Hers to Protect

by Nicole Disney

  Adrienne looped her arm through Blondie’s. They were smiling, relaxed. They went into the brunch restaurant like they didn’t have a fear in the world, like they were on a Goddamn date and like Adrienne hadn’t just abandoned her, like the cop hadn’t just killed someone.

  Gianna gripped the steering wheel in anger. The cut on her hand split and blood rolled down her arm. They thought they won, that they could get away with this. How could Adrienne not know better? After five years together, could Adrienne really think she was going to just drop it?

  The anger built, threatening to explode. She wanted them to know she was here, that she could take them whenever she wanted. She wanted Adrienne to know she was betting on the wrong horse. She wanted to put a bloody end to this hearts and rainbows fantasy they thought they could live.

  But watching them from the safety of anonymity was also thrilling in its own way. She could torture them. She found a scrap of paper and scribbled down a message. She pulled up to the car and stuck the paper in the window, then sped off.

  * * *

  Kaia saw a scrap of paper propped on her window as they approached the car. She smoothed it out.

  I see you.

  She refused to look over her shoulder. Gianna wouldn’t be visible, and seeing panic would give her exactly what she wanted. If she was here to hurt them, she’d have done it.

  She met Adrienne’s worried eyes but simply crumpled the paper and got in the car. Once they’d left, she handed her the paper.

  “Shit,” Adrienne said. “I told you.”

  “I know.”

  “I told you, I fucking told you. She is going to find me and kill me. God, and now I’m a rat on top of it. Why did I do that to myself? Shit!”

  Kaia calmly put her hand on Adrienne’s knee. “She assumed you were a rat the second you called me. The only difference it made is you gave us a real chance to put her away for a long time. It’s going to be fine. This is good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yes. She’s shown herself. I’ll give the info to Davis and he’ll be all over it.”

  “I’m going to die,” Adrienne said. “You too, probably.”

  “No, we’re not. We’ll stop by my place, get some stuff, and move to a safe house.”

  “What if she follows us there?”

  “She won’t be able to. There are safety measures to prevent it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Kaia spared a glance from the road to look Adrienne in the eye.

  “I’m sure. This is exactly what they’re for. And now we know she’s still in town. We’ll lay low and they’ll find her. Every cop in the city is looking for her.”

  Kaia pulled into the apartment parking lot. She knew Adrienne’s stomach couldn’t handle being here long. It didn’t feel safe anymore. As she swung into her space she noticed Carli’s car pulling in behind her.

  Carli hopped out of her car and jogged to Kaia’s door. Kaia got out, and Carli plowed into her, pulling her into a tight hug.

  “I came as soon as I could, but your security wouldn’t let me up last night. Are you okay?” She let go and backed up.

  “I’m okay,” Kaia said. “Still on high alert around here, but they should have let you up. You could have called me.”

  Carli waved it away. “I figured you needed rest. They told me your vest saved you.”

  Adrienne’s car door opened and she walked over, eyes combing Carli head to foot. Carli glanced from Kaia to Adrienne and back.

  She finally extended her hand to Adrienne and introduced herself. Adrienne tentatively shook her hand. Kaia shifted uncomfortably. Their tension was contagious.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Kaia said. “We’re going to have to move to a safe house. It would have been a shame to miss you before that. Who knows how long it will be.”

  Carli’s eyes went wide. “A safe house? That’s necessary?”

  Kaia explained everything, feeling self-conscious as she caught Carli unable to hide a few glares Adrienne’s way.

  “Well, you take care of her,” she finally said to Adrienne.

  “I will.”

  * * *

  Adrienne and Kaia slowly unpacked the one bag they’d shoved both of their things into. Adrienne had chosen several of Kaia’s clothes to hold her over and bought new toiletries. She was too scared to go back to her house for belongings, even, or maybe especially, with Kaia and other officers with her.

  The safe house was pristine, on a large plot of land, wood floors, pale walls, and stone counters. Everything felt hard and sterile.

  “Have you ever had to do this before?” she asked.

  “No,” Kaia said. “Doesn’t happen often.” Kaia’s hair was pulled up in a messy bun, strands falling free over her bare tan shoulders. Adrienne wanted to kiss their warmth, breathe in her smell. She studied Kaia as she casually went about finding places for her things.

  “So,” Adrienne said. “You didn’t tell me you have a girlfriend.”

  Kaia wandered to the refrigerator and studied the contents. “Hey, they gave us beer. Guess they knew we’d be stressed out.”

  Adrienne’s cheeks flushed. God. Kaia had a girlfriend all this time. It was just like the time she’d seen her in the bar. Her stomach turned with jealousy and her chest deflated. What did Kaia need with her? She was a common criminal, and Kaia obviously had high caliber suitors. Why lead her on?

  Kaia walked over and handed her a beer. Adrienne accepted it with numb fingers.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Kaia said.

  Adrienne tried to hide the relief. She didn’t even know why she was. Had she not just this morning decided she wasn’t going to jump into anything with Kaia?

  “That’s good,” Adrienne said. “Thought I was messing up your relationship for a second.”

  Kaia shook her head. “Nope. I don’t really do relationships.”

  Adrienne’s heart sank again. Damn it, what was wrong with her? She sat on the bed, ignoring the clothes she’d yet to put away. Kaia did the same, leaning against the headboard.

  “So what was she then? You seemed…familiar.”

  Kaia nervously rubbed her own neck. “She’s a dispatcher. We’re friends.”

  “With benefits?” Why was she putting them both in this awkward position? It wasn’t her business and she didn’t even really want to know.

  “For a while.”

  “When did it stop?”

  “Uh.” Kaia took a drink. “A few days ago.”

  “I see.”

  She’d been with Gianna until yesterday, what could she really say? “She seems nice. Pretty.”

  Kaia looked over at her. “She is. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t there.”

  “And you never date? Never been in love?” Adrienne knew Kaia had loved her, but were there others?

  “I like to keep it simple.” Kaia shrugged. “Love is messy.”

  Adrienne nodded. Love was messy. Loving Kaia had ended in terror and chaos. Loving Gianna had ended like this. Maybe Kaia had the right idea.

  Kaia abruptly switched subjects. “Do you ever go see your dad?”

  “Ted?” She hadn’t thought Kaia would mention him. “I did a few times. Been a long time now.” Adrienne saw pain she didn’t understand on Kaia’s face.

  “Is he…”

  “The same.”

  “And your mom?”

  “We don’t talk. We stopped when I came out. Or when I told her the conversion therapy wasn’t working, rather.”

  “Conversion therapy?”

  “Yeah, the whole teach you how to be straight thing.”

  “No, I know,” Kaia said. “I just didn’t know she made you do that. I’m sorry.”

  Adrienne shrugged. “I lived.”

  “That was all my fault. I got us caught when I…” she trailed off again.

  Adrienne wanted to comfort her, tell her it wasn’t her fault, but she’d never completely believed that. She knew Kaia had acted out of love, but it had stil
l taken her father’s life, destroyed her mother, gotten her moved into a poverty-stricken neighborhood and enrolled in one sadistic Catholic program after another. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t wish Kaia had handled it differently. She could have handled it differently herself, too, though. She could have told Ted Kaia was in the closet before things got out of hand. He would have been mad, but Kaia wouldn’t have had to see what she did and she wouldn’t have grabbed that baseball bat.

  “Everything happened so fast I never even knew how you felt about it,” Kaia said. “Everyone told me I did the right thing, but it never felt so clear-cut to me. I never stopped feeling guilty about it.”

  “Everyone told me you did the right thing too. Except my mom, of course.”

  “Did I?”

  “I don’t know, Kaia. I understood you, but it wasn’t what I wanted. He was a sick fuck, but he was my dad. I was so afraid of what would happen to your life after that, but then I realized mine was the only one changing.”

  “Mine did too.”

  “Not like mine. You still had your home, your family, and everyone thought you were a hero. For me it was therapy and church and my family hated me. We moved to the ghetto because my mom couldn’t afford anything else and Ted’s hospital bills were crazy. That’s how I first started hanging out with gangs and dealing drugs. Out there, everyone was in one, it was normal. If I needed two things they were money and to feel like I had a family. That might as well be the brochure for gangs. It barely fazed me when Gianna jumped into the Wild AKs. I figured I’d follow soon enough.”

  Kaia slammed her beer. She didn’t say a word. Adrienne looked down at the bed, guilty. She’d said too much. It wasn’t Kaia’s fault her life turned out the way it did, that her mom was homophobic or that her dad had raped her. She didn’t mean to blame Kaia for everything, and yet she couldn’t deny there was some anger, anger she couldn’t name or rationalize. She grabbed Kaia’s hand.

  “The results sucked, but I never blamed you.”

  “I never meant to hurt him that bad,” Kaia said. “I just wanted him to stop.”

  “I understand.” She’d never known that. She’d assumed Kaia felt no remorse, then or now, that she hadn’t cared what the results were. No one else did. A child rapist doesn’t receive much sympathy.

  She turned to Kaia, but she was already turning away. Kaia pulled the blanket over herself. It was still early, but Adrienne didn’t know how to help. She was too mixed up about it herself. She stared at Kaia’s back until she faded off to sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gianna rolled up Marco’s alley at his second, secret home. She knocked on the back door, using the pattern he’d told her to. The door opened slowly. The person opening it was hidden behind the door in the dark until he shut it again behind her. He was an athletic looking black man with a scruffy beard. He pointed at the stairs.

  “He’s waiting.”

  Gianna climbed the stairs two at a time. Marco was sitting with his arms spread along the back of a leather couch. A stripper pole was fixed in the middle of the room. One girl danced while another lay faceup across his lap while he ran his hands over her. An AK-12 was propped against the armrest, much like the one tattooed on the side of his face.

  “Come on in,” he said. His thinness and crazy eyes suggested heavy drug use. Gianna sat as close as the woman’s legs allowed. It was bizarre watching her lie there while he felt her breasts and caressed her legs as he pleased, sometimes wandering between them. The woman provided understated reactions to him that made sitting next to them extraordinarily awkward.

  “You want one?” he asked.

  Gianna was too nervous to think about girls. “Nah.”

  “Suit yourself.” He reached into his pocket and produced a piece of paper for her. “That is a list of all the times and places we’ve had cops up our asses. Notice anything?”

  She searched for a pattern but couldn’t find one. “No.”

  “No? I’ll tell you. It’s fucking constant! Every member. We can’t do shit. I’m sitting on fifty kilos I can’t sell. That’s a lot of fucking cocaine, Gi.”

  She looked away. She hadn’t known Adrienne was able to hook him up with that much, but she wasn’t going to question him. Adrienne’s connections had surprised her from the start; it was possible.

  “You know why they’re all over us?” he asked. It seemed he was cutting into his giant supply himself. “Do you?”

  She didn’t answer. He fished in his pocket, sprinkled a line on the girl’s chest, and snorted it. “I’ll tell you why. Because they’re looking for you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. I don’t need I’m sorry. I need my money. We have a gun run coming up, and if we don’t sell this shit we’re not going to be able to pay for them. Guess what they’ll do with the guns if we can’t pay for them. Go on, guess.”

  “Find another buyer?”

  “They’ll fucking shoot us with them is what they’ll do. Then they’ll find another buyer.”

  “Can we sell it in—”

  “Shut up. I didn’t bring you here for ideas. Your ideas are obviously shit.”

  Gianna looked at the ground and waited. Marco slapped the thigh of the girl on his lap, signaling her to get up. Free of her, he crossed the room and opened a cabinet. Gianna couldn’t see what was inside, but her pulse quickened. She checked the accessibility of the pistol in her waistband.

  “You know, Gi. I always thought you were dumb, letting that little girl have such a hold on you. You let a little pussy get you into a real mess. Look at you, making a fool of yourself, going to jail for slapping her around. It was dumb, but it wasn’t my business.” Marco crossed the room, fitting brass knuckles to his hand. “But now you’re making it my business. You’re messing with my money, my respect.”

  “It wasn’t even like that, Marco. It was the cop that fucked everything up. She was coming at us, I had to—”

  “No, it’s about your girlfriend, and I’ll tell you why. She is the reason that cop got involved, and instead of just cutting her loose the second that happened, you let your emotions make you make stupid choices. You got my people shooting at a cop, dying in the street over your personal shit, and you couldn’t even be bothered to do it well? You didn’t even get her, and you showed your face on a camera.”

  “Marco—”

  “You’re on the Goddamn news! Weather, Gianna Hernandez’s stupid face, sports, Gianna’s fucking dumb face again!” he screamed. “One of my people died in the street and the cop doesn’t have a scratch!” The punch came so fast Gianna couldn’t defend herself. The brass knuckles split her face, a dull, solid thud marked the impact and made her ears ring.

  “You got too big for your britches, and you need to fall in line.” He punched again, this one sent her to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Marco.”

  “This is not your gang. They are not your minions. They are my members. They make me money and they protect the WAKs, not run fucking errands for you when you get pissy. And you, what good are you now? The second you show your face you’re going to prison. What good are you to me?”

  “I’ll be your security. I’ll do the pickups on the docks. I’ll do anything, Marco, please.”

  He removed the knuckles. Gianna had seen him beat people much worse. She was shocked by the pain of just two punches.

  “All right, get up,” he said. “Sit down, have a girl.” He snapped at the dancer. “Sweetheart!” She came over and danced in front of Gianna enticingly, touching her legs. Gianna could barely see, her eyes were still watering from the blows to her head.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I have a case out there right now and it’s leaning the wrong way. You’re going to take care of the judge for me.”

  “Take care of him?”

  “You said anything, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, well, that’s what I need. You want to survive a
round me, be needed.”

  Gianna nodded. “And my warrant?”

  “Don’t get caught.”

  “Can you hook me up with a new identity?”

  “Sure, but it’s not going to help you if you can’t stay your happy ass away from the girl. Can you?”

  Gianna paused. “I want her to pay.”

  “Christ, you’re being such a pansy. She’s just a girl. Let it go.”

  “She lived with me for five years; she knows things. And now she’s with a cop.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “Nothing she shouldn’t,” Gianna said. “But—”

  “How much?” Marco leaned forward, danger flashing in his eyes.

  “Nothing she shouldn’t,” Gianna repeated. “But she knows who was in the car when we shot at the cop and knows who the members are and where most of them live. Could have something to do with that list you showed me.”

  “So you’re saying she’s a rat?”

  “I think so.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Get the judge, get the girl. Then we’ll get you a new name and setup.”

  * * *

  Kaia woke to the softest of morning light seeping through a small part in the drapes. She’d gone to bed too early and now woken at sunrise. She turned carefully toward Adrienne, trying not to wake her, but her eyes were already open. She smiled.

  “Good morning.”

  “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “Not for hours.”

  Kaia got up and made coffee. She heard Adrienne riffling through clutter behind her. “So, we’re not allowed to leave, are we?”

  “That’s the idea,” Kaia answered. “Don’t want to be seen.”

  “Makes sense, but would it have killed them to give us some entertainment?”

  Kaia laughed as she poured her coffee. “What do we have?”

  “An encyclopedia, really bad movies, and Monopoly.”

  “TV?”

  Adrienne turned it on. A hiss of static answered her.

  “Well, shit.”

  “You want to play Monopoly?” Adrienne asked.