The Institute, Daddy Issues(75)

I put my hand on the knob. Slowly and ever so care­fully, I turned it and pushed si­lently into the room.

Or I would have been si­lent if it hadn’t been for the huge piece of sil­ver equip­ment hid­den in the shad­ows just be­side the door. I have no idea what it was—a pool va­cuum maybe? Any­way, it fell over onto the tiled floor with an almighty loud clat­ter.

“Mandy, what the Hell?” an angry male voice ex­claimed. “You know Berkley says you’re not sup­posed to be in here! And I told you, I’ll let you know if I find any ‘juicy’ parts for you to watch later.”

I had a con­fused im­age of a room filled with black and white mon­it­ors—it looked like one of those “eye in the sky” mon­it­or­ing rooms you see when you watch doc­u­ment­ar­ies about Ve­gas casi­nos. Sup­posedly they watch every­one in their ho­tels all the time and it looked like Berkley had de­cided to do the same thing. I got a glimpse of the din­ing room with every­one still sit­ting around the table on one screen, and a shot of the empty front entry­way on an­other. Oth­ers showed the pun­ish­ment wing and med­ical rooms and there were plenty which seemed to show the guest suites as well.

A glimpse was all I got be­cause I was already try­ing to get away from the scene of the crime and the large, angry se­cur­ity guard who was watch­ing the mon­it­ors. Un­for­tu­nately, my feet got tangled in the hose at­tached to the equip­ment and I fell.

“Mandy!” the guard ex­claimed in ir­rit­a­tion. He yanked me up by the arm be­fore I could get away from him. “I told you I— Hey…” He frowned as he got a closer look at me. “You’re not Mandy. So who the Hell are you?”

I’m De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker and you’re un­der ar­rest if you don’t get your hands off me right now, I wanted to say. But of course I couldn’t. I also couldn’t kick him in the balls or use any of the hand-to-hand com­bat moves I knew to take him down.

“I’m mishka.” I tried to make my voice small and frightened as I looked up at the guard with wide eyes. Damn, he was al­most as big as Salt.

“You’re who?” he de­man­ded, shak­ing me. “This area is strictly off lim­its.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a friend of Mandy’s and we were play­ing hide and go seek but I couldn’t find her in the play room so I thought I would look in here. Is she around?”

I tried to look as in­no­cent as I could but the guard clearly wasn’t buy­ing it.

“No, she isn’t and you shouldn’t be either. This is a re­stric­ted area,” he growled.

“I’m really sorry.” I made my eyes big and scared. “Please, can’t you just let me go? I prom­ise I won’t bother you again.”

“Afraid not, girly. Sneak­ing a peak into the view­ing room is a pun­ish­ment of­fense.” His mud-brown eyes raked up and down my body, mak­ing me wish for a thick turtle-neck sweater to cover up with. He licked his lips. “Wish I could pun­ish you my­self, but I have strict or­ders from Dir­ector Berkley to bring any­one snoop­ing around straight to him.”

“But I wasn’t snoop­ing,” I ob­jec­ted. “I told you, we were play­ing hide and go seek!”

“Too bad—looks like the only thing you found is trouble.”

And tak­ing a firmer grip on my arm, he hauled me out of the equip­ment room and through the pool and spa area.

“Let me go!” I snarled at him furi­ously. “My part­ner—er—Daddy is go­ing to be ex­tremely angry if you don’t!”

“Yeah, yeah, you all say that.” The guard soun­ded bored. “And then your Daddy shows up and de­cides you need a good can­ing or flog­ging or whatever.”

I felt cold all over. “But I don’t want to be caned or flogged!”

“Sure you don’t, girly,” he said sar­castic­ally, shoot­ing me a lech­er­ous look. “Which is why you were in a re­stric­ted area dressed up like that and look­ing to get caught. I know all your tricks—you want to be pun­ished. It makes you fuck­ing hot.” He gave me an­other ap­prais­ing glance. “Not that you’re not hot enough already. Damn, you have some sweet little tits.”

“Why you—” I star­ted to protest some more but he whipped out a walkie-talkie and star­ted tak­ing into it.