Chapter 1

"Randy Buck, Nancy," Cynthia Marvel, also known as the Baroness, owner, president and chief executive officer of Marvel Industries, the cosmetic and bluejean conglomerate says to her vice president of marketing.

"Now there is a name I haven't heard in a long time," Nancy responds, "and hoped never to hear again."

"Now Nancy, the world is too small and Randy and I too large for us not to run into one another every now and again.

"I saw him in a restaurant the other day, Nance.

"The big, friendly wave, the 'how have you been' bit, the whole thing."

"How very nice for the two of you," Nancy observes, drily.

"Yes," Cynthia says, ignoring the sarcasm, "there is something very nice when two old adversaries run into each other in a social setting.

"It gives each of us a chance to gauge how things are going with the other.

"Do we look well or hagard?

"Are we aging gracefully or at all?

"Are we tanned from the sun or pasty from too much time spent in the great indoors?"

"Stuff like that.

"Combinations of observation and intuition.

"Especially interesting when applied to Randy Buck, a man who bears watching."

"A man who belongs in a straight jacket until they give him a lethal injection, the gas chamber, the electric chair, the gallows, the firing sq—"

"Enough, Nancy!

"I get the picture and I agree with you a thousand percent.

"Which should make it all the more disturbing when I tell you that he was looking very well indeed—tanned, fit, radiating contentment."

"Uh-oh," Nancy drawls.

"Well put, kiddo.

"If that sicko pervert creep is all that happy, that can only mean, as Sherlock Holmes, used to say, the game's afoot."

"Again," Nancy appends.

"Exactly.

"It's happening again. The only question being what 'it' is this time."

"I wish that were the only question," Nancy replies.

"How's about letting the other shoe drop, boss of mine?"

"Why, let's do it together, in chorus.

"Ready?"

And they recite in unison, "What are we going to do about it?"

They laugh, but it is brief and their eyes tell each other that this is no laughing matter. •

Randy Buck, owner of a football team, a baseball team, a health club franchise operation, and a string of gourmet restaurants, is rich, powerful—and a sexual pervert of the first magnitude.

He was the Seneschal, the sinister operator of a private club upstate known as Buck's Castle, a labyrinthine structure in which sado-masochism, bondage and discipline were practiced regularly by a large membership of perpetrators and victims.

Cynthia and Nancy had managed, at the risk of their lives, to destroy that operation, but not Buck, who escaped punishment by donating the odd structure to the state and subsidizing its conversion into an orphanage.

That was merely their first encounter with the madman.

The second was when he tried to kill Cynthia by poisoning her at a charity masquerade ball, with the help of Fiona Fairley, head of Fairley Palace Hotels.

Cynthia managed to switch drinks with him, in the event, but he was saved by being rushed to a hospital and having his stomach pumped.

A third adventure involved a pseudo-monastic order founded by Buck, staffed by sex offenders, called the Brotherhood of the Body, which specialized in kidnapping runaway girls and doing the obvious with them.

Cynthia and Nancy, again at great personal risk, managed to destroy this operation, with the help of a dominatrix, Vanessa, whom Buck had engaged to assist in the festivities.

Buck again managed to escape, but this time there was not enough left of the facility to do anything with it except turn it into a landfill, which Buck duly did, donating it to the state.

His shot at revenge this time took the form of kidnapping Nancy and holding her at his mansion in the country, the Estate, hoping to lure Cynthia into a trap with her as bait, there to wreak his vengeance in full upon Cynthia, Nancy, and Vanessa, who had gone on Cynthia's payroll as part time advertising model and full time bodyguard.

This also backfired, due to Cynthia's connections within the state police and her prior planning before her and Vanessa's elaborate rescue attempt of Nancy, but once again, Buck was able to evade responsibility and, therefore, prosecution.

But Buck is a sick man and they both know it. He is also a man with the means to indulge his illness.

And, since it is directly related to his sexual appetite, they know that it is continuing, smoldering there within him, if not actively erupting.

As, they are certain, from time to time, it must.

Hence Cynthia's concern.

She buzzes her secretary on the intercom.

"Get Vanessa. Tell her I'd like to see her in my office."

And they sit there, Cynthia staring Out the picture window at the grimy, ugly panorama of old factory buildings, smokestacks and railway tracks, the bustling traffic on the huge suspension bridge in the distance.

Nancy, seated on the overstuffed sofa against the wall, does not look at her, preferring also to look out the window as she tries to overcome her fear of what she knows is about to transpire.

Why is the Baroness like this? she wonders.

How and why is it her responsibility to play the role of Randy Buck's nemesis?

Really, it's all so melodramatic and ridiculous.

They are like comic book characters, the villain, Buck, the heroines, Cynthia and herself, with attendant supporters on both sides of the fence of good and evil, right and wrong.

And the action comes complete with costumes hoods or masks, black leather corsets, whips, spiked heels and black mesh stockings—in short, the full paraphernalia of S&M, B&D, the full alphabet soup of sexual perversion.

Yes, Nancy thinks, Randy Buck is one sick puppy, all right.

But her boss and constant companion is surely no less so.

She is, in her own way, just as sick, if not sicker, than her arch-enemy, Randy Buck.

No question.

That latest little diversion of hers, the doll house, with muscle men all dressed up in drag, complete with make-up, prancing about and queening it up for her amusement, her living dolls, as she termed them—what was that, if not really sick?

And Cynthia herself seemed to realize this, making no attempt to rebuild the Victorian house or to set up the thing elsewhere after Antoine, her couturier, now ex-couturier, had burned the place down in a fit of pique after being excluded by her from participation in what turned out to be, thanks to him, the last session, almost trapping them within, himself included.

It was as though she suddenly snapped out of a hypnotic spell, the blaze awakening her.

She said nothing to Nancy, of course.

After alt, she is the infallible Baroness.

Still, she never mentioned it again, even in passing.

But Nancy gained an insight from that incident.

At least, she thinks she did.

It could very well be (in Nancy's opinion) that Cynthia's fascination with Randy Buck is that they are opposite sides of the same coin.

Meaning that, but for Buck as a foil for her fascination with the world of sexual perversion, an outlet for her attention, for her obsession with that dark kingdom, Cynthia herself might be irresistibly drawn to acts of perversion, more and more intense, more and more twisted, until she would become, in turn, a villainess of the first magnitude.

And Nancy sighs, realizing that it was her own taste for it, or at least curiosity about that dark, sick world, which had led her to join the Club, Buck's nebulous title for the membership of the Castle.

And it was Cynthia, coming along as her guest, which was the beginning of their adventures with, or more accurately, against Randy Buck.

So that, indirectly, she supposes that she is responsible for all that followed, dangerous and, to her at least, terrifying adventures, as Cynthia battled with Buck.

She views herself as his nemesis, obviously.

Equally obviously, since, whatever else Buck may be, he is certainly not stupid, he must view himself as her nemesis.

So that today, they are undoubtedly both biding their time, each thinking of ways in which to destroy the other, their mutual safety lying in the self evident fact that neither of their plans have gelled, at least to the point of beginning implementation.

"Hello."

And Vanessa, tall, broad-shouldered, looking every bit as big as she is in the blue blazer with brass buttons of the security staff of Marvel Industries, calves bulging below the short, matching skirt and above the high heels, strides up to the desk, nodding to Nancy en passant.

"Ah, Vanessa!

"Sit down, sit down!

"The subject, this morning, is Randy Buck."

Vanessa says nothing, seated at attention in the chair opposite Cynthia, at an angle so that she can also take in Nancy.

She waits for additional information.

"What," Cynthia continues, "is he up to these days?"

"Something," Vanessa replies.

And this is not a trivial answer.

Because it is something, as opposed to nothing.

It is a statement of opinion which has the effect of elevating a similarly held opinion on Cynthia's part to the status of fact.

"I agree. Something.

"And we were wrong, you know, Vanessa, in not having him tailed every second, from the minute we rescued Nancy."

"From the minute we were all rescued by the state police," Vanessa corrects.

"Yes. We should have done that."

"That too," Cynthia concurs, reddening with embarrassment at the correction.

That last incident was a close call.

And if not for the state police—never mind.

Because that is water over the dam.

The question before the house is what Randy Buck is doing right now.

These days, rather.

At this moment, middle of the work week, he is undoubtedly at his office downtown, across the river, directing his business interests with his usual, driving expertise.

But at night, on weekends, what?

How does the perverted monster spend his leisure time?

What is the creep doing to keep himself amused, satisfied?

"How long has it been, Vanessa?"

"Six months."

"Six months," Cynthia repeats.

"So that, if history repeats itself, then he is just about to recover from licking his wounds and try, try again."

"Right. So?"

But she already knows the answer.