Slay Me With Kisses

Jimmy slowed the Caddy down when he saw her walking alongside the deserted country lane. Tight jeans, a red tank top and long blonde hair covered by an old Stampede hat. Perfect!

As she came alongside the vehicle he pressed the button to roll down the window. "Hey girl! You got car troubles or something?"

She rested her hands on the door frame, and leaned down to look in and he couldn't help noticing the cleavage this displayed, but quickly looked up into her face, which was beautiful in spite of the tear stains.

"Oh, did you see my wreck of a car a few miles back?" she asked. Then her mouth flew open in a gasp. "Why, it's you! You're Jimmy Savage!"

"I sure am darlin', but what's your name?"

"Patricia Landers" she said with a shy smile. "But you can call me Trish. Everybody does. But I can't believe it's you!" she gushed. "Jimmy Savage, the number one Country Music heartthrob, just tooling down a country road in the middle of nowhere, stopping for me."

"Darlin' I always stop for a damsel in distress!" he said with his signature grin, deep vertical dimples bracketing his mouth. "Where y'all goin? Hop in and I'll give you a lift."

"Are you sure? Don't you have to get ready for your concert?"

"Nah. That's not 'til tomorrow and my staff handle all the hard work. I just have to show up and sing! If I can I most always drive around in the countryside on the day before a concert; it helps me get my head screwed on straight."

"Well I surely could use a lift." she said, opening the door and climbing in. "My cell phone also conked out, so you're the answer to a girl's prayers!" she said as she buckled her seatbelt.

"Where'd you like me to take you?" he asked. "Are you meeting someone, or have an appointment or something?"

"No, I was just out for a drive too. Enjoying the scenery, like you. I guess I'll eventually have to get to a phone and call a friend to take me home. Then I'll have to call a tow truck."

"You wanna tool around with me for awhile?" Jimmy asked. "We can enjoy the scenery together."

"Hmmm ..." she said, pressing an index finger to her lips and wrinkling her brow. "Ride around with a famous Country Music star and have an exciting story to tell my friends, or just go take care of getting my car towed? I think option A sounds like a lot more fun!"

"A story to tell your friends, huh? You're not a reporter lookin' for a scoop, are you?"

"Nope. I'm just a receptionist in an insurance office, so riding around with the man who topped the charts with 'These Trinkets Remind Me of You' and 'Slay Me With Kisses' is probably the most excitement I've had in at least a year." she giggled.

"Well, then--excitement it is!" he said as he stomped on the gas. "Yee-HAW!"

After an hour or so of driving down empty, winding roads, telling each other stories, and Jimmy charming her by singing snippets of some of his songs, he slowed down and steered the car onto a narrow track. It looked like it led nowhere, as the ruts were filled with grass and trees crowded closely on both sides.

"How about we see what sort of scenery's down here?" he asked with a hint of a leer, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"Oh, that sounds fun!" Trish said with a grin.

After about a half mile the road opened up to a clearing filled with knee-high grass and a dilapidated, abandoned shack. Jimmy stopped the engine. He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to Trish. "Come here, darlin'." he said. He ran one hand under her hair and stroked the back of her neck, while his other hand stroked along her jaw, turning her head towards him.

Trish was nervously working the clasp on the purse in her lap. She smiled at him tentatively as she leaned forward.

He smiled back and said "Did your Mama ever tell you not to get into cars with strangers?" as his fingers tightened around her throat.

Suddenly he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his thigh. He looked down to see Trish's hand holding a hypodermic needle jammed in his leg. It felt like his brain was going in circles. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was Trish saying "Yes. She did."

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Jimmy slowly opened his eyes. Bright fluorescent lights made him close them again. What the fuck? What happened? Where was he?

Panicked, he leapt to his feet, ready to flee. He looked around, bewildered. His eyes traveled around the grey cement walls and floors and the stout iron bars of a basic 10x10 foot cell. Contents: a stainless steel toilet, a sink, a mattress ... and one Country Star named Jimmy Savage.

Sitting in a chair outside the bars was a woman. What was her name again? Tish? No! It was Patricia,"call me Trish, everyone does" Landers. But she looked different. She was wearing different clothes, of course, but the change was more of an attitude. She looked fierce and determined. No hint of the flirtatious airhead he'd believed her to be.

"Trish! What's going on? Where are we? Why are you doing this? Let me out!"

"I don't think so, Mr. Savage." she replied calmly. "But to answer your questions, I have abducted you, we are in a soundproofed room, and I'm going to keep you here until you answer some of my own questions."

"I don't understand." he said. "Are you some kind of fanatic? You can't do this--I'm a very important person and people must be searching all over for me. You'll never get away with this!"

"Oh, you're right, they started searching the minute they found your car torched."

"You torched my car?" he cried.

"Certainly. Had to get rid of the evidence. And of course you're an important person, but you're also a serial killer. Unfortunately for your victims, no one but me figured that out. Until now."

"Who are you? Are you some kind of vigilante? What are you planning to do, kill me?"

"Me? Well darlin' she said, mimicking his country twang, you can keep calling me Trish. Not everyone does, of course, because it's not really my name. And Yes, I am some kind of vigilante--the type whose sister went missing without a trace on her way to one of your concerts. And no, I'm not planning to kill you, I'm going to find out where you buried her ... and all the others."

"What makes you think I murdered anyone?" Jimmy said indignantly.

"You chose the wrong victim when you chose a woman whose sister works for the F.B.I. It took me too long to figure it out. I would have been able to save some of your victims if I'd figured it out sooner. But the coincidence of all those women disappearing within a hundred-mile radius and within one day of your concerts was a pretty good clue. So I decided to set myself up as bait near your next concert, and here we are!"

"But why me? It could have been one of my Roadies, or even one of my fans!"

"True, it could have been. But you're forgetting your well-known habit of driving around the countryside the day before a concert to--as you said--get your mind straight. And my sister wouldn't have gotten into a car with just anyone, and all those other girls probably wouldn't either. But accept a ride from a well-known Country Superstar? Yep, they would all have trusted you. Also, let's not forget the final, damning proof: you tried to strangle me."

"And just how do you suppose you're going to get me to confess? Torture? You get anywhere close to me bitch and I'll ..."

"Temper, temper!" she said. "I won't touch a hair on your demented little head. I'll make sure you have food and water in your little cell. Truly, all the comforts of home! And of course, I'll play music for you." She pressed the button and a melody filled the air.

"Oh, you'll talk" she said. "It's on a continuous loop."

Jimmy's hands grasped the cell bars. His face was red and contorted with rage as he shouted "You evil BITCH!" Trish smiled sweetly as she walked out the door.

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Four weeks later at an undisclosed FBI holding facility, two agents stood outside a cell, watching Jimmy Savage, erstwhile Country Music star and serial killer, now a prisoner awaiting arraignment.

"He says she was an FBI agent. Who do you think she is?"

"He also said she was one of the victim's sisters, and none of them have any ties to the FBI, so I think whoever it was that kidnapped him was stringing him along."

"And if they ever find her they'll probably give her a medal instead of arresting her. They've found 13 of his victims so far, all over the country, and all found because of the video files she sent of his confessions. She even got him to admit where he stashed all the trinkets he took to remind him of his victims."

"If she's not FBI, she must be some sort of computer hacker or something because we haven't been able to trace those files back to a source. She bounced them all over the globe. Hey! Maybe she's a CIA spook?"

As they watched, Jimmy kept slapping his palms against his ears, chanting over and over "Make it stop! Make it stop!" But nobody else could hear what he heard. He couldn't get it out of his head:

♫♪ Grandma got run over by a reindeer ... ♪♫