By the time eleven o'clock came up that Wednesday, Angie had already put in a long day, or so it felt as she brewed organic green tea and took a break with the TV news.

The big Southern Fried Lottery Sweep was reaching panic proportions. More than two hundred million new bucks were at stake now, and ticket sales across the southern tier had exploded. For calculated commercial reasons, the "Fried" was a restricted lottery, with tickets only sold in the states of the old Civil War Confederacy. This made it a badge of pride down there and had elevated it to a spot somewhere between College football and NASCAR as an essential aspect of cultural life. Past the lottery news everything was dominated by the tortured tale of the Mardell baby of Court County, Tennessee, which had been born with two heads. The national debate over what should be done about this was totally consuming for TV news, and the segment occupied almost the entire news slot. Religious conservative pundits opined that both heads had to be kept alive, as each head represented a fully formed human life. Moderate pundits responded that neither head would have a life worth living and that one head had to go.

Floating in the middle was some unfortunate Californian medical guy, who claimed he could keep whichever head was detached, alive, long enough for someone to come up with a robot body for it.

This concept had freaked the religious folks out. The Reverend Balsom Balcombe, head of the United Church of Revelation, the leading New Baptist congregation in the country, had denounced it as a "satanic" idea. They were just about howling for the Californian, name of Beregen, or something like that, to be disbarred, or defrocked, or whatever it was they did to Doctors to drum them out of the business.

Meanwhile, the Mardells, parents of little Evangeline, had become figures of hatred, loathed for their desire to have one head removed, to give Evangeline some chance at a normal life. They had been forced from their home by death threats, and were now living with a rescue mission, somewhere outside the county. Lawsuits had been filed to force them to give up the child, while counter suits had been filed to keep the family intact. The Mardells' other children had been the subjects of other court activity as various Christian groups sought to "rescue" them from their "satanic" parents. There were clips of protest groups marching around the Mardells' neighborhood with signs saying "Two Heads are better than One" among other things.

The tea was brewed. The harried looking face of Dan Mardell was on screen as he was pursued into a supermarket by a horde of reporters. Angie switched off in disgust.

Angie poured the tea into the little Ming tea cup she'd bought long ago, at a yard sale in Encino. This little cup-- a Gaiwan --was a gorgeous survivor of who knew what kind of history. It was unchipped, uncracked and still had its saucer and lid, and it was genuine Ming porcelain, from Jingdezhen, the great city of porcelain manufacture during the Imperial era. The cup had a white background, and on both cup and lid were circling clouds, and birds, beautifully rendered, with wings open, in deep blue. As she had so many times before, as she poured her tea into the cup, she recalled the day she'd found it, a grey overcast one, in February, and unusually cold for LA. She'd been looking at various properties that week for a new dungeon, thinking to move up into North Hollywood, perhaps. Something about the yard sale, the hand made sign, the smile on the face of the plump lady, or the happy looking black labrador had made her stop, park and investigate. And after staring at 20th century dolls, a collection of ancient vinyl "records" that you had to have some kind of antique system to listen to, and other amazing old stuff, she found the Ming teacup on a table laden with bric a brac, mostly weird and ugly, like the little ceramic dachshund salt and pepper shakers that sat next to the Gaiwan. The tea cup had spoken to her. She'd seen at once that it was very much older than everything around it, and that it was in great condition, so she'd picked it up. The lady had said "ten bucks" and she'd bought it without even haggling.

And later, in Beverly Hills, she'd found that it was worth about three thousand new dollars, especially since it had its lid and saucer intact. Sometimes, she thought, you just didn't know what you had, and maybe you let it go too easily. She'd considered going back and giving that woman five hundred bucks more, and she'd wanted to. But somehow, it hadn't happened. Well, money didn't grow on trees, and in those days she was still struggling to find her feet.

As she sipped her tea her thoughts circled back to Paul, and whether she'd been wrong to let him go. That Tilley Heron song came back again, with the haunting refrain. "things that once seemed all so certain, now have drifted far away....."

It was just so true, and Heron's voice, at once strong, and still ethereal and husked with sad emotion, was simply the perfect vehicle to carry the sentiment.

She and Sanni had both been big Heron fans, going to gigs at the New Troubador on Sunset, and downloading every scrap of Heron's songbook they could find.

The fundamental question still nagged at her. Could she have taken Paul, wed him in secret, moved back to California and lived happily ever after in some secure zone, perhaps up north? They would have had plenty of money, Paul could have changed his identity and started his own investment business. They could have had a family.

Well, maybe, but then again, all the familiar doubts and fears returned. Someone like Paul couldn't just disappear. He was simply too prominent. Anyone at his level was watched, monitored, observed, call it what you like. They would want to know why he'd vanished, and where he'd gone, and with whom. They would search for him, and they had incredible powers in that area these days. And that would mean staying hidden forever and always having the fear in the background of their lives.

But there was more to it. Deep down, beyond the bullshit, she didn't think she would ever commit to a man again, not in that way. That grim day back in '44 had destroyed everything for her in that department. She had no trust left. Mark had done nothing that he hadn't been ordered to do by superior officers. And yet they'd killed him, and they'd marked her for death too. She'd come to associate love, happiness, family life, with being assassinated. It was a fundamental aspect of her existence.

And yet, there was still more, because over the years she'd changed. It wasn't something she liked to accept about herself for some reason. She looked out the window at the view across the valley and shrugged. She'd become used to being in control. In her work she kept men on a leash, and on their knees. Away from work she was entirely independent, with no man in her life, outside of once-in-a-while dating. She was free to do whatever she wanted, whenever she liked. And that was how she liked it.

She sighed.

And then there was Rory Calann. The drug dealer, or grower, or whatever you liked to call it. He'd called her, and he kept calling. He wanted her. She liked that fact. She wanted him too. That night at the Calann compound, the fortress in the woods, as Jim called it, had stayed warm in her memory. But her feelings frightened her too. Especially, knowing what he did for a living. He had to have a big data tail in the files of several big agencies. Hang out with him and she was bound to show up on somebody's radar. How long before they ID'd her, connected her to the list of those marked to die way back when and sent the killers to finish the job?

This line of thinking made her restless. She wanted to get away, do something, anything.

First, she tidied up the kitchen, which was already pretty neat. She scrubbed the top of the fridge, pulled dishes out of the cabinet and cleaned that out, it was a job she'd been meaning to tackle for quite some time. She moved on to digging out the tube vacuum cleaner and working on the dust accumulated behind the fridge, another job she'd been meaning to get to for a while. The robovac was a good one, but there were places it just couldn't get to.

She was still upset, restless, and horny. She hated to admit it, but thinking about Rory Calann and his smile, his wit and his lean, hard body was making her hot. And she knew that just going to bed with the supa-vibe wasn't going to cut it. Nor would virtsex. She had an aversion to that sort of thing. Call her old fashioned, call her fussy, call her what you liked, but she didn't like having her own head manipulated on a sexual level. Perhaps that was because she was so good at pushing the buttons in her clients' heads.

More than anything she hated the feeling of not being in control. Self-control had become very important to her over the years of hiding in the shadows and working as a Dominatrix. Self-control was what her life had turned into. And that raised a bleak little question. Was that all there was? Keeping an iron lid on feelings. Pushing away anyone that got close. For the rest of her days? Could she stand it? Could she ever relax?

Eventually she decided to go for a run. It'd been three days since she'd had a real aerobic workout. It would help clear her head. And running on the trail was good for thinking, too. She could mull over her options. She'd already decided to go up to Boston soon and check it out. She'd never spent any time there, but she knew it was a civilized city with a large academic establishment. Academics had always been good for her business.

And besides, she'd spent the morning tracking down her money. That was always a nerve jangling exercise. She had what she thought of as "rabbit hole" accounts in California and New York City, money held under good, but fake, ID that she could use if she had to drop everything and run for her life. Of course, it took time and care to check it all out safely. Anonymous web activity was not only illegal it was difficult to pull off in the era of super-security protocol searches, run constantly by the Cyber Security Agency from its high tech, black-glass redoubt outside Washington. To anonymise, Angie relied on a young dude who called himself CyberReb7 and who claimed to be in LA, and might even actually be there. He had always managed to stay a couple steps ahead of the cybercops and his rep was solid gold. Today he had been false-sourcing his customers from IP addresses out of a hacked system in a bank branch in Fur Falls, Idaho. So, after some delays, while Cyber Reb made absolutely sure she was who she said she was, and that no cyberspider was tracking her movements on the web, she'd checked her hidden accounts, ascertained that everything was safe and tip-toed away again on anonymous cybertoes. It was important to do it, to make sure everything was okay in those accounts, but it was a bit nerve wracking. There was always the fear that the banks' own security would smell a rat and that could bring an investigation of the account and eventually the loss of that money. And then there was that nagging fear that the Feds had finally cracked CyberReb7 and she was just leading them to her precious rainy day money supply.

Still, this time at least, all had gone as planned.

She slipped into her tracksuit bottoms, exercise bra and the rock-ranger jogging shoes. They had extra cushioning and ankle support, with the foam-thread socks they cut impact stress by as much as fifty percent. She checked the sun before stepping out and added another layer of sunblock. Skin care was so essential for someone her age. Finally she grabbed a bill cap.

Outside she did a few knee bends, some stretches, enjoying the warmth of the sun. She would jog along the road, then take the slash trail, cut by Jim's boys, that ran all the way around the crag. The trail was seven or eight feet wide, and marked an ancient carriage road from another era. According to Jim there were ruins down past the crag where a "Mountain House" had stood once upon a time. It had burned down in the mid-twentieth century and what was left was completely overgrown.

But there were other ruins along the way, because people had lived here more recently than that. Their houses had been torched, probably by the military at the beginning of the proscription. Now there were mature trees growing up through the scrappy ruins. In another fifty years you wouldn't be able to tell they'd ever been there.

Sometimes she wondered about the lives of the people who'd lived here. It had been a different world back then, she understood that. Everything back then had run on oil, or some kind of fossil fuel. That was the reason the climate had changed, though nobody talked about it. There'd been a lot of personal freedom back then. The internet had been pretty much wide open. There'd been news media, with reporting on politics that went far beyond the bland official announcements that you had today.

All in all, that had been a very different America, where there was still a kind of democracy. Now, well she understood that power was more or less permanently retained by a small elite group and the people were largely discouraged from getting involved. There was still a little bit of a show of democracy. Elections were held, but actual voting was heavily discouraged, except by members of the ruling elite, of course. Ordinary people didn't vote. Paul, for instance, didn't vote, despite being such a high flyer. He'd told her once that only the CEO and CFO of his company voted, and everyone else was expected not to, as a mark of respect for the bosses.

The people in the older America would not have understood that. And it was a perfect example of how things had changed.

Had the people who'd lived in these long ruined houses had any idea of what was coming? Could they have imagined that their country would become a military dictatorship? Or was it a complete surprise to them when the soldiers showed up here, threw them out of their houses and blew them up?

Considering her own moment of enlightenment, twenty four years earlier, she rather imagined that nobody dreamed of what was going to happen to them. That was just the way people were. You didn't want to think about the bad stuff that might happen. Life was complicated enough. You had more problems than you needed. Why bother thinking about stuff you couldn't do anything about, anyway? And besides, hadn't there always been an assumption that that kind of thing couldn't happen in America? Until the day came when it did, and they kicked in your front door and told you to get out.

She didn't run fast, but she managed a steady pace. The trail was nice and level, and Jim's boys had done a great job, levelling trees right down to the ground, cutting out all the bushes, especially the invading bamboo. They'd even filled in some of the gulleys that had been cut long before by summer rains. She either ran on the trail up here, or worked out on the stairstepper machine in her basement three times a week. It kept up a good aerobic profile and a good looking ass, which in her business was extremely important. After all her clientele spent a lot of their time on their knees, looking at it, when they weren't looking at her boots.

As she ran, her thoughts cycled forward to her plans for the future. She was thinking seriously of moving up to Boston. She'd drive up there in the next week or so and start researching. She didn't know the city very well, had only visited a few times, but she knew that it had a large upper mid-class population, plus a big academic side. Both of those were prominent components of her clientele. Academics were a rich vein, in fact. Complex men, often struggling with gender issues, hiding from their true natures, desiring the hard little kisses of the whip to cut through the psychological knots that bound them.

So, Boston, a small city with a huge suburban ring. She would take a new name, perhaps Mistress Katrina, or Mistress Laura. She'd always liked those two. The only big questions left concerned property. Should she keep her house here on the mountain? And once she'd sold the property in Ramapo should she buy an apartment in Boston, or a suburban house? There were pros and cons for either choice. An apartment required a special location. One ideal type was a basement flat with a separate entrance, for the anonymity her clients would always prefer. A house was usually better in those regards, but it could also limit your market. Many men would not care to drive a long way for an appointment with a Dominatrix. On the other hand, it went without saying they didn't want to visit someone in their own neighborhood. So, it was a matter of making a careful choice. So considerable research was needed. The best strategy might be to start the way she'd done it in New York. Begin as an urban Mistress, and once she had a solid clientele, move out to the 'burbs. A devoted client would happily follow her to the new location.

Beyond those sort of calculations she knew she needed to take a good hard look at the Boston marketplace for her kind of services. At her age, with her looks, she could take any number of roles outside those of Teen-Queen and Young Blonde Bitch. She could be flexible and she had experience in creating any number of scenarios across a very wide spectrum of masochistic male desires, so she was confident of finding a niche, or several of them, but to be sure of quick success she needed to pitch herself to the right market in the right way.

And she also knew from experience, that the academic market would not pay super high prices, but on the other hand they could become loyal customers. Since what she wanted was steady, repeat business, that was a factor to keep in mind. Academics would also be uneasy about visiting an address in a super upscale neighborhood too.

Her 'net searches had shown a well developed market, with several prominent Boston dommes with big websites. They ran the gamut from young and lissome to older and haughtier. She was sure she could fit right in. But she'd have to start going up there, staying for a week or two at a time, to get the feel for the place.

She lapped the mountain trail twice, always keeping a sharp eye out in the space by the berry thickets where the rattlesnake sometimes waited. The snake was not aggressive or anything, it was just waiting for an unwary chipmunk to come looking for berries, but one time it had rattled loudly as she ran past, giving her a real scare. Since then she'd always watched out carefully for it when she passed this spot and sometimes, usually in midsummer, it would be there, silent, watchful, waiting. It had never struck at her, nor even rattled again, but she was always careful when she jogged past that spot. She liked to think that since she didn't ever bother the snake, it didn't concern itself with her running past its spot by the berry bushes. All it cared about was the possibility of an unwary chipmunk, after all.

She finished her laps and came down off the higher ground where the old carriage road had been laid, onto a lower trail. There were some ruts here that had deepened into little gulleys under the effect of the recent monsoon rains. She made a mental note to call Craig Elam, who had a small tractor-cum-dozer unit and who would regrade the trail and keep it from washing out entirely.

Down past the gulleys the trail snaked through a grove of hemlocks and then opened out to the road right by her driveway.

She paused for a moment there. The run had done her good, she'd shaken off the anxiety that was taking control earlier. She walked up the drive feeling strong and back in control until she came around the house and found a small, offwhite National pickup truck parked outside the garage.

Instantly she went into alarm mode.

Who could this be? The truck was unfamiliar. Strangers were just about unknown up here. She tapped her right temple to activate her phone chip and opened a line to Jim.

As usual it didn't ring. Jim's phones like everything else of his were off the grid, jacked in by some unusual and free technique that gave nothing away, especially his location. It was a mystery how he managed this, but that was Jim, he knew his way around the high security state apparatus. She waited. It was weird not even getting a ringing tone, left you wondering if your call had even gone through.

But then Jim was there.

"Jools, what's goin' on?"

"Got a pickup in my drive. Older model, National, 505. "

"Oh, yeah? Plate start with BIV?"

"Yes."

"Rory Callan has dropped by to see yer, that's all."

"Oh."

"Enjoy, Jools."

Jim was gone.

Damn! This was just what she'd been avoiding.

She couldn't see Rory, but she felt she was being watched, so she walked up to the house, gave the truck a once over as she passed it, noting the tool chest in the back, the shovel, pick, rake and big fork, all held by black plastic gripstix to the side walls of the bed, and the rifle in the front of the cab, propped up on a home made mount bolted to the door.

"Hello?" she called out, heading for the front door of the house.

There was no response, so she told the house to open up, slipped inside and went over and took the gun out of the bookcase. Even if it was just Rory, she preferred having the gun in her hand.

She took the opportunity to scan the house security system and to look out the windows at the back. The house had taken note of the truck's arrival, had logged a single person getting out, who had then disappeared off the house's screens.

Okay, Rory was here, but he'd realized she wasn't home and he'd gone for a walk.

She went back outside and called his name a few times.

On the fourth repetition she heard a callback, and there he was jumping down from the higher ground upslope of the driveway, his boots crunched on the gravel.

"Hey," he said. "You don't need the gun, I surrender."

He came close. She wanted to not respond, to not be attracted. It was so much safer that way, but with this good looking hunk of man standing there, smiling, looking loose and relaxed, she wasn't thinking like that.

"Well, I suppose I should have expected this," she said, mock severe, but smiling back.

"I told you that the Calanns are hard to get rid of."

"You did, and I believed you."

He pointed to the gun in her hand.

"Well, you gonna put me out of my misery or what?"

She laughed, then pointed the gun at the ground. "Sorry. Habit, I guess. Living alone and all."

"Okay. So, you didn't return my calls."

"Yeah, I usually don't."

"Another habit?"

She hesitated, looked him in the eye. "Yeah."

"So, you're single for a reason."

"You could say that, I suppose."

"Just, well, I guess I'd have expected a lady like yourself, to be, uh, married or something."

"Yeah?"

"You being about as beautiful as anyone I've ever met, and smart too."

Whether he was sincere or putting her on a little bit didn't matter, she was touched.

"Where did you learn to flatter like this?"

"It just came naturally, ma'am. Kinda surprised me, I don't think I've ever felt the need before."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Never?"

He spread his hands as if to clear the air. "Look, honestly, you got to me."

She grinned. "I'm old enough to be your goddamned mother."

"Yeah, I know. And your line of business is not my thing, either."

"What?" Alarm bells rang up and down her spinal column.

"Whoa!" He'd seen her eyes go to slits. "It wasn't me. It was Mina. I don't know how, but she unlocked the door on the truck. "

"Fuck! Jim swore my stuff would be safe."

"Oh, don't worry. I got that thing back, locked it up, moved the truck somewhere that nobody can get at it. Your, uh, stuff is fine."

He had a little smirk on him. A part of her, a well practised part, could easily imagine erasing it with a few strokes with a squid or a single tail whip.

"Okay, thanks. I'll come get it in a day or so. Sorry to have inconvenienced you."

The smirk was gone. "It's safe. Nobody but me, Mama T and Mina knows. And Mama T made sure that Mina won't open her mouth."

Angie compressed her lips, kept her silence.

"I put it back. Everything's cool."

And Rory's smiling, casual armor had crumbled for a moment. She found that she enjoyed that. Seeing him squirm, just a little. It was authentic, and he really did want her.

"Okay." She let him have a smile. It was okay, she wasn't that angry.

"So what did she take?"

Rory blushed. It was so unexpected that she almost laughed out loud, but held back, just --aware that she'd found a real chink in his sophisticated shell.

"Uh, I don't know what you call it. Like a fake dick, in a jock strap?"

Now she really laughed. "Oh, my, that was bold of little Mina. What was she going to do with that?"

Rory's confidence had snapped back into place. "I don't know. It could give me nightmares if I thought about it."

"For your information that's a Strapon. We, uh, use them to fuck guys."

Rory's eyes had widened appreciably. This was touché for all the stuff about possums and organic produce.

"Wow, that's, uh, hard to, uh, imagine."

"Oh sure, until you've done it a thousand times, I guess."

Something in his eyes told her she'd got him below the waterline with that one.

"You're pretty, uh, experienced then."

She took his hand, pulled him along towards the house. "Baby, there isn't much about men that I don't know by this point. That you can count on."

The door opened, she tugged him inside. She put the gun back in the bookcase in the kitchen.

"I'd shower and everything, but you know, I'm just too ready for this," she undid his belt, unzipped his jeans, helped herself to the contents.

He was ready, no question about that. She decided to think about the consequences of all this later, considerably later.