by Cassie Cole
But they weren’t jogging up the street. They went as far as the cafe door, then came inside. All the cafe patrons stopped what they were doing to watch.
I stared with horror as they strode right up to my table and said my name.
6
Karen
“Si, me llamo Karen Helmandollar,” I said. “¿Cuál es el problema?” Yeah, my name’s Karen Helmandollar. Is there a problem?
“Ven con nosotros,” one of the officers said. Come with us. An order, not a request.
“Que…” I began.
One of the policemen grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet. I was too shocked and confused to protest as they led me from the cafe and into the back of their police car.
The sirens wailed as they drove up the pedestrian-only boulevard and back to the main street. People stopped to watch, gazing at the windows to see who the criminal was.
I asked the officers what was going on, but neither of them paid me any attention from the front of the car. Finally I gave up and tried to take slow, deep breaths.
Everything is okay. It’s probably a misunderstanding.
They hadn’t handcuffed me, or said I was being arrested. That was a good sign. Maybe it had to do with the bar fight last night. Although they could have taken my statement without throwing me in the back of the police car.
I looked at the buildings out the window to try and gauge our location. They were taking me to the police station on the Gran Via. Two more blocks, then we would be turning left…
Instead, the car turned right and went in the opposite direction.
I began to sweat in spite of the air conditioning blowing on my face. They’re not taking me to the station. Were they even police officers, or were they impersonating them? Was I being kidnapped, just like my mom was constantly afraid of? I hadn’t asked to see any identification. Uniforms could be faked, but stealing a police car was tougher. Plus there was the more obvious question: why kidnap me specifically in the middle of the day?
“¿A dónde vamos?” I asked. Where are we going?
The officers continued staring straight ahead.
To my surprise, we eventually did arrive at a police station, though it was farther away than the one on the Gran Via. As the officers got out of the car I considered being less cooperative. I could insist on staying in the car until they gave me some answers. I could yell and make a scene as they took me inside. The urge to be unruly was strong. I had rights!
They opened the car door for me, and I followed them inside without a fuss. I was led through the station, past more bored-looking cops who gave me a quick who is this girl glance. Finally I was escorted into a small, featureless room with oppressively white walls. The only contents were a table with two chairs facing each other. The officer took my purse and cell phone, then closed the door behind me.
“Okay then,” I muttered to myself.
They let me stew for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Alone with my thoughts, I began second-guessing everything I’d done in the past week. Getting kicked out of the club was the obvious one, but I started over-analyzing every potential offense. Using my student I.D. at the theater even though, technically, I was no longer a student at the University of Barcelona. Saving a few pennies by ringing up organic bananas as regular bananas at the grocery store.
I was on the verge of breaking down when the door opened and a new officer entered. She was middle-aged but fit underneath her deep blue uniform, and she had a sheet of paper in one hand and a stub of a pencil in the other.
“Hello,” she said in accented English.
“Why am I being held?” I demanded, rising to my feet. “You can’t do this!”
She sat in the chair opposite me and stared, stone-faced. Feeling foolish, I quickly sat back down.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Karen Helmandollar. Don’t you know that already?”
“Date of birth?”
“April 14, 1996.”
“Your age?”
I stared at her as if it were a trick question. “I’m 23 years old,” I said with only a hint of sarcasm.
The officer scribbled a note on her single sheet of paper.
“Were you at Discoteca Merlin last night?”
So that’s what this was about. The fight at the club. Relieved, the information poured out of me. “Yes, I was. A man there tried to roofie me. That is, he slipped a drug into my drink. His name is Phillip, although I suppose that might not be his real name. He had dark hair, olive skin, and was wearing…”
I trailed off at the officer’s annoyed look. “I do not need this description.”
I gave a start. “Then I don’t understand. Why am I here?”
“Were you at Discoteca Merlin last night?”
“I already told you I was!”
Another scribble with the pencil. “Have you been there before?”
“No. It was my first time.”
“For what purpose did you visit the club?”
“I was hoping to get roofied,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. “I love it when guys try to drug me. Every girl’s dream.”
The officer gave me a flat look. “There is no reason to be uncooperative.”
“I would be more cooperative if I knew why I was here!”
The door opened, and then a man walked into the room.
But not just any man. The most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life.
7
Karen
The man who came into the interrogation room was huge. Not fat—big, his entire body popping with muscle. His khaki cargo pants were almost tight from his tree trunk-like legs. He wore a short-sleeve polo shirt which might have been a size XXL but was also dwarfed by his tremendous upper body. His arms were veiny and defined as they hung out the tight sleeves. His face looked like something carved out of marble, lots of hard lines and a strong jaw covered with a thin beard. His short black hair was streaked with grey, though he looked to be only 30 or so years old. Maybe 35.
“Thank you,” he said to the officer. His accent was American. The police officer immediately nodded and left, leaving the two of us alone. The buff American ignored the open chair and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked at me with curiosity. Like I was a puzzle he was brought here to solve.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a quiet, but deep, voice.
“Karen Helmandollar.”
“How old are you?”
Goodness gracious, that voice is as smooth as caramel.
“Are you going to ask me all the same questions over again?” When he didn’t respond, I answered, “23 years old.”
“Why are you in Barcelona, Karen Helmandollar?”
“I’m a grad student at the University of Barcelona. In their study abroad program. Am I in trouble? Who are you? Are you from the American embassy or something?”
The question sounded ridiculous the moment I heard it out loud. He didn’t look like a bureaucrat.
“Grad student,” he said, tasting the words. “Do you work for a foreign government?”
“What? Of course not.”
“Russia?” he prodded. “Iran? China?”
I struggled not to laugh. “I’m a microbiologist from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I’m in Barcelona studying warm water cell growth in response to—”
“Why did you go to the club last night?” he suddenly asked. His eyes, which were as green as shamrocks, bore into mine. Once again, I was struck by how ruggedly handsome he was. If he were wearing flannel he might have looked like a lumberjack. But here, in this context, he exuded silent danger. Like a predator who wasn’t sure whether or not to pounce.
I desperately wanted to tell him all my secrets. A subconscious urge to please him. To make him smile.
Yet I hesitated at his question. “Why does anyone go to the club? I wanted to have fun.”
He sensed my hesitation, and his stare hardened.
“To ce
lebrate the end of my semester before going home.”
The stare continued. He didn’t believe me.
“I don’t know what else you want me to say. That’s why I went to the club.”
“How did you come in contact with Seth?”
I spread my hands, exasperated. “Seth who? I don’t know any Seth.”
Anger flashed behind those emerald eyes and his hard jaw tightened. “Now I know you’re lying to me, Karen Helmandollar.”
“I don’t know anything!” I said. My voice was teetering on the edge of pleading now. “I swear I don’t know what’s going on. I was sitting in the cafe about to eat breakfast when two police officers hauled me away, and now you’re in here interrogating me like I’m some kind of criminal, and all I want is to go home, so if I have any rights at all I’d like to talk to a lawyer.”
My voice cracked at the end. I wasn’t crying, but there was a shimmer in my eyes threatening to turn into tears. What was I supposed to do if this man didn’t believe me?
He unfolded his arms and stuck his hands in his pockets. “You were with two of my… colleagues, last night. Seth and Hunter. I want to know why.”
“Hunter…” I said. “Wait a minute. You mean Hunter and Cairo!”
His nostrils flared at the name. Yep, that’s what this was about.
“He introduced himself as Cairo,” I said, eager to tell him whatever he wanted to hear. “But yeah, I was with them last night.”
“How did you come in contact with Cairo?”
“We were next to each other at the bar. He made fun of my American accent.”
“He initiated the conversation?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why did you go home with them?”
I let out an annoyed laugh. “Why do you think? So I could fuck them.”
Any other time, in any other context, I would have been mortified to say this out loud in a police station. As dirty as I liked to be behind closed doors, it was entirely different talking about my sex life out loud with a stranger.
“Is that the truth?” he asked.
I made a face. “Is it really so hard to believe that a girl would want to sleep with two ripped hunks at the club? Or is wild sex a crime in Spain? I’m just a silly American girl studying abroad, so I may be behind on international sex-law.”
He scowled at my attempt at humor. “How did you select them?”
I laughed again. “You make it sound like they were targets. I didn’t select them. I chatted with Cairo for a few minutes at the bar, then went back to dancing. Then this other asshole, Phillip, slipped a roofie into my drink and brought it back to me. Cairo saw him do it.”
“Cairo swung first?”
“Like my life depended on it,” I said. “He got the better of the asshole until Phillip’s buddies showed up.”
“And that’s when Hunter joined the fight?”
I got the impression he’d heard all of this already, and was merely using me to corroborate the series of events. “Hunter jumped in then, yeah. Came flying in like a bat out of hell. Didn’t even ask questions. He just had Cairo’s back.”
The faintest ghost of a smile curled my interrogator’s lip. “That sounds like Hunter, alright.”
“How do you know them?” I asked. “Are you their boss or something? Are they in trouble? Shit. I was afraid that would happen. Look, they were just trying to protect me…”
“They’re not in trouble for the bar fight,” he said.
A name tickled my memory from last night. “Logan. Are you Logan? Their roommate?” The way his mouth hung open told me I was right. That, and the way they’d acted like their roommate was a hard-ass. This guy fit the description.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he said. Was he flustered that I knew his name? “I think you’re telling the truth. That’s good.”
“Why would I lie?”
Everything started falling into place in my mind. The weird questions about foreign governments, and who approached whom at the bar. The way Cairo and Hunter had been secretive about why they were in Barcelona…
“You guys work for the government? Like the CIA?” And then, in a flash of insight, I realized what they were. “Oh! I bet you’re Navy SEALs!”
Logan’s eyebrows rose in alarm. Bingo.
“Now I understand,” I said. “You’re a Navy SEAL team, and thought I was some secret agent trying to get close to you with seduction. Like a spy.” I put my hand up as if to take an oath. “I promise I’m just your average, boring graduate student who spends most of her time peering through a microscope.”
He studied me. Once again I withered under that handsome stare. Would this have been easier or harder if my interrogator had been ugly? I wasn’t sure.
Finally, Logan knocked on the door. It opened, and the officer outside handed him a gallon-sized plastic bag. He tossed it on the table. It held my purse and cell phone.
“You’re free to go,” Logan said in a calm baritone. “Thanks for your cooperation.”
I stared at my bag. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You held me against my will on some random suspicion?”
“You could have left at any time,” he said. “And our suspicion wasn’t random. The officer at the front desk will call you a taxi. We will contact you if we have any further questions. And Karen? It would be best if you didn’t talk to anyone about this, or about Cairo and Hunter.”
He held the door open for me. I slowly rose to my feet and held my bag of belongings in both hands. “If you do have any further questions, you can just call. You interrupted my breakfast.”
“Some things are more important than breakfast.”
I scoffed. “Name one.”
That beautiful face only stared back at me. I walked through the doorway, then stopped.
“In all seriousness, I hope Cairo and Hunter aren’t in trouble. They were just protecting me from a creep. They’re good guys.”
For a brief moment, Logan’s face softened. “They’re good guys,” he agreed, but didn’t say anything more.
I followed the waiting officer outside.
*
The officer told me a taxi was on its way, and then she went back inside without any other explanation or apology for my inconvenience. I didn’t mind. The small, windowless room had been getting to me even after only half an hour inside. It felt good to get some fresh air again. Like I’d escaped from prison.
Or narrowly avoided prison. I shivered in spite of the warm noon sun.
I stood there collecting myself for several minutes before checking my cell phone. I had three missed calls and a voicemail from Linda. At first I wondered if she’d heard that I was pseudo-arrested in the cafe, but it was probably more boring than that. I bet she was calling to pester me about packing.
I was about to call her back when a familiar voice said, “Hey. Karen.”
I spun to find Hunter standing there with an apologetic look on his face. The breeze blew his blond hair across his crystal eyes. “No designer jeans today?”
He cracked a smile. Man, he had a great smile. “I save those for the club.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen. About what just happened…”
“What, you mean the weird one-night-stand debriefing?” I asked with only a hint of annoyance in my voice. “Does that happen to all the girls you take home from the club?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There were… I guess call them extenuating circumstances. It’s not your fault.”
“Of course it’s not my fault!” I hissed. There were pedestrians walking down the street and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I lowered my voice. “All I did was screw a pair of Navy SEALs and now suddenly—”
“What?” he said, eyes wide with alarm. “We never told you that. And Logan sure as hell didn’t.”
There was my confirmation. As if there was any doubt before now.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out. When I guessed you were SEALs, he h
ad the same gawking look on his face you have now.”
He grabbed me by the arm—a quick reminder of how overwhelmingly, tremendously strong he was—and led me away from the street and into the mouth of an alley. A cat leaped from its hiding place behind a dumpster and scurried out of sight.
“Dude, don’t talk about that,” he warned. “Not to anyone here. Okay?”
“It’s not a secret, is it?” I’d seen SEALs give interviews on television, and remembered how the guys that killed Bin Laden had book deals. I didn’t understand what the problem was.
“Kind of, sort of,” he said. “What matters more is whether anyone knows where we are. If that makes sense.”
“That does make sense,” I nodded my head patronizingly. “I can totally see why you and Cairo went to the club if you were trying to lay low.”
“Just be chill about it. Unless you want Logan questioning you again about every little detail of what we did.”
What we did. The image of him behind me, muscles glistening with sweat as he grabbed my hips and fucked me doggy style, hitting my inner wall in that sweet, intense spot while I kissed Cairo…
“I had fun last night,” I said. We were close enough that I could smell peppermint on his breath. “A lot of fun.”
He grinned that disarming grin again. The smile of a troublemaker who’d gotten away with it, and was thinking about doing it again. “Me too.”
I kissed him. I didn’t really intend to—it just sort of happened. I pressed my chest against his and tilted my head up to meet his lips and gave him the goodbye kiss he deserved.
He growled into my mouth, and his hand slid down my belly into the front of my panties. I moaned as his fingers touched my most sensitive place, pressing into my clit with rough pressure before rubbing it in a circle. I shoved my tongue in his mouth and his own warm, wet tongue pushed back harder, swirling in a circle in time with his fingers.
“You like that?” he whispered before jamming his tongue in my ear, wriggling up and down with sexual promise that made me wish it was on my clit rather than his fingers.