“She’s in the back. It’s almost shift change. I forgot to tell you…” She twisted her hair into a bun, and seemed preoccupied as she did so. When she finished, she looked at me. “I forgot to tell you what happened.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a secret, so promise you won’t tell.”
“Okay.”
She squinted her eyes. “Can you be trusted?”
I shrugged. “Society thinks so.”
“Good enough.” She smiled. “I kneed a guy in the nuts.”
I couldn’t believe she had said such a thing. Nor could I imagine her doing it. Or needing to do it. I raised my eyebrows in wonder. “Oh really?”
“Yep. Hit him, too. He was a crap-hat. At the 7-Eleven. He was wacked out on something. Tried to grab me, and I hit him like this.” She thrust the heel of her palm outward as she extended her arm. “And, I gave him the knee.”
My heart began to race. “Which 7-Eleven?”
“Pala Vista. I walked there last night for a Mountain Dew. I didn’t tell mom. She’d freak out if she knew. You can’t tell her either, you promised.”
“I won’t.” I looked her over. “He didn’t hurt you?”
“Nope. Just grabbed my wrist.”
“You’re sure?”
She held up her arm. “See?”
I tried to hide my interest. I swallowed hard, and then let out a sigh. “What did he look like?”
“Shaved head. Tattoos on his face. A ‘1’ tattooed on one cheek, and a ‘3’ on the other. Had a scorpion and a bunch of other crap tattooed on his neck, too. He was a little guy. Shorter than me. After I kneed him, I took off. Ran all the way home. Got there, and didn’t even have my Mountain Dew. Must have dropped it.”
“What time last night?”
“Right after dark, why?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering.”
She rubbed her hands together. “You going to find him? Take him in the interrogation room and slap him around?”
“I just might. Don’t go back to that 7-Eleven, okay?”
“I’m not. I’m not going anywhere after that.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“In fact, how about until I say otherwise, you don’t go anywhere at night alone? Can we make that happen?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Why?”
“There’s just a few guys I’m trying to find. The little guy might be one of them. So, until I get him found, you stay home at night. Deal?”
She gave her mock salute. “Deal.”
“So, how did you learn to defend yourself?” I asked.
“I don’t just read literature,” she said. “Jack Reacher’s good to break up the monotony of good literature. He’s my favorite. Lee Child’s is pretty detailed in his descriptions of hand-to-hand combat.”
I chuckled. “Jack Reacher, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to go talk to your mom, and see if she found my key,” I lied. “I won’t say anything to her, don’t worry.”
“Must be an important key for you to come back all of a sudden. You could have just waited ‘till tomorrow.”
I looked her over and grinned. She defined innocence. “It’s a pretty special key. It’s something I never want to lose.”
“I’ve got all the stuff I don’t want to lose in a special place,” she said. “You should try that. Keep the important stuff in a safe place.”
I smiled and then turned toward the back of the diner.
I’m doing my best to do just that, kid.
Chapter Two Hundred Fifty-Seven
Taryn – Day eighteen
With the refrigerator door held wide open, Stefanie stared at the bare shelves for some time. After scanning the door’s compartments again, she swung it closed with a bang.
She wrinkled her nose. “You were serious.”
“I told you.”
“Not even wine remnants.” She glanced around the kitchen and then looked at me. “You always have wine remnants.”
I’d tossed everything with alcohol in it into the dumpster downstairs, and had no intention of bringing anymore into my house any time soon. I shrugged one shoulder and raised my eyebrows. “I got rid of everything.”
“Are you done forever?”
“For now. We’ll see. I don’t know.”
She looked me up and down and then cocked her hip. “Did mister thirty days put you up to this?”
I scowled at her. “No.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. I just decided to lay off for a while. When I get drunk, I act like an idiot.”
She opened the pantry and grabbed a jar of peanut butter. “You’re fun when you’re drunk.”
“I don’t have to be drunk to have fun.”
She unscrewed the lid and poked her finger inside. “I can’t answer that.”
“It wasn’t a question.” I shot her a look and motioned toward the silverware drawer. “Get a spoon, that’s gross.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll put the spoon in there, eat it, put it back in, eat it, and then do it again. If I use my finger, it saves a spoon.”
I chuckled. “Saves it from what?”
“Being washed.”
“My silverware doesn’t have a life expectancy. Grab a spoon.”
She sucked her finger clean and then looked in the jar. “If you were drunk, you wouldn’t care.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“That’s my point. You need to drink to be yourself.”
“I’m myself right now.”
She walked past me and into the living room, then flopped into a chair. “You’re more fun drunk.”
I leaned against the door opening and looked at her. “It’s Tuesday at 11:00 in the morning. What were you going to drink before work anyway?”
“Obviously, nothing.” She fingered another scoop of peanut butter from the jar. “Act like you haven’t had a drink before work.”
Sadly, I had. I didn’t know what the definition was of an alcoholic, or if it required some special gene to be in my gene pool, but my guess was that I had most of the characteristics of one, regardless.
After talking to Marc about what happened, I no longer felt the need to mask my feelings with alcohol. I decided I’d face my days sober, and learn to accept the feelings that came along with abstinence.
Instead of accepting what life had dealt me, I chose to drink so I didn’t have to. The drinking brought on other problems, and my way of dealing with them was to drink so I didn’t have to accept them.
Looking at it all now made me feel foolish. The thing I found to be the funniest was that in the absence of alcohol, my life and all the problems I felt it presented were still right where I left them.
In my lap.
I promptly realized how much of a disaster my life had been for the last ten years. It was a decade I couldn’t change, but I could make an effort to see that I never made the same mistakes again.
“I’m not trying to adopt a holier than thou attitude, Stef. Really. I’m just saying that I’m not going to drink for a while.”
With the jar of peanut butter nestled between her legs, she scanned Netflix for something to watch. “How long’s a while?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many days left?”
I had stopped counting. In cleaning my car’s interior earlier in the morning, I’d realized I hadn’t marked the calendar in a few days. Only after marking the days that had passed with an ‘x’ did I realize how many were left.
“Twelve,” I said.
“Fucking weird.”
“Orange is the New Black, or the thirty-day thing?”
“The thirty-day thing.” She poked her finger in the jar and then shoved it in her mouth.
“I don’t think so.”
“Of course you don’t.” Her eyes were glued to the all-female prison show. She turned up the volume. “But how can that be? It’s weird.”
&
nbsp; “It’s not. In the past, I looked at boning as the beginning of a relationship. You meet, you screw, and if you like each other, you continue. I can’t even tell you if any of the guys I screwed had a single redeeming quality. I don’t know anything about them other than their dick size.”
She let out a laugh.
I shot her a look. “What?”
She continued to stare at the television. “Now you know everything about a guy except for his dick size.”
“I don’t care about his dick size.”
I did, but I didn’t. I preferred a big dick, but if he had a nub, I’d find a way to make it work. If nothing else, it would be easy to deep throat.
“If he whips out an uncircumcised two-incher, I bet you say otherwise,” she said in a snide tone.
“I bet I don’t. If he’s got a two-incher, at least I’ll be able to take it all in my mouth.”
“That’s be the only one I’d be able to swallow. God. I swear.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “It’s every guy’s dream. I hate sucking dicks. It’s dumb. And, after I gag, it’s all over.”
“I can’t swallow it all, either. But I like to gag. It’s weird, it turns me on.”
“Turns you on? How can that be? If it gets into that reflex deal, I’m done. Until the next holiday. If it happens again, I’ll go on a no blowjob campaign.”
“No blowjobs? That’s dumb.” I realized what she said, and let out a laugh. “Next holiday? What does that mean?”
“Blowjobs are dumb. Guys shouldn’t need their dicks sucked. If I had a dick, I wouldn’t make anyone put it in their mouth. And, I only suck dicks on holidays.”
“Nobody makes me do anything,” I said. “Only on holidays? Every day’s a holiday?”
“They expect it. They get it out, and they look at it, and they look at you. And then they do that thing with their eyes. That put this in your mouth thing. I swear. I’m like, really? I got sick of it, so I made a rule. Only on holidays.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yep.”
“You only suck dicks on holidays?”
“I just said yes. Holidays, that’s it.”
“How did I not know this?”
“You never asked.”
“Do you on the random holidays, like Boxing Day, and Father’s Day and stuff?”
“New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. That’s it,” she said, extending a finger with each holiday she named.
I chuckled. “You left out Christmas.”
Her eyes remained fixed on the television. “I don’t suck dicks on Christmas.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “It’s the best holiday of them all.”
“Precisely,” she said. “I’m not going to ruin Christmas by putting a dick in my mouth.”
“If I had that rule, I’d have to accept holidays from every country on earth. I’d even make up my own. Blowjobs make guys happy.”
“Diamonds make me happy.” She raised her hand and stretched her fingers wide. “See any?”
I chuckled at her logic. “Do you ever wish you had a dick?”
“Like, one of my own? Yeah. Sometimes. Like now. This show’s dumb, and I’d probably be playing with it just because I could.” She said. “Just eating peanut butter, watching Netflix, and stroking my dick.”
“I wish I had one sometimes, too. But not to play with. I’d like to feel what it feels like to have sex with one. I think it’d be cool.”
“If I had a dick, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off it. I swear. I’d be playing with it all the time. It’s just crazy how they go from all wrinkled and stupid looking to being all stiff and fun. I’d always be messing with it just to watch it do that.”
I leaned away from the door and checked the clock. “You’re weird.”
“I’m not the one in a thirty day no-sex relationship.”
I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I was growing quite fond of Marc, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to imagine losing him. I hoped if nothing else, we could continue our abstinence for another thirty days if need be. I’d be willing to go thirty more, and thirty after that if need be.
“Well, I’m happy to be where I am with who I am.”
“I hope it works out.” She glanced in my direction, and then looked at the television. “Really, I do.”
“I do, too.”
She paused the show. “This show is stupid.”
“It’s time to go to work, anyway. We need to leave in ten.”
She turned off the television and stood. “I need to get something to drink. It doesn’t have to be coffee, though.”
“How’s a chocolate malt sound?”
“A malt from that Ocean whatever place sounds awesome.” She put the peanut butter in the pantry and then looked at me. “What made you think of that?”
An awesome guy who doesn’t drink, has a thirty-day no-sex rule, and possibly a two-inch uncircumcised dick.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I had one the other night and really liked it.”
She reached for the front door. “Come on,” she said excitedly. “Let’s go.”
As we hustled down the stairs, she glanced over her shoulder. “This is a great idea. Maybe you’ll be okay not drinking after all.”
Yeah, maybe I will.
Chapter Two Hundred Fifty-Eight
Marc – Day twenty-two
It had been a week, and I had no leads on where the missing girls were, or where MS-13’s members were hiding. It wasn’t uncommon for the gang to use teenage girls in trade on drug deals, or as an enticement to encourage a major cocaine or heroin purchase when a potential buyer was indecisive.
If all else failed, they used them as prostitutes. Regardless of what they were choosing to do, my hope was that I could somehow find them before it was too late. Knowing time was of the essence, and that my options for gathering information were few and far between, I became desperate to gather it.
It’s common knowledge that desperate men take desperate measures, me included.
I parked my car alongside the road behind the old warehouse that I intended to deface. The facility was a 100’x100’ metal building that was commonly built for storage in the city’s industrial district in the 1970’s.
Purchased by FF, LLC in 2002, the building was used as a clubhouse for a local motorcycle club. According to an informant in another MC, the club in question was going to be gone for the night.
Saturday night activities for the members of Filthy Fuckers MC were anyone’s guess. All-night parties at their clubhouse weren’t uncommon, neither was spending the entire night at the bar they claimed as their turf. Oftentimes, they also had parties at the homes of their patched members.
On this particular night, all that mattered was that they were gone. My plan was to try out my ability to paint with a ten-foot extension pole I’d purchased online. Within a day or so, I hoped my luck in obtaining useful information about the girls would change.
I got dressed in the same gear I used when raiding the homes of gang members. After getting my spray paint, Reach N’ Spray, and gloves, I ducked into the darkness and crept to the side of the MC’s clubhouse.
Under the cover of darkness, and doing my best to duplicate the MS-13’s typical Old English font used to tag their turf, I sprayed a six-foot M, an S, and the number 13. Then, I went to the front of the building.
I painted the same sized symbols on the garage door, and then on the building’s exterior beside the door. After admiring my artwork, I removed my gloves and placed them in my rear pocket.
Ten minutes later, I was halfway home.
I opened the door as soon as the doorbell rang.
She was wearing shorts, sneakers, and a designer tee shirt. I had yet to see her dressed in such casual clothes, and it was a nice change. She looked great regardless of what she chose to wear, and in the twenty-two days we’d been seeing each other, I had yet to see her
wear the same thing twice.
I stepped aside and motioned toward the living room. “Come in.”
She walked past me. “How was your day?”
“Uneventful.” I looked her up one side and down the other. “You look cute.”
“Thanks.” She giggled and lifted her right foot high in the air. “I wore this to work.”
I was surprised at her flexibility, and gawked at the display. “You always dress up for work.”
“I felt like wearing shorts. So, ponytail, tee shirt, cut-offs, and Chucks.”
I looked her over one more time and then grinned. “I like it.”
“Thank you.”
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Not bad. Good tips today, so that was good.”
I laughed at the thought of painting the MC’s building with gang graffiti. “I got a good tip, too.”
“Your tips and my tips are different.” She sat on the end of the loveseat. “Do you just have to work Saturdays when you’ve got some case that requires it?”
“I’ve got to be available seven days a week.” I took the spot across from her on the sectional. “I only work nights and weekends as I’m required to. Now that you’ve asked, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Okay.”
“You’re off tomorrow, right?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got to run to interview a potential witness tomorrow, and I’m expecting a delivery that’ll need to be signed for. Are you interested in house sitting for me and accepting it? It’s an important package.”
“Sure.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to put you out.”
“No. I can do it. Anything I can do to help. It’s not going to explode or anything, is it?”
“It shouldn’t. As long as you don’t shake it or drop it.”
Her eyes thinned. “Seriously?”
“I’m kidding. It’s safe. And, it shouldn’t be too heavy. Just be sure to wipe it off before you set it down anywhere,” I deadpanned.
“I will.” She adjusted her ponytail and then met my gaze. “I still can’t get over how clean everything is. There’s never any dust or anything. Do you clean it yourself?”
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