Kimiko didn't care that she was dwarfed by velvet-festooned French doors, or that outside the morning sun poured gold over a garden the size of her home town. Instead, she scowled, incredulous, as a rash of red lights flashed all over the schematics on her tablet. The old rocker's house was riddled with wireless hidden cameras. All on. All sending data.
She might be a rookie, but she was no idiot. The first thing Kimiko did when he left her alone was scan the place for surveillance devices. If they were to protect the old rock-star's daughter, Angelique, from a stalker's death-threats while she convalesced after rehab, then why didn't they cover just points of entry? Why multiple cameras in bathrooms? And if they were to keep tabs on Kimiko, then that was weirder. Why pay a fortune for a week's worth of pay-per-hour bodyguard and then not trust said guard to guard said body?
She tugged at her cuffs, and let hot air out from under her collar. As if she needed another reason to be ill-at-ease here. She was utterly out of her league. Even the great house seemed designed to intimidate her; from its national museum monumentality to the edgy opulence of its décor. During her briefing, the rock legend had called the style 'brothel punk' and Kimiko had laughed bawdily, but he didn't even crack a smile. Her ears had sizzled, yet again the un-coolest girl in school.
"Chill baby," he'd said. "Chill."
Tosser.
She thumbed off the iPad and chucked it onto a chair. What a gig, though. And what luck. Rarely did a client specifically request a woman for a job, and what were the chances that the only other woman in the company - her female boss - should fall magically pregnant (after ten years trying) while simultaneously winning the lottery?
Scary job or not, Kimiko needed to make the most of her rare good fortune.
In a field at the back of the lawns a gloss-black Sikorsky idled while the rock god hugged his fashion-model daughter like a reptile throttling Bambi. She patted his back until he eventually let go, waving his finger at her. She seemed childishly excited about being left alone. Her golden braid wagged as she bounced, and her hands wrung behind her tweed Bermuda shorts like a preppy college-girl, not a fully-grown woman. But then that was her thing - and the most attractive thing about her in Kimiko's opinion - this old-school demureness. A total contrast to her rock'n'roll parents. Even now, at home, she was all buttoned up in a pristine fitted blouse, socks and penny loafers. Kimiko wondered what kind of rehab a woman like that underwent, not for drugs or booze, surely? Maybe she'd overdosed on 'Penguin Modern Classics'.
And she had a hardback waiting under her bed by look of it.
Angelique stood on tip-toes and offered her dad a peck on the cheek with those fabulous, inherited lips, but he twisted to meet her and suckered an inappropriate kiss to them instead. She jerked back with a pained smile. Kimiko grimaced. The guy might be famous for shagging anything - and his wife dead for a few months now - but really, there had to be a line drawn somewhere. Suddenly the proliferation of cameras seemed even more sinister.
He laughed and patted his daughter's bottom, then loped across the lawn to his helicopter, clasping a daft studded cowboy-hat to the top of his head. With a waggle of the fingers, Angelique waved him off to his 'clinic' - Kimiko suspected plastic surgery - and watched the aircraft until it was nothing but a thrumming dot in the sky, then the woman spun on her heel and blew a kiss. To Kimiko.
Momentarily shocked that Angelique had even been aware of her, Kimiko faltered and ended up waving politely at the woman's back as she scampered off around the corner. With a lurch, Kimiko scrabbled at the door's antique locks but by the time she got them open, she'd already lost her client. Or rather her client had lost her.
Kimiko trotted around the outside of the house, her cheeks blazing at being so duped, and burying - unsuccessfully - the déjà vu of running around town looking for her sister, Sachiko, during one of her highs. The mid-morning sun already had some heat in it and sweat soon prickled under her buzz-cut. If she hadn't been wearing her holster, she would have removed her jacket, but better to sweat than show off a weapon like the macho dicks back at HQ.
No sign of Angelique, anywhere, though Kimiko did discover a large Harley hidden behind some bushes by the gravel drive. Oh this was just typical of her luck. The old bloke had told her not to trust his daughter, warned that she was wily and desperate to escape her post-rehab prison without any care for the danger she was in. Kimiko had reassured him that - though she was a new to bodyguarding - she'd been in the police for years. She'd even said, "I know what it means not to let a subject out of my sight, sir."
It took almost twenty minutes to circle the sprawling gothic pile. She arrived back where she started without a glimpse of Angelique so decided to head back inside and search there, trying not to let the situation get to her, but still aware of how useless she must look to all those hidden cameras. Then she noticed that the enormous French doors, which she had left gaping, were partially shut. Cheeky cow. She must have hidden, waited for Kimiko to run off then slipped back in.
Kimiko stomped toward the doors, when a deep male voice from inside stopped her in her tracks. She darted behind a wall and approached the opening obliquely. There was not supposed to be anyone around other than Kimiko and Angelique. Shit. Was it the stalker?
A woman whimpered. Kimiko had her Glock out and was pressed alongside the window in under a heartbeat, hidden by a fortunately placed ornamental bay tree. More voices from the inside. Male cursing. French. Kimiko peeped through leaves and her stomach dropped into her boots. Oh no. How should she handle this?
Two identical male rears, giants, one standing, one kneeling. Both naked. Models or dancers by their hairless muscularity. Angelique sat before them as if her armchair was a throne. Regal, but for the shorts gathered at her ankles, and the gusset of her underwear pulled aside. And the indecent spread of her knees to the kneeler's eager mouth.
"Yes..." she hissed. Then she frowned. Then she shook her head. "Nope." She pushed him off her, and clicked her fingers at the other man. Wriggling her knickers off, she kicked them away with her shorts so she could loop her legs over the chair arms into a flagrant and very un-demure display, even in a buttoned-up blouse and socks.
Kimiko's head whirled. The dad had insisted on no visitors, especially men, and these were pretty unequivocally men. And they were visiting his daughter in some detail. So Kimiko was contracted to put a stop to it. But she was a bodyguard, not a bloody chaperone, she had no idea where to start. She couldn't just jump in there and stop strangers mid-sex. Mid-great-sex by the look of it, too. A gorgeous woman enjoying two gorgeous men in her own house, what right did Kimiko have to break it up? She knew from painful experience just how difficult great sex was to find, as well. No-one would thank her for ruining it.
Also, she was not often star-struck but Angelique - Vogue magazine's 'most desirable woman' seven years in a row - was an icon. 'The Angel'. Up there with Monroe and Hepburn. You did not usually see the spread of an icon's bald vulva before you'd even shaken her hand and gushed about their charity work. Kimiko did not relish embarrassing the nation's freshest treasure.
The chosen giant dropped to his knee and took his turn. He either had the most compelling technique on the planet, or his doppelganger had done all the prep, because in one puff, Angelique arched and shuddered. She threw her arms over the back of the chair and pulled her legs even wider. "Yes!" she hollered, "Yes-yes-yes... God-YESSS!"
