INFORMANT

by Payne, Ava Archer

  “Well, he must have some money. Or maybe his family does. That’s an eighty thousand dollar ride.”

  I shrug it off, but she’s right. His dad’s got money—lots of it. International drug lords normally aren’t broke. A car like that would be pocket change to him. What puzzles me (deeply disturbs me, actually), is that Ricco is driving it. I think back to the photo of Ricco lying in the hospital bed. Miguel Diaz’s doing, according to Beckett. Something’s not right. If Ricco’s trying to distance himself from his father, why is he cruising around in a luxury Mercedes?

  Later. I’ll think about it later, when I’m alone. I stand, suddenly anxious to leave.

  “Jess, it’s getting late. Maybe we should—”

  “Whoa,” Jess interrupts me. She lets out a throaty giggle. “Too bad I’m married. Would you just look at that guy.”

  Ricco’s gone, his sleek Mercedes swallowed up by traffic, so I turn my gaze in the direction she indicates. Beckett. I freeze. I don’t know where he came from, but suddenly he’s there. If he was a superhero, that would be his superpower—the ability to appear and disappear, seemingly out of nowhere. Right now he’s sitting at a café table with a group of four other students, drinking beer.

  “God, is he gorgeous,” Jess says, her voice almost reverent. Then she lets out another giggle. “Oh my God. He’s looking this way. Do you know him?”

  I take a breath to steady my voice. She cannot know about what I’m involved in, what I’ve agreed to do. She just can’t. So I give a loose shrug. “He’s in one of my classes. He’s an asshole.”

  “Really?” Her disappointment is palpable. “Figures,” she sighs, “the gorgeous ones always are. Except for Ronnie, of course.”

  I let the comment slide. We just made up—no sense stirring the pot again. I’ve got Dally in my arms, so she reaches down to grab his diaper bag. When she straightens, she cocks her head and looks at me, as if something suddenly occurred to her. Jess may not be good at school, but she’s not stupid. She’s putting things together. “Hey. Whatever happened to that guy you went out with?”

  “Who?”

  “You know, that guy. Blue Eyes.”

  “Oh, him.” I shake my head. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I think he transferred out.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Dally arches his back and starts to fuss. He’s been good, but now he’s tired and hungry. He wants his mommy, not me. By the time Jess and I get him resituated and make our way to Ronnie’s Crown Vic, Beckett is gone.

  Day Twenty

  Night

  It’s nearly midnight, and I’m at Jess and Ronnie’s. I don’t expect them home for a couple of hours. Dally is sound asleep with the door to his nursery closed. He’s been sleeping through the night lately, but I’ve got a baby monitor sitting on the kitchen table with me while I study, just in case he wakes up.

  I’m trying to focus on Mendel’s peas. We’re doing a unit on genetics in my bio class, and I’ve got my first exam coming up. I’ve spent my night making flashcards with all the terms I need to know: DNA, dominate genes, recessive genes, heredity, nucleotide, protein, triad, Watson and Crick… I have dozens of the cards like this spread out on the table. It’s tedious work, but that’s the only way I can manage to memorize it all.

  I’m so immersed in my studies that the sound of the door buzzer going off startles the shit out of me. Ronnie and Jess must have forgotten their key. I stand up, stretch, and then move to the door and hit the intercom button. “Hey, you guys are home early.”

  A long, static-filled pause, and then, “It’s Beckett.”

  My stomach drops. What? Beckett—here? What the hell?

  “Can I come in?” he asks.

  For a long moment, I don’t know what to say, what to do. I can’t move. I just stare stupidly at the intercom box, as though the answer might be revealed there.

  “Kylie?”

  I hit the button to unlock the lobby door and let him in the building. Five seconds later he’s knocking on the door to Ronnie and Jess’s flat. I let him inside and close the door after him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I got your text.”

  I sent Beckett a message four hours earlier, telling him about my upcoming dinner with Ricco and his Uncle Juan. Just letting him know. I certainly didn’t expect him to show up. I start to ask him how he knew where to find me, but realize that’s a ridiculous question. He knows where I am every minute of the day—a fact that may be necessary for my safety, but is also totally unnerving.

  “I would have been here sooner, but I was… out,” he says.

  “Out?” Until midnight?

  “Working.”

  I’ll bet. He looks almost unbearably handsome. He’s got on the same suit he wore when he recruited me to be a CI. Did he have another ‘date’? Did he take her to Romano’s for calamari? Did he seduce her with wine she wasn’t old enough to drink? I can picture the whole thing, and am equally repulsed and infuriated by the scenario. This twisted little game we play is rooted deep. Beckett is mine. I don’t want to share. I want the exclusive right to be manipulated, stalked, and sexually frustrated by him.

  “How’d it go, Jane?” I ask in my best snarky tone. “Did she say yes?”

  He scowls at me. “I was at a meeting with my boss and supervisor—talking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. That was quite a bomb you dropped.”

  My breath catches. “You mean about my dinner with Ricco? So Uncle Juan is important.”

  He gives a choked laugh. “Yeah. You could say that.” He glances around the flat. “Can we sit down?”

  The kitchen’s a mess with all my books and notes spread over the table, so I lead him to the living room. Beckett sits down next to me on the sofa. The cushion sinks under his weight and my body leans toward his, as though gravity itself is conspiring to push us together. I have to consciously pull back to create a comfortable distance. I remind myself that he’s not here to see me—not personally, at least. This is business. Beckett proves me correct by withdrawing a manila envelope from his inner suit pocket. What follows next he refers to as a ‘debriefing’. In other words, he clues me in.

  Juan Diaz—Uncle Juan—is Miguel Diaz’s younger brother. He handles the family money. Funnels it into legitimate, cash heavy businesses where the Feds can’t trace it. He also likes to dabble a bit in prostitution, just for fun. He’s especially keen on bedding girls as young as thirteen, roughing them up as he rids them of their virginity.

  I push aside my disgust and study the photos Beckett produces. A guy with heavy jowls and dark eyes glares back at me. He’s in his mid-fifties, heavy set, nicely dressed. Likes jewelry. He wears three or four rings, thick gold bracelets, flashy chains looped around his neck.

  “So why don’t you just arrest him?” I ask Beckett. “If you already know so much about him, can’t you just lock him up?”

  “Right.” he lets out a breath. “If this were a TV show, that’s exactly what we’d do. The problem is, nothing’s that easy in real life.” He rubs his hand over his face and leans back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “Nobody gets arrested until you’ve got real evidence—the kind of evidence that will hold up in court. We’re not there yet.”

  “Are you close?”

  He turns to face me. He looks strained and exhausted, and I wonder why I didn’t see that earlier. “I want to say yes, but the truth is, I don’t know anymore.” He pauses for a minute, thinking, and I don’t rush to fill the silence. After a beat, he continues, “It’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but you don’t know what the end result is supposed to look like. The longer you screw around, trying to get it right, to be smarter than Miguel Diaz, the more people die. All you have are these pieces you put together, and none of it makes sense, until suddenly it does.”

  I nod. I’ve got all this. What the DEA needs is someone who can get close enough to Miguel Diaz—through Ricco—t
o anticipate his next move. I understand that this is where I come in. It’s my job to get Beckett and the team he works with out in front of Diaz, rather than always chasing after him. So when I look at Beckett, I know there’s something else on his mind.

  “What?” I say.

  “It’s you and Ricco.” There’s an edge to his tone I don’t understand.

  “Me and Ricco? There’s no problem. Everything’s working fine. Actually, we’ve become pretty good friends.”

  “Friends.”

  I shrug. “Maybe more than that, but that’s okay, right? I’m doing my job. Getting close. Isn’t that what a CI does?”

  “Yeah, you’re doing your job,” he reluctantly admits. “But I don’t like it. Not at all.”

  The truth is, I’m doing a little more than getting close to Ricco—especially when Beckett is around. In chem lab, I brush my cheek against Ricco’s shoulder when I check his notes. Run my hand along his forearm. Hold his gaze a beat too long. I do this deliberately and with intent. I do it to torture Beckett. To make him as painfully aware of me as I am of him. I am unabashedly delighted that it’s working.

  He drags in a breath. “Kylie, I don’t know if I want you in this anymore.”

  My heart stills. “What?”

  “If Juan Diaz is in San Francisco, he’s not just sightseeing. Miguel Diaz sent him here. Something’s going to go down.”

  “I know. I get that.”

  For some reason, my answer infuriates him. “You know? Jesus, Kylie, you don’t know anything. You don’t have any idea how bad this can get.” He stands abruptly, pacing the living room rug.

  “You came to me,” I remind him hotly. “You recruited me. I didn’t come to you, looking for this shit.”

  He pivots and stares at me. “That’s exactly the problem. When I got you into this, I thought I could handle it. I thought it would work. I was wrong. I don’t want someone else I care about hurt by Miguel Diaz.”

  I am still—snow hare still. Frozen by his admission.

  My thoughts fork in two directions. He cares about me. What exactly does that mean? And this: What happened in his past to make him so determined to stop Miguel Diaz? But since I can only say one thing at a time, I focus on what I seem to have a perpetual lack of when it comes to Thomas Beckett Smith: information.

  “Tell me what happened,” I say. “Who did Diaz hurt?”

  He shakes his head, dismissing the question. Instead of answering, he returns to the sofa and sits down. His gaze locks on my hair. I’ve got it pulled back in a loose, sloppy knot at the nape of my neck. He pulls free the rubber band that secures it, allowing it to tumble free past my shoulders. The light of primal satisfaction glows in his eyes. He lifts the dark, silky strands and allows them to slip through his fingers.

  Unbidden, my body sways toward his. God, I want this. I want this so badly it scares me. But I remember what happened the last time we were alone together, so I bring up my hands and rest them lightly on his chest. I feel his muscles quiver in response to my touch. “Beckett…”

  “Yeah?” His mouth is inches from mine.

  “I thought you said this only complicates things.”

  “It does.”

  “So…?”

  “So… fuck it. Just… fuck it.”

  He gathers me in his arms and it is as if I never left. The feeling is so familiar, so right, that I cannot believe I’ve only known Beckett for a month. His breath, warm and spicy, falls against my neck. He catches my earlobe between his teeth and gives it a gentle nip. A shiver runs through me. I instinctively arch my back, giving him greater access to my skin.

  A million thoughts scatter through my brain, but they have no more substance than the wind. I can’t catch a single one. I am lost, swallowed by a tide of sensation. All I can focus on is the heat emanating from his body. The intoxicating, male scent of his skin. His thrilling physical power. His hands trace the swell of my hips as the tip of his tongue skims the sensitive skin of my neck.

  Then he presses his mouth to mine. Lightly at first, soft and exploratory. All heat and restrained power, the faint taste of bitter coffee clinging to his lips. A current of intense satisfaction sweeps through me. Yes. So exactly right. I absorb the feel of his kiss, the taste of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue against my own. Pleasure curls my toes and spirals up my spine. I melt into him, absorbing his strength, his solidity.

  Beckett pulls back slightly. “Kylie,” he says, his breath coming hard and fast. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Sure…?”

  “Sure you want this. Sure you want me.”

  At first I’m confused. Isn’t it obvious what I want? Then his meaning slowly penetrates. He doesn’t want me to be swept away in the moment, only to regret it later. He wants fully conscious consent. This step—after weeks of playing it safe, toying with each other—is a choice, not a seduction. The knowledge that he respects me enough to offer that vanquishes the last of my doubts.

  My eyelids flutter shut. “I want this,” I breathe. “I want you.”

  Beckett releases a ragged sigh of pure relief. He gives a low moan and wraps one strong arm around my waist, drawing me tightly into his embrace.

  He coaxes my lips apart and sweeps his tongue into my mouth. His kiss deepens, becoming hard and unyielding. A silent thrill courses through me as I absorb the rich male taste of him. This isn’t a sloppy kiss. Nor is it overly dry and precise. Beckett’s kiss is magic, through and through. As good as I remembered—only better. I wrap my arms around his neck and return it with reckless abandon, undulating my hips against his, losing myself in the lusty rhythm of our embrace.

  But it isn’t enough.

  More. I want more. I am convinced I can never get enough of him. My response to his kiss veers from pleasure to maddening, aching need. My hands leave Beckett’s shoulders and drift downward, curving around his back, pressing him closer. Suddenly I am confronted by something I didn’t expect: My fingers trace a thick leather strap that cuts across his chest, leading to the leather holster he wears beneath his arm. I touch the cold hard steel of his gun.

  His gun. Warning bells go off in my mind. I should be shocked. Horrified by the significance of the handgun, put off by its presence between us. Instead, a thrill runs through me. Beckett is dangerous in so many ways. Yet I am drawn to him. I can’t turn away, even though I know I should.

  The deafening rattle of a trashcan being knocked over in the alley interrupts us. Beckett tears his lips from mine. He draws in an uneven breath and tilts his face away from mine, his expression suddenly alert, listening. In one lithe movement he is up and at the window, pulling back the curtain to look at the alley below. His eyes narrow. But everything seems to be okay, for he gives a shrug and moves away.

  In the nursery, Dally starts to cry. The sound disturbed him as well. I wonder if he’ll fret himself back to sleep, but it seems unlikely. His wails are amplified by the baby monitor sitting on the kitchen table.

  The mood is broken. A rueful smile curves Beckett’s lips. He returns to the sofa and reaches for my hand, pulling me up. Without a word, he leads me to the front door. He skims his hands over my upper arms—a brief, final contact before he opens the door and steps across the threshold, standing in the hallway. I wrap my arms around my waist and attempt to sort out my rioting emotions. I don’t want him to leave, even though I know he has to.

  His deep blue gaze burns into mine. “Promise me,” he murmurs.

  “Promise you what?”

  “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course. I always am.”

  A long pause. His eyes darken. Tension makes his jaw rigid. When he speaks, his voice is low, hoarse. “I don’t know if I can keep you safe anymore, and it’s killing me.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I bristle. “I don’t need—”

  “Kylie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re going to ask you to wear a wire.”

  I blink. “What?”


  “Tomorrow night, when you meet Ricco’s Uncle Juan. That was the reason for my meeting tonight. My bosses at the DEA… they don’t want to miss a single word. I thought you should know.”

  He thought I should know? That’s all he has to say about it? A wire. Holy shit. Like in the movies, only without the safety of make-believe. This is real.

  I am stunned beyond words. And even if I knew what to say, it wouldn’t matter. The echo of a car door slamming a few blocks away drifts up to us. Beckett turns, and then he is gone. Down the stairs and out the door before I can form a single cohesive thought. Before I can process what just happened.

  I don’t know how long I stand there until the sound of Dally’s furious wails slowly penetrates. Glad for something to do, I move to the nursery and woodenly lift him from his crib. I kiss his tear-soaked cheeks, put him in a fresh diaper and heat up a bottle. (Jess is still nursing—she uses a pump to keep a supply of breast milk on hand.) I rock my nephew in my arms as he latches onto the rubber nipple and sucks the bottle dry. After that, he drifts back to sleep.

  I return him to his crib and go back to the kitchen. My books and notes are right where I left them, strewn across the table. No sense even trying to study. Adrenaline is coursing through me, but my brain is fried. I’m too shaken to focus on anything. I grab my backpack and swipe my arm along the tabletop, haphazardly dumping everything inside.

  That accomplished, I look out the window. Jess and Ronnie are just getting home. They get out of their car and turn toward the building to come inside, but Ronnie catches Jess’s arm. He pulls her against him, trapping my sister against the long, hard lines of his body. Ugly yellow street light (recently installed as a deterrent to crime), bathes them in its glow. Their silhouettes throw dark shadows, temporarily obliterating the crude graffiti that blankets the alley walls.

  They are kissing, groping one another. Ronnie’s hand travels up Jess’s skirt. Her fingers tangle through his hair. I know I should leave them to their privacy, but I am unable to tear my gaze away. Something about their embrace has the same riveting, obscene pull of a traffic fatality. It is so damned beautiful and sad. I look at them and I see tragedy, but I don’t know why. I picture the ugly tattoos on Ronnie’s forearms, the grime under his fingernails, the holes in his jeans. Then the fog starts to roll in.