by Blair Grey
“Come on, Max.” I kicked the door shut after getting him inside. Holding the handgun up, I asked, “Can I put this away? Or do you think you might want to try to make a break for it again?”
He took a seat in the chair and huffed. “I won’t try to run. Even if you didn’t have a gun, you’d catch me. But I really can’t tell you anything. Not because I don’t want to but because I don’t know shit. I really don’t.”
Another knock on the door and this time Garrett went to answer it. “This should be the food.”
“It’s lasagna and breadsticks,” I said to entice the chubby man. “There’s plenty of it too. Would you care for a plate?”
“I could eat,” he said with a smile. “And a beer would probably help me chill too.” He pointed at one of the pockets of his hoodie. “And if you guys are game, we could have a toke and a smile.”
“How about we share our beer and pasta and forgo the drugs?” I had to laugh at the guy. “But thanks, Max. That’s very nice of you to want to share.”
“I’m a sharing, caring guy. What can I say?”
Garrett took the sack to the kitchen. “I’ll plate up the food because I don’t trust myself not to let the guy go.”
“Good idea.” I looked at Max as I took a seat on the sofa. “There was a car left in the Walmart parking lot three nights ago. You drove that car there. You parked it. You put the keys on top of the driver’s side front tire. And then you walked away.”
Garrett brought plates to me and Max then went back to grab his. “Beers are coming up. He still gets one, right, baby?”
“He sure does.” I wasn’t going to leave Max out of anything. Cutting off a chunk of the thick pasta dish, I watched Max as he took a bite. “Good huh? The ratings said this is the third-best lasagna in Baltimore.”
“I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about, lady.” Max took a bite. “This is pretty good.” He took another bite then nodded at Garrett as he handed him a beer. “Thanks, man. You guys are proper hosts. I will tell you that.” His eyes came to mine as he put the plate on his lap while he opened the beer can. “I don’t think I caught your name or what police department you’re from.”
“I’m not from one. The funny thing about those keys you left on the tire is that there wasn’t one to open the gas cap.”
Taking a swig of the beer, he shook his head. “You mean that you found the keys next to the gas cap and they wouldn’t open the trunk.”
“Sure, I did.” He’d just blown it and had no idea what he’d done as he scooped up more food.
One. Two. Three.
Max dropped his fork as Garrett ran his hands over his face and said, “This date is not turning out how I thought it would at all. Not even a little. So, what are you going to do with him, baby?”
“Nothing.” I pulled my gun out and placed it on the coffee table. “As long as he answers me with truthfulness, this won’t get messy at all. And you will get to go back to Greta, Max. She loves you - you know. It would devastate her if anything happened to you.”
“It would upset me pretty bad too, Max,” Garrett said then took a drink of his beer. “Come on, buddy. Just give her the answers she wants so you can get back to Greta and we can get to our date that’s been derailed twice now.”
Max knew he’d been beaten. “What choice do I have?”
Exactly.
Chapter Thirteen
Garrett
The three of us sat there, stunned and unsure of what the next move should be. The only thing I knew for sure was that Dean Strong’s reach went a hell of a lot further than Nicki could’ve imagined.
“He has orchestrated this whole thing.” The color drained out of her face as Max’s words sank in. “Dean set me up.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.” Max looked at me for help. “I’m serious, man. I thought her finding out that there wasn’t ever a crime might make her happy. It was all a practice run. That’s all. And she found me.”
“You weren’t supposed to tell me anything, Max.” She looked at him as her chest rose and fell, her breathing hard and erratic. “Were you? I’m sure you were told not to speak.”
“Well, yeah,” he agreed. “But I’m not about to take a bullet over some training exercise. I’ll tell that Rod guy that myself. Five-hundred bucks isn’t worth getting shot over.”
“Five-hundred dollars,” Nicki muttered. “And he paid that to you, huh?”
“I’ve said too much already.” Max headed to the door. “Can I leave now? I really don’t have anything else to tell you. You probably know more than I do now.”
She gave me a nod and I opened the door for him. “Thanks for coming clean.” I slipped him several hundred in cash. “Lay low for the next few days or so. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Wherever this guy knows he can find you, stay the fuck away from. He doesn’t know about you and Greta, does he?”
“No. We didn’t get on friendly terms.”
“K. Stay away from her. Don’t give him any reason to go after her.” I had a bad feeling about the next few days. “Promise me. K?”
With a confused expression, he asked, “Did I fuck up?”
Nodding, I didn’t see any reason to sugarcoat things. “You did. You weren’t supposed to tell her anything. He’s going to want to make you pay for that.”
Nicki walked up behind me as she sighed heavily. “I won’t tell him a thing. You’ll be fine. I’ll act like this never happened. I don’t want anyone to get hurt here. And if I confront him, you’ll get hurt or even worse. So, you don’t say a thing, and neither will I.”
Max tried to give me back the money I’d given him, but I shook my head. “Keep it and do what I told you to. Lay low. And stay out of places he knows you hang out. Even if Nicki doesn’t say a thing, he’s not a nice man. I have a feeling he doesn’t like to leave loose ends at all. You are a loose end.”
Nodding, he finally seemed to understand. “I get it now.”
“The best way not to get into life and death situations is to not get involved with bad guys, Max,” Nicki let him know. “Now, go on and don’t tell a soul about this. Not anyone. Especially not your girl. Keep her name out of anything you do. If you love her, and I know you do, you’ll protect her at all times.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He turned to leave, and I closed the door behind him.
Nicki had walked away without me even hearing her do it. She popped open a beer and sucked the whole thing down. “Dean had to have let my supervisor in on his plan. And he had to have let the cop I’m working with here in on it too. There’s an apartment rented, and I had to sign for the car from the agency. A lot of money or at least him calling in favors went into this.”
“All this, just to get you away from Arlington?” Dean’s plan hadn’t been unraveled entirely.
“Well, not exactly. He did this to get me here, in Baltimore. He wants my help in bringing down the Iron Cobras.” She opened another beer and took a long drink before going on, “He wants me to go with him to a strip club to see about getting dirt or planting something, I’m sure.”
“The Executive Viper?” I didn’t even have to ask but did anyway.
“That’s the one.” Plopping into the chair, she shook her head. “But that can’t be the only reason he’s doing this. See, I disgraced him when I accused him of raping me.” Her blue eyes cut to mine. “He’s going to kill me and set it up like someone from the Iron Cobras did it. I could bet money on it.”
“No,” I couldn’t believe he’d do that. “He’s always after you. He doesn’t want you dead. He just wants you.”
“I don’t think you’re right.” She took another drink then pulled out her phone. “I need something stronger than beer. I’m ordering some Vodka and orange juice.”
Kneeling in front of her, I gently took the phone out of her hands. “You won’t need that.” I wiggled my fingers at her. “I’ve got magic hands. A massage is much better than getting bl
ind drunk. Plus, you’re going to need that brilliant brain of yours working if we’re going to be able to come up with a plan.”
With a smirk on her pink lips, she said exactly what I was thinking, “The only plan I have is to end him before he can end me.” The smirk vanished. “But I can’t do that.”
“Because you want to continue being a DEA agent?” I didn’t think they’d done right by her at all. “If a man like Dean Strong can get people in that agency to do what he wants them too, then I don’t have much respect for the people you work for.” Getting up, I went around behind her to rub her shoulders.
“That does feel better than a hangover. Thank you, Garrett. I’ve wondered the last couple of years how Dean was brought back to Arlington and I was kept there as well, even though he was put on probation for raping me. There are so many places to station an agent. So why put him and I together with our bad history?”
“Because government organizations of all kinds are corrupt as fuck.” I was sort of surprised she hadn’t figured that out on her own yet. “Working where you do, I know you’ve seen shit that wasn’t right.”
“Not that I can talk about.” She put her hands on top of mine. “You don’t have to really give me a massage. I understand you not wanting me to turn into a slush bucket in front of you.”
“It’s not that.” It really wasn’t anything like that and I didn’t stop the massage, digging in even deeper. “If you really want to tie one on, then I’m the man to have around to make sure you stay safe while you do that. But you can’t get weak right now. You’ve got to stay strong and fight. After Dean Strong is dealt with, I’ll personally pour your drinks if you want.”
“I know you’re right.” She turned in the chair to face me. “Help me brainstorm, Garrett. Help me come up with something that will shut him down.”
“I can help with that.” It would take some real thinking to come up with an idea she would go along with though. Straight out murder wouldn’t work for her.
“And while you’re exercising your brain, throw in something about figuring out what else I could do to make a living, besides working for the DEA.” Dropping her head as I ran my fists up and down her back, she moaned, “That feels so good.”
“Let’s see what your resume would look like, shall we?” I wanted her to know that there were many ways to make a buck in this world. Working for a government agency wasn’t the only thing in the world that she could do. “You can shoot a gun.”
“I can do that. I have exemplary marksmanship skills. But I have never shot a living thing before.” She laughed. “I’m still considered a rookie because of that.”
“That’s okay. Killing people isn’t a thing everyone has to do.” Using my elbow along her spine, I thought she’d get a better massage if she laid on the floor. “Get on your stomach on the floor.”
“Garrett, really, you don’t have to.”
Picking her up, I tossed her over my shoulder. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Laying her gently down on the carpeted floor, I ran my finger in a circle. “On your tummy.”
With a huff, she turned over, crossed her arms in front of her and rested her chin on them. “One of the things I think I’m really good at where my job is concerned is tracking down leads. Maybe I could be a private investigator.”
“Yeah, let’s be private investigators together,” I said half-jokingly. “My computer skills go all the way into computer forensics. The Navy taught me that.”
Straddling her back, I rubbed my palms together to warm them up. “You going under the shirt, hero?”
“I am going under the shirt.” Lifting the bottom up, I started to move it. A two-inch scar near her lower left rib stood out. “How long have you had this?” It had been stitched up; the small dots on each side of the scar showed that much.
“Since a crazed drug addict stabbed me when I wouldn’t let him take his three-year-old daughter from the foster home we were in. He didn’t get her. Not even when the pain almost made me pass out, I still held onto her. Tabitha Sinclair was her name. And that incident is why I became a DEA agent. I knew I wanted to get drugs off the streets to help keep people safe from drug addicts – among other things.”
“Wow.” She had no idea how much she’d impressed me. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen. I’d been there a week. My parents had been killed exactly nine days before that night the man came through the bedroom window. The little girl was in a toddler bed across the room from the twin bed that I was in.” She got quiet.
Tracing the scar with my fingertip, I couldn’t believe what all she’d gone through. “You’ve been through more than I have. You’ve been through more than a lot of people have. You don’t deserve all this pain.”
As if I hadn’t said a thing, she went on, “He was closer to her when he came through the window. But he was messed up and came toward me first, calling me Tabby. I jumped out of bed and told him to get out. Then I ran to Tabitha and held her as she tried to go to him. She kept crying, daddy, daddy.”
“I bet it was hard for you not to let them just leave together.” I would’ve probably let the guy take his kid.
“Our foster mother had told me why Tabitha was in foster care. Her father had killed her mother only a month before. He’d actually jumped bail to come find his daughter. So, no, I didn’t find it hard not to let her go to him at all.”
“Jesus, Nicki!” I couldn’t believe how heroic she truly was. “Smart, courageous, brave. I can go on and on, but you probably already know this about yourself.”
“If you get off me, I’ll show you something else.”
Moving to the side, I couldn’t believe she had more. “What else has happened to you?”
Pulling her shirt all the way off, she sat up then made an ‘X’ right between her boobs that were encased in a plain white bra. “This is the spot where Ryan Sosa broke my heart when he said no to being my date for the Sadie Hawkins dance when I was twelve.”
Laughing, I took her by the shoulders, shoving her back onto the floor then straddling her as I held her by the wrists. “You are a freaking heroine and that boy was an idiot.” Letting her hands go, I tickled her sides. “But I’m not an idiot.” Leaning over, I kissed her on the forehead. “You are the most remarkable person I’ve ever met.”
Her hands moved up my sides, leaving trails of heat behind them. “I think the same about you.” Moving her hands all the way up, she put them on my cheeks then pressed them together, making me have fish lips. “Come here and give me a fish kiss, handsome.”
Making fish lips at me, she pulled me in for a kiss as we both giggled like kids. I’d never had so much fun with any girl in my life.
She started moving her hands through my hair, tugging it as she ran one foot up the back of my leg, then her fish lips went away, and her tongue moved into my mouth as the kiss changed from playful to passionate.
Rolling over onto my back, I had her on top of me and she sat up with a playful smile on her plump lips. Putting her hands behind her, she took the bra off.
With my eyes bugged out, my dick thumped against her crotch as she wiggled on top of it. “Does this mean we’re moving our relationship forward, my heroine?”
“I’m game if you are.” She ran her hands under my t-shirt and pushed it up. “Ha! I knew it. A full six-pack. Yes!” Running her hands up and down my washboard stomach, she moaned, “Mine, all mine. Don’t make me share these with anyone, Garrett.” She took my hands, putting them on her C-sized tits. “In return, these will be all yours.”
The sudden rush to get to sex was awesome for me but I wasn’t sure it was the right thing for Nicki yet. “I’ll take them. And you can have my abs. No shirts tonight. But that’s it. You’ve found out some tough shit that you need to process. Agreed?”
Glazing over, her eyes dropped. “Why are you so damn good to me?”
Taking her by the wrists, I pulled her down to me then kissed her. “Because you deserve someone to be good to you
, baby. Now, let’s make out.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nicki
Draped across my side, Garrett’s arm lay heavy on me. Soft snores tickled my ear as he nuzzled my neck. My eyes wide open, I couldn’t stop my brain from working.
Dean has something sinister in mind for me.
It had taken a few hours for me to process everything. But it came down to the fact that Dean had others working with him where I was concerned. And the thing that stood out to me about that was they were females. At least my supervisor and the cop in Baltimore I was set up to work with were women.
It wasn’t lost on me that some women found men like Dean attractive. He had that whole dominant male thing going on. That had me thinking that he and the women he had pulled in on this vendetta against me had something sexual going on between them. Maybe even between the three of them.
The thing about the submissive females that stood out in my mind was that they weren’t weak women in the least. They were very strong-minded and strong-willed individuals who yearned for a dominate to tame them, shape them, make them into something else. But they only wanted to be something else while with their dominant and not at other times.
Dean found smart, strong women attractive and both the women helping him out with this thing were those things. Being that I had turned him in for rape may have made them angry with me.
I had no idea about what things they did. They might have played some sexual games that incorporated things like being taken against their will. And he may have described what he’d done to me in such a way that made then upset with me.
Plus, he’d told me on many, many occasions that I thought I was too good for him. So, he may have told them some lies about me thinking submissive women to be weak, stupid, and not a thing I wanted to be for him. Thus, making them think I did need to be brought down a peg or two, helping Dean out for that reason.
I did not think either woman had any idea of how far Dean would go to punish me for accusing him of rape. But I did know that he wasn’t going to let me get by with it.