Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 45
As the plane gained altitude, Olivia Lockheed looked down at the shimmering blue and white costume in her hands. She held it up and ran her fingertips over the smooth fabric, unable to believe it was hers. The feel of the fabric, and memories of the costume on the superheroine's body, aroused her. After a few moments of admiration, she returned it to the inside of a backpack on the seat next to her. The heroine’s boots, gloves, tights, and necklace sat in the bottom of the bag.
A pang of regret stabbed at her heart as she imagined Sapphire Angel — Beth Harper — back at the prison, without her signature items. It wasn't guilt Lockheed felt, though. No, definitely not guilt. Instead, Lockheed lamented lost dreams. Perhaps her desire for the fantastic woman had only ever been a fantasy, but her brief taste of the heroine had ignited an obsession. Savage’s destruction of the stunning woman had crushed any chance her dreams would come true.
Satisfaction tempered her regret, though. Her quarrel hadn’t been with Sapphire Angel. It was Beth Harper with whom she had a problem. The two women had clashed from the very beginning, before Lockheed’s FBI days. It seemed like a lifetime ago, even if it had been only seven months earlier. Harper had been a thorn in Lockheed’s side, and had now had taken a fall like no other. Lockheed had gotten the best of Harper, and it hadn’t even been close. She felt smug satisfaction at putting the little blond woman in her place.
Lockheed sighed and pulled the costume back out of the bag. As she held the minidress in her hand, it was hard not to fantasize about running her hands over Sapphire Angel’s body. The FBI agent felt desire bubbling up inside her again, and considered how to satiate it. This evening, after they landed in Harrisburg, she would visit her favorite club. There she would find a pretty blond upon whom to release her frustrations.
She’d always favored petite women, like Sapphire Angel, but now she faced a conundrum. Lockheed loved Sapphire Angel’s slender body, but also loved the heroine’s power. Or, more accurately, the FBI agent loved controlling that power. Lockheed might need to deviate from her normal preferences and find a strong woman to control tonight.
A snicker from the front of the plane brought Lockheed from her thoughts. She glanced up to see Maximus Savage watching her from a plush seat near the cockpit entrance. She blushed, wondering if her arousal had been evident. Savage rose from his seat and marched back to her.
“You’ll never have her now,” he said with a snort.
Lockheed scowled and stuffed the costume back into the back. She looked away from the gang leader and said nothing.
“But that’s not why I came back here,” he said. “We need to talk about our deal.”
Lockheed stiffened. Her agreement to work with the gang had seemed theoretical, but now it stared her in the face. This was real.
“What about it?” she asked, her voice tight.
“If you want to take Howard’s place, you need to come through for me. I need information — and I don’t mean the location of Lynch and your partner. If Howard didn’t already tell you, I know where they are. So I need something else. I want you to get your hands on the FBI manpower rosters for all the cities where my gang operates. Names, experience, skills. Where they stay. Everything.”
“I… I don’t have access to that kind of information. I’m too low in the pecking order.”
Savage stared at her, and for a moment she thought he would reach out and choke her. But he didn’t. He spoke instead.
“I can probably change that,” he said, and a thin smile crossed his rugged face.
Lockheed frowned.
“You can get me higher in the bureau’s pecking order?” she asked. “Somehow, I have a hard time believing that.”
“Shut the fuck up and listen to me, you stupid bitch,” he said, although there was no venom in his voice. He said the words in an even tone, as if talking about the weather. Lockheed sat still and listened.
“What would help you move you up the ranks, besides the normal way those things happen?” he asked.
Lockheed stared at him, her mind working.
“Well,” she shrugged. “The agency is desperate for a win. So I’d need a success. A pretty decent one. But something tells me that isn’t happening, because any win would come at your gang’s expense. And even with a success, there are no openings above me at the present.”
“And I’m supposed to be the dumb brute,” Savage said, shaking his head. “You’re not thinking outside the box. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I have a few men who are skimming some money off the top of some of our projects. They don’t realize I’m wise to it. I need to set an example. So I’ll set them up — I’ll send them on a job, which you’ll know about, through your brilliant police work, of course. You nab them, and suddenly Sapphire Angel isn’t the only person who has taken down a few of my men.”
“You’d let that happen?” Lockheed asked. “That’s not how you operate.”
“I’d think of it as one step back and two steps forward. The more information you have access to, the more it will help me and my men going forward. And even though the public and your bosses would think it was your work, I’d make sure my men knew what happened, so they’ll know what happens if they fuck up.”
Lockheed studied the gang leader.
“It might work,” she said. “But probably not. The agency has many protocols to go through for someone to get access to sensitive data. One big win might not be enough for me.”
The veins in Savage’s throat bulged, and he clenched his jaw.
“You better hope it’s enough,” he seethed. “Because that’s what you bring to the table, remember? Information. If you can’t come through, you’re worthless to me.”
Lockheed swallowed, and could swear the temperature in the plane had risen a few degrees. “I’ll… I’ll make it work,” she stammered.
“Good,” Savage said, rubbing his hands together. “We’re going to move fast. Really fast. Tonight, we put things in motion for you to get your accolades. But I don’t want the people of this city to get too hopeful. So that’s when we chop ‘em off at the knees. That’s when I’ll have Lawlor share her footage of my fight with Sapphire Angel, which will gut everybody. That’s gotta be the order this happens in. I don’t want people seeing Sapphire Angel get brutalized, and then have you arrest a few of my men, and give people a little hope. But this ain’t gonna take long. That footage of Sapphire Angel needs to get out there soon. So be ready.”
Lockheed nodded. Inside, her stomach churned. She didn’t have faith she could get Savage the information he wanted. If she couldn't get him the information he wanted, could she offer him something else? Sapphire Angel's identity, perhaps?
She would keep it in mind, but Sapphire Angel was nothing to him now — a bug on the windshield, especially compared to the valuable information he wanted. If anything, Savage was more likely to force Lockheed to reveal Sapphire Angel’s identity — painfully — once she tried to play that card. And revealing the heroine’s identity would put someone else in harm's way — Conner Bennett, Beth Harper's boyfriend and Olivia Lockheed's former boyfriend. Lockheed wasn't above sacrificing Conner to save her own skin, but she needed to be sure it would actually get her what she wanted, and not blow up in her face.
“Let’s get to work on the details,” Savage said, and lowered himself into the seat across from her.
Before the gang leader could speak, a skinny man with glasses leaned in close. He spoke to Savage in a hushed tone, but didn’t seem to try to hide anything from Lockheed.
“I heard from Bugsy,” the skinny man said. “The warehouse at McLane and Cameron is ready. I know you like to attend the first night to kick off the festivities. If it works for you, invitations can go out tomorrow for one week from today. That should give us time. But you need to review the final guest list.”
A smile crept onto Savage’s face.
“I’ll be there,” he said. He turned back to Olivia. “I’ll be right back. Give some thought to our relationship. And when I get back, we’re going to work out the details of your impending victory. I want you arresting my traitorous men soon after we land. Then your bosses can praise you and maybe even promote you, and you can get me the information I need.”
He rose and stalked toward the front of the plane, taking an iPad from the skinny man and looking down at the screen. A cold pit of fear settled in Lockheed’s stomach. Even if she arrested his men, she would never get a promotion as fast as he wanted. And that meant she might not be around for much longer.
Megan Lawlor, television reporter for Channel 10, sat on the floor in the corner of her kitchen, her legs pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her knees. She couldn’t stop reliving Maximus Savage’s beatdown of Sapphire Angel. Lawlor shuddered when she thought of the horrific scene, and she alternated between trying to block out memories of the brutal assault, and trying to make sense of it.
Sapphire Angel never lost. It wasn’t possible. Lawlor had seen the heroine’s exploits with her own eyes, when the costumed beauty had rescued her only ten days earlier. Someone with Sapphire Angel’s power and skills didn’t lose.
Yet this time she had lost. No, she hadn’t just lost. It had been more than that. Much more. Savage had annihilated her, leaving the once-invincible heroine weeping in agony and pleading for him to stop.
Lawlor looked across the kitchen to the camera sitting on her counter. Not just any camera. It was the camera holding the proof of Savage’s defeat of Sapphire Angel. And the gang leader expected Lawlor to trumpet his victory to the city when he told her it was time.
Could she do it? Only a day earlier, Lawlor thought she would have done anything to get herself back in the limelight. She wanted to be known as not only an expert on Sapphire Angel, but as the go-to source for information about the Savage Gang.
Now she wasn’t so sure. Could the city take it? Could its people stomach the sight of someone beating their legendary heroine into submission? And could Lawlor do that to Sapphire Angel, even if the heroine wasn’t around to see the consequences of the newswoman’s decision? The superheroine had saved her, after all.
But what if Lawlor didn’t heed Savage’s wishes when he contacted her? She would put not just her own life at risk, but the lives of her loved ones, too. It seemed like an easy choice — show Sapphire Angel’s defeat to the city, on television, and catapult herself to stardom, while also protecting herself and her loved ones.
But as she looked at the camera, Megan Lawlor didn’t know if she could do it. She would need to decide soon, though. Maximus Savage wasn’t the sort of person to sit by and wait.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
Well, now.....all of the multi-sided behavior from Savage in the first half of the chapter really got me interested. At first, one might possibly see it as him not caring about his own men (particularly, whether or not they get "arrested" by Lockheed to get her a promotion), but it's obvious Savage has much further plans beyond just that. Still, I'm wondering what the people who get sent on this mission will think; the ones who will ultimately be arrested by Lockheed if the operation goes through successfully. Would they be so devoted to Savage's cause that they'd get incarcerated for it (I could see some zealous and overly loyal people doing that), or would they not be on board and try to throw everything off-balance instead? And I suppose it's a good thing that Lockheed decided not to reveal Sapphire's identity for the time being---as interesting as the reasons for it were---since that would just be rubbing even more salt in the wound after everything else that's happened. At least Lockheed still has somewhat(?) of a heart, not wanting Conner to get caught in the middle of her beef with Sapphire (then again, he was formerly her lover for a time).....but dang. I said it before and I'll say it again; Lockheed's got issues.
So we're going to try and pull off a staged operation that will ideally result in the arrest of some of Savage's own men, Lockheed's promotion, and big information on the FBI, assuming everything pans out. Gosh.....imagine if Lee and Sanders come to the "rescue" in Sapphire Angel's car. They'd be like, "Hey, Lockheed! You need our help?!" or something like that. Then again, with how obsessed Lockheed is with Sapphire, I could picture her doing some very.....unsavory.....acts to that car if she ever got her hands on it. It might need a replacement tailpipe afterwards.
I still think there's hope for Megan Lawlor. The fame and acknowledgment that came with journalism---and her competition with her coworker---kind of got to her for a time, but if anyone stands the best chance of withholding that footage and keeping Sapphire's people hopeful for just a little while longer, it'd be her. I always felt like her allying with the Gang (even if it was for her own reasons, despite literally having been their hostage at one point) was a bit too far, and that she could've settled things by other means. But she didn't, so I guess she has to make this decision now.
Let's get things rolling!