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PART 14

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She was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes upon. 

 

He had felt that way even before he met her in person.  When he had first seen her ashen image on the nightly news, wrapped in an emergency blanket and explaining the auto dealership fire -- at that moment he had known her beauty was exceptional.  But now that she was sitting across a small table from him, he realized her beauty was beyond measure. 

 

Her first name was Kim, but she had an Italian-sounding last name-- perhaps a dual heritage?  Her remarkable appearance suggested the same thing.  Her light copper skin, almond eyes, luxurious long dark hair, and long elegant eyebrows suggested that she had genes from the Mediterranean.  Her high cheekbones and button nose suggested genes from England. 

 

She would have been a knock-out even if she had shown up in baggy pants and a t-shirt.  But she was dressed to the nines -- a long elegant evening gown with a tantalizing leg slit up the side, heels, and a large formless silk shawl covering her torso.  Her endless, vibrant hair was worn "up" -- a casual yet classy style held in place by two pins.  Having her hair "up" only served to further highlight and illuminate her mesmerizing facial features.

 

She was the kind of woman that would never have given him the time of day -- not now, not even 25 years ago when he was better looking.  But he knew how the game was played.   She needed money.  That much was clear from the TV broadcast.  And when it came to money, he had it -- gobs of it.

 

The money came from being a successful businessman, which included being a skilled negotiator.  And yet, despite his skill with such interactions, this remarkable woman was proving to be a hard case to crack.

 

"Are you enjoying you food?" He asked anxiously.

 

"I guess," she replied, desultory.

 

"If you want something else, you can have it.  Have anything."

 

"No, it's not that," she pouted, sending an involuntary tremor of desire through his center.  "It just that.... this place.... it's so formal and conservative.  It's just not me.  I like being wild and uninhibited."

 

Bob could only hope that "uninhibited" would someday involve letting him see the shape of the torso under that enormous, formless, silk shawl.

 

"We could go back to my place for dessert," he suggested.

 

"Are you ok driving?  I just saw you scarf down two gin and tonics."  She asked.  It was true.  He used it to calm his nerves on dates.

 

"I'm fine.  Besides, this Ferrari is a stick shift.  I don't suspect you can drive it.  You kids never seem to know how to drive stick shift anymore."

 

She got up from her chair and turned to leave,  "You have no idea how much stick I've driven."

 

 

---

 

 

The cool desert air filled the cabin of the car as they raced back to Paradise Valley.

 

"So how'd you make all your money?" She asked playfully.

 

"I build houses."

 

"That's doesn't sound like a get-rich type of business.  I was thinking you'd be in computers or something."

 

"You can make a lot of money building houses, if keep your costs low."

 

"And what does that mean, keeping your costs low?"

 

"It means that you build the absolute cheapest house you can.  Don't buy shingles that are going to last 15 years.  Buy shingles that last 8 years."

 

"But with cheap shingles, then the buyer is going to come home after only eight years to find rain puddles on the living room floor."

 

"So, that's their problem.  They get to evaluate my construction when I build the house.  If they don't like it, they can buy somebody else's house."

 

"Uh, most homeowners don't know good shingles from bad shingles.  Sounds like you're basically screwing people into paying too much for cheap houses."

 

"You could look at it that way."

 

She leaned over from the passenger seat to peck him on the cheek.  "We're going to have fun with each other!"

 

 

---

 

 

The house was gorgeous.  Tuscan-style stone columns out front, Italian landscaping -- even the driveway in front of the five-car garage was an expensive mosaic tile.

 

"I originally bought the land with a few investment partners, with the intention of building a housing complex here," he explained has he pulled the car up the drive.  "But there were some imperfections in the partnership agreements, and I was able to screw the other two guys out of their share.  So now I have 40 acres to myself, and decided, what better place to build my mansion?"  He climbed out, opened the passenger door for her, and led her to the front door.

 

As he unlocked the door to the house, she immediately pushed the door open and stepped in.  That's odd, he thought, following her in.  It would be one thing if I held the door open for her, but just to barge right in like that?  In to my house?

 

As he followed her down the hall, she walked slowly and deliberately, looking in every direction.  It was as if she were trying to decide whether to buy the place, he mused.  Her style was authoritative, almost arrogant.

 

"I like it."  The click-clack of her high heels echoed off the walls.

 

"Glad I could be of service," he quipped.

 

"Nice kitchen--" she affirmed as she entered it. "--about 600 square feet, Viking ranges, the works."

 

"Glad you like that too.  My wife designed it."

 

"And where is she now?" Kim asked as she traced a lazy hand along the edge of the buffet.

 

"Nowhere special.  Mostly suing me for child support.  So I'm mostly suing her for other stuff."

 

"What's for dessert?" She asked, turning her penetrating gaze towards him.  He caught his breath at her beauty in the moonlit kitchen.

 

"I didn't have anything specific prepared."

 

"Tsk, tsk," she chided, sauntering up to him.  "Was this dessert thing just a ploy to get me back here?"  She pulled, lightly on his tie.  "So that you could have your way with me?"

 

"No," he chuckled. 

 

"Why don't make us some drinks," she purred, running her perfect hands down his tie. 

 

"Sure.  What would you like?"

 

"I don't know," she responded, ambling towards the grand living room.  "Whatever's expensive."

 

He laughed.

 

"So," she shouted from the other room, "after you became so big and successful with your leaky roof houses, then what?  Did you invest in more real estate?"

 

"I'm investing in all kinds of things," he said, entering the room with two filled rocks glasses in his hand.  "Stocks, bonds, you name it."

 

He handed her a glass.

 

"It's a MacCallan 1939," he explained.

 

"A seventy-year old scotch?" She asked sipping it tentatively.  "Is that like, a thousand dollars a bottle?"

 

"Ten thousand dollars a bottle."

 

"Wow," she replied reverently.  "You really ARE loaded."

 

He chuckled, unsure what to say.  "Here," he continued, picking up the small box off the coffee table.  "Here's something for you."

 

Kim placed her whisky aside and gingerly took the box.  Carefully prying open the lid, a green sparkle caught the lights of the room.  "Wow, that's lovely, Bob!  Emeralds!"

 

For the first time that night, she unwrapped the shawl from around her torso, standing up as she did so.  The sight that greeted him was more breathtaking than he had imagined possible.  She wore an elegant forest green-colored evening gown that only a very rare woman could wear.  As he'd already seen, it contained a slit that ran all the way to her upper thigh, providing tantalizing glimpses of those shapely legs as she walked.  The torso of the dress, which he was seeing for the first time, was a halter top, where the fabric ran up one side of her front torso, around the back of her neck, and down the other side of her front torso.  And it wasn't just any halter top, but a daring one too, with a neckline that plummeted nearly to her navel. 

 

His hungry eyes began feasting on the graceful and sumptuous lines of her back, and then moved to her front.  That plunging neckline not only hinted at an athletic abdomen, but it left no opportunity for a bra or other type of support.  This made all the more mysterious and captivating the immensity of her tits -- large buoyant globes boasting cavernous cleavage.  Bob realized that his early assessment of her background was lacking.  Sure, she had some genes from the Mediterranean, and, given her first name, probably some genes from England too.  But there were aspects of this exceptional beauty that seemed to come from nowhere on earth, as if much of her had been hammered out on God's own anvil.

 

"You got these just for me?"  She was lost in a mirror, putting the emerald earrings on.  She seemed unaware of his reaction.  Or perhaps the stunned look on men's faces had become commonplace to her.  He didn't know.  However, something in the back of his mind -- something that later he wished he had listened to -- wondered how she could be using the mirror to put the earrings on.  That mirror was 30 feet away.

 

"OK, I admit, I didn't get them specifically for you.  I picked them up in the Cayman Islands.  I just didn't know who I was buying them for at the time."

 

Her laugh was like music.  "They're beautiful, Bob.   And clearly with refractive indices of about 1.57 and birefringence in the 0.004-0.007 range, this type of mineral does wonders with the evening light."

 

"You seem to know a great deal about gems."

 

"When it comes to geology, I'm very well read,"  She sat back down much closer to him.  He could feel the warmth of her body only inches away.  He smiled to himself.  The emeralds had done their job. 

 

Kim leaned in close for a kiss.  Her breath was elegant whisky mixed with her own natural scent, which was sweet and intoxicating.  The nearness of her now, the dance of the light on her pouty, glossy lips, on her sparkling emeralds, on her hypnotizing eyes -- it made her nearly irresistible. 

 

As her mouth contacted his own, a feeling of elation came over him.  She tasted of honeysuckle.  He could have made out with her forever.  He let his hand wander down to her thigh.  However, a moment later, she was gently removing his probing hand and broke the kiss off.  It all ended far too soon.

 

"Not too fast, buster."  She smiled a mischievous smile, catching her breath and straightening up.  "Let's get to know each other some more."

 

"Ok,"  he said with disappointment.  "What do you want to know?"

 

"What brought you to the Cayman Islands?"

 

"It's a good place to park your money -- no taxes, and you don't even have to put your name on the account."

 

"No names on the accounts?"

 

"Many accounts on the island are completely anonymous -- just show up with the right account number, and the money is yours."

 

"Wow," she said, the glossy almonds of her eyes lost in thought.  "So you don't even have to bring an ID, or even resemble the guy that opened the account."

 

"Right."

 

"But what if somebody stole your account number?"

 

"That's why I keep it in a very safe place."

 

She looked away, again lost in thought.  She inhaled like someone sipping air through a straw, as if she had experienced a moment of delirious vertigo.  "Being rich is more complicated than I thought," she smiled demurely.

 

"It's not so bad.  Investing can be really cool."  He had never described investing as "cool" before, but he hoped it would help her relate.  "Here," he said proudly, pointing at the newspaper.  "This is one of my investments."

 

"Satellite en route to White Sands Launch Site," she read from the local paper.  ‘Truck to deliver multi-billion dollar device today for launch next week.’"

 

"It's a communications satellite," he explained.  "It's being trucked in on I-10 from Texas even as we speak.  I've got major stock in that company.  When it launches successfully, my shares should be worth ten percent more than what they are today.  A ten percent gain is pretty good for a day's work.  That's what's fun about investing -- the risks and the rewards."

 

"Huh."  She said distantly, lost in more thought.

 

The captivating woman closed her eyes momentarily, placing her fingers on her temples.  She whispered quietly to herself, lost in concentration, as if she was having a conversation with herself.  The bizarre display gave Bob a chance to steal another look at the remarkable landscape of her body.  He was somewhere in the valley of the twin peaks when her eyes burst open again.

 

"Sorry about that," she said as he looked up with a start.  "I sometimes have voices in my head."

 

"I see," he said nervously.

 

"Come on," she said cheerfully, standing up.  "I'll make you dessert."

 

He followed her into the kitchen, gladly watching the sashay of her ass under the sheer forest green evening gown.

 

"Let's see what we have here."  A fluorescent glow spilled across the room as she opened the fridge.  Reaching in, she extracted a canister.  "This should do," she concluded, placing the small canister on the huge buffet.

 

"Just whipped cream?"  He asked.  "I don't get it."

 

"I'll help you figure it out."  Kim put her back to the buffet and faced him.  Reaching behind her head, she drew the halter top forward over hear head, and then down over her enormous breasts.  She slid her hands gently down her flared hips, and the entire dress quickly slipped to the floor.  Her panties were evergreen like the dress, and soon they were off too.

 

When she had been clothed in that dress, she had been ravishing.  Without it, she was devastating.  Her breasts were magnificent, full orbs -- jutting out without any deference to gravity. 

 

"There are women who would die to have even a tenth of the chest you do."

 

"I know," she said casually, hoisting herself up on the buffet.  "And in the same way..." She began to spray the whipped cream on her abdomen, in a vertical line "...there are men who have never in their life tasted a dessert that compares to mine."    Then, she capped the bottom part of the line with a "V", forming a downward arrow that pointed at the space between her legs.  Slowly spreading her legs, her hairless pussy was not just damp, but was literally dripping with its own juices.  A small puddle  formed on the marble buffet, and a drop or two even plopped onto the floor.  "So, in honor of love-starved men everywhere," she purred, "You should eat every last morsel."

 

 

---

 

 

Louisa and Vicky walked into the truck stop hand in hand, their ripped jeans showing off flashes of leg as they walked.  Most girls got ripped jeans by paying extra for them.  These girls got ripped jeans by running across the nighttime desert at 300 miles per hour.

 

They were here because of Kim, who had explained that she needed an assist on one of her little projects.  {{You can have some fun while you're at it}}, she had promised them.  It had taken the girls just over 20 minutes to cover the 125 miles between Las Cruces and the truck stop.

 

"Are you the guys with that huge truck out there?"  Vicky asked as they approached a group of three men just finishing up dinner.  Vicky let the eyes of the truckers wander over her a bit as she shifted her weight to one leg and rested her hand on her hip.  "Can we sit down?"

 

"Sure."  A burly guy enthusiastically made room for her.  "What can we get you lovely ladies?"

 

"Milkshakes," Louisa said, allowing her breast to brush against the man to her left.  "You can never have too much milk."

 

"You should watch that stuff," a thinner guy snarled. "It can make you fat."

 

"Nice guy you are," Louisa retorted.

 

"What's in the huge truck?"  Vicky asked.

 

"We aren't allowed to say," the burly guy replied.  He seemed nicer.  We're delivering it to White Sands.

 

"Oh, that's the satellite!" Louisa interjected.  We saw something about it on TV.

 

The men didn't respond, but their smile told the whole story.

 

"Be careful out there tonight," Louisa warned, with a slight sing song in her voice.  "I hear there are falling rocks from the cliffs.  Big falling rocks."  Louisa's deep brown eyes grew wide.  "HUGE ones."

 

"That's the first we've heard of it," the third guy responded.  He appeared to be the one in charge, with a Mexican complexion.

 

"I think you girls are full of shit," the nasty thin one replied.

 

"I'm SERIOUS.  Swear to GOD," Louisa gushed.

 

"You're full of shit."

 

"Fine.  I hope a big rock lands on you and smushes you," Louisa replied.

 

"OK, boys," the Latino one said.  "Time to hit the road.   Strict schedule on this."  He dropped a few 20-dollar bills on the table, enough to cover the tab and the milkshakes, which were only now arriving. 

 

"Sorry to have to leave you girls," the burly one said.  "But we get our assess reamed if we're late."

 

 

---

 

 

The girls watched the satellite convoy pulling out as they sipped their milkshakes -- one big rig hauling a platform trailer, and two pickup trucks serving as pilots, one before and one after the trailer.

 

"We should probably go do this now," Louisa suggested.

 

"Nah, let's enjoy the milkshakes.  We'll take care of them in a bit.  They can only move, like, 60 miles an hour."

 

"Cool," Louisa replied, sipping.  "I guess I'd forgotten how slow everything else in the world is."

 

Twenty minutes later, the girls were rocketing through the desert about 400 yards away from the roadway.  They moved at about five times the speed of the traffic, so to them, their journey felt like running by a linear parking lot.  The satellite convoy soon came into view, as well as the cliffs and canyons looming up ahead.  Perfect timing.

 

The girls zoomed into the mountains and soon encountered a deep chasm, perhaps 300 feet across.  "You think we can clear it?"  Vicky asked, as they stopped at the edge.

 

"Sure, you silly!"  Louisa responded.  "You designed these bodies, you ought to know!" 

 

The girls retraced their steps about a quarter mile to get a running start.  Moments later, the ground was a blur under their feet, followed by no ground at all, just the yawning air of the chasm.  Other side of the chasm seemed to rise to meet them, and in moments their feet were back on solid earth, severely compacted by their punishing landing.  "Pretty fucking cool,"  Louisa gasped.

 

Proceeding to a promontory over the highway, Vicky and her friend took in the lay of the land.  "Maybe a rockslide?"  Vicky suggested.  "Something that stops the convoy without killing anyone?"

 

"Oh, poop. You're no fun.  Can I at least kill the mean one?"  Louisa asked.

 

"That doesn't seem necessary. Kim didn't need them dead."

 

"Puuuullllleeeeezzzzee?"

 

"OK," Vicky chuckled, "fine.  If it makes you happy."

 

"Yea!" Louisa chirped, as they turned to look for fodder for their "rockslide".

 

Vicky was examining the rock debris at the top of the cliff when she heard a rumble of rock, and turned to see Louisa holding a car sized boulder over her head.  It was amusing to see her thin frame under the massive object.  In the dark of the desert night, the boulder was simply a grey mass, its size evident by the number of stars that had been blotted out above her head.

 

After a moment's more searching, Vicky found a boulder of her own, about the size of a pickup truck.  Despite all her knowledge of her own capabilities, it was nonetheless intimidating to feel the cold massiveness of the rock as she positioned her hands on it. 

 

She took a deep breath and threw her strength into it.  Instantly, the boulder snapped off the surrounding rock -- she had had no idea that it was still connected -- and rose up into the air.  Crap, Vicky thought as the rock rose above her head, this is about as hard as lifting a Pilates ball!   Sand and dirt cascaded off the massive rock as she held it, and Vicky shifted the weight to one hand in order to wipe the debris off her face.

 

To Vicky, the feat was disappointing in a way.  Ever since developing her new strength, she has rarely needed to use its full potential.  Even tossing the car into a tree the other night was nearly effortless.  I mean, come on, Vicky said to herself, that thing weighed only about 4,000 pounds, even with the guys inside it.

 

This boulder was proving to be little more rewarding.  "I was hoping these boulders would give us a little bit of a workout, " Vicky complained to her friend.  "But this one is only about 30,000 pounds."

 

"I know," Louisa agreed, her own rock still held aloft.  "This is kind of a joke."

 

The girls' supersensitive hearing had picked up the rumble of the satellite-carrying truck approaching from many miles away, but now their headlights came into view on the far side of the bridge, about to begin the crossing.  "OK," Vicky sighed, "let's get this over with."

 

Vicky waited until the truck was halfway across the bridge before hurling her rock down onto the roadway.  It was a perfect shot, landing on the white dashed line that separated the two westbound lanes.  The boulder hit the road with a deafening smack, splintering and scattering itself all over the roadway.  Neither of the westbound lanes could be passable with that debris in the way, and the convoy came to a sudden halt.

 

Standing at Vicky's position, a normal person would have seen no more than three pairs of headlights.  But Vicky's eyes were anything but normal.  Her beautiful hazel/grey eyes instantly zoomed to a magnification that military spotting scopes would been envious to achieve.  Her superhuman retinas shrugged off the oppressive darkness and saw the convoy in daylight-type clarity.

 

"Your least favorite driver has the pickup truck in the back," Vicky noted.

 

"I know," Louisa responded, a moment before launching her rock at the convoy.  It landed squarely on the third truck in the group, crushing the cabin.  The rock was so massive that the midsection of the pickup was no longer visible, smothered by the boulder.

 

"Take that, meanie," Louisa joked.

 

The two girls paused a moment to take in the scene.  The feeling was exhilarating.  Everyone down there was at Vicky's and Louisa's mercy.

 

"Now what do we do?"  Vicky sighed.  "Just land a rock on the satellite and leave?  That seems lame."

 

"I thought of something that could be fun," Louisa chirped.  "Come on."

 

"What did you have in mi--" but Vicky did not finish her sentence.  Louisa ran headlong off the cliff into the yawning chasm below.  It must have been a 10 story drop. 

 

Vicky stifled her instinctive reaction to such a peril and followed, launching herself into the darkness.  She felt the upward flow of the cool desert air as her body plummeted into the chasm.  And then, her feet were on solid ground again, painlessly.

 

"So, what's your big idea?"  Vicky asked as she stepped out of two foot-sized craters in the cliff face, shattered rock and dust spilling off her ankles.

 

"We take the bridge down," Louisa exclaimed, bounding towards the base of the bridge. 

 

"Really?"

 

"Come on, it'll be super cool!"

 

The bridge was an arch-type steel structure: two massive steel beams that started on the far side of the gulch, rose up to the level of the roadway, and then descended to meet the cliff face on the near side of the gulch.  Louisa bounded up to one of the footings, where one of the steel arches met the cliff face.  Vicky approached the remaining footing, and gave her friend an inquiring look.

 

"Dude," Louisa gushed.  "Come on, this will be so awesome!"

 

"Honey, you're 5 feet 11 inches of pure trouble," Vicky chuckled as she wrapped her arms around the massive steel support and crouched down, her feet on the concrete footing.  

 

"One, two, three!"  Louisa shouted.

 

Vicky grasped the massive steel support in a bear hug.  Her muscles flared as she slowly stood up.

 

Even as she exerted herself, Vicky stole a moment to admire Louisa.  Her friend was clad in eye-catching jeans now strained to the breaking point by the flaring of her glute muscles.  Louisa's t-shirt was one of those form-fitting numbers -- the hem of the sleeves cropped high on the shoulder to show off her arms -- and the colors were a cute lavender and baby blue combination.  However, there was nothing baby-ish about the rest of her.  Not only her glutes, but also her triceps, biceps and quads and flared nicely to accommodate the increased strain.  The deltoids and trapezius muscles on her back had also sprung into high definition that could be detected even through the cotton t-shirt.  Louisa was the perfect symmetry of unrelenting strength and elegant beauty.  Vicky couldn't help but allow herself a moment to gloat over her handiwork.

 

As Vicky and her friend exerted themselves, they were soon rewarded by a devastating groan as the bridge experienced strains for which it was not designed.  The sound send a tremor of excitement though Vicky as she was reminded how truly powerful she had become. 

 

Vicky then heard a deafening bang at her feet, and turned to see a massive steel foundation bolt -- its head six inches across -- pop off and tumble towards the chasm.  With little additional effort, Vicky redoubled the pressure she was applying, and there was another pop, followed by a third.  The bridge above her groaned in protest.  Then it all happened suddenly -- pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop -- as the massive bolts succumbed to her overwhelming power.  Soon, the only thing holding the west end of the bridge up were two lithe young ladies.

 

Vicky looked over at her friend, who sported a smile a mile wide.  Above, they could hear terrified shouts, and their enhanced ears picked up the frantic footsteps of motorists evacuating their vehicles and running towards safe ground.

 

"Ready?" Louisa said anxiously.

 

"No hang on," Vicky said, still listening to the sound of the receding footsteps.   Finally, the last of the noises transitioned from the hollow sound of a footfall on the bridge to the thud of a footfall on the ground.  "OK, ready.  Let's push it to the left."

 

The bridge groaned and screamed as the massive five-foot-wide steel beams offered no contest to the power of the girls.  Vicky watched with some fascination as her triceps flared to handle the extreme load.  Finally, she was experiencing a level of exertion that her highly enhanced body needed and deserved, and it was exhilarating!

 

The far end of the bridge, still attached to the far cliff face, buckled and bent as the bridge above them toppled to the side, the screaming of the steel unabated.  As bridge listed further and further to the side, cars skidded and then finally tumbled clear off.  Next came the massive satellite truck with its billion-dollar load, temporarily blotting out the night sky as the behemoth tumbled into the chasm.  A massive "boom" reverberated from below.

 

"Whhheeee" Louisa screamed.  With one last burst of strength, the hapless bridge went all the way over on its side, following the vehicles into the chasm below, screeching and tumbling as it went.  Vicky could feel a mass of cool air rush upwards from the chasm as the enormous piece of falling infrastructure sailed through the air.  The "BOOM" emanated from the bridge's impact was many times that of the truck.  It reverberated through Vicky's insides and echoed off the canyon walls.

 

"Oh my God, that was SO cool," Louisa squealed.  "What a huge bang!  Can you hear?  It's still echoing!"

 

Louisa was right.  Vicky could hear the subtle boom-boom-boom as the sound of the crash bounced off of the surrounding mountains. 

 

"I've never done anything so HUGE before," Louisa gushed.  "Let's do it again somewhere else."

 

"Whoa, big girl."  Vicky chuckled, removing a cell phone from the back of her jeans. "one thing at a time.  Let's get Kim the video she asked for."

 

 

---

 

 

"What's so funny?"  Bob asked, turning to face her.

 

Kim was lying prone, next to him on the bed, the light of the moon sliding gracefully down the elegance of her naked back.  Propped up on her elbows, she fiddled with her cell phone.

 

"Your little satellite project just hit a snag," she giggled.  "Looks like it's sitting in pieces at the bottom of a ravine."

 

"Are you kidding?" he replied, rolling over next to her.  His body was still clammy from their recent sexual exertions. 

 

Kim tilted the cell phone his direction.  It was playing a grainy video, captured by another cell phone, apparently.  But the main point of the video could not have been clearer - a crumpled and ruined truck, the twisted remains of a bridge, and in the foreground a broken and pummeled object, clearly labeled "Launch Module 2NQ-4".  That was the official name of the satellite, and everything about the object seemed to match his previous recollections-- the color, the shape.  He even recognized some of the pieces.

 

"Where did you get this?"

 

"I friend of mine just happened to be in the area at the time."

 

"My god," Bob said.  "I had a hundred million in that project.  What do I do?"

 

"I don't think even the news crews know about this yet," Kim suggested.

 

"You mean I still have time to dump this fucking stock?"  He exclaimed, jumping out of bed.

 

Bob threw on a pair of pajamas and ran downstairs.  Kim slipped into a pair of panties and a flannel shirt she had found on the bedroom floor.  She followed Bob at her own casual pace.

 

By the time she arrived in the office, he was busy making frantic phone calls.  To the trucking company: "Are you sure it was destroyed?"  To his stock broker: "I don't care what time it is.  Dump the stock now.  Twenty percent every hour so the market doesn't pick up on it."

 

Kim sauntered around his office while he was on the phone and eventually relaxed into the leather couch in the corner.  He noticed that she was looking around again, appraising the room in great detail.  It was the same odd behavior she had exhibited when she did when she first entered the house.  What the hell was behind that, he wondered?  Did she plan on moving in?

 

"Is that all you're doing?  Dumping the stock?"  Kim asked.

 

"Yes, why?"

 

"I just thought it would be more complicated than that.  I thought maybe you'd find a way to make money off the fact that the stock was going DOWN."

 

Bob thought about it a moment.  She was right!  There WAS a way he could do more than simply rescue his investment.  He could make a killing off of this! 

 

To do so, he would need to take out a short position.  Rather than buying a stock and hoping it would go up, in a short position he would actually buy the opposite instrument:  if the stock goes up, he loses money, but if it goes down, he makes money. 

 

In fact, shorting this stock would produce a huge payoff.  He had originally bought it at $50 hoping to sell it at $60.  But come morning, this stock would certainly plummet near zero.  Getting out of his original investment at full price, plus buying a short position now, would mean earning nearly $50 per share, not just $10.

 

Bob turned at the stunning beauty of the leather couch.  "You just gave me a great idea, honey."

 

The remainder of the night was consumed with more frantic phone calls as he slowly reorganized his investment.  By the time they were back in bed with the lights off, it was 3am.

 

As he watched the slanted rays of the moon bathe the room in an austere blue, he concluded that he couldn't have been a luckier guy.  He had the sexiest woman in the world wrapped around him in bed.  And across town, he had a stock broker making NASDAQ trades that, by sunrise, would nearly double his wealth.

 

Admittedly, there was only one nagging detail.  He never should have called the trucking contractor to verify that the satellite was destroyed.  He should have relied only upon the cell phone video.  The fact that he called the trucking contractor meant that he now possessed information that only a company insider could know.  Trading stock based upon that knowledge is illegal.

 

Luckily, he told himself, the girl who now slumbered peacefully, with her trusting arms wrapped around him, couldn't possibly know enough about stock market regulations to realize his indiscretion.  She probably know more about short skirts than she did about short positions, right?

 

With this as his self-assurance, Bob slowly drifted into a satisfied sleep.  He was so tired that he did not notice his raven haired companion slip out of bed at 7am and tip-toe downstairs with her cell phone. 

 

And as he snored, he did not hear her whispered voice as she spoke to a Securities and Exchange Commission hotline -- from a number that had been pre-programmed into her phone.