Chapter 5

The descent into Denver airport woke us up. As per instructions we took a train into downtown Denver and a bus from there to our apartment in a high rise building. “Look,” Emily said about halfway down the block and across from the apartment building. “It’s a pot store.”

“You smoke?” I asked.

“Sometimes. You?”

“Not for a while.”

She grinned. “Let’s check it out after we drop off our stuff.”

“Why not?” I grinned back.

A packet awaited us in the small one bedroom apartment which at least had a queen sized bed. A small kitchen and bathroom and a large walk-in closet was it. In front of the window was a sort of desk but more a long and deep ledge in the bedroom, drawers underneath it and two spaces between the drawers for legs, so desks, which is where I found the packet.

Dumping the contents on the bed revealed two smartphones, a couple large manila envelopes and a couple letter-sized ones along with some loose pages. Emily grabbed those while I took the phones, one of which turned on when my thumb pressed it.

“Thumbprint,” said Emily and I handed her hers.

“How did they get my thumbprint?” I asked, looking at the apps, none of which I recognized.

“That would be my fault,” Emily admitted. “Egghead called and wanted me to bring him something with your thumbprint on it. I brought him a wine glass and he used some weird device to record it. I should have told you, but it was so weird and creepy I guess I didn’t want to.”

“Because I’d freak out and not want to go?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“What was the device like?”

“A lot like the anti-listening device,” she said, which we both knew to actually be a listening device. I nodded.

“What else does it say?” I asked.

“It says to put all transmitting devices in the box in the bottom drawer of the desk. The other bottom drawer has laptops programmed to each of us.”

“Shit,” I said.

“But we can copy anything we’ve been working on and put it into the new laptop, which will scan for any malware or spyware.”

“That’s good at least.”

“Yeah. It says when we’re ready to place the stuff in the box as well as anything with our name on it, drivers’ licenses, credit cards, business cards, social security, health, and once done, close it and press the button and it will seal and not be able to be accessed by us.”

“Lead lined,” I speculated.

“Or something,” Emily said. I nodded. Alien technology came to mind, or perhaps the work of other geniuses.

“Anything else?”

“They said they’d return the stuff if we’re not accepted in the program.”

“Or not,” I thought, but decided not to say. People liked keeping their secrets.

Emily set aside the paper despite there being more pages and grabbed a small envelope, looking at the contents. “This one’s yours,” she said, handing it to me and opening the other one.

“Joseph Gould,” I read on the Colorado driver’s license. The address was the condo.

“Amanda Gould,” she read. “Hey we’re married. And I guess I just turned twenty-one!”

“Happy birthday,” I chuckled.

“Thanks,” she grinned. Then pouted. “No honeymoon.”

“I guess this will be,” I shrugged.

“And no rings,” she added.

“I guess they didn’t think of everything,” I muttered.

“Buy us them?”

“Of course.”

I got a kiss for that, but we had more to look at.

The manila envelopes held forged documents, our birth certificates, our diplomas, all fiction of course, and CVs, which since we wouldn’t be looking for jobs probably had to do with memorizing the fiction of our fake lives.

I read the next page of the shared printouts. “We’re to be at the back entrance of the old mint at precisely 5:48 am whereupon a code will let each of us in. What code?”

“Maybe the key card?” Emily suggested.

“Maybe.”

“Or...” She opened her new phone. “There’s an icon with a door.” She opened it and showed it to me. It looked somewhat like a scan code but different. I opened mine and we compared them finding slight differences.

“It says to be near a minute before,” I continued reading, “And a sound will signal us to approach the door. We’ll have a minute to enter.”

“Surveillance cameras,” Emily figured.

“Probably.”

“Anything else?”

“Just a map which they recommend not bringing with us.”

“Of course.”

“And to bring the laptop, the phone, the key card and nothing else.”

“Naked?” she grinned and we laughed.

“They did suggest casual,” I pointed out.

“So we look like the next schmo,” she offered.

“As if you could look like any schmo, let alone the next,” I responded.

She gave me a quick kiss. “Let’s go get high.”

“Maybe we should dump our stuff first?”

“Everything I need is on a memory stick. You?”

“I pretty much resolved everything before we left. But maybe we should make sure your data works?”

“Okay.”

We pulled out the laptops and traded when our thumb prints didn’t work. A few file icons popped up, none of which I recognized. “Looks like a quill pen and paper,” said Emily.

At least the laptop had normal plugs and Emily plugged in the stick. Her files popped up and she was able to copy them like normal and pulled out the stick before opening the quill program which brought forth a rectangle, the corners somewhat rounded, with what looked like a drain at the center. Pasting the files, we watched as the icons stretched and slipped into the drain. We heard flushing and, moments later, the file icons popped out one at a time and seemed to float into position. “Looks like they’re still windows!” Emily proclaimed. “Let me try something.” She opened a file and through it a new file and wrote Emily and saved it. Another flush and closing the windows page the new file appeared. She plugged the stick back in, brought Emily to it and pulled it out. Opening her old laptop she checked the new file. “It works!”

“Except they probably won’t want you to keep the stick,” I said.

“But it doesn’t transmit,” she said.

“Let me check something.” I opened the top drawer and found a stick with a shape and texture similar to the device.

“Do you think they’d let me send that?” Emily asked.

“Except having you published while we’re here is a great cover,” I argued. “Maybe they could messenger a normal stick to Danny.”

The phone in the room, the one actually plugged into the wall, rang. Since we both knew it was for her, she answered it, hanging up soon after.

“Machine voice says to bring the stick to class when it’s ready,” she reported.

“At least they’re not pretending not to listen in.”

“I guess,” she said. “I really need to get high.”

We put all the stuff requested into the box. I slipped my new ID into my basically empty wallet, except for the several hundred dollars of course, and we headed out.

At the marijuana shop we decided against ingestibles figuring they’d probably linger in our system too long. Limited to a little less than an ounce, we each bought that amount with two varieties of their most expensive herb, going cheap on the delivery device, a wooden one hitter with some screens.

“Where can we smoke it?” Emily asked.

“Besides your home?” the friendly gentleman replied.

“We’re feeling restless,” she explained.

He gave us an address in walking distance. The app on my phone let me know where. A couple blocks later we found a gentlemen’s club. “Maybe we can smoke in there,” she grinned.

“We can ask,” I shrugged.

A thickset Mexican greeted us from behind a desk. “Ten dollars each,” he said. “Two drink minimum.”

“Can we smoke pot in there?” Emily asked.

“No smoking, pot included,” the man smirked, amused.

“But we could share.”

An idea struck him. “Hang on.” He leaned through the door which increased the thudding sound of the music. Settling back, a middle aged man came in and paid the fee before a tall and slim and beautiful and impossibly stacked Asian woman came through the door. She and the bouncer talked close together so we couldn’t hear. The woman laughed. “Follow me,” she said.

“Uhm, ten dollars,” the Mexican reminded us. I handed him a twenty and he stamped our hands.

I watched the tight shifting little ass of the stripper, exaggerated by her tall stripper heals, the shifting easily seen with her tiny red skirt and black French cut panties obvious beneath when I wasn’t glancing at the gorgeous naked blonde on the large stage in the middle of the room, also slim but without the augmented tits, so they looked to be barely b cups and the other nearly naked women parading around of various races, mostly slim and all at least pretty, most beautiful, an impressive array of pulchritude all in all, while the Asian beauty led us though a doorway where booths surrounded us, a few occupied by more sexy women grinding away on men, and on the other side a door she opened and a set of stairs to a second floor hallway and another door, a lounge with chairs and tables and a large open window where a couple dancers smoked. “You girls want to get high?” the Chinese woman asked.

“Really?” one said, and the other said, “Of course.” The first was naturally voluptuous and somewhat stocky but definitely a hot black woman, the other a graceful, elegant seeming raven haired beauty with startling blue eyes.

“They’re cool about you getting high?” I asked while Emily prepared the one hitter for herself, lighting it with wooden matches the shop had provided.

“Our manager’s out sick and Jorge’s cool,” said the Asian woman.

“So that’s a no,” I chuckled while Emily coughed, handing me the pipe which I handed to the Asian woman.

“They prefer us drug free,” the black woman with a higher than expected voice answered.

“Marijuana’s cool,” said the elegant raven haired woman. “Just not smoked here. I’m Ava by the way.”

“Rayna,” said the black woman.

“Layla,” the Asian. “I should get back to work.”

“Let anyone know we’re here,” Emily said.

“I will.”

Emily and I introduced ourselves using our new names.

“Why are you in town?” Rayna asked.

“We live here,” I said.

“I haven’t seen you here,” said Ava.

“First time,” said Emily. “We’re celebrating getting my first book published.”

“Cool,” said Ava. “And what do you do?” she asked me.

“Professor,” I replied.

“I’m a former student,” Emily giggled.

“Naughty professor,” Ava smirked.

“We waited until after that relationship,” I said defensively. “I was of course attracted, but didn’t know she wanted me until she basically raped me in my office once she graduated.”

“Rape,” Ava muttered. “Right.”

“I was extremely aggressive, but he was anything but reluctant.”

“No shit,” said Ava. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You ain’t too bad yourself,” said Emily.

The two had a moment. “I should go,” said Rayna, and when she exited the door, another beauty, this one blonde, entered.

“Sit,” said Emily. “I’m Amanda.”

“Cherie,” said the blonde. Emily handed her the stuffed one hitter. “Hate to smoke and run,” she said after coughing, “but...”

After she left, Emily asked Ava, “Anything more private than those booths?”

“Past the VIP section at the back, but it’s expensive.”

“Not a problem,” I said.

Another stripper entered, this one a curvaceous Latina with a full ass, Celia, lovely of course. By then the three of us remaining had smoked a couple hits and Emily lit up a third one. Once she blew out her smoke, she handed the container of pot and the one hitter to Celia. “You guys smoke what you want, but we’ll need the pipe back.”

“Okay,” Celia smiled.

“Show me this private room?” Emily asked Ava.

“With pleasure,” Ava grinned.

Back downstairs, we followed Ava to the bar. “Twenty each for the VIP room,” she told us, “and you get two drink coupons. Three hundred for fifteen minutes in the private room, and five hundred for a half hour.”

“Joe will definitely need the half hour,” Emily giggled

I pulled out my slim wallet and counted out six hundred dollar bills, getting change in twenties, fives and ones, mostly ones. Emily and I both ordered gin and tonics. Though I preferred scotch or bourbon depending on my mood, I was too much of a connoisseur or snob to order anything off the shelf unless I trusted the shelf to be worthy of snobbery.

I left several of the ones behind, tipping the bartender before Ava guided us through a curtain and into a smaller room, the mainstage basically extending into it. On the smaller stage, the tallest and most full figured of the women I’d seen twirled around a pole with both grace and athleticism. She may have been thicker than the others, but both tits and ass held their beautiful rounded form, and muscles played out beneath a soft, feminine layer from abdomen to thighs. Her brunette hair and Semitic nose suggested Jewishness but beautifully. I barely noticed the three naked women giving lapdances to a table of Asian businessmen who obviously were allowed to touch and another smaller table a couple felt up another woman sitting between them.

“That’s Hannah,” Ava informed me, noticing my gaze. “She’s a sweetie.”

She led us to another curtained door where a muscled black man sat on a stool. He collected a receipt from her before we passed through the curtain to a hallway with four doors, entering the second one on the right. The first on the left had a small round light lit dimly red. I noticed the other doors had unlit ones. I also noticed Ava pressing a button on the wall to the right of our door and the light illuminating there as well. A matching red light inside the room illuminated it.

A double bed filled most of the room, along with a small cushioned box, which Ava opened and pulled out a fitted sheet, quickly covering the mattress with it while letting us know, “You can hang your jackets on the hooks,” two of which had been secured to the door. We did as requested, setting our cups down on a slim table set into the wall opposite the bed, a mirror above it.

Grabbing our drinks, we sat on the bed. Ava pressed a button on the back wall and the music from the club became piped in. She danced for us slowly, slower than the beat, sensuously and gracefully, mesmerizing us, while performing the proverbial dance of the seven veils with much fewer veils to remove. Once naked, she moved to Emily to whom she’d gazed at most of the time, performing a suggestive lap dance with mouth and then breasts pressed against Emily’s covered pussy and up to her covered breasts until she teased Emily’s lips with light pecks. Emily would have none of that, and pulled Ava into a strong kiss, then laying back and scooting them to the center of the bed while grabbing Ava’s supple ass and pulling her up, kissing nipples for a time before encouraging her to bring her pussy to Emily’s lips. When Emily’s hands went to her pants, I took over, removing them and her panties and diving face first onto her pussy.