by Sophia Reed
"They're doing a bypass." He let go of my hair. "Fifty-fifty I make it through, if I read their reluctance to tell me jackshit. If I do, though, full recovery. Enough about me. You being safe?"
"Sure, dad. That's why I work narcotics."
His eyelids were starting to lower but he grinned at that obvious lie. "That's my girl."
I wasn't out of cover but there were protocols in place so I could check in with Dave Samuels. y handler, the closest thing to a contact, and the guy who's supposed to pull me out if the whole operation goes south, but I think we all know that would never happen. When it all goes bad there's never enough time.
"Do you need out?" he asked. After the previous day's fuck up, it was logical that was his first question.
There are protocols for everything, safe words, so to speak. Not that I couldn't walk away if I had to. Nobody gets to determine my life to that extent.
"No." I was twitchy. In a Starbucks in a different city. It didn't feel like Jesse would have me watched, but I knew a lot about his business. There's more to the motorcycle gangs than leather vests and beards and boots. His business was organized, lucrative, and totally illegal. ATF, DEA and Seattle PD narcs – everybody wanted to take down the Brotherhood. They had ties with the Bandidos and the Mongols, and the Brotherhood was growing exponentially and putting more and more China white on the street.
I wasn't ready to pull the plug. It was too confusing, trying to figure out how I'd go work as a uniformed cop and go home every night or every morning to have coffee with Mark and sex that didn't involve a fist hitting the pillow beside my head. Or anything else possibly hitting anything else.
The advantage of looking underage was working in the schools. The Brotherhood was dealing to younger and younger buyers and China white wasn't just heroin anymore. In this context it was fentanyl, a whole hell of a lot more dangerous, more potent, more addictive, more deadly. I'd gotten involved with a high school sting, going back to school and making friends and making contacts and making buys. Until there was enough information and then I didn't go back in to PD, I moved to another location, stayed under, and found my way to Jesse.
Because during the time I was in the school system, I got to know some of the kids who were using, including Lorelei.
I went to her funeral.
"Not ready to come in. Just checking in." My eyes couldn't stop going from customer to customer in the shop, making sure I didn't see any faces I recognized. No one from Jesse's world watching me.
On the other end of the phone, Dave hesitated. "You saw your dad?"
"Yeah. There wasn't a cover break for that."
"Listen, you're going to hear this anyway because it's going to probably hit the news. There's an internal investigation, looking at a handful of cases your dad worked on."
I closed my eyes. "What?"
"It's not just him. It's everyone who worked those cases."
It wasn't starting with him - that's what Dave could have said. But it would come down to my dad. Because not everything he'd done was above board. I knew that. There are great cops out there who never violate a single rule and who get the job done. There are dirty cops, of course.
Then there are those who push the line a little. Not everything they do is true blue. My dad fit in that category. He'd never told me, never let slip the smallest detail. But I knew.
But he was proud of his career, proud of what he'd done, proud of the crap and the dealers he'd helped take off the street. Now he was sick, trying to get through open-heart surgery. If I stayed undercover, I couldn't even testify on his behalf.
If I didn't, more girls like Lorelei would die.
Mark wasn't at the apartment when I got there. He didn't know I was coming back and maybe I did that on purpose. It kept him safer, for one thing. Contacting him when I did was tortuous. And for another? I think somewhere in the back of my mind I thought if I surprised him and he wasn't alone, I'd finally have an excuse to walk away.
He was alone. Alone and delighted.
"Babe?"
I'd just stepped out of the shower. Hearing his voice, there was a flash of desire, of heat, and intense pleasure.
"I'm in here!" I called and wrapped my robe around me, letting my dark curls drip water onto my shoulders.
We met halfway between the master bath and the living room, colliding together in the hallway, all arms and mouths and him backing me up against the wall.
There were no words. He was tired, looked like he'd showered at the hospital and come home with something from a Chinese restaurant. I could smell sweet and sour pork or something from the other room. My stomach growled but I didn't stop.
His hands were on my back, in my hair, on my face, and I was touching his chest, his shoulders, sliding down to his hips to drag his pelvis against mine. We ground together, slid along the wall, knocked a framed picture of his grandfather to the floor and moved around it, sliding back into the bedroom.
He kicked off his shoes, struggled to get out of his pants. Scrubs should come off more easily. I was tearing at the top, tangling him in the cotton as he kissed my mouth, my neck, my ears, slid his tongue down into the opening of my robe and tried to free me from it without undoing the cord.
We fell back on the bed together, kissing, hands everywhere, touching. He kissed down into the robe, pulled my arms free, finally fought the cord off until I was naked and he was still half dressed, his scrubs not quite off yet.
I tumbled him over, climbing on top, fighting his pants the rest of the way off, running my hands over his thick hard dick, hearing him moan. It was hot and fast and frenetic.
Until he turned me over and got on top. And then somehow the speed and the need didn't fade, but the hot did. Mark kissed and sucked and even sometimes bit – a little tiny amount of biting. Gentle. Never bruising. Never anything like where a dentist could line up dental records to that bite. The most he'd ever done was stretch my hands above my head and try to pin them there and that night I had come unhinged, told him never to hold me down.
Just imagine if he knew about Jesse….
Mark always used a condom, would until we married. A weird code of conduct, because I knew he wasn't cheating on me.
I couldn't say the same. In the line of duty? But it was still – I was grateful for the condom.
And not grateful that Jesse had just gotten into my head, even as Mark slid into my body.
I ground against him, bit his lip, heard him murmur, "Hey, I'm right here! It's okay…"
--and thought that it wasn't.
I loved him. I'd tried to convince him to go. I'd tried to tell him I wasn't who he thought I was and I wasn't worth waiting for but Mark was good and true and Mark was waiting, convinced I'd see the light and leave narcs and maybe leave the force.
And I knew I had no intention of doing that.
The sex was sweet. I didn't think I was looking for sweet anymore. But sex with Mark was sweet.
And it felt like goodbye.
It wasn't goodbye quite that easily. Jesse called and told me to stay with my dad for a couple days. Things were weird. They thought the Asians had double crossed them and two of his soldiers were dead.
The fact that he thought about my safety felt a little weird. The fact that I felt kind of like I would be betraying him when he eventually got taken down? That felt weird too.
I accepted the extra time. On the second day at the apartment I set out to wash the clothes I'd brought with me as cover, including the ones I'd been wearing at the buy. I was dumping everything in the laundry room, preparing to go through pockets when my phone rang and this time mom was crying.
At first I couldn't make sense of anything she was saying. My heart began to hammer so hard I could barely hear over its racket and the ringing in my ears. Then Sarah took the phone (translation: We're here at the hospital; why aren't you?) and said, "It's the investigation, Anne."
Hello to you, too. But honestly I was more interested in what was happening with dad than
in saying hello to my sister.
"Has something happened?"
"Yeah," said Sarah, and uncharacteristically, "Those sons of bitches are going to bring him up on charges of falsifying a crime scene and arrest report."
What I wanted to know was when was the surgery and what were his chances. Because I loved him and I was scared, my toes were cold on the carpet because I wasn't wearing shoes. But the chills going up my arms and back, they were all because of dad.
"Surgery is tomorrow morning," she said. "Will you be here for that?"
I didn't even need to translate that one.
I called the hospital, proved who I was, proved it again, told them I didn't give a shit about their HIPAA privacy laws, called back because apparently life and death hospital stuff is all dependent on us not swearing like good little grade school children.
That time, I got a doctor who knew what dad had done and who he was, and who was willing to talk to me.
"It's not good, Ms. Knox. He's got a lot of issues with blockage, which is the usual reason we do open heart, but worse, his heart has been weakened from years of it."
When I could make my mouth work, I said what dad had said. "Fifty-fifty?"
A silence, and then he said, "Thirty-seventy. Maybe thirty-five."
I hung up and sat down on the floor beside my clothes. The need to go the hospital was tempered by the facts: I couldn't do anything once there. I was still a little afraid of blowing my cover by running into somebody who knew me and equally afraid that would put my family in danger. Waiting with my sisters was in no way better than waiting alone.
Eventually I got to my feet and went back to picking up my clothes, shaking out the pockets, finding a key to the clubhouse (which was never locked), a wad of cash (which probably couldn't be traced and didn't have to be turned in for evidence because I was undercover).
And some packets full of white powder.
China white.
4
"I was afraid you'd be gone when I got home," Mark said.
We were making dinner together, one of us using her most-prized culinary skills (me: I was boiling water for spaghetti) and Mark using the skills of a surgeon to chop up onions and garlic and tomatoes and throw them into olive oil to sauté before adding tomato sauce and paste along with bay leaves, fresh basil, oregano, red and black pepper freshly ground, and salt.
"I expected to be." Not that I could tell him my main squeeze biker had told me to take some time because he was afraid for my life. Or that I might let slip something he needed kept secret. "It's nice to be home."
"I checked on your dad," he said, sliding a tray of garlic bread into the broiler.
I managed to splash water all over the stove dropping in the spaghetti. "You did?" I was afraid to ask anything else because Mark would understand the odds and the medical jargon. Of the things he didn't understand about me, he knew me too well to pull punches.
"He looks good."
I jerked my head up to stare at him.
He nodded, like he understood the hope and didn't want to encourage it. "I mean, for someone in his condition, he's at the higher end of the odds for making it."
I toyed with my food. "Why don't his doctors say so?"
Mark snorted. "So they won't get sued. Eat that."
I did.
For the first time, I felt a little bit of hope. And later when I had my hands in the soapy water and Mark came up behind me, naked from the shower, and wrapped himself around me, his hands on my breasts, his face ghostly in the dark window over the sink, right beside mine, I shut off the water and turned within his arms.
He lifted me effortlessly onto the counter, and stepped between my legs. I was wearing one of his long shirts, nothing else, and he slid into me easily, his erection filling me up. All of Mark is just right. He didn't make me ache, but he touched everything that needed touching.
I bit his neck. He stilled, as if considering, and I tried to remember if I'd ever done that before. I wanted him to rip the shirt away, to have his teeth find my nipples, to wrap my legs around him and have him carry me.
But instead he helped me down from the sink and put his arms around me, the two of us moving through the kitchen in a series of bumps into appliances and chairs and, impossibly, each other. e reached the bedroom and he knelt before me, pulling my legs to his shoulders and burying his mouth between my legs. He sucked and licked and swirled his tongue and I bucked and arched but didn't cum. Not until he climbed up on the bed, sliding his erection between my legs and not even then.
Not until I spun him unceremoniously and got on top. That surprised him. His hands went to my breasts and I leaned back, gently fingering his balls, which made him start and stare at me, more aware behind his eyes than I thought he should be.
A satisfactory time was had by all.
But only that.
Over the next two weeks, my father got stronger, got weaker, got pneumonia, got well, and got scheduled for his procedure.
Over the next two weeks my phone rang with messages from Jesse, once, and then not anymore because he'd told me when to come back and it was a long time off and I couldn't promise but I wanted to.
Because I had work to do. That's why I wanted to.
During those two weeks, three more middle school children OD'd on China white.
During those two weeks, my mother got into an accident and totaled her car and my sisters took turns driving her to the hospital, leaving me out of the rotation.
During those two weeks, Mark made love to me and I continued to surprise and confuse him until I stopped accepting his offers. Too tired. Too worried.
During those two weeks, my father, who was fighting for his life, was brought up on charges that were just waiting for him to be released. My mother raged, my mother who can barely bring herself to talk back to someone who’d just done something totally egregious, called dad's captain a motherfucker.
During those two weeks, Jesse was shot and killed.
The white powder bubbled down to an injectable. It was child's play getting the needle.
For the first time in two weeks, my heart stopped racing and my breath stopped coming in like I was asthmatic or slowly being strangled.
The afternoon passed in a drifty unreality that didn't hurt like other days.
5
"Babe?"
Mark found me sleeping in the sun on the couch. I never nap.
I rarely giggle.
He sat down beside me and looked deep into my eyes. I gave him a fatuous smile then I realized he was looking at my pupils.
"You're fucked up," he said flatly.
"No, no." My words were mostly clear. "I was very sleeping." I cleared my throat. "I was very sound asleep."
He gave me a look of utter disgust and got off the couch. "What are you on?"
"Nap." I wasn't trying to be cute I just wasn't thinking very fast.
"Jesus, Annie. I know you've had a hard couple weeks. I'm not going to turn you in to anybody. I want to know what you took so I can keep you safe."
"As if," I said. "I'm fine. I can take care of myself."
He gave me a very long look, the kind I thought he'd give me when he finally told me he wasn't going to wait for me any longer. "Then see that you do," he said before he left to go back to work.
6
Once became twice. Became half a dozen times. A dozen. Became the need to score some more and that wasn't hard either.
Jesse was dead and dad was sick and being charged and Mark was angry and kids were dying and –
And Dave Samuels said they were pulling the plug on my operation. I'd been given leave I didn't ask for and when I came back to work - once your father is doing better which I thought translated into your fiancé had some things to say and we believe you need a month, and you're valuable enough to us to get it - we'd discuss my next assignment.
"Narcotics?" I said.
"Yes," he said, and then, "Annie, your voice isn't right and you've missed calls f
rom the captain and I get it, your dad is not doing okay and when he does he has a shitstorm to work through but you've got to get it together."
"I don't know what you mean," I said angrily.
"Really? Okay, let me put it this way. You want your job back? You need to get clean."
On the last day of the two weeks, my handler Dave Samuels said he knew what was going on with me and hinted it was a very delicate thing, not letting everyone else know too. On that day he told me if I got cleaned up and did it now, there was a chance no one on the force would ever know, other than him, and he could keep a secret.
I almost asked him What do you need in order to keep that secret? But I didn't have to because he went on to tell me.
All I had to do was show up clean at the end of my month’s leave.
Right. But it had already been two weeks. The stuff was strong. And currently? I wasn't.
He knew a guy who could help, he said. Worked in pharma and when I asked - no, the legitimate pharmaceutical industry, and he was working on a drug that was rainforest-based and had the tremendously promising effect of ending most addictions without killing the addict and without harsh measures.
It would be just like going undercover again, he told me. Because I was to tell no one where I was going or what I was going to do.
"How am I supposed to disappear on my family? My fiancé? My father's in the hospital!" I didn't want to admit to myself how out of the loop my family was keeping me, as if they expected at any minute the job would pull me away.
"Find a way," he said. "Because otherwise it's going to get out, what's happened to you. Even if you can deal with it, can your father? Your fiancé?"
It was a low blow. But it worked. Even now I could feel the fire starting to crawl through my veins, the desire for more. My teeth kept sinking into my lower lip and the hand not holding the phone kept scratching the skin on my other arm. Digging for something. Sanity. Clarity. An end to the pain.
