If Quinn believed in heaven, he would have sworn that it took the form of the two naked nymphs whose bodies he was thoroughly enjoying.
He lay flat on his back, naked. His head rested on a pillow. Riding his tongue was a gorgeous, nubile blonde. She was sweet, pungent, and moaning softly as she kissed the tall, athletic brunette astride his manhood.
The girls fucked him slowly at first, and Quinn responded with eager thrusts of his pelvis and tongue, savoring the sights, sounds, and tastes.
Their pace soon quickened, urgency building. Before long, they moaned and moved together in a wanton carnal melee. The blonde girl came, thrusting her honeypot harder and harder onto his mouth, gyrating her hips to guide his tongue’s motion. It threw him over the edge. He bucked wildly into the brunette, the arch of his powerful hips easily lifting her tanned, athletic body.
The girls climbed off of Quinn, and the blonde tended to the brunette’s growing desire for an orgasm of her own. Her mouth found the brunette’s sex, and she lapped, nibbled, and licked until the brunette’s moans became loud, orgasmic howls.
After the fun, they lay together, the smell of sex heavy around them. It had been a banner day for Quinn. A bloody, messy job had gone very well, and he now had a pound of pure gold to show for it. He only rarely accepted cash for his work, preferring “real money” instead. The evening’s entertainment had cost him an ounce of his bounty, but it was well worth it.
And, he flattered himself, it had obviously been more than just work for the girls, too.
He had just about dozed off to sleep in between the two gorgeous women when his cell phone rang. It was a cheap prepaid phone that wouldn’t see more than four more hours’ use, if all went well, but the ring wasn’t a welcome development.
“Quinn,” he lied. It wasn’t his name, but that’s how his case officer referred to him for this particular job. He listened intently for several seconds, then said, “Got it.” He cursed softly to himself after hanging up, and set about quietly gathering his things.
Back to work.
He stopped in the bathroom to relieve himself and put his clothes on, pausing for a look in the mirror. Brilliant eyes blazed back at him; one grey-blue, the other greenish brown, like a wolf or wild dog. He had a long scar beneath his green eye.
He was also very tall, and extremely muscular. It was unusual for a man in his profession to have such distinguishing features, as wet men were traditionally nondescript, but it was testament to his exceptional talent that the Agency had selected him for this particular line of work. He had a gift for it.
And, he occasionally admitted to himself, he enjoyed both the chase and its reward, the feral rush of power and bloodlust that invariably accompanied killing another human.
One of the girls was snoring softly on the bed as he left. He made no sound on the way out of the newly remodeled hotel room in Shirlington, Virginia, dark ball cap pulled low to obscure his facial features from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras. “Good evening, Mr. Quinn,” the desk clerk chirped as the assassin strode by on his way to the parking garage. Quinn smiled and returned the greeting.
Minutes later he was on I-395 northbound in his rented Land Rover, en route to a provisioning stop. Unlike the evening’s earlier job, which had been what industry professionals refer to as a “scene” – complete with a suicide note, though Quinn didn’t believe anyone really took those seriously any more – he was apparently on his way to provide what Agency people euphemistically called “interrogation enhancement.”
Torture.
Officially, it didn’t happen on American soil. Then again, neither did assassinations.
Quinn hated interrogation enhancement jobs. He was a professional murderer, but he lacked the freakish sadism the really good torturers had, and the jobs tended to haunt him. Howls, screams, begging, sobbing, tearing flesh and snapping bones; they all left their mark on his psyche, which was why he charged so much money for them.
Sure, most of his victims were bad people, but who wasn’t a bad person, when it came right down to it? He no longer had a patriot’s ideological zeal to soothe his conscience, and knew that he was more mercenary than anything else, which had him contemplating a career change. But for the gold…
He exited the highway in a bad part of town, pulled into a warehouse parking lot, lifted up the lid on the third recycling bin from the north end of the wall, grabbed the pre-packed duffel bag his handlers had left for him, and was back on the highway a few minutes later. Clockwork.
He drove quickly toward his destination, an Arlington mansion he’d never seen before. Hope the guy squeals early. Quinn had been awake for over 20 hours already, and he didn’t have the energy for a prolonged session.
He stopped for coffee, chuckling at the absurdity of needing a caffeine hit to gear up for a torture job.
Just another day in the life, he thought, wondering vaguely who tonight’s victim might be. Smart money would bet on a dark-skinned Arabic speaker, but he had removed a few Russian fingernails recently as well. Uncle Sugar had plenty of enemies, and was busy making more all the time. That couldn’t possibly be related to all the murder and torture, the assassin mused darkly.
He was, quite literally, the pointy end of State policy. As such, he had long since been aware of the cavernous gap between the reality of statecraft and the bright-eyed bullshit the politicos hoped the public would swallow. Mostly the public did swallow it, which kept Quinn well supplied with gold bullion and expensive hookers.
He found the address, entered the gate code, parked in the drive, and rapped on the door, holding an elevated middle finger in view of the peephole. The door opened seconds later, a familiar face peering around the opening. Quinn stepped in to the waiting darkness.