She took it off and handed it to me, saying, "Don't be silly. At least I can hold the back door for you so you won't have to come back in the front. Just don't let anyone get a good look at you. That dress is going to be easy to describe. Especially on you."
"Yes. Well, come on then."
I headed out the door at as quick a pace as I could manage in those shoes. Before it closed behind us, I saw Mom looking at us with an expression that said she knew we were up to something. I wanted to wave or something, but there wasn't time.
In the back hallway, Neeka opened the restroom door to mask my exit out the back. There was a pay phone there she could use as an excuse to hang around and my last glimpse was of her reaching for the receiver.
Once outside, I dashed around the screen of bushes hiding the dumpster and raced around to the parking lot at the side of the restaurant. I edged in between an SUV and a minivan to watch for the two goons coming out the front door. I didn't have a clue that they looked like, but if I heard the same voice, I would be sure.
While I waited, I tied Neeka's green scarf around my head to hide my blonde hair. That done, I tried to think of any other way I could keep from being recognized. Neeks was right about the dress, it was bright blue and practically glowed in the bluish light in the lot. The shoes were impossible. I had almost stumbled twice getting to my hiding place. They had to go, so I kicked them off.
"I'll just do this barefoot," I thought. Then another obvious idea occurred to me. It was so obvious that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. It solved a lot of problems and would make identifying me as Sam Kramer almost impossible, while anyone at all would instantly know The Dragon.
There was no one else in the lot, so I unhooked the halter from behind my neck and let the beautiful silky blue dress slide off me and puddle around my feet. Since it and my shoes were the only thing I had put on to go out, I was stark naked except for the scarf on my head.
A moment later, I wasn't naked. I was wearing dark green scales, ugly yellow claws, and a face out of a monster movie. I had been so hung up on carrying around my fighting suit that I had ignored the fact that my skin was the perfect disguise. I remembered when the soldiers had almost barfed while looking at my boobs. With my whole body involved in my costume, my figure would be the last thing anyone would notice.
The only remaining item to deal with was the chain connecting my nipple-rings. I was trying to work the little hook on one side when the front door opened and two men in suits walked out. Connie leaned out the door behind them, calling cheerily, "Thanks for coming. Please come again soon!"
As they crossed the concrete apron into the gravel parking lot, I saw that neither of them wore a tie and that their coats looked too big for them. At first, I put it down to bad tailoring, but then I realized that they probably had guns under their coats and the larger size was so the bulges wouldn't show.
I picked up my dress and shoes and shadowed the two men while crouching behind a row of cars. One of them tugged flamboyantly at his coat's labels and said, "Well, Mr. Jones, that's another successful negotiation. Our employer told us that family-run businesses would be easy marks. The poor saps just have too much to lose. They always come across."
His partner laughed and said, "Yeah, Victor — I mean Mr. King — sure can pick 'em. But you should have let me rough him up a little more, just to let him know we was serious. I can do it without leaving marks."
"Perhaps, Mr. Jones. We'll see. The next place on the list is that Chinese place a few blocks from here. We'll make the owner there the same proposition."
From eavesdropping on them, I figured that Smith, Jones, and King were all fake names they had been told to use to keep nosy parkers like me from figuring out who they were and who they worked for. Smith was the talker and Jones the muscle. Victor, aka Mr. King, must be their boss, the man who came up with the scheme and made the list of places to hit. I thought about trying to track them back to their boss, but it sounded like they were making the rounds of several places tonight and I didn't have time or the means to tail them all over town.
The car they stopped at was a dark-colored, two-door sedan with out-of-state plates parked in the darkest corner of the lot. In the pale light it looked new, but I could see that the tires were worn almost bald. I wondered why someone would buy a new car and put old tires on it, then I figured out that it was an older car that had recently been through one of those 'paint your car for $49.95' shops.
"Probably stolen," I thought. "I bet they swapped license plates with another car, too."
I dropped my dress into the back of a pickup truck that didn't look too awfully dirty and concentrated on dumping adrenalin into my blood as fast as I could. These were two armed, professional crooks, and I wanted to be ready for anything.
My shoulders shook as I felt the first burst of power flow into me. It made my boobs bounce and the chain tug on my rings. I'd forgotten about the chain with the charm in the middle. "No time to get it off now," I thought. "I just hope they won't notice it."
Another burst of power hit me and I felt my skin crawling all over. It felt like I was swelling up, getting too big for my skin, but it was probably just my muscles tensing. A sudden gust of cool night air felt good on my bare back as my metabolism kicked into high gear and my temperature spiked. I stood up straight and flexed my arms and shoulders. I was going to enjoy this. These thugs had messed with the wrong restaurateur. Uncle Sergio had a guardian Dragon and she was about to rock and roll on a couple of hoods who thought they could get away with bullying and threatening honest people. Maybe their boss would take a hint and move his extortion racket somewhere else.
The crooks got in their car and started it up. I stepped out of my hiding place and walked boldly up behind the crooks as Mr. Smith put it in reverse and started to back out. I expected him to stop when he saw me, but either he wasn't looking or the sight of a five-foot tall dragon in his rear-view mirror just didn't register. Either way, I had to get out of the way, or I would get run over. I was so pumped that I took the sky route. With a single step run-up, I took off and jumped up on top of his roof.
Because of all the adrenalin, I went pretty high up and landed feet-first with a loud boom, making a big dent in the roof of his car. He slammed on the brakes real quick then. So quick that I lost my balance and fell over backwards, landing on my back with another loud boom. My head bounced off the roof just where a support ran across it and my eyes crossed and I saw stars.
It didn't hurt terribly much, but it stunned me and I lost control of my animated skin and it reverted back to my normal tan in a heartbeat. I could tell this because I was struggling to get up and my head and shoulders were raised and I was looking right down my front when it happened.
"Oh, hell," I thought. There goes my costume. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all."
A wave of dizziness hit me then and I was still sitting there wondering if I had a concussion and trying to sit up when the two thugs popped up on either side of me to see what had landed on their car.
"Holy shit!" Mr. Jones said. "A girl! And she's naked. And she's got great hooters, too." Then, somewhat belatedly, "What the hell is she doing on the car?"
"Never mind that, idiot! She's going to attract attention! Get her down from there and put her in the back seat. We've got to get out of here and ditch this car."
"But I like this car! The seats are comfortable and it's my favorite color."
"We can't drive it with the roof mashed in like this. It would stand out. And if you remember, dimwit, we boosted this out of a garage in Birmingham. Now get her down and let's go. We can find out her story later. I confess, I'm curious. And we haven't gotten our ashes hauled since we left Panama City."
They talked so long that I was able to regain enough coordination to roll to my knees and reach for Smith. At the same time, Jones grabbed my ankle and yanked, jerking me flat on the roof again. Smith either got impatient, or he saw me lunge for him, because he reached up to grab my arm rather than wait for Jones to corral me. I jerked it away successfully, but his hand got tangled in my charm-chain.
Smith grabbed the chain by reflex, but as soon as he realized what he was holding and how it was attached, he grinned right in my face.
"I gotcha now, Peaches. You're coming along with us or I'll rip those nips right off." To make sure I knew he was serious, he pulled on the chain, reeling me in. I could either follow like a dog on a lead, or be dragged by the nipples. I crawled down as quick as I could, but he half-dragged me anyway, just to be mean.
Smith yanked the seat forward and shoved me roughly into the back. The back seat was even more cramped than the one in Neeka's car. It was so small that it barely qualified as a shelf. My knees were jammed against the seat back in front of me and if I had been any taller, I would have had to bend my neck to keep my head from banging against the sloping rear window.
I expected to have time to recover and take them out before they got out of the parking lot, but Jones turned around in his comfortable seat and shoved a pistol in my face. The barrel looked like the mouth of a cave and he held it steady, pointing it right between my eyes.
I had been shot once already and survived, but that was in the hand. I had no illusions about my ability to recover from a bullet to the brain. If Jones pulled that trigger, I would be instantly dead. I decided to bide my time and wait. He would put the gun down eventually, and I would spring into action. If they got as far as taking me to their boss, maybe I would have an opportunity to take them all out together.
My decision not to resist must have been clear from my face and my posture, but Jones was taking no chances. As the car pulled out onto the street, he fumbled in the center console without taking his eyes off me and pulled out a thick roll of package-strapping tape.
"Turn around and kneel on the floor," he told me.
I followed orders. There was so little room that I couldn't get my feet and my knees on the floor of the car together. I had to straddle the hump in the floor and bend my legs so that my heels were pressed into my butt. I was bent awkwardly over the rear seat with my butt stuck up in the air between the front seats. This put my face into the rear seat and kept me from seeing out. With me kneeling on the floor and bent over the rear seat like that, no one could tell I was even in the car, which was probably the idea. I looked back at Jones over my shoulder to see if he was enjoying seeing the contorted position he had put me in.
He seemed to be. He tapped the inside of my ankles with the pistol and I moved them further apart, putting my feet alongside my ass. He admired the view for a bit, then he said, "Put your hands behind your back and cross your wrists."
I did this, too. He bit on the end of the roll of tape and unrolled a length with his free hand. Then he took a switchblade knife out of his pocket and cut the tape off the roll. With more dexterity than I would have expected, he wrapped the tape tightly around my wrists with one hand.
I was trying to test the strength of the tape without being obvious about it, when I heard him prepare another length. This one he wrapped around my forearms, almost at the elbows, strapping them tightly together behind my back. This forced my shoulders way back and made my back arch. My breasts jutted out from my chest at different angles. The chain connecting my nipple rings was pulled taut and I could feel the rings twisting in my flesh. The tendons in my shoulders strained to keep my arms from popping out of their sockets. Even as limber as I was after all the cheerleading and martial arts exercises I had done, the discomfort was enough to make my eyes well up with tears. I blinked them away as soon as they formed. I would not let these two think they had made me cry.
I looked back to see Jones still holding the gun steady on me while he unrolled a third, even longer, piece of tape and then a fourth. With these he strapped my ankles to my thighs, immobilizing my legs. I felt like was trussed up like a holiday turkey, ready for the oven. It all seemed too much to me, but Jones was the expert here. Given the ease with which he tied me up while reaching over the seat of the car while holding a gun on me with one hand, he must have had lots of practice at doing this. I began to have doubts about escaping easily.
I still tried to look over my shoulder to see if he would put the gun away now that he had me so thoroughly strapped, but, he still had it pointed at me. He only relaxed enough to rest his arm on the console between the front bucket seats.
I thought that the large-caliber pistol was a perfect phallic symbol for a thug like Mr. Jones, who probably couldn't achieve satisfaction any other way. I wondered if the gun had become his substitute for sex. Perhaps when he pulled the trigger that was his climax. Maybe the bullet represented his cum. Then I realized that the gun was pointing directly at my exposed pussy and perhaps this line of reasoning wasn't the best way for me to pass the time.
Jones seemed to read my mind. He extended his arm, pushing the end of the pistol between my legs. He raised it up until the steel slide rested between my slightly parted labia. The raised nub of the front sight bumped my clit and I flinched, making the muscles in my thighs flex and my butt quiver.
This encouraged him and he started stroking me with the gun, sliding it back and forth against my pussy, dragging the rounded sight across my clit with each stroke. I tried to ignore the stimulation, but I felt my body respond automatically. After a few more strokes, he took the gun away and held it up to look at it in better light.
"This one's got a real hot box on her," he observed to his partner. "She's already wet. I bet she was out there doing something wild when she fell on our car."
Smith grunted. He was more relaxed, now that we were away from the restaurant where he had committed extortion. "Probably," he said. "I can't think why she'd be out there bare-assed like that unless she were looking to get some pipe laid in her. She's sure a looker, isn't she? I never saw tits that big on such a little girl. It certainly would be a crime to let this opportunity go to waste." He chuckled at his choice of words, but the humor seemed to sail right over Jone's head.
"Yeah? Maybe Mr. King will want to put her in one of his videos with her as the star. You think? I bet she'd do real good in front of the camera. She's obviously not shy and she's got a great body."
"That would be his decision, but I'd say that's the way to bet. Hey, Peaches? You want to star in a video?" The way he laughed when he said it told me that there was something I needed to know about the role I would be playing.
At first I thought about answering. They hadn't gagged me, yet. Pleading would probably just egg them on. Threats of retribution if they didn't let me go sounded awfully lame, so I didn't bother. Nothing I said would change their intentions one bit. I thought about trying to sound enthusiastic about the plan. Sort of reverse psychology. But that would be even more absurd than threatening them, so I said nothing.