On the Job Assistant

*When you decide to hunt a boar, you bring a spear if you want to live*

Stephanie sat across from her former co-worker, Peter Bartowski. He had taken her old job back at her old corporation. He was an Account Manager. She had risen to one step away from Account Manager at her new firm in only two years so she was still a decade faster in her advancement over him. Peter had scrupulously played by the rules, until it came to breaking her.

"What do you want Peter?" she asked pleasantly as she tasted her pasta appetizer.

"I've been watching your progress, Stephanie and it has been disturbing," Peter began evenly. "Some of your old co-workers and I are concerned by what we've seen. We aren't sure what you've done but we want it to stop."

"So, let me get this straight; I've worked my ass off to make Floor Manager and you are pissed with me but you can't tell me what I've done wrong? How does that work?" Stephanie asked.

"The next newest Floor Manager has been there eight years, Stephanie. What did you do to it in only two?"

"I don't know. My previous Floor Supervisor had a heart attack and died on the job. After that, I ran my unit as the strongest producer for four quarters in a row, Peter. I earned this," Stephanie pointed out with some heat.

"Well, we don't think so, and we think you should take a step back. You got a walk on your past crimes. We don't think you should be allowed to continue hurting people. The Upper Management didn't want to make an example of you, but you haven't been forgotten. I have little doubt you've hurt more people on the way up. It isn't happening again."

"What do you want me to do?" Stephanie sighed. It was easy to sound defeated now. They'd nearly broken her the first time. Nathan had saved her then. She'd saved Nathan in return, but no one else knew that.

"Take a demotion to Floor Supervisor," he ordered her. Stephanie doubted this was up for discussion. One of Peter's flaws was his rigidity of thinking.

"If I don't?" she asked.

"Your current boss discovers some of your past indiscretions with us," he threatened.

"That's downright underhanded Peter. I was guaranteed that none of that would come to light if I was a good girl and went quietly. Why are you going against that agreement?"

"People like you have to be stopped," Peter insisted.

"People like me? Oh, okay if you put it like that." Stephanie weighed her options. "Peter, can you wait until the end of March for my demotion? I'd like to finish out the quarter at least. That way I'll qualify for that last bonus."

"No. I'll give you until the end of the week. If we haven't heard from you by Monday, I'll take action," he promised.

"Peter please," Stephanie sounded exasperated, "I know you aren't acting alone. I'm sure the whole gang is going to be on in the kill. Give me this much. I won't be back in the office until Tuesday -- we have a weekend team-building exercise -- can you give me until then so I can make a graceful exit?"

Peter was thinking it over. Stephanie didn't do anything overtly sexual. She did her best to look pathetic.

"If we don't have confirmation that you've been demoted by Tuesday at ten, we will send the information over at eleven. We'll make sure you stay in the grave this time," he stated with authority.

"Thank you Peter; I'll make best use of the time," Stephanie said then made a few stabs at her meal. "Peter, I've lost my appetite. I'll cover your meal, but I have to go now."

"That won't be necessary," Peter protested.

"No Peter, you came and warned me. I won't forget it," Stephanie promised him.

She flagged down the waiter, got the bill, paid and left. Once outside she immediately pulled out the phone and called Nathan.

"We have a problem. Something has come up. We need to talk," she told him.

"Oh ... we should meet at the apartment then. I'll be there in thirty," he answered.

"Are you still at work? It is lunch time," Stephanie noted.

"When have you not known me to be dedicated to my job," he stated evenly. Stephanie knew that was right. In fact, she was counting on it. Peter had given her five days to save her life and livelihood; she didn't plan to waste them.

(Sunday night)

Peter and Anne Bartowski sat at the foot of their bed in their slightly upscale home in the suburbs that his promotion a few years back had afforded him. They had duct tape on their mouths and their hands and feet were bound with nylon cord. The smaller of the two assailants had them covered with a gun. She -- he was assuming it was a she -- though masked seemed very nervous.

The larger of the two came in three times, each trip depositing one of their three children onto the floor in a bound and kneeling position. He too had a gun, but he was anything but nervous. He seemed so utterly calm it was frightening. Both the home invaders were dressed in black and wore black ski masks. Once the last child was in the room, the woman put her gun in her belt and pulled a video camera out of a black travel bag the two had shown up with.

The man put a silencer on his weapon which caused the parents to moan fearfully. When the woman nodded the man began speaking.

"I am here to talk to you about Stephanie Lamborne. If you use her name, I will kill your youngest child Mr. Bartowski?" The man said.

Peter blanched then nodded. The woman and the two youngest children started to sob. The man looked to the woman who gave him the thumbs up. She was clearly now recording the events. The man removed the tape from Peter's mouth.

"Who is part of your conspiracy?"

"Who are you?" Peter begged. "What do you want?"

"Who is part of your conspiracy?" the man repeated.

"Listen, I'm not sure of what you mean," Peter insisted. The man turned and blew Peter's eldest child's (a son) brain all over the carpet with a well-aimed shot to the forehead.

Peter gasped. Anne Bartowski screamed against tape and slid off the bed.

"You have two children left Mr. Bartowski," the man said in a dispassionate, almost bored voice. "If you want to keep playing games, I can keep shooting. If you don't want to see any more of your children die, you will answer my questions truthfully and quickly. Do we understand each other now?"

"Please, I beg you, they are just children. They don't have anything to do with this," Peter begged.

"We apparently don't have an understanding," the man sighed. He pointed the pistol at the middle child's head.

"Wait, please, I understand. I understand. What do you want to know?" Peter said desperately.

"Who is part of your conspiracy?" the man said for a third time. He moved the gun down to his side. Peter began spewing forth names. When he finished the man studied him for a second.

"Who else?" the man shrugged then leveled the gun at the child's head once more.

"Joel Huxley," Peter groaned.

"Joel Huxley in Legal?" the man asked. Peter nodded. "I believe you," the man said. "Good men who play by the rules shouldn't do bad things. They have unforeseen consequences." He then blew Peter's brains all over his comforter, pillows, and headboard. He grabbed the wife and flopped her on the bed next to her dead husband.

"I said he wouldn't have to watch his children die," the man stated calmly. "I never promised you that." He proceeded to spatter the two remaining children's heads all over the wall. He motioned the woman to cut the video. The man leaned into the semi-comatose body of Anne Bartowski. He slapped her a few times to get her attention.

"Stephanie Lamborne sends her regards and wants you to know she remembers you holding down her arm while your husband fucked her. She wanted you to know what it felt like to lose everything before you die." The man put the gun into her mouth. As she gagged on it, he pulled the trigger.

"Okay," Nathan told Kikki, "grab up the items I told you about and let's get out of here."

"Damn Nathan, that was so ... intense," Kikki gasped.

"We aren't free and clear yet. Let's get moving," Nathan urged her. "We aren't safe until we get back to your place."

"Nathan, I'm so horny," she said in disbelief.

"We'll take care of that at your place as well. Priorities," he stressed. The finished the looting of the high-end portable items and exited the house. To the authorities it would appear to be a home invasion gone horribly wrong. Only a handful of people would ever need to know different.

(Monday morning)

Joel Huxley was walking across the plaza leading into his office building.

"Mr. Huxley," a man called out. Huxley sighed and tried to avoid this unknown solicitor. The man bared his way.

"Yes," Joel said in an exasperated voice.

"This concerns Stephanie Lamborne," the darkly handsome man said by way of an introduction.

"Oh, well you can tell Ms. Lamborne that her deadline is still tomorrow morning. I was against Peter giving her even that long," Joel declared.

"I understand that, and it is because of Mr. Bartowski that I am here today," the man responded. He pulled out a video camera and tilted the screen so that they could both see it. The video came on. It showed Peter and his wife bound up and sitting on what looked to be their bed.

"What is this about?" Joel asked.

"It will become obvious right now," the stranger said. Right then it looked like one of Peter's kids was murdered off-screen.

"What the hell?" Joel gasped. Peter began naming names and sobbing. After a brief hesitation, he gave up Joel as well. Seconds later, Peter was dead. Two more shots went off-screen as well. Joel struggled to remember how large Peter's family was. The video ended.

"Who the hell are you?" Joel whispered to the strange man with the cold, dead eyes.

"You might say I am a friend of Stephanie Lamborne. What is pertinent to you is that I knew how to find Peter, and now I know how to find you and your wife. I know how to find everyone on the list. I suggest you do some serious soul-searching over the next tweny-four hours."

"What ..." Joel stammered.

"If Ms. Lamborne has her job on Wednesday morning, we can forget this unfortunate incident. If she becomes financially challenged, the possibility exists that things won't go well for you and your family."

"What about Peter? You murdered him. You can't expect us to just forget that," Joel wondered.

"I never said I killed Peter. I do know that Peter is dead and that you are not. Now, you can do the right thing and save your family, or betray your corporate code of ethics, for a second time, and screw over Ms. Lamborne. The choice is yours. I suggest you do the right thing."

"I could call security," Joel threatened.

"They won't catch me, thus us meeting out here in the plaza as opposed to in your office. I would have to assume by that action you didn't have Ms. Lamborne's best interest at heart and act accordingly," the man told Joel.

"I'm not going to get away with murder. Peter was a friend," Joel struggled to say.

"Peter is past caring. You can implicate Ms. Lamborne in his murder, but in doing so implicate yourself in as scheme to blackmail her. I guarantee that she has an alibi. You have a video of a man getting murdered and naming you as a member of an unknown conspiracy."

"Now I ask you again; how much are you willing to sacrifice to do the wrong thing?" the man stated. "You have tweny-four hours to decide. I suggest you convince the other people on the list to do the right thing as well."

"I will need a copy of the video," Joel suggested.

"Not likely. They will believe you without seeing it while I don't feel obliged to reveal the tape until it serves Ms. Lamborne's interests."

"I can't believe she is this ruthless. Peter was doing her a favor," Joel told him.

"Joel, Peter was salving his own conscious. All of you should have known that you were putting Ms. Lamborne's back against the wall. Did you really think she would let you fuck her over a second time?"

"I ...you know she will destroy you too?" Joel warned.

"I believe she will try," the man confessed.

"What makes you think that you will survive her? If she's willing to kill a nice guy like Peter, what do you think she will do to you?" Joel threatened.

"I'm willing to do things she's not, Mr. Huxley," the man stated honestly. "Now that you know what we are both capable of, I hope you will make the smart decision. Believe me, I am more than willing to have the same talk with another one of your colleagues if you prove to be unreasonable. Hopefully they will find the video of you to be more enlightening. Bye," the man said as he departed.

Joel didn't know what to do. He staggered over to a bench and sat down. He called his wife only to hear the sound of her voice. He stood back up and went to his office. Joel had to start talking to a specific group of people.

(Tuesday night)

Kikki, Stephanie, and Nathan sat around Nathan's little apartment eating some Greek take-out. Kikki and Stephanie felt giddy. Kikki was basking in witnessing the successful application of precision force in solving a delicate problem. That is how she saw the murder she'd participated in. Nathan had been so casual yet methodical; it hardly felt like murder at all.

For Stephanie, it was the dual thrill of destroying not one but many enemies at the same time, along with the affirmation of her status at her new corporation. She'd been threatened with destruction and survived. Sure she had only seen the video once before Nathan hid it away somewhere, but that one moment had been magical.

That fool Peter had actually thought he was doing the right thing by warning her. It had been right -- for her; not so much for his wife and kids. There was an extra degree of satisfaction that the last thought going through Anne Bartowski's mind was that she'd been destroyed by Stephanie Lamborne. Now that the crisis had passed, she desperately wanted Nathan all to herself.

For Nathan, thoughts were more mundane. He wondered if the lamb on his sandwich had been cooked enough. He didn't worry about the tape; he had destroyed it. Stephanie might want some evidence of the deaths locked safely away somewhere, but Nathan thought that was foolish. Murder is what made things happen. It wasn't a game. It wasn't thrilling.

Kikki stole Nathan a glance. It told him that she was going to do something crazy and off the wall though he didn't know what that was. He followed her gaze to Stephanie. Nathan had little worry that Kikki could do Stephanie permanent harm. Stephanie had enough size on her that their equal strengths would allow him to intervene before things got too nasty.

"You say that you are in charge so let me show you what being in charge gets you," Kikki murmured as she crawled across the sofa to Stephanie. Stephanie looked suspiciously at Nathan, but the man looked amused, not particularly unhappy. Whether this ploy actually worked was up to Stephanie. She didn't like Kikki, but the naked desire of the woman to belong was a delicious vulnerability.

Stephanie split her legs and let Kikki draw close. For a moment their faces were inches apart then Kikki leaned in and gave Stephanie a kiss on the lips. It was hardly electric, but it was not amateurish either. Stephanie decided to make an exception in the young woman's case and show her how it was done. Steph pulled Kikki into a longer, breath-stealing embrace. Propped against the arm of the sofa, she was able to use one hand to push the back of Kikki's head in while the other reached out and massaged the closest breast of the smaller woman.

Stephanie pulled back on Kikki's hair and sneered slightly.

"Strip," Stephanie commanded. Instead of finding resistance, the young Asian lady hastened to obey. On the scale of raw sensual femininity she had Kikki beat. Naked, the woman looked a lot less like a threat, but so did most people. What she did look like was being eager to please.

Stephanie met Kikki half way but where Kikki expected a kiss, Stephanie put a hand on her chest keeping her at a distance. She ran her fingers along Kikki's petite breasts, rubbing the back of her knuckles over the nipples in an appraising gesture. One hand departed to draw a trail up above the breast to the collarbone then neck. The other hand elicited more please, tracing a line down to Kikki's nether regions.

"Trim this," Stephanie commented as she stroked her fingers through her pubic hair; "be stylistic." Stephanie waited until Kikki nodded before going farther down. Kikki rose up on her knees to give Stephanie easier access. She dipped two fingers into the tight gap causing Kikki to worry her lower lip.

"Very wet," Stephanie observed casually. She brought the fingers up to her nose, sniffed, and then licked the tip. She tilted her head in acceptance then forced the fingers between Kikki's lips.

"Lick it clean," Stephanie commanded. Kikki sucked and licked the finger until Stephanie was satisfied.

"Nathan, go get my bath oils," Stephanie said. Nathan sat unmoving. "Nathan, go get my bath oils please. They are for Kikki," Stephanie repeated with greater diplomacy. Nathan got up and retreated to the bathroom of his tiny flat. He retrieved several of the oils Stephanie had cluttered around the tub. When he got back he laid them out for the women to see before sitting cross-legged in the best position to see what was transpiring.

Stephanie retrieved a particularly thick oil she preferred for its feel and scent. She uncapped it and let several drops fall over each breast until a tantalizing drop hung from each nipple.

"Rub it in," Stephanie directed. She could quickly see how the new sensation made the very art of touching one's self heightened to a new level. Kikki was licking her lips and closed her eyes.

She let several more drops fall over Kikki's body and the lithe woman quickly spread the sensation over her toned form. When she reached between her legs, Stephanie stopped her hand and Kikki groaned in disappointment.

"You use different oils there," Stephanie informed her, lifting a new bottle before her. Kikki reached for it but Stephanie stopped her hand. "No."

Kikki looked hurt and confused, just the way Stephanie wanted it.

"Tomorrow go out and get yourself some decent bras and panties, something that says you are sexual and desirable. Throw everything else out. I'll give you some brands to choose from. Also, I'll give you the list of some of the oils I want you to use."

"But..." Kikki began, clearly in need.

"Go home. Tomorrow is a new day. We have new plans to make and if you want this to work, you will have to extend yourselves in new ways to get there."

Kikki got dressed, got the list from Stephanie and Nathan walked her to the door. They kissed and Kikki departed.

"Nathan," Stephanie said in her sexiest voice.

"I know what you are doing and I don't like it," Nathan responded evenly.

"Nathan, we won today --surely?"

"Stop being such a bitch and I'll think about it," he informed her dispassionately.

The problem was twofold; for some reason the more unattainable Nathan became the more she desired him. The other problem was that all she knew how to be was a bitch.

(One week later)

It was still morning when a homicide detective gave Stephanie a call.

"Ms. Lamborne, this is Detective Mullins. I wonder if I could have a moment of your time."

"Sure thing detective; what can I do for you?" Stephanie answered calmly while her heart raced.

"I'm looking into the death of Peter Bartowski and his family ten days ago. I have from his phone records that the two of you talked and in his schedule he had a lunch meeting with you. Can I ask you what that was about?"

"Oh God, that's horrible. His whole family you say? I'll tell you what I know if you think it will help; Peter and I parted on bad terms when I left my former company and Peter began feeling terrible about it. At lunch I decided to not accept his apology and I left after the appetizer."