Dino

by Desiree Lafawn

  So normally, I would go to my grave doing what I could to support Gabe Anderson, even moving closer to the East Coast than I ever wanted to be again in my life, because he was the reason I was still alive. Still free. Gabe Anderson helped me feel safe. And not in that romantic, his arms are my wonderland, syrupy sweet way. In the life and death kind of way.

  But right now, looking at the inquisitive look in his puppy dog eyes as he was not even trying to hide the fact that he was staring at me, waiting for me to tell him something, all I wanted to do was drop kick him in his fucking chin.

  "What?" I asked him, more testily than I probably would have before I had the life scared out of me. Jesus I was on edge.

  "Nothing. This is my office. I'm just sitting." That innocent look didn't fool me. He was a sandy-haired shark in a three-piece suit. Waiting. Calculating.

  "But you aren’t sitting in your office. You are sitting in the waiting room to your office. Waiting." I pushed my tortoiseshell glasses higher up my nose in a movement I barely registered anymore. I had been wearing these things so long it was almost like I actually needed to wear them. "What are you waiting on, Gabe? Do you need some busy work? Because it's my job to do the busy work." I knew what was coming as soon as he opened his mouth. I could tell by the way he slumped down in his chair and let his chin rest on his chest and his legs extend until they were under the row of empty chairs in front of him.

  "I'm bored."

  Yep. Saw it coming. A bored Gabe is a dangerous Gabe. I wasn't inviting his attention any more than I had it though, so I kept my lips shut. Gabe wasn't done talking though.

  "I miss my old job. I don't get to do anything here. It's boring. I'm bored. I want to be in the field again." He would have sounded like a whining child, but I knew the field for him meant undercover, guns and rescues. Gabe was no wussy, he just needed action to stay level. It was his thing. It was what he was good at. To be honest, I missed his old job too. Gabe was good at field work and intel, but he wasn’t really good at keeping things organized. I, however, was excellent at it, and we made a good team.

  My workload corresponded with his workload, and to be honest, I was getting bored too. I would be a liar if I said I didn't miss the action too. I didn't shoot guns and rescue hostages, and I didn't get hired for bodyguard gigs when celebrities were in town, but I kept busy with the logistics of everything. I had a purpose, and shit to do that I was good at. Here I just managed the schedule of a guy who clearly had enough free time to spend melting into a puddle of boredom in his own damn waiting room looking like he wanted to give me the third degree about things I didn't want to talk about. To hammer that particular nail home, he suddenly fixed me with a very mature, eagle-eyed stare and opened his mouth again.

  "Dino called me Friday night."

  Yeeeeeah. Ugh. Dino. I had ditched him ten minutes after we got there. There was no way he was going to be cool with me after that. As much as Dino and I like to pick at each other, I really didn't feel good about freaking out and running away. Because that's what I had done, run away.

  "And?" I didn't know what he wanted me to say to that, so I didn't add anything.

  "He was worried about you, Jeanette, and that surprised me because Dino normally doesn't worry about anyone but himself. He was asking me a bunch of questions..."

  "What did you tell him?" I hated that I interrupted. And that I sounded so desperate but fuck I didn't want Dino to know. Any of it. I hated that I sounded so weak, or how terrified I was by where this conversation was going. I hated it all.

  "I didn't say shit to him, Jeanette, but I have some questions of my own." Gabe had a hard look in his eyes. The look of a man who was used to getting the information he wanted. I owed Gabe for a lot of things, but I was only willing to give so much.

  "I reserve the right not to answer." I crossed my arms over my chest to hammer the point home. I was in charge of this conversation, not Gabe. I allowed him to have the information, he didn't take it from me.

  "Fair enough," he replied and then he abruptly relaxed, going from a bird of prey perched and ready to pounce, to casual and relaxed boss man engaging in friendly conversation. I wasn't fooled. I had worked with Gabe for years now. This was definitely still an interrogation.

  "I don't push you for a lot of information, Jeanette. I have learned enough about your character these last six or so years that I can draw my own conclusions about the kind of person you are. And I like the kind of person you are. I have literally trusted you with my life on more than one occasion. You have access to almost all of my personal information including passwords and safe codes, my medical history and shit to do in case I get killed on a job. You literally hold my life in your hands. But you don't trust me enough to tell me what happened to you."

  "You know what happened to me," I whispered angrily. My voice was so low I wondered if he could even hear me, but I lacked the control to speak in a normal tone. I didn't want to talk about this.

  "No. I know how I found you. I know that I was following a lead on items being sold on the Silk Road and instead of stolen goods I found a terrified young woman tangled up in something she knew nothing about, trying desperately to buy a new identity, just so she could go to a hospital for help without being identified. You were bleeding out slowly and you were so fucking afraid of being found, that you tried to buy a new name before you could even get treatment." His lips were pressed together in a hard line. Gabe wasn't angry with me. He was angry with the situation. I remembered exactly what he was talking about.

  The Silk Road was slang for items being bought and sold with cryptocurrency. Digitally mined computer money that was essentially impossible to trace. Perfectly legal, but also perfect for the criminal element. It had started as just an office project when Bitcoin first came about. A co-worker and I built a few mining computers in an empty office hobbled together with pieces and parts of spares in the supply closet. We ordered a few cards and let them run twenty-four hours a day. It was a minimal investment and the payout was really slow, so my coworker lost interest. The output was not worth the effort she had said. I put in the time, monitoring, researching, and making trades. It was fascinating. I bought and sold and traded, every fraction of a penny was money I had tied up in electronic accounts that David knew nothing about. The Silk Road would eventually buy my freedom, but sometimes even money can't save you.

  It was almost too late for me.

  I'd made it to Oregon. I’d driven for two days almost straight through, stopping only to take quick cat naps during the day at roadside rest areas. I always parked between two other vehicles and never for longer than two hours. When I got to Portland I knew it was my last stop. My body was shutting down, and the little light that I had been protecting, that thing that had fueled my need to run? Well, it had been put right out. I wasn’t very far along, but I knew what was happening. I’d been beaten far too badly for a baby to still be able to grow inside of me. And I would never get the chance again, he’d made sure of that. I didn't know quite how dangerous it was at the time, but I did know I couldn't go to a hospital and get treatment without the proper identification. They would treat me, but if I refused to give my information they would print me, run whatever information they could get, and find out the truth that way. Then David would have me. He would find me and drag me back. Again.

  So, I tried to buy a new name and new social security number on the black market. It was straight dumb luck that led Gabe to me. He was looking for something completely different, instead he found someone nearer to death than she knew and desperate. I don't know why he helped me. I don't even know how he found a medical facility that would take me as an emergency patient, with no identification, no questions besides some family history out of medical necessity, and I couldn’t even answer those. It probably had something to do with his deep as the ocean pockets, but I never asked. I also didn't ask how he got me the airtight identity. Social security, birth certificate, and backstory. All done while I was in recovery.
I had a new birthdate, but that was easy enough to deal with, I never celebrated it anyway.

  I could have left at any given time, but I stayed with Gabe. Because he was a good guy. A real one. He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't, he just adhered to his own moral code, and his moral code said there was no damn way he was going to leave me broken and terrified in a filthy motel in Portland slowly bleeding to death from a miscarriage and the beating of a lifetime.

  I know what Gabe wanted. He wanted to know how. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know a name. I couldn't give him that. It wasn't that David was some head honcho. Nope, he was just a regular police officer in a small town where everyone knew everyone. The problem was his influence. Everyone loved David. Everyone. He was the smooth-talking local golden boy who could do no wrong. And he never did. To anyone but me. For some reason I was a catalyst to his obsession. His madness. Every time I tried to get away, every time I ran, he would find me and drag me back home. Telling me that he loved me. That only he could take care of me. That we were meant to be a family.

  The terrifying part was that he believed it.

  Enough to convince everyone around me that I was crazy. That I needed medication. That I needed David to take care of me. It wasn't just his physical abuse that I was afraid of, because I tried to get up and leave. More than once. The truly scary part about David Ashley, was just how manipulative he was of everyone around him, not just me. And without a family of my own, no brothers and sisters, no parents to speak of, there wasn’t a soul in my corner who would believe me when I said I was living with a demon.

  Gabe wanted to know who my boogeyman was, so he could help, but I wasn't giving him up. I didn't want Gabe to try to find him. I didn't want to establish any link between myself and that man. Gabe thought he was Superman, and I know for a fact that when or if he did any digging he would wonder why I was making such a big deal about a small-time cop like David Ashley. There are good cops and bad cops. Abusive relationships are a dime a dozen. But David Ashley did something to my mind, and I have been fighting for the last six years to try to fix it. To not be afraid to sleep in a bed again – sometimes I still huddle into a ball in the closet, where I can feel the wall at my back and the door at my feet, and that was the only way I could make the memories go away long enough to get some rest.

  Shit like that doesn't go away because he couldn't get his hands on me anymore. He still had an iron grip on my psyche.

  So, I wouldn't tell Gabe anything. I wouldn't give him the name. It was the only control I had left.

  And since Gabe didn't like not getting his way, he would get salty about it. Enough to keep poking away at me when I clearly didn't want to talk.

  "I just want to help you, Jeanette, but you are so damn stubborn. Look at you, you’re freaking out right now."

  I was not freaking out, I was completely under control, thank you very much.

  Even if my hands were trembling and I kept looking at the door, expecting David to walk through it at any moment, just because I had seen someone from his precinct in the same place as me for ten minutes. But he said her name. He said my name. I'm pretty sure that I had him convinced he had the wrong person, but still. Too close. Too fucking close.

  "You are full of shit, Gabe, I'm here aren’t I?"

  "Yeah but for how long? How come your car is so loaded down with boxes and bags that you can barely see out the back windshield? What are you doing, Jeanette?" Gabe was stalking closer now, getting too close to the safety of the half wall that separated my desk area from the rest of the lobby. There was danger in his eyes and the volume of his voice rose with every word. "Where are you going, Jeanette? Are you just going to cut and run without saying anything to anyone? After six years of being my partner is that what I am worth to you?"

  I hated that he was scaring me right now. I trusted Gabe more than any other person in this world, but right now, with his menacing stance and his loud voice I couldn't stop from backing up and I couldn't stop my legs from shaking.

  Do not cry, show no fear.

  "I was cleaning the apartment and planned on taking things to donate after work today."

  "Lies," he thundered as he came to the desk and slapped his hands on the counter. His eyes widened in surprise as I immediately dropped to my knees with my hands over my head before crawling under the desk to get away from the anger of someone who I know would never put their hands on me in a million years. I hated that I did it, but I couldn't stop. Couldn't stop when the irrational fear rode me hard and the sobs racked my body. Couldn't stop even as he vaulted over the waist-high partition and sat cross-legged on the floor. Kept bawling as he pulled me gently out from under the desk and into his lap, holding me like a baby with his chin on my head and his arms squeezing me tight. Shutting out the light, shutting out the world, protecting me from whatever I was afraid of, horrified that even for a moment, even mistakenly, that it was him I had feared.

  I heard him swallow roughly, and then in a voice thick with emotion he choked out, "Jeanette. Talk to me. Please."

  But I couldn't stop crying long enough to answer him.

  6

  Dino

  I thought about Jeanette all through my lunch meeting in Detroit. And by lunch meeting I meant that Eddie and I stood around the table looking intimidating while Chaz ate and entertained his guests.

  Maybe intimidating wasn't the right word.

  Eddie is Chaz's gunman. His personal protection. There is nothing scary looking about Eddie except for maybe how shockingly bright red his hair and freckles are. He kept it short, but it still shone like a stop sign in a headlight and his goatee made a rusty stain across his naturally pale face. He was pretty thin, nothing much to look at, but he wore his gun holster on the outside of his pants and that's as menacing as some people needed to be to get their point across. Eddie always stands right next to Chaz. Even if Chaz is sitting, like he was at the moment, Eddie was always standing nearby, like an accessory, ready to pull the trigger. We didn't call him Fast Eddie, or any other kind of nickname, but make no mistake, Eddie was fast enough when he needed to be.

  Gordon was positioned on the other side of the closed door, kind of keeping tabs on anyone coming in or out of the room. The guests didn't bring in any muscle with them, which was either ballsy or smart depending on how you wanted to look at it. Gordon had graying hair and a receding hairline. He looked like someone's damn grandpa. Like he had a golden retriever that fetched his paper for him every morning and he liked to fly fish in the country on the weekends. I don't know what the hell Gordon liked to do for fun, but I'd seen the guy drop a body without blinking, just because Chaz showed him the appropriate amount of dollars. Gordon was probably the scariest guy I had ever met, mostly because he was just so damn nice all the time. He was the same way with killing. Ask a person how's the weather and then blow out the back of their head. He was definitely a man to keep track of after my deals were done.

  It was my job to keep an eye on everybody. To be quiet. To just watch. Chaz liked me because I kept my cool. I wasn't prone to emotional outbursts and I didn't interrupt or try to voice my opinion. All the qualities of a good underling. Also, qualities of a good spy, but Chaz didn't need to know that. The whole point of me going undercover in his operation was to find out why he was sweating my grandma's restaurant so bad. It was just an upscale Italian place. We loved it because it was ours, but why would a guy like Chaz care about it? He went after my family like the building was on an untapped cache of oil or something.

  There had to be a reason, but I hadn't found it yet. The best I could do right now was make sure I was the guy sent to hassle the family – and protect them from whatever the hell Chaz was planning on throwing their way. I just hoped they could keep from blowing my cover until it was all over, and not completely hate me by the time that happened.

  I would have liked nothing more than to focus on the reason I was standing in the corner playing wise guy for Chaz Malone in the first place, but I c
ouldn't help thinking of Jeanette and her runaway bride routine as I stared across the table at the guy who had spooked her in the first place. Was it some kind of coincidence? Not in my line of work. I let my gaze roam around the room like I was supposed to, but I never let that pasty-faced doughboy out of my sight. Fresh-faced and eager, he was definitely the sidekick. I knew he was the sidekick because he kept eating while Chaz and the other guy talked. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the kid, he ate his fucking pasta salad with his hands. Just picked away at it – a little piece of tomato, a piece of rotini. Did they not have forks in bum fuck New York, or whatever upstate country town they came from? What the hell were they even doing here?

  As gross as his eating habits were, I shouldn’t have been concerned for him, his boss was the real trouble. He was the type of guy who was used to being in control. I could tell by his posture as he sat perfectly straight in his chair, seemingly relaxed but still on guard. He was casually taking in everything around the room, making special note of Eddie, and also myself. As his gaze passed over me I met his stare unflinchingly. Alpha to alpha.

  I already didn’t like this guy.

  It didn’t surprise me when he said he was a cop. I knew a lot of cops, some of them good and some of them less good. I had never had one walk into a meeting with a crime boss and straight announce their profession like he was listing a/s/l in an online chat.

  He was super fucking proud of it too.

  I wanted to know what the hell this meeting was about, but as a lackey it wasn’t my place to ask questions. It wasn’t even my place to speak unless Chaz asked me to. My job was to be a fucking piece of furniture and observe everything. Funny thing though, the cop in the chair seemed to be super interested in observing me. And nobody was saying shit until lunch was over, but the only person still eating was the dufus sidekick who was still picking at his plate like he had the manners of a monkey. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was the only one still hoovering the deli platter until he looked up and saw four pairs of eyes staring at him like he was a museum display.