Little Black Book

All characters are 18 years old or older. This is one of those one shot stories I mentioned. I am always trying to write stories in a different way or flavor. In this case I alternate between a male and female character to get their point of view. I prefer writing in first person. It is more natural form for me. I like looking through the eyes of my characters. Tell me what you think. This one is also a subject and style I've never written before, as far as I can remember. Enjoy and please vote, comment, and tell me what you think.

*****

Anniversary:

I laid the rose beside his tombstone. It had been a year since his sudden death. I missed my dad and his bride was off swimming with the dolphins in Miami. The snow had begun last night and clung to the frozen ground. I had one more day until they returned. My stepmom and her daughter were due back tomorrow night. They both insisted I call them mom and sis, but it never felt right. Dad had been having an affair with her when my mom had passed from a heart attack. Her heart had been weak since she was a child but never so bad that she warranted surgery. I drove back to the empty house. I let myself in and heard the phone ringing. I raced over and picked it up before the answering machine took over.

"Hello?"

"Is this the Anderson residence?"

"No." I replied to the strong male voice on the other end of the conversation.

"Oh, I was looking for Louise Anderson. She left this as her contact number."

"Can I ask who is calling?" I asked feeling sick to my stomach for some reason.

"This is special agent Robert Collins from the FBI."

"I don't suppose you could tell me why you are looking for this Louise person."

"She is wanted for questioning about the disappearance of Michael Moore. I just need to ask her a few questions."

"My stepmom's middle name is Louise," I said aloud, and I heard a thoughtful hum from the agent. "Do you have a number I can contact you at?"

I wrote down his number and promised to call when she got home. I hung up and that sick feeling grew. I sat on the couch and stared at the piece of paper with the agent's number on it. My dad was barely gone a year and they were down vacationing. The doubt that had been nagging at me flared back to life. I raced upstairs and stared at her bedroom door. Her words echoed in my head.

'I don't go into your room and you will reciprocate that respect, do you hear me?'

I grabbed the doorknob and felt my heart hammering in my chest. I turned the knob and shoved the door open. I stood on the threshold and looked inside. I had seen its interior before, but I had never set foot inside without her there. She was so secretive. It was all the little things, but they added up and now that the FBI had called it was the last straw. I went to her dresser with the mirror. It was here that she kept her jewelry and personal papers. I caught my reflection in the mirror and damn I looked guilty. The top drawer was locked but I knew where she kept her spare key. I went into my stepsister's room and snagged her spare keys from the bag at the floor of her closet. I knew the second key to the dresser was on the ring. I unlocked the drawer and slowly opened the drawer. I was careful as I opened it. I didn't want her to know anything had been disturbed.

"Okay, slowly now," I said as I lifted her jewelry box up. "What the hell?"

I caught the box's reflection in the mirror. A piece of paper was sticking out of the back of the box. I opened the box but there weren't any papers inside. I moved aside her jewelry and spotted the false bottom. I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't seen the papers poking out the back. I fished the folded pages out and sat on the bed reading them. As I shuffled through them a small notebook slid out and fell to the floor. It looked like a little black book at first, but the contents were far more interesting. It was an address book of sorts listing a number of men's names, but it was the last few pages that proved puzzling.

"It makes so sense." I muttered as a stared at the random letters and numbers, and penciled in numbers next to them. "No fucking way!"

I cursed when I realized what the numbers were. Once I figured that out the letters made sense. The numbers listed in pencil were dollar amounts and the inked in apparent random numbers and letters were passwords for bank accounts. The length of the numbers indicated hundreds of thousands of dollars and in one case over a million. I returned my attention to the papers and realized many of them were deeds to property while the others were life insurance policies. What was the missing man's name again? It was Moore, Michael Moore. I felt a chill when I found the life insurance policy in the name of Michael Moore Senior. The sole beneficiary was Louise Anderson. I recognized my stepmom's handwriting. There were ten other life insurance policies and each of them came from places she had vacationed or visited for business purposes.

I kept the papers and returned the jewelry box carefully. I closed her door and went to my bedroom. I took out the little black book and began searching for the names online. I quickly learned that the names marked with a black F were dead or missing. I thought the F stood for finished or maybe even fucked. The names in pencil were alive and well and possible targets. The names in ink without an F were also on the life insurance policies. They were men she had lured in were sure to die or disappear. I leaned back and pushed everything away.

"My stepmom is a serial killer."

The fear hit me hard when I realized how many men she had killed already. The fear turned to rage when I thought about my parents. Had she killed them too? She must have for them to die so suddenly and neatly. I was going to get my revenge. I knew there was only one person I could get help with this. I fired up Skype and contacted DJ. He was an aspiring hacker and digital guru. He picked up and looked like he hadn't slept in days. His face showed days of facial growth and his eyes looked like he was borderline manic. I had caught him on a good day.

"Hey DJ."

"Jones... you look like hell man. What's up?"

"It's a long story but I need your advice."

"It'll cost you ten percent," he joked and when I said okay he put on his serious face. "What are we talking about?"

I gave him the short version and at first, he didn't believe me until I mentioned the bank accounts. He focused, and I described the entries and he whooped and hollered. It took him a little over an hour to crack the bitch's code. DJ had figured out the banks and once he had that he helped me set up an offshore bank account. I had no idea how skilled he had become since he dropped out of school. I set up a fifteen-digit password to access the account and logged into my stepmom's banks and drained every last penny. I offered DJ his ten percent but when he realized it was blood money he didn't want anything to do with it. I never knew he had a code of honor or was it fear. Was he afraid of her? I was too angry to be afraid now. DJ wished me luck and told me to be careful and not to leave any trace that I had messed with her things, for now. I stared at my bare hands and the first thought was fingerprints. I took photos of everything and returned them to the jewelry box. I locked the dresser and replaced the keys. I created an email and attached the photos to it and saved it as a draft. I placed twelve of my closest friend's names on it, so I could send it at a moment's notice.

The murderous bitch and her daughter would be back tomorrow, and I had no idea how long it took before she learned about her bank accounts. How often did she check them? I hadn't thought this out. My anger had boiled over and I had crossed a line before I let it process. I needed a plan and being here when she got home wasn't a good idea. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and sat and formed an attack plan. I brainstormed with pen and paper until I had a series of supportable ideas. I tossed the empty bottle into the recycle bin and went to work. Time was passing, and I had to get moving.

Ghost in the Wind:

The taxi pulled up in front of the house. I paid the driver and he offered to carry our luggage to the front door. Kayla unlocked the door and we took our bags to the living room. The house was strangely quiet. Kayla raced upstairs looking for Luke while I grabbed a hamper for our dirty laundry. As I passed the kitchen table I saw the note by the phone. It was Luke's handwriting and the contents were chilling.

'An FBI agent called looking for someone named Anderson. His number is below. Staying with friends, see you late Sunday or after school Monday. Luke.'

Kayla appeared and told me that Luke wasn't here and that his laptop was in his room. I took the note and headed up to take a closer look. Kayla had left his bedroom door open. The silver laptop was on his bed which had been made to military perfection. I sat on his bed and turned on his computer. I was shocked to see that the machine had been returned to factory settings. All the files and activity prior to that were gone. The sense of wrongness grew by the second. I raced to my bedroom and found my dresser drawer locked. The feeling of panic was still strong, so I unlocked it and searched my jewelry box. Nothing appeared to have been touched, that was until I opened the secret bottom. It was empty. I felt my knees buckle and I was kneeling on the floor next to my bed. Kayla came running when she heard my scream.

"MOM! What is going on? Were we robbed?"

"Get my laptop," I growled. "NOW god damn it girl!"

She appeared a minute later with my laptop in hand. I logged in and clicked on my banking program. It was far worse than I thought. The accounts were empty. All the money was gone. The only money I had left were my public accounts. They barely held a hundred-grand combined. I had to pay taxes on something if I was going to appear legitimate. How? How the hell had he figured out which banks and where did he transfer the bulk of two decades of hard work. All those men and all those lives snuffed out, and for what... nothing?! He had the life insurance policies and the property deeds. The fucker had enough to get a needle in my arm. Texas loved its executions and three of them had been in the Dallas area.

"Mom..." Kayla's voice drifted in from the fringes of my perception.

"I'll kill him." The words slithered out and she flinched. "I don't get it. Why aren't they here?"

"Why aren't who here?"

He was holding the Feds over my head. If I went after him he would hand over the evidence and that would be that. Unless I could kill him before he sent off the information. I couldn't let him get away with this. He had stolen my retirement. I would have to strike at the only thing he held dear, his ageing grandfather. If I put him in jeopardy he should fold. I dug out my cellphone from my pocket and called the old man. It rang three times before anyone picked up.

"Hello." A youthful girl answered.

"Cheryl dear, is that you?"

"Oh... its you..." she said her voice and demeanor changing instantly.

"Why such a bad attitude sweetie?" I asked, and the young girl replied fearlessly.

"You are why great grandpa killed himself."

"What..." I was staggered that the old man would take himself out of the equation. "Why did he do that?"

"Luke called and talked to him. Luke warned him about you. You are why Luke is hiding. You are why the police are here." She said, and I heard a male voice ask for the phone.

I hung up. I set the phone on the floor and looked up at my daughter. I calculated the odds of escape with her along and going on alone. She had been pampered her entire life. I had seen to that. She never knew what my early life had been like. She had no clue to what I did to survive. I couldn't put her through that.

"I have to go." I said as I grabbed Timothy's duffle bag.

"Go... go where? I don't understand what is going on. Where is Luke? What was on that note? Why are you acting like this?"

"I love you." I said as I squeezed off three shots in quick succession.

My only child's head snapped back as the twenty-two caliber bullets struck her in the forehead. She was dead before she hit the floor. The life had left her, and she stared blankly at the ceiling. I finished packing before wrapping her body in plastic and placing it in the chest freezer in the basement. It would only slow down her discovery, but every minute counted. I was packed and out of the house in less than twenty minutes. I went into the garage and fished out my escape kit I had set there years before. It held cash, clothes, and weapons as well as ammunition. I had a car concealed in a garage I owned on the other side of the city. It had altered VIN and wasn't tied to me in any way. I had paid cash for it and a friend had gotten clean papers for it. I had to trace that little fucker's location somehow. I had been lax, and it had cost me. I knew I should have killed him and his father in the same accident. Kayla had become attached to him so quickly though and I had indulged her.

First, I needed new I.D. since the feds had already learned about Anderson. I knew just the guy. It would cost me, but it was worth it. In two days' time I would begin the hunt. It would take hours for him to die. I would make him suffer for making me kill Kayla. It was all his fault she was dead. I swapped vehicles, transferred my belongings, and made for the Stark Car Graveyard. It was the lair for Malcolm Stark. He was pretty low on the criminal food chain, so he wouldn't draw the kind of attention like the FBI. The sun was setting as I pulled into the junkyard. The towering stacks of rusting metal shimmered irregularly where the fading sunlight caught rare pieces of chrome or unblemished steel. I drove past the main office towards the center of the metallic maze. Malcolm had a full-sized trailer where he sat behind a set of monitors where he could watch key locations in his domain. I parked outside and slowly exited my vehicle. I kept my hands out, so he could see that I wasn't armed.

"I'm here."

"Come on in sweetie, but keep your hands where I can see them." His voice came over the hidden loudspeaker.

The smell was overwhelming. It was a mix of sweat, booze, and roaches. Malcolm sat behind his desk and trained the gold plated nine-millimeter at my mid-section. He gestured with it and I raised my arms above my head. A sudden click surprised me, and I found my wrists immobilized. I was trapped, and Malcolm smiled as he lowered his weapon. He opened the belly drawer of his desk and withdrew a gleaming combat knife. I watched as he rose to his feet and stood in front of me. He used the knife to slice through my blouse and then bisected my bra.

"I never get tired of seeing those lovely coconuts lass."

"It's good to see you too Malcolm. As you can see I'm not wired."

"You can never be too cautious," he said as he unbuckled my jeans and tugged them down. "You quit shaving... what's with this trimmed pussy shit?"

"Sorry to disappoint but I didn't have time."

"What do you need luv?" He asked as he returned to his chair, so he could enjoy the view.

"I need a new identity. Someone betrayed me, and they need to pay." I said spitting on the floor between us.

"It'll cost you, but that has never been a problem with you. Your money has always been good and so is that fine ass of yours."

"If you are going to fuck me, at least take a god damn shower Malcolm. You reek to high heaven and low hell."

"Fine..." he growled, and then talked into his intercom. "Trish, get your ass in here. I got to wash up for the finest piece of ass this side of heaven."

A short busty blonde with her shirt tied under her tits strolled in. She had the girl next door good looks Malcolm preferred. She made sure I was cuffed securely before she let Malcolm leave the office. Trish grabbed the pistol and kept it trained on me until Malcolm returned.

"You're that crazy bitch he is always going on about." Trish muttered with fear blazing in her bright blue eyes.

"Yep." I said smiling. "I am also the one that will be out of your hair in less than twenty-four hours. You have nothing to worry from me unless you do something stupid to piss me off."

"I have no intentions of doing that."

Twenty minutes passed, and Malcolm returned with only a towel wrapped around his waist. Trish set down the gun and left. He released my wrists and I rubbed them as he grabbed me by the hair and bent me over his desk. So much for foreplay. He used a lubed condom and eased slowly inside of me. I gasped as his cock stretched me out. His pecker wasn't long, but it was damn thick. He worked it in me good until he could slide it in and out easily. I gasped when he began pounding me. I whimpered when it hit deep. He liked my noises and I used that to my advantage. I squeezed my pussy around him and he yelped in surprise.

"Oy, I forgot how hard you can clench those pussy muscles of yours."

"I guess you don't believe in foreplay."

"This is about me bitch, remember that and you'll be fine."

"Is that your thumb in my ass?" I moaned as his thick digit worked its way into my other hole.

"I'm getting it ready," he growled. "I've haven't tapped your ass in years. I'm not wasting our time together."

"You are going to wreck me if you stick that thing in my ass!"

"That's the plan sweetheart."

I howled when he pressed the head of his cock against my asshole. He had never been what you'd call gentle. I punched the top of the desk as the mushroom shaped head opened me up. It hurt like hell, but I had no choice. It was just another inconvenience, another bump in the road. I let out a sigh of relief when the tip popped inside. I was gasping for breath as he shoved the rest into me.

"You... you really are a bastard Malcolm!"

"So damn tight," he grunted in my ear. "For what it is worth I am close to busting my nut already. It won't be long now love."

"Thank god..." I moaned as he pounded my ass for all he was worth. "Come on shithead and fuck me like a real man!"

He doubled his efforts and drove that fat cock as hard and fast as he could. I cursed as his thing swelled inside of me. He was close, real close. He hadn't lied about that. I howled when I felt his load splash deep in my bowels. He yanked his cock free and thrust a meaty fist at the ceiling in salute to having violated me successfully. It would cost him in the end. He pointed towards the bathroom, so I could clean up. I hated anal sex. It made me feel like a whore. Most of my lovers were satisfied with my pussy but not dear old Malcolm. He enjoyed humiliating me. I let the rage cool but stoked it with a promise. In time he would regret tonight. I walked outside and retrieved a change of clothing. He stared at me as I dressed in front of him.

"How long?" I asked.

"I have your new identity in my safe." He laughed as he unlocked it and tossed the plain brown envelope onto the surface of his desk. "I've had this one for over a year. You leave a pattern when you know what to look for. I knew in time that you'd need this."

"Here's your payment," I said tossing the four bricks of cash his way.

"Good doing business with you."

Hunter Hunted:

It had been three weeks since I fled the house I had grown up in. My first week on the road was spent aboard buses and trains. I never slept in the same town or city two nights in a row. I crossed the country twice. I relaxed after my first week and focused on smaller towns but that quickly went to shit. While staying at a bed and breakfast my room was ransacked and the police were called. None of my things were stolen but the teens involved were thrown in jail while I quietly slipped out of town the same night. It was after that little incident I decided it was time to enjoy a bit of the wealth I had acquired. I looked up luxury hotels in a nice quiet city. I stayed the hell away from places like Las Vegas and the like. It would be too easy for her to find me there.