Page 127 of Deep Cover

16

Annie

Things sucked on arrival. The private jet touched down in Southern Nevada and all I wanted was to be on vacation again.

That's apparently a normal way that normal people act. Vacations are freeing and precious and when people first return from them, they don't want their real lives back.

But I'd loved what I did for so long that not loving it felt pivotal. Being with Cole wasn't where I belonged. Contrarily, being with Cole in Rio had felt like belonging. Mark and I had had taken two trips during our time together. He'd been finishing up med school when we met, so there hadn't been a lot of time or a lot of money to vacation. I was already a police officer and started undercover work within weeks of getting together with Mark. Which led me to believe he should have known what he was getting into, though that really wasn't my point when I found myself thinking of him as the plane touched down.

My point was that a working trip with Cole felt like more of a vacation than a trip with Mark ever had.

And that working with Cole, I felt like he knew me better after the months of "treatment" than Mark did after years of relationship.

So I was already confused and tired as the plane descended into a stormy gray desert. Southern Nevada gets some 300 or more days of sunshine a year. People shoot car commercials on the wide open empty highways because they can pretty much depend on glorious blue sky and sage brush vistas.

Unless it's December and gray and Christmas is coming and it's going to be spent with a man whose history you don't know but whose dungeon you do.

There was definitely something wrong with my life.

Upon getting back, Cole plunged into work and other than maintenance spankings and the morning routine, he had little time for me. He even forgot about the enemas which had only been instituted right before the trip and though I hated it the one time he did it, the lack now seemed strange.

If Cole could forget about me and leave me on the shelf, what did that mean about me? I needed to have some use in the world. Some place.

I went back to working out to Tad's Taekwon-Do YouTube videos and within a day I'd also returned to Tad's comments section. Rio had only been a total of four days, less than a week. Nothing had changed that radically on the street, but there had been another death from fentanyl.

Tell me what I can doI sent in nearly so many words. His careful reply – carefully protecting my identity – indicated that he thought my information would matter. That my identifying the people dealing would matter.

That I could make a difference.

But he thought I had to come back to do it. The Powers that Be weren't going to take advice or direction from an unknown, unnamed source who wouldn't even communicate with them directly.

I bit my lip and looked out into the cold dark world beyond my cell. It was safe here, where even the dark gray of winter and seasonal affective crap couldn't drive me to destroy myself again because there just wasn't any way to do it. If I truly wanted to kill myself in Cole's custody, I'd have to find a straight out way to do it, not beat around the bush on the five year plan of opioids.

Tad's comments also referred to the belt system of martial arts, the TKD system ranging from white to black. I read his meaning as If you're not ready, stay where you are. He seemed to think if I came back too soon, fet would claim another life: Mine.

He was probably right. But agreeing with him was tantamount to putting my life above those of others. I could do it if I thought in the long run I'd save more people by saving myself now.

I wasn't sure.

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