Misplaced Trust

by G. K. Parks

  He nodded, not really listening to what I had to say.

  “I’m gonna get cleaned up. Make yourself at home,” I insisted.

  Grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, I ducked into the bathroom. Stripping out of my grimy clothes, I turned in the mirror to see the swollen bruise that fell almost perfectly in line with the bottom of my left shoulder blade. That bastard with the bat needed to learn some manners. It wasn’t nice to hit a woman. Eckhardt better find him and teach him as much, or I would.

  After a quick shower, I returned to the kitchen. “What are you doing?” I asked, horrified at the sight of a full trashcan.

  Decker spun to face me. “You can’t eat this shit. I just phoned in a grocery delivery. It’ll be here soon.”

  “But that was my dinner.” I pointed to the trashcan, fighting back memories of Martin and his obsession with cooking. “I didn’t come to your house and throw out your dinner.” I narrowed my eyes. “By the way, where do you even live?”

  “In a trailer on Wilde’s property.” The disgust on his face kept me from asking additional questions. “It’s the best place to monitor our surveillance feeds after everyone goes to bed. It also keeps me in close proximity to the target, but it can be a little too close for comfort sometimes.” He dropped his voice, closing the fridge door. “When the latest body was discovered, I wanted to storm across the lot and beat a confession out of him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Not yet.” He exhaled and rubbed a hand down his face. This op was weighing on him, more so today than I’d ever seen.

  “So why do you hate takeout?” I asked, sifting through the containers at the top of the pile and contemplating whether or not anything could be salvaged.

  “A couple years back I was sent to infiltrate some low-level dealers in a crackhouse. It was a poor area, and it was a shit job. No fancy cover apartment. No nothing. We slept on the streets and ate fast food for almost every meal. Occasionally, it came from inside a dumpster.” He cringed. “Now the only time I can stomach that shit is when the situation absolutely calls for it. I’m all about fresh foods.”

  “I get it.” I pushed past him and opened the freezer, glad to see he hadn’t cleaned that out yet. Removing an ice pack, I checked to make sure there was nothing inside that I really wanted and left the door open. “Have at it.”

  He looked inside, finding nothing offensive, and closed the door. “Does your ankle hurt?”

  “No,” I went to the couch, pressing the ice against my shoulder blade before leaning back, “but I’ll have to wrap it before Tim arrives to make our story convincing.”

  “What’s wrong with your back?”

  “Nothing.” I gave him my best drop it look, but he didn’t seem to catch on. “That jerk took a practice swing before trying to kneecap me. Frankly, he should have gone straight for my legs. Amateur.”

  “How bad is it?” He closed the distance between us and reached for the hem of my shirt. “You should have said something when we were back at ops. We have a medical team on standby.”

  I slapped his hand away with more ferocity than was necessary. “It’s fine.”

  He held up his hands. “Okay. I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. I just wanted to help.” He took a seat across from me. “To answer your earlier question, Alex, I can’t read you. Today proved that I have no idea what you’re thinking or how you’ll react. Case in point.” He shrugged. “But I’m also under the impression that you don’t know what to expect from me either.”

  “We’re barely acquainted. We haven’t exactly had much time to bond, unless you think twenty minutes once a week was supposed to provide great insight into how we function.”

  He checked his watch. “I don’t know how long we’ll have, but it’s about time we rectify this situation. Do you play poker?”

  I nodded.

  “Get the cards. I could use a break from Jason Ellis for a few minutes.” He offered a friendly smile, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a handful of change, dividing it up on the coffee table. “Each coin is worth one question.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “You have to win in order to ask that. Plus, it’ll give us a chance to get to know each other’s tells, how we bluff, how we think. It’s a twofer. The only rule is the questions have to be personal. Asking about facts of the case won’t help us bond.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t have anything better to do with the rest of my evening, and if it put Decker in a better mood, it might be worth it. “Fine, but we’re not playing strip poker.”

  “Damn, you’re still hung up on trying to get me in bed, aren’t you?”

  I snorted. “You’re not my type.” I swallowed the pang of loneliness and guilt and went to find some playing cards.

  “Who is?” he asked, and I turned with a glare. “Right, I have to win a hand before I can ask.” I returned with the cards and settled on the floor, leaning against the couch with the ice wedged in the middle. Decker took the cards, shuffled, and dealt. Then he slid a stack of coins in front of me. “Ante up.”

  Somewhere between that first hand, the arrival of the groceries, and Decker tossing together a large salad and broiling up some tuna steaks, we managed to break the ice. He might have been the first person I’d ever been partnered with that didn’t drive me crazy. He didn’t seem to be overly macho or competitive, and he wasn’t a know-it-all, even though I had a feeling he knew a hell of a lot. Despite our initial interactions, his default setting was laidback. He was professional and serious when it came to work, and he didn’t want anything to jeopardize the operation. But he didn’t seem the type to try to micromanage either. He trusted his team to do what they did best.

  He was single. No wife, no kids, and no permanent ties. That’s why he didn’t have a problem volunteering for these operations. The team was his family. After working extensively with addicts in rehab, he wanted to take a more proactive approach and applied for a position in drug enforcement. He’d lost one too many patients to overdoses to sit back and wait for it to happen again.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, holding up a coin and placing it in the center of the table. “And don’t feed me that line of bull about your partner transferring.”

  “Lucca did transfer.”

  “But that’s not why you traveled three thousand miles to work a case you barely knew anything about. How could you just uproot like that? Didn’t you leave behind family and friends?”

  “You’re allowed one question. I believe it was asked and answered.”

  “And I believe you don’t want to talk about this.”

  I touched my finger to my nose and pointed at him. “Brilliant observation.”

  “Why not?” He lifted another coin off his stack of winnings and put it in the center of the table. “Did someone break your heart?” He added another coin to the pile.

  “Jace, I don’t want to talk about this. It has no bearing on who I am or how I work. It has nothing to do with anything.”

  He held up his hands and leaned back. “Okay.” He narrowed his eyes. “Does it have anything to do with why you were so willing to bust your ankle?”

  “Oh my god, it barely even hurt. And since it seems obvious Tim was behind the attack, he needs to believe that his thug was successful. If not, he’d just have him try again.” My rationale was sound. There was no reason for Jace to question it.

  “What are you going to do when he decides that he wants to sleep with you or if he lays out a line of blow and hands you a rolled up hundred?” He shook his head. “How far are you willing to go? Do you know where the line is?”

  I knew exactly where the line was. I’d crossed it, and it cost me almost everything. “I don’t sleep with marks. I never have, and I sure as hell never will. And I’ve worked drug cases before. I have no desire to use. I don’t give a shit if the DEA allows it or not. I won’t do it. I was dosed once, and that was a horrible experience. As it is, I barely drink. Another bad experi
ence.” I snorted. “My life is mostly bad experiences, so something stupid like taking a few punches or getting a couple of bruises to sell a story isn’t a big deal.”

  He nodded, picking up another chip and tossing it into the middle of the table. “What’s the worst case you worked?”

  “I can’t answer that.” I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know. Ask me something else.”

  He was almost out of coins. I had already used all of mine, but that part of the game had been a lot more fun. I liked asking questions, not providing answers.

  “Why’d you freak when I tried to look at your back?”

  “Knee-jerk reaction,” I speculated.

  For several moments, he remained silent while the wheels in his head turned over all the things he’d recently learned about me. “Did you come here to escape an abusive relationship?” He pushed the rest of his winnings into the center of the table.

  I burst into laughter. “God no. He would never hurt me, not like that.” Quickly sobering, I got lost in my own thoughts for a moment. “I don’t even think it was intentional. He just created the distance as a last-ditch effort at self-preservation. Damn, it was like a page out of my playbook.” I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “Did he cheat on you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you cheat on him?”

  Opening my eyes, I stared at Decker. “I said we weren’t talking about this. And no, I didn’t cheat on him. I lied to him as a way of protecting him. Work happened, shit got real, and I made him get out of Dodge with the promise I would meet him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I needed him safe, so I could stay behind and handle the situation.”

  “Is he an agent?” Jace asked, and I shook my head “Prosecutor?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me he isn’t a defense attorney.”

  “Do I strike you as insane?”

  He cocked his head to the side, clearly enjoying the twenty questions even though I was still trying to figure out why we were having this conversation when I kept insisting that we weren’t discussing what led to my relocation. “Local police?”

  “No.”

  “Military?”

  I blinked a few times, wondering why Decker was jumping to those conclusions. Agent, lawyer, and cop made sense. Those were the people I interacted with on a daily basis, but military wasn’t. “Why would you think that?”

  He shrugged. “You have a tough job. I imagine whoever you’d be involved with would need to possess similar skills just to understand what we go through.”

  I laughed cynically. “And that my dear headshrinker is precisely why we’re not together anymore.”

  “So he’s a civilian? That definitely complicates things. Medical professional?”

  “I hate doctors, Ph.D.s included. And you ran out of coins a while ago.” I looked at the clock, wondering what was taking Tim so long. Shouldn’t he have phoned to say he was on his way by now?

  “It’s obvious you still love him.” Decker gathered up the cards and put them into the box. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be at home, sorting things out.”

  “I’m where I need to be. He has to move on, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I’m not around. He doesn’t trust me. He threw me out.” I blinked back my emotions. “He didn’t speak to me for a month, and when he did, everything was different. He deserves someone that fits into his world and doesn’t complicate things.”

  “What do you deserve?” Jace asked, his blue eyes boring into mine.

  “I already got what I deserve.”

  Thirteen

  Wilde never showed up last night. Decker had to crash on the couch, and I couldn’t help but think that somehow we’d been compromised. Tim made a move against me, and the paranoid part of my mind decided it was to test my reaction. A woman with a privileged upbringing who just fell on hard times certainly wouldn’t react the same as a seasoned federal agent. I didn’t run or scream or cry. Okay, I did scream for help, and then I circled the enemy. Thankfully, my firearm had been inside the restaurant, or things would have gone a lot differently. I’d probably be on a plane back home now.

  Rolling onto my back, I hissed. The blow from the bat had obviously done some damage, and for a moment, I wondered if I had a fractured rib. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it would make life more annoying than necessary.

  The sounds of the blender working in the kitchen indicated my guest was awake, which meant I should probably get up so we could revisit the facts of yesterday before Wilde arrived. I didn’t know when Decker and I would get another chance to discuss these things outside our weekly briefings, so now was as good a time as any. Yesterday, he’d been moody and practically useless on the Wilde front. Hopefully, he had his head on straight today. Getting up, I pulled on the same jeans and t-shirt from the night before and went into the kitchen.

  “How’d you sleep?” I asked, noticing that it was barely eight a.m.

  Decker turned and smiled. God, he was a food snob and a morning person. The universe was having fun at my expense. “It’s the first night I slept soundly in six months. I tend to monitor the surveillance feeds even though there are techs back at ops doing the same thing. I’ll wake up several times just to make sure the signal is being transmitted and nothing’s going on. It’s stupid, but I can’t stop myself.” He scooted a glass filled with a thick, green concoction over. “You definitely look like you could use this.”

  “I must look like shit. What the hell is that?”

  “A green smoothie.”

  “Y’know, I’m not color blind.” Picking it up, I gave it a sniff. “What’s in it?”

  “Some fruits and vegetables blended together. Drink up. It’s good for you.”

  Giving it a tentative sip, it surprisingly didn’t taste the way that it looked, which was a relief. Putting the glass down, I shrugged, wincing at the movement. Decker noticed but didn’t comment. At least he was a fast learner.

  “We didn’t spend much time talking about Wilde or the case last night, but I have questions. Lots of them.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Should we be worried that Tim never came to get you?” I asked.

  Decker shook his head, downing most of his smoothie in a single gulp while he removed some breakfast steaks from the fridge. “We’re fine. The situation hasn’t changed. Frankly, I suspect Tim’s trying to force us to like each other. He often says that I should go with him to see your performances or that I should make an effort to say hi when you drop by the commune on the weekends. It’s imperative that you have close ties to those in his cult. That’s how he lures in his members.”

  “Why does he want you to be a one man welcome wagon? He has two dozen followers. I’ve spoken to several who sell goods on the weekends. They’ve all been friendly, but no one’s asked if I want to grab a coffee or anything. What makes you so special?”

  “It’s not me. It’s you.” Decker diced some vegetables, tossed them into the skillet with the steaks, and added some seasoning. “You didn’t seek out the commune, and you’ve demonstrated skepticism in regards to his religious order.”

  “Should I have not done that?”

  Decker thought for a moment. “Actually, that was smart. Your distrust is genuine. It’s real, and he might have picked up on any deception. This way, you don’t have to convince him to let you in. Instead, he has to convince you that you want to join. It turned the tables.”

  “And solidifies my cover.”

  “Precisely, and since I came to him desperate, alone, and in need of serious help, I’m the ideal candidate to woo you to the dark side. Plus, he treats me like a younger brother. I believe he trusts me to serve his interests.”

  Decker’s back story was simple. He’d gone through foster care, like Wilde, and when he turned eighteen, he had to find a way to fend for himself. He worked odd jobs, scraped together what he could to survive, but ultimately ended up on the streets. He was a d
rifter, searching for a place to sleep and something to eat. He was a nomad, traveling all along the Pacific coast for a decade until he happened upon the commune. Wilde secured him a job at a gas station and helped him with the down payment on the trailer and let him park it on the property, effectively putting Jace forever in his debt.

  “Then why doesn’t he bring you in on whatever’s really going on inside that place?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He has control issues. Perhaps that’s part of it.”

  “Or he doesn’t trust you completely. Sure, your cover story makes you a kindred spirit, but it’s not like you saved his life or took the rap for a crime he committed.”

  Jace thought for a moment. “There’s one other thing you’re forgetting. Not to sound sexist, but his flock is predominantly female. His victims are women. My gender makes me a potential threat. He could perceive me as competition. Another cock in the henhouse.”

  “If that’s the case, why would he let you spend the night in my apartment?”

  “Aside from the obvious fact that Alice has never been one of Jason’s fans, perhaps he thinks that your dislike of me would keep you from joining his cult and handing over your trust fund. He needs you to be comfortable with everyone, particularly when he wants to bring you into the fold and isolate you from the outside world. The attack yesterday is the first step in doing that. Now that you can’t work, you’ll be removed from outside influences and facing additional financial hardships which should result in dire circumstances.” The burner phone rang, and he checked the display. “Or maybe he just wanted me out of his hair in order to take care of business.”

  “Who is it?” I asked

  “Matt.” Answering the call, Jace listened for several minutes, not providing any hint what was happening. “Okay, find out what you can. We need to be certain it’s the same guy. Use our connection with the LAPD, and make sure you update and forward the reports to Alex’s handler. If they think it’s necessary, the FBI will step in and get us answers faster. They might be able to put a rush on things, despite the backlog.” He hung up, deleting the call from the phone before tucking it back into his pocket. “Based on the description you provided yesterday, Matt believes that they found the man that assaulted you. He was killed in East LA late last night. It looks like a gang hit, but he didn’t have any known gang affiliation. It would appear to be a random act of violence, except his car was found a hundred and fifty miles in the opposite direction, abandoned on the side of the road.”