Page 10 of Deep Cover

7

The town car that picked me up had windows tinted so dark it had to be illegal but though we passed several state police units, no one stopped us. There were no identifying marks on the car, no license plates, and my phone had been taken before I could have dreamed of running anything through DMV.

There were no handles on the inside of the car in the backseat. There was a dark walnut and glass wet bar, with a silver bar attached to it for a towel to hang decorously upon. To my credit, my cop-ish paranoia suggested it would be a good place to cuff someone.

I carried very few belongings, only toiletries and a couple changes of clothes, a small bag containing my drug of choice and my kit.

Halfway through a very long drive, the car stopped and a woman met us, escorted me to a restroom inside a convenience store in an Oregon town. When I got back in the car, we continued. Into California. Into Nevada. All the way south to Las Vegas.

On the outskirts, the driver pulled over, put down the window between us, holding a taser trained on me and held out a thick black scarf. "Tie this over your eyes and nose." He didn't bother to threaten what would happen if I didn't. He was, after all, holding a weapon.

A month here, with whoever the reclusive billionaire with the pharma miracle was, and I'd return to my life on Seattle PD, clean again. Safe again. Ready to work.

It was worth this indignity. Once I'd tied on the blindfold he said, "Hold your hands out to me."

I did, unsurprised when cold metal cuffs went first around my left wrist, then around the silver bar on the wet bar that graced the back of the front seat, up the other side, I could assume, and snapped around my right wrist.

"We're almost there. You get carsick?"

He hadn't been actively mean. Just quiet. "I don't know," I said. "I don't usually ride in bondage."

He gave a short laugh and I heard him turn back to me. "Open your mouth."

He sounded calm and kind but I didn't.

Pause, and then, "It's crystallized ginger. Feel." He brushed my fingers with it and that's what it felt like. "Combats nausea. Even people who don't get carsick can when blindfolded."

I took the ginger. I thanked him.

And I rode to Cole St. Martin's enormous walled estate in the deep desert, blindfolded, trusting, and already craving.

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