“Do everything they say, Jordan,” Kari ordered her son as she and Jordan both lifted their hands in the air and got out of the car.
As soon as their feet touched the earth, they were grabbed and handcuffed. Jordan, who was on the passenger side of the car, was pulled around to the driver side by another cop, where his mother was handcuffed. And then they threw them both to the ground.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A couple miles behind them, Tino and his security team caught it all on the monitors. “What the fuck is going on?” Tino asked. It all was unfolding so quickly. “What just happened here?”
“They weren’t speeding,” one of the four men in Tino’s car said. “And you know that new-ass car doesn’t have any lights busted, or bad tags.”
“Then what the fuck they stopped them for?” Tino asked. But when those cops, after cuffing Kari and Jordan, proceeded to throw them down onto the ground and placed their knees onto their backs to keep them down, he didn’t wait for an answer. “Go!” he ordered his driver. He wasn’t sure if they were real cops or kidnappers!
They were a good two miles back, which was standard operating procedure in their line of work so that there would be no indication to any bad guys that Kari was being followed. But when they arrived near the scene, they slowed down considerably. And Tino had his answer. They were cops all right. Those back-woods boys could not be mistaken.
“What are we going to do, Boss?” one of the bodyguards asked Tino as they slowly approached. “Those fools might shoot us on sight!”
“True,” Tino said. “But Alex Drakos is going to do worse to us if we let them arrest his woman.”
“You think he loves her like that?” asked the same bodyguard.
“What the fuck you think?” asked a second one. “Why would he have us tailing her all the way to Florida? Because he hates her? He loves that chick! And Tino’s right. He’ll kill us if we mess this assignment up. But those trigger-happy cops might kill us if we intervene too.”
“Then what the fuck are we supposed to do?” asked the first guard. “What are we going to do, Boss?” he asked Tino again.
Tino knew what the second bodyguard said was true. If they intervened, and it didn’t go well, it was either going to be death to those cops or prison or death for Tino and his men. With trigger-happy yahoos like those, he knew there would be no middle ground.
But he also knew Alex Drakos. And he knew that motherfucker didn’t play in the middle either. And if he said they were to protect his lady and that boy of hers with their lives or they wouldn’t live themselves, then that was what they had to do.
“Drive past and then pull over,” Tino ordered. “I’ll get out and approach them. Hopefully these clowns will listen to reason.”
“And if they don’t?” asked the second guard.
Tino didn’t want to even entertain the thought. “They will,” he said as the car was nearing Kari’s car.
But before they got anywhere near passing it to pull over, they could hear sirens blaring from behind them. Then one police car. Then another one. Then a third one followed by two more flew up behind them. They had to pull over to give them room to pass. And the cars flew pass them and stopped just behind Kari’s car. It was like a scene out of a movie!
“What the fuck?” the first guard asked rhetorically as the cops pulled in front of Kari’s car and then jumped out and ran to the aide of their colleagues. They were behaving as if Kari had been featured on America’s Most Wanted!
“There must be ten of those motherfuckers on the scene,” the second bodyguard said.
“What are we gonna do now?” asked the first bodyguard. “We can’t kill all those cops. They’ll take us out and Miss Grant, too, while they’re at it!”
Tino stared at the monitors that showed the activity surrounding Kari’s car. And he knew it was all true. There was no way they could intervene now. There were way too many cops! And they were overreacting like a motherfuck. Those fools were acting as if they’d just caught Bin Laden or some serial killer or somebody! No way would they listen to him.
It was a bad choice either way, but Tino made it. “Drive a mile up the road,” he ordered the driver who complied with the order. “We’ll monitor events as they unfold and follow those fuckers wherever they take Miss Grant. But we can’t intervene.”
“And Mr. Drakos?” the second bodyguard asked.
“It’ll be his call,” Tino said. “And he may see it differently. He may want us to fight to the death. And if he does, we will. This is what we signed up for. This is why he pays us the big bucks.”
Then Tino looked at the second bodyguard. “Do it,” he said, and the second bodyguard pulled out the red phone, and handed it to Tino. And Tino went about the complicated process of entering codes that would get him a direct, secure line to Alex.
But as Tino slowly entered those special codes, things were moving a whole lot faster for Kari and Jordan. Once all of those backup cops had arrived, to the tune of what looked like a small militia of cops, Kari and Jordan quickly felt the impact of their police stop.
After Kari and Jordan both were pulled out of the car and handcuffed, and thrown to the ground like common criminals, one of the cops, their big, burly chief on scene, grabbed Kari by her hair and leaned her head back so far that they were face to face. “What’s a nigger like you driving a white man’s car like this?” he asked her.
Jordan, scared for his mother, spoke up. “That’s my mama’s car,” he said nervously.
But the cop holding him down knocked him across his head with his nightstick. “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled.
“Jordan, it’s alright,” Kari said frantically to her son. “I’m alright!”
“You heard what I asked you,” the chief said to Kari. “Whose car you stole?”
“It’s my car,” Kari said.
“Bullshit!” said the chief. “Now tell me the truth, witch. Whose car did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal it. My fiancé gave it to me.”
The cops laughed. “First it was yours, now you claim some fiancé gave you a brand-new Rolls Royce? Yeah, sure he did. And I’m fucking Tinkerbell!”
The other cops laughed.
Kari decided to namedrop. Not to puff herself up, but to get those men to realize she just might be telling the truth. “His name is Alex Drakos,” she said. Many people knew his name the way most people knew Warren Buffet’s name, or Bill Gates. Maybe one of those good old boys had heard it before. “I have his phone number,” she added. “You can call him and confirm what I’m telling you.”
But she was out of luck that day. If one of them did know the name, they weren’t letting on. Her only hope, she now knew, were the security detail she was certain Alex had following them.
But the chief was getting impatient. He either wanted her to admit a lie or make up a better one. “Stop wasting our time, lady,” the chief said. “Who did you steal this car from? And what’s in that trunk? Or do we have to take it there?”
Take what where, Kari wondered? And why would something be in the trunk? What was he talking about!
But Kari said nothing more. They weren’t trying to hear her anyway.
“Okay, moonshine,” the chief said, “you wanna take it there? We’ll take it there.” He released Kari’s hair. “Hey, JimBob,” he yelled as he stood on his feet. The other cops laughed, which made Kari figure that wasn’t the cop’s real name. But they were enjoying their power trip that day. Every one of them. There was no threat on the scene, they were getting paid to be there, and they got to get in on an arrest and humiliate two strangers while they were at it. They got to lift themselves up by diminishing Kari and Jordan.
But when JimBob hurried over, the fun changed in Kari’s eyes.
“Yes, sir, boss?” JimBob asked.
The chief motioned for JimBob to come closer. “Look in my trunk,” the chief said in a voice only he and JimBob, among the cops anyway, could hear. “I do believe you will find
what we’re looking for.”
Kari looked at the cop in shock. What was in his trunk? And why was he going on about trunks all of a sudden? She looked around at the other cops. They were still enjoying themselves and talking amongst themselves and totally oblivious to what the chief was plotting. It didn’t mean shit to them!
Didn’t mean shit to JimBob either. He grinned. “Yes, sir, boss,” he said, stood back up, and took off.
Kari could see him run to the cop car that had cut her off, and that was therefore in front of her. And just as she feared, he pulled out a plastic bag filled with what she knew to be powdered cocaine because her old man used to traffic in it, and he hurried past Kari to the back of the Rolls.
She couldn’t see what he was doing, but she had a darn good idea. And when he came back, and said “done,” to the chief, she knew it was going to be her ass.
“Now,” the chief said to JimBob with a grin, “go into the trunk of that Rolls Royce we have in our county and see what you can find. She’s given us permission.”
Kari wanted to object, but she knew better. She wasn’t about to give them a reason to knock her across her head or, even worse, blow her brains out. And she especially wasn’t giving them a reason to harm Jordan.
JimBob did as he was told and reopened the trunk of Kari’s car that he had just closed, and he pulled out the drugs he had just planted in that trunk.
And Kari knew, right then and there, that they weren’t about to get out of that situation with just some trumped-up ticket or trumped-up resisting arrest charge. Humiliating her wasn’t enough for them that day. They aimed to nail her with serious felonies. This was like a nightmare for her!
But her first concern was Jordan. He was foremost on her mind as they laid on that ground together. And she could see he was terrified.
“Look at me, Jordan,” she said to him as the chief went over to see what JimBob had discovered. “Look at me!”
Jordan swallowed hard and looked at her. He was having trouble breathing he was so terrified. But seeing his mother’s calm face helped to calm him down too.
“No matter what,” Kari said to him with those sincere eyes he loved, “I want you to do absolutely nothing, you hear me? No quick moves. No questions. Nothing. You do nothing. You say nothing. You live. You hear me, boy?” she asked him.
Jordan nodded his head. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Kari attempted to even smile. “We’ll be okay,” she said. Then she added, because she knew the outsized confidence Jordan had in him: “Mister D will get us out of this.”
And for the first time since the ordeal began, Jordan actually smiled too. It alarmed Kari on many levels that her son had so much faith in Alex, mainly because if it didn’t work out between she and Alex, Jordan was not going to take it well at all.
But it pleased her too. Because Alex represented hope for her son when he’d had so little in his young life. And that was why, as those crooked cops grabbed her and Jordan up from the ground and shoved them into the back of a police car, Kari thoughts turned to Alex. And how he was going to feel when he got the word. And what he was going to do to every single one of those slimy motherfuckers when he found out what was really going down. Because Kari didn’t have fear on her mind. She was too angry to be fearful. She had revenge on her mind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He sat in the reception area of the metropolitan office and patiently awaited his turn. With his dark shades covering his eyes, his dark hair neatly trimmed, and his suit coat unbuttoned, he looked not unlike most men who requested an audience with the oil baron. So nobody gave him any advantages. Which was fine by Alex. He just wanted this handled so that he could get to South Carolina, or wherever they were along their journey, and get to his family.
“Next,” the receptionist said and looked at Alex.
Alex rose from the metal chair and made his way up to the scuffed-up desk.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Alex said, removing his shades. “I wish to see Mr. Tenniston, please.”
“And may I ask who wishes to see him?”
“Alex Drakos,” he said.
At first the receptionist just knew he had to be kidding. But then she realized he did look familiar. And suddenly she realized it was him. The billionaire playboy! She quickly rose to her feet. “Right this way, sir,” she said, and without delay, to Alex’s surprise, she escorted him right into the inner office. She didn’t even knock first.
“Who is it this time?” Tenniston asked as he sat with his back to the door, his feet up and pressed against the wall behind his desk, as he was looking out of his big window.
“Mr. Alex Drakos is here to see you, sir,” she said.
Tenniston dropped his feet to the floor and turned around in his chair. “Alex Drakos?” he asked, which was shocking enough. But when he saw that she had allowed him to come straight in, and he was standing right there, the shock was tenfold.
He quickly stood on his feet. “Mr. Drakos, hello,” he said in his Texas twain, extending his hand happily. “Why it’s an honor to meet you, sir.”
Alex walked up to his desk and they shook hands. The receptionist made her way out of the office and closed the door behind her.
“Please have a seat,” Tenniston said.
Alex took a seat in front of the desk. Tenniston sat down behind the desk. He had the voice down pat, and the oh, gosh demeanor. The only thing missing, Alex thought, was the gallon-sized hat.
“What can I do for you, sir?” Tenniston asked as soon as he sat down.
“Oil was syphoned and stolen from one of my oil rigs.”
“Stolen?” Tenniston asked.
“Stolen and transported to you, here in Texas.”
“To me?”
“That’s right.”
“No, sir, that’s wrong.”
Alex ignored his denial. “I’m here to find out why.”
“But I didn’t steal no oil,” the oilman said. “I paid for that crude!”
Alex suspected he would make that claim. “You paid for it to whom?”
“To you. Or at least to your gal.”
His gal? “To someone representing me?”
“That’s right! We met in New York City. Like you, I have a privately-owned oil company myself. Unlike you, this company is all I have. I’m no big conglomerate. Competing against the Exxon-Mobiles of this world ain’t easy. I get oil where I can get it. She had a good deal going, and I jumped on it. But it was completely legit. I didn’t steal nobody’s nothing!”
In Alex’s line of work, he had to make snap judgments all the time. If he was wrong, he could pay dearly. But on this one, he didn’t think he was wrong. He believed the oilman. “Describe her,” he said to Tenniston.
Tenniston searched his memory. Another reason Alex believed him. He didn’t have ready answers. “She was on the tall side. Thin. Blonde. Oh, and she had a heavy accent. German or Russian or something. An eastern European accent.”
Alex was not surprised. He had described Ninochka to a T. “What name did she give?”
“Some foreign name. I couldn’t remember it if my life depended on it. I just viewed her as an emissary of yours. I wasn’t interested so much in her name. I thought she was one of yours.”
“When did you pay her?” Alex asked.
“Today. On delivery.”
“Here in Texas?” Alex asked anxiously. “She’s here in Texas?”
“No, not personally. By wire transfer like we agreed. Into what she said was a Drakos business account. She delivered the package. I transferred the money.”
Alex should have known Ninochka wouldn’t be so sloppy as to leave a calling card. She wouldn’t leave footprints that easily. Or would she? She made certain he saw her in Moscow! “The oil was stolen from me,” Alex said bluntly. “The woman you paid does not work for or represent me in any way.”
The oilman was stunned. “What are you saying?” he asked. “She delivered the oil. She
kept her end of the bargain. And you’re saying you don’t know her?”
Alex knew her too well. “She doesn’t represent me,” he said again. He stood to his feet. “I’ll need everything you have on her, including all info on where you met her in New York.” The oilman stood up too.
“I’ll have a gentleman who does represent me, Matthew Scribner, get in touch with you to receive all the info we need,” Alex said. It was a job Oz could have handled for him perfectly. But Oz was in Russia finalizing the Moscow deal.
“But,” the oilman began saying. It was obvious this was very troubling news to the oil baron. “What I’m trying to say,” he continued, “is about that transaction. That transaction set me back ten million dollars!”
“Which was less than half of what that oil is worth on the open market,” Alex said. “As you know.”
“I understand that,” Tenniston said. “Yes, I do. But that’s why I took that chance. I thought I was dealing with the Drakos Corporation. I thought you were big enough to make those kinds of deals. And I’ll be blunt with you, sir. I can’t afford to lose no ten million dollars. Especially when I was operating in good faith. I don’t see where I did anything wrong!”
Alex needed his cooperation. “Neither do I,” Alex said. “Her scam won’t redound to you. It’s the woman pretending to represent my interests that I’m after. Not you.” Alex extended his hand. “Cooperate with my guys,” he said, “and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“Do we need to get the Feds involved?” Tenniston asked.
The Feds were the last people Alex wanted in his business. But he had to play it coy. “You can contact them if you wish,” he said. “But they will insist that you return that oil. And you won’t get your money back. They aren’t going to give you a pass.”
Tenniston was shaking his head. He didn’t get to be where he was by playing it straight. “Then I’ll deal with your people only, sir,” he said.
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