Three Times a Lady

Chapter 20

From his unobtrusive position in the corner of the noisy nightclub, Nicholas watched a third huge black guy indelicately muscle his way in on the shameless ménage-a-trois taking place out on the crowded dance floor.

Already sandwiched by the other two thugs from earlier, Dinah Leach didn’t seem to mind the added attention one little bit. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. After all, why settle for just two pieces of cake when you could have three, right?

Judging by the hair graying at the new guy’s temples, no doubt he was known on his block as an ‘O.G.’ – an ‘original gangster’. One of those guys who didn’t seem to know that being ‘cool’ had passed him by long ago and had left him standing squarely on the pier of middle-aged poseur-hood.

A moment or two later following the third guy’s appearance, the sounds of Lady Gaga faded away and the DJ flipped the wax over to Bullet With A Name by the heavy-metal group Nonpoint. Almost comically, the three thugs paused as one and looked at each other in confusion. Nicholas almost choked on his ice water as he fought back a sudden wave of laughter. Obviously, they didn’t have the slightest clue of how to dance to white-people’s music.

Nicholas shook his head in bemusement, both at the thugs’ cartoonish reaction to the new music and also at the song selection itself. The lyrics couldn’t have been any more appropriate if none other than Clive Barker himself had written them. Because Nicholas had a bullet with Dinah Leach’s name on it, didn’t he? Even if he would go with the knife tonight? Of course he did. His mother’s exacting plan might have called for ending Dinah Leach’s life with a blade, but just to be safe Nicholas had also tucked a.45-calibre handgun into his jacket pocket before leaving for the club that night. A little added security to ensure that he lived up to Annabeth Preston’s very lofty expectations of him.

In a perfect world, Nicholas would have marched directly out into the middle of the dance floor and put a bullet into Dinah Leach’s worthless temple right then and there. Sadly, though, this wasn’t a perfect world. Not even close. Not yet, at least.

But Nicholas was working on it.

Besides, killing Dinah Leach in that manner would have been going against Annabeth Preston’s very specific plans for the woman, and frail as the old gal might be these days, Nicholas knew she’d hoist him up by his shirt collar and hang him by the back of his neck on one of the sharp steel hooks in the butcher’s shop back home if he deviated even one iota from her very specific instructions. So for now he’d just need to wait a little bit longer before introducing any exciting new wrinkles to her script.

But those wrinkles were coming. Boy, were they coming. Just wait until Annabeth Preston saw what Nicholas had planned for her.

The heavy bass coming from the nightclub’s speakers punched like fists into Nicholas’s chest, making him wish he could punch it back. Doosh-doosh-doosh-doosh. After several minutes of this, the song finally switched to Stronger by Kanye West, and out on the dance floor, Dinah Leach gleefully succumbed to the renewed dry-humping foisted upon her by her three thuggish-ruggish friends, who seemed much more confident in their dance moves now that a fellow brother was supplying the beat.

When Stronger faded away itself and gave way to Justin Bieber’s Girlfriend, Dinah Leach at last disengaged herself from the panting pack. Crestfallen looks coloured in the faces of her dance-mates as they watched her walk away. Three necks swiveled on three sets of powerful shoulders. Six bloodshot eyes immediately scanned the dance floor in search of another willing whore with whom they could get their respective grooves on.

Nicholas chuckled to himself and checked his watch again in the strobe lights flashing overhead. He let a full thirty seconds pass before following Dinah Leach to the bar at a discrete distance. Wasn’t all that difficult in the packed nightclub. But to hell with all the foreplay already, right? He was ready to get his own groove on.

Fighting his way through the bumping and grinding going on out on the dance floor, Nicholas shouldered his way up to the long bar lined with people and readied himself for what would come next. Any nervousness he’d been feeling earlier in the night had dissipated completely now. In its place, a calm like none he’d ever experienced before had settled over him like a mother’s warm and comforting embrace.

Or at least what he imagined a mother’s warm and comforting embrace must feel like.

Nicholas took in a deep breath through his nostrils and sidled up next to Dinah Leach at the bar. Almost time for the payoff. Just a little bit longer now. And the clock was still ticking. Could Dinah Leach hear it yet?

Nicholas closed his eyes. Of course she couldn’t. But he sure as hell could.

Tick, tick, tick…