Summary: Carmen hires a call girl to fulfill a very specific fantasy. Carmen/OFC, hints of Carmen/Ivy.

Disclaimer: WOEICS is the property of not moi.

Author's Note: This chapter in particular contains some light bondage and coarse language.

It's one of those strange quirks of life that big or exciting or terrible things never seem to happen when we expect them to happen. No, true disaster blindsides you, hits you like a bus on an otherwise boring Tuesday when you thought everything was going well. At least that's how it happened to me.

About two weeks after I got back from San Francisco, I found myself engaging in my normal weekday afternoon ritual: painting my nails and catching up with my "stories" on TV. They were just about to reveal who was the father of Veronique's evil twin's secret love child when the local news cut into the broadcast.

(You know, I never did find out who was the father of that baby. After my own life turned into a soap opera, they kind of lost their escapist appeal.)

The perky Channel 11 anchorwoman announced, "We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this breaking news bulletin. At approximately 4:30pm today, notorious thief Carmen Sandiego broke in to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and made off with a painting in broad daylight."

I snorted. Carmen Sandiego had been pulling off robberies since I was a kid in Iowa with a training bra and braces. This was news?

But then they flashed the stolen painting up on the screen- two women sitting in a café, the colors and textures I loved so well. My jaw dropped; Sofia and I had just seen it. Weird.

"The painting is Edward Hopper's Chop Suey, on special loan to the Met from a private collector. This is Carmen's first crime in the Big Apple since she stole the lions outside the New York Public Library last October, and her fifth break-in at this particular museum."

A picture of the master thief appeared on the screen: a beautiful woman dressed in cadmium red, with hair the color of old antimony. Her face was hidden except for one glimmering eye, a familiar and deep Prussian blue.

I nearly stabbed myself with my nail file. Antiquarian, my ass.

"We go now live to the scene of the crime where our own Kent Steele is interviewing the lead ACME detective on the Sandiego case. Take it away, Kent."

"Detective Ivy, where is ACME on this latest robbery? And why is this woman still at large after a nearly fifteen year crime spree?"

I completely tuned out whatever else the reporter said because I was totally fixated on the young woman beside him. Short red hair, green eyes; this woman could have been my sister. Actually, I have a sister, and Detective Ivy looked more like me than she does. She was taller and more muscular and I had more freckles, but the resemblance was uncanny.

And then suddenly it all clicked into place, like a brilliant piece of trompe l'oeil.

My opposite number answered the reporter with authority and annoyance. "ACME is doing everything within its power to bring Carmen Sandiego to justice. I personally will not rest until she is behind bars. We are asking all citizens in the tri-state area to call in to our special hotline to report any suspicious VILE activity…"

I shut off the TV. I knew instinctively that Sofia…no, Carmen…would be on her way here. Soon. And I knew what she wanted.

A more moral person would have called that tip line. A smarter person would have just left town. But I was neither of these things, just a young and foolish girl who seemed to have broken rule number one in the escort handbook: never fall for a client.

Instead I went to my closet and exchanged the flirty sundress I was wearing for a tight fitting tank top, jeans and a pair of hiking boots that hadn't seen the light of day since a camping trip two years ago. Next went on a beat-up black leather jacket to complete my look. In the bathroom, I washed off the majority of my makeup, putting on just a touch of lip balm. Not an exact match, but pretty damn close. As the pièce de résistance, I retrieved a pair of handcuffs from my bedside table and tucked them into the back pocket of my jeans. I shut off the lights and watched and waited.

I fell into a kind of trance and lost all semblance of time. Minutes or hours later, I discerned a faint scratching at one of my loft's oversized windows and a pop as a pane of glass was removed. Lithe as an acrobat, a shadowy figure slipped through the opening and landed on my hardwood floors with two soft staccato clicks of her stiletto heels. I watched silently in the darkness as she sashayed over to my living room wall, lifted down one of my paintings, and hung Chop Suey in its place. The master criminal stepped back to admire her handiwork, smiling her vermillion smile, mistress of all she surveyed. And then I pounced.

With all the strength and agility I possessed, the sum total of every pilates class I had ever taken, I shoved Sofia-Carmen forward, sending her stumbling into my credenza. Quick as a flash, I grabbed the handcuffs from my pocket and restrained both arms behind her back, locking the metal around her slender wrists. "I've got you at last, Carmen," I breathed into her ear.

For a fraction of a second, I saw something that looked like genuine apprehension in those midnight blue eyes, quickly replaced by a ghost of a smile. "So you have, detective," she spoke in a voice that was both dark and sweet, like liquid chocolate. "Whatever are you going to do with me."

I wrenched her left arm back, digging in my fingers hard enough to leave bruises. "You've given me a lot of trouble over the years. But, finally I have you at my mercy." The words were a bit awkward, but I tried my best to sound natural, pitching my voice a little lower, trying to imitate the redheaded agent I had seen on TV.

I broke character slightly for a minute in hesitation. I was pretty sure this was what she wanted, but I needed to know for certain. There are conventions to be followed and I was, after all, a professional. "You do know what is going to happen here, tonight, don't you? And you consent?"

She turned to me, and said sardonically, "I don't really have much of a choice, do I?" I stared back at her thin-lipped and angry, as Ivy might have done. She sighed. "Yes, I consent."

And just to be sure. "And what signal will you give me to let me know you've had enough?"

A bark of sarcastic laughter. "You seriously consider yourself capable of even coming within a mile of my boundaries?"

Her mockery, for some reason, infuriated me. "In case you haven't noticed, you're not calling the shots tonight, Carmen. We do this my way, or we don't do it at all. Or perhaps you would prefer I just leave you here like this, a nice early Christmas gift for the ACME detective agency?"

She licked her lips. "Very well." And told me her safe word.

I pushed her back onto my mattress, removed her hat and loomed over her. In my line of work, I had felt sexy, wanton, and seductive plenty of times. But wrapped in Detective Ivy's persona was the first time I had ever felt tough or strong.

I looked into Carmen's blue eyes, where defiance had been replaced by an aching vulnerability. Where had all that famed bravado gone. I ran my thumb against her lower lip and felt her tremble; she wanted this so badly, it frightened her. Fitting for one so clever, so seemingly untouchable, that surrender would be the ultimate forbidden desire. Especially surrender to her beloved foe, the girl detective.

I kept her hands bound throughout our entire encounter. And somehow by binding her body, I freed her spirit. This time, she did not hold back or stifle her sounds of pleasure. It was a heady feeling, an intoxicating power to feel her body swell and writhe, yielding to my every touch. I brought her to the brink of release and back again, stopping just a centimeter short of the edge. After the fourth or fifth round of this little game, her frustration and impatience were palatable and hung in the air between us, a tangible third-party.

Pain I was pretty sure Carmen could handle; I could have whipped her until my own hands bled and not gotten anywhere. But pleasure…that she had no defense for.

"Tell me," the master thief gasped, her voice hoarse, "how much longer do you intend to torture me in this fashion?"

"Why, until you've learned your lesson, Carmen." I leaned in so close so that my lips almost touched hers and said, "You've been doing this for more than a decade. Letting the cops get close to you, and just when they almost have you, dancing right out of their grasp. No one likes to be teased."

She was stubbornly, defiantly silent. But her blood sang to me all the same.

I ran my hand up her smooth thighs and began to stroke a very sensitive part of her anatomy. "If you want me to stop, you only have to say the word."

She actually blushed. "You can't be serious."

"I am," I said, pressing harder to drive my point home, causing her cry out. With my free hand I caressed her cheek and told her softly, more myself than Ivy, "For once in your life, give in."

She closed her eyes and I could read the inner struggle flicker across her face. "Alamo,"she whispered. A losing battle indeed. Almost instantaneously, I felt her shudder violently against me. Sympathetically, I felt it too, and rode it out with her, wave after wave.

But then, like a spell had been broken, I slumped down, drained. I no longer felt brave or in control, but physically and emotionally exhausted. Minutes, seconds later, a red-coated arm reached out to embrace me. I heard the handcuffs fall to the floor with a clatter. Ha. Everyone knows that an encounter like this one is just the illusion of surrender; with Carmen Sandiego, it was the illusion of the illusion of surrender.

"Thank you," she told me in a half-broken voice, stroking damp strands of my red hair. I turned to look at her beautiful face, now marked by the tracks of silent tears. I didn't know what to say. Underneath all those layers of sophistication and wit and bravado, she was as raw and needy and human as anyone I've ever met. Maybe more so.

We lay together in the afterglow, breathing the same breath as the sun set on Manhattan. In those minutes, an entire new landscape of possibilities opened up before me, like an undiscovered country. I dozed a little, happy and comfortable in the safety of her arms. I awoke when my client or lover…I wasn't quite sure anymore…left and went to the bathroom. I heard the soothing sound of water running. When she came out, her clothes and hair looked immaculate but her face was colder than I'd ever seen it. It was like something had swung shut behind her eyes.

"I'm sorry I dropped in on you unannounced. I'll send a courier over to your office tomorrow with your fee, plus a little extra for the inconvenience," she said coolly, as if we were chatting about the price of blue chip stock instead of an evening of mind-warping sex.

"I don't want your money."

She arched a perfectly plucked brow and said cruelly, "This only works because I pay you, you know."

"Right. Of course," I choked on my words. Although she had metaphorically ripped my heart out and crushed it beneath her crimson heel, I was not going to cry. I was not.

Carmen fixed her trademark fedora upon her head and said from under the shadow of its brim, "We shouldn't see each other anymore. It's too dangerous."

"I thought you liked danger," I commented bitterly.

She shook her head and sounded sad, "Not this kind."

I knew then this was an act. Just another manifestation of the ambivalence that had been with us all along, since the first time we met. She didn't want to let me go, but she would force herself to do it anyway. I grasped for her gloved hand and pulled her down beside me. "Take me with you."

The world's most mysterious woman took off her glove and traced the contours of my face one last time. "And keep you beside me like a nightingale in a gilded cage?" She paused and said with finality, "No."

And the master thief rose and glided away from me, a raven on the wing, while my bones and muscles turned to lead, pinning me to my bed, unable or unwilling to chase after her.

She paused in front of Chop Suey and said thoughtfully, "In all the years I've been doing this, I've never once stolen for someone else."

"Yeah, well if you're going to leave, take that damn painting with you. I don't want it," I spat.

Carmen shrugged. "It's yours now."

"What the hell am I supposed to do with a stolen masterpiece?"

"Keep it, sell it, hand it over to the police. Whatever you like," she said, her tone as smooth as glass.

Before Carmen took her leave of me, she shared one final thought; "I meant what I said before about your art. Keep painting. To steal a masterpiece of yours one day would be a rare pleasure." And with a flash of a smirk and a tip of her hat, she took flight.

Seconds after she left, the tears I'd been holding back streamed forth like rain. The disappointment, the shock, the anger- it was all too much. In becoming someone else, I had never given more of myself to a client. I racked my brains, retraced all my steps with this woman and tried to understand why the hell I decided to follow her down this rabbit hole. It was a sad truth that the better I became at having sex for money, the worse I became at having sex for fun. And the more I was Alex the exclusive escort, the less I was the artistic girl with a dream. Somehow Carmen had offered me the irresistible opportunity to be both, and I fell for her completely.

I sat there sobbing on the carpet near my bed for quite some time, sipping on a toxic cocktail of self-pity and self-hatred. I might have stayed there all night had I been given the opportunity.

In the end, I was jolted back to reality by the rough music of police sirens and the percussion of the SWAT team breaking down my door. Someone on a megaphone shouted for Carmen Sandiego to come out with her hands up and I numbly buried my face in the bedsheets. There was no time to escape. I was a hooker who had aided and abetted Public Enemy Number One and there was a piece of stolen artwork hanging in my living room. To put it bluntly, I was good and truly fucked.

Officers in bulletproof vests swarmed my loft, inspecting every nook and cranny. I stayed on the floor, silently shaking with fear until a hand belonging to a gangly teenage boy gently pulled me to my feet. Then, a firm and serious female voice told me, "We're going to have to ask you to come along with us, Ms. O'Keefe."

I raised my eyes and met my double.