Covert

by Shani Dowdell

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blaine's phone had been used several times while we were at the warehouse. Monique was back at the station tracking his movements and checking into his contacts. “We have intel on another person involved in the terroristic plot, but we need someone undercover to infiltrate the meeting Blain set up with him,” Monique announced.

  I’d just debriefed from the case of the sex trafficking sting and was being briefed on Blaine’s latest activities. Chief chewed me out about compromising the lives of other girls, just to save one, but in the end everyone, including Chief and Clanton, agreed with my decision to save Tabitha.

  Our situation room was jumping with intel coming in by the minute. Strategizing and sideline discussions were going on, as I sat silently contemplating going back undercover to get to Blaine.

  “Nicollette, I think you are the perfect person to go back under, provided that you do everything according to plan,” said Chief who was admonishing me with his glare and pleading with me at the same time.

  Yoni, a half Chinese, half Caucasian agent that was always busting my chops about one thing or another, spoke up on my behalf. “I agree, Chief, I think Agent Jones is our best chance.”

  Everyone turned their attention to me as if waiting for me to say I’d do it. Chief had the glint in his eyes that he usually wore just before shooting off one of his nonnegotiable orders.

  “Give me just a second,” I said, standing up from my seat. My chair screeched as it slid back. I stepped out into the hallway and dialed Granson’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Did you get the bastard?” he asked in a low tone.

  “No, not yet. I’m working on that now. But I have to know how Britt is doing. Is my shugga lump going to be okay?”

  “She’s doing great. Even opened her eyes and talked to me for a little while. And, the doctor gave a good report when he was up here a little while ago.”

  I let out a deep sigh that I didn’t realize I was holding in, until Granson gave me the good news. “I hate that I can’t be there with her.”

  “I got Britt, Nicollette. On my life I have her, and security is so tight on this floor you would think the president was up here. So don’t worry about Britt, just find the son of a bitch who did this to her.”

  “I will,” I said, wanting to add that I loved him. The pain from the last time he rejected my words stung in my heart, halting me from saying it again. I decided to give him more time before I broached the subject of our relationship again. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find something out,” I said and hung up.

  I walked back into the situation room and took my seat. I looked at Wiley and we had a nonverbal exchange. He knew that my concern was Britt. His gaze assured me that she would be fine.

  “Nikki, since you have already had contact with him, you would be the best person for the job,” said Chief, bringing my attention to the decision I had to make.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Nik needs a break,” Wiley said. He knew I would kill Blaine on sight and was trying to shield me from more drama.

  “I’m good Wiley,” I said to my partner. “I’m the best person for the job, since I can work Blaine into doing what I want,” I tell everyone sitting around the table. “Where was he last spotted?” I turn to Monique and ask.

  “At the V-Bar right next door to Club Platinum.”

  “Typical,” I said. Blaine really was a textbook type of dude. He could be figured out easily, since he rarely changed his stripes. A nightclub and beautiful women just about summed up his modus operando.

  “Does anyone find it the least bit suspicious that Blaine didn’t use his phone for almost twenty-four hours and then all of a sudden it starts pinging and it’s a meeting where they are clearly discussing a plot for an attack? My gut tells me we’re being led into this meeting,” said Clanton, who was familiar with Don Vargas, the person whom Blaine was meeting with. “And why is he meeting up with Vargas anyway? Vargas is known for sex trafficking not terrorism.”

  “You raise a good point, and I considered that, but we can’t let this lead go. We’ve invested too much time to just not follow through,” said Monique.

  Chief rubbed his chin and his brow crumpled up showing his frustration. “Monique is right. We’ve been looking into the connection Broadnack has to Vargas, and we haven’t come up with anything. We need someone on the inside.”

  “This is too dangerous. I personally think her cover’s blown and that she’s being set up,” Wiley spoke up.

  “Explain what you mean,” Chief asked Wiley.

  “My cover is not blown,” I spoke up, cutting Wiley off and giving him a glare that gave him pause. “I just need extra coverage because I’m going in. We have lives to save.”

  Chief looked at Wiley for an answer to his question. “Why do you think Agent Jones’ cover is blown?”

  “Because of what Clanton mentioned about the call seeming to lure us in. I, too, feel like it’s a set up.”

  “Well, if that’s your only reason for saying making that statement, we’re going in. I want you to go with her and hang back and I’ll send Monique and Yoni to blend in with the crowd.”

  Every agent sitting around our briefing table silently agreed. A few hours later, I was dressed in a fitted black dress, strapped stilettos and wearing a long, black wig full of fluffy curls. My makeup was flawless, thanks to Monique’s help once again. As soon as I walked into the V-Bar, I spotted Blaine’s tall, stocky frame sitting at the bar.

  I approached him and touched his shoulder, ready for whatever. “Well, if it isn’t Blaine Broadnack. I’m sorry I had to leave you so soon last night, but I figured I would find you here or Club Platinum.”

  “Stace?” he said as his eyes focused in on me. “Well, if it isn’t the black mamba herself.”

  “Is that how you greet all of your one night stands the next time you see them?”

  He slipped out of his seat and towered over me, looking down at me with an air of cockiness. “No, just the ones that slip away in the middle of the night and leave a napkin stained with black lipstick. Who are you really?”

  “I’m…”

  “It doesn’t matter who you are. I have to go. I have a meeting with someone,” he said and stepped around me and walked away, his suave swagger compounded as he moved toward the door.

  I pursued him, but the large, tangled crowd surrounding the bar made it hard to catch up to him. When I caught up with him at the front door, I was done talking. I pressed my 0.38 special into his back and said, “Make a scene and I will kill you where you stand. Walk.”

  He stood still and I cocked the hammer back ready to blast the pathetic life out of him. He started walking again. I held the gun firm to his back, as we walked together out of the club. This wasn’t the plan Chief laid out at the station, but I followed my own instinct. I had no intention of letting Blaine leave this club without giving me some answers.

  “Move,” I said, letting him know that I was the one with the upper hand. I guided him over to the side of the club where not many people were passing by. “I know you had something to do with my daughter being hurt today, so I’m going to count to ten. You either fucking spill it or I’m going to spill your blood all over this alley. Wouldn’t it be just a shame for the big and tough Blaine Broadnack to die right here?” I asked pointing at the polluted round that we were standing on.

  “Stace, I didn’t do anything to you. It was Jaylon who thought that you needed a warning. They found the tap in my car and my boss was not happy about me being taken by a girl. What are you a cop, or were you paid by the cops?” His back was pinned against the brick wall and he was singing like a canary.

  “All you need to know about me is that right now, I’m your worst nightmare. Until my daughter comes out of that hospital without a so much as a scrape remaining, you are closest to your death bed than you have ever been. Turn around and look me in my eyes.”

  He turned around and I could see the fear he was at
tempting to avert from his eyes. “Don’t shoot me,” he said with his hands up.

  “Blaine, I hadn’t quite pegged you for a bitch and a snitch, but I guess I do get it wrong sometimes,” I said and let out a despicable laugh. “And to think I gave you some pussy when all I had to do was pull out my pistol to make you start talking like the little bitch you are. What kind of man messes with children?”

  “The kind that you should be more careful about pointing your gun at,” he said, his voice swelling with more confidence than he had before.

  “Yeah, right.” My phone started vibrating at my side and I looked down and see that it was Wiley calling.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly right. You see, the reason I’m at the V-Bar tonight, instead of Club Platinum where I normally go is because I’m meeting with a very important person,” he said, the tone in his voice getting more brazen.

  “Which is exactly the reason you should lower your gun, pretty lady,” a raspy voice said close to my ear. A snaky-like hand travel across my thighs and touch my intimate place at the same time that I felt a piece of hard steel against the side of my face.

  “Get your hand, off of me,” I said, but by this time I recognized that I was out gunned and outnumbered. There’s a man standing to the right of me looking on and a man to my right. The man behind me licked my ear on one side while he held a gun to my head on the other.

  Blaine reached forward and took my gun away from me. “Let’s see who’s the bitch now,” he said mushing the gun in my face, causing my head to push backwards into the man who was licking me.

  “A pretty lady like you shouldn’t be caught up in the nether regions,” the unseen man said.

  “Nik, Nik…” Wiley called my name as he attempted to make his way through the crowd surrounding the club.

  The four men forcibly escorted me to a black Lincoln that had pulled into the alley. They tossed me into the backseat. The driver stepped on the gas and hauled me away, just as Wiley, Monique and Yoni ran to the area where I’d once been standing with my pistol to Blaine’s chest.

  I was trying to put two and two together when we arrived at the abandoned warehouse where I’d rescued the children the night before. I tossed into a room and knocked out cold by a force unseen. My last thought before I closed my eyes was of my daughter and if she and Granson would be safe with the guards on duty at the hospital.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sleeping with The Enemy

  “She’s got some sweet pussy man. It’s a damn shame she tries to be Rambo in a skirt.” I heard Blaine saying when I came to. I opened my eyes and everything was blurry. Eventually, they focused on my surroundings. Blaine stood by a steel door talking to another Indian man who was laughing at his attempt at a joke. The room was empty besides an old, heavily stained queen-sized mattress on the floor.

  “That’s why in our native land we put women in their place early. None of this superwoman nonsense that they are doing here in America. I cannot wait to get back to our land where women know how to treat men.”

  “That’s right, they do what we say when we say and how we say to do it,” Blaine agreed.

  “Fucking weasels,” I said weakly. “I’m going to show you my place—on top of each of your necks, ripping out your main arteries.”

  “Stace, I mean, Nik, Nikki, whatever your name is, that night at the Hyatt could have been the start of something. But you had to go and make it into this ugly nightmare, for yourself,” Blaine said, walking toward me with a horrid sneer. “Give me a minute alone with her, will you man?” he said to the other man who was guarding the door. “We have some catching up to do.”

  Once we were alone, Blain strode over to me. Towering over me, he touched the side of my face. My attempt to reach up and slap his hand away drew my attention to the fact that my hands and feet were shackled and chained down to the ground. “Get your filthy hands off me,” I screamed and the sound echoed off the barren walls.

  “Why? You loved these hands last night.” He kneeled down and yanked me up, pulling me close to him by my hips. “Now that you think I’m a criminal, you want to act different toward me. I’m the same man that you let all inside of you only twenty-four hours ago, and you’re going to give me some more of this sweet pussy tonight.”

  “I will do no such thing! I am not giving you anything, you fucking scum of the earth,” I yelled. I didn’t have anything to give a man that degraded and demoralized women.

  “If you don’t behave, you will regret it…,” he said, his minty breath hitting me in the face. “And, from what I recall, you have more than just yourself to worry about.”

  “Are you threatening my child? You motherfucker, are you threatening my family?” I jiggled my hands around trying to get lose from the chains. “Your moments are numbered, Blaine.” I made the threat, even as I was unaware of how I would execute it.

  “You think you’re a smart little cunt. That’s the reason your daughter is in the hospital now. You think you’re smarter than me…but I don’t like being lied to, and I damn sure don’t like being talked trash to.” His brows furrowed and then softened. “I was thinking about you the next morning, you know? When I woke up and found you gone, I was thinking of ways I could get the mystery black treasure back in my life. I craved for more of you. I wanted you something awful.”

  Blaine’s hand stroked the side of my face and I yanked my head back. My rejection caused his mood to shift. “And can you imagine how I felt when my car didn’t pass a car sweep? I was heartbroken. And then, I was pissed.”

  He jerked my dress up above my waist and shoved his hand inside of my panties. “I’ve never been taken by some random pussy, but you Nikki, you’re special. That’s why hurting Brittney wasn't the only thing I did,” he said, and a twisted grin splayed across his otherwise handsome face.

  “You better not have done anything else to my daughter.”

  “Oh no, she’s safe for now. But I did make it so that your little boyfriend will spend the rest of his life thinking he’s not Britney’s father. Once I kill you, he will never find out the truth.” He massaged my inner lips as he spoke, hovering over me and looking me in the eye.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep my legs held tight together. It dawned on me that Granson had been lied to and that he was really Brittney’s father.

  Blaine pried my legs apart with his knees and darted his finger in and out of my core, while looking me in the eyes. I fought with every shred of resolve within me not to give him the gratification of knowing that he was affecting me, negatively or positively.

  “A lady should never speak that way. Cursing is so beneath you, Nikki. Damn, you are so wet.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Fuck you is what I’m trying to do. Can’t you see how badly I want to?” he said, making note of his rigid erection pressing firmly against his jeans. “You should really consider giving me what I want, since I decide if you live or die today.” His hand continued to dart in and out of my pussy. He brought his fingers to his lips and sucked on them as if the flavor was to die for.

  “Blaine, what did you do to my daughter’s records about her blood type?” I found the voice to ask. I wanted to cry, as for the first time in years I felt hopeless.

  “I paid that doctor to fudge the test results. Your boyfriend’s blood type really is O negative, so that means he’s Brittney’s father, just as you thought.”

  “You low down piece of shit.”

  Blaine laughed, a lusty gaze still in his eyes as they surveyed my breasts. With my hands and legs chained down, I was his for the taking. “It’s the art of war, baby. The best way to injure a man, or woman in this case, is to tear down her home without even stepping foot in it. I figured since you tried to ruin what I’ve built, ruin my chance at repaying America for its atrocities against the world, I’d ruin you by leaving you all alone in the world. Bottom line, I don’t take kindly to people crossing me.”

  “Look at me
, Blaine,” I said, as a renegade tear creeped down my cheek slowly.

  “I am looking at you Nikki,” Blaine said as he held himself up “No, I mean look at me in my eyes.”

  When his brown eyes meet mine, I said, “I’m going to kill you, and let me tell you how.”

  “This should be interesting. Go ahead and tell me how you plan to kill me, when clearly you’re the one at a disadvantage right now.” He looked down at the chains on my hands and feet and laughed hysterically. “I’m going to start calling you my Rambo pussy.”

  He unbuckled his pants and pulled them halfway down his legs along with his underwear. He pushed my panties aside, leaving me without a shield to thwart his assault. He pried my legs apart, once again, and entered me roughly. He revved his head back in pleasure as he began stroking inside of my wetness.

  “I’m going to maneuver my hands until they wrap around your neck. Then, I’m going to use this chain to strangle the life out of you,” I said, informing Blaine of how his life would end.

  “Ah, your pussy is so tight. You feel so good.” He was using both of his hands to hold on to my hips and grind deeper into my slit.

  My words fell deaf on his ears, as Blaine pumped in and out of me. I squeezed my pussy muscles with a death grip, causing him to jerk and grunt out his orgasm. For that moment when he was jerking uncontrollably, I maneuvered one hand across the front of his neck and the other over the back, as if I were hugging him with the chains crisscrossed. I used all of my might to hold him in that position, strangling him until the worthless life left his body, as he jerked out the final climax of his pathetic life. He fell limp on top of me, just as I heard gunshots out in the warehouse. I pushed Blaine off of me and looked around for a way to get myself unchained.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Unspoken Words

  “How did you find me?” I asked as Wiley burst through the door.