Explicit Memory

by Scarlett Finn

  So when she saw her friend Liam approach their pre-arranged meeting point, a little of the current weight on her shoulders lessened.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Liam asked, when he reached her position on this generic street corner.

  The library he worked at, where Flick had originally met him, was more than an hour away by car. But he’d come without question when she’d called from the local library in this area. The time it took Liam to get here gave Flick a chance to note down all of the important details on a notepad borrowed from the librarian.

  ‘It’s a long story, Liam. Thank you for coming.’

  Throwing his arms around her, his embrace was tight and almost relieved. ‘I’m glad you’re ok,’ he said. ‘When I didn’t hear from you again I thought the worst. I sent the audio to that email address you gave me, and—‘

  ‘Thank you, but I didn’t call you about that.’

  ‘Have you gotten yourself into more trouble?’

  ‘Buy me a coffee, Liam.’

  After fleeing Victor’s gang, she and Rushe had cohabited in an apartment. For the three months that they’d lived there, Flick had been a regular user of the public library where Liam Hutten worked as a software engineer, and in that time they’d developed a friendship.

  Liam was something of a technical whizz, and he had frequently impressed her with his skills of covert information gathering. Those skills had come in handy during the last assignment she and Rushe had embarked upon.

  He had helped them out in a time of need, and so after recording incriminating evidence on their last job, she and Rushe had sent it to Liam. He’d collated and kept it for them until she told him to forward it to another of Rushe’s contacts, a man named Eric, who had been one of the two men to hire Rushe for the mission.

  Traversing the sidewalk to a nearby diner, they entered and got coffee before she and Liam tucked themselves into a secluded booth in the back corner.

  ‘Where’s Rushe?’

  ‘He doesn’t know I’m here,’ Flick said, hoping that her love was safe and wasn’t too worried about her.

  ‘You’re running from him? Hiding?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she snapped, and her eyes fired up to his.

  ‘Unless you tell me what’s going on, I’ll have to keep playing twenty questions,’ Liam said. ‘You called me here without notice, so whatever it is, it’s important.’

  Flick swallowed away her anxiety and curled her hands around her coffee mug.

  ‘I have to tell you a story, the story of how Rushe and I met.’

  The easy smile, which was usually a permanent feature on the face of the IT expert with the mucky brown hair, was now absent.

  ‘Ok.’

  Flick appreciated that he sat back so calmly and waited, putting no pressure on her to hurry up. She had never told this story, and Rushe would remind her to keep her guard up. Maybe her lover would warn her against trusting Liam, but her friend had come through for them in the past, and right now, she needed guidance.

  To bring this situation to a successful end, Flick had to acknowledge that she couldn’t do it alone, but that didn’t mean she had the faintest idea how to bring things to a head. So she sat there opposite Liam and told him everything, the whole story from beginning to the present.

  ‘Jansen was gathering evidence,’ Liam said, after they’d been talking for a number of hours. ‘Serendipity told you that?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Flick said, picking off a corner of the banana muffin Liam had bought for them to share.

  ‘So there’s something there to find,’ Liam said. ‘You have to prove what happened. What really happened.’

  ‘That was what I thought too,’ Flick said. ‘But where do we begin? How do we prove beyond any doubt that the Merciers are involved, and that they have the police in their pockets?’

  ‘They don’t have every member of the force in their pockets,’ Liam said. ‘From what you’ve told me they’re not hugely wealthy. Rushe told you that they were mid-level and without great funds. They’re not billionaires dallying in human trafficking for fun.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So they needed the money, they’re not infinitely rich. If that’s the case, then they’ve only got a few key members of the force in their pockets. They can’t pay off everyone.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Jansen was based somewhere around here in New Jersey, and this shack you were at, it was only a few hours’ drive from here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Flick said.

  ‘Victor’s mansion, that’s further north than your parents’ place, somewhere in Maine, you think. Everything started here, and then spread out over time. This is far-reaching, there’s no way that the Merciers have paid every cop to keep their secret.’

  ‘We need to find out who they do have on their payroll then,’ Flick said. ‘Because whoever it is, they’re destroying everything that we need.’

  ‘No,’ Liam said, shaking his head and leaning over the table. ‘We’ll have to find that out, sure, but they’re not destroying everything, just whatever the police already have. There has to be more out there, evidence that the police haven’t yet uncovered.’

  ‘Jansen’s evidence.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Liam said. ‘If he’s pulled all the pieces together then that’s great, we’re already halfway to where we need to be. But he won’t have handed it over to the evidence locker if he thinks that it’s going to disappear from there.’

  ‘So who would he give it to? The DA?’

  ‘Maybe, but unless he knows and trusts the DA then he’s not going to go anywhere near a place of authority that the Merciers might hear about. You said that he tried to go to his own superiors about the mess with Serendipity and word got back to Victor. The guy has got to be paranoid. He’s been screwed over from every angle in the past.’

  ‘Serendipity didn’t say where he kept what he’d uncovered, but if he’s already gathered everything, then there’s nothing left for us to find.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Liam said. ‘Maybe we have to come at this from the other side. Instead of proving the Merciers’ guilt, you have to prove Rushe’s innocence.’

  ‘Before he’s been accused of anything?’

  ‘I think they’re doing the accusing, and if they’re planting evidence then you need to be able to refute that.’

  ‘So,’ Flick said, considering what that meant. ‘We’ll retrace every step. I was there, so I know what happened. I have to take everything that I know and prove that Rushe isn’t the monster that they’re going to claim he is.’

  ‘Prove that he wasn’t the one giving the orders... and that your relationship was consensual from the get go.’

  ‘Right,’ Flick said.

  ‘Ok,’ Liam said, pushing aside the muffin and their cups. ‘Tell me everything again from the beginning.’

  Chapter Nine

  They talked for another couple of hours. Upon leaving the coffee shop Liam had offered Flick a ride, but she’d opted for a loan of cash for a taxi instead. Night had closed in around them, and while she wasn’t comfortable accepting a ride and drawing Liam into the danger surrounding the brothel, she didn’t fancy walking alone through the city to the less than savoury neighbourhood that the brothel was situated in.

  The cab dropped her off and she went to the shop door, which she was surprised to find unlocked. Then again, the customers wouldn’t want to be loitering on the sidewalk and drawing attention to themselves, so direct access would be necessary. Getting through the beads to the back door, Flick pushed the button that caused the buzz and the door was yanked open.

  She expected Rushe, she expected fury, but instead she was faced with a short, black, indifferent man.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Lilah chanted from behind the reception desk, and so Flick was granted entry.

  A couple of johns sat quietly, and neither lifted his head when she came further into the space.

  ‘Thanks,’ Flick said to Lilah. ‘Is Candy ok?’

&
nbsp; ‘Pissed as hell,’ Lilah said, picking at her fingernail. ‘But she’s good.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Rushe ain’t none too happy either,’ Lilah said. ‘He don’t like anyone bringing their crap to his girls.’

  So these were his girls, and Simone was Flick’s problem. Any concern she had about his state of mind over her location today evaporated.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Flick tossed the curtain aside and sloped up the hallway, lost in her fogged and tired thoughts. So without first going into the bedroom she stripped down and went straight into the shower to wash off the day.

  Liam was going to find out as much as he could about the Mercier family, Victor’s gang, and Theo Silver too. Perhaps more importantly, he was going to probe the internal investigation that Jansen was suspended for, and the bogus police case Simone and the others were perpetrating against Rushe.

  Her desperation for answers made Flick crave the opportunity to do some digging of her own. The only reason she’d left it in Liam’s capable hands was so that she could come back to Rushe, on the assumption that he may have missed her or been worried. Obviously, that assumption had been erroneous.

  Without a towel, she couldn’t dry off after her shower, but she was too tired to care. Kicking the heap of her clothes from the hall into the bedroom, Flick then ran a comb through her hair before she collapsed onto the bed and went to sleep.

  Up, off the bed, off her feet, Flick’s back crashed against something solid, and her upper arms burned against the embers that kept her clamped in this elevated position.

  ‘What the fuck did you think you were doing?’

  Dizzy, Flick fought against the liquid circling her brain that caused her ears to ring. This was Rushe, pinning her to the wall, and he was angry. Blackness surrounded them, so it had to be night-time. Quaking from the slumber he’d hauled her from, it took her a few seconds to re-orient herself and recall what was going on.

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘My job,’ Flick croaked, then cleared her throat to try and define her voice. ‘They shot Candy, so I had to go. I saw Serendipity.’

  ‘I thought they’d taken you,’ he growled, his lips never moving. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘Yes, I could tell how worried you were when I came in and you were pacing in anxious wait.’

  ‘I was out there looking for you, ignoring my responsibility to this place,’ he snarled. ‘We got back here and there was blood, a trail from inside to out, and you were gone. What the fuck—‘

  ‘Simone’s man shot Candy to highlight their power,’ Flick said. ‘I had nowhere to run, Rushe.’

  ‘I spoke to Cody, I got in touch with Antoine. Kitten, I was gonna start shooting.’

  ‘Simone let me leave as she said she would,’ Flick said, struggling against the deepening blaze of his grip. ‘It wasn’t a kidnap, I went voluntarily to get answers and to see Serendipity.’

  ‘You didn’t come back to me. You left Simone hours ago.’

  ‘I didn’t know where you were,’ she said, narrowing her eyes to match the width of his. ‘I wasn’t going to come back in here to sit alone, locked in a room, doing nothing, on the faintest hope that you might deem me worthy enough to talk to eventually. Why have you shut me out again? You trust me, Rushe, I know you do. I thought we were beyond this.’

  The scorch released, and as she was unprepared for liberation, she tumbled to the floor. Rushe marched ten feet from her and for a moment, there was peace. Then he spun to face her, and she recognised the torture in his countenance from their very early days together.

  ‘You were worried about me,’ she whispered. ‘Do you need me to reassure you that I’m ok? That we’re ok?’

  Rushe understood sex, and the connection that he felt when they shared it. In its simplest form, Rushe felt closest to her when their bodies were bonded.

  Tumbling forward onto all fours, Flick stalked toward him, rising to her knees when she reached his location. Very slowly, she unbuttoned his jeans and let her eyes drift upwards to his.

  ‘You’re hard,’ she murmured, on liberating his member. ‘He’s missed me.’

  Leaning forward she clasped the length of him to her cheek, rubbing back and forth until her eyes closed, and she got lost in her bonding with her closest ally here. Sliding him across her face she nuzzled closer, then pushed higher to press him against the column of her throat, while humming out to send vibrations skittering through him. Urging him upward, she tilted her head to repeat the action with his balls in place against the front of her neck.

  When he groaned out in instinct from the pleasure she imparted, Flick pouted her lips to meet his shaft and drew them up, while squeezing her tongue between them. Churning the saliva in her mouth, she lapped his head and suckered in her cheeks around him. Her next instant force of action pulled him into her throat. Pulling back, she milked again, tugging him into her throat and out, in partnership with her tongue flickering the end of him when she withdrew.

  ‘Suck that,’ he grumbled. ‘Right there.’

  Triumph bred a smile, but when she cast her eyes upward again she saw that his eyes were closed. She couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever not watched her do this, unless he was asleep. His skull went back and she closed her curled lips around his bulbous head to suck while pumping her fist up and down his shaft.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered, consoled that they had this time to re-connect.

  But no sooner had the words passed her lips than he was leaning over her, taking the rigid organ she’d been playing with from her grasp and snatching her arms to haul her up to toss her to the bed.

  With a grin, Flick parted her thighs expecting to have Rushe join with her in this minute, but he did not. Fury circulated his form, and her frown quickly took place of her glee.

  She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. ‘Come here and let me finish.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said, on half a laugh and reached for him, but he stepped out of her range. ‘You’ve never had a problem with my technique before, but if I need more practise—‘

  ‘This isn’t a game, Red!’

  Alarm spiked in her chest and shot through her limbs, and then slowly, all emotion – pleasure, pain, fear, happiness – it all went away as the icy slurry of terror found every crevice within her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She managed to snag his loose jeans pocket, but he backed away out of her grasp, moving until he hit the back of the couch. Whilst his eyes remained on her he tucked himself away, and all ecstasy of a few seconds ago was now forgotten.

  But his expression relaxed, freeing him of the anger he entered this space with. ‘I don’t know why I...’

  Showing weakness wasn’t something Rushe enjoyed, it was so foreign to him that even now as he looked on her with such confusion Flick wasn’t sure he knew he was revealing so much of himself.

  “Red” was a nickname from the time they’d met, before they’d slept together, before he knew her hair colour at the time wasn’t natural.

  ‘It’s something about this place,’ she said. ‘Something here has changed things between us. Something here is hurting you, Lover. I can feel it in you. I feel your war.’

  Leaving the bed, she gradually closed in on his position, moving toward him as though he were a scared animal that she didn’t want to spook.

  ‘You were here before,’ Flick said. ‘Before me, is that it? Did something happen here?’ He didn’t respond. ‘You recall what our lives were before we found each other? You can talk to me, Lover... I love you.’

  The puzzled daze vanished, and his posture adjusted. ‘There’s no place for that here.’

  On his clipped words, he pivoted, and marched out, slamming the door between them. Rushe had wrestled with demons all of his life. Being a loner was an integral part of his identity; he’d confessed himself incapable of love, until there was her.

  One of the first things she had le
arned about Rushe was not to push him. Coming to terms with what he was now, with her, evidently meant facing who he was before, and the journey he had gone on to make that transition.

  Flick wouldn’t push him, but when the time came that he was ready and needed someone to talk to she would be there, and she had faith that he would know that.

  Relying on her, trusting her, had been no small feat for him. Traversing the route to get to that level of trust that they had hadn’t been easy, but it was real and thorough, no shortcuts, no quick fixes, or easy paths. He’d told her that she was an extension of him, and so when the moment was right for him to explain what he struggled with, Rushe would seek her out. Flick had faith in him, and in them.

  Waking up alone to another breakfast bagel on the nightstand, Flick discovered one great thing about this place. The bed was no more than a box spring and mattress, so that meant there was no opportunity available to keep her tied down. No head or footboard existed for Rushe to chain her to in order to keep her immobile.

  Struggling to sleep without him was becoming the norm, but he was obviously coming in to check on her because he kept leaving food. But without restraint Flick was free to shower and ready herself for the day without any need for permission.

  For the first time since they’d been living here, when Flick moved through the curtain to reception, the doorway to the women’s wing was open. Though all Flick could see was a long, straight passage that ran the length of the building.

  Lilah was at the front desk, because it seemed that she never had anywhere else to be when she was here. A man that Flick didn’t recognise sat beside the shop door, but he wasn’t a john, not if his casual pose and stocky stance were anything to judge him on.

  ‘Going out,’ Flick said to no one in particular, and then went for the exit, but the man stood up and blocked her path. ‘Have you got a problem?’

  ‘Rushe don’t want you going out today,’ Lilah drawled.