by Nicole Kurtz
“Ahhh. That hit the spot. Thank you,” he said, his eyes skipping over my face and around the apartment. “Haven’t done much with the place.”
“No, I’m too busy,” I said sharply, feeling the hair on my neck rise up. “Tell me what’s going on. Quit stalling and spill it. This isn’t a casual visit. Stop pretending it is.”
He grimaced and stood up. As he walked around the sofa, I thought he was going to leave, but he didn’t. He pivoted around and walked back to the end of the sofa. Pacing, he folded his hands behind his head.
“The agency received some complaints about me,” he said dully, his voice extremely low and quiet. He paused long enough to toss me a a glance. He commenced at once.
I bent forward to hear, straining my ears to capture each word.
“The people were high up in quadrant governments.”
“Governor level?” I asked, interrupting his explanation. The highest level in all the quadrants was governor.
He shrugged his brawny, square shoulders, drawing the sweater fabric taut against him. “Don’t know. The complaints were anonymous and false anyway.”
“What kind of complaints? Sexual?” I felt like I was interrogating a witness, which gave me an odd feeling, for Trey had done nothing wrong.
Right?
Sure he hadn’t done anything wrong, but his presence in my apartment surely wasn’t right. He didn’t knock or ring the bell, he’d used his key…even thought he knew I wasn’t expecting him. We weren’t a couple any more.
I guess it could also mean we weren’t a couple any less.
I grinned at the joke, a small one, with my lips moving upward in a grin, nothing more.
Besides, I wasn't getting the entire story from Trey and that alone killed any amusement.
He smiled. “That would be the first choice wouldn’t it?”
“It’s how my mind works,” I said back almost playfully, almost like we were before…almost. “As you know.”
He nodded. “No, let me explain.”
Finally.
With his smooth, caramel complexion, baldhead, and sturdy build that was engineer perfect, Trey looked good enough to eat. I fought back my naughty thoughts and focused on his tale.
“…I was undercover out in the Southwest,” he was saying. “Deep cover, when suddenly I was exposed. Two days prior to meeting the head honcho of the Raymen Cartel. Rumor was that the leader was one of the governments’ officials.”
“Exposed? By who?” I asked, surprised. “And you weren’t killed?”
“I overhead Buzz on the telemonitor giving the thug-party the heads up. I disappeared before they got to me. Someone in T.A. blew my cover.”
I’ve heard of the Raymen Cartel, but for the life of me couldn’t remember where I’d heard it. Drugs. Prostitution. The usual violantions, but the Raymen Cartel rang a bell I couldn’t silence at the moment.
“Raymen Cartel…who are they?” I asked finally, revealing my ignorance.
He finished pacing and came around to the sofa. He sat tittering on the edge of the sofa, his hands holding his head as if it was too heavy to hold up any longer.
“The Raymen Cartel runs drugs like AckBack and Zenith out of the Southwest into the other territories and down to Mexico. As you know, Zenith is one of the deadliest drugs this side of the twenty-second century,” he explained in a careful, weary manner. As he relaxed, black circle appeared under his eyes and large, heavy bags hung from beneath his eyes.
How long had he been without sleep? Days? Weeks? Months?
“At first glance, the Zenith pill is an unassuming, harmless pink pill. The cherry taste gives the user visual flashes or what is known on the streets as “cherry blasts.”
I remembered now where I’d heard about the Raymen Cartel. Malcolm Moore had done a long investigative story on Zenith use with students at Old Montgomery College not too long ago. The piece had mentioned the Raymen Cartel, and how its tentacles reached into some of the most powerful political places in the many territory governments.
Figures—it takes a violation enterprise to unite governments who normally are at odds. These days, only the violators had much of the currency to support the various economies—except in Teriad’s dictatorship in the Northwest and the Cali district.
"Like the Biblical Moses who went to the zenith of Mount Sinai to speak with God, cherry blasts allow the user to see his or her future, or so the myth goes. Once the visions are over, the person has a sexual release, and then he passes out," Trey continued, his voice lagging in excitement, as if he had given this lecture before and was bored.
Yes, that’s what Malcolm’s article stated and several experts agreed.
"The sexual element alone would be addictive, but the future visions were equally appealing. The added cocaine kick in the pill made it physically addictive," he said. “The visions aren’t revelations of the future, but images stimulated by the chemicals in the designer drug…hallucinations brought on by the drug’s peyote ingredients.”
"As I recall if taken too much, the user could go blind, mad or into cardiac arrest," I said. “It not all three.”
He nodded. "So the pressure is on the Territory Alliance to stem the flow of both Zenith and Ackback, especially now that it’s the latest party drug for college students."
Right, only the government officials’ kids were allowed to go on to higher education. No wonder the T.A. was catching so much heat and pressure. The generals, governors and territory dictators won’t stand for their kids being used as drug bait.
The other drug, Ackback, although not as exotic as Zenith, contained deadly agents in its composition. It worked like crack and was a derivative of cocaine.
"Are you sure it was someone in the T.A.?" T.A. was the sole regulating authority left after the wars sliced up the former United States. "This is serious."
"Yes, it is," he said with a yawn. "As soon as I reported in, Captain Montague fired me. Said I was endangering his career."
"Did you explain your cover had been blown?" I took off my boots and removed my ponytail tie carefully as to not aggravate the bruises. My braids spilled over my shoulders like chestnut licorice.
We sounded like an old married couple and we weren't even a couple. A few days ago, I thought our breakup was for the best; painful, but what we both needed.
Now, I wasn't so sure. Seeing him again and in such a difficult position had conjured up feelings that I thought I had buried and deserted in the New Mexican high desert.
"Yes, yes," he groaned as he threw his hands into the air. "I did. He was enraged with me."
"So who's after you? The Raymen Cartel?"
"Yes," he said, his face sagged. "They are ruthless, callous people—some are hatchlings. The hired muscle that is, I believe. They would kill my family, if I had one. They would slaughter anything, everything I held dear if they couldn't get to me."
He got up and stood by the telemonitor. "Including you."
“Why me?” I asked, scowling and ignoring the flare of stinging needles at the action. “I’m not in your life anymore, remember?”
He sighed, but didn’t turn around. “I didn’t say those in my life, Cybil. I said those I hold dear.”
I left the rocking chair and sat on the sofa, folding my legs under me. So, he still held me dear to him. He counted me amongst the people he cared for, but what did that actually leave for me? What did I feel about all this? Drama brought to my doorstep wasn’t a way to get back into my good graces.
Montano’s attack might have been an attempt by the Raymen Cartel. Didn’t he demand to know Trey’s whereabouts?
Why did Trey think the Raymen Cartel would go to such extremes to see him dead? He did say he'd risen up through the ranks to meet the head of the organization. But he hadn’t actually gotten a chance to meet the leader.
Maybe that didn’t matter.
Surely he'd seen procedures, faces of people who could spend a lot of time dreaming about pink bunnies in the cradles chambe
rs. Was it worth going to these lengths to delete one person?
Trey gazed across the coffee table at me. "Fathers, you are so beautiful when you're lost in thought. Even though you looked like you lost a fight with a razor bot."
Husky and heated, his voice awakened my dormant longings and they shrieked for him. He stepped over the coffee table, pushing the table backward with his sneaker to give him space. Once comfortable, he kneeled in front of me. His hands slid along my thighs, brushing the bruises and caressing, giving me pain and soothing pleasure at the same time.
"So, tell me what happened?" he whispered, his voice like velvet, gliding along my skin and across my face, rubbing against my back and up my spine.
"Nothing I can't handle," I said softly, not wanting to talk about work. Not wanting to talk at all, but to act. Already every nerve in my body eagerly sought his familiar touch. Despite the complaints from my battered body, I wanted his hands all over him.
"Why won't you let someone help you," he said as his hands interlocked with mine. Calluses dotted his left hand. "I've badly missed you."
He leaned in and kissed my cheek gingerly. "Cybil, about our break-up…"
"Trey," I whispered hotly back as his full lips brushed mine, leaving them tingling and wanting.
"Yes?"
"Go take a shower. You stink," I said with a deep laugh, my motives to see him naked, clear and exposed.
“Come with me,” he whispered back, pulling me off the sofa with him.
“Owww…”
“Sorry.”
He navigated the apartment as if he had never been away from it. We slid together into my closet sized shower. With a laugh, he turned on the water, howling at the cold water and shielding me from it until at last it warmed up.
Taking my liquid soap, I squeezed tropical breeze all over his chest and busily rubbed my hands across it, turning the liquid into lather and loving it. Without waiting, Trey grabbed the bottle from me and squeezed the cold soap over my shoulders and back. His hands felt heavenly on my skin as he massaged in the soap. Even the bruises he touched seemed to sear and fall in response to his touch.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the shower’s wall, while his hands made their way from my back to my front and engaged in sensual circular patterns of warmth. I leaned back, palms against the shower’s damp tile, and letting the water wash over us in scalding rivulets and streams of steam.
I couldn’t tell if the shower clouded up from the hot water or from our own steamy embraces.
Thursday morning came way too soon. Annoyed and sleep deprived, I clumsily got out of bed, slamming my toe on the bed's frame as I hobbled through the living room and on to the kitchen to start a cup of coffee.
There was nothing like waking up the morning after a good ass whipping.
People had this habit of underestimating bruises. They freakin’ hurt. After you sleep and have sex with them, they tend to be more painful. Too much touching and biting, and smacking and grabbing—I felt like I’d been in another battle.
The apartment lay in semi-shadow. All of the curtains had been drawn throughout the place, except for my bedroom. I must have forgotten to close them last night. The nightlights, strategically placed in each room offered small circles of illumination, giving rise to shadows and dusky corners.
"Coffee on," I said with a throat as dry as cotton. The scabs on my face itched. I fought back the urge to scratch them, knowing that wouldn’t satisfy the itch, but would make them bleed again.
The click of the coffeemaker confirmed my command. Not unlike most people, my coffeemaker resided in the kitchen, but only made cups individually. Not fifteen cups or twenty, one cup of hot java at a time. The machine held two containers, one for coffee and the other for water. The computer controlled the mix, the fulfillment and creation of my morning wake up.
I had to speak clearly to the coffee maker or I'd get something else like water with coffee grinds or coffee mud, a black sludge of bitterness. I leaned back against the fridge while the coffee hissed and whirled.
My heavy eyelids closed.
The telemonitor buzzed, forcing me out of my sleepiness. Groaning, and wishing it were a wrong number, I headed to the living room.
It wasn’t.
I saw Tisha's face on the caller identifier and I wanted to scream. I hovered around the screen and tried to decide if I should answer it or let it go to video mail.
She was my sister.
I picked up the remote and clicked the telemonitor fully on.
"Hello, Tisha," I said as the video filled in the telemonitor’s screen. My enthusiasm for the day continued to plummet like a rock thrown into the ocean.
My sister's face frowned, wrinkling the expensive and expertly applied cosmetics. "You're awake?"
"I am now," I said somberly and trying to not groan out loud. My body simply was smarting.
The volume immediately balanced so I caught the complete effects of her displeasure at finding me at home. If she could help it, Tisha would only leave messages. Talking directly to me might mean she'd have to have a conversation with her only sister. Which in turn meant she’d have to face the fact that she wasn’t an only child.
Tisha’s face relaxed into a visage of arrogance and mock importance.
Thursday was definitely not getting off to a good start.
"How's the shoulder?" I asked, failing to hide my own irritation at her call.
It was only six a.m. The time was even earlier out in the Southwest…by about two hours, which meant at four a.m. Tisha looked as fresh as blooming flowers. She was as poisonous as belladonna.
Even though I couldn't see the scar now, for she wore a long-sleeve mauve shirt, I knew it was there. The scar on Tisha's shoulder would forever remind her of how dangerous my job was and the fragility of her own life.
And for that, she would never forgive me.
"Never mind," she spat. "I was calling to say that Nina's birthday is coming up."
She said it as if I didn't know my favorite (and only) niece's birth date. The unspoken accusation stirred up old feelings of rejection and competition. Instead of cursing a string of intelligible words at her, I smiled.
"She's having a party and wanted to-"
Tisha's voice trailed off. Her eyes moved over to someone or something out of picture range. She whispered furiously under her breath words that I could not catch. Her artfully plucked eyebrows crouched down in a menacing look, before finally saying, "Fine!"
She stepped back and Nina stepped into view, her braids pulled into two side-long ponytails. "Can you come, Auntie Cyb? Can you? To my party?"
Ah, now everything became clear. Tisha didn't want Nina talking to me. If I hadn't been home or answered, Tisha could have told her that I never responded to the message, thus painting me as a naughty, neglectful auntie.
As it were, I was home, and now faced with a difficult decision.
"Well, I'll try, but I'm working a case," I said, my heart twisting in agony. I'd missed so much of her growing up already because of the distance between D.C. and the Southwest Territories. Missing yet another milestone forced my heart to wring itself in indecision.
Her crestfallen face stabbed at my emotional center. Once one of my cases put her in danger. In fact, it was the same case that gave her mother the shoulder scar.
I couldn't let that happen again.
Because next time, Nina might not be so lucky.
With any luck, she might be out of therapy by the time she reached forty.
"You're working?" Nina asked, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She was stiff-upper-lipping it and for that I was proud. Her eyes betrayed her outward stance of understanding.
"Yeah," I said back, swallowing the lump that had risen there. “I am working a really tough one too.”
"In your pjs?" she snickered and erupted into giggles. Her cheeks filled out in a cocoa-toned, chubby cheer. Still, disappointment lingered in her eyes. She knew my job and I think, she worried
about me, probably more than her mother.
That did not sit well, but it was how I paid the bills. I eagerly shoved the thoughts aside, and smiled back at my little trooper.
"That's enough," Tisha said firmly as she gently pushed Nina out of the picture. "Come if you can."
"I will try," I said, a little surprised at the sound of slight concern in Tisha’s voice.
Since our violent bonding, Tisha had been reasonable when calling and leaving messages. I had to be honest. I thought she was doing it to irritate me more. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say, kind or courteous, but our usual heated arguments were less frequent now.
"Bye," she said, her jewelry sparkling in the flow of the overhead lights in her living room. "Be careful. You look like hell."
I spoke too soon. Was that concern coming from Tisha?
The world must be coming to an end in a mere few minutes.
Okay, so she could do kind when she wanted.
But then so could I.
"Yeah.”
We disconnected with my thoughts centered on Nina. Wow, she'd grown in the last two years. Only four or five inches shorter than Tisha, who stood at five feet nine inches, Nina was growing like a weed and well on her way to being a real beauty.
I removed my travel bag out of the living room's closet when the door rang.
The camera showed Jane, packed and dressed, in the door's entranceway. I clicked the open button and she waltzed in her face a stony mask, her sunglasses on.
"Not even dressed!" she said around an unlit cigarette, no doubt her first of the morning. "Hurry up! It's nearly seven."
"All right, I'm going!" I said and went back into my bedroom to load up the travel bag. “Tisha called and I got thrown off track.”
“How are they anyway? Both out of therapy?” Jane shouted back.
Jane wasn’t trying to be funny.
“No, I think Nina will be in it until she’s forty…” I said as I hauled my suitcase onto the bed wincing all the more since it required two hands to do. My right went numb again after I dropped the bag onto the bed. I could purchase an apartment drone, but I hated robots.
