Page 164 of Deep Cover

39

Cole

In the end, the Seattle trip was like one long, very strange date. Maybe a blind date. With a very rich and very eccentric guy met over the internet and not properly vetted.

After he half stripped me in the car and spanked me until I could feel the heat coming off my own ass, there was no way to ask what the whole trip was about. Maybe the secret to being a billionaire is that you can take a private jet from Southern Nevada to Washington State just to prove a point.

Whatever points Cole wanted to make on the trip, my takeaway was confusing and twofold. On the one hand, I wasn't ready to be out in the world yet or if I was, I was looking for a different world. The idea of going back to my old life, the one that had fit like a glove before it fell apart, was exhausting and disheartening. Probably I could do it and probably I'd be successful at parts of it. I'd return to PD and go back to being undercover for at least a couple more years before I either had to change my role in the drug culture, or pick something else to do.

It didn't appeal. The idea of starting something new did. I wasn't sure where that left me and Mark. Part of me wanted to contact him and babble at full speed about all the choices we could make and how we could go forward together because there weren't any hospitals in Seattle he was desperate to work at, so one hospital and one community was probably as good as another for him. Mark's family was scattered around the country. None of them liked me and half of them didn't seem to like Mark or each other. There was nothing much keeping him in Washington.

The rest of me acknowledged that I could take Mark with me. Or I could head out into this new life that felt like a promise rather than a threat and I could go alone. Because I missed the idea of me and Mark a lot more than I missed the reality and when I was nursing a cropped behind or my breasts ached from a switching Cole had inflicted, the real life I longed to return to was more the ordered life in PD or the disordered, chaotic but useful life undercover.

Not the one I shared with Mark.

Probably that meant I needed to acknowledge it to myself and free both of us.

But it wouldn't be easy.

The second part of my takeaway from the Seattle trip was, while I might not be ready for real life, I had to watch that I didn't get too comfortable hiding from that life. When Cole had offered me a visit with my father, I'd resisted. The idea of a cover story as to how and why I was on a day pass from "rehab" was too uncomfortable. I didn't want to lie to my dad and I didn't want to tell him any version of the truth.

My mother and sisters had never even entered my considerations.

We flew back to Southern Nevada very quietly. Cole worked on some project for his pharmaceuticals company and I played with various computer games until we landed.

For a billionaire, Cole traveled light. I'd worked enough security to understand that a show of force isn't always necessary. Sometimes it just draws attention. Cole wasn't as recognizable as Bezos or the Tesla guy and he wasn't a rock star or movie star. He was a very attractive guy but he kept a low profile in the world as a whole. So we flew in and he paid his pilots an absurd amount of cash that I thought was a tip then took my elbow and walked me from the plane.

The backseat of the limo was specially equipped so that once we were on the freeway, he simply tinted the glass until there was no way for me to see out. The compound would remain a mystery. The only thing I knew for certain was it was south of Vegas and I'd already known that.

He escorted me back to the holding cell. Jason was back, I saw him as we passed. He held his body stiffly, as if he'd like to dissociate himself from it. I knew that pain and I forced myself to meet his eyes, judging how bad the situation was.

Answer to that question: If I had to be alone around him, I'd be a lot more comfortable if I had my Glock with me.

Cole came with me into the holding cell and waited while I went and showered off the impromptu trip and changed into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt.

"I ordered some food," he said when I came out and I suppressed a sigh. Cole's idea of acceptable food was always going to be different than mine. He surprised me with a wicked grin. "Just consider it part of your submission."

I bit my lip and tried to look grave. Truth was I still felt half like laughing out of embarrassment when he said things like that. It still sounded like a bad dirty joke or someone's filthy imagination running overtime.

"Am I hungry, sir?" Sometimes he'd allow light sarcasm like that to go by. He'd had the cook bring a salad, some yogurt, some salmon which was, at least, one of the less disgusting fish. There were multigrain bagels, cut up apple, slices of cheese, and two boxes of protein drink. If he thought I could eat all that he was seriously overestimating me.

"You might want to put a dent in it," he said and glanced at his watch. "You're fasting after this until tomorrow morning."

I'd been about to bite into a bagel when he said that and I stopped, letting a frisson of fear tingle its way down my spine. Alone in the holding cell I'd had time to investigate every corner of it. There had been no casual cruelty from Cole in the entire time I'd been with him, and no reason to expect him to go crazy and decide to starve me to death. If anything, he wanted me to eat far more and more often than I had any interest in.

But this was creepy.

And then in the next instant, he explained, and it was creepier.

"Tomorrow morning I'm going to do a full physical workup on you."

I stopped with the bagel halfway to my lips. Doctors and exams give me the creeps and I avoid them like the plague. Cole St. Martin had studied to be a doctor but he was the billionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company. I didn't want him playing doctor on me.

"The fast is so I can run a bloodwork panel on you," he said and I reminded myself I was a police officer and had done a lot worse than have blood drawn.

It didn't take. I hate needles. Even the opioids I'd been using didn't get me used to needles. The only reason I could do it at all was – well, two reasons. I was the one controlling it.

And addiction.

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