Page 159 of Deep Cover

That made him do it again, catching my left hand and making it sting and ache. I yanked my hands up and he hit me one more time.

So I wouldn't be asking what we were doing here. What I wanted to do was see my dad, and my mom, I supposed, though there was less chance she needed to see "her rock" as Mark insisted I was to her.

I didn't really want to see Mark, but mostly because I thought if I did, home would start fitting itself around me as home. There was no way Cole would let me out of my contract even a second early. He was enjoying everything he was doing to me, the head games and the body games.

So I didn't ask.

The day was overcast but bright. It would be raining later on. February in Seattle can be brutally cold and it can snow like it does in Northern Nevada. Southern Nevada didn't get snow and so far this year, I hadn't missed it.

Cole drove through a neighborhood that seemed familiar to me. Inner city, far from the water and the tech centers, far from the PD and even far from the apartment I shared with Mark. We drove past rundown bars and abandoned laundromats and I tried to figure out how a laundromat goes out of business.

Eventually Cole was cruising very slowly and I was automatically sitting back in my seat, looking almost asleep to the casual and not so casual observer but I was actually taking in everything around us. In a couple blocks time I saw two sales go down, one to a fat middle-aged woman who was probably buying for someone else. Given what looked like a hellacious bruise on her neck above the neckline of her sweatshirt, I'd bet on a significant other, male or female, somebody with a nasty habit and nasty habits.

Another street and things started to look familiar. This was Brotherhood territory. From other streets I could hear bikes roaring but there was never anyone in sight. The streets changed from rundown businesses to liquor stores and empty storefronts. Chain link fences hemmed in vacant lots. Graffiti decorated everything.

We passed another buy. Kid doing the selling looked about seventeen. Kid doing the buying looked about thirteen. I swallowed hard and Cole kept driving, up the street to a middle school where children were leaving the building, their voices shrill and alive in the darkening afternoon.

Cole pulled over and sat watching the school as the students barreled out and headed for rides, headed off on skateboards, headed off running or walking.

Or headed directly to the dealer of choice standing on the edge of the property under a spray of evergreen trees. He looked popular, big smile, friendly greeting for each of the kids approaching him. He obviously knew them all by name.

My fingers itched for cuffs. Hell, they itched for my gun. That was safely locked up back at the apartment I sort of still shared with Mark. My cuffs and the rest of my gear were waiting for me to finish my rehab.

To anyone sane, or anyone asking, I'd already been gone too long. Logically I wasn't in rehab anymore but had just quit and not bothered to tell anybody. But I was still getting direct deposits. My sick leave was still covering the fact that I wasn't there. And Tad Charles wasn't saying anything about me needing to get back before they up and fired my ass.

Then a little blond girl who looked so much like Lauren, the first girl to ever OD while I was deep cover in a local high school, came around the side of the building and walked, grinning, over to Mr. Sunshine. She'd just come out of the middle school building. So clearly she wasn't how she looked, which was like a fifth grader, but like me, she looked younger than she was.

But she was tiny. And blond. Delicate. Fragile came to mind and when she held her hand out, one wrist was encased in a cast.

Of course it was. There were all kinds of kids who used for the thrill of it and the hell of it and because they'd been told not to and because they liked the high.

But there were also those kids who were running hard from something and because they knew they couldn't run yet in the real world – they weren't ready to sleep on the street and do whatever they had to with their bodies to survive. Those kids were buying because they needed somewhere to run to.

I had my hand on the door handle and the door partway open before Cole clamped his hand around my wrist.

Yeah, that was what I figured had happened to the blond girl's wrist. Somebody grabbed it. Somebody a lot bigger than her. Like Mom's boyfriend. Or Dad. I turned in my seat and hissed at Cole whose face was stony. Emotionless.

"Close the door."

"Fuck!" I snarled.

He didn't ask again. My seatbelt was still on, at any rate, and he hit the gas, speeding through the school zone. He drove several miles, actually getting us back to semi-decent city blocks before he pulled over and cut the engine and pulled my phone out of his breast pocket.

"Look up requirements for DEA."

I almost said What? because my brain was back there with the kid and wanting to follow her home and beat the shit out of whoever broke her wrist and sent her into opioid hell.

Instead I looked from him to the phone, then tapped into Google and started reading.

"Bachelor's degree or higher, though that can be waived for candidates with extensive experience."

Cole raised an eyebrow at me, looking very much like the Thunder God's adopted brother. He waited without speaking.

"At least twenty-one and younger than thirty-seven. Got that. Valid driver's license. Strangely, yes, still. U.S. Citizen." That felt like a guess anymore. Staying with Cole was like staying on another planet.

I didn't say so.

"Normal hearing and vision." Yeah, as long as Jesse wasn't around to pop me on the side of the head and nobody was firing off rounds too close to my unprotected ears – or as long as I wasn't with the Brotherhood, in other words – my eyesight and hearing were just fine.

---