by Nicole Fox
Quint sneered again. It was an expression that suited his face. "I think if you give me the names, then we can do immunity. But if you're not willing to do that as... call it a goodwill gesture, then..." He threw up his hands.
I simply met his gaze.
Quint wagged a finger at me. "I don't get you. I don't get you. You say you want immunity. I offer it. You turn me down. I don't get you. I don't know what you're after, and I can't trust that."
For the first time, Agent Hamlin now stepped forward. "Perhaps I should have a word with Mr. Covert in private."
"I think I'll stay, if it's all the same to you," Dugas said, sticking to his guns.
Hamlin shrugged. "Well, in that case, I feel that we've done all we can do. Let's find a cell for Mr. Covert, and get him charged."
Dugas snarled. "You're going to turn down my CI request, just because I won't leave you alone with him? Something which I am in no way obligated to do? You're going to send the man to jail over that?"
"I'm going to send the man to jail because he broke the law," corrected Agent Hamlin. "Repeatedly. And by his own admission. You surely don't have any objection to that."
"He's more use to us as a CI, and you damn well know it."
"Only if he cooperates," Hamilin said smoothly. "And he seems to be completely unwilling to do so at the present, which makes him no use to us. But I have to ask myself - it's my job to ask myself - what if there's something in this room that's stopping him from telling us everything he knows?"
Dugas glared. "You're saying that he's not telling you what you want to hear because I'm here."
"It's a possibility. It's equally possible that my colleague, Agent Quint, may have, in the diligent pursuit of his duty, so enraged Mr. Covert that he is holding back information out of perversity. Either way, getting both of you out of the room will allow me to have a more useful, as well as a more frank and productive, interaction with Mr. Covert. Don't you think?"
Dugas clearly didn't think anything of the sort and was opening his mouth to say so, when I interrupted.
"It's fine. I'm happy to talk to her alone." It wouldn't help me if Dugas put himself on the wrong side of these people, and it certainly wouldn't please Corinne if her dad totaled his career this way.
Dugas shot a glance at me. I think he may have even been grateful for my interruption, though he sensibly disguised it.
"Fine," he said at last. "If you think it'll help."
"I do," Hamlin replied, as calm and collected as ever.
"But, you know, there is one possibility you've overlooked, as to why he's not telling you what you want to hear," Dugas said, as he headed for the door with Quint behind him.
"Indeed?" Hamlin asked. "And what is that?"
"It's not true," Dugas replied plainly. "What you want him to say isn't true; and at some point, you may have to come to terms with that."
Having delivered this last blow, Brian Dugas left the interview room with the rat-faced Quint on his heels.
"That's better," Hamlin said, turning to me as the door closed. "Now we can get properly acquainted."
"How nice," I replied.
"You know, a woman in my position could do a lot for a man like you." Hamlin seated herself on the edge of the table, her slim leg swinging slightly. "Come to think of it, I suspect that a man like you could do a lot for a woman in my position. Or, indeed, in pretty much any position."
Her swinging leg went further with each swing, so that now her foot rubbed against my inner thigh at the apex of every arc.
"I think you'd be happier if you co-operated, Asa. I'm damn sure I would. You want to make me happy, don't you?"
At this point I wasn't sure if she was using the promise of sex to get me to own up to all this stuff I hadn't done, or if she was hoping to get sex in return for going easy on me. Either option was a hell of a lot better than the choice I had previously been facing: tell lies about my friends, or go to jail.
I didn’t want to be arrogant but it wasn’t the first time I have been in situations like this. I was a good-looking man, in a rough-cut sort of a way, and I took care of myself in a way that, apparently, made me pretty appealing to the opposite sex. All too often, we imagine that it's only men who could be bought with sex, but women had desires too, and a man like me could fulfill them. Of course, it would be hard to believe that a woman like Agent Hamlin was hard-up for male companionship, but, for a woman like that, one who lived by the rules, a man like me was a whole other kind of thrill. She was a woman who got off on breaking the rules and going after something forbidden.
But I already had someone like that in my life, even if I was fated never to lay eyes on her again. There was only one woman who filled my mind at the present: Corinne Dugas. It wasn't that I was going to turn down Agent Hamlin's offer because I didn't want to cheat on Corinne, it was that, having met Corinne, Agent Hamlin's offer didn't seem all that appealing. Who wants to sell themselves for sex anyway?
Agent Hamlin's swinging foot came to a stop, resting on my thigh, then slowly travelled up to press pointedly against my crotch. I removed it and was gratified to see Hamlin somewhere between shocked and offended.
"Something like that could easily be misinterpreted as you trying to coerce me," I explained. "And I'd hate for you to get into trouble on my account."
Hamlin stood back up abruptly. "Would you?" This was clearly a woman who was not used to men turning her down. Which came as no surprise to me. She was stunningly beautiful and almost painfully sexy. A week ago, what she had tried here would have worked on me instantly, and we would, even now, be putting on an X-rated show for anyone behind that two-way mirror. But things had changed since then. I had changed.
"If you're just going to ask me the same things as your colleague, then you might as well show me to my cell," I said. "I told him the truth. I'm not going to admit to stuff I didn't do, and I'm not going to incriminate my friends. Not even to please you."
Minutes later, I was being unceremoniously dumped back in the holding cells. As I settled down to wait, I took the time to think about Corinne and hope that she was doing well and would manage to reconnect with her father and sister. I hoped that everything would work out for her in my absence, because, if the look on Agent Hamlin's face was anything to go by, that absence was going to be a very long one indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Corinne
Two weeks passed.
They went slowly and miserably for me. I had expected Asa to be out of jail the same day he went in, confirmed as dad's informant, and ready to take on the mafia. Instead, Asa was still in jail. Dad said little, but wore a morose expression for much of the time, and the mafia were making their presence felt in town. I tried to talk to dad about it, but he invariably made some excuse, uttered a few vaguely comforting words and rushed off. I knew that, secretly, he was as worried as I was. First, he was worried about me about how I might react to the possibility of Asa being in prison long-term, and what that might do to the relationship between us that was still very much on the mend. Secondly, he was worried about his town. He didn't say it, but at the moment, I think he would have been prepared to admit that he had never realized how lucky he was to have a problem like War Cry. Compared to the mafia, War Cry was nothing. Lastly, and perhaps this was just optimism on my part, I thought he was also worried about Asa. Perhaps he wasn’t worried in the conventional way - he knew that Asa could take care of himself - but Asa had handed himself in under my dad's protection, and I knew that dad felt he had let Asa down. As a sheriff, Brian Dugas, of course, did not like Asa, and, as a father, he perhaps liked him still less. But he had given his word to do his best to make Asa an official CI, and the fact that he had failed and that his failure had put Asa in jail, weighed heavily on dad's conscience as a man of his word. To Brian Dugas, a man was only as good as his word. He had fought hard to keep that word, but, in the end, the decision had been taken out of dad's hands.
Not that he was giving up. Thou
gh he tried to keep me out of it altogether, I could tell that he and Porter Crucero were plotting something. I just hoped that it wasn't anything that was going to come back to kick them in the ass. Brian Dugas was in uncharted waters here, and that was the other thing that was really preying on him. It was not just that he had let Asa down. The law had let him down. Dad had served the law all his life. He respected and believed in it above all other things, perhaps even family, and it had let him down when he had needed it. More accurately, the law had proved to be as prey to the human frailty of corruption as anything else. It was a sad time to Brian Dugas.
It probably wasn't a good time to be Asa Covert, either, but I had no way of knowing. Because he was still technically under consideration as a confidential informant, his basic rights to a phone call or any other contact with the outside world could be dispensed with, in the name of keeping him safe. I would have given a lot to know how he was and what was going on with him, but I had a feeling that the answers to either question would not make me happy. This being the case, I decided to move on from wondering what Asa was doing and what was going to happen, which were things over which I had no control, and focus on what he might want me to do. Asa had always been clear that I should make the effort with my family, particularly my dad, and I had been determined to stay true to that. It had worked out pretty well. Things were still a bit tense, and there were still arguments between us, but, now, instead of storming off and slamming doors, we stayed and talked. We even found that nine times out of ten, we could sort things out that way, and that we had, in fact, been on the same side to begin with. Talking to my dad was a bit of a revelation, and I owed it to Asa.
Having said that, the other thing I was doing might sound completely contradictory. I was looking for somewhere else to live. Much as I was enjoying this new-found closeness with my dad, and as much as I was hoping to build on it, one of the things that had come out of our talks was that living under the same roof brought us into friction. We had lived in the same house all my life, and, while I was there, it was hard for Dad not to see me as a little girl. I was a grown up now, and it was time for me to move out on my own, but without severing ties as I had before. So, I started looking for somewhere in town.
"Just look carefully," Dad said. "You know there are places now that are Mafia-controlled."
"I'll be careful," I reassured him
"Take Risa with you. She's a smart girl."
I nodded. Then added. "Why don't you come too?"
Dad looked positively startled. "You want me to come?"
"Only if you want to."
"Oh, I would definitely want to. Thank you for asking."
It was these exchanges that made the difference. Brief though it was, such a conversation would never have taken place between dad and I, until Asa had entered my life.
# # #
The following day we headed out with a list of apartments to see. My price range did limit me, but dad had offered to help out with rent, and I had accepted, as long as I could pay him back once I had gainful employment. We had seen a few places and were heading towards a third before stopping for lunch when I spotted something in my rear-view mirror. There was nothing automatically suspicious about the black car, but I was sure that I had seen it behind us earlier as well. That was odd, because, when you are apartment hunting, you are inevitably taking a route around town that doesn't really lead anywhere. No one should accidentally take the same route. But, as I thought that, the car turned off. I dismissed my concerns as paranoia and decided not to mention it to Dad, who was bound to overreact to something like this. Still I kept my eye on the mirror for the rest of the day.
It was a good day. Not a hugely productive one, in terms of finding apartments, but a fun one spent with my Dad and my sister. It was a very happy car-full of people who headed back out of town in the direction of the Dugas home.
It was then that I saw the black car again, still following.
"Dad?"
Dad had been sharing a joke with Risa, but immediately sensed the anxiety in my voice, his face growing grave. "What's wrong?"
"I'm sure I saw that car following us earlier."
Dad took a quick look. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"They stopped following."
Dad shook his head. "You stopped seeing them, but I doubt they stopped following."
"What do I do?" Fear flowed through me, fast and cold. What if I had driven my father and sister into a dangerous trap?
"Don't panic," Dad said, his voice calm and soothing. "Just keep driving. Don't let them think that there's anything wrong."
"There might not be anything wrong," Risa added, always the voice of optimism.
"Exactly," Dad agreed, though I could hear little optimism in his tones. "We're coming up on the turn-off west. There's nothing much else ahead but our house, so if they don't turn off here, then..."
He left the sentence unfinished as we passed the turn-off. Moments later, the black car passed it, too, staying on our tail. There was no longer any doubt that they were following us. The Dugas house was out in the wilds, and there was nothing else in this direction but our home.
"What now?" I asked. I felt a terrible, and probably ill-advised, urge to stamp on the gas and get us out of here, which would have been dumb, as there was nowhere to hide.
"They're not going to wait for us to get home where we can hole up," Dad said firmly. "The further we get from town, the more comfortable they will be making their move. We need to get back to town."
"You want me to turn?"
"Not yet." Dad pointed up ahead. "You see the tree? When you get to that, loop around it, and give it all the gas you've got." He reached into the glove compartment and brought out a handgun.
I gasped. "What the hell is that doing in my car?"
Dad shrugged. "Since the mafia have been moving in, I decided to add safety features to the cars."
"Were you going to tell me?!"
"Hell, no." Dad looked shocked. "Giving you a gun doesn't make the car safer. Quite the reverse. Turn!"
We reached the tree. I pulled a hard left and hit the gas, so we careened off across the rough ground.
"Well done," Dad said.
"They're closing!" gasped Risa.
Dad nodded. "Well, they've got a lot more power than we do."
"Can you shoot out their tires?"
"I'd rather not be the one who introduces guns into this."
I knew what he meant. They would have a lot more gun power than us as well.
In a fair race, maybe we would have made it. But it quickly became clear that the black car was not just more powerful when it left the factory, it had been further modified since then and was bearing down on us with terrifying speed.
"Come on, blow the supercharger, you bitch," Dad muttered, as he watched the car coming closer. That was about our only hope now - hat the car would malfunction, owing to the high speeds combined with the rough terrain. But, clearly, luck wasn't on our side today.
As they drew level with us, the black car veered right to sideswipe us. I screamed as I fought for control of the car.
"Don't panic," Dad urged. "If they wanted to kill us, they would have been shooting long before now. They want us to stop, and they can't afford to hurt us, so we just keep on going."
Once again, Dad's tactic was right, but, once again, luck was conspiring against us. As the black car slammed into us again, I lost control of the steering wheel, and we hit a rock, sending the car up onto two wheels. For a moment, it hung there, seeming like it might be able to continue like that all the way to town, then gravity seemed to catch up to us, and we toppled over, my car lying on its side, the wheels still spinning. I'm not altogether sure what I was doing at this point, but I was probably crying. My only clear memory is of Dad, with blood pouring from a gash in his head, trying to comfort Risa and me at once.
The next thing I remember is a hand with a grip-like steel closing on my arm. I screamed at the sudden c
ontact.
"Lean back, honey," Dad said, still managing to sound calm for my sake.
I did as I was told and screamed again, this time at the noise of Dad's gun firing in the claustrophobic confines of the car. There was a scream of pain from outside, as the arm that had reached in through the window to grab me was hastily retracted amid a lot of swearing.
"Any more of that, and you're all going to end up dead!" A harsh voice came from outside.
"Remember," Dad whispered, "He's lying. He needs us alive."
Of course, that wasn't the whole truth, and Dad and Risa knew it as well as I did. They needed me alive, not my family.
"We're coming in again, Dugas!" The voice spoke again.
"Then you know what to expect!" Dad yelled back and aimed his gun at my window, knowing that it was me they were after.