Part 3: Another Error in Judgement, by Mark Danelaw
Part 1: an error in judgement can found here.
Lorraine pressed her lips together too late, Dacre caught the smirk as he turned from Mary’s corner, his eyes narrowing in the dim light. The boxcar swayed violently, but his balance never wavered. He crossed the space between them in three strides, the floorboards groaning under his weight.
“Something funny, Carter?” his voice was low, rough at the edges like gravel under tires.
Lorraine leaned back against the crate, deliberately casual. “Just admiring your technique,” she said, tilting her head toward Mary’s hunched form. The girl’s fingers trembled where they laced atop her head, her blouse riding up just enough to reveal the ravaged red aftermath.
Dacre’s hand closed around Lorraine’s wrist, yanking her forward. The crate’s edge dug into her thighs as he spun her around, his palm landing a stinging smack right through her skirt. Lorraine gasped, more from surprise than pain, but Dacre didn’t give her time to recover. His fingers hooked in her waistband, jerking skirt, slip, and panties down to her knees in one sharp motion.
“Dacre, not here,” Lorraine wailed.
“Oh here is perfect,” he growled, “You cost us a grand,” Then he flipped up her blouse tail. The boxcar’s stale air hit her bare skin like a slap itself, “Then giggled while I cleaned up your mess.”
The first swat cracked through the boxcar louder than the rattling wheels beneath them.
Lorraine jerked forward with a hissed “Christ, Dacre…” but his forearm barred across her lower back, pinning her in place. The second smack landed lower, sharper, the callouses on his palm leaving behind a brand-like sting.
“The trouble is I don’t spank you often enough and you keep taking liberties,” Dacre told her, his hand blasting her now blazing bottom, “I think you can have this on account until we get back to the office,” his hand spanking over and over.
From her place in the corner Mary was embarrassed and shocked; no one had ever quite put her in her place like that before. Still she had time to risk a look around out the secretary’s spanking and allowed the schadenfreude to mitigate her own shame. Still her tail burned and she doubted that she would want to sit down all that soon. But then neither would Lorraine, she supposed, that was a small comfort.
The sound of the spanking had to compete with the train noise, but it managed rather well, especially as Lorraine started yelling; the two spheres of her bottom taking on a quite shiny red hue as Dacre belaboured it. Dacre’s hand mapped her flesh like a surveyor, finding every sensitive spot she’d tried to hide.
“You enjoyed that,” he accused, pausing to press his palm flat against her scorching skin. The heat radiated through his touch. “Watching me discipline her while you got off on the memory,” His fingers flexed, testing the give of her flesh before another smack lit up her nerves.
Lorraine sniffed, mortified that she was crying a little. “Maybe a little,” she blushed, “If I am real good, can I take a rain check on further spanking, I’m getting kind of tender back there and it is so embarrassing getting my tail end paddled in front of the kid.”
Dacre spanked her bare bottom a few times more, enjoying the heat and resilience under his hand. “Fair enough, but make it the top of your to do list once we get back,” he told her.
“Thank you Sir,” she agreed.
Mary still felt exposed standing in time out in the corner with her red hot hiney on show, but she found a smirk all the same. “Gee Mr Dacre; I am glad you’re not my boss.”
“Now let me see two tail ends gracing the box car wall,” Dacre chuckled.
“You mean?” Lorraine pointed at Mary.
“Right next to the kid,” he grinned.
Lorraine miserably rolled her eyes and staggered over to obey to put her red behind right alongside Mary’s. “Hi,” she said to Mary, “Looks like we’re roommates.”
“Looks like,” Mary groaned wearily, “Is he always like this?”
“Always,” the secretary sighed.
“Hands on your head,” he ordered, “Move an inch, and we repeat this with the hairbrush. That goes for both of you, hear me?”
“Yes Sir,” they both chirped in unison.
Dacre’s cigarette glowed in the dimness as he unfolded Margaret’s ledger again, the pages crisp under his fingers. The numbers didn’t lie: twelve payments of six grand, all routed through shell companies Lorraine recognized from a bootlegging case last fall. She chewed her lip, tasting blood again. Margaret hadn’t just hired Dutch Vickers, she’d bought him outright.
A rustle of fabric, Mary’s elbow nudged Lorraine, “Your… your stockings are ripped,” she said to the older woman.
Lorraine didn’t need to look down. The laddered nylon snagged at her thighs with every breath. “Yours will be too,” she muttered, “when he’s through with you.”
Mary’s gasp was almost worth the fresh throb in her backside.
“Oooh, I won’t sit down for a week,” Mary complained, liking now that she had someone to share the humiliation.
“I would call that a luxury princess,” Lorraine responded through gritted teeth, the bottom burn was still getting to her, “When he gets through with me I won’t sit down for a month.”
The boxcar shuddered to a stop, the sudden silence thick as the dust motes swirling in the dim light. Lorraine’s calves burned from standing rigidly still, but she didn’t dare shift her weight, not with Dacre’s cigarette burning steadily behind them, his gaze like a physical weight between her shoulder blades.
Mary’s elbow nudged hers again. “He’s…” she whispered, barely audible over the creaking metal, “he’s staring at your…”
“I know,” Lorraine hissed through clenched teeth. She could feel it, the exact path Dacre’s eyes traced down her exposed thighs, over the wreckage of her stockings, lingering where her blouse barely covered the aftermath of his discipline, “And yours too kid.”
Mary blushed, she had forgotten that.
A match scraped. Dacre lit a fresh cigarette, the flare illuminating the sharp planes of his face for a heartbeat, “Mary.”
Lorraine’s spine stiffened further, “Sir?”
Dacre exhaled a slow stream of smoke, the ember glowing brighter as he tapped ash onto the floorboards. “Tell me about Margaret’s safe,” His voice was calm, too calm, the kind of quiet that made Lorraine’s skin prickle.
“She… she keeps it behind the Degas in the study,” Mary whispered. “Combination’s my birthday backwards.”
Lorraine snorted, “Christ, its amateur hour.” The words slipped out before she could bite them back.
“Margaret keeps two safes,” Mary continued, keeping her hands locked atop her head, “The Degas one’s a decoy. Real one’s behind the bookcase, Dickens first editions. Touch the spine of Great Expectations and the whole shelf swings out.”
Dacre’s fingers stilled, “Combination?”
“Her birthday date, twice forward, once back,” Mary told him, “But I already took the ledger, I have it here.”
Dacre’s cigarette flared as he took a drag, the ember casting jagged shadows across the crates. “And you didn’t think to mention this earlier?”
Mary was wary, “Didn’t seem relevant until now.”
“Anything else you haven’t told me?” Dacre asked.
“Probably,” Mary whispered, “I’m sorry Mr Dacre, I am not very good at this, and I do appreciate your help… even the kind I didn’t want… I mean I guess I needed it though,” she added ruefully.
Dacre spread the ledger across a crate with surgical precision, the pages crisp under his nicotine-stained fingers. “Payment logs don’t lie,” he murmured, tracing a column of numbers with his pinky. “Twelve instalments of six grand, Last one dated…” His nail stopped mid-column, “Yesterday.”
Mary made a small, wounded noise. Lorraine didn’t need to look to know the girl’s face had gone sheet-white—her sharp inhale was louder than the boxcar’s creaking joints.
“The day after you vanished,” Dacre continued, flipping a page, “Interesting timing.”
The ledger page rustled as Dacre turned it, the sound like dry bones in the silence. Lorraine could feel Mary trembling beside her… not just fear now, but something sharper; betrayal, maybe, the kind that left splinters under your skin.
“Margaret paid Dutch to stash you,” Dacre said, tapping the date with his cigarette, “Not kill you. Not yet,” His gaze flicked up, catching the dim light, “Why?”
Mary’s throat worked, “I already told you… the… the trust,” her voice cracked, “I turn 21 next month. The money…”
“… shifts to your control, as we already figured,” Dacre finished, He snapped the ledger shut, “And Margaret loses her meal ticket. But you will get to see the accounts too… how much she has skimmed off… she had to get you out of the picture by then… she must have been planning for months.”
The boxcar lurched as the train slowed, sending dust motes swirling. Lorraine’s punished skin throbbed in time with the wheels’ rhythmic clatter. Dacre didn’t seem to notice, he was already shrugging into his jacket, the movement pulling the fabric taut across his shoulders.
The train’s brakes screeched like a gutted animal as it slowed toward the rail yard outskirts. Lorraine’s thighs trembled, not from pain now, but the icy realization creeping up her spine. Dutch Vickers didn’t take instalment payments.
Dacre’s fingers froze mid-button on his jacket. He’d caught it too.
Mary’s coveralls rustled around her ankles as she shifted. “What?”
“Shut up,” Dacre’s voice was a blade. His hand vanished inside his jacket, and reappearing with the .38 Lorraine hadn’t seen him lift from her garter. The steel gleamed dully in the boxcar’s gloom, “Twelve payments mean twelve jobs.”
Lorraine’s stomach dropped. Margaret hadn’t hired Dutch to hide Mary; she’d hired him to frame her.
“Twelve jobs,” Lorraine whispered. The ledger’s implication crystallized like ice in her veins. Margaret hadn’t just paid Dutch to stash Mary… she’d paid him to plant evidence; enough to sink the heiress if she ever surfaced.
“Get the hell dressed,” Dacre spat, “Both of you.”
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