by Nicole Fox
“You want it in the ass?” Cor’s cock is huge and thick, reaching up to near his nipples. Twenty inches—no thirty. “You want to be taken like a real little whore, is that it?”
I climb onto my knees and arch my back. I’ve never wanted it in the ass before, but with Cor I want it. I want it badly. I want him to use me any way he likes. I want to be dominated, because in real life I spend so much time being the strong one. I want to be submissive with him because I feel safe with him. He grabs my ass cheeks and slides his thirty-inch cock inside of me, filling me completely. I expect agony, but all I feel is my clit, my burning, throbbing clit, as he slides his cock into my tight asshole.
“Yes, yes!” I cry, something splashing in the lake. I ignore it. I can’t look. I won’t. “Yes, Cor. Fucking take me! Fucking take me hard!”
I push back with all my strength, grabbing fistfuls of leaves and bouncing my ass up and down on his abdomen. It feels so good to have him inside of me—nothing at all what I imagined anal was like. A lucid thought hits me: is this anal, or am I just rubbing my clit, someplace far away?
I collapse forward, mouth full of leaves, eyes in the dirt. Cor has stopped now. I hear him walking away. Looking up, I see him standing there, hands in his pockets. “We can’t do this,” he says. “This would only ever work if we were on the same team. This would only ever work if you let me be who I need to be.” He sighs, then repeats, “We can’t do this. Not now.” He walks away with his head bowed. I want to follow him, but invisible ropes have secured me to the earth. I struggle upward, but the ropes get tighter.
From the lake, the splashing gets louder. Two girls are giggling; two girls are playing; two girls are living life and having fun with no idea what’s about to happen to them.
I lie still for a long time, listening to the girls, their giggling and their squeals of joy, waiting for the ropes to be released. After a long while, they unfasten, and I’m free to stand up. I see the lake, a long, oval-shaped body of water where, for five years, the O’Bannons played at living life like nothing bad would ever happen. At the end of the lake sits a log cabin, which right now is shuttered against the world. I look at the girls on the lake. One is fifteen, tall, redheaded, and clearly older. The other is short, stumpy-looking, with jutting teeth, and with freckles blanketing her face. She is the cutest, funniest, most wonderful twelve-year-old I have ever laid eyes on. I look down and see that I’m wearing a bathing suit, the same red one-piece the fifteen-year-old out there is wearing. I reach up and feel my hair tied up in a bun, the same bun the fifteen-year-old has her hair in.
I can save her! I can make everything better!
I dive into the water and start paddling as quickly as I can, head down, aiming for the girls. If I can get to her and get her out of the water before anything bad happens, life will be full of sunshine again. Dad will look his age, or younger, and mom will once again have friends and hobbies and go to work. Tess will be at college, or married, or something living people do. I’m smiling as I pump my arms and legs. The lake is large and the two girls are right in the middle of it, treading water. Stupid girls, I reflect. Idiots. They ought to know better.
Soon I’m within feet of them, but when I reach out to grab Tess, my hand moves through her like fog. She’s smiling, but for some reason, I can’t hear her now. “Tess! Tess!” She just keeps smiling, lolling on the waves, and grinning at her big sister—her protector. I turn to the redheaded teenager, who thinks she’s the best swimmer in school and who’s confident she could swim ten laps of this place without becoming exhausted. “You naïve little fool!” I snap. “You need to get out of here!”
I swim toward her, and then I’m being sucked into her. Her mouth is open, a maw the size of a city block, a black hole sucking me inside. I move within total darkness for a minute, trying to get my bearings, before jumping up and realizing I’m in her skin. I slide my hands into her hands, my feet into her feet, and my eyes into her eyes. And then I’m the one treading water, the one giggling with Tess. But when I try to speak, I find I can’t. I’m forced to watch. I can feel the water between my toes and feel the laughter in my belly, but I can’t change any of it.
“You are such a liar!” Tess exclaims. Get away! Get to shore! Tess! But she just smiles and tips her head. She’s trying to act older to impress me. She’s always trying to impress me.
“I’m not,” I reply, feeling cool and liking the way Tess looks at me like I’m the biggest, most badass girl she’s ever seen. “I’ve been with, like, ten men.”
“Yeah right!” But she’s grinning. She’s jealous. We both think this is a grownup, sophisticated discussion. We both think this is the sort of discussion ladies have. We have no idea about anything. “Well ... guess what?” I can see that she’s starting to lose her breath, her face turning red. She’s tired, but she doesn’t want to tell me, and I don’t want to see. I’m having too much fun out here to let my little sister ruin it.
“What?” I ask.
“I can hold my breath for a minute and a half, so what about that, huh? I practiced it at swimming and everybody said I was the best.”
“A minute and a half!” I laugh meanly, because I’m the cool one this afternoon. I’m the show-off this afternoon. Mom and dad are in the cabin with the curtains closed, so I’m the grownup. “Now who’s the liar?”
“I can. Look!”
I try and scream. I try and go to her, grab her by the shoulders, and tell her it’s all right, that she doesn’t have to show me, and that I’ll take her back to shore now. I try and lash out with my hands. I try and do something—anything. But all I can do is giggle and watch as Tess ducks her head under the water and swims straight down, kicking far too powerfully, kicking with enough force to send her right to the bottom if she’s not careful. And still kicking. I wonder, vaguely, why she’s kicking so much and why she just doesn’t float on the surface. And then I remember that she told me yesterday that she likes to go to the bottom and float up. She says—smiling like a girl of six instead of twelve—that it makes her feel like a balloon.
When the bubbles start to rise to the surface, I hate myself for thinking, ha, ha, it hasn’t even been a minute yet. Then one, giant bubble rises and pops loudly, bringing me out of the fun. This is real. Something bad is happening. I duck my head under and start swimming down, but I don’t have my goggles. I’ve never been good at opening my eyes underwater. I swim and swim, but the water is stinging my eyes, making it hard to see. A shape, thrashing ... I swim faster and faster, but then my air is running out and I’m forced to return to the surface. Twice more this happens, air failing me. When I do finally get to the bottom, the shape isn’t thrashing anymore. She has her foot trapped under a rock, beads of blood rising in the water. I dislodge it and carry her to the surface, wondering if I’ll be able to hold my breath long enough, my mind screaming even if I can’t.
“You’re okay.” I gasp, one arm hooked under Tess and the other paddling for the shore, which seems a million miles away now. I half-remember thinking I could swim ten laps of this without getting tired and wonder what sort of drugs that girl was taking. This place is huge. It’s a sea. It’s never-ending. “You’re fine, Tess. Fine, fine, fine. Come on. Say something. Laugh. Come on.” I don’t like the way she feels in my arm, sagging, like a dead fish or something. No, not dead. Alive. A sleeping fish. Just sleeping. How is the shore still so far away? “Tess, stop messing around now. Stop it, please. Stop being so silly. You’re being such a silly. Such a silly, silly, silly—”
Aching and trembling, I drag my little sister onto the shore. For around ten seconds, I just stare down at her. Her face is a funny color and her eyes have this distant, animal look. Then I come to my senses and sprint for the cabin, and then I’m back with Tess, with dad leaning over her, pumping her chest and trying not to cry. Mom is pacing up and down in a bathrobe, biting her fingernails and whispering to herself, “God forgive us. God forgive us. Where is that ambulance?”
“Tes
s, dear. Tess, my angel. Follow daddy’s voice. Daddy is here. Follow daddy’s voice now.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, dad, mom, and I are sitting in the back of a black car with the driver hidden behind a black window, all of us dressed in black clothes. Mom holds a cross to her lips and keeps kissing it over and over, and dad just stares ahead with blank eyes, like he’s not there at all. I keep thinking about the silly girl who thought she was super grownup taunting her little sister. I wish that girl was dead instead, and not Tess.
“Couldn’t you get to the shore sooner?” Dad says, talking to me in a voice I’ve never heard before. It’s the voice I’ve heard him use on the phone with people from work. “What were the two of you doing out there? Why couldn’t you get her to the shore sooner?”
“Derrick!” Mom cries, but then she collapses into herself, weeping violently.
“I tried, daddy!” My tears come now, too. I can’t help them. I cry until my tears turn to rain, and I’m standing at Tess’ gravesite, the rain making my hair stick to my forehead.
“I’m sorry, Tessy. I’m really, really sorry. It’s all my fault. Dad said sorry for shouting at me in the car. He said he was just sad. But he was right. It is all my fault and—and I should be down there, not you. Everyone thinks that. I know they do. Everyone thinks it, and I don’t blame them!” I make to leave when the crust of dirt shifts, tiny stones falling aside as Tess’ hand thrusts up, dirty, dead-white fingers wriggling in the rainfall. I watch, stunned, as she drags herself out of the grave, naked and white with maggots where her eyeballs should be. “T-Tess?”
“You’re right,” she says, but not in her voice. She speaks in my voice, but a grownup version of my voice. “It’s all your fault. Everything’s your fault.” She picks a maggot from her eyes and flicks it at me. “It should’ve been you.”
When the maggot hits my cheek, I sit up, gasping and clawing at my sweaty face to get the maggot away. I don’t believe it’s a dream until I’ve turned on all the lights on in my apartment and checked under the bed, terrified that any second dead Tess will come running at me, maggots squirming.
The windows are frosted over, the first hints of winter in the air. The dreams get worse every night I go without seeing Cor. It’s been months now, and we haven’t seen each other. I wonder, like I always do, what the dream is trying to tell me. Sex, and then Tess, and then the maggots ... but then I start to get scared again. I laugh ruefully at myself, sitting up in bed with my blankets wrapped around me. I’m working to bring down the Irish mob and root out corruption in the FBI, and my dreams are what scare me most of all.
I take my cell from the bedside table and see that it’s five in the morning. I know I won’t get any sleep, so I sit back and start browsing the internet. There are some photographs of Cor on here from his social media accounts, and there’s one in particular I keep coming back to: Cor, at the pool, smiling at the camera in his swimming shorts, his hair hanging sexily near his eyes. As I’ve done every night the horrible dreams come to me, I distract myself by sliding my hands down between my legs and focusing all my attention on the photograph.
When I’m done, I’m able to lie on my side and close my eyes. I won’t let myself fall asleep, but I need the rest. I have to be strong. I have to be hard, cool, and untouchable Agent O’Bannon.
Chapter Fourteen
Scarlet
I make myself a massive cup of coffee and sit in my living room, which even after years of living here is still hotel-like, with clean, bare walls, a clean floor, and a clean, neat everything. I have a cleaner who keeps the place looking like this, which is good, since if I had to do it it’d be a mess. But it also has the unintended consequence of making me feel like I don’t belong here. The only personal touches are my gun and badge resting on the coffee table and my FBI certificate on the plain wall.
I take my cup of coffee to the window and look down upon the city, which is covered in a fine layer of ice. Ice creeps up the window and in the street below I see an old woman hobbling over the ice, picking her steps carefully. I drain my cup of coffee and try not to think about Cor. It seems every day lately has been spent trying not to think about Cor. I have loads to occupy my mind that isn’t Cor-related, and yet I still drift to him, unable to stop myself, unable to keep from wondering where he is and what he’s doing.
I drive to the FBI offices, scanning the sidewalk and imagining that I see Cor’s face in every random passerby. A man huddling under a doorway who looks nothing like Cor miraculously becomes him. A man helping his daughter across the street has Cor’s eyes. The guy who lets me into the parking lot is Cor’s twin. I park my car and tell myself to stop this, but I can’t. Those two weeks with Cor were the most transformative weeks of my life. Not even my time at the academy affected me so profoundly. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that I fell in some kind of love with Cor: a quick, sexual, violent kind of love. Being on the run with him, pulling a gun on him, and then spending a few days at Moira’s ... it shouldn’t be enough, and yet with the weight of our years of working together behind it, it’s more than enough to make me crazy. I swallow, forcing those feelings down. I have work to do.
My first order of business is a meeting with Max Smithson to update him on the progress of my investigation into Mickey’s mob, which has now established itself in prostitution, hard drugs, and murder. Dad and I decided over a month ago, based on what evidence dad was able to pick up—eye witnesses who’d seen Max and Mickey together and agents in Cali who’d had suspicions for some time—that Max Smithson was working for Mickey. But we haven’t got enough to bring him in, and anyway, it might not even be to our benefit. All it would do is tip Mickey off.
Walking through the office and telling myself to stop being stupid when I see Cor in the face of every agent, young or old, I make my way toward his office.
When I knock, I hear him shuffling around some papers, drawers opening and closing. Part of me wants to barge in to see what he’s hiding, but that’d ruin everything. I have to pretend to be Agent O’Bannon, the woman who was missing for a week because she was conducting an independent investigation into the mob and the woman who is now leading an additional investigation. It makes my skin crawl to know that the only reason Smithson is allowing this investigation to continue is so he can report to his boss. I wonder how it would feel to break the man’s jaw. Then he clears his throat and calls, “Come in.”
His jowls have grown larger this autumn, and he drums his fingers on the desk with more anger, but otherwise he’s the same big, dark-eyed man sitting in an oversized chair. He waves for me to sit in the chair opposite, leaning back and looking like an oil man or a business man, but not an FBI agent. I half expect him to ask me about the markets when he opens his mouth.
“So, Agent O’Bannon, my files tell me you have been conducting this investigation from late summer. It is almost winter—Christmas is in a few weeks. I know this because my wife won’t stop prattling on about it. You know how women can get—it is almost winter, and you haven’t turned up any substantial leads or made any arrests.”
Of course I haven’t, I want to scream at him. If I had, you’d have me fired or killed. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear a question.” I make sure my veil of professionalism is impenetrable. He’s searching me with his eyes, as he always does when he calls me in for these meetings, but I won’t give him anything. Max Smithson is the only man who doesn’t remind me, at all, of Cor. I’m glad for that.
“A question.” He chuckles throatily. “Here’s a question, Agent O’Bannon. What is the progress of your investigation? Do you have any leads?”
“We are following several different lines of—”
“Don’t feed me that FBI horseshit!” Max Smithson’s face gets red and he slams his fist down on the table. A superior has every right to be frustrated when those under him don’t deliver, but reacting like this, with this much open rage, is bizarre. At least it would be, if I didn’t know he was scared o
f Mickey. The coward. “I want to know who you plan on arresting, where, and when!”
“Sir,” I say, my tone of voice reminding me of a customer service representative dealing with a problematic customer. “I’m afraid I can’t go into specifics, as I would only be wasting your time. The details are constantly shifting. The parameters of the investigation are constantly moving.” I hardly listen to the exact words. All I’m trying to do is get out of the office. I can’t trust my boss; I’m not even sure which of my co-workers I can trust. All I know is that, one day soon, this needs to end, so that Cor can come out of hiding and so that I can see him again. I won’t arrest you, I want to tell him. I want you.
“Agent O’Bannon.” He leans forward, scowling at me as though I’m a slug he’s just found blocking his drainpipe—as though I’m the lowest of the low. “You are being deliberately obstructive.”
“I apologize if you feel that way, sir,” I say, showing no sign that I acknowledge his anger. “But I can only repeat what I have said before. We are following several different lines of inquiry.”