Chapter 1

As Max drove down the freeway in the gathering dusk, his wife, Carmen, turned to see what was happening on the back seat of their recently stolen, six-cylinder, four-wheel drive, Explorer. The noise of struggle had stopped.

The cruel mocking voice of the rapist, the tearful protests of his victim, the sobs and slaps and the sound of ripping cloth had ceased. The noise of the brutal assault had been replaced by a satisfied rhythmic grunting interspersed with expressions of gratification and unlikely, foul-mouthed, compliments from the man and an occasional, barely audible, sob from his victim.

"Yeah, oh, yeah, you cum-sucking bitch," he grunted. "You got a sweet, tight, cock-starved mouth, honey-bun."

Carmen peered over the back of her seat to look at her husband's fellow escapee, Skull Grooste, sitting on the back seat of the stolen vehicle. A blonde-haired woman knelt on the floor, jammed in the gap between the front and back seats. She crouched between Skull's wide-spread legs. The convict had taken off his leather jacket. Carmen had brought one for each of them to replace the prison-issue coats with their tell-tale red "SP" logo. Skull had unbuckled his belt and dragged his jeans and underpants down to mid thigh. Carmen could see his hairless, bare, chest and stomach were covered with a network of pornographic tattoos. The crudely drawn prison tattoos flowed down his well-muscled body, slid around his buttocks and circled his swollen sex, now engorged by the widely stretched, coral-pink, lips of the Ford's former owner.

The woman was trapped. Skull had taped the her hands behind her back. He had ripped the top of her pretty yellow summer dress and tugged her brassiere below her full, creamy, breasts. Now Skull had a fistful of his victim's short straw-colored hair and was forcing her head up and down his snake-veined cock. Carmen was angry and worried, but found it difficult to look away.

The Ford's previous owner was in her late twenties or early thirties, Carmen thought. A bit older than herself. From what she could see the woman had a good figure, neat round buttocks, a narrow waist and large, perhaps over-large, natural, breasts. Her brown eyes were tear-filled and open wide in terror as her tattooed tormentor forced her head up and down his thick erection.

Carmen experienced mixed emotions as she watched the defenseless woman being compelled to do something the dancer had only seen acted on a few so-called "adult" porno DVDs and videos. She was appalled that a violent crime was being committed under her nose—but at the same time Carmen was fascinated by the violent scene.

Carmen watched Skull's savage treatment of his captive with mounting interest and concern. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she did not. She found she was excited by the sight and sounds of the woman's humiliation. She was aroused to see bruises on the woman's breasts made by the rapist's cruel fingers. The faintly blue-veined flesh rose and fell in time to Skull's thrusts and animal grunts. Carmen found she was becoming turned on by Skull's musky smell as he slid his victim's head up and down the glistening length of his erection.

But it was wrong, Carmen thought, to do nothing while a woman was being sexually assaulted a few feet away. They'd done her enough injury by stealing her vehicle. Carmen started to protest but then stopped. She coughed and hesitated and, while she debated whether to try to help the woman, one of her hands slipped between her denim clad thighs and gently massaged her moist pussy through the cotton cloth.

"Leave him be," had been Max's advice when Carmen had first expressed her detestation of Skull. "He's dangerous. Skull is a crazy son of a bitch, but I owe him. And having him with us will speed things up with the digging. Soon as he gets his share of the 'buried treasure' he'll be gone. Until then don't get him rattled, okay?"

Max was taller and broader than Skull and, like the tattooed man, he had kept in shape during the three years since he had been sentenced. Standing six foot two and without an ounce of fat on his slim-hipped body Max still looked like the athlete he had been. But Max lacked Skull's savage survival skills. He knew that, without his hard-headed cell-mate, he would have been unable to resist the demands of the legion of fellow convicts. One or another of them would have forced him to reveal the whereabouts of the proceeds from what the media had called, inaccurately, "the great plane robbery".

The five million dollars in used bank notes had been taken from the airport's secure area, not from an airplane. The notes, of all denominations, had been destined for destruction by burning at the government's approved incinerator. They were untraceable. Max's two colleagues had died in a car crash while being pursued by the police an hour after the robbery. Max, and the van with the loot in it, had got clean away. He had hidden the money before the long arm of the law grabbed him by the balls.

It had taken Carmen three years to find a warder venal and vulnerable enough to ensure a clean get-away for her husband. The married prison officer was a regular drinker at one of the strip clubs that took Carmen's "Lady With the Lash" cabaret act. Caught on camera astride one of the club's girls he was fair game for the persuasive Carmen. Skull was told about the planned escape a week before Max was due to be sprung and insisted on being included in the plan. No one had raised the alarm as the two convicts scaled two walls and negotiated an electric fence before Carmen, in a stolen Honda, picked them up.

Carmen took an instant dislike to her husband's cell mate. She didn't appreciate his knowing leer as Max picked her up and hugged the breath out of her five foot two pole-dancer's body. She was dressed for action. Jeans, sneakers, and a plain cotton top. No bra and, for convenience, her long blonde tresses were pulled into a pony-tail and secured by a blue ribbon.

"Max said you was a blonde bombshell with brains," Skull had said, stripping her mentally with a hot stare. "He didn't say you was a walking wet-dream with legs all the way up to her ass and tits to drive a man wild."

"I take it that's a compliment," she responded, coolly. "Thanks. Get in, belt up. I think this hot Honda may have been picked up on CCTV, so we'll need to find another auto very soon. There's a supermarket with a big car park with no security cameras on the outskirts of town. We should be able to find suitable transport there."