INFORMANT

by Payne, Ava Archer

  We are naked. Beautifully, gloriously, and completely naked. Our bodies bathed by the faint glow of the streetlight outside my room. I press my lips to the velvety coarse skin of Beckett’s throat. My fingers lightly trace his biceps, his muscular shoulders, the smattering of dark hair across his chest. We move our hands over each other’s bodies in rabid exploration, touching, tasting, licking, biting. We can’t get enough. We fall against one another in a passion so intense it is almost anger.

  I am dimly aware of my clock radio crashing to the floor, magazines knocked from the nightstand, pillows thrown aside. None of it matters. Our need swells and grows.

  This isn’t lovemaking. It’s an explosion of lust. Or maybe an implosion. Either way, we need this force, this energy. We are breaking through the wall of denial we so painstakingly constructed, brick by brick, to keep ourselves apart. Now that wall is crashing down, tumbling in jagged pieces all around us. It is beyond exhilarating. It is as close as to flying as I’ve ever come.

  Beckett tears his mouth from mine, his breath coming in hot pants against my throat as he says, “We have to slow down. I won’t last. I want this to be good for you.”

  “This is good for me,” I rasp back, my hand trailing down his stomach toward his erection.

  He lets out a shout of laughter, followed by a vivid oath. Before I can reach my goal, he scoops me up and sets me on my knees opposite him on the bed. We are out of arm’s reach. My hair cascades over my shoulders in dark disarray, my lips feel swollen from his kisses. Beckett is not touching me, but his gaze burns across my skin like a wicked, scorching caress.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says, and there’s a rawness to his words that makes me believe them, even though I don’t.

  “So are you,” I say.

  He smiles slightly, shakes his head, dismisses it. But I mean it.

  He is just inches away from me, so devastatingly, overwhelmingly male. So impossibly strong and handsome. Burnished skin, broad shoulders, muscular chest, rippled stomach, slim hips. And as thrilling as that is, I can’t pull my gaze away from his sex. His shaft is long and thick—far thicker than my own two fingers—and stands firm and erect against his belly. Nervousness floods me. I’m not a virgin, but Beckett looks like more than I can handle.

  I lift my hand, and then hesitate as my courage vanishes. My eyes search his. “Can I touch you?”

  “I will lose my mind if you don’t touch me.”

  I reach forward and wrap my hand around his cock, taking in the length and breadth of him. The skin of his penis is silky to the touch, yet rigid as well, a stiff rod pulsing with a life and virility all its own. Strange and fascinating and totally foreign. I tighten my grip experimentally and draw my palm up and down along his length.

  Beckett clenches his jaw and draws in his breath in a sharp hiss. His body quivers as though straining with the effort of holding himself back.

  My worried gaze shoots to his. “Am I hurting you?”

  He gives a rough shake of his head and closes his eyes. “No. I like it too much. That’s the problem.”

  Before I can untangle the meaning of his words, he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me beneath him. I am stretched out flat on my bed. Bracing himself on his elbows above me, he captures my lips with his, thrusting his tongue into my mouth as his groin presses into my belly.

  Pleasure sparks within me and I hungrily return his kiss. We are back to where we started: naked flesh meeting naked flesh. Heat builds in my belly and drifts lower, pulsing between my thighs. I arch my back, eager to give him whatever he wants. My body craves his touch more than it craves air.

  They say all sex is the same sex. That might be true for some people. It doesn’t apply to me and Beckett. We are more than just the joining of our bodies. The word ‘magic’ comes to mind, though I’m embarrassed to admit that here. Regardless, there is a sense of homecoming, of such deep fulfillment, that I can’t adequately put it into words. And when it’s over, when we have spent ourselves and lie ragged and breathless in a lover’s embrace, when our skin is slick with sweat and the scent of our lovemaking perfumes the air, I fall into an exhausted sleep, more supremely content than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

  * * *

  Beckett and I wake at the same time. I worried there might be some lingering embarrassment once morning came, but there isn’t. He smiles and pulls me against him so that my head rests on his shoulder. We blink the sleep from our eyes.

  He looks totally incongruous in my bed, tucked between my faded sheets with their field of tiny purple violets. My comforter edged with white lace. It’s all so girlish and ridiculous.

  I look around my room, seeing it the way he might. The badly worn little girl furniture, second-hand when I got it over a decade ago and in much worse condition now. The shrine to my father, the stuffed animals, books I read years ago—Harry Potter sits shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Seuss and the Gossip Girls—posters of exotic places I want to visit but doubt I ever will, pictures of friends with whom I’m rarely ever in touch anymore.

  This is the room of someone who’s moved on with her life, but hasn’t bothered to clean up the mess she’s left behind. The only things I use are my bed, my desk, and my mirror, where I do my hair and makeup. That’s cluttered with a messy assortment of powders, creams, lipsticks, brushes, blow dryers, and curling irons. It’s awful. I suddenly realize that my room reveals more about me than my nakedness does.

  Then Beckett turns to face me, and all the excuses I’m about to make for the state of my bedroom are driven from my thoughts.

  “Oh, my God,” I say. “What happened to your eye?”

  His left eye is totally swollen, the skin surrounding it blooming with hideous shades of yellow, purple, and green. I didn’t notice it last night in the dark, or maybe it wasn’t as bad then, but now…

  He brings up his fingers and lightly touches it. Winces. Then he sighs and shakes his head. “I fucked up.”

  I’m up on my elbow, concerned. My heart is racing. Did one of Miguel Diaz’s men do that? “What happened?”

  He gives a smile so sad and so sweet I can feel my heart cracking just looking at it. “You should have seen Reardon last night. I thought he was going to draw his gun on me.”

  I blink. “Wait a minute. Reardon did that?” Agent Reardon—Beckett’s DEA boss, a cop’s cop if there ever was one—lost his temper? Gave him a black eye? I can’t imagine it.

  “Yeah,” Beckett says, his expression grim.

  “What happened?” I repeat.

  He glances at me, then studies the ceiling. I wait impatiently until he collects his thoughts enough to admit, “It was my fault. I was totally out of line. I was in the van outside the hotel when everything went sideways. It sounded like Diaz’s crew found the mike on you. I went crazy. I don’t know what happened—I just lost it. I had to get you out of there. I thought—”

  He stops abruptly, but it’s not necessary for him to continue. We both know what we thought was about to happen. Miguel Diaz was going to kill me.

  “I know,” I say, although I really don’t. I don’t know what Beckett feels about what happened last night in Diaz’s penthouse suite. I hardly know what I feel about it. It’s still too much to process.

  After a beat, Beckett continues, “I guess I didn’t hear the bit about it being a baby monitor they picked up, not the DEA mike. I bolted out of the van, but two of Reardon’s agents caught me in the lobby before I could charge the suite. Reardon tried to tell me what was going on, but I wouldn’t listen. At least, not until he got my attention.” He gives a small, sheepish smile and probes the bruising surrounding his eye. “The truth is, I think he’s been wanting to take a swing at me for a while. Last night I finally gave him a reason.”

  Well. Lots of information there. Words I can twist endlessly looking for meaning. What am I to Beckett? What is he to me? How do we move forward? (That’s assuming of course, that ‘we’ exist at all. Given everything that’s happ
ened, and might happen still, that’s a pretty big assumption.) Bottom line, it’s early, and I need a break. I’m too spun to think clearly about anything.

  “My mom will probably come home to shower before she leaves for work,” I say.

  Beckett gets the hint. He slides off my bed and reaches for his jeans. We both dress quickly, silently, our backs to each other for privacy. I walk him to the door and expect him to slip away with a simple nod, a quick word of goodbye. He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls me into his arms and kisses me with the same hungry, fiery possessiveness he did last night.

  My knees go weak and I melt into his arms. I could kiss Thomas Beckett Smith forever—I really could.

  Finally however, he pulls back and brushes my hair off my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. He uses his thumb to gently stroke my chin. Then his gaze locks on mine. He looks somber, deadly serious. “You can still get out,” he says. “Just walk away from everyone—Ricco, Diaz, Reardon, me… It’s not too late.”

  I suppose, in theory, that’s true. I could walk away. But we both understand that’s not going to happen. I’m in too deep, and the stakes are too high. Everyone’s counting on me to see this through.

  I give a shake of my head. “I’m in.”

  Beckett’s expression doesn’t change, but I can sense the tension coursing through him. He wants to nail Miguel Diaz—for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, it is absolutely essential he accomplishes this—yet he loathes the fact that he’s using me to accomplish this. He wants to protect me from Ricco, from Diaz, from everyone.

  Here’s what I wish I could tell him: I’m smart and I’m strong. Also, I’m nowhere near as vulnerable and innocent as he believes.

  Last night with Beckett was a fantasy. Amazing. But now it’s daylight, and I can see everything a lot more clearly. For example, I’ve already learned a little bit about how the game is played.

  Rule Number One: Grab as much money as you can and stash it away. Jess needs it, my mom needs it, and I need it. Eventually the DEA won’t pay me anymore, and that fountain will run dry. Get the cash now.

  Rule Number Two: What the DEA can’t see, they don’t know.

  Beckett doesn’t ask me about Miguel Diaz’s phone number. Obviously he doesn’t know I have it—Reardon would probably get a hard-on if he thought he could tap that cell. I don’t remember the exact wording of my conversation with Miguel, but it must have been sufficiently vague for them not to know what was going on.

  The DEA has no idea what happened. But there’s the number, sitting in my phone right now, under the single contact letter ‘M’. Miguel Diaz.

  I could tell Beckett I have it, but I’m not going to. Not yet, anyway. That’s just the way I was raised. That’s the way life works in The Avenues. If you want to survive, you sure as hell don’t play all your cards at once. That number is power, and I’m not going to give mine up so easily. For the first time in my life I’ve got an edge, and it’s a pretty heady feeling.

  I’ll give Beckett my body. My mind. I might even give him my heart.

  But Miguel Diaz’s cell number? I think I’ll keep that to myself… just in case.

  Day Thirty-Five

  Morning

  I spy a drugstore pregnancy test kit sitting on the shelf in Jess’s bathroom—the pee on a stick kind of kit. It’s unopened, but its very presence chills me. I snatch it off the shelf and confront my sister the second I return to the kitchen.

  “A pregnancy test?” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “Jess, you’re being careful, right? You and Ronnie?”

  It’s Saturday morning and she’s baking vegan cupcakes. When the weather’s nice, she pays for Sunday booth space at the farmer’s market down in the Marina. Jess is a fabulous baker, always has been. Cookies, brownies, cupcakes, muffins… everything she does looks amazing, tastes delicious, and is actually healthy.

  The money’s good, and she can set up Dally in his crib while she sells. I’ve offered to watch him while she works the market, but she likes to bring him with her—she swears he’s her good luck charm. That’s probably true. People like helping out young working mothers, so she always sells more when he’s there. (I know for a fact that her tip jar fills faster, too.)

  She carefully finishes applying an artful swirl of lavender, honey-sweetened frosting, and then looks up at me. “What do you mean?”

  “This,” I say, tapping the box on the counter. “I mean, you guys are using protection, right?”

  She shrugs and averts her gaze, reaching for another cupcake to frost.

  A note of alarm races through me. “Jess?”

  She heaves an irritated sigh and plops down her frosting bag. “Kylie. You know I want kids. I always have. Ronnie wants them, too. Besides, I love being a mother. Why wouldn’t I want more beautiful babies when Dally is so perfect and gorgeous?”

  My heart skips a beat. “Now?” I say. “You’re trying to get pregnant now?”

  “What’s wrong with now?”

  Everything, I want to scream. She’s too young, too broke, and too exhausted to handle even one baby, let alone two. Everything about her life is just too unstable. But most importantly, how will she ever get out, how will she get away from Ronnie permanently, if she’s tied down with kids? I’ll admit it straight out: if I could have one wish in the world, that would be it. Get Jess Away From Ronnie. She deserves so much better.

  But I can’t say that, of course. I’m not even supposed to be thinking it. Any comment I make along those lines would only serve to set off World War III again. I’m trying to be a better, more supportive (or at least less judgmental) sister, I really am. It’s her life, her choice.

  And so I simply say, “What about buying the garage? Is that still in the works?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She and Ronnie want to buy Noriega Street Auto. The owner’s retiring, so they have six months to raise a fifty thousand dollar deposit. Even with the five thousand a month I’ll be funding them (courtesy of my work with the DEA), coming up with that kind of money still seems like a stretch.

  Jess, however, seems convinced it’s going to happen. I assume she’s just living in fantasyland, but the next second she leans across the counter and whispers conspiratorially, “Ronnie made over a thousand dollars last week. All cash.”

  What? Ronnie? Ronnie made over a thousand dollars cash? In a week? WTF?

  As if to underscore my disbelief, Ronnie opens their bedroom door and stumbles out. He emerges dressed in boxers, looking bleary-eyed and hung-over. I think he got a new tattoo, but I can’t tell—they all kind of merge together. Swaying unsteadily, he surveys the room. Our gazes meet, but neither of us says anything. Instead, he moves to Jess’s side, locks his arm around her waist and gives her an affectionate squeeze. Then he sticks his fingers in the frosting bowl and scoops up a thick glob of the lavender goop.

  “Hey!” Jess protests, swatting him away with a wooden spoon.

  He shoves his fingers toward her mouth, but she ducks away and the lavender frosting smears her cheek instead. Ronnie pulls her to him and slowly, erotically, licks it off. Jess giggles.

  I can’t stand to watch them, so I avert my gaze. When I turn back, I find Ronnie watching me, a smug expression fixed on his face. His naked chest swells. He looks super satisfied, thoroughly pleased with himself. “You heard about the money I’m making, right?”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “So maybe we’re not gonna need your help after all. Looks like I can get all the cash I need to take care of my family.”

  I shrug. “Good for you.”

  He gives me a slow, nasty smile and lifts his hand. Globs of frosting drip down his fingers. “Want some?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  “Suit yourself.” He licks his fingers, and then uses his sticky hand to swat my sister on the ass. “I’m going to take a shower, babe. Why don’t you come join me?”

  There’s my cue. I
abruptly stand. “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  Jess worries her lower lip, her dark blond brows drawn together. “Already? You just got here.” She looks conflicted, torn between her loyalty to me and her loyalty to her husband. That must suck.

  “It’s fine,” I say, reassuring her. “I’m working the lunch shift at the café. I’ve got to go home and change. I’ll be late if I don’t leave now.”

  Her expression lightens. “Oh, okay.” She walks me to the door.

  I hesitate. I should just let it go, but something about Ronnie’s earlier stance is bothering me. He wasn’t just cocky and obnoxious—he was aggressively cocky and obnoxious. Swaggering, almost bullying, definitely in my face. Something’s going on.

  “So how’d Ronnie make that kind of cash?” I ask, trying my best to sound nonchalant. “Is he still doing oil changes at night?”

  “No, that didn’t pan out.”

  “So what’s he doing?”

  “He got a job delivering Chinese food. The tips are huge.”

  Really. A thousand dollars a week delivering Chinese food. Bullshit. Well that’s just great. Now I can add one more thing to my ever-expanding list of things I have to worry about: What’s my lowlife brother-in-law up to now?

  Day Thirty-Six

  Afternoon

  I bring Ricco with me to the farmer’s market to check up on Jess. I’m worried about her. (Yes, I recognize the irony in this. I really do. I’m strolling hand-in-hand with the son of a Cuban drug lord, a man who could order my execution with one careless flick of his wrist.) But I can’t shake the feeling of foreboding I have about Jess, Ronnie, and Dally. I have a mental picture of the three of them tucked into a canoe that’s being swept straight toward a raging waterfall.