Claire Redfield's mind held no doubt that were she not a hot girl, the taxi driver would never have agreed to take her this far into the countryside. She repeatedly caught him stealing glances at her through the rear view mirror; he did it in between checking his wristwatch and looking for the sun, muttering in Spanish how it would be dark soon.

He stopped at the end of a dirt road where there was a poorly marked trailhead. "This is the end of the line," he said in an oily, leering tone.

She'd been planning to tip him well, but all she gave him was a flat stare plus what she owed. He said something that sounded suspiciously like "puta" before driving off, leaving her completely alone.

Though it was warm out for an overcast day in autumn, Claire turned the collar of her red windbreaker up before starting down the winding trail through the woods. She felt for her gun beneath her jacket. She was only here to ask questions, but if this lead turned hot, then... Chris! She'd forgotten to call him. She flipped out her cell phone. One bar, as expected. She hoped it would go through, otherwise she'd be in for it.

"Are you there?"

Chris' voice sounded even further away than he really was.

"Yeah, I'm here. Sorry, the signal isn't very good."

When he didn't respond right away, she worried the call had dropped. "It's getting late," he said finally. "You'll want to head for the safe house. You know where to go?"

"Yeah," she said, careful not to sound petulant, knowing how many strings he'd pulled to get her this assignment. "You said it's a crappy-looking house with red trim, near the edge of the town's center."

"Go straight there. Don't go back outside until morning, give the villagers some time to get used to you. They tolerate the government inspectors who stay there sometimes but someone like you snooping around late at night might lead to trouble."

"Are they dangerous?" she said, looking between the gray trees, feeling watched.

"Maybe. There's a cult that's been operating around there for a few years now. Los Iluminados. It's led by a guy named Osmond Saddler, whose name comes up in the bioweapons world. No one knows much about him. If Ashley is there, I'd say odds are pretty good he's the one behind her kidnapping."

Claire wished her brother was in front of her so she could see him, so she wouldn't have to ask him this next question. "Chris, is this a real lead?"

Another silence, again she worried if she'd lost the signal. She'd have to walk to the main road and dial him back if she had. Her bosses at TerraSave had made it clear that she was under complete BSAA control while on this mission and would follow all of their protocols to the letter.

"The intel is credible," Chris finally said. "I wouldn't send you to a place like that for no reason."

"I know," she said quickly. "Sorry."

"The lead is definitely worth checking out, but if the intel were any stronger, they'd send a special forces battalion. Remember who we're talking about here. Every special agent and black ops team in the world is on the hunt for the president's daughter right now. Someone will find her."

Visions of red, satin hips swaying in the gloom had Claire feeling tight. "Yeah, you're right. I'll hunker down in the safe house until morning then ask around about Ashley. If I find anything I'll call it in."

"Good. Okay. Just be careful."

"I will. Talk to you later."

"Later."

She turned the phone off to save its battery and continued through the forest. If all went well she'd pass a dull night in a rundown building, spend the morning stumbling through some awkward conversations in Spanish, then while trying to find her way back to Madrid she'd get a call saying a special operations team had found Ashley Graham and whisked her back to Washington, D.C.

And if all didn't go well, she had her gun.

Whatever she was walking into couldn't be worse than Raccoon City, Rockfort Island, or any of the other outbreak zones she'd been to since joining TerraSave. Still, the sight of the black shingled rooftops peaking above the trees up ahead made her feel tight in the chest and arms.

The village was a sodden, molding place, but had been by sure, sturdy hands. Farm tools from the last century leaned against sheds sheltering gas-powered generators, blue tarps had been carefully nailed over holes in walls and roofs. The house with the red trim was easy to spot. It was right beside the open ring of the village center. She saw no one out and made straight for it, only to be seen by some people up a side street she hadn't noticed.

There were three of them, a man and two women, all dressed in simple homemade clothes, the sort Claire imagined farmers around the turn of the century might wear. She couldn't see the man's face in the gloom but he was definitely staring at her, intentionally shielding the two women from her view with his barrel of a body.

No, she realized, that wasn't quite right. It was more as if he didn't want the women see her, not that they likely would with their faces concealed within deep bonnets. He ushered them into a house through a side door and shot Claire one final, lingering dirty look before ducking in after.

Well, tomorrow aught to be fun, she thought, stepping into the safe house. It was a sort of post office, furnished with a chair, table, and boxes of unsorted mail beside a wood furnace. She barred the door, went up the narrow stairs into a short hallway. At the end was a bedroom, bigger than she'd expected. The bed beneath the window was spartan, neatly made. Under it was a box with some bottled water and a bag of trail mix. As she ate and drank, she took her shoulder harness off and laid her gun by the foot of the bed. Her walk through the forest had been longer than it felt and it was good to be off her feet.

Through the window above the bed she watched the night pour into the village, flowing from the side streets and narrow alleys into the town center. The darker it got, the harder it was to believe Ashley could have been taken to a place like this. Whoever had plucked her from her dorm room so easily probably had a base on the moon to hide her away in, not some rundown village in the Spanish countryside.

She closed the shutter. Slipping out of her windbreaker, she kicked off her shoes and stepped out of her pants. She set her gun beside the oil lamp, which she lit using a little box of matches found in the drawer. It was going to be a long night, she needed rest, but knew sleep wouldn't come without some help. Lying flat on the bed, she took a photo of Ashley she planned to show the villagers in the morning from her windbreaker pocket and looked at it in the weak lamplight.

They'd met at a TerraSave fundraiser where Claire had been the keynote speaker, to talk about what she'd seen in Raccoon City during the outbreak, or at least the things people could believe. Ashley, the budding young activist, was there, of course, to draw attention to the whole affair.

Claire hadn't been expecting much from the young woman, honestly. Every famous young-and-hot was supposed to have a pet charity cause these days and Ashley Graham had set herself apart from the cancer and literacy awareness people by making hers bio-terrorism. The story was she'd seen a scary movie when she was young and was "devastated and beyond horrified" when she heard about it playing out in real life.

Claire had been meaning to ask the little rich girl what lay beyond horror, but when they finally met, away from gawking eyes and cameras, she found not a preening celebrity out for attention, but someone real, someone who seemed to really get it, even though she'd never experienced the nightmare of a bio-weapon incident. Not only that, the supposedly air-headed First Daughter had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the official incident reports, both public and some not-so-public.

Their friendship had been so unexpected, so unlikely, maybe that was how it had accidentally slipped into something more.

Claire set the photo on her bare stomach while her fingers tapped her swollen labia through her panties. This should be the last thing on her mind right now, and not just for tactical purposes. There was no way she'd be allowed to see Ashley after this regardless of who rescued the girl, or from where. Protecting Ashley had been her responsibility the night she was taken and she'd blown it, hard. She should be doing everything she could to put the horny stuff out of her mind for good, not nurturing it like this.

She moved the photo to the nightstand, wet her fingers in her mouth and slipped them under panty line. She thought of the woman she blamed for making her like this, Ada Wong. She imagined her in a silken red robe at the foot of the bed, slipping out of it. There were tears running down Ada's face, hot and angry, just like that final night in...

Ugh!

Did she have any sexual fantasies not tied to bitter or horrific memories? The best she could muster was that lunatic, Krauser. She'd had a sort of butch charm, but it was paper-thin and couldn't hold up in Claire's mind. She was about to give up on her lady and try doing push ups or something to tire herself out when she heard footsteps outside the room.

The door swung inward. Claire gasped, her guilty hand pulling back so that to her panties snapped against her belly. It was the two women from the street. They floated into the room, moving to either side of the bed while taking down their shawls, revealing their heads to be completely wrapped in white bandages.

Claire's gun was by her foot but she made no move towards it as the two women slipped their pale shoulders free from their rough dresses. Twins, Claire thought, her eyes bouncing between each pair of breasts as the women poured themselves onto the bed to flow up and over her.

"What in the heck is going on here?" Claire murmured as their soft fingers caressed her thighs and hips, parting her legs.

Prostitutes, she thought, come to service their regular government inspector. That she was a woman didn't seem to give them any pause as one slid her body between her legs while the other went kissing up her stomach towards her breasts. The woman had bright, blue eyes and red, sensual lips. Her tongue was slight, but forceful.

The bandages must be to conceal their identities, she figured, as the one between her legs parted her slit. That or their usual guest had a kink. The woman's tongue inside her made her shiver, her muscles down there wobbled with sudden energy. A current ran between the two wet, silken mouths, causing Claire's entire body to shudder like a hot wire.

She came slowly, as if she were melting, her bliss coming out in long groans. The sister sucking her breasts joined her sibling between Claire's legs. They kissed, the one licking Claire's juices off the other before they both went for her still-quivering lady. Claire's cries came sharper now as their lips and tongues, working in tandem, doing things to her pussy she'd never considered. She wanted to tell them she hadn't signed up for this, that there'd been a mistake, but she couldn't remember any English much less Spanish.

The sisters never let up, spreading her further apart, licking deeper. She felt them kissing, felt her orgasms folding over one another, becoming a single point of bliss.

She opened her eyes. How long had she been over the edge? The sheets were drenched in her sweat and other fluids. The sisters were on top of her, licking her nectar off each other's lips. They stopped when someone came to the door.

A chainsaw roared to life, the sound curdling Claire's insides. The door was then kicked in by the man she'd seen outside, only now he wore a burlap sack over his head like a mask. The sisters howled with delight and held her down as he rushed in, the saw blade screaming.

Claire didn't bother struggling with the women, rather she grabbed the nearby oil lamp and threw it at the chainsaw man. It broke against his forehead and engulfed him. Claire pulled back her right leg and gave the nearest sister a kick off the bed.

In the mad scramble that followed Claire grabbed her gun and ducked around the flaming man to dash out the door. She fired behind her twice, hitting one of the sisters who'd chased after. The woman slumped to one knee and fixed Claire with a hateful look as she got back up, a fiery bedlam breaking out behind her. Claire fired again and ran down the stairs to the front door.

Dozens of villagers were outside, probably come to start a bucket brigade and put out the fire. Claire was not looking forward to explaining herself to them, but saw by their pitchforks, hatchets, and the strange gleam in their eyes that she wouldn't have to.

This lead was hot.