Edge of the Heat 5

by Lisa Ladew

  She could fell him moving upwards in the bed. He placed a chaste kiss on her belly, and then laid next to her, his head on her arm. She could feel his erection on her hip. Hard as ever. She wanted to feel it. To touch it. Maybe to kiss it and lick it. It was just so … so masculine. But she’d wait until she got her breath back first.

  Jerry ran his fingers through her hair, and lightly down her body, raising goosebumps from her head to her toes. She reveled in his gentleness and thought again that she loved him. She refused to think of anything else. This moment was for them.

  After a moment, she reached her hand to his cock and curled her fingers around it, letting him know she was recovered. He pushed up on his hands immediately and moved his body between her legs. He watched her face and waited, still. Finally she determined he was waiting for her permission. “Take me Jerry,” she whispered. “Love me like a boyfriend would.”

  “I do love you, you know,” he said, his gaze unwavering. “I think I’ve loved you since the first day I met you.” Hot tears sprang to her eyes. As they overflowed and ran down her temples to her hair, he paused long enough to kiss them away, then he returned between her legs. Gently, as gently as the wind kisses a butterfly, he pushed inside her. She felt herself stretch deliciously. It seemed to go on forever. He nudged forward a centimeter at a time, losing himself in her eyes. She felt hopeless longing for a lifetime of this build in her mind. She pushed it out of her mind and clung to him, urging him on.

  They found a rhythm, a melody written just for them. Sara felt another orgasm building. She struggled with it, trying not to be done so quickly. Jerry leaned closer. “Come for me baby,” he whispered into her ear. Sara tensed beneath him a final time and felt herself detonate again. Her pleasure exploded in a thousand pieces and a million parts that flew out from the center of her. She bit her lip and tried not to scream out her satisfaction. As she collapsed for the second time she felt Jerry thrust hard inside her and stiffen. A low noise came from his throat. She watched his face, wanting to see his pleasure fly across it. He shook slightly over top of her, then dropped to the side, being careful not to crush her. She bit back a cry at the broken connection between their bodies. She had wanted it to last forever, even if she knew it could not.

  ***

  The next four days passed in a rapturous blur to Sara. They shopped for clothes and necessities. They ate all their meals in the motel, sometimes while naked - just trying to restore their energy levels between lovemaking sessions. In each early evening, before the sun went down, they prowled the ghettos of Las Vegas looking for illegal guns. A lot of them. Sara also found an identity dealer who made her a fake driver’s license, so she could access her $50,000 trust. They bought an open cargo truck and rented a storage bay for it.

  They were robbed at knife point twice, both times on D street. The first time Sara handed over a wad of cash that, to Jerry, looked like she had kept in her front pocket for just that purpose. The nervous young male looked at it and took off running. Sara didn’t say a word, just kept walking.

  The second time, Sara took the knife off the man and kicked him in the dirt before Jerry even knew they were being mugged. The man made a move under his shirt and Sara produced her gun. He fled faster than the first guy. Jerry looked around to see if anyone noticed, but no head had turned. He pulled Sara to him and whispered, “Does it say something horrible about me that I was turned on by that?” A hint of a smile playing on her lips, Sara said they should head back to the motel in case the guy decided to come back with friends. They barely made it into the room before Jerry pressed her against the wall and stripped her clothes off. His normal gentle approach morphed into something harder, faster, rougher. Sara found she couldn’t get enough of this new level of passion, and she spurred him on by whispering “fuck me” into his ear over and over again. She bit his shoulder when she came to keep from screaming.

  On the 5th day, Sara woke with dread pinning her to the mattress. Everything was done. Tonight was the night. Even if everything went perfectly and she and Jerry made it out of tonight still alive, and not in handcuffs, she would not leave Las Vegas with Jerry. Good guys didn’t spend their lives with broken, disheartened murderers. She knew what she was even if he didn’t.

  She watched him sleeping deeply next to her and felt like her heart might rip right out of her chest.

  Chapter 36

  Hawk leaned over his keyboard, his fingers moving deftly. Craig watched him in silence, uncharacteristically stewing about what that woman had gotten Jerry involved in.

  Hawk leaned backwards in his chair and stretched. “There. It’s done. I’ve compressed all of Lionel’s instructions and sent them to Jerry’s phone. It actually looks quite simple since Lionel did all of the leg work. He batched all of the signal frequencies that Sara asked for together. All she has to do is type in a few commands to the software.”

  He looked back at Craig. “We could have done it for her.”

  “We could have, but how do we know that we should? I can’t believe we’re going along with this at all,” Craig said grumpily. He couldn’t help but feel that he was failing Jerry right now, sitting in this hotel suite doing nothing. Craig thought about the monumental sacrifices Jerry had made for him and for Emma. About the gunshot Jerry took. About Jerry’s mangled leg. All because Craig had asked him to wear a concealed weapon to protect Emma. And after all that you are just sitting here in a hotel room while some stranger gets him involved in God-knows-what trouble.

  Craig pushed out of his chair and paced the room, disgusted with his inaction.

  “Come on Craig,” Hawk said. “Jerry is a smart guy. There must be a good reason for all of this.”

  “Maybe he thinks there is a good reason, but really that woman is just setting him up to take some sort of fall for him. Or maybe she’s blinding him with sex so he can’t think straight at all!”

  Hawk watched him thoughtfully. “Maybe. Was that the vibe you got from them?”

  “I don’t know.” Craig clenched his fists in frustration. “Emma says they’re having sex for sure. I don’t know how she knows but I believe her. She’s known Jerry for a long time. And women just seem to know about those things, you know?”

  Hawk nodded but Craig wasn’t looking at him. He just kept talking.

  “I just wish we knew who she was. She carries herself like a cop, but she’s not in any database in the country as having ever been a cop or an agent or even military.”

  “We’ve been over this before. She probably changed her name,” Hawk said.

  “But why? What is she hiding? And how bad is it all going to turn out for Jerry” Craig mused out loud, for the hundredth time. He stopped in front of Hawk. “Look man, I don’t want to watch whatever they are going to do on the TV with the rest of the world. I want to know what’s going on. What if she’s legit and they need our help? Or what if she’s bullshit and we can get Jerry out before it explodes in his face?”

  “I know Craig, I know. We’ll just have to keep looking. I’ve got facial recocgnition software running right now. Maybe that will turn something up.”

  “You have a picture of her?”

  “Yeah, there was one from our wedding photos. Jerry wanted her to be in it.” Hawk flipped around in his chair and pressed a few keys, pulling up the image. Craig squinted at it.

  “It’s not great though, is it? She turned her face partially away from the camera and her hair covers a lot of it,” Craig said.

  “No, it’s not great. I already got a result of nothing found, but I’m running it again with wider parameters.”

  Craig grunted. “Which means you’ll get a ton of false positives probably.”

  “Yep, but it’s all we’ve got right now,” Hawk said. “If only we had a better picture.”

  The door opened and Emma and Vivian walked in, laughing and carrying bags of Chinese food. “A better picture of who?” Vivian asked.

  Hawk shot out of his chair and grabbed the bags out of her han
d, placing them on the table. He gave her a soft kiss and said, “Of Sara, we’re trying to figure out who she is.”

  “I’ve got one,” Emma said. “On my phone.” She pulled out her phone and tabbed through her gallery. “Here.” She handed the phone to Hawk. Craig crowded over his shoulder to see it too.

  “Perfect,” Hawk breathed.

  It was a full face picture. Jerry was whispering something in her ear and her eyes were wide, her mouth breaking into a smile.

  Hawk flipped around again with Emma’s phone. In 5 minutes he joined the rest of them at the table to eat. Craig raised his eyebrows. “It takes awhile. Could be all day,” Hawk responded.

  Craig made a face but nodded and kept eating.

  ***

  Two hours later, Hawk’s computer made a chiming sound. Craig ran to it. “Don’t get too excited,” Hawk called after him, staying where he was. “That noise signifies a partial match only.”

  “Holy shit,” Craig said, his voice low and awed. That got Hawk moving.

  “Oh no,” Hawk said under his breath when he saw the monitor.

  “What?!” Emma and Vivian cried in unison. The tension level in the room increased a thousand fold.

  All four of them crowded around the computer and read the All Points Bulletin with a National Security Agency logo plastered across the top.

  Vivian read out loud, her cultured voice shaking slightly. “Melissa Medina, wanted for treason. Do not approach. Highly dangerous. Call Agent Frank Thorpe immediately with any information.”

  Craig felt nauseous. He clamped the feeling down. “Where’s the throwaway phone?”

  Emma grabbed it for him. “Here.”

  Craig sat in a chair and started texting. Suddenly he didn’t give a shit about all of Sara’s rules - no names, no mention of Westwood Harbor, only very generic texts, no locations.

  “Jerry, I need to talk to you.”

  Nothing came back.

  “Jerry, it’s important.”

  No response.

  Craig felt like throwing the phone across the room but he restrained himself. He would get an answer eventually.

  Emma sat down heavily next to him, a shocked look on her face. Vivian stayed with Hawk, whose fingers were a blur across the keyboard, rubbing his shoulders.

  The minutes passed like seconds, everyone suddenly aware that they might be completely out of time at any moment, and that their friend Jerry’s fate might depend completely on what they did or didn’t do before then.

  Craig texted a few more times and still got no response. “Damnit!” he shouted, startling Emma. She grasped his hand. “Do we have any idea at all where they are?” He curled his fingers around hers. “None. Maybe somewhere near that park. That’s all we know.”

  Hawk made a noise of disgust. “What?” Craig asked.

  “I’ve accessed the NSA files and I can’t find any files on Melissa Medina or this treason or anything from Frank Thorpe. His mouth twisted at Thorpe’s name.

  “Clearance?” Craig asked.

  “I’ve got full clearance. They just don’t exist here.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Not sure, but maybe it’s because Thorpe doesn’t work for the NSA, or at least he didn’t 8 years ago.”

  “Who does he work for?”

  “Ever heard of the DCIA?”

  “No,” Craig said, his face still stormy. Hawk ignored it. He’d seen it before. Emma however, rarely saw Craig anything but cheerful. She massaged his hand, hoping to calm him a little.

  “It’s a clandestine agency. They mostly do spy work. It doesn’t even officially exist,” Hawk said.

  “A clandestine agency? In the U.S.?” Hawk nodded. “So how do you know about it?”

  “They recruited me based on my FBI entrance exam test scores and my computer knowledge. In fact I met with Frank Thorpe. He was the director then. This was while you were still in the Army.”

  “But you didn’t want to sign up with them?” Craig asked.

  “Nope. I was interested, very interested. But when I met with Frank Thorpe I decided no way. The guy’s a sociopath. And he doesn’t even know it.”

  Craig’s face contorted savagely. “Awesome. He fits right in with this party then. So what do we do now?”

  “Not sure. I would say we snoop in the DCIA’s files but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I don’t know how to find their network.”

  “Fuck!” Craig got up and paced the large room again, texting on the small phone while he did so. Twice he looked ready to pitch it across the room, but both times he reeled his anger in with effort.

  Hawk looked at Emma pointedly. “Maybe you should go look for him,” he said to Craig, inclining his head towards Emma and raising his eyebrows. She nodded and jumped up.

  “Yeah honey, let’s go back to that park and see if we can find anything,” Emma said to Craig.

  “Yeah, good, let’s go,” he said, still texting as he walked out the door.

  “I’ll call you if I find anything,” Hawk yelled after them.

  When they were gone, Vivian turned to Hawk. “Can Lionel help you?”

  “Maybe. I’ll message him.” Hawk turned to his computer again. Vivian retreated to the couch and grabbed her tablet. She knew that when Hawk was working it was best to leave him in peace. Besides, she had some ideas of her own she wanted to punch into Google.

  ***

  Craig drove slowly. The setting sun partially blinded him, adding to his frustration. He and Emma had been walking a perimeter around East Apple Park for hours now, showing Jerry and Sara’s picture. Melissa’s picture, Craig corrected himself bitterly. The feeling that he was failing Jerry was stronger now, pounding relentlessly at his temples. They were driving now, and starting to get desperate. He pulled into the parking lot of a run-down motel. “Let’s go talk to the clerk and show him the picture.” Emma nodded, her phone in her hand. As they opened their car doors, it buzzed.

  She read the text message from Hawk. “Hawk says to come back. He says it’s urgent.”

  Craig took a last look at the large, plate-glass window of the motel, marking it, then slid back in his car. “OK.” He’d learned years ago to trust Hawk’s instincts.

  It took them almost 30 minutes to get back to their hotel. As they walked in the door to the room, Hawk was already waving them over. “You have to see this Craig. Jerry’s in big trouble alright, but we don’t think Sara’s a criminal or guilty of treason. Not anymore.” He glanced at Vivian. She nodded vehemently.

  Hawk handed Craig two large bundles of paper. Craig riffed the edges, unbelievingly. “Can’t you just give me the short version?”

  “OK.” He looked at Vivian. “You want to tell him? You’ll explain it better.”

  She nodded and took a deep breath, thinking how to start. “Sara’s a spy, Craig, and an undercover DCIA agent, or at least she used to be. She was part of an experimental program that Thorpe dreamed up. The program has since been discontinued because 29 out of the 71 original agents who were part of it are serving jail time for heavy crimes. Lots of domestic violence. Lots of murder. Basically, a high percentage of the people in the program are acting as sociopaths without any impulse control at all. What this guy Thorpe did was, he convinced agents to put their kids in the program from birth. These kids grew up without any real school or peer contact. They were trained how to be spies from the time they could walk. And they were sent to camps where the propaganda about the country and themselves was off the charts. They were trained to be killers. There’s report after report about the killing they’ve done for the agency. Lots of military stuff. Enemy targets in countries all over the world. But none of them are in jail for that. Out of the 29 people who are in jail right now, 18 of them are there because they killed outside of work. 14 of them killed a spouse or a girlfriend. One killed a coworker. Two of them killed neighbors. And the last one tried to kill Thorpe. That was when he finally dismantled the program. He called it Operation Scope.”
>
  Vivian took a deep breath. “There’s so much to tell. Hawk and I have been poring over everything we could find for the last few hours, trying to make sense of it all. But the bottom line is Sara was part of this program. She did a lot of work for the DCIA in Mexico and South and Central America on Human Trafficking. Thorpe turned her into a one-woman vigilante justice program down there. But her reports have been doctored. And 2 years ago she took off. Just disappeared. 5 weeks after that Thorpe put out that wanted APB on her. Problem is, there’s nothing to back it up. And she puts out her own report every day on the Internet. As far as Hawk can tell she distributes it to a different site every day and it’s deleted almost as soon as she puts it up. And the site is knocked offline too. She must have some software doing it for her, and Thorpe must be using software to find it and then scrub it. Her report says that Thorpe is funneling illegal drugs and money into the U.S. from Mexico, and he was using her to scare the cartels down there into doing what he wants. If one of the big drug lords didn’t do things exactly how he said, Thorpe would give his name to Sara, feed her a bunch of fake or real information, and tell her to kill him.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open. Craig held up a hand. “Wait, wait, wait. This guy is funneling guns into the U.S.?”

  Hawk nodded. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. According to Sara he’s got a partner. A senator.”

  Craig tore to his feet. “A senator? Oberlin?” Craig yelled, knowing it couldn’t be true, but unable to not say it. Senator Oberlin was dead. He had shot himself in front of Craig and Emma when they stumbled into his sick plot. But two senators making themselves rich off the illegal gun trade in their own country was unthinkable to him. If there was one thing Craig didn’t understand, it was people who already had plenty of money and who were tasked with keeping the U.S. a great place, doing horrible things.