AFFLICTED: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Nicole Fox

  “So,” Fed asked when Claire paused for a moment, “you're telling us, we weren't cutting into his company's profits at all? Like zero? Zip? Zilch?” Claire nodded in agreement. “We were stealing guns specifically made to be sold to people under the table? That they all had serial numbers linked to honestly bought guns?”

  “Precisely. You never would have noticed they were fake because you didn't have access to the ATF's database.”

  Aleksey had a solid plan, I had to admit. I mean, if anyone saw the guns, they wouldn't immediately think something was up unless they had the numbers in front of them. I leaned forward, my chin propped up on a fist. “Alright, but what can we do to help you? What do you need from us?”

  “We were hoping,” Claire said, looking around at the table of FBI agents, “that you could help us pick out some of the trucks he might be using. We've been able to dig through his finances and figure out a financial structure using public records, but we think there's still gaps in our information. That said, some of our CI's have let us know that he's moving something, and soon. Maybe as early as tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Lemme get this straight,” Jace said as she leaned forward and looked around the table. “You want us to go down to the ports and point out which ones we recognize?”

  “Nail. Head. Got it,” Claire said.

  Jace looked to me, and I just shrugged. “Seems simple enough.” I turned back to Claire. “When? Right now? Tonight? I'm down.”

  Claire flashed a bit of a smile. “We can start as soon as you're able.”

  The meeting convened after that, and Jace and I climbed back into the Tahoe with Claire. This time Claire hopped up front in the passenger seat, and left the back to me and Jace. She and I snuggled up together, not giving two shits about whether or not there were two federal agents playing chaperone.

  About an hour later we were down at the docks, with Claire and her driver using their federal authority to muscle past the guards. The sun was low in the sky, but the port didn't look like it was close to shutting down. Ships were still loading and unloading, and would be all through the night.

  We cruised around the lot, the windows up, blocking any outsider's view of it. The agent carefully drove along the roadway, careful of any intermodal haulers coming through. Finally, we came to a stop as we approached a ship Claire thought might be used for the shipment out.

  “That's it,” she said as she handed me a pair of binoculars.

  I rolled down the window a little and peered out from the back, the binoculars pressed to my face. The tractor looked familiar, but I still bit my tongue. I'd been so cocky in the past, so full of my own ego, and had made so many wrong decisions.

  “What do you think?” Claire asked.

  Without saying a word, I slowly shook my head. I just couldn't afford to be wrong. I lowered the binoculars and passed them off to Jace. “Here, babe, you take a look. You saw the truck as well as I did.”

  Jace looked at me uncertainly. “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Your memory's as good as mine, right?”

  She nodded and bit her lip, put them to her eyes. She spent even longer than I had, finally agreeing with me. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I'm pretty sure that's the one.”

  “You sure?” Agent McKesson asked.

  I grinned. “Yeah,” I said, kissing Jace on the cheek, “she's sure.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Koen

  We were back in shitty motels with bad sheets. Jace and I had both petitioned Claire for something a little ritzier for our first night together, but it really didn't matter in the end. The scratchy cloth of the linens and covers might as well have been silk for all we cared as we lay beneath them, naked and covered in sweat.

  “Goddamn I missed you,” I said as I stroked Jace's face. “Every night, every morning. I couldn't think of anything else.”

  She leaned in, kissed me, and grinned. “I took up reading books on old wars to try and get you out of my mind.”

  “Old war books, huh? Did General Sherman's march to the sea make you forget me?”

  “Not for a second,” she replied. “Now, D-Day and the beaches of Normandy, though . . .”

  I pulled her in and kissed her again, over and over. “How about now?” I asked between kisses.

  As she laughed and squirmed in my grip, the room's phone began to ring from her side of the bed.

  “Stop it, Koen!” she squealed under the barrage of my lips. “I gotta get the damn phone!”

  I let her break free of my grip and roll over to pick up the handset. “Hello?” she asked.

  My eyes traveled down the curve of her back, the swell of her hips. I was already getting hard again just looking at her, remembering how she'd felt moments before.

  She put the phone against her shoulder. “It's for you, babe. It's Claire.”

  I got up and padded around to her side of the bed, still completely naked. I put the offered phone to my ear. “Yeah, Claire?”

  “There he is,” Claire said, her voice unusually chipper and upbeat, “the man of the goddamned hour. How you feeling? You guys enjoying yourselves, yet?”

  I felt Jace's long fingered hand wrap itself around my length. I glanced down and saw her lick those full lips in their perfect cupid's bow as she slid across the bed and closer to my manhood. Apparently, she was ready for another round, too. “Uh huh,” I mumbled.

  “Just calling to give you guys an update. We took the information with your statement up to our bosses, and they've authorized us to start putting together the information for a search warrant on the company that rig from last night belonged to.”

  Jace was swirling her tongue around the crown, now, and I'd leaned back a little as the pleasure began to flood into me, muddling my thoughts. Still, though, I tried to focus on Claire's words without letting her know what we were doing.

  “We're ninety-nine-percent sure that this is going to be it,” Claire said. “We'll put this fucker away with everything you two have given us.”

  “Oh,” I said, my voice sounding ridiculous to even me, the owner, “that's real nice.”

  “It's fantastic news! Don't you get that?” Claire asked. “Wait . . .”

  I groaned low as Jace slipped her lips completely over the head, taking me into her mouth.

  “Are you two . . .? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. I'd say get a room, but for Chrissakes, Koen. At least don't do it while I'm on the phone.”

  I cracked a grin. “Don't blame me, Agent McKesson. She started it.”

  “Whatever. It's almost over, Koen. Talk to you soon.” She hung up the phone, crashing it down loudly in my ear. On purpose, I was sure.

  “Good news?” Jace asked as she stroked me and beckoned me back into bed.

  “Yeah,” I said as I crawled into bed with my woman, pinning both of her thin arms to the mattress. “We'll talk about it later, though. After.”

  Despite the tenor of the conversation I'd had with Claire, and how confident she seemed, I was still secretly worried. I knew this wouldn’t be the end of Aleksey. Not by a long shot.

  # # #

  Jace

  Koen explained to me what was all was going on, about the warrant, about the company they were now looking into. It all sounded great on the surface. A win for the good guys, even if we were anything but.

  “You don't seem as happy as Claire did on the phone,” Koen said, stroking my cheek. We were still naked in bed, and I could feel the heat rolling off his body like a furnace cranked up to full blast. “You okay?”

  I turned and kissed his fingertips, then sighed. It was so wonderful to be back in his arms, to be back in New Orleans. Even the smell of the place, which was fucking awful, seemed like a good thing. The river rising up, filling my nostrils. And the hot sun, with all the mosquitoes and muggy air, beat the Hell out of Seattle's drizzly weather day in and day out.

  “No,” I said after a moment, “I'm happy that they might have a chance at getting
him. That's good, you know?”

  “But, still . . .” Koen said, pulling me into his arms.

  “Still,” I agreed as I laid myself against his chest. “Tomlin's gone.”

  “Yeah,” he said. holding me closer and tighter. “I know. Aleksey took a lot from both of us, didn't he?”

  I turned my head, kissed his broad chest, took a deep breath of his skin and musky man smell.

  “I love you, Jace Spears,” he said after a while. “I'll love you till the stars burn out, and the world ain't nothing but darkness.”

  I smiled, tears forming up at the corners of my eyes. They were the same words he'd said the first time he confessed to loving me. I'd believed him way back then, but not quite as fully as I did now.

  He brushed my long auburn hair with the flat of his hand, kissed the top of my head.

  “We're gonna make everything right,” he said. “I promise you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Koen

  “I fucking knew there was going to be a catch,” I said under my breath, shaking my head at how unsurprising this all was. “I just knew it.”

  “What was that?” the FBI tech asked as he wired me up with the listening device beneath my shirt and light jacket.

  “Huh?” I asked. “Oh, nothing, man. We almost done?”

  “Almost.”

  I was sitting in the back of an FBI van, inside the parking garage of Volkov Arms down in Baton Rouge, two days after Claire had given me the good news over the phone.

  Turns out, the case wasn't as airtight as they thought it would be. At least, the US Attorney's Office didn't seem to think so. For something this big, with so much money and creative accounting going on, so many go betweens and no video of the Wolf touching the money, they needed proof. Real proof.

  And that meant a confession, on tape.

  I'd raised my hand to volunteer so fast you'd have thought I was Billy the fucking Kid.

  There wasn't much of a plan, this time. No warning for Aleksey, either. Just a rough idea of confronting him, getting him talking, and get him to admit what had been going on.

  “All set, sir,” the FBI tech said. “Just a few tests and we'll be go.”

  “Good deal,” I replied.

  We ran through the short set of tests to check the connection, and placement of the microphone for best pickup. This had to count, and had to be good.

  “We've got him on visual,” one of the men up front said. “Agent McKesson's truck has him spotted.”

  “Guess it's time,” I said and, with my chest wired up like some bad 80s sci-fi movie, I hopped out of the van. I walked around it and out into the lane between the parking spots. Up ahead, I could see Aleksey Volkov with his cellphone pressed to his ear. Flanked by two bodyguards, he was headed to his Mercedes with briefcase in hand. Looked like it was the end of the working day for the Wolf.

  He didn't glance my direction, and neither did the guards. I still hadn't had a chance to swing by my house and pick up my clothes, so I'd had to stick with my used car salesman get up. Jace had mentioned she kind of liked it. Said it felt like she was getting a new man in her life.

  I approached his car as he was just about getting into it and came to halt. At this distance, I'd be a sitting duck. “Hello Wolf!” I called out as he beep-booped the alarm off and unlocked the door. “Aleksey Volkov!”

  Aleksey stopped, his hand hanging in midair. “Excuse me?” he asked with his thick Russian accent as he turned back to me. He glanced at the two bodyguards, who were watching him for instructions. He nodded. “Do I know you?” he asked as the two security guys started to walk quickly towards me, hands stuffed inside their jackets.

  “What?” I asked, my eyes solidly on the two likely-armed men coming my way. “Don't recognize me from the park a few months ago? Came to you with a deal?”

  Aleksey raised a hand as he barked a command in Russian. The bodyguards stopped in their tracks, not more than ten feet away. Just like attack dogs. “Yes, I think I remember you. Mr. Baldwin, correct? Koen Baldwin?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What can I do for you today?” he sneered as he looked me up and down.

  “Came here to talk about my grandpa, Xavier Baldwin.”

  He made a face and shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know this man.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “You sent some of your lackeys after him because you thought I was coming after you.”

  He laughed. “Oh, yes,” he said, clapping his hands together a single time. “The fat FBI agent who hated me so much. I remember him, now.”

  I gritted my teeth together and balled my fists at my side. “You had him killed as a message to me.”

  The Wolf shrugged. “Why would I do that, Mr. Baldwin? What do you think I am? Someone like you?” He switched to his sarcastic American accent. “An outlaw Billy bad ass?”

  I took a step forward, my fists still at my sides.

  His bodyguards took a half step back and drew their pistols from beneath their coats.

  “I know who you are,” I said. “I know you a hundred times worse than me, or I could ever be. I know you sell guns all over the world, I know you run sex smuggling operations, I know you sell to anyone willing to pay. But you're not going to fucking get away with.”

  He shrugged again, his hands out in front. “So fucking what, Mr. Baldwin? Why do think I won't get away with it?” He laughed. “You think this is, how do you yanks say, my first fucking rodeo? I'm Aleksey fucking Volkov, Baldwin. I'm more connected than you'll ever imagine, with more people protecting me than you could ever conjure up in your tiny American brain.”

  I grinned, knowing he'd said enough. “Know what?” I asked. “You're probably right.” And, with those words, I did the sensible thing. I turned around on my heels and walked away.

  Behind me, the Wolf just laughed. “That's it, Mr. Baldwin. Scurry away to your little suburban home. See if I won't find you,” he said, before switching to Russian and speaking another command to his security guys.

  # # #

  Jace

  I grabbed Agent McKesson by the shoulder. “Something's wrong,” I said, “get him out.”

  We were all in the security van at the other end of the parking structure from where Koen was squared off with the Wolf. A camera they had trained on the pair of them, though, showed in almost perfect resolution what was really going on, though. Between that, and the feed coming in from the mic on Koen, we saw and heard everything that was going on.

  We sat there, crowded around the TV monitor, watching everything unfold. I'd kind of drawn the worst spot, I guess, sitting on a folding chair right behind the driver's seat. I could see the TV just fine, but the audio could have been louder.

  But, from the what I could hear of Aleksey, I knew something was up. He spoke freely, without a damn care in the world. No way he would admit to all this shit just so Koen would just walk away. He must have had one last ploy left to play.

  Claire looked back at me, her eyes narrowed and searching. She didn't believe me, I could tell. She just thought I was getting nervous.

  “You got what you need,” I said. “Get him out, now, or I'll go up there and do it myself.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Fine, Jace. Have it your way.” She turned and nodded to one of the agents sitting near the back of the van. “You heard the lady. Go bring her boyfriend home.”

  Before he could go for the door, or even say, “Yes, ma'am,” though, the audible click of the hammer being drawn back on a semi-automatic pistol filled the security van. There were only so many places it could have come from. It sure as hell hadn't been Fed, who was right next to me. Or Claire, or even the agent Claire had ordered to get Koen.

  “Not so fast,” a voice said from my left. “Mr. Volkov wants all of you right where you are.”

  I turned and looked at the source. The driver had his pistol out, with the barrel leveled at Fed, Claire, and the other agent. He had a big silencer attached to the
end of it, like you see in the movies. At this distance, everyone but me was in the line of fire.

  “Really Jenkins?” Claire asked, clearly disbelieving what was happening.

  “You have to even ask me that?” Jenkins replied. “You don't even let me in the goddamn office when you're having meetings.”

  “Well,” Fed added in, “kinda makes sense now, doesn't it? The whole not letting you in.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Jenkins shouted, the pistol shaking a little bit from his nerves.