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  TRUST ME

  A Novel By

  Paul Slatter

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. References to real people alive or dead, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are for the intended purpose only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  TNCS - Publishing Edition

  Copyright – 2020 by Paul Slatter – 1103027 B.C. Ltd.

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN: 9781794504615

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The publisher is not responsible for any websites, or contents of any websites, that are not owned by the publisher.

  First Trade Edition:

  1103027 B.C. Ltd.

  Also by Paul Slatter

  Burn

  Rock Solid

  For

  Jean and Bob

  Semper fortis

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Vancouver Series

  Book Three:

  Trust Me

  Chapter One

  Mazzi Hegan could still hear the clicking of the small stunt bicycle as it freewheeled around and around somewhere in the distance behind him. The guy had passed him earlier trying to look tough, once then twice, riding the bike with his knees up around his chin, giving Mazzi the eye, sizing him up as he'd passed.

  Now he was out there still, cruising around somewhere in the background, the rear gears ticking as he coasted. He took a left, then a right—the roads quiet at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in downtown Vancouver. He saw the steps for the small park just west of the convention centre that would take him down to the seawall and Mazzi Hegan took them quickly. If the guy on the bike was following him then he’d think he’d have gone straight on; and if somehow the guy’d seen, then he'd have to come down the steps. And if he did that then Mazzi himself could disappear into the darkness and wait it out, let the man go and then take the seawall back to his place that looked out across the city at the bottom of Davie Street.

  Moving quickly, he reached the bottom of the steps. It was clear down there—well lit on the seawall, that is. The park where he'd hide if need be was dark against the silhouette of the street lights and apartment blocks on the other side. Mazzi carried on, listening as he looked around, hearing only the faint lapping of the water on the wall as the gentle swell hit home having travelled across the globe.

  There was nothing, no clicking, no young man with a hoodie trying to look cool riding his little brother’s bike. Mazzi continued, thinking about the night—this guy he’d met earlier causing trouble like he had because Mazzi liked to drink, throwing a beer Mazzi should have already drank in his face, then leaving with Mazzi’s wallet while Mazzi stayed, alone with his phone sending drunk texts to anyone stupid enough to reply until the music stopped and security asked him politely to leave.

  He carried on along the seawall, looking behind him at the steps as he went. Another man was there now in the distance, halfway down the wall looking through the telescope to North Vancouver on the other side of the inlet with its streetlights and industrial sodium burning light back across the blackness. Mazzi moved forward, looking behind him again at the steps and at the empty warmth of the trees lining the way. If the guy on the bike had followed on foot, sneaking down when his back was turned, he'd be trapped.

  He continued on, the man ahead more visible now in the faint street light as he pulled his eye from the scope and looked back to Mazzi as he drew closer. The man young, in his teens, with a newspaper delivery bag slung over his shoulder, stared at him as he drew ever nearer. He looked to the ground, knowing too well he shouldn't and then looked up again just in time for the teenager to smile as their eyes met and say clearly, “Howdie partner!”

  Mazzi carried on, passing the kid and looking to the ground again for another twenty feet, wishing he'd stayed up on the road, feeling for the phone he knew he'd lost when they’d thrown him out of the bar in his drunken state. Quickly he looked back over his left shoulder for the young man with the bag—he was gone now. Then looking over his right into the darkness, Mazzi saw him moving, following, hiding in the darkness. Feeling the knot in his stomach tighten, he spun around. In front of him at the end of the park just above the yachts all moored up and sleeping, the kid on the bike was waiting under a lamppost.

  The fucking prick had corralled him he thought, steered him onto the steps, pushed him down them with his presence. Now he was trapped.

  He slowed almost to a stop looking quickly down the bicycle path again, the kid with the bag nowhere to be seen. He looked back, the one on the bike doing nothing but sitting low in the saddle waiting, pushing him further into the darkness of the park again with his presence.

  Turn, he said to himself, turn and walk back—head for the steps. The kid with the newspaper bag was no bigger than him, but what was in the bag?

  He carried on, feeling the sweat on his back under his shirt—don't go into the dark, he told himself, walk up to the guy and carry on past him, that’s what you do—walk up, stare him down and let him know with your eyes he’s in big fucking trouble if he decides to get off his little brother’s bike.

  That’s what I’ll do, he thought, I’ll say that as I get to him, say, hey fuckhead, come near me and you’ll wear that bike like a hat.

  He could do it; he’d done it years before when he’d been bullied after school, passing a whole gang of older boys every day as he walked home. Mazzi thinking they were cute and wondering why they were calling him fag-boy and cocksucker. Way back then, when he was all confused. Then one day he’d come home with his mother, walking the same path and forgetting about these guys who always hung at the same corner trying to look cool. Seeing them and hearing them call him names as they always did, shouting out dogface and fagboy and asking if his mother was a dyke as they passed, Mazzi all tough like he should have been before when it had started, instead of there and then when it was too late on that hot summers afternoon, when the sun was setting and he’d lashed out blind and hit his mother in the nose by mistake.

  But this time he didn’t have his mother’s honor to protect and could lash out without her getting in the way like she had. All he had to do was go for the guy, kick the fucker off the bike, thump him if he could land one and keep going till he started crying like his mother had after the gang of pricks had seen how hard he could punch.

  Then the blow from the baseball bat the kid kept in his bag hit him across the side of his head and knocked him off his feet. His elbow hit the paving stones hard as he landed on the ground and felt the power of the kid’s foot hit him straight in his chest, winding him as the kid followed through with his other, spinning Mazzi’s head around towards the boats in the marina just in time to see the blur of a figure of a woman dressed like a guy running along the dock, clearing the gate just as the kid on the bike arrived. The woman screaming out at them both, “Get away from him
you pricks—I'm a cop.” And she was, and her name was Daltrey.

  Chapter Two

  Daltrey stood above Mazzi Hegan and watched as the kids disappeared across the park into the darkness. The man now half up and back on his feet in his tight leopard skin trousers, stinking of booze, with blood running from his mouth.

  How long has it been since she'd ventured outside, Daltrey thought as she stared at him, days or weeks? How long had she spent holing herself up in the boat she knew would be empty with her face and hands burned and what felt like half the hair on her head gone. Locking herself away, sitting there, crying for hours, feeling her hands shake, knowing she was a coward.

  What had she been doing thinking she was so brave? Following the Russian like she had and failing herself, failing the street woman who'd been the brave one, the woman trying to protect her and being burned herself. The woman, without fear, doing everything and a terrified Daltrey had done nothing, except run. And run she had, like a kid running for their mother on the first day of school, with her face and hands burning from the flames the Russian had poured down upon her. Running both from him and from her shame.

  Day after day, hour after hour, she’d sat locked away from the real world, too frightened even to look in the mirror as her delicate fingers felt her burnt hair. Waking from dreams of him coming at her spitting death, seeing this woman beneath him, who should have been her, dying, feeling the boat rock on the water in the dock as people passed, clonking the wooden planks with their feet, she’d hid and watched them looking in as she looked out at the world through portholes of pitted brass. Until one day, as if it couldn’t have gotten any worse for her, she’d felt her hands shaking as she saw something across the water, something that could only make her question her sanity—a poster of Dan standing there in a pair of silver underpants.

  How could she have left her there? How could she have run as she did, Daltrey asked herself again, as she walked over to pick up a phone and handed it to the guy who should’ve know better than to walk alone through the park at night?

  ************

  It was around three in the morning when Chendrill, the private eye who used to be a cop, arrived back at Dan's mother’s house and, using his key, crept inside and took a shower before climbing into bed.

  A lot had happened over the last few days or so, and he was wondering if things could get any worse. Nearly burned to death, electrocuted, almost drowned, beaten in the ribs by a baker, kicked in the throat by a Sikh.

  Things needed to start settling down.

  Dan’s mother, Tricia, was stirring now, her body smooth and warm beside him. He could wake her and make love, but why, what was the point? All he'd do was be thinking about how long the wannabe gangster he'd just sent swimming out into the dark sea only hours before had taken to drown?

  Then he heard his woman say, as she turned naked to him and feeling her light touch upon his chest, “I was beginning to worry again.”

  Chendrill lay still and said, “There's no need.”

  But there was and Tricia knew it. This man who was big and strong and took no shit from anyone, the guy who used to be with the force but now was paid handsomely to keep an eye out for her son, who, despite his newfound fame as a supermodel/actor, still lived downstairs in the basement.

  Chendrill watched over him and had been staying with her since they’d become lovers. The night before, he’d disappeared and come back in the early hours with his hair full of salt, smelling of the ocean, with his shins ripped up and calves bruised.

  He had been a mess—now she'd sensed the sadness after he'd returned again. She said as she leaned up and placed her head on his chest, “Something's upset you?”

  God, Chendrill thought, she was right but how could she tell that just from him walking in the room? But she had sensed it, heard his breath, his silence. The way he lay himself next to her and didn't move. She asked, “Is it about last night?”

  It was—a man with a diamond in his front tooth had tried to end his life and almost succeeded, and only a few hours earlier Chendrill had turned it around giving the same man a taste of his own medicine. He took a deep breath and, lying, answered, “No, it's all good.”

  But it wasn't good, not by a long stretch. So already knowing the answer, but changing the subject, he asked, “Is Dan home?”

  Dan wasn’t; his red Ferrari absent from its usual spot outside his mother’s small stucco covered two-bedroom home.

  The truth was Dan had gotten back home from work and without showering jumped straight into his speed restricted racing car and headed into town to climb back into Adalia Seychan, who was now riding herself up and down on his cock with just enough light on in the hotel suite for her to see him but him not to see her.

  Not that Dan cared.

  He could have had the lights on full blast or the suite could have been pitch black and he'd have been happy. All he wanted was to feel her pushing down on him, her stopping as she felt him about to come every minute. He'd wondered what a woman's pussy felt like for years and now he knew—with hers all smooth and shaven and still tight for a woman in her fifties—or sixties, but who was counting—and all courtesy of a combination of yoga and a very talented surgeon who’d also done her neck.

  Smiling as she looked down at him holding her waist with one hand and with his other in a packet of family sized Cheesies, she said, “You like that do you—when I ride you like this?”

  Dan grinned and stuffed another handful of Cheesies in his mouth, the Rock Solid brand tablets he'd been given earlier in the day still living up to their name.

  “If we’re going to be working together and you’re going to love me in the movie Dan, then I want the chemistry to be real—you'll need to know what I like, and I like this.”

  And she did, she liked riding him and staring at his tight stomach as she let her thigh muscles bring herself up and down, feeling his dick on her cervix. She said, “You know what you’re rubbing inside me don't you?”

  Dan did, he knew all about the sexual reproductive organs of a woman on paper and for the last few years had been trying his best to get as close to the real thing as possible, so he said, “Yeah, when I was a kid, the cat next door got in and started playing with one of my mum’s mice.”

  Adalia stopped and looked down upon him, this young lad, sexy enough for her to dream up a bullshit excuse and leave her heart-shaped California swimming pool for Vancouver in the hope she could meet him. This guy, now inside her bareback, whose photo in a pair of silver undies had made her come her silk panties in the back of her blacked-out limo on Rodeo drive—her calling out to her driver through the communication device to make another four lefts so she could see him again. She said, “Oh!”

  “Yeah,” Dan said, “Mum got all embarrassed, pretended it was the real thing, and chased it out into the garden with a broom.”

  Then as Adalia pulled herself almost off of him and slowly dropped back down, she said, “That's not the best thing to be talking about when you're making love to a woman, Dan.”

  And that's what he was doing at last, making love, or fucking and eating Cheesies—depending on who’s perspective you took. He heard Adalia carry on, saying, “You need to be telling me how beautiful I am, how much I mean to you. Make me feel like a beautiful woman. Tell me I'm special Dan—tell me what you want to do to me.”

  Dan gave it some thought as he looked up at this woman he could barely see in the faint light coming in from the hotel suite’s minibar that he’d left open, then said, “I wanna fuck you in the ass.”

  That, he thought, was what she wanted to hear—as it was all this other older woman who'd picked him up in the street and sneaked back to his basement a couple of nights back had kept saying. That is, before his mum burst in the room, turned on the ugly lights, and kicked her out.

  “Really? Don't try to run before you can walk Daniel,” Adalia said with a grin to this kid who'd obviously spent too many late nights on the internet as he’d said it like
a porn star. This same kid who could act and ad lib like a natural and with whom she was about to make a movie. The same kid who she was going to show to the Western world and turn into a star, so that when he was just that and the people had begun to forget her, she could let it slip they'd been in love and ride the tabloid wave until no one longer cared.

  Leaning down she felt her breasts touch his chest as she gently kissed him on the mouth and said, “You think you can do that to me, do you big boy? Well why don't you start by fondling my breasts then, since you’ve got your big hard cock where it’s supposed to be—try holding me down on top of you and give me everything you've got before you start fantasizing.”

  And raising her buttocks a little to meet him, Adalia pulled Dan’s hand from her waist and whispered in his ear, “Go on Dan, I'm waiting—touch my breasts, feel them, caress them, hold me down and fuck me as hard as you can and try not to come whilst you pound me until I have.”

  Dan reached up and began to touch Adalia Seychan’s breasts with his right hand, feeling their softness as her nipples grew harder beneath his fingertips. He watched as Adalia closed her eyes whilst he lifted his other hand up and began rubbing both breasts with both hands, squishing them, tugging them, stretching out her nipples, pulling them away from her until Adalia worried he’d undo all the work she’d had done and asked him to stop, “Oh Dan, please be gentle with me.”

  And with her own hands she pulled his hands up, placing them onto her shoulders. Then she said, “Hold me down Daniel, hold me to you,” as he looked up at her breasts, seeing them all covered in orange Cheesie stains and sticky crumbs from his fingers.

  Adalia looked at him staring up at them as Dan panicked, leaning up quickly before she could see the mess he’d made; he took her breasts in his mouth and began to lick them all over. Closing her eyes in delight as she felt his tongue sweep across her breasts, his teeth nibbling at the crumbs around her nipples, Adalia saying, “Yes Dan, do that. Oh yes, Dan. Yes! Do that and fuck me, Dan. Fuck me hard.”