by A. J. Downey
“I… I would never ask you to do that,” Chrissy murmured.
“You didn’t have to.”
“A man will do some real crazy shit for the love of a good woman,” Skids said and sounded like he’d been there, which he had.
Chrissy’s eyes brimmed with new, but entirely different tears. She sniffed but they spilled over anyways. Yale handed her a paper towel.
“Thanks,” she said her voice broken in only that way that crying made it do.
“No problem,” Yale said.
“Okay, so how do we know that this asshole making threats and attempting to kill Ms. Franco here, is the same dude that took pot shots at the Ten-Thirteen last night?” Poe asked, leaning forward.
“We don’t, but it fits,” I said.
“Chrissy, please…” she corrected Poe dully.
“Okay, so we’re stalled out on an ID for this dude, right?” Blaze asked.
Yale spoke up, “I got a good look at him, but he could literally be any Joe in the city.”
“We looked at victimology yet?” Skids asked softly and Chrissy met his sympathetic look.
“No, and I honestly don’t know who it could be, I mean, I didn’t think I had any enemies… not until all of this.”
“Doesn’t your firm keep a file of every threatening message you receive? I know the prosecutor’s office does,” Yale said.
“I never even knew I got any threats at all until I checked my email and saw the pictures of the flowers…” she said.
Yale scoffed a bit and said, “I don’t know a single damn lawyer whose done their job right, either criminal or civil who hasn’t been threatened.”
“I don’t think Jaime and I have ever had a case dealing with one of you guys before, I feel like we may have missed something here.”
Yale adjusted himself in his seat, “Yeah, a lot, you might have a rabbit hole to follow there.”
“That still doesn’t explain how we’re going to stop him, or catch him…” Chrissy murmured and I could see the wheels in her head finally had started turning again.
“What ’cha thinkin’ princess?” Reflash asked.
“I’m thinking that if my firm had this information but no one bothered to disclose it, or offer it up, I really need a new job.”
I set down my phone, having texted Jaime that we needed to look into it pronto and said, “She’s right, fact remains that she’s still a target until we can snap him up. She can’t go anywhere thanks to the media and that fucking hashtag.”
“So use it,” Skids said, and Yale was nodding slowly. I was too, thinking along the same lines.
“Wait, how? You’re not suggesting I grant an interview or something are you? Because I really don’t want to do that.” Chrissy looked uncomfortable and said, “I’d rather be bait.”
“Over my dead fuckin’ body,” I said.
“Maybe you’re both right,” Driller said with a devious grin.
“Spill, what you got?” I asked.
“Yale gets on the news, tells the world that Chrissy’s testifying on such and such date for the grand jury, right? Says she’ll be put up courtesy of Indigo City taxpayer funds at the Regency Hyatt as a material witness.”
Yale frowned, “We don’t use the Hyatt for that.”
“Well duh,” Narcos said. “That’s the point. We don’t actually want to give the world the location of the hotel we do use.”
“Exactly,” Driller said. “And the Hyatt is suitably expensive to rile up anybody who pays taxes, but not so out of pocket the city won’t spring for one night in it.”
“Guys, we aren’t using Chrissy as bait,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” Chrissy murmured and Driller shook his head.
Oz grinned and said, “Now hold on now, y’all just stay in the truck. Driller, what you thinkin’ man?”
“Good ol’ fashioned sting. Get a female undercover officer from Vice to pose as Ms. Franco. A wig, a floppy hat, put her arm in a sling, some big fuckin’ sunglasses… it’s doable.” I was nodding now, catching on.
“You’ll have to be there, Tony. You’re almost as big news as she is anymore. Everybody wants to know who her great white knight is,” Narcos said.
“I can do that.”
“Meanwhile, we can keep Chrissy at the hotel we do keep witnesses at under full guard,” Yale said and Driller pointed his index and middle finger at Yale and dropped his thumb like the hammer of a gun.
I nodded, “This could totally work.”
“I can call my contacts in Vice, I know of a couple detectives that would fit the bill,” Driller said.
Chrissy looked pale but hopeful, her eyes met mine and I saw worry there.
“It’s a good plan,” I told her and she nodded.
“Only hitch would be if dude is underworld, any seasoned criminal would see right through this, wouldn’t they?” Golden asked.
“You’d be surprised,” Driller said. Narcos nodded in agreement.
Okay, we had a solid foundation here.
“You good with this?” I asked Chrissy and she nodded gravely.
“I have to be,” she said. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
I don’t think anyone could blame her there.
Chapter 22
Chrissy
The last of the men of the Indigo Knights left, and I found myself leaning in the doorway to the living room, watching them go. I turned around and eyed Tony who was cleaning up his kitchen, loading the dishwasher with his mismatched dishes.
“They all come here like that often?” I asked, and he barked a bit of a laugh and shook his head.
“Only on special occasions.”
“Am I a special occasion?” I asked, and I really think I just needed to hear it again. He set down the dish he had in his hands and rinsed off his hands in the water pouring from the tap before he shut off the sink.
“I’d like to think you already have the answer to that.”
I nodded mutely, and cursed myself for letting my feeling so damn shitty get to me like that. Turning me into one of those girls who resorted to fishing for compliments. It wasn’t attractive and was manipulative, and just plain wrong and I opened my mouth to apologize but he’d reached me by then, hands smoothing over his shirt, over my hips and effectively short-circuited my brain.
“You were gonna say,” he said with that charming, little boy smile, the one with all the dimples. I closed my eyes and swallowed and told him the truth.
“You know I can’t think straight when you smile at me like that?”
“That was sort of the idea,” he said with a deep chuckle, before he put his mouth on mine. I sank into the kiss gratefully, my fingers finding the softness of the back of his hair as I held him back, pressing myself into the length of his body, mine coming awake with every bit of contact.
He pulled back minutely and asked me, “Your body done doing its thing?”
I smiled at how simply he put it and was happy to report, “Yes, it’s done ‘doing its thing.’” I couldn’t help but laugh at how he put it and he chuckled too. It wasn’t unusual for me to have short periods that only lasted three days at the most, so I wasn’t worried. If anything, I was grateful right now, even if the cramps were killer for me every month.
All of that was forgotten, though, the minute he pulled me near, his hand on my ass, giving it a squeeze. He drew me around the back of the couch until we stood in front of it and pulled a condom out of his jeans pocket, before losing them completely.
“Keeping them handy?” I whispered and again with that devilish grin that would have melted my panties if I had been wearing any.
“Uh huh.”
“Good.”
He tore it open while I watched and rolled it on before dropping onto the couch and waving at me to straddle him. I did, carefully, bracing myself on the back of the sofa with my good arm while he lined himself up for me and slid right in.
I moaned, bowing my head, pressing my forehead to his and despi
te how the back of my shoulder screamed about it, cupped the side of his face. He looked up for me so that I could kiss him, hands roaming under his shirt, along the outside of my thigh, kneading my ass, smoothing over my lower back as he encouraged me to move and to grind on him.
It was the only solace I got with the insanity my life had turned into, these moments alone with Tony as the world fell away and we were two bodies coming together as one being. Soul-touched, I carefully worked him, sliding up and down along the length of him while his cock went impossibly deep. I arched back, and let him hold me while I gave myself over to the feeling, letting my body go and do its thing. My mind finally shutting off and going quiet for half a damn minute.
Peace and a quicksilver euphoria flooded out from my center and I gasped, rotating my hips, not even caring that my lower back twinged and shot pain down my right leg from the motion. I adjusted and did it again only not quite as extreme and Oh. My. God.
It was like a time lapse of watching a flower burst into life, except this was no flower, it was me. Electrical impulses firing, traveling down every nerve, like light down a fiber optic line. I was the vessel, the conduit for the joy he sparked in the center of my being to fill me up and send me trembling into some unknown plane of existence.
It was a slow build, but a rush none the less, the pleasure rising warm and heavy, filling my senses until I couldn’t tell where I left off and he began. His breath harsh, his teeth setting gently into the side of my neck, the vibration of his pent up groan thrilling down my spine, I begged whatever gods that may silently to let me come, to let us come together, because I could tell he was close, so very, dangerously close.
One or two more rolling thrusts of my hips down on top of him, our mouths crushed together; bodies pressed so tight I couldn’t reach between us to give that last little nudge, but damn if I didn’t need to. The orgasm zinged through me out of nowhere, my cry muffled by Tony’s intensive kiss, swallowed by him, as I felt like I poured right out of the confines of my being, swirling in a lighted rush around the room before being returned to the fragile shell of my body, trembling and spent, my arms trapped at my sides by Tony’s shirt, fingers digging into his arms, above his elbows, as I held onto him for dear life, panting.
I couldn’t even be sure when he’d unbuttoned the shirt, but it was quickly apparent he hadn’t when, shaking, I drew the two sides together to fasten them and found no buttons with which to do it. Good thing I could sew, that was, if we found all of the scattered buttons.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said drawing me close and nuzzling the side of my neck.
“I don’t even remember you doing it,” I replied, gasping.
He chuckled darkly and held me close, his shoulders rising and falling, his chest pressed tight against my stomach. I wrapped my arms around his head and held him close, tightly and he sighed out content and listened to my heart for several long moments.
“I needed that.” I spoke softly, the dim hush of the living room adding to the intimacy of the moment. He smiled and looked up at me, placing his chin on my chest, between my breasts. I liked this view. I looked down into his eyes and he smiled up at me.
“Me, too.” His smile dropped and he closed his eyes and breathed out slowly.
“What now?” I asked, somber, and he smiled again.
“Now, we work on what’s going to happen next, we catch the bad guys, you testify in front of the grand jury, and the good guys win the day.”
I closed my eyes and smiled at the surety his voice held. I liked the sound of that. The part about the good guys winning the day, but after everything that’d happened to me, I was beginning to seriously question if I was one of the good guys anymore. I mean, I always thought I’d been, and that my intentions were pure, but as a firm believer in Karma, I was seriously beginning to wonder… I mean, if I believed so wholeheartedly in Karma, and that everything a person did came full circle back to them… With this, and I do mean all of this, I had to ask myself, what did I do?
“Hey, what’s that look for?” he asked and I opened my eyes.
“Do you believe in Karma?” I asked.
“I do, but I believe in God first, baby,” he answered. “Which in that vein, I also believe that God never hands us more than we can handle.”
“I believe in Karma, even though I don’t necessarily subscribe to the whole religious concept. I mean, seems like a legitimate line of thinking, doesn’t it? That whatever we put out in the world comes back to visit us, full circle.”
“You’re wondering what you did to deserve all of this?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing. You didn’t deserve it, you didn’t do anything to deserve it… Like I said, I believe in God, baby, but there can’t be light without the darkness and in the dark resides the devil. How do you know that what’s happening to you isn’t his work?”
“I thought the devil didn’t exist,” I said with a small smile.
“That was the crafty bastard’s greatest con of all, wasn’t it? Convincing man he didn’t exist.”
I sighed and nodded, he had me there. I bowed my forehead to his and just relished the contact with him, and he murmured, “There you go making me look like the good Catholic.”
I laughed, “I told you I wasn’t very good at it, didn’t I?”
“Apparently not, believing in things like Karma.” He winked at me.
I scoffed, “You said you believed in it, too!”
“I did,” he agreed. “So if you think Karma’s whooping your ass with everything that’s happened, let me ask you, how do I fit into things?” I stilled and drew back even more so I could search his face.
“You’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me,” I said unequivocally.
“There you go then, how do you know that isn’t your Karma in action?”
I tilted my head to the side and considered what he was saying and finally offered up, “Maybe its best I leave the philosophy lessons to the philosophers.”
He laughed, and smoothed his hands up and down my body. I shivered and his smile changed to something private, something dark but deliciously so. It was the kind of smile a man gave when he was admiring something beautiful, something he’d coveted for a long time and finally owned, or had taken for himself and I felt this deep throb in the middle of my being.
It was a sensation unlike any other I had ever experienced before that moment, but the paramount emotion I would attach to it was relief. I didn’t know how long I had yearned for a man to look at me that way, but not just any man, the right man. I don’t know how I knew, but I did, I just knew with all of my being with that one look, with the feeling I’d just had like the whole world just snapped into place, that the right man was right in front of me, still inside me, and I felt a rush of almost tears with just how awesome that felt, with the relief and the joy, with the happiness and peace that brought to me…
“Hey, you okay?” he asked me, thumbing away one of the surprise tears. I smiled and leaned down, kissing him. He held my face between his hands and kissed me back, kissed me true and I sighed against his lips in utter contentment.
He drew back carefully and asked, “What was that?” but I was almost too embarrassed to tell him, what with how corny it would sound.
That was me, falling in love with you…
So I just smiled instead and didn’t lie and say it was nothing because what’d just happened wasn’t nothing. Instead, I said, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
He grinned at me and laughed, and I kissed him again, and this time it led to a whole new round of lovemaking, only this time we moved it to his living room floor. Let’s hear it for variety.
Chapter 23
Tony
It was hard leaving her the next morning but Jaime and I had a date with a representing attorney at Reardon, Colfax & Price. Not one of the big men themselves, obviously we didn’t warrant any of their time, but still, we wanted everything of a threatening nature that’
d been logged against poor Chrissy to see if we could get a lead on our guy between now and her grand jury testimony.
“You have a warrant for that, I’m sure…” the gentleman was saying and I swear I heard a record needle scratching harshly across some vinyl. Jaime and I exchanged a look and apparently I wasn’t crazy and my partner had heard it too.
“Excuse me?” Jaime asked.
“A warrant for those files,” the lawyer repeated and I blinked.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You don’t want to help Chrissy out and just cooperate?”
“It is Reardon, Colfax & Price’s policy when it comes to police matters that we do not release any files concerning any employee without a proper warrant.”
“You’re serious,” Jaime said and sounded incredulous. I was already on it, phone pressed to my ear, waiting for it to ring through.
“Parnell,” Yale answered on the second ring.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said.
“Try me, I bet you I will,” he shot back.
“I need a warrant for Reardon, Colfax & Price to collect evidence in the Franco case.”
“Yeah, see, I told you. I’m not surprised. Give me the specifications and I’ll see what I can do. Judge Holcomb hates that they do this and will generally sign just about anything just to be a pain in their ass right back for wasting the court’s time.”
“You got a fax number or email address for this?” I asked, and was hoping they’d at least cough that up to save me and Jaime from having to go all the way down to the courthouse and come back. Like I would leave, as it was, I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t destroy evidence in our absence, these fuckers were acting hella shady.
The lawyer they’d sent to deal with us, Mr. Darnell Pritchard, plucked a business card off the reception desk and handed it to me.
“Yeah, Yale, you still there?”
“I’m here, almost done typing this bad boy up.”