"I'd Kill 4 a Redhead"
By: The Angelic Temptress
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone from the Batman Universe, though I'd like to have either Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson with a bow for my birthday. It's November 14th, in case you wanted to surprise me. ;)
The idea is my own. The characters that I've created belong to me, so don't take them. ;)
Rating: R for violence, language, sexual situations, and rape.
A/N: Thanks Missy.
(2/3)
RRR
Chapter 2:
"Thank you so much. If you have any more information, please contact the GCPD." Barbara put down the receiver and added another detail to her notes.
Detective Montoya abruptly raced past Barbara's desk and toward her father's office carrying something in her hands. Barbara slowly stood and followed.
"We've got another letter, Commissioner." Montoya handed him the envelope and waited as he opened it with gloved hands.
He read it to himself and then announced. "He's making demands."
"What?" Barbara blurted and received a few strange looks. She bit her bottom lip in response.
"He's holding her for ransom," her dad muttered.
"Why would he change his M.O., Dad?" Barbara questioned.
He momentarily made eye contact with his daughter and then told the entire room. "He wants Hawkgirl and Batgirl in exchange for Tanya."
Barbara's jaw dropped. "He can't be serious," she mumbled and ran a hand through her hair. But if he wants me, he can have me.
RRR
His breathing began to slow, and T.J. licked the side of Tanya's face. She shivered and lay still as he climbed off of her.
She wanted to die.
This was so much worse than either Purgatory or Hell could ever be. She'd much rather go there.
RRR
"Are you requesting assistance?" Shayera asked Batman via satellite and with the hint of shock on her face.
Batgirl stood in the corner where Shayera couldn't see her.
"No." Batman pressed a few keys on his computer and announced, "I sent you a copy of the letter Red Skeleton wrote. He specifically demanded that you and Batgirl are to be handed to him."
"Did he want us wrapped in blue ribbons and tissue paper as well?" When Batman didn't answer her sarcastic question, she sighed. "If you need anything, I'll be here. I'm stationed at the Metro Tower for the next couple of days. I won't be leaving."
"No dates this week?"
What?
Her lips curved into a strange smile. "And you want to know, why?"
"No reason. Batman out." He cut the connection. "I don't understand the letter."
"What do you mean?"
"He wants an equal trade, but he's only abducted one woman."
Batgirl slowly came to stand beside her mentor. "Maybe he's planning on snagging another?"
"Maybe."
She faked a smile, pretending everything was all right. "So… you and Hawkgirl, huh?" The traitor too? Bruce has been getting around lately.
"No."
"What was with that question then?"
RRR
The bar was a bit seedy, but T.J. ignored its crowd and its look. As he attempted to shake off the rain, he walked straight to the bar and smiled when he locked gazes with Jackie. She was wearing a plum, satin shirt with a plunging neckline and a black skirt with fishnet stockings and black boots. Her dark hair was parted differently and held a few curls.
Jackie's glossed lips curved into a pretty smile as she patted the empty seat next to her. "You don't understand how difficult it was to save that seat. I had to threaten a few lives."
"I bet." He laid a small kiss on her cheek and took his stool. "Did you wait long?"
"No. I was expecting to be the one who showed fashionably late, though. Trouble finding the place?"
T.J. winced. "I couldn't figure out which shoes to wear."
"You're a terrible liar."
"Isn't that a good quality?" When she didn't answer, he moved his eyes to her beer. "You got started without me?"
"I had to. How else was I going to get seats?"
"Well then," he said. "I will buy us the next round."
RRR
"It's quiet on this end of the city," Batgirl said as she pressed her earpiece.
Batman answered curtly, "Same here."
"So, how's the East end?"
He didn't respond.
"Wait a second," she whispered and locked her attention on a couple leaving a bar across the street.
The woman, wearing a long coat, held herself up using the dark-haired man's arm. Both were huddled beneath an umbrella, and they started walking north. Another man who stuck close to the alley near the bar didn't have an umbrella. His right hand stayed hidden beneath his soaked coat, and it made Batgirl very uncomfortable.
She shot her grapple and swung across the street without anyone noticing. After landing on the roof of the bar, Batgirl peered into the alleyway.
"Hey!" the suspicious man called out to the visibly tipsy couple and revealed a revolver. "Come here!"
Batgirl didn't hesitate to use a batarang and knock the gun from his hand. She then threw a bola before he could run away or hurt someone.
RRR
"It's getting late," Jackie mumbled and leaned in toward T.J.. "Maybe we should get out of here."
He smiled and stood with her. After he helped Jackie with her coat as well, T.J. asked, "What do you want to do then?"
"Honestly, I want to go back to your place."
He gulped. "My place is a mess."
Jackie nodded. "Then we'll go to mine, since it's not far from here."
He guided his date out the door and pulled her close after he opened the umbrella. She held onto his arm and tried not to stumble as they started for his car.
"Hey!" some guy from the alley yelled and stopped them in their tracks. "Come here!" he ordered and pulled out a gun.
T.J. froze. He didn't know what to do and knew he didn't want to die. He had so much work to do and so much work already accomplished. Some lunatic with a gun wasn't about to stop him from attaining what he wanted most.
"Don't let him kill you, Macaw."
A sleek, black object hit the gun from the creep's hand and a cable immediately wrapped around his legs and upper torso. He fell flat on his face, splashing into the water of a deep puddle. Lightening struck, and T.J. could make out the figure standing on the bar's roof.
It belonged to a woman.
She carefully lowered herself into the alley and unhooked the cable from her utility belt. Her red hair clung to her Kevlar covered face and neck, and her eye makeup was smudged from the beating rain.
"Are you both all right?" she asked. Her voice sounded as if it was supposed to be soft, though she disguised it as something a little more rough and tough.
"We're quite all right," he answered quickly. "And you're Batgirl."
"Beautiful little whore, isn't she?"
She pulled a pair of cuffs from her belt and bent over the man. After placing the cuffs on his wrists, she tied him to the nearby streetlamp.
"Be sure and call the GCPD to pick this guy up." With that, she shot her grapple and left the co-workers in the alley.
"Jackie?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to drive you home, but I don't think I should stay."
"Why not?"
"I have some work to do."
RRR
Jim spread the women's pictures over his desk and massaged his unshaven chin. After he opened and closed his eyes a few times, he started focusing on each of the young victims.
Betsy Murphy.
Courtney Griffith.
Bridget Nelson.
Jillian Webber.
He sighed and heard a light knock on his door. "Who's there?" he demanded coarsely and rubbed his exhausted eyes for the fourth time.
The door opened, and Dr. Donovan poked her head inside. "Commissioner?"
Jim sat up in his chair. "Doctor? Isn't it late for you to be roaming the station?"
"I was home, but I got restless. For some reason, those girls… they're on my mind." She carefully glanced around the room with her bright eyes and asked, "Can I come in?"
"Um…Of course."
She stepped inside and carefully shut the door behind her before taking a seat in front of his desk. "Quite honestly, I had a feeling you were having the same trouble," Donovan stated as her gaze slowly moved to the photos on his desk. "Their images are haunting."
"Am I that transparent?"
A small smile appeared on her pink lips. She had a pretty smile that lit up her entire face, even in the dimmed light. "It's difficult not to notice that you rarely go home anymore."
"You've been noticing?"
Her eyes shot up to meet his after the smile slithered off her face. "Well… I have been spending a lot of time here lately."
"Doctor… Lindsay." Again, he let go a heavy sigh. "Why are you here?"
She pushed her lips into a thin line and then asked, "Why haven't you told me to go home?"
"I'm not sure."
"Then neither am I." She ran a hand through her cute blonde hair and set her purse on the floor. "You're a good man, Commissioner."
"Jim," he corrected.
Again, there was a smile. "Jim," Lindsay repeated quietly. "I know you have a lot on your mind right now with the girls and the murderer." She stood and walked to his window. "And I know it's terrible to say, but when we have these types of cases…" Her sentence trailed, but she managed to look at him again.
He knew what she was trying to get at. Though Gordon hadn't had a woman in years, he still remembered what attraction and tension felt like. Jim could see it in her stare. "I'm older than you are. Probably fifteen years older."
"More like nine, but I'll allow the flattery."
"Will you?"
"As long as you ask me out for dinner, I will. I mean, it doesn't have to be this Friday, but as soon as you can take some time off."
Jim shook his head with uncertainty. "You don't know what you're asking."
"I'm a grown woman, Jim. I'm not your daughter or a teenager with some silly crush."
He swallowed the lump in his scratchy throat and began filing the women's pictures away. "Goodnight, Doctor."
"Goodnight?"
"Maybe I'll give you a call later this week."
"Maybe?"
"You'll have to take it for what it is. I can't make any promises."
RRR
He sat down at his desk, relishing in the quiet sobs coming from the next room. After setting the slightly bloody knife down, he smiled to himself. Tanya was much prettier than the others. Curvier too. Her hips were perfect to hold on to when he rammed himself into her over and over again.
T.J. never really noticed how much that meant to him before now.
He remembered she was crying as he fucked her, and he knew her ass must have been sore. It didn't matter how she felt though. All that mattered was how he felt.
And he felt so good when he was inside of her, when she was screaming for him to stop the pain.
"And you feel good doing it, don't you, Macaw? It brings a smile to your face, doesn't it?"
His bare ass stuck to the seat of his chair, but he ignored the fact that his behind was probably red. T.J. opened his shoebox of Polaroid pictures he had taken before he'd acquired his prey, while he had them restrained, and after they were dead.
His attention averted to the recent snapshots of a woman with shoulder-length red hair and blue eyes. She usually wore a black pea coat and a skirt when she worked at the police station. Her short bangs slightly covered her beautiful forehead, and she always wore clothing that hugged her body nicely.
"Girl has class, like any respectable commissioner's daughter should."
T.J.'s eyes glanced over her name, which he had printed with a permanent marker at the bottom of the photo.
"Barbara Gordon…"
"Barbara Gordon," he whispered and gently placed a hand atop his abdominal muscles. He closed his eyes as he slowly ran his fingers down the line of his stomach.
T.J. thought about the phone call he received only forty minutes ago. The woman on the line suggested that he strike again. The dumb GCPD hadn't caught him yet and were not expecting him to attack so soon.
"Why would the Red Skeleton change his pattern out of the blue? Maybe because they hadn't given him either Batgirl or Hawkgirl? Maybe he was bored with only one redhead in his large bed?"
He liked imagining how it would feel to fuck two women one right after the other.
He liked imagining how the Thanagarian's feathers and the vigilante's Kevlar would feel against his skin.
He really liked that thought.
RRR
Barbara tightened her hold on his shoulders as he kissed her. She didn't know why she gave into him again, especially when she could taste Selina's red lipstick on his hard lips.
He had her pinned against the Batmobile as his gloved hands ran over the Kevlar of her suit. Somehow, she knew this was the last time she'd ever allow herself to be "loved" by him. The position seemed so fitting. Taking her roughly would be the way to end this terrible condition that she liked to call a relationship.
Then she realized what was happening and gently shoved him away. "I can't."
Bruce slowly took a step back and stared at Barbara for a moment before turning his back to her. He started for the small closet he kept spare clothing in. She grabbed his arm to stop him.
"I don't mean just tonight. I need this to end, to really end."
His blue eyes narrowed slightly but returned to their unemotional state within a millisecond. Without a word, he gently pulled from her grasp and continued on toward his destination. Barbara followed.
"Did you hear me?"
"Go home then," he said and tossed her a tee and sweats.
She caught them and shook her head. "You don't understand. Not only do I think that we should stop…" The words got caught in Barbara's throat; it was as if her body were fighting what her mind knew was right. "I don't want to be Batgirl anymore either."
Bruce didn't respond.
"You have Huntress who can help, and Dick is only a phone call away. If Tim gets better, you'll have him too." She let out an aggravated groan. "Honestly, I want to work with my dad and maybe become a detective, someone who doesn't have to wear a goddamn mask and hide from the criminals."
Barbara sighed and added quietly, "This is my last case. Then I'm gone. If you want someone else to take the mantle of Batgirl, you're free to offer it."