Operation Whiplash Read Free Page A

asked after an hour.
    “I’d just as soon make it as soon as possible.”
    “I don’t know if I can take it,” she said. “I’ve had two full days already, and I can’t sleep in a car. Can’t we stop?”
    “We can get a few hours’ sleep in Jackson,” I said grudgingly. “But I want to make Mobile tomorrow afternoon.”
    It was quiet then except for the rush of night air through the open windows. We kept running in and out of light rain showers which hardly dampened the highway and certainly didn’t cool the countryside. At Eudora I refilled the gas tank.
    Robin took the wheel at that point. I felt tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept running through my mind the situation in Hudson as I’d known it, wondering what could have gone wrong. I was almost sure it wasn’t a police situation. There was almost no way it could be a police situation.
    I was almost at the end of my second two-hour stretch when we arrived in Jackson. I turned off at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, and Robin stretched lengthily as the car drew to a halt. She sat silently while I went inside and registered as Mr. and Mrs. Earl Drake. I wondered about continuing to use the name. Nobody in Hudson should know Earl Drake, but nobody in Hudson should be making trouble for Hazel, either.
    I drove to the assigned ground-floor unit and carried Robin’s bag and my briefcase into the room. “I’ll match you to see who uses the shower first,” I said.
    “You go ahead,” she returned.
    The steaming hot water was relaxing. I emerged from the bathroom swathed in a bath towel. I stripped the double bed and climbed into it. I’d halfway expected Robin to say something about the double bed, but it had been her idea to stop. She didn’t say anything, though. She eyed my body scars curiously, those created by skin transfers while I was acquiring a new face, but she made no comment about those, either. She went into the bathroom and closed the door.
    I was almost asleep when she came out again.
    Her hair was done up in a towel, and she was wearing the black-rimmed, harlequin glasses, and a smile. Period.
    “Hazel thought you might like to have a surrogate piece of tail,” she said to me.
    “She did, did she? She’s getting quite emancipated.”
    “She also told me that you were an ass man,” Robin went on, turning to exhibit a real butterball type. She glanced at me over her bare shoulder.
    “You can play that contract vulnerable and redoubled,” I agreed, scrutinizing the scenery. “Did she also tell you I bite?”
    “Where it shows?”
    “Only if you’re a nudist.”
    She came over and sat down on the bed. Her pelt was dazzling and its texture was like satin. She had two or three extra pounds attached to each curve, but that situation never gets any criticism from me. There was no particular expression on her face. I mean it wasn’t coy or lustful or even playful.
    She reached and took a finger-and-thumbful of my flesh near my ribs and gave me a twisting pinch. Her hand strength was such it felt like a lanced boil. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, slapping her hand away.
    “I like to hurt men,” she answered. She giggled, a high-pitched sound in contrast to her normal speaking voice.
    “Yeah? Better be careful about those you pick to hurt or you’ll get that handsome ass fractured,” I told her.
    She stretched out on the bed and pulled me down on top of her. I have to be careful with women. More turn me off than on, but this one had a way with her. When she saw my readiness, she stuffed a pillow under her butt. I removed her glasses and slid into the saddle. Her reactions were mechanical but expert. She had the type of firmly rounded belly that could have served as a launching pad for a moonshot.
    All my life I’ve been hearing that muscle-broads are no good in bed.
    It’s a crock of shellac.
    What I got was better than what I gave, although the surrogate didn’t match up to the original.
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