by Tawni O'Dell
“Walk away. She already succeeded at half her game. Don’t let her succeed at the other half. She’s not going to give you this baby.”
“You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“No, I guess I don’t. I can’t put myself in your shoes for a lot of reasons.”
The main reason being that I think your shoes are really ugly, I add silently.
“Maybe I can reason with her? Maybe I can threaten her? I’ll tell her I’m onto her. I’ll go to the police.”
“She hasn’t done anything illegal.”
“Maybe she’ll take pity on me.”
“I think she already has.”
This comment is met with silence, followed by the click of a hang-up.
My next call is to Kozlowski.
I think very carefully about how I should play him after what Vlad told me about him. I now know why he wants Shannon. Her baby is worth a lot of money to him. I think Shannon set up the Jameson adoption on her own and he doesn’t know anything about it, but he probably arranged the other adoption and has involved Vlad’s employer as well.
He’s also not above physically threatening or intimidating her in order to get the baby, since he had no qualms about putting Vlad on her trail. And apparently, he’s a real slimeball in general. Not that I believe every word out of the Russian’s mouth, but Vlad had no reason to lie about Kozlowski, and what he said made some sense.
Kozlowski obviously hasn’t found her or he wouldn’t have called the hospital looking for her.
In other words, he wants Shannon bad and I know he does. My knowledge of her whereabouts will make an irresistible piece of bait.
But if I’ve found Shannon, he has to wonder what she would have told me about him. He has to wonder why I would be willing to give up my long-lost sister to the man she’s running away from.
I leave messages for him on his cell and at his room at the Comfort Inn, telling him I know where Shannon is and I’ll be willing to lead him to her for a cut of the money.
Once I’ve taken care of my phone calls and finished dressing, I check the time. I still have about four hours before meeting Cam Jack. I don’t have any jobs lined up for the rest of the day, but that can change at a moment’s notice.
I think about driving to Centresburg where there’s usually more business, but I’m not eager to get any closer to my final destination.
My stomach’s upset and my hands are clammy over the thought of seeing him again. I need something to calm my nerves and build my confidence. There’s only one thing that works consistently for me; the problem is I can’t always find it when I need it, although I constantly come across it when I don’t want it.
I rack my brain trying to think of someone to screw. I haven’t had a serious relationship in years, and I usually cross county lines if I feel like pursuing a casual one. I don’t have time to do that now.
I finally come up with an idea. I check the time again. I’m pretty sure I know where I can find him.
I drive to the high school.
The Marine is alone, like he was this morning, sitting inside the same white Honda Civic I recognize from the mall with a Corps bumper sticker pasted on the trunk lid and a blue lace garter hanging from the rearview mirror.
He’s jerking his head around, moving his lips, and hitting the steering wheel with his white-gloved hands in time to some music I can’t hear.
I park a few spaces away from him and get out of my car. As soon as he notices me heading toward him, he switches the music off and puts the hat on.
He watches my approach across the blacktop and rolls down his window.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” he calls out to me.
I don’t answer him until I arrive at the side of his car and lean inside the window, giving him a good shot of cleavage.
“You can not call me ma’am for starters, although I understand it’s meant as a term of respect. I was a cop for twelve years. I’m familiar with the philosophy. Good manners. It’s the only thing that separates us from the animals.”
He smiles. It’s a good smile. A recruiter’s smile. He probably practices it in front of a mirror every morning. He even knows to make eye contact, but he’s not good enough yet to fake with his eyes. There’s no warmth in them. They’re flat and bored: the eyes of a man who spends all his time hustling strangers and already knows before he asks a personal question that he could care less about the answer.
“Where were you a cop?” he asks.
“Here in Centresburg most recently. Before that I was a Capitol police officer.”
“What kind of training you do for that?”
“Eight weeks at FLETC.”
Some interest rises to the surface of his stagnant eyes, along with a mild admiration.
“So you’re a hard-ass?” he asks, smiling.
“Something like that.”
The interest grows deeper and he lets his eyes flick up and down my body, lingering on my legs and the boots.
He’s young, not much older than Clay. Not bad looking, although I’ve never been fond of buzz cuts. The body is nice. Broad shoulders. No sign of a paunch.
“What are you doing now?” he asks, looking past me at my car. “Working for some kind of cab company?”
“It’s my own company, but it’s not much.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look like a cop, and you don’t look like a cab driver.”
“That’s part of my charm.”
“Why’d you leave the job?”
“Got tired of cleaning up other people’s messes.”
“I hear that.”
“I have a lot of down time at my job.” I decide to come right to the point. “I figure you do, too. I saw you this morning, and I’m a sucker for a guy in uniform. I thought maybe we could have a little fun.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, soldier,” I say, smiling. “I’m not.”
He looks all around him inside his car as if he might find the answer to my proposition written out for him on a Post-it stuck to the dashboard or the floorboards.
He looks at his watch. He looks over at the empty courtyard in front of the high school that will be milling with hundreds of kids in about ten minutes.
“School’s about to let out. I’ve got to work right now. How about later?”
“I can’t later. Besides, I like to have spontaneous encounters. More exciting that way. You ever have any spontaneous encounters?”
“You mean like picking up a girl in a bar…?”
“No. That’s a mating ritual.”
I lean into his open window and glance down at his crotch. I can see the outline of his erection straining against the fabric of his perfectly pressed pants. He watches me.
“I mean like having a beautiful stranger approach you in a parking lot and offer to fuck your ears off in the backseat of her cab.”
“Are you kidding me?” he asks again but this time his voice almost cracks.
He coughs to cover it up.
“Come on,” I say and start to move away from his car.
“I gotta work,” he says again but with little conviction.
I pretend I suddenly need to bend down and adjust the zipper on my boot, making sure my dress hikes up enough for him to see the lace tops of my stockings.
“There’s a back road not far from here where we can park and have some privacy. You can be back as quick as you’d like.”
I don’t wait for an answer. I start walking to my car, listening for the sound of his car door opening and closing. I don’t hear it and I wonder if I’m beginning to lose my appeal when the slam of a door reaches my ears. I don’t look behind me.
He joins me in the front seat of my car.
“Shit. I shouldn’t do this,” he says.
“That’s exactly why you should.”
It takes about five minutes to drive to the nameless dirt and gravel power company road that leads up a wooded hill to a humming g
enerator enclosed in concrete and surrounded by a chain-link fence.
For as long as I can remember, kids have been coming up here to park in the small clearing.
It’s empty now and completely silent except for the occasional far-off rumble of a truck and the insect whine of electricity leaving the generator and traveling up through the cables.
He looks over at me, not sure what he’s supposed to do. Should we make small talk? Should he kiss me? Should he wait for me to do something?
I solve the problem for him by getting out of the car and doing a little bump and grind for him.
I pull my dress up to my hips while I gyrate, then slide my black lace thong down over my legs and kick it off the toe of one boot.
“You’re crazy,” he tells me, grinning. “What if somebody comes up here?”
I crook my finger at him, and he gets out of the car.
“Take your gloves off,” I tell him. “And the hat. I don’t want to be responsible for getting them dirty.”
He does what he’s told.
He comes at me, hungrily at first, his hands and eyes roaming my body, then a fleeting expression of embarrassment passes over his face as if he’s suddenly remembered something he’s obligated to do. He gives me a hard, fast kiss with too much tongue, but I don’t mind; it will be our first and last kiss.
I back him up against the car while I unzip his fly. He moans when I take him out of his pants, and his hands grip the hood of my car as I begin to kneel in front of him.
“What are you?” I ask him. “A staff sergeant?”
“Yeah.”
The word comes out like a gasp of pain.
“You want to be a general someday?”
I feel the moist ground grinding into my knees too late and realize I’m probably ruining my stockings.
“I’m hoping to be a civilian someday,” he manages to tell me before his ability to form complex sentences is temporarily suspended as I take him in my mouth.
I play with him, licking him and taking him deep in my throat, until he starts to get serious. He grabs my head and begins thrusting with a definite rhythm.
I realize he’s going to come soon so I pull away and lead him to the backseat of the car, sit him down, pull my dress off over my head, and crawl on top of him, clamping my thighs around his hips. He slides inside me easily.
He starts to fumble with my bra, and I unhook it for him. His style lacks finesse. It’s mostly grab and rub. But he gets an A for enthusiasm, and I enjoy his enjoyment.
He cups my breasts and takes one in his mouth. The feel of his tongue against my nipple sends a raw current of pleasure directly to my pussy. My thighs spread wider, and I ride him.
Afterward, I lay my head on his shoulder and my hand against his chest. His heart thuds rapidly beneath the decorations pinned to the heavy material.
I wanted him to strip, too. I wanted to feel flesh on flesh, but I knew that would have been asking a lot. I know what a pain in the ass it is to take a uniform off and put it back on again.
A couple dozen teachers’ cars are all that remain in the parking lot by the time we return. The last bus has left, too.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “Looks like you missed your chance.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ll hit the mall later.”
I pull up and park beside his Honda. We both glance over at it.
“A friend of yours get married recently?” I ask, looking at the garter hanging on the rearview mirror.
“Yeah. A buddy of mine. Last weekend. Before he shipped out to Iraq.”
“And you caught the garter?”
“Yeah, I caught the garter.”
“Did you want to catch the garter?”
“I was pretty drunk. All I know is they rounded up all us guys and somebody threw something into the crowd. It was pretty much instinct that made me fight for it.”
He puts his hat and gloves and recruiter’s smile back on.
“I guess I should get going,” he says.
“Yeah. Me too.”
He gets out of my car and starts moving away from me in a Marine’s smooth, stiff-legged glide.
“Hey,” I call after him. “I noticed earlier the tread on your tires is pretty worn. You might think about replacing them. And your rear left one really needs some air.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I sit back in my seat and take a deep breath. I feel good. I feel ready to deal with Cam Jack.
The Marine gets in his car and sits alone in the vacant parking lot staring at the empty school.
As I drive away, it crosses my mind that I may have saved someone’s son.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A FEW DAYS AFTER Cam Jack screwed me in the plush burgundy backseat of his silver Cadillac when I was sixteen, I became plagued by nightmares of brutal rapes and obsessed with the literal definition of the word.
I didn’t know why. I knew I hadn’t been raped. I was sure of that. I hadn’t put up a fight. I didn’t scream and scratch and punch. I didn’t call for help or knee him in the groin or spit in his face, even though I thought about doing all those things.
I had told him I didn’t want to have sex and even pushed him away the first time he put his hands on me. He responded by flashing his privileged smile and trying to convince me in his oily carnival barker style that the very thing he wanted from me was something I should be embarrassed by and eager to discard.
I had agreed to meet him, he reminded me. I even put on a pretty blouse that gave him a glimpse of my titties. What did I think was going to happen when I got into a big roomy car with a grown man who had a grown man’s needs? Did I think we were going to have stimulating conversation? We were going to go for a drive and get an ice cream cone? Did I think it was the chaste beginning of a beautiful relationship, that Stan Jack’s son was going to court and marry one of his coal miners’ daughters?
What possible reason could he have had for inviting me? What possible reason could I have had for saying yes?
“Cut the bullshit, Shae-Lynn,” he said to me with his trademark forthrightness that came from a lack of intellect and a glut of ego, not from any desire to be genuine or honest. “You know why you’re here.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I did know why I was there. I doubted he knew why I was there, but he thought he did and that was all he needed in order for him to feel that he was successfully manipulating me into becoming a willing accomplice in setting my own trap.
Maybe he found these mind games necessary when seducing other girls. Maybe they needed to be persuaded or he needed to do the persuading, but this wasn’t the case with me. I was no innocent virgin who could be tricked or badgered, and I wasn’t a prude who had to be flattered and vindicated.
I had been screwing around with boys since I was fourteen. My first time had been unintentional. I was hanging out with Teddy Mullen, the sixteen-year-old son of a nearby farmer who also ran a meat market. Teddy had recently earned his driver’s license and sometimes gave me rides home from school. That particular day we stopped off at his dad’s farm first because his mom had just finished canning some stew meat and gallons of her homemade vegetable soup and wanted to give me a few jars.
It was a warm day in May and we took a walk around the farm after we loaded the jars in his car and ended up in a dark corner of the barn where slats of white sunshine shone through the cracks between the old musty boards and striped his yellow hair.
Teddy produced a crumpled five-dollar bill from his jeans pocket and told me his dad had begun to give him an allowance now that he’d turned sixteen so he could have gas money. He told me he’d be willing to give me the whole thing if I’d take my top off for him.
Up until then I’d never thought of Teddy as a potential boyfriend. I’d never thought of anyone as a potential boyfriend even though I’d already had plenty of volunteers for the position. Teddy was certainly cute enough to consider, and he had strong, hard arms and a ruddy, sun-kissed glow to his ski
n in the summer from all the manual labor he did on the farm.
The problem was each time I thought about having a boyfriend and what it would entail, holding hands and French kissing and having a boy touch me everywhere, I thought about E.J. and I instantly hated myself.
Even then, after Teddy made his offer, the first thing that crossed my mind was wondering why E.J. had never tried to purchase a peek at my breasts, or anything else for that matter.
Because he was totally disinterested, I told myself, because he couldn’t care less. But someone cared. Teddy cared.
I snatched the bill out of his hands, stuffed it into the back pocket of my jeans, and pulled my shirt up off over my head, silently cursing E.J.’s stupidity, or was it his wisdom? I didn’t care. All I knew was I was sick and tired of thinking about him all the time.
More was promised; and more was taken off. Even more was promised; and body parts were touched.
Before I knew it, I was stripped down to my panties and Teddy had me pushed up against a wall promising me his prize calf that won a 4-H blue ribbon at last year’s county fair.
It was an enlightening experience and mutually successful. I had always assumed, like all girls did, that when it came to sex the boys were in charge. They were the knowledgeable ones. They were calling the shots, setting the tempo. They had control of the situation. They were fearless.
It came as a great shock to me that first time and many subsequent times to find out that boys didn’t know anything about sex. Not only that, they didn’t even need to have actual sex in order to get off. Just seeing a girl’s bare butt or getting to touch a breast could be enough.
Plus they were squeamish. They thought they wanted to get their dicks inside you but they didn’t want to see where they were going and most of them didn’t want to touch it and they sure as hell didn’t want to get up close and personal with it.
That first time I unzipped a pair of jeans and got my hands on an erection and saw the pained look on Teddy’s face that I realized was a sort of pleasure that went beyond the usual physical boundaries, I thought to myself, I can be in charge here, if I choose to be.
I quickly came to regard boys as flesh and blood launch pads, each equipped with his own little heat-seeking missile, and I was the one who controlled the countdown. I enjoyed the power, especially since I suspected it might be the only power I would ever possess.
