Page 125 of Deep Cover

14

Annie

The rest of the trip, another day and a half in Rio, was pure vacation. I had no desire to run and nowhere to run to. Cole was like a sort of new boyfriend, if I'd ever met one of the high end dealers, maybe, instead of becoming the girlfriend of somebody riding in a gang. It was pleasant but unnerving to be with him and in some ways I wished the trip was already over. Then I could remember with pleasure that everything had gone well.

In the end, it did. With the guards in attendance, we looked like a weird convocation of bodybuilders out for a day and a half on the beaches. We ate and sunned and laughed together and played with a beach ball for a while and took a run as the sun set. Dinner was at a restaurant just off the beach and Cole didn't oversee what I ate so there was no fish, just steak, salad, baked potato and cheesecake for dessert. I was working, so even if I wasn't in recovery I wouldn't have had anything to drink. No one at our table drank, but since we were in a foreign country, we opted for bottled sodas.

When we got back to the hotel that night I wondered if Cole would insist on another maintenance spanking once we got back to the suite of rooms, and part of me that needed to get itself under control throbbed at the idea.

But when we were back he started going through his notes of the meetings he'd taken. He was stretched out on his bed, the laptop on his flat, hard six-pack abs, and incongruous pair of reading glasses on his nose. If I hadn't known eventually my ass would pay the price, I'd have told him he looked cute.

Instead I went back to studying the criminal justice course on my laptop, drinking tea made with bottled water. By the time I finished with half a dozen landmark cases on search and seizure (my favorite was Won Sun and the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, in part because the name was fabulous and in part because the police kept rushing into the wrong addresses and arresting people who really were committing crimes, but not the people or the crimes they were looking for) he was asleep in the same position. After a moment's consideration I decided I'd rather get in trouble for presuming and being nice and also watching out for him than get in trouble for letting him fall asleep and roll over on a laptop and spear himself on his glasses. I tiptoed in, removed the glasses, took the laptop and put it on the far side of the bed, switched off the bedside lamp and, though it wasn't cold, pulled a light blanket from the closet and covered him with it.

I went to bed and slept as though someone had just pulled the plug on me.

Halfway through the next day we flew back to the States and the vacation was behind us and all the nerves and impatience began building again.Along with a strange new guilt.

Something about what Cole had done to me in the empty office, coupled with my taking care of him in the hotel room, came together to produce a vague, free-floating anxiety and guilt.

Because as soon as I got back, I asked permission to do more YouTube Taekwon-Do without admitting I knew the instructor.

And without admitting I was receiving terse nearly-coded messages from him in the comments to the videos. The gang shootings were escalating and a shitload of meth and China white was flooding the streets.

I knew who this was. An old lieutenant of Jesse's who became a rival. When it had been proven he couldn't take Jesse's turf, he'd gone off to Chicago or somewhere else. At any rate, he'd taken his business elsewhere and some level of drugs on the street reduced.

Now he was back full force, months after Jesse had been killed, apparently feuding with the Brotherhood and other organized groups. I was willing to bet Victor Broka was forming his own gang, and willing to bet there were enough perks for joining and enough downfalls for not joining that he was having no problems building up his forces.

This was a time that no matter how much the guys on the job wanted to give me shit about it, I really could make a difference. I knew what Victor looked like and I knew the Brotherhood guys who were likely to have gone with him.

If I send info, will PD act on it? I wrote, in a slightly coded way. That was the gist of it, anyway.

Tad wrote back what I already knew. They need you. And they need you to prove you're back to you.

Shit. I needed a phone, a better way to contact him. For now, this would have to do. At least Tad believed me and he was checking his channel daily.

It wouldn't do any good if people were already overdosing on the street. I had to get back there or do something to cause change. My having been gone so long was a good thing. All I had to do was fake another jail time record for Lily, maybe find someone to back up that story, and Lily could go in with her knowledge of Jesse's bookkeeping systems.

I could get in where other people couldn't. I still had the Lily persona. I could do fet if I had to and come back to Cole for more treatment. That was a statement I didn't bother looking too closely at. Whatever I'd been through, I was still a cop, and I had to do something about this.

I started making what plans I could.

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