This woman is naïve, Omar decided, as he drifted behind her and sneaked a look inside the conference room, where she was seated with several men, all in business suits. Whatever was happening in there, she seemed composed and confident. Omar knew he’d have to change that.
That same night in Las Vegas, Omar began his campaign to weaken Michelle, so that she would eventually be under his control. It was the night he ordered Samson to assault her in her hotel room.
Omar noted that she was still stubborn, despite his efforts, as he carried her down the hallway. Although she was easy to manipulate. Michelle was fiercely protective of the people in her circle of friends and relatives.
He’d taken care that she wouldn’t be missed at work, leaving a text message from her own cell phone to her boss, Tom Mitsuto, that she had contracted the flu and would have to be absent for a few days.
The cat, Lucifer, turned out to be an unexpected problem, though. Omar had directed Genelle, a witch in his Hawaiian coven, to go and feed the cat last night. He made a copy of Michelle’s key from the one in her purse and had it messengered to Genelle’s apartment. Later that night he got a stinging phone call. The cat attacked her the moment she went inside Michelle’s apartment.
Genelle described how Lucifer jumped on her leg, bounded up it with his long sharp claws and scampered up her blouse to her shoulder. Then the cat practically cut her face to ribbons, growling and hissing the whole time. Genelle managed to grab the cat and throw it violently across the room. As she backed out the door, she saw Lucifer bound up and race toward her again, ready to anew the attack.
Genelle was furious. She’d had to go to the hospital; he would have to pay for the necessary plastic surgery. Omar subdued her, with a lot of reassurances and a hefty chunk of cash, in addition to the plastic surgery fees, because Genelle threatened to have the cat declared a dangerous animal which should be euthanized. She warned Omar that she was going to call Hawaii Animal Control.
Omar didn’t like Genelle much, so he appreciated how his former cat had reacted to a stranger entering Michelle’s apartment. He had trained Lucifer well. Now he had to figure out how to feed the feline. The cat was too valuable to let it starve. Besides, Michelle was fond of the little beast. She would never forgive him if it died of hunger and thirst.
Omar was looking at room numbers as they went down the long hallway and nodded at Leilanie when they reached their suite. She opened the door with a key card and Omar walked through the entrance and a tastefully appointed living room to one of the bedrooms. He carefully lowered Michelle onto the large king sized bed and then turned and pressed a button on the wall next to the bed.
Within a couple of minutes someone knocked discretely on the bedroom door and entered the room. He was wearing a lab coat, holding a notebook. He was short, slim, and sported a short goatee. “My name is Dr. Jacob Franz. I’ll be overseeing the whole procedure. I understand you want it done immediately. So I’ll need to ask you a few questions. It looks like your wife is sedated?”
“Yes. She was a little nervous,” Omar said. “She asked me to give her a Xanax so she could sleep through the whole thing. Hospitals make her anxious.”
The sedative Omar had given Michelle was much more powerful than Xanax or a Valium. In fact, if the anesthesiologist was not attentive she could die on the table. Omar knew and he didn’t much care. Michelle would be a dangerous future liability. He decided to let fate make the choice. It was necessary to keep her quiet and unresisting. Sedating her with a strong opiate was the only option he’d had.
“She hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in the last twelve hours?”
“No, nothing,” Omar said.
“Perhaps we should wait until the drug is out of her system,” Dr. Franz suggested.
“I was assured she’d be fine by her doctor in Hawaii, and she said she just wanted to wake up after the procedure was done.”
Dr. Franz looked like he intended to argue, and Omar stared him hard in the eyes. Time passed. Dr. Franz shook himself, feeling like he’d come out of a trance, and frowned. He couldn’t remember what he’d been upset about.
He turned and looked at Leilanie. “You’re Michelle’s sister, I understand. You have not eaten or had anything to drink either in the last twelve hours?”
Leilanie vowed that she hadn’t.
Dr. Franz noted her answer in his notebook. He looked at Omar and smiled, “I can get started right away with your wife and Leilanie. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. In the meantime, as your wife goes through the harvest procedure, you will need to provide us with your, ah...”
The doctor seemed to have trouble spitting it out, so Omar said, “seed?”
“That’s right,” Dr. Franz said, nodding rapidly. “Your specimen. A nurse will be here in a little while to take it.”
Dr. Franz handed Omar a glass collection vial. Omar noted that his name was already written on the side of the container.
Omar felt like cackling and rubbing his palms together gleefully, but he restrained himself. His final aspiration was within his grasp.
When the doctor left, Omar hummed a song he’d heard from somewhere, ‘You can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you get what you need.’
Chapter 8
Heather felt woozy from lack of sleep. She would have been happy if Michelle wasn’t mysteriously missing. Staying up half the night left her groggy as a bad, after-morning, hangover. She needed a caffeine fix.
First though, she grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table and punched in
