by Jessie Cooke
Still on the tips of her toes, she made it down the hall and into the great room. The place was almost cleaned out. On the couch were a couple of naked people. From where she stood she couldn’t see who it was, but the rise and fall of the back on top was the only movement she saw from either of them. One of the guys was passed out with his head on his arms at the bar and there was a naked club girl with her legs spread, asleep in the recliner across from the couch. If Angel had to guess, she’d say that that one fell asleep masturbating to the sight of whatever was happening on the couch. She knew she had no right to judge, but she shook her head anyways as she quietly crossed the room in the direction of the meeting room.
Angel held her breath again as she slid the third key on Dax’s ring into the lock. It turned easily and she pushed open the door. She stood quietly for a few seconds and let her eyes adjust to the dark before stepping inside and closing the door behind her. She was suddenly in pitch darkness. Again, she had to wait for her eyes to adjust and hold onto the chairs that sat around the big, round oak table in the center of the room, to make her way to the front.
Angel knew that Dax’s vice president Maximillian, or “Mad Max” as they called him, was out of town and had been since before she met Dax. He hadn’t told her any particulars, just that Max had to lay low for a few months. His road captain was a man named George Hanson, or “Handsome” as he was called. He had two sergeants at arms. One was a guy named Trent Phillips, who went by “Mad Dog,” and the other was Franklin King, who was still in jail alongside Scar for parole violation. She wasn’t sure who besides his road captain and his one sergeant at arms he had at his meetings, but she was running on the assumption that they were hashing out a plan for Friday. She hoped that there was a logbook or something that they used to keep track of what took place in their meetings.
She sat down in the center chair at the head of the table. She knew without even being able to see that it was Dax’s chair. A wave of guilt assaulted her until she reminded herself that she was doing this for Dax. She put her hands out and felt across the documents lying on the table in front of her. One of them was a leather-bound book. She picked it up and brought it close to her face before opening it. It was some kind of accounting…there were numbers in different columns. She didn’t know what it meant and she didn’t have time to worry about it right then. She put that book down, hopefully in the same place she’d picked it up, and she picked up a small stack of papers to her left. As she scanned the top one in what little light there was coming in through the blinds behind her she realized that she was holding exactly what she was looking for. She also realized that there was no way she’d be able to memorize or copy it in the dark room. She’d have to risk taking it with her and getting it back where it belonged before everyone began waking up. It was a huge risk, but a necessary one. It was the only way she’d be able to save Dax’s life…and despite everything else she was supposed to be doing there, that was her immediate priority. She stuffed the papers down the front of her jeans and slipped out of the room, locking it behind her. She grabbed a half-drunk bottle of water off the bar as she passed it and returned to the room she’d left Dax sleeping in…only to find him sitting up on the side of the bed, with his jeans on.
19
“Hey. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
She didn’t know if it was her imagination or not, but he seemed to be looking at her with suspicion in his eyes. It was probably just her own anxiety, she told herself. “No. But I woke up and you weren’t here. I got worried.”
She smiled and held up the water. “I just went to get a drink.”
He looked at her seriously for a second, and she was sure he was trying to figure out whether or not he should trust her. Ridiculously, she was hurt by that. What a fucking mess, she thought. She could feel her heart slamming against her rib cage as she waited for him to say something. “Did you bring any whiskey?” He smiled. She breathed.
“No. But I’d be happy to go back out and get you a bottle.”
He stood up and she tensed. If he touched her, hugged her, he would feel the papers she had stuffed in her pants and the keys she’d put down in the pocket where she kept her phone. He put his hands on the waist of his jeans and unbuttoned them, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “Nope, I’d rather have you again. Come here.”
She smiled as sweetly as she could and hoped like hell that she didn’t look guilty. “Mm, sounds great, but I have to pee first.” She held up the water, thankful she’d picked one up that was half gone.
“Okay, but hurry, and be naked when you come back.”
She quickly turned toward the bathroom. “You got it.” She stepped inside and turned on the light. When she closed the door, she had to lean into it for a few seconds to catch her breath. Once she could feel her limbs again she undid her pants and pulled out the papers and glanced at them again. She saw a little hand-drawn map of the area around the cemetery. This was definitely what she needed. Frantically, she looked around the small room. There was a small cabinet underneath the vanity that she pulled open. It was filled with towels. She reached in and lifted the second to the last one and slid the papers between that one and the one on the bottom, and then she did the same with the keys. Saying a silent prayer, she closed the vanity, flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and hastily stripped off her clothes. She had to catch her breath again before going back out where Dax was waiting. He was sitting on the bed again, but now he was naked and his erection was in his hand. She smiled. “Did you start without me?”
“Barely,” he said. “Come over here and get on your knees and finish it for me.”
Angel smiled at him and went over to where he sat. She dropped to her knees in front of him and took his thick cock out of his hand. She gave it a few slow strokes with one hand while kneading one of his thighs with the other. She let her thumb softly stroke the inside of his thigh and brush against his heavy balls as she stroked him. He leaned back on his muscular arms and let his head fall back as he moaned. Angel loved hearing him moan and knowing that she was the cause of it. She leaned in closer and let her long hair brush against his bare thighs. He groaned and shuddered. One of his hands left the bed and went in search of her nude body. He found a breast and a hard nipple and he began to manipulate it with his thumb and forefinger. Angel was still stroking him but now she’d begun kissing upward along the inner part of his thighs, pausing when she was at the top to give his heavy sac a kiss or a lick. He pinched down harder on her nipple in time with each stroke of her hand on his cock. They’d fallen into an erotic rhythm that was causing Dax to moan out her name and curse under his breath.
Angel finally left his thighs altogether and sucked one of his balls into her mouth. She let it slide around against her tongue and then did the same to the other one to the tune of his loud grunts and moans. His free hand was in her hair now, pulling it hard while still pinching and pulling on her nipple with the other hand.
Angel left his balls and licked the shaft of his cock from root to tip. She felt his body shudder as her name once more escaped his lips. She licked back down, covering him with her saliva, and then back up, finally sucking the head into her mouth. She lowered her head, sucking as she did until his big cock was as deep into her mouth and throat as she could take it. As she began to bob her head up and down, she let her small hands slip underneath him and grabbed each one of his cheeks. She rubbed and massaged it as she sucked. Dax was moving his hips in time with the way she moved her mouth up and down his cock, letting it land in the back of her throat each time she did. She could hear his breathing getting heavier as he once again leaned back and let her completely take over.
He continued to buck his hips up and down off the bed as she took the shaft of his cock back into her hand and stroked it down low while she licked and stroked the rest of him with her mouth. She flattened her tongue and licked the underside of his shaft using as much pressure as she could, delighting in the way it made him groan. She pumped fast
er and swirled her tongue around his shaft faster and harder as she felt him growing more excited. She used her saliva to make him as wet as she could and the noises she was making as she practically choked on him were even making her pussy wet. She reached down between her legs with her free hand and found her clit. She pressed down on it and rubbed while she continued to suck his throbbing cock. She could feel him swelling already. He wanted to come, but he was holding back. She rubbed herself hard and fast, and after several seconds of that she began to moan. The vibrations of her moans must have stimulated his cock even more because his grip on her hair tightened up and he began to shove himself in deeper and harder. He was fucking her mouth and she was practically choking on it, but she didn’t stop. Instead she took her wet fingers out of her pussy and used them to touch and caress his balls as she sucked even harder.
“I’m going to come, baby. God, you’re so fucking good at this. Where do you want it? Tell me where you want me to come.”
She let her lips slip off him for just a second and said, “In my mouth.” Then she slid her lips over the mushroom head of his cock and resumed her pace. She was making loud sucking and slurping noises that seemed to turn him on that much more. His cock was as hard as a rock and getting harder. It wasn’t just throbbing any longer, she could feel it shaking in her mouth. He was screaming out her name, probably waking up everyone in the house just before she felt him contract and flex. She kept sucking as he came, letting his warm, thick liquid coat her throat as she swallowed it. It was an intense rush and he came so much that if she hadn’t been there when he came twice earlier in the evening, she wouldn’t have believed it. His orgasm was like that of a teenager who hadn’t had sex in months, if ever. Wave after wave seemed to roll through him and each time one did, she swallowed, struggling to breathe through her nose as she did. She felt the muscles in the arm and hand that had a death-like grip on her hair begin to relax. That relaxation worked its way through his body in the form of the shakes and when he collapsed back on the bed, Angel let go of his now empty balls and cock, and she climbed up on top of him and stabbed her tongue in between his lips. She suddenly wanted him to taste himself on her. He kissed her, licked her lips, and sucked on her tongue until every drop of his own hot fluid was accounted for, and then he collapsed back onto the bed and pulled her hand so that she would climb up and lie down next to him. She snuggled down deep into his loving arms and he tightened them around her. She closed her eyes and felt sleep tugging at her again. She didn’t fight it this time. She let it take her and within seconds she was taking one easy breath at a time.
The next time Angel woke up it was to a pounding on the door. “Dax! Are you in there?”
Angel sat up quickly, startled. Dax didn’t seem to hear the pounding on the door, but as soon as she moved, he opened his eyes. She was staring up into his eyes and he was looking down at her, smiling gently. “Someone is knocking,” she told him.
“What?”
“I need to see you, Dax.” Angel recognized the voice then. It was Handsome, the road captain. Her heart seized up. If he was here to tell Dax the papers were gone, it was all over for her. Dax had seen her sneaking back into the room earlier. Once Handsome told him the papers were missing he’d look in his pocket for his keys and when those were gone too…her goose was cooked. She wondered if he’d take into consideration all those nice feelings he told her that he had for her…or would she be just any other witness, like all the other witnesses the Skulls had somehow managed to make disappear?
20
Present Day
Angel waited nervously outside of Captain Banks’ door. She had an appointment with him at three that afternoon. It was already three-thirty, but his assistant told her that he was meeting with an agent of the FBI Since the platinum coin case was broken five months earlier, the FBI had been crawling around like vultures, picking the carcasses of the collars the Hanover PD had made.
She picked up a copy of Glamour magazine and thumbed through it. She smiled to herself as she wondered why on earth they’d put Glamour in the waiting room of a police captain’s office. Even she would rather thumb through a copy of Guns and Ammo than a perfume-drenched fashion brochure.
Her foray through the world of accessorizing and matching your lipstick to your shoes was interrupted by the click of the heavy office door. Captain Banks appeared in the doorway with another man. Captain Banks was in his forties, but from the neck down he looked as fit as any twenty-year-old on the force. His age, and probably a lot of stress from the job, was only apparent in the lines around his eyes and the thinning, gray hair on his head. He still carried himself with the presence of a young man, but in seconds he could transform from that into the stern disciplinarian parental type. Angel would never dare compare him to Dax Marshall out loud, but the truth was, they had a lot of similarities. Not in looks, of course. But they both had the ability to suck out all the oxygen in almost any room they were in. And like Dax, Captain Banks was loved by some, feared by others, but respected by all.
Everyone knew that the captain became a cop with the idea that someday he would run the department. It only took him fifteen years to get where he was today and he didn’t appear to have any plans on stopping. Every time Angel saw him she thought about Kyle and his aspirations for the chief of police job. She wondered how the captain would handle answering to a man like her brother. Kyle was as polite and respectful as he had to be toward the captain at this point in his career, but Angel knew how controlling and dominant he could be. The current chief was a much older man who seemed mostly weary of police work and the world and probably had a calendar he marked an “X” on daily, counting the days until he could retire. He was content to sit back and let the captain run the show and then he’d go to the mayor and take credit for anything that turned out well. The captain tolerated that, she guessed, just because he loved the autonomy it gave him in the meantime. That would drastically change if Kyle ever bypassed him for the chief job. It was an elected position in their county, so it was highly possible. She reckoned the two men would spend a lot of their time knocking heads.
“Brady! I’m sorry, I’m running behind. Special Agent Johnson, this is Officer Angel Brady. She was a key player in taking down Vince Miller.”
“Brady?” the agent asked as Angel stood up and he offered her his hand.
“Glad to meet you, sir.”
“Likewise. Are you related to the detective that was killed…?”
Angel felt that now familiar lump in her throat and tightness in her chest as she said, “He was my father.”
“Jesus,” the agent said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She nodded. Stoically, because she didn’t reveal her emotions to many people, she said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Agent Johnson, I’ll have those files over to your office by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said. Looking back at Angel with sympathy on his face he said, “Take care, Miss Brady.”
“Thank you. You too.” She stood with the captain and they watched him go. Finally, the captain looked down at her and said,
“Come on in, Brady. Sorry about that.” She followed him into his spacious office and took the chair he indicated with a wave of his arm. After her father died, the captain had been very supportive and encouraged her to take some time off. She’d refused to do that, mostly because she needed Dax’s support more than anyone else’s. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “What does the F.B.I. want now?”
The captain made a face and said, “Agent Johnson wants everything we have on the Sinners.”
That wasn’t a surprise. The only surprise was that they’d waited so long to ask for it. Angel voiced that thought out loud. “Did he say why he’s only just now requesting it?”
The captain raised an eyebrow and said, “They’ve been watching the Skulls and the Sinners while this war was going on.” He shook his head. “I’ve lost count of th
e bodies and the collars. It’s insanity at its finest.”
“Yes, sir. From my perspective, the Skulls would like to not be in the middle of it at all.”
The captain frowned. He didn’t believe that any more than the task force did. “Well, we will agree to disagree on that one for now, Brady. So, what did you want to see me about?”
Angel took a deep breath. She thought she was ready for this. It had been so hard to tell Micah, and Kyle had completely gone off the deep end. She thought the captain would be the easy one. But now that his steely gray eyes were focused on her face, she was almost rethinking it. Maybe she shouldn’t tell him why she was leaving the force, just that she had to go.
“Um, this is hard for me, Captain. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past year and I’ve come to a very difficult decision.”
His eyebrow went up again. “Okay…”
“I’m resigning from the force,” she blurted out quickly, so she wouldn’t drag it out.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I just don’t feel like this is what I want any longer.”
“Is this about your father?” Angel was prepared for that.
“No, sir, not directly. I mean, I guess it factored into my final decision, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.”
“What about the investigation that you’re neck deep in right now?”
“Sir, it’s been over seven months since I infiltrated the Skulls and so far, we’ve got nothing major to bust them on. I just don’t see it happening and I’d like to get on with my own life now.”
“Doing?”
She was prepared for that question as well. “I think I’ll go back to school. I have my AA degree in Administration of Justice. In two more years, I can finish my bachelor’s and maybe go to law school.”