By now, it was midnight. We had twenty hours to get to Texas and Google said the drive would take eighteen. It was going to be a virtually non-stop road trip.
I slid behind the wheel. “I’ll take the first stretch. You get some sleep.”
Louise climbed up into the passenger seat and started to get herself comfortable. Just before she settled down for the night, she leaned across and slipped her arms around my neck to kiss me. Immediately, the touch of her bare skin on mine made every little hair stand on end. Every muscle grew hard and tense, ready to grab her and pull her into my lap.
So I did. Just in case it was the last chance we had. I hauled her across the cab, making her yelp in surprise, until she was sitting on top of me, my cock instantly hard and straining at the feel of her. Then I kissed her hard, parting her lips with my tongue, closing my eyes, and drowning in her sweet, feminine softness. I imagined we were in some place with no more risks, no more danger, where no one could touch us ever again. And she responded, relaxing into me, leaning back on my arm so I could tilt her head back and kiss her even deeper. Her full breasts thrust out towards me and I ran a hand up under her top, gently squeezing one, feeling the warm skin and the hardening bud of her nipple stroke my palm.
She broke the kiss—just. Our lips stayed so close that each syllable stroked them together. “Did you really mean it?” she asked. “About going straight?”
I drew back just enough that I could look into her eyes. “I’ll find a church and become a bloody preacher, if you want me to.”
She pressed herself hard against me, then slid off my lap and onto her own seat. “Then let’s do this.”
I put the van into gear and we drove off into the night.
Louise
You may think you know what tension feels like. You’re wrong.
Tension is driving down a highway with half a million dollars worth of drugs in the back, waiting for a cop to pull you over. Tension is driving knowing that one little mistake—a single dangerous overtake, drifting a mile over the speed limit—could result in the red and blue lights and then the death of someone you love. Tension is doing all this in a truck with scratchy, lumpy seats, a gear shift that feels like stirring a lead rod in a barrel of broken parts and the steering from an ocean liner.
For six hours straight.
Sean had driven for the first six hours. He would have kept going for longer but, when he roused me at a gas station to see if I wanted to use the bathroom, I looked at his drooping eyelids and insisted I take a shift. As morning broke, the cops came out in force. They were looking for easy tickets to make their quotas, but the traffic was light, so pickings were thin. That made us a prime target.
I’d never realized how much I zoned out on a long drive until I couldn’t do it anymore. Even when I was just sitting in my lane, cruising along, I was constantly checking the mirrors for approaching cops, checking my speed, checking I wasn’t doing anything else wrong. When a cop overtook us, I’d sit there bolt upright, arms so stiff on the wheel that my muscles screamed, eyes straight ahead. They’d get closer and closer and closer, right up alongside us...then they’d pass by and I’d breathe again. I was soaked with sweat by the end of the first hour.
Now it was nearly noon and I was a wreck. My hands throbbed from gripping the wheel so tightly; my thighs burned from the awkward pedal position, made for someone with longer legs than me; my arms, shoulders and back were on fire from the constant stress.
And it wasn’t just the drive itself. My mind kept going back to what we were attempting here. A deal with the cartel, people who made Malone, with all his heavies and his jazz club, look like a spoiled child. I’d seen the news stories. If they weren’t happy with the deal I offered them, they’d simply shoot us. And my plan pretty much guaranteed that they wouldn’t be happy. And even if we could somehow cut a deal with them, we still had Malone to deal with. Wherever we ran, he’d hunt us down—
An ear-splitting whoop! from behind me. Whoop! Wh-wh-wh-whoop!
I checked the rear view mirror and saw the cop car, six feet behind me, lights flashing. The officer behind the wheel jerked his thumb for me to pull over.
Fuck.
Louise
Sean came awake fast, but there was nothing we could do except glance helplessly at one another. I slowed and pulled over at the side of the highway. The cop car’s siren cut out and it was suddenly very quiet: just the soft roar of passing cars and the desert wind whipping across the hood.
It stank of weed. The cop was going to smell it as soon as he got close.
“Open the windows,” Sean said quickly. “Open all the windows!”
I wound mine down—the truck was too old to have electric windows—and he did the same on his side. The wind blew through the car and lifted away some of the smell but, every time the wind died, it came back.
I heard a door slam. In my side mirror, I saw the cop climb out of his car and amble towards us. I looked across at Sean and he was grinding his teeth, hands twitching as if looking for something to hit, something to smash. But for once, violence wasn’t going to help us. Fighting the cops was out, as was running—we’d just wind up with every cop in the state on our tails.
All we could do was sit there and accept it. It was over.
The cop strolled up to my window. God, he’s going to get a promotion for this, I thought, imagining his face when he found the crop. Cop of the year, probably.
I tensed as the cop leaned against the door and took off his sunglasses. “You know why I pulled you over, ma’am?” His voice had a deep Texas twang, homely and warm. At any other time, it would have been comforting.
“No,” I said gingerly.
“You were drifting out of your lane,” he said almost sadly. “Maybe drifting off a l’il bit? White line fever?”
My heart sank. That?! All my tension and care and it came down to that? I’d been worrying so hard about the cartel, I’d lost concentration for a few vital seconds. At the same time, I felt a tiny spark of hope. If that was all it was, maybe there was a slim possibility we could get out of this. The wind was blowing steadily through the truck, carrying the scent of weed away from the cop. Please keep blowing. Please keep blowing. “Um. I am kind of tired. Early start this morning. Forgot to have my coffee.” I smiled my most ingratiating smile. “I’m really sorry. I’ll pull over and take a rest at the next gas station.”
The cop tilted his head to one side. “Where are you folks from?”
I could still feel the wind against my cheek. I tried to do the same puppy-dog eyes that Kayley did to me when she was in trouble. “LA, sir,”
“Well, now don’t they have coffee in LA?” the cop shook his head. “You get yourself off the road at the next gas station and don’t get back on it until you’ve had a bellyful of joe—you hear me?”
The wind died a little, then came back stronger, tickling my hair against my neck. I willed it to keep going, thinking of hurricanes and tornadoes, gusts strong enough to lift you off your feet. “Yessir. I will. I promise.”
The cop sighed, straightened up and turned to walk away. “You drive careful, y’hear?”
The wind died. And then gave one solitary gust—just a tiny little breath—in the wrong direction.
The cop took a single step away. And sniffed.
He could have a cold. He could be wearing so much cheap cologne it drowns out the smell. He could have been doing lines of coke for years and lost his sense of smell.
Just a little bit of luck. Please!
The cop put his hands on the roof and leaned right in through the window. He took a big lungful of air, his chest swelling.
“That there is weed,” he said, his voice hardening. “Ma’am, step out of the vehicle.”
Louise
I had to put one hand on the top of the door and the other on my seatback in order to climb down. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand up on my own. I automatically faced the truck and put my palms on the window sill where
someone had once served ice cream. I drifted out of my lane. It kept going through my head. I drifted out of my lane one lousy time and now I’m going to jail and Kayley’s going to die. And Sean: his life was over, too. He might not have been happy before, smashing stuff and playing guitar on the rooftop, but at least he’d been free.
A single tear fell from my eyes and landed in the dust beneath me. I didn’t want to cry and tried to take a slow, calming breath. But...we were in Texas. Did that mean we’d be put in jail in Texas? There was no one who could post bail for us.
I wasn’t going to see Kayley again, before she died.
My shoulders shook and then I was off: choking sobs that burned and ached in my chest. With my head down, the tears couldn’t run down my cheeks properly: they hung from my eyelashes and then dropped to the dust, making dark little splodges.
“Aw, for cryin’ out loud…” said the cop behind me. “There ain’t no need to cry about it.” There was a rasping sound, like sandpaper. When I looked at his shadow on the ground, I saw that he’d taken off his hat and was scratching at the stubble on the back of his neck. “What the hell did you think was gonna happen, driving through my state like this?”
I nodded, gulping. It had been a stupid plan.
He sighed. “Well...it should be a DUI. But...level with me: how stoned are you?”
I blinked through my tears. Stoned? He thought I was stoned? I swallowed, still sniffing and blinking back tears, and thought fast. “N—Not at all, sir,” I croaked. “It was last night, before we set out. We smoked a joint in the back of the truck: that’s why it smells in there. I swear, I’m fine. I really was just tired.”
“Turn around.”
I turned to face him.
He studied my face. “Really?”
“Yessir.”
He stared at my tear-red eyes for another few seconds and then said, “Walk that white line for me. One foot in front of the other.”
I looked down and put my sneakers on the line. Then I walked along it, willing my legs not to shake. When I dared to look round, he was staring at me. “Just tired, huh?” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes sir! I was stupid. And smoking the joint was stupid. I swear I’ll never do it again.”
He sighed. “You said you smoked it in the truck. If I go in there and search it, am I gonna find any drugs?”
Six months ago, I hadn’t been able to lie at all. Even now, it took every last shred of ability I possessed...but I kept my voice level. “No sir. We left all that stuff in LA. This is a fresh start for us.” I stared into his eyes, begging, and that part I didn’t have to fake.
“Fresh start, huh?”
I nodded. “We’re going to sell ice cream at fairs and...and rodeos and things. That’s what the truck’s for. We’re going to do it up, paint it and everything. Vintage. Traditional.”
The cop stepped closer. “You seem like a sweet girl,” he said. “So this one time, I’m going to let this go. But you promise me you’ll behave.” He nodded to the truck and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen your boyfriend, all muscles and attitude. He probably persuaded you to smoke that joint, didn’t he? Guys like that ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”
I nodded solemnly. “I’ll be careful.”
“And stay away from the drugs!”
“That’s absolutely my intention, sir.”
He gave one last long-suffering sigh. “You drive careful.” And then he was ambling back to his car.
I went around to the passenger side and climbed in, motioning Sean to move over. “You drive,” I said weakly. “I can’t—I can’t even….”
I collapsed into the passenger seat as the cop pulled away and drove off into the distance. I let my head tip back against the headrest and just melted into the seat, nothing but a floppy bag of twitching nerves.
“What the fuck happened?” asked Sean as started the truck.
“Karma,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “That was every speed limit I’ve ever stuck to, every empty intersection I’ve ever waited at. It finally paid off.”
Louise
The meet was at an old, abandoned airfield way out in the boonies. We got there with only twenty minutes to spare and pulled up alongside the runway, the ice cream truck sitting incongruously next to a couple of rusted aircraft carcasses. Even in September at nearly eight in the evening, the Texas sun was hot, bleaching the tufts of grass that had grown up through the cracks in the concrete and gleaming off the broken panes of glass in what had once been the tiny passenger terminal.
The door to the control tower had long since been broken open, so we climbed up to the top and stood looking out over the airfield. Some local teens must have discovered the place, because there were empty beer cans and graffiti all over the inside. “You think we can pull this off?” I asked, nudging a can with my foot.
Sean wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Just remember,” he said. “It’s all about attitude.”
The sun glinted off a speck in the distance, a speck that slowly grew bigger and bigger in the clear blue sky. Then, with a roar of engines that shook the tower, the private jet was throttling back and sweeping in to land right in front of us. Sean led the way down the stairs.
The first three people out of the plane were men in suits, all carrying machine guns. The fourth was an older guy in slacks and a shirt. He removed his big, gold-rimmed sunglasses as he approached us. “Sean? And Louise?”
They’d demanded our full names on the phone. With the cartel, you didn’t fuck around with false ones. We nodded.
“I am Francisco.” He sounded cautious, but not unkind. “These men will search you.” It wasn’t a request.
Two of the men stepped up to us while the third kept his gun pointed right at us. Hands swept up my legs and over my ass, up my sides and across my back. Having a man do it should have felt uncomfortable—awkward, at least. But the men were as clinically professional as doctors, far from Malone’s heavies or Murray’s leering thugs. It made it even scarier: I suspected they’d be just as clinical if they were ordered to drag our bodies into shallow graves.
The men stepped back and nodded that we were clean. “The weed is in the truck?” asked Francisco. Sean nodded. Francisco spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to two of the men, and they hurried off to the ice cream truck. “We’ll try some samples,” he told us as an afterthought. Again, not a request.
We spent an agonizing ten minutes standing there while the packets of weed were unloaded, counted and stacked up on the runway. Packets were selected at random to be sliced open and tested. Francisco sniffed the weed, rubbed it between his fingers and finally smoked joints of it, just one slow inhalation of each sample before he crushed the joint underfoot. It was impossible to read his expression. At last, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. Just one word: Sí. Then he crossed his arms and just stared at us as if waiting for something.
“So?” Sean asked at last. “Are we making a deal?”
“Not with me,” said Francisco. “With her.”
Behind him, a woman emerged from the plane. Her long, coal-black hair blew in the wind, as did the long, gauzy layers of her exquisite white dress. Everything about her was coolly elegant and off-the-scale confident. One of those people who’ve held so much power for so long that they’ve become accustomed to it, like a president. The men with guns stepped back respectfully as she approached.
I’d seen her in photos, but only grainy black and white ones shot with a long lens. This was Isabella Gallego. The head of the entire Gallego cartel.
It was very difficult to gauge her age. She could have been anywhere between mid-thirties and mid-fifties. Her skin was soft and barely lined, her hair still completely black—natural or dyed, I wasn’t sure. She was incredibly beautiful.
She looked both of us up and down, speaking to Francisco without turning to him. “So it’s good?” she asked in heavily-accented English.
“It’s really good,” said Francisco. “Smooth. Strong.”
“Very.”
Isabella drew in a long, slow breath. “Okay,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand, as agreed.”
I took a deep breath and glanced at Sean. He nodded at me. You can do this.
“No,” I said.
Isabella slowly took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were a beautiful deep brown, but they were utterly without warmth. “Excuse me?”
“I have a counter-offer,” I told her.
“That isn’t how this works. We agreed a price.”
I looked nervously at Sean. “We said two-fifty on the phone to get you here. But the weed is worth six hundred thousand. You know that. We know that.”
Isabella stared at me...and then laughed out loud. “In Texas, maybe. But we’re not from Texas. We’ll sell it to our dealers for seven hundred thousand...maybe eight. If we pay you six, it’s barely worth the trouble.” She shook her head. “Two-fifty. Take it.”
I wanted to take it. I was terrified. But two hundred and fifty thousand wouldn’t pay for Kayley’s treatment. I shook my head again.
There was a tiny noise, barely audible, from off to my left. The men with guns, readying themselves in case they were told to fire. Isabella was looking at me pityingly, urging me to do the smart thing. I felt myself weakening. This is not me. This is not my life. I was a freaking botany geek, for God’s sake! I just wanted to run and let someone else deal with this.
And then Sean put his hand on my back. Just a gentle touch, but I could feel the whole strength of him throbbing through me, letting me know he was there, that he was beside me in every possible way, forever. My legs stopped shaking.
“Six hundred thousand,” Sean and I said together.
Growing and Kissing Page 25