In Too Deep

by Fox, Harley

  I wish he were here with me. I wish he were holding me, and kissing me. I wish he could run away with me, that we could leave together. I wish … I wish I’d never hurt him the way that I did. I wish everything had been different.

  Warm wetness finally makes its way down my cheeks and I wipe it away with my sleeve, sniffing wetly. But as I blink more tears come out and I wipe those away too, and then the ones after that. They don’t seem to stop. I’ve held them back for too long.

  Looking around to make sure no one outside is looking in, I turn my face away from the window and bring my mug of coffee up to my face … and then sob, softly, into it. Letting it out, letting the pain out in slow trickles. Just enough to get me by. I don’t try to stop the tears as they make their way to my chin, dangle off, fall down to the floor below.

  And then I hear Captain Hartridge’s voice in the room and my stomach does a flip inside of me. I cough, trying to mask the sound of my crying, and hurriedly wipe away at my face.

  “Mm, sorry, Captain,” I say in a choked and muffled voice. “I was, um, I sneezed and didn’t have anything to blow my nose.” I suck the wet snot back up and turn, composing myself quickly. But when I look at where I think the captain is standing all I see is the empty room again.

  And then I hear her voice again and I look up at the TV to see Captain Hartridge and Devon standing outside in front of a large building. And standing in front of them … is none other than Will Silver.

  I stare, dumbfounded, at the screen as they speak, smiles on their faces. I can only just make out what they’re saying, so I walk over and turn the volume up.

  “… new development with Santa Espera’s very own Will Silver, CEO and founder of PharmaChem,” Captain Hartridge is saying. “PharmaChem has been generous enough to offer to finance a new drug enforcement division of the police force, and has offered up their facilities in order to analyze any new drugs found. With this new technology we’ll be able to reverse-engineer the composition of these new drugs—including the latest drug to hit the streets, a meth-like hybrid that has been found to be more addictive than meth and heroin put together. This way it can hopefully give us a clue as to how it’s being created, which will help lead to more arrests.”

  “I’m happy to offer my help to our fine officers,” Will Silver says. “Anything I can do to help keep these drugs off the street and out of our children’s hands. This town means everything to me. I would hate to see it fall into the hands of the wrong sorts of people.”

  The image cuts back to the newscasters as they banter about what was just shown, but I don’t hear them. I’m speechless. I can’t believe it. Will Silver … and the captain. And Devon! All three of them, together. That means …

  I look out through the breakroom windows, into the office where my fellow police officers are walking around, talking, doing work at their desks. They all look so normal, but they’re not. How many of them are corrupt? I knew some of them were, but there had to be some good cops, besides myself.

  Am I the only one? Am I the only fish left swimming in a pool of sharks?

  I look down at the coffee mug in my hand. I walk over and pour the rest of it out, leaving the mug in the sink. Leaving the breakroom, I walk to my desk, feeling like I’m in a dream. All around me are strangers. People I thought I knew, but it turns out I know nothing about. I reach my desk and sit down. What do I do? I don’t know what to do.

  I feel like the air here is getting thinner. I need to leave this place. Can I just leave? No. Suspicious. Something else. Other work. Filing? God no. The front desk! It’s Wednesday, usually the quietest day.

  I stand up again, having only sat down a few seconds ago. Nobody noticed. I turn and leave, without saying anything. Stay calm. Act normal. I walk through the halls to the foyer and see Lyle sitting at the front desk, an older cop who left the beat after a bullet went into his leg. There’s nobody else here. He looks bored. I walk up to him.

  “Lyle,” I say, and he turns his head slowly to look up at me. His eyes narrow and he glances at my badge.

  “Officer Pearson,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to relieve you,” I say, putting a smile on my face. “I need the training, and you need the day off.”

  One gray eyebrow slowly raises up.

  “You’re relieving me?”

  “Unless you want to stay on,” I tell him. “I can go back and tell them—”

  “No,” he interrupts. “That’s fine, I’ll take it.”

  It takes him a minute to stand up and gather his things, but soon enough he’s out the front door and I’m left sitting at his desk, alone in a quiet room where I can finally think.

  Okay. Okay. What am I going to do?

  Will Silver’s in with the Captain. I don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. As much as she was a hardass I had hoped she still had a sliver of decency, but I guess I was wrong. Devon I’m honestly not surprised about. But it means that I can’t turn in those dossiers. That would be yelling out to Will Silver that I’m a cop. And besides, it would tell the captain that I went undercover on my own. I had hoped before that I could kind of gloss over that detail and hide it with all the impending arrests. But now it’ll get me in deep shit. And I can’t ask for a transfer, because then Will will have access to where I go.

  I’m fucked. I tried getting into something that I thought I could handle, but I couldn’t. I can’t. And now I’m fucked. Fucked by the police. The one group of people in this evil town that I thought I could trust, my only sanctuary now is tainted. Now my only real option … is to run.

  I have to. What else can I do? I’m going to die if I stay here, either by the Bullets or the police. The memory of Flynn and me talking suddenly pops into my head:

  Maybe I won’t stay in Santa Espera forever. I think I’d like to settle down and have some kids. Buy a house. Get married. You know, that kind of thing.

  He said that. This was before he found out about me. Before everything got all fucked up. But he said that to me. That’s how he feels. He doesn’t want to be in this city either.

  So maybe we can run away together.

  Just the three of us: Flynn, my mom, and me. Maybe we can do it. Really make it work between us. I know Flynn is angry at me now, but I love him, and he loves me. We can get away from all this. Escape Will Silver, escape the Bullets, escape this entire fucking poisonous town. Get away and finally be safe.

  The front door opens and I snap out of my thoughts to see a woman walk in carrying a baby. She looks harried, as most people who come in here usually do. I’ve found that whenever I’m dealing with a scared mother, a calm approach is the best one to take. It usually calms them down too.

  “Hello,” I say to her. “My name is Officer Pearson. How can I help you?”

  “Um, yes, hello,” the woman says, glancing around. “Um, I’d like to report a, um …” She looks behind her, around at the empty room. And yet, even though we’re alone, she drops her voice. “A rape.”

  Oh, God. “Of course,” I say, keeping my emotions from my face. She doesn’t need to see pity right now. “Let me get the proper form.”

  I open up the desk drawer and flip through the papers to find the report form for sexual assault. The woman’s baby becomes a little fussy, but the woman calms him by stroking his back, and the baby quiets down.

  “Okay, first I’m going to need your name.”

  “Jeannette Willow,” the woman says, and I begin to write it down. But as I do something in my mind begins to stir. Jeannette Willow? Why does that sound familiar?

  “Okay, and do you know the person who committed the assault?”

  “Yes,” she starts to say, but the baby starts fussing again. “I’m sorry,” she says to me as she turns her attention onto him. “Nathan please, be quiet for Mommy. I know you’re hungry, but you’re going to have to wait.”

  Nathan Willow. Jeannette Willow. It starts to come back to me. Yesterday. A meeting in the Bullets warehouse. Wi
ll Silver telling us we have a job: to kill a woman and her baby. This woman and her baby.

  I look up at the woman standing in front of me, unable to believe it. Finally little Nathan quiets down and Jeannette focuses on me again.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, giving me an apologetic smile before looking down at the form in my hand. “The name of the man who assaulted me is Craig Silver.”

  Flynn

  I open up my fridge, looking inside, but I know I’m not hungry. Nothing catches my interest and I close it, looking around. Looking for something to do. Something to distract myself. Something to get my head away from all these bad thoughts.

  I look over at the sink, at the rack full of drying dishes next to it. Suddenly a memory of Trista pops into my head: her standing naked at my sink, filling up a glass of water. She looks over her shoulder and smiles at me. She looks happy.

  I turn away from the sink, shaking the memory from my mind.

  Leaving the kitchen, I walk back into the living room and decide to drop down and do some push-ups. Maybe exercise will help to clear my brain.

  But even as I lift myself up and down, even though I start counting out loud to drown out the silence, all I can think about is Trista.

  It was only yesterday that she told me what she is. That she confessed—because that’s really how it came across, as a confession—that she’s a cop.

  A fucking cop. A cop! She could’ve been on the run. She could’ve been a drug smuggler, or working for someone else, or been a fucking murderer and we would’ve figured it out. But a cop?

  How could she do this to me? How could she have lied to me, after all this time, after so much time spent together? Was it all a lie? Did she fuck me just to get information out of me? When she smiled at me, when she told me she loves me … was that all a lie too?

  I’ve gone over this in my mind so many times, and every time I know the answer.

  No. It wasn’t all a lie. I’d like to think it was, because that would make things so much easier. If Trista lied about everything then I could just hate her and that would be that. Seal her off from my heart, kill her if I get the chance, and sort it all out afterward.

  But I know she didn’t lie about everything. I know she didn’t mean to get her heart mixed up in this, just like I didn’t mean to fall in love again. And I know she didn’t lie when she told me she loves me. Because I didn’t lie when I told her I love her. And even though she’s fucked my life up in such an irreversible way, I still love her. I don’t know why but I do. And even after all this, the thought of being without her is worse than any other outcome this situation holds.

  I stop at fifty push-ups and stand back up. I need some air. Grabbing my keys and my Bullets jacket, I go out the front door and head for the stairs.

  The roof. I need to think, and this is my thinking place.

  Walking up the flights I reach the door and go through to the outside. It’s late morning and the sun is shining brightly overhead. I walk over to the edge and peer down into the city. Into this cesspool of a city. Cars drive through the streets, line up behind red lights. People roam the sidewalks, going in and out of stores, walking, talking. And looming over it all is PharmaChem. The monolith whose veins pump blood into every facet of this city. Without PharmaChem this city would be dead. It’s the only thing holding us all together. It’s the single thing that stands between economic vitality and absolute desolation.

  And it needs to be destroyed.

  Because at the heart of PharmaChem is an evil man. My boss’s boss, Will Silver. He’s the evil stepdad who swooped in when the family was going through a tough time and made everything all right, just so long as they abided by his rules. Now he owns this city. And with this new drug that’s hitting the streets, he’s going to have everyone in his pocket even more than before. They’ll all be addicted to his own drug. He’ll have no competition, and no way for people to get clean. Hell, he’ll probably even come up with some antidote and sell it through PharmaChem. Addicted to the drug or addicted to the antidote, it’ll make no difference for him. He’ll become richer than he already is, and all at the low, low cost of a few innocent people dying.

  He needs to be stopped. That’s what Trista was setting out to do, I realize that. But she was going about it all wrong. And I should know, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot too. I love the Bullets, but I hate what they do. I thought I was going to leave with Trista. I thought she was going to be my out. But I can’t just leave my friends like this. I can’t leave them just as a new shitstorm is about to unleash.

  I turn away from the building’s edge and look around the rooftop.

  Trista and I were here. The first time we really made love was up here. I can still feel her, can still smell her. No matter how angry I am at what she did, she’s never far from my mind. And up here was the first time I realized that she was something special. Is something special.

  I honestly don’t know what to do. Maybe I need to get out of here to clear my head. I haven’t left my apartment since yesterday. Maybe I need to go to the bar.

  I walk back over to the rooftop door and go in, quickly descending the steps all the way down to the ground level. Leaving and heading to the parking lot, I climb on my bike and kick it into life, revving the engine and peeling out of there, heading for Point Blank.

  The wind feels good on my face and before I know it I’m there. I park my bike and go inside. Again I immediately see memories of Trista—playing pool together, the first time I met her; sitting on the couches together; holding her hand, kissing her, drinking together. But I shake them away as I walk over to the couches. Chloe and Matthias are there, along with Jackie, Tyrone, and Kendal. The light is dim so it’s not until I get up close that I see they’re badly bruised. Chloe has a black eye and Tyrone’s lip is cut. And then I remember: they went to the Chain Gang yesterday to ambush the Chains.

  “Hey guys,” I say as I sit down. “How’d it go yesterday?”

  None of them answer right away. They’re all looking down in the dumps. Finally Chloe speaks:

  “It was fucked,” she says. Everybody nods, although it looks painful to do it.

  “Will was right,” Tyrone puts in. “They didn’t expect a thing. They thought the truce was still happening. So when we showed up drunk and started fighting, it took them a bit before they realized they had to start fighting back.”

  “Did you kill anybody?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  “No,” Kendal says, and I feel relief course through me. “After Will left we all agreed we wouldn’t use our guns. We just brought some hand weapons. Pipes, chains. Fucked a lot of people up.”

  “That pregnant woman was there,” Jackie says, her speech sounding a bit muffled from a fat lip. “Jake’s woman, I forget her name.”

  “Merryn,” Chloe says, and Jackie nods.

  “Yeah, Merryn. We left her alone, though. You don’t want to fuck with somebody’s unborn baby.”

  “But Jake got it good,” Matthias says, looking sad. “He was yelling a lot, standing between us and Merryn. He got right up into it. We had to do something. He looked like he was going to kill us.”

  “Can you blame him?” Tyrone asks. “The man’s got a kid on the way.”

  “Anyway, it was fucked,” Matthias goes on. “A pretty even match, but it was a mess. We tore the place apart. Lot of blood. We’re just lucky the Chains didn’t pull out their guns. I guess with the truce on they figured they didn’t need them. Or something. We left before anything got too crazy.”

  “Maddox didn’t go,” Chloe tells me, and to this I raise my eyebrows. “He said he needed to stay behind, keep his wits about him.”

  “I think he just felt bad about it all,” Jackie says.

  “Yeah, but what about the next plan?” Kendal asks. “How can he feel bad about ambushing them after giving us that?”

  “What’s the next plan?” I ask. Everybody drops their gaze, so Kendal keeps talking.

  “Maddox told
it to us when we came back,” she says. “We told him how it went and he was all in a fervor. I guess he’d kept drinking after we left; he was pretty worked up. He said Will doesn’t want anything getting in his way. He was going to surprise Will, he said. Get back on his good side.”

  She’s about to keep talking, but then she hesitates and looks away from me. I look around at everyone and none of them are meeting my eyes.

  “What’s the next plan?” I ask again, feeling worried now. Kendal drops her gaze and it’s Chloe this time who raises her head. Her eyes are shimmering with tears.

  “We’re going to kill them,” she says. “He wants us to go over to the Chain Gang tonight, when they’re all there, and set the place on fire. He said when people leave … we have to shoot them.”

  “It’s gonna be a fucking massacre,” Tyrone says, shaking his head.

  “Kill them?” I ask. I think about Trista, how she said her brother was Sal. Sal started the Chains when he was only a kid. Kid. “What about Merryn? Are you going to let her go, or …?”

  Nobody says anything, giving me the answer I didn’t want to hear.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say. I feel numb. We’re going to murder a pregnant woman. It’s like my past is coming back to haunt me, but this time I’m on the other side. What have I become? What am I doing? What would Elizabeth think? What would Trista think? How will I be able to live with myself after this?

  “Flynn?”

  I snap back to reality and look up to see Kendal looking at me.

  “I asked you where Trista is,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. “She, um …” I look at my friends, at the sorry state they’re in. They don’t need this. Not right now. Not with what’s going to happen. Tonight. “She and I had a fight,” I say, and the others look up at me.

  “Is everything okay?” Chloe asks.