An Eye for an Eye

I stopped. My heightened senses working overtime, listening, smelling, my eyes peering into the darkness checking for anything that could spell danger. I knew this room as well as I did my own, I knew every stick of furniture in it as well as my own. I had spent hours studying the floor plan of this room, watching a 'fly around' video of this room until I had committed this room to memory. It was my job to learn as much as I could about my target and where he lived before I went in and got the information vital to the next phase of the operation, which was illegal, the information gained could not be used in court, but then a court was the last place that it would be used, that had been tried in the past and failed.

I was on one knee and slowly 'scanned' the spaces, searching for a threat, was it my imagination, or had I heard the soft breathing of someone in the large bed, hopefully asleep, I'd have to risk waking her, I knew that it wasn't the man in question, it couldn't have been, because I had seen him not more than half an hour ago and there was no way that he was going to be in that bed and that quiet. I raised myself into a crouching stance and moved silently to the door at the other side of the next room which would lead me to my target, the room that was the centre of his world, the room from which he controlled his empire, the room that I had to penetrate if I was to succeed with my mission, my mission to bring him down.

My gloved hand reached for the door handle, I held it for several seconds before slowly turning it the quarter turn necessary to open it. I felt the tongue of the lock slide into the door frame and free the door. Slowly I began to open it, not expecting any alarm to activate because I had disabled the alarm system before I entered the house, but you can't be certain that there wasn't a secondary system in place to protect such an important room. So far so good, the door moved silently open and I eased myself into the room, closing the door behind me, placing a wedge under the door to, if not prevent, at least slow down, any person trying to enter while I was inside.

Moving around the periphery of the room to avoid the motion sensors that I knew covered the area just inside the door, these I knew were on a back-up battery and remained active even if there was a power outage. I reached the bookcase that concealed my goal, the safe that contained the access codes to his computer system. He didn't trust the on-line storage systems that so many men in his world were encouraged to use, fearing that, despite assurances that it could never happen, someone would hack into such a cloud based system and he'd lose everything. For someone with his taste in books, the least likely was the one that hid his safe. I placed my finger on the top of the spine of a leather bound copy of the 'Complete Works of William Shakespeare' and pulled it toward me. There was the quietest of 'clicks' as the lock was released and the panel swung open. I shone my small LED torch on the combination keypad and punched in the pin number followed by the 'A' key and the green light shone, telling me that it was open.

Reaching in I removed the small black book that contained his codes and replaced it with an identical one that I had in my pocket, one that was identical in all but one important aspect, the codes were just a little different to his. It had taken some time to get his codes, but it wasn't enough to gain access to them, I had to substitute them for codes that would not allow him access to his system, I needed time for the next phase of the operation. I also wanted him to panic when he couldn't get into his system, I knew that he was prone to losing his temper when he lost control. I was counting on this to happen because I also knew that, when he lost his temper, he also lost his confidence and began to make mistakes. These mistakes were what I hoped would lead to me getting enough to bring his world crashing down. An eye for an eye.

I closed the safe door and the panel. Turning, I began to slowly and silently retrace my crouching steps. Through the office door and into his bedroom, across the floor I crouched, to the far door and my escape. My hand reached for the door handle. "You are good, I'll give you that." I froze. Damn! The sleeping person was now awake, she hadn't gone with him tonight, but who had, who was it that was with him at that Industry function? A torch beam crossed the room to light my face. "Stand up and let me see the man who thought that he could penetrate my husband's security system."

I stood, my hands up, palms facing her. I blinked at the light and she switched it off, reaching for the bedside lamp.

"You can put your hands down. Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything silly like scream. Come, sit here." She patted the bed beside her. I sat, I couldn't be sure that she didn't have a gun in her hand that was hidden under the covers. "I'll give you this, you were very quiet, the only sound that I heard was when you shoved something under the door, I assumed that it was to prevent me or someone else from interrupting you doing what it was that you were doing. I won't even ask what that was, because I don't care, even if it leads to my husband's death, I no longer care what happens to him."

"Why would you not care?" I was puzzled by her statement.

"For the simple reason that I've had enough of him and the way that he treats me. A woman should never have to put up with what I've been forced to over the past ten years. If I could have found a way to hurt him without endangering myself, believe me I would have." I took a closer look at her. I could understand why he would have married her, if not for the worry lines on her face, she would still have been a beautiful woman. The cares of her world had proved too much for her, she needed to be released from this life and was obviously looking to me to help her escape. "How did you plan to get away from here?"

"The same way that I came, through the conservatory, across the lawn and down the stormwater drain to the other side of the park, I have my car parked there."

"Take me with you, please." While the lines on her face were those of a woman some ten years older than she was, her breasts were those of a woman of her real age. The reason that I mention this is that when she pleaded with me to take her with me, she let the sheet that she had held in front of her, slip down, her nightdress did nothing to conceal her breasts from my gaze, and gaze I did. For a woman in her late thirties she was amazingly well preserved, her pink nipples poked at the transparent fabric of her nightdress, if I didn't know better I'd say that she was aroused by my presence in her bedroom.

Bringing myself back to reality with a jerk I said, "You can't go anywhere like that now, can you?"

"No, but I can change into something more appropriate in a few minutes, and I won't even ask you to turn around while I do it, I want, I need, to experience once more the feeling of a man who is interested enough to watch me dress."

I could no more ignore her dressing than breathe, there was something sensual about the way that she went about it, milking it for all that she was worth, and I was responding, I couldn't stop my reaction and decided that I didn't want to. Somehow I wanted her to know that at least I thought that she was a beautiful woman.

She finished dressing, track pants and top, no bra or panties, sneakers and a baseball cap, in a matter of minutes and came to me, stroking my engorged cock. "Thank you for that, thank him for that, I must reward the both of you. But not now, we'd better make a move, the bastard should be home anytime soon."

I led her through the darkened house and out across the back lawn to where there was a sump at the opening of the stormwater drain. I raised the grating and pointed inside. "Do you think that you can crawl down that pipe?"

"If you can do it, I can. Do you want me to go first?"

"Yes, I have to replace the grating after us. Don't worry, the pipe is clear, just be careful when you get to the end, there's a drop of about a metre into the open drain." She dropped into the sump and crawled away while I replaced the grating behind me.

About halfway along I bumped into her, my head ramming into her. "That felt good, that's the first time any part of a man has touched me there in I don't know how long. Do it again."

I moved forward and my head once more pushed against her, I suppose it was her pussy that was the target, all I knew that it was soft and caused her to chuckle. She resumed her crawl, and soon stopped at the end of the pipe. I saw her framed against the soft moonlight and didn't bump into her. "Spoilsport." She chuckled.

"There'll be plenty of time for fun and games when we're right away from here."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." She swivelled around, and, grabbing the lip of the pipe, swung herself out and stood in the open drain. I followed suit and found myself in her arms. "I like this feeling of freedom." Her lips brushed mine, paused and pressed against mine, her arms around my neck prevented an escape, but that was if I wanted to escape, which I didn't. This was an unexpected complication, one that I had every intention of taking advantage of. The thought of taking something of his added excitement to the job.

"Come on, we'd better make ourselves scarce." I led her up the drain to the edge of the park and where I'd parked my car. Half an hour later we'd parked the car in my garage and entered my house. "It's nothing like your place, but it's all mine." This was in reference to the fact that her husband had recently re-mortgaged his home to finance his latest deal.

"The less that I come into contact with the world of high finance the better as far as I'm concerned. I have lived in that world, and believe me it holds no attraction for me. He, on the other hand, would be lost without it, it's what he lives for every waking moment."

"I could never understand men who play games with money, usually someone else's, everything that they do is about the big earn, but they produce nothing but the illusion of wealth, a financial downturn can wipe them out completely."

"I know what you mean, you wouldn't believe how many times he has been financially in the red and having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to put food on the table. But then he always seems to find a way out. Do you know what his first money making scheme was?"

"I hate to think."

"He sent out literally hundreds of letters to people, offering, for the small sum of $25, to teach them how to make lots of money with very little effort. When the greedy replied all that they got in return was a flyer explaining that all that they needed to do was to send out literally hundreds of letters just like his. The amazing part was that his success rate from those letters was around fifty percent."

"Greed is an amazing thing, it causes ordinary, rational people to do stupid things."

"Tell me about it. He got onto the dot com bubble in its infancy and set up a scheme that involved multi-level marketing of dot coms. Then he read in, of all things, a computer magazine that predicted that the bubble was about to burst in the US, so he sold his company to another for an obscene amount of money just before the bubble burst here in Australia. He got death threats after that one, but that didn't bother him at all. Hide like a rhino that man, I tell you."

"I bet that there's one thing that will get under that thick skin of his."

"What's that?"

"You not being at home when he gets there. Guys like him are driven by their own opinion of their own self-worth, take that away and they lose the plot big time."

"Do you think that will happen this time?"

"You bet, especially when I've finished with him."

"That leads me to a question that I should have asked when I first saw you. Just what were you doing in my husband's study?"

"I was borrowing his security and transaction codes."

"But he'll notice them missing when he goes to his safe in the morning."

"He won't notice anything until he goes to use them, you see I replaced them with a book of similar codes, which of course won't work."

"What do you intend to do with those codes?"

"Let's say that I'm going to redistribute some of the wealth that he has 'borrowed' from other people."

"But why? Who is employing you to do this, presuming that you're working for someone and not for yourself?"

"Who it is is irrelevant, let's just say that he has upset far too many people for far too long to continue to get away with it. Certain people have looked at his finances and have reached the conclusion that, in the not too distant future he will no longer be able to service his outstanding loans. They are taking steps to ensure that he will no longer be able to obtain funds from legitimate sources, and are also taking steps to ensure that, when he defaults on his next repayments, which he has already planned to do, they will have covered their arses. In order to do this they will remove from his offshore bank accounts sufficient to cover their exposure."

"But isn't that against the law?"

"Technically yes, but these funds are secreted in offshore accounts and they represent moneys that he has acquired from my principals by means that could be construed as illegal. They are moneys borrowed for a purpose and which he had no intention of using for that purpose, in other words, fraudulently obtained funds. The legal processes and time involved in recovering those funds by legitimate means are something that my principals have decided do not fit into their timeline, hence this operation. He has obtained funds as a hedge against his retirement, and because he has mortgaged his house against those borrowings, there will be little left for you when he disappears."

"Disappears? What do you mean disappears?"

"We know that there will be a yachting accident. His yacht will disappear somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. There will be a mayday call to AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority) that he is under attack from pirates, not an uncommon occurrence in the waters around the Philippines, and some days later wreckage will be found that will be identified as his yacht. It's marvellous what can be achieved with self-steering yachts and an inflatable tender, false papers and a new identity."

"How do you know this?"

"From purchases that he has made over the past month. His yacht, that trapping of wealth that he uses to smooth talk prospective lenders into lending, has now been fitted with self-steering gear and distinctive new sails, supposedly in preparation for the next single-handed offshore race. He has bought a tender that he will pick up along the way north. We know that he has acquired, through contacts, a high powered rifle similar to those used by pirates, and that he will use to shoot up the yacht to add authenticity to his story. We believe that he has obtained a device that will deploy his EPIRB (emergency beacon) some time after he has 'abandoned ship' and around the same time that AMSA receives his distress call. It will be shortly after that time that he will find that he will not be able to access his funds."

"But won't he try to get funds before he leaves?"

"No, he has already taken sufficient from his account for his immediate needs. He plans to set sail the day after tomorrow. With your disappearance, which we did not factor in by the way, he will have an even better reason to make a run for it, he will assume that you have discovered his duplicity and are going to the authorities and he needs to make himself scarce before they can investigate."

"One question." She had a worried look on her face.

"Yes?" I had a worried look on mine.

"Your skills at breaking and entering, where do they come from?"

"I was hoping that you wouldn't ask that, you do realise that if I tell you I'll be forced to kill you." Her face went from worried to scared in a nanosecond. "Not really, it's no secret that there are sections of the military that are trained in such skills, to be able to infiltrate and obtain information, plant bugs and bombs, and get away without being caught, as well as the usual grizzly bits like killing people, I just happen to have been in one of those sections. Now my skills are in demand by various people, including I might add, law enforcement, but not in this case. I'm strictly freelance, but you won't ever see me in the Yellow Pages, my business is strictly by word of mouth, and I research the hirer before I take the assignment. My fee is commensurate with the risks involved and the outcome, it would upset your husband no end if he knew that the fee for this job is modest to say the least."

"So all you had to do was to get into his study, steal his code book and then what?"

"Getting the code book was just the beginning, this is the second time that I've taken it, the first was for me to photograph it so that I would be able to make a passable duplicate, and return it un-noticed. Having got it, now I have to use it to retrieve the money that he has stolen and return that to its rightful owners before he needs to access his accounts."

"How much time have you got?"

"Probably the best part of a week, he has to get well away from the country and somewhere near where he intends the yacht to be found, so a week should do it."

"But you're going to gain access quicker than that, aren't you?"

"How did you guess? I'm going to begin work on it first thing in the morning. I figure that I need to get onto it ASAP because I suspect that he will use the satellite phone he has installed to access his accounts in the Caymans. He won't do anything for a day or two and when he does he will discover the phone that he paid good money for doesn't work. I fried the connection before I went to your house. "

"What are you going to do until then?" She had a funny look on her face now.

"I'm going to bed, and I suggest that you do the same. I've got a spare bedroom and the bed is actually made up, so sleeping arrangements aren't a problem."

"Damn!"

"Why damn?"

"Here I was hoping to be able to share the bed with my knight in shining armour."

"Do you think that wise?"

"Maybe not wise, but I like the idea. Do you have any objections?"

"Hundreds, but you won't agree with any of them."

"Well then, shall we adjourn to your bed?"

"Very well, but let me warn you, I fully intend to go straight to sleep."

"That gives me hope. Now if you'd said that you would go straight to sleep I would have worried. You can intend all you like, whether you succeed is another thing. When you've been on short rations for as long as I have, you take it where you can get it, and I fully intend to get it."

"Do you mean to tell me that someone as gorgeous as you cannot convince her own husband, or someone else, to make love to her?"

"He spends upwards of twenty hours a day finding new and creative ways of making money, that doesn't leave a lot of time for him to make love to me. As for the other, none of our friends interest me and I have no desire to go looking for casual sex."

"And you've never thought of looking for it anywhere else?"

"Oh I've thought about it, but you obviously don't know my husband very well. He does not allow me to leave the house at night without him, and during the day it is only to go to the supermarket to buy food. His trappings of wealth and leisure do not extend to me."

"If you're playing on my sympathy, it's working." We met and kissed, me tentatively, she hungrily. My intentions were denied, not that I'm one to complain, after all I'd been on short rations for a while myself, not every woman is impressed by the strong silent type, many of them look for SNAGS, and I sure as hell wasn't one of those.