Abby loved her house and her furniture. Her dining room table was her favorite and now it was an accessory to a crime. Of the thousands of hand crafted, Ethan Allen tables that had been used for distributing drugs or making tidy razor formed lines of coke or had marijuana sorted seed from stem, this table was supportive of one of the most creative drug activities possible. On a carefully split open trash bag, taped securely over the top and around the legs of the table, Eddie had set up a limited production facility.

The two J’s had worked for days and at the end of their toils, a proprietary, carefully screened, members only, web page popped up on the internet. Cyber invitations were sent to select clients and friends.

All across Seattle, weather wasn’t the only thing leading to despair. The misting rain, just enough to sully a windshield, but not enough to justify even intermittent wipers, annoyed and depressed the populace at large. Barometric pressure, clouds and general malaise caused a precipitous drop in the number of people who would be getting laid that day. None of that registered on Bill and if it had, his thought would have been his usual, if you ain’t fucking me, well I don’t care about you and just fuck off too.

Catherine Anne considered herself an exemplary judge of character and predictor of human behavior, or she wouldn’t have been in the business of being a therapist for the fetish community. In the beginning, she had been ‘just a therapist’; but after she had counseled a number of couples that had their marriages threatened by being part of Seattle’s active swinging scene, she had found a business niche she could exploit.

For Eddie and Sara, the hunt was on in full swing and the prey was sitting willingly, but unknowingly with the predators. Eddie hated the music on the sound system but pasted a contented but slightly nervous look on his face. He was dressed in a more affluent style than was normal. It worked out well for him that Sara had wanted him to look just a bit uncomfortable because he was uncomfortable; but not for the reason the prey thought. He just hated these damned clothes.

It was early morning and Catherine Anne hadn’t gotten over yesterday’s encounter with the spectral potential client, Catherine Anne needed to reassert her control over her universe. That bitch had set off every alarm in Catherine Anne’s head and she hated being scared. Maybe mental imagining would help. Mental imaging was a therapeutic version of meditation and always helped Catherine Anne when she wasn’t as stable as she needed to be to face the freaks and lunatics who populated her thriving practice.

Sara preferred stealthy surveillance, but she was in a rush to learn about Abby and Bill’s therapist, Catherine Anne DeLenquant. Sara had done her usual electronic peeping into the lives of those who interested her because she hoped she could learn enough about both Bill and Abby to see if the plan had an acceptable chance at success. DeLenquant’s name had come up several times in billing records but things had only gotten interesting when Sara had accessed Bill’s saved on-line internet chats. It was amazing how often people used their computers to save the tools of their own destruction.

John Marshall kept his door unlocked when he was in the office. The incident with the blonde hooker had taught him that a locked door made it too easy for people to assume you were being caught with your pants down, especially when they were. That implication had only happened once and no one could prove a damned thing.

Robert had finally begun to feel more like a manager in the club. It wasn’t just that he knew everyone and was a good guy to get along with, but recently he had become the go to guy for Victoria and by extension for everyone else. The club refit had been the thing that defined him as a defacto manager of the day-to-day doings at Power Exchange.

To say the streets in Seattle are steep is to say tornados sort of spin around a little. The streets near Columbia Center are the rule for Seattle not the exception, which is to say they are really fucking hilly. The ups and downs are brake burners and they scared the hell out of Eddie as he drove.

John Marshall was fuming more aggressively than his normal smolder. His office was a showcase of his combative nature. Every spare inch of shelf space was resplendent in the accoutrements of conflict and that calmed him and fueled his rage in the same turn.

Victoria’s rib cage constricted around her lungs as she pushed through the front door of the club. She was instantly assaulted by saw dust, stripped wire casing, and discarded fast food bags littering her club. Even the progress on the rebuild didn’t calm her. It felt like things in her life were really getting out of control and deep in her head she so hated to be out of control. She couldn’t admit it to herself but she had a control freak inside.

Sara had lived in Seattle before and knew that corporate coffee stores in Seattle are more prevalent than homeless people.  Other shops almost tagged along as afterthoughts to the coffee commerce.  Tourists could wander down any major street and buy a single shot of espresso, start drinking the shot at the door and be able to step into another coffee store before they could finish the first shot.  As often as not, following this pattern, a stoic drinker would find the third or forth coffee store down the block would be owned by the same company that provided the first shot.

Eddie couldn’t be more content that he and Sara both shared a lack of commitment to culinary excellence. A white and red bag of Chic-fil-A, Eddie called it, chicken fries, sat crumpled and tired after the power eating fest the couple had undertaken post sex. It couldn’t get lots better than this, thought the fully sated man. He had even just heard a small burp from Sara, after she had finished a decidedly unladylike sized slug of soda. Sara had actually taken such a large drink, that he had, by habit nearly gotten up to give her a Candy squeeze. While it had been beneficial to let Candy pop off the planet, he had no intention of letting this perfect woman follow the same path. Candy could let the drink kill her, but Eddie would go to the end of the planet to save Sara. The moment of near PTSD awareness shook Eddie to his core. Jesus Christ. He was in love and he loved the thought. He reveled in it, in her beauty, in their near prefect compatibility.

Cars of all types, filled with a few singles, mostly couples and a few brave groups, slowed along Pike street, near Seventh Avenue looking for either parking or assurance that even if they had found the right address, that they were still in the right place.

Babeland, a prominent, high end, sex toy store, had an acclaimed reputation for putting on sex workshops for the experienced as well as the uninitiated. The store took great care to entice those who trolled the streets wondering if they were the kind of people who would attend this type of event.

That tiny seed was fertilized by Eddie’s feeling that everyone could read the existence of his new kinky lifestyle. He could still feel the marks from her whip and other extreme treatments, but more to the point, for today, well, this was the first time he had murdered a man with his own hands and he was sure that somehow that must show as he wandered through a grocery store picking up cereal. He watched Sara read the ingredients of a new type of soup, just like she had done this a hundred times; murder, then soup reading; choke someone; oops too many carbs in the soup. He

For a man, who was firmly tied in a chair, wearing a woman’s panties and bra and had a ball gag in his mouth, things were going remarkably well for Eddie. By late afternoon, he had even gotten over his total fear of being blindfolded and bound.

John Marshall sat, infuriated at his over sized desk, in his not so governmentally appointed office. Opulence wasn’t allowed but that didn’t mean that position didn’t have its benefits. For instance, his chair was the same or better than the ones those god damned federal judges sat their judgmental, liberal asses on.

Victoria found herself consistently enchanted with Seattle whenever she had the opportunity to spend a late evening gazing out of her living room windows at the twinkling lights of the Alki district of Seattle. In all the time she had lived in this apartment, since the divorce, she had never gone to the tiny coastal crescent of night lights, an illuminated oasis of hope. Every other community in the discontiguous suburbs of Puget Sound was fair game, but she desperately needed Alki to remain a twinkling dreamland.

Eddie lay on his back, completely stunned. Aside from the carnage of the bed sheets, Sara’s bedroom was a study in simplicity. The bed was a sturdy four post affair; firm and plush. The mattress was clearly the most expensive furniture in the room. Sara had explained that sleep was the most important thing she did at the apartment and an expensive bed was worth the price. Eddie didn’t care. He had just had the best sex of his life. It could have been on a wood floor and on nails.

The note had come to Power Exchange from Sara, as she causally typed on her portable computer.  Power Exchange’s web page covered part of her large monitor.  Sara was hoping to catch more of Eddie’s activities and see if he was the type to cheat on her.  Fucking others with permission was entirely different than hunting other lovers and Sara, while open to opportunity and still on the hunt, was very possessive.  She had been imagining and wondering how far Eddie would go to please her if she gave him everything he ever wanted when Sara felt a tingle in her head.  On the web site for Power Exchange Victoria’s picture opened.  Sara stared and concentrated until it finally came to her.  A wide smile grew on her face and she said to the picture, “Hey beautiful, I know you.”

Robert and Victoria sat in his office.  The desk was covered in paperwork and computer systems hummed in the back ground as Victoria spun lazy circles on an office chair.  Robert typed and clicked on the system.    
 
He glanced over at Victoria and said, “I’ll have the web page functional in the next day or [...]