FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter XXXIII - Debrief

The vixen struggled to maintain her cool. The key to her ability to survive this would be preventing the Goza people from figuring out who she was. And, she figured, the best way to do that would be to leave them no reason to hold her in suspicion.

If they discovered somehow that she was the one who had crippled the heir to their business empire, she would be just as dead as if Gecko had succeeded in what she suspected was a bid to capture her while she'd been comatose.

Comatose due to a complicated childbirth. A thought that made her wince and squeeze Tristan's paw, and push thoughts of her one dead child out of her mind for now. She could grieve later, though the waves of pain and sorrow were near-insurmountable. Tasha had to focus on the child who had lived, and on her fiancé, who was taking it even more poorly than she was.

If Goza's men figured out who she was, her life was as good as over, and if she was dead, she could do nothing to protect Tristan and her daughter.

She looked the furs in her hospital room over again. The black tiger she already knew quite a bit about. His name was Arlen Blacktiger, born in Saint Louis Missouri, former Army sharpshooter and expert in close quarters and covert action, and in charge of this group if the way the others spaced themselves around him was an indicator. His eyes were dark, unreadably so, and hadn't left her in the minute or so since he'd entered the room.

To his left was a lanky hare, Rene Pileau, a pilot rated in almost everything that could fly, former Coast Guard search and rescue. The hare was trying to chat up Tristan, who was giving him a fairly blank look, while holding onto Tasha's paw like a lifeline.

The three others, all canids dressed in nice suits, were alien to her. She figured they must have signed on with Goza after her departure from contract with Gecko's company. Otherwise she would have seen the dossier thanks to whoever Gecko's mole had been.

Arlen broke the silence, his baritone voice slightly rough, as if he'd been inhaling dust.

"Miss Castellas, do you know who we are and why we're here?"

Good place to start. You force me to admit how deeply embroiled I am in this.

She licked her lips and shook her head, hoping that acting like she was still dulled by her near-death experience would excuse the slowness she needed to decide how to respond. The thought struck her that it wasn't entirely an act, the ache in her skull reminding her that she was still healing, the pinch in her off paw that she was still attached to an IV that was helping her body recuperate from blood loss.

Tasha remembered something her father had once told her; 'When in doubt about what lie to tell, use the truth. The best deceptions aren't lies.'

The vixen shook her head, and felt the room wobble as she did. Tristan squeezed her paw, and leaned over the bed rail to trace bangs out of her eyes. She gave him a weak smile, appreciative, and kissed his cheek before answering the impassive tiger.

"You found out that I used to work for Simon Gecko, and you want to know what I know about him."

She frowned slightly, and scrunched her brow.

"But if you wanted me dead, you would have already found a way. The hospital's security is good, but not good enough for men as skilled as yourselves. I hope you aren't disappointed. What I know is a year out of date."

The tiger didn't nod, and gave no indication whether or not she had said what he was expecting. She noticed the tiny earpiece, though it was reasonably well-hidden. Someone was checking her facts, or at least prepared to. Tasha realized she was a little afraid of this male. His face had a foreboding, stormy look, and his eyes had already evaluated and decided the best way to kill her quickly and leave if he had to.

The tiger spoke again, after a few moments' heavy silence.

"My name is Captain Blacktiger. I'm with Goza Security. A few days ago, we received information indicating that you were a target for one of Gecko's hit teams. We also figured out that you used to work for him, but not in what capacity."

She swallowed and nodded her head, endeavoring to act as little like a trained, cold-blooded sniper as she could.

"We stopped his team from getting to you, but its plain that you aren't safe here. Wherever you were hiding out, he'll probably find now that he knows where to start looking. This hospital has a serious bribery problem."

To say the least. Ugh.

"If you're willing to fill in the blanks for us on who you are, what you do, and where we can look for Simon Gecko, my boss has authorized me to help you. We have a safe location we can move you and your family to, and depending on your skills, we may have work for you as well."

Tristan lifted his head up, finally speaking after hours of grieving silence since he'd heard of the death of one of the twins.

"She doesn't know much. Tasha was a freelancer acting in an advisory role about internal security. When she and I got together, he went crazy. He raped her, and she and I ran."

Arlen nodded and looked to Tasha again.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Not a pleasant thing to go through."

She couldn't do anything but give a slight shrug and put her cheek against Tristan's strong shoulder. And wonder how he got so good at telling such smooth lies intermingled with truth.

The tiger furrowed his brow, before looking to Tristan and asking another question.

"Why would he be so jealous of you?"

"My name is Tristan Taverem Gecko. Simon's my uncle."

Gavin stared at the photo in his paw, and just felt blank. An odd tightness was clenching his chest like a vice, his stomach felt full of acid, and he had a headache who's source he couldn't define. But he just felt cold, and blank.

His vision was blurry, and it perplexed him, right up until he swiped a paw across his face and had it come away wet with tears.

I'm...Crying?

The otter tried to speak, but his voice felt squashed, rough, and he decided not to push the words out.

Simon Gecko sighed and shook his head, sitting in the woven bamboo chair across from Gavin. They were on the balcony of his hotel suite, and he was enjoying the sun while looking out over the French Riviera.

"We will need to wait a little while before the revenge can begin, but I promise you it will be quite brutal."

Gav's eyes traced the photo again. A satellite shot, no doubt having cost Gecko a good bit of cash, it showed three dead furs laid out on the pavement inside Rocinha. Two were wolves he remembered from the operational team, stripped naked, with ragged exit wounds in their chests. The last, he had to look away from. It was a strange reflex, and he tested it again, and found his eyes pushed away as if by a same-pole magnet.

I've seen hundreds of corpses. Made a lot of them, too. Why can't I look at Collin's? What the fuck is wrong with me?

"The mission was a success. You got me something more than I could have dreamed." The wolf laughed, turning to face Gavin as the otter looked up from his picture.

Gecko's eyes were shining with mirth and not a speck of pain. Gav had a momentary twinge, an instinct to grab the margarita glass out of Gecko's paw, break it on the table, and paint vicious, spine-bending agony on that smirking face. He shook the urge off. Such a thing would not be profitable.

"You'll be getting everyone's pay, since you're the only survivor. That's over a hundred thousand pounds, my aquatic friend."

Gavin set the photo down, face to the table, and sat back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other. The wolf kept right on talking, as was his habit.

"If you want out of the business, tell me now. I'll understand."

Gavin looked to his left, towards the black dog there, the last remaining of its family, all killed by Goza's troops.

He tested his voice, coughing once before speaking, and found it satisfactory. When he met Gecko's eyes, he realized how intense he was being by the sudden curiosity reflected in the sociopath's face.

"Firstly, I'll need to know the condition of the infant at all times. It's the only way we can leverage the intelligence we need since our mole went quiet."

Gecko smiled, having gotten his answer, and nodded. Under the table, he made a signal, just a swish of his paw, to tell his guard they wouldn't need to put Gavin's corpse in a crab pit tonight.

"Secondly, we'll need to wait a few years. She won't be any use to us right now. They won't trust her with anything useful, at least for a while."

Gecko shrugged and sipped his martini.

"Clearly not. Go on."

The otter slid to his feet and walked past Gecko to the balcony's edge, laying his arms flat along the rail.

"Lastly, we need to find jobs that won't have Goza's men after us for a while. Russia, maybe?"

Gecko smirked and shrugged again.

"Fine. You have yourself a deal. The infant is alive, in a small private hospital whose location I've told no one."

The wolf slurped down the last of his drink and tossed the glass cavalierly off the balcony to smash on the rocks below.

"When it's done and we're the top again, I'll need a new head of operations."

"Fine."

"What the fuck do you mean we're done looking for him?" Arlen was shouting, though he didn't seem to realize it. The big tiger glowered as the van was pulling into the private airport they were using to get home.

Sato's voice was calm as always, the playful edge gone, as this was all business.

"My uncle believes that we have taken as much time and money looking for him as is reasonable. Gecko has been crippled, and this last operation, in my uncle's mind, is the proof."

"Then your uncle's lost his fucking mind!" The tiger was furious. That bastard had backstabbed them, killed one of his friends, crippled his lover, and nearly ended all their lives. Not to mention caused Sato's father's death...And now their CEO wanted to let it all go?

Sato's voice was crisp, uninflected, which in a cooler mindset Arlen would have remembered meant he was getting annoyed.

"Arlen. Listen to me, please. Kiyosato wishes the matter to be tabled indefinitely. We have gutted his business, killed many of his soldiers. While I do not disagree with you, I cannot disagree with my uncle either."

"What the fuck? He killed your father! We've been down here three months protecting this vixen chick from him, because he's going to try to kill her and her kid!"

"Yes. When the opportunity comes to pay him back, we will take it. But I am tired of you risking your life over my fucking knee!"

The tiger startled, and looked at his phone, pulling it away from his ear, both brows raised. Cursing from Sato was rare enough. Any raise in his tone was even more surprising. He furrowed his brow and frowned, uncertain what to think of the comment.

"Sato...If we don't get rid of him, he'll keep coming after us. This guy is a fucking psychopath, he doesn't care about consequences or common sense..."

For a few seconds, he thought Sato had hung up on him, or that the line had gone dead. Arlen felt a curdled sensation in his gut, his anger draining away as he just felt like an ass somehow, despite being pretty sure he was right.

From the other side of the line, he heard a sigh. The wolf's voice came back, sounding tired of the argument or perhaps just in general.

"He cannot come after us any more, Arlen. He has no money left, and likely no soldiers either. Get on the plane. We will talk when you get back. Tam flew down to meet you. You've been in Brazil three months now waiting for the infant to be able to fly. Please just come home."

Arlen nodded and rubbed at his forehead with a thumb. He reminded himself to check in with his doctor back home, since headaches had been becoming more and more frequent in the last few months.

"Alright. Sorry I yelled at you."

The line was empty. He wasn't sure when Sato had hung up.

Tam's first thought, seeing the teams and their three wards as they emerged from vans onto the puddle-covered rural airstrip was that Arlen looked like he was lost in a fog. The tiger's face was unreadable, and he didn't say a thing when he stopped at the bottom of the boarding stairs and waited for his men to board ahead of him.

Once they were past, the lithe housecat slipped through the door and down the steps, pausing on the last one as Arlen looked up at her and managed a weak smile.

"Hey kitty cat..."

"What's wrong, Arl?" She reached out and gently touched his arm, as he stepped up next to her. The engines started to thrum, spooling up, as they climbed the boarding steps together.

"I...Think I fucked up. Yelled at Sato for telling me we're...Giving up on finding Gecko."

"Yeah...Guess why I wanted to fly down for the pickup?"

He looked down at her, his expression fading from a saddened defeated look into a smirk, which she mirrored by putting a paw on her hip and cocking a brow at him.

"I just figured you wanted to be part of the mile-high club."

She poked him in the chest, causing the tiger to fall back against the bulkhead and laugh, holding his paws up in surrender.

"What? Am I seriously that predictable?"

Tam snorted and rolled her eyes at him. Behind her, the team was belting in, two of them making sure the still-fragile vixen and her family were all right. She could hear them solicitously helping, to the bemusement of the Russian fox and her fiancé. Somehow, the familiality of it was comforting.

She rose on tip-toes to kiss Arlen, lightly, a teasing touch, and gave him another of her smirks.

"Meet me in the cargo area after you're done with the men okay?"

Arl nodded and kissed her forehead back, staying out of sight of the men while doing so.

"You got it, boss lady."

They were somewhere over the ocean, not that Arlen cared in the least. At the moment, he was busy lifting Tamra up and sitting her on a counter in the cargo area so he could push her skirt up out of the way and press his still-clothed hips up against her panty-clad groin.

The cat laughed and plucked at the obnoxious yellow silk flower shirt he was wearing. 'Civilian camouflage' was no end of amusing to her, given how awkward Arlen was sometimes about being in a gay relationship. A fringe benefit of having to look like a tourist, she figured, was the fact that he also ended up looking like a fruity, flamboyant gay man.

When he ground the steely hardness under his shorts up against her, though, she gasped and stopped worrying about appearances. Her hips ground right back, causing the tiger to growl and rumble against her, sending delicious vibrations through her from what felt like every point of contact.

His neck craned down, and their lips met in a passionate kiss, as his paws squeezed and massaged her rear, and her legs wrapped around his hips to keep him pressed up against her, as the wetness started to seep through her white cotton panties.

A lurch of the plane led her to wrap both arms around him too, blinking as the kiss suddenly ended. Tam looked up and saw Arlen looking towards the door up into the service area of their plane. She reached up and touched his cheek, meeting his eyes as he turned back.

"Heh. Guess we don't have all day huh?"

She snorted and gave her most self-lampooning porn voice said, "Then do me fast, you fucking stallion!"

The tiger laughed and reached down between them, tugging her panties aside and shimmying his ass as he undid his pants, letting them slip down to his knees to be kicked off. His tip smacked against her lips, making her jerk and softly gasp as he wasted no time in starting to push up against her, the slightly awkward angle ensuring that his dick poked and slid over her clit several times before finding its target.

Tam bit her lip as his girth spread her open, clawtips digging into his silk shirt where it lay loosely against his back, her thighs squeezing his hips as he took a hard grip on hers and gave a thrust that would probably have hurt if she hadn't been fantasizing about this moment since an hour before the plane had landed to pick the tiger's teams up.

When he was halfway imbedded, the tiger's muscles bunched and he picked her up, shifting the angle so that her weight would push her down onto him, his rock-solid shaft sliding into her soft, sodden depths, as she bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying to find purchase to start rolling against him.

Her hips were shifting, finding a good rhythm when his paws gripped her by the ass to stop her, causing the cat to open her eyes to see him smirking mischievously at her.

"Nope. I'm in charge right now."

The housecat's tail lashed and she was about to give him the smartassing of his life when he jerked her forward and thrust with his hips. The barbs beneath his head caught her flesh deliciously, and his groin ground right into her clit, cutting her words off mid-snark as they turned into a yowl, her claws digging into his back as she panted and tried again.

A second time, he pulled back and thrust in, cutting her off with another yelp of pleasure, her mind shutting off to ride the beginnings of waves she knew were to come.

All around, the droning of the plane's engines was like a white noise generator, drowning out all the distractions that might otherwise have kept her quick mind on track. The urge to mess around and nettle the big tiger was gone, quickly vanishing into the mist of her mind as the target's powerful cock pistoned inside of her. He had her back up against a wall now, or so she vaguely thought, and was pounding away at her for all he was worth.

His growling was vibrating her chest, her blouse doing nothing to deaden the effect on her proudly peaked nipples, and she rubbed them against his chest, clamped onto him with arms and legs like a limpet as she was.

When Arlen's teeth sank into her shoulder, she let out a choked little squeak and came hard, explosions of pleasure blasting out from her groin through her body to bounce about knocking her muscles into clenches then slackness, her jaw hanging open against Arlen's chest as she jolted against and around him.

Moments later, she felt the rush of his heated ejaculation, as he growled into the mating grip he'd made in her shoulder, holding her immobile against him as he spasmed her full of his spunk.

Thank god for birth control...

Not long after, they laid wrapped in each others' arms on a secured cot in the cargo area. He'd pulled her back to his chest, muscular arms around her middle and his chin on her shoulder.

She felt comforted, wrapped up in the powerful feline's protective arms, and for a long time they lay together basking in the pleasantness of it.

Just as Tam was drifting off, though, she felt an odd sense of foreboding about the fact that they would soon be back Stateside. For the last year and more, they had spent most of their time chasing down Gecko's goons, funded by Kiyosato Goza's empire, which was both legitimate and illegitimate.

If their boss had finally let the blood vendetta against Simon Gecko fall by the wayside, she couldn't be sure what would happen next. It felt to her like flying a two-seat puddle jumper plane into a thunderstorm.

Tam had never really liked uncertainty. So she snuggled back into her tiger, a rock she knew she could rely on, and let herself drift into an uneasy post-coital doze.