by Claire Adams
“We need him to admit to a few things. You see, Jose Escabar has been involved in a huge cartel operation for years. Drugs and money have passed through international borders and ended up here in Atlanta, all because of him and the people he works for. If you want us to keep you safe, you’ll need to wear a wire and come back to us with some real proof on tape.”
“What are you talking about, George? I can’t get that kind of information out of Escabar. He knows I have the book. He won’t confess anything like that around me. He’s not that stupid.”
“I’m sorry, then. I don’t think we can help you. At least, not right now. Come back if there’s an immediate threat against your life.”
Just like that, Captain Bastrop turned and walked down the hall.
“You can sleep for a bit in the bunk room if you’d like,” he said when he reached the end of the hall.
I was too angry to respond. I had finally gotten up the nerve to go to the police, and they weren’t going to offer us any kind of protection at all. In fact, just knowing that we had come to the police was enough to get us killed. Luckily, we were still driving the vehicle from my friend’s store, so I doubt Escabar’s men would be able to find us too quickly. But still, we had no money and no place to go.
My mind worked through all the possible scenarios. I just couldn’t think of one possible conclusion that ended with Jordan and I being safe. I had really done it. I had finally found some sort of stability in my life, and it was all going to be gone. I was going to be gone.
“Jordan,” I whispered as I opened the bunkroom door.
“Yeah, over here.”
I climbed into her bunk with her and just lay with her in my arms. I couldn’t find the strength to tell her what was going on yet. I didn’t want to ruin her night of sleep. Instead, I held her close to me and stroked her hair with my hand as she drifted back to sleep. It was the only thing that made sense for the moment. We were both so tired. We both needed sleep desperately and at least there, at the police station, we were safe.
The only thing left for me to do was get some sleep as well and hope that in the light of morning, I would have some sort of clear answer. Because, at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing that would save us from our situation. I couldn’t imagine how we would get through the next few days. Perhaps, we would have to take off and leave the country. Maybe if Escabar knew I had turned the black book over to the police, he would leave my family alone. Or maybe he would still hunt them down? I didn’t know.
Nothing about my future was known. Anything could happen.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jordan
As I woke up with Chase next to me, I felt like everything was going to be just fine. We had arrived at the police station and made the decision to let them help us. I finally had a sense of relief. Plus, sleeping in the employee bunkroom was probably the safest place in the city. Both Chase and I had slept well past nine o’clock in the morning, and it felt pretty fabulous.
When I started to wake up, so did Chase. But neither of us were in a hurry to get out of the tiny bed we shared. It was safe. We hadn’t had a safe night’s sleep in a very long time.
“I just want to stay here wrapped in your arms forever,” I whispered as he tightened his arms around me in a tight squeeze.
“Pretty amazing how good I slept last night. I really needed that.”
“Me too.”
I felt his lips as they kissed the back of my neck. Not in a seductive way, but in a sweet, loving way. It was just what I needed. I really couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with Chase. Sure, we had rushed into the marriage, but we could spend the rest of our time getting to know each other better. We could grow old together.
“I have to ask you something and please don’t get mad,” he said.
“Sure, anything.”
“You’re not working for Escabar, are you?”
“What?” I said as I jerked myself away from him and stood up beside the bed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry. The Captain started questioning me yesterday and put doubts in my head. Like why you went with Salina and Salvador and why Escabar left you untouched when he had you kidnapped. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You seriously think I am working with Escabar?” I said as I tried to control the anger that I felt building inside of me. “What do you think happened? Do you think Escabar hired me from Liechtenstein to seduce you? Do you think I somehow just waited for you to message me so I could trap you for him?”
I could hear my voice getting louder and louder as I talked, but I couldn’t stop myself. The anger and betrayal that I felt had overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t even stand to look at Chase.
“I’m sorry, Jordan. They got in my head. I knew it wasn’t true. I told them it wasn’t. But I just had to ask. I said I was sorry. We need to move on.”
I felt the tone in his voice change, similar to how it had when we first argued. He certainly wasn’t going to continue the conversation any further. Chase had decided he was done talking about it, so I was supposed to give up on the argument and just be done.
“Well, I don’t need this. I’m going to ask the Captain if he wants to talk to me directly. If he has concerns about me, he should ask me himself instead of going through you.”
I grabbed the door and swung it open, but Chase had flung himself out of bed and stood beside me. He held onto the doorknob and wouldn’t let me leave the room. I pushed hard against him, but he still refused to let me leave.
“You can’t go, I have something I need to tell you,” he said solemnly.
“Like what? You think I’m working for the mafia, too, or how about maybe I’m a Russian spy? What else is there?”
“They aren’t going to help us. Captain Bastrop said we don’t have enough information for them to go on. His only solution was for me to go meet with Jose and get him to confess while I was wired.”
“Are they stupid? Jose isn’t going to meet with you without searching you for a wire. Then, he’ll kill you right there if he finds one. Even I know that.”
“Exactly. So, basically, they aren’t going to help us.”
“What the hell? What kind of police department doesn’t help people when they need it? So, they just are all right with us getting murdered?”
“No, I’m sure they don’t want that for us. Captain Bastrop did suggest that we lay low for awhile and that I pay Escabar the money I owe him.”
“Laying low isn’t going to make Escabar forget about you stealing his black book. Wait – did they keep the black book?”
“Yes, they still have it.”
“You need to go get it back. You need to make them give it to you.”
“What do you want to do? I can’t just give it back to Escabar.”
I had to sit down. It was all too much. There we were, sitting in the police department, but unable to get any help from them. In fact, they had done absolutely nothing to keep us safe and planned to do nothing at all. My breathing started to become labored. I felt like I was going to pass out.
“Chase, we have to go to your father. Maybe if we give Escabar the money and continue to tell him we don’t have his book, he will let us go. Or at least pay him the money, and we can take off out of town or something.”
“Do you think if we pay him the money he won’t come after us? He knows it was me who took the black book, Jordan. He’ll come after me.”
“Okay, don’t get mad…” I said calmly, as I reached into my bag and pulled out an exact replica of the black book.
“What the hell is that?” Chase said as he grabbed it.
“It’s just a book that looks like Escabar’s. I got it when we were at the courthouse. Remember when I said I saw a huge spider?”
“Shit, that looks just like it.”
“I know. I had hoped to copy down the information in Escabar’s book onto this one. But I guess if they kept the book, we
won’t be able to.”
“No, we can do it. I’ll ask them to see the book. It’s not theirs. I brought it in. We will copy the information over.”
“Chase, they aren’t going to give it to you. We need to think of a different plan.”
He just looked at me with worry in his eyes. Neither of us had a plan that seemed like it was capable of working. There just wasn’t any way we would get out of Escabar’s reach. He wanted us dead, and he wasn’t going to stop until it happened.
“I don’t know if this would work or really how it might work, but what if we turned Escabar’s boss against him?” I suggested.
It was something I had seen in one of the shows I watched. The police couldn’t get the local bad guy legally, but they could get his own people to turn on him and kill him. It was totally a shot in the dark, but at that point, we needed anything we could get in order to try and save our asses.
“So, you think we should go to Ramos, the drug cartel leader, and turn in Escabar? What exactly would we say in order to get him to go after Escabar?”
“I have no idea.”
Chase and I both laughed at the suggestion. Although I could tell he was thinking about it, just as I was. There would be a certain kind of irony in it, if Jose Escabar ended up getting killed by his own boss.
“I’ve got an idea, but I really don’t know if we can pull it off or not,” Chase said tentatively.
“What?”
“Well, what if we brought the fake black book to Ramos and told him that we overheard Escabar saying he was going to the feds and getting out of the business? Maybe we could fake some entries. I remember some of the names. We could just make the rest up. The key would be getting Ramos to believe that Escabar wanted out.”
“Wouldn’t they just let him out of the business?” I asked.
“No, not someone as high up as Jose Escabar. He’s in it for life. But I could say I had been working with him, maybe like Marco does. There is no way Ramos knows all of Escabar’s employees. I’ll just say I was concerned I was going to get turned into the feds. I was concerned that Escabar wanted to retire and would give us all up to the feds to get a cushy deal.”
Chase’s idea didn’t seem totally unreasonable. It was dangerous as hell, though. Neither of us knew this Ramos guy or how much he knew about Escabar and his operation in Atlanta. For all we knew, the two guys could be very close friends. If that were the case, we would both be killed the second we tried our plan.
“If we are going to do this, how the heck are we going to get hold of this Ramos guy? I’m sure his number isn’t listed in the yellow pages.” I laughed.
He stopped to think out his idea.
“Perhaps we could flip Marco? Or maybe we could get that friend of yours, Salina, to turn and give us the information?”
Just the mention of Salina made my skin crawl. I had thought she wanted to be my friend, and she was truly just a goon who worked for Escabar. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was try to talk to her.
“I think Marco is just too close to Escabar. As much as I hate to admit it, a meeting with Salina would probably be best. If we could offer her some money for the information, I’m sure she would be much more willing.”
Money, it always came back to money. I knew that Chase didn’t have any money, and I certainly didn’t have much of it. But we needed to figure out something to get Salina interested in meeting with us, without Salvador.
“I’ve got ten thousand dollars stashed in my safe back at the house,” Chase said with a disappointed face. “Do you think that will convince her?”
“Yes, oh yes. That will convince her for sure.”
He paced around the room for a few minutes before he said anything else. I could tell he was thinking about all the possible solutions to our problem. Should we try and just pay off the loan? Should we run away? Whatever we did it seemed like there was a downside to every option. Personally, I felt the best solution was to go to Ramos, but I wanted to know what Chase thought was the best solution.
“Let’s do it,” he said as he slapped his hands together. “I think it can work.”
I jumped up and wrapped my arms around him. I knew it was the best solution. Going to Ramos wasn’t the safest solution, but it did offer us the surest way of getting out from under Escabar for good. If we could pull things off as we wanted to, Chase and I would be safe from being murdered, and that was the best possible outcome.
The warmth of Chase pressed up against my body instantly had me aroused. It wasn’t something I had planned. We were in the middle of a bunkroom at the police station. But the moment was filled with excitement. I looked at Chase while we remained wrapped in each other’s arms, and I could tell he felt the same thing I had felt.
“No, we can’t…” I whispered as I saw the devious look in his eyes.
“Why not? No one has come into this room all night long. They obviously aren’t going to come take a nap at ten o’clock in the morning. I think we are pretty much alone in here,” he said as he started to kiss my neck.
I felt his hand as it slipped up my shirt and he let his fingers grab hold of my nipple firmly. My back naturally arched against him and I did my best not to moan too loudly. It was a safe feeling to have his hands on my body. He made me feel safe, which was crazy considering the only reason I was in danger was because of him. But I could tell in his touch that he wanted to be there for me. I felt his passion and determination to be a good husband for me.
My body quickly gave in to Chase as his hands explored me. He took control and pulled my clothing from my body and laid me back down on the bed we had been on. I was naked, in a police station – it was exciting. More exciting than any television show I had ever watched.
“How are your ribs?” I asked quietly as he slid into the bed behind me.
“Sore, but not too sore to keep me from you.”
I felt his naked body behind me and his hard throbbing cock as it pressed up against me. My hand reached back and stroked him as I tried to decide if I was really willing to have sex with Chase in the middle of the police station. Sure, we had been alone throughout the night, but that didn’t mean much. Anyone could walk through the door at any minute. There wasn’t a lock on it. There wasn’t any way we could hide what we were doing. Our clothes were sitting right there on the ground.
Chase didn’t wait for my trepidation to subside. He pulled my hand away from him and held onto it. His throbbing member slid into me with ease, as I was soaked with desire for him.
My neck felt his warm breath as he let one slow thrust after another penetrate me. His body against mine was so filled with delight, that I started to forget where we were and gave in to the feelings that Chase had rushing through my body.
He grabbed a hold of my hips firmly and thrust himself deep into me. It wasn’t a gentle thrust, and Chase caught me off guard as I reacted with a scream of pleasure to his thrust.
“Shhhh,” he said as he covered my mouth with his hand.
Harder and faster, he moved inside of me as I fought every urge I had to scream out. I just couldn’t keep myself from letting out the desire that was so close to escaping. But with his hand over my mouth, even my screams were quieted.
My body moved back against Chase in a desire to feel the explosion that was coming. Thrust after thrust, I waited for my body to shake with the final ecstasy, the final powerful light of desire that I knew was only a few short moments away.
Then, we heard something. It was two men talking just outside the door to the bunkroom. I wanted to stop what we were doing and get dressed, but I also wanted to feel the orgasm that I had built up and was so close to releasing.
I pressed myself urgently back against Chase and moved his hand from my mouth down to my clit. He took my direction expertly and started to manipulate my clit as I moved hard against his cock. When I felt the tightening of my body, I grabbed him by the hips and he thrust one last deep, hard thrust so we could both explode together. It wa
s absolutely perfect – except that there were two men just outside the door.
Neither of us waited at all. We quickly got up and put our clothes back on. I walked to the bathroom and cleaned myself up while Chase lay back down in the bed. I could only imagine just how much his ribs had to have been hurting by that point.
“Mr. Foster,” a voice said from the doorway.
I peeked my head out from the bathroom to see who it was. It was Officer Reyes and another officer behind him.
“Yes,” Chase said from the bed.
“Your father is here to see you.”
I opened the bathroom door and stared at Chase and then back at the officer. How the heck did Chase’s father find out he was there? I could see the shock on Chase’s face, and I quickly made my way back over to him.
“All right, tell him I’ll be out there in a minute,” he said and the two officers went away.
“What’s going on? How would your father know we were here?” I asked, totally confused as to what was going on.
“I suspect that Captain Bastrop called him. They are friends.”
“If they are friends, then why the hell didn’t Captain Bastrop offer to actually help us out? Why would he call your father, but not bother to actually give us help that would let us go free and be safe? This is craziness. Now, your life is still in danger, and your father is going to hate us forever. He won’t give you the company. You won’t have your dream of running his organization.”
“You know what, Jordan,” Chase said with a smile on his face. “I don’t think I want to run his company. I know what I want in life. And I’d be happy to work for him, but I don’t want to be in charge of all that.”
“What about the money?” I asked.
It seemed like a shallow thing to ask, but really, Chase was talking about giving up millions of dollars. What did he want to do that was more important than millions of dollars?
“I don’t know. All I know is I am not going to let my father hold his money over my head forever. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”