by Ray, Lexie
“I guess I have,” he said, no less furious.
“And I guess we’d better be going.”
“You guess correctly,” he said, hustling me to his car, his eyes darting around the crowd of people milling about the crime scene. He got me into the passenger seat and shut the door before jogging around to the driver’s side and hopping in. His eyes never left the crowd, looking at faces even as we started driving.
“Were you followed here?” he demanded, glancing at me as we got onto the street.
“No—I mean, I don’t think so,” I said, cringing. “I took a cab. Nobody knows I’m staying at your place. Oh, except Jasmine, but she doesn’t know who you are or where you live.”
“It was stupid to come here,” he said, splitting his attention between the street in front of him and his rearview mirror. We started with the loopy driving, cutting down an alleyway at one point, to ensure we weren’t being followed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But Jasmine thought I was dead and I had to talk to the insurance lady again.”
“Are either of those things worth your life?” Tyler asked. “Are they?”
“No, I guess not,” I said, feeling a little petulant. He didn’t have to be angry with me. I was the one who’d just lost her home.
“Where were you, anyway?” I asked.
“Doing my job, Shimmy!” he exploded. “Investigating! Trying to keep you safe while you go to the very place your enemies want you to go to!”
I wouldn’t stand being talked down to by Tyler. I couldn’t stand it.
“Pull the car over.”
“No.”
“Stop the fucking car!”
“No fucking way!”
We glared at each other.
“You just missed your building,” I said, watching it vanish in our rearview mirror.
“We’re not going back to the condo,” Tyler said. “I’m going to show you something. I probably waited a little too long, but hopefully now you’ll understand the danger you’re in.”
I didn’t have long to wonder what he was talking about as we approached the street where the Paxton’s lived.
“Tyler,” I hissed. “The restraining order. If anyone sees me …”
“No one’s going to see you,” he said. “Lean your seat back so you can just barely look out the window. The glass is tinted.”
I did as he said, and he slowed down a little bit.
“Who’s that thug on the porch?” I asked, staring at the beefy man posted at the front door.
“Security,” Tyler said. “There’s another guy at the back of the house. Every ten minutes, they rotate, walking around the edges of the house to make sure there aren’t any shenanigans. There are ten different security guys that I’ve been able to count. Plus the camera at the front door. Plus the van full of thugs we’re passing right now. These guys are always here. When they think nobody’s watching, they’ll unload boxes from the moving truck we’re passing right now.
“Other cars come and pick up other boxes. Yesterday, I saw an interesting thing. Guy walking in, seems pretty important, surrounded by heavies. I took a couple of photos, started doing a face recognition program once I got back home. Guess who the Paxton’s have paired up with?”
I swallowed. “Who?”
“Guess,” Tyler said pleasantly. “You’ve gotten so good at it lately.”
“Please don’t be mean to me,” I said, tears springing up to my eyes. “I said I was sorry. I lost my apartment and I wanted to go see it. That was all. I understand now that it was a silly thing to do.”
“Silly?” Tyler repeated. “No. It was a goddamned stupid thing to do. The Paxton’s are in bed with one of the most violent cartels in Mexico, smuggling drugs throughout the United States. They’d kill you without so much as blinking.”
“What do you care?” I demanded, losing my temper even as the first tear rolled down my cheek. “You don’t give a damn about me. You could never love anyone, you said. Why do you give a fuck about what I do? Are you worried about getting paid? Would it help if I gave you an advance?”
Tyler sucked in air and clamped his jaw shut even as he ground his teeth together. I could plainly see that he was trying not to come unhinged on me. He drove off, going back on his looping journey back through the city until we finally arrived at his condo.
I moved to get out of the car, but he laid his hand on my thigh, stopping me.
“I do so give a damn about you,” he said. “More than I’d like to admit. But I can’t love you.”
“Why?” I said. “What can be so hard about loving me?”
Tyler stroked my cheek, traced my jaw line, and lost his fingers in my curls.
“Because if I lost you, it would kill me,” he said, his voice quiet.
It was then that I think both of us realized that he did love me. He did love me, and it terrified him.
“I have a plan for getting the final nail in the coffin,” Tyler said. “But I need another person.”
“I’ll do anything,” I said. “You know I will.”
“That’s what scares me,” he admitted.
“Tell me,” I said. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been willing to do, is for my son. Fucking grizzly bear mama, remember?”
“I remember,” Tyler said, smiling grimly. “There’s a tiny window just at basement level of the house, on the right side if you’re looking at it from the street. It’s obscured by a rose bush, but I’m guessing the basement is where they keep the cocaine—or whatever they’re smuggling. Cocaine’s where the money is, but it could be pot, meth, anything.”
“You need me to get the window open and get inside,” I said. “You’re too big to get into the window.”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “Are you sure you don’t want to quit the fashion business? You’d make a hell of a detective.”
“I could be your partner,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“You don’t have to get in the window,” he said. “If you can get some photos or audio of whatever operation they’re staging down there just by sticking the camera in a little bit, do that. I’ll be serving as your lookout, ready to kick ass should one of the security detail spot you.”
“This is the nail in the coffin,” I said. “If we get something good enough, this’ll be it. The courts can’t ignore this kind of evidence. Their lawyer will be powerless. And I’ll get Trevor back.”
“It’s going to be dangerous,” Tyler said. “I won’t lie to you.”
“Danger I’ve done before,” I said. “Danger I can do again. This is my son, Tyler. Everything for him. Anything for him.”
Tyler swallowed and traced my cheek as if he were trying to commit it to memory.
“We’ll wait until dark,” he said. “You have to do exactly what I say.”
I leaned forward and kissed him deeply, hoping I could convey everything in the one gesture. I loved Tyler. I was thankful for him. I knew that he was scared, but we were together. We could do this. We could make it. We had to make it.
Soon, the kissing had morphed into something else. Tyler pushed the driver’s seat back and I straddled his lap, kissing and kissing and kissing. The way we held each other, the way that we clawed at each other’s skin was desperate, carnal, needy, frightened. We wanted to take comfort in each other. It was all we had to lean on right now. It was everything.
I unzipped Tyler’s pants and withdrew his hard cock before pushing my panties aside and sitting straight on it. I didn’t need any preparation. That’s how wet I was just from kissing him, from being near him, from smelling him, from touching him.
In the middle of that parking garage, cars zooming in and out, we asserted that we were there for each other, made each other silent promises, rode out on our hopes and fears and dreams and reined each other back in.
I came sobbing, kissing Tyler all over his face, my body convulsing on his, rocking and rocking to eke out every drop of pleasure. He buried his face in the crook of m
y neck and cried out, the muffled sound saying everything that he couldn’t. He wanted me, but he was scared. He loved me, even, if it took him a lifetime to say it aloud.
We were together, in this to the end. I saw that now, saw that Tyler was just as far in as I was. I saw it, and began to hope. We were doing all we could as human beings and coping with terrible things. We could come together, though, couldn’t we? We could save my son and make this happen. We could make me a mother again.
I thought I’d be more nervous than I was, but having a plan calmed me considerably. We parked a couple of blocks away and walked casually until we reached the Paxton’s’ street.
“Let’s review the plan,” Tyler suggested.
“You’re going to signal to me when it’s safe to go to the basement window,” I said. “I am going to run like hell—quietly—and dive under the rosebush. I am going to take this camera—” I held it up “—and document whatever operation’s going on in the basement.”
“And on my signal, you run again,” Tyler said. “Is there anything you don’t understand about the plan?”
“No.”
“Are there any questions about the plan?”
“If things should go wrong …”
Tyler shook his head mightily. “Nope. We’re not going there. Nothing’s going to go wrong. We’re going to be in and out, easy as pie.”
“But if it should,” I said, “I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate all of this. And I mean all of it. You. The case. Everything.”
I was babbling and I knew it was nerves. Tyler did, too, taking my chin in his hand and holding my head still so he could kiss me on the lips.
“Is that how everyone in the FBI starts a mission?” I asked.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Only the good ones.” He took a pistol from beneath his jacket and checked it.
“Shit,” I remarked.
“You’ve never been around guns?”
I shrugged. “You pulling that out just made everything real,” I admitted. My heart was pounding and I could feel the sweat prickle on my scalp.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said. “This is just a precaution.”
What he meant to say was that killer drug cartel members were roaming the property that we were about to trespass onto and that gun would be our only defense if everything went south. It didn’t make me feel any better leaving certain possibilities unsaid.
We cut through the yards of several neighboring homes before we approached the Paxton’s’. In the dark, it seemed even scarier. Who knew what was inside or what all had been going on? My bigger fear—the fear that kept my feet moving forward—was that my son was in danger. Simply by being in the same house as cartel and the brand of criminals the Paxton’s were shaping up to be was a danger to him.
Now, we just needed the proof.
We paused on the edge of the property, and I had to stifle a gasp. We were in thick bushes, well concealed, but the open window not a handful of yards away from us showed Mrs. Paxton feeding Trevor. She was writing in a ledger of some sort as she monitored his dinner, seeming to encourage him to finish what appeared to be chicken of some kind and other finger foods. He seemed disinterested, and, within time, Mrs. Paxton picked him up and whisked him away to another room.
“My son,” I whispered to Tyler.
“I know,” he mouthed back, then laid his finger on his lips.
Whatever last vestiges of fear I’d had left. That was the reason we were doing this. For my son. It was time for him to come home to his mother.
I held my breath again. The butler, Miles, had entered the room visible through the open window. He cleared the table and cleaned it before drawing the curtains and turning off the light.
I thought that had been what we were waiting for, but Tyler held me back, shaking his head, and keeping his finger over his lips. I soon realized why—the changing of the guard. The beefy man who had been scowling from the front porch came lumbering around the side yard, looking around.
I resisted the urge to duck down in part because of Tyler’s death grip on my wrist, holding me in place. I knew that it was far too dark and our cover too thick for the heavy to see us. I was letting my nervousness get the better of me.
When the security guard made it to the back of the house, Tyler made me look at him. He held up three fingers in the air, made sure I saw them and started counting down. When that hand made a fist, it was time to hit the rosebush. I eyed it, sizing up what I’d have to do to get under the thorny branches unscathed.
For my baby, I’d take on much more than a rosebush.
Three—two—one—closed fist and I was darting across the side yard, staying low to the ground like Tyler had told me. I dropped to the ground once I got beside the house and rolled under the rosebush. A couple of thorns snagged at my curls and I felt a hot line on my cheek, but that was the end of it. I was pressed up against the side of a house—and a window.
The window was tiny. Tyler could never have had any hope of getting through it. It looked small even for me. But he’d said that all I had to do was get photos. Maybe I wouldn’t have to get in.
I rubbed a clean spot on the grimy window and pressed my face against it, peering inside. It was dim in the basement—too dim for a decent photo. I worked at the window a little bit, working and working until it begrudgingly gave. The Paxton’s had probably never even opened this window since the time they moved into the house.
I could reach my arm in and get the camera closer to the boxes, but I didn’t want to chance a flash. I heard low voices somewhere in the basement. The last thing we needed was to be discovered now. Not when we were so close.
My eyes darted around the basement before I cautiously put my arm through, pointing the camera at a stack of boxes. I snapped a photo and brought my arm out again, careful not to rub or catch it on anything. I had to be silent and quick.
I examined the photo I’d taken and let loose all manners of profanity in my head. I could hear Ben’s lawyer now: “Sure, you took a bunch of photos of boxes. They’re boxes owned by my client’s parents’ company. Would it be strange for them to have their own boxes there? No.”
What was strange would be the contents of the boxes. I had to get closer. I had to get this nail to put in the Paxton’s coffin. I had to prove that this home wasn’t safe so that I could get my son back.
There was a low whistle and I froze. That was the sound to retreat, that someone was coming and we needed to get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t make myself obey. Instead, I jammed my legs and hips into the open window and forced the rest of my body to follow.
I landed on my feet and lightly just in time to see a security guard walk by. He didn’t so much as notice the open window, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
The basement was silent. I’d heard voices before. I’d been sure of it. But now it sounded—and felt—like I was the only one in the space. Maybe whoever was down here had left. Or maybe they were still down here, waiting for me to make another sound.
I waited as long as I could stand and started moving, walking lightly to the stack of boxes. I had to be brave. I had to be bold. I had to be silent. I had to be quick. All of this was for my son. I would do anything for my baby, anything to be with him again.
I pulled out the camera that I’d stuffed into my jeans pocket and turned it on, holding my breath at the soft whirring of the small machine. I took a couple of photos of the boxes close up, and the Paxton shipping logo came out perfectly. Now, for the big reveal.
I turned the camera on video mode and pressed play.
“These are the markings of the Paxton shipping company,” I whispered for the benefit of the feed. I zoomed in on the logo on the box before opening it. “Inside, cocaine. Nail in the coffin.” I hefted one of the bricks and even tore open a little corner to capture the white powder that fell out. I ended the video and made sure it was saved before turning back to the window.
The Paxton’s were buried. All
we had to do now was get the evidence to the right people. I put the camera carefully in my pocket.
I looked up at the rectangular window too close to the ceiling and had my first misgiving. How had I fit through that to begin with? How was I going to get out again?
I looked around at the boxes of cocaine, wondering if they’d hold my weight. There was only one way to find out—and only one chance I’d get at it.
Carefully, I carried one of the boxes over to the window, putting one foot on it and leaning my weight a little. The cocaine inside was like packed sand—firm, but with a danger of shifting. Still, it was my only ticket out of the basement. I had to try.
When I stood up on the box, several things happened at once. First, the box collapsed and I was left hanging on the windowsill. Second, a security guard who had apparently been peering in the basement window grabbed my wrist from outside. Third, Tyler appeared out of the darkness and cold cocked the security guard, grabbing me and starting to pull me through the window. Fourth, somebody seized me by my waist and hauled me bodily back in the basement.
“What did I tell you about coming back here?” Ben asked, his face way too close to mine. “I told you I’d kill you, didn’t I?”
I went wild, scratching and clawing and slapping and pulling and stabbing and punching with my fingers and fists, trying to get him off me, trying to get back to the window and to safety, to Tyler. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be easy, in and out, just like Tyler had said.
When Ben backhanded me and my vision grayed, I realized that things weren’t going to plan. Things were going to shit.
“What are you doing here?” Ben asked almost sweetly. “Answer me, Shimmy.”
“What you’re doing is illegal,” I said, my voice quavering. “This isn’t the life I want for my son. Give me my son and I’ll go.”
Ben shook his head. “That isn’t how this works,” he said. “You’re not in any place to make demands. I’ll be telling you what to do now.”
There was a commotion on the stairs behind us and we both turned to look. A security guard was shoving Tyler in front of him, and Tyler was bleeding heavily from his nose. It looked gory, but not too terribly serious. Just a gusher.
