “No, no!” she cried out, but the whip again swished towards her breasts. She could not twist away in time and the snapper caught her other nipple squarely. She yelled loudly and jerked again.

  The pain must have been stronger than the first stroke because her body jerked and twisted wildly for a long time.

  “Please, no more!” Susie called out between her sobs. “Please!”

  As if aroused by a lover’s tongue, both her nipples were standing out, taut and hard.

  Bending down, Stella brought the whip up to Susie’s bare breast and tapped the rigid nipple. “Just the beginning,” she whispered. Susie’s looked up to see a mask of pure, vicious evil. This woman loved hurting other women!

  Susie closed her eyes and waited for the next blow. What else could she do? She was sure that there was nothing she could say, no promise she could make, nothing she could do that would stop this torment. Raszini wanted her in pain, and so it would be.

  The riding crop had reddened the skin of her breasts, but this whip raised an ugly welt wherever it kissed the flesh.

  The whipping of her breasts continued. With each strike of the leather, she cried out and frantically twisted her body to try to avoid the pain. Her contortions set her to swinging, but no amount of movement could distract Stella’s accurate blows. Again and again the whip touched her flesh and delivered its venom.

  With both her breasts covered with dozens vicious whipmarks, there came a point where it seemed that continued punishment would do more
than mark the skin, perhaps even begin to tear it. At that point, Stella’s hand was caught in mid-backswing by a man’s hand.

  “Let’s leave some for tomorrow,” Raszini said, quietly.

  Stella glared at him, a vicious curse about to spring from her lips, but then she sucked in air and the hatred fled from her face.

  “Of course, Mr. Raszini. Tomorrow.”

  Susie hung there, crying softly and in pain for a long time before she was let down and her numb hands released from those cruelly tight ropes.

  Chapter XVIII

  The Search

  I pulled up to Raszini’s former residence that afternoon after what should have been a pleasant drive up the California coast. But my mind was too filled with worry to enjoy the views of the mighty Pacific, the blue sky, and the offshore oil rigs. His home was in an area called Montecito, a foothill area of Santa Barbara filled with trees and multi-million dollar homes, most at the end of a private driveway. The house itself was a classic California Mission style home with whitewashed walls and red tile roof, and was large enough to hold conventions in.

  No one seemed to be at home, which did not surprise me. I had hoped to find the place empty. There was yellow police “crime scene” tape across the front door, so I walked around to the back and let myself in via a convenient window.

  There were signs that the pace had been tossed, undoubtedly by federal agents. Drawers were pulled out, papers scattered around, pictures off the walls (looking for safes) and generally everything was a mess. At least they hadn’t taken to tearing the upholstery off the expensive furniture.

  It was getting dark before I found what I was looking for. The agents had been looking for evidence relating to criminal activity. They had taken everything out of the house, including a couple places that looked as if there had been computers. I was looking for something more normal. And found it.

  In the trash can next to a desk I found a sheet of paper. It was only a utility bill for electricity and gas but it was not for this house. It told me that he had another house. And it gave me the address.