Page 170 of Deep Cover

42

Annie

In like a lion, out like a lamb. Isn't that March? It's either stormy at the beginning or at the end, generally reversing itself throughout the month.

March blew in two weeks after the Valentine's Day Massacre as I’d started thinking about it, and ten days after the Seattle trip and all the weirdness that followed. Wild winds blew across the flat of the Southern Nevada desert, making anything not nailed down on the compound rock and rattle and crash. Rose bushes pounded against the windows. Something came loose outside the holding cell suite and banged periodically into the wall. I'm a sound sleeper, but if I'd been trying to sleep, that would have kept me awake until I called the main house and asked somebody to fix it.

Not for the first time I wondered what Cole's contingency plans were if there was an emergency in the compound. I'd seen the response from an ambulance when Jason needed to be taken for medical treatment. But what if there was a fire? The desert floods every year – there had been a couple days of flash flooding at the end of January while it stormed, but flash flooding outside is dangerous. The ground is flat and hard and unforgiving in Nevada and water runs across it with no way of sinking in. The most that could have happened to the compound and my holding cell would have been inches on the floor and when it was built, someone had the bright idea of building the foundation up. The flash flooding in the compound ended up just being a lot of rain.

As March blew in, it was basically just a lot of wind. There was rain, too, lashing against the walls, and I wasn't trying to sleep. The violence of the storm entertained me at the same time it made me lust after new things. I wanted to start new projects and go after new goals. Sitting out there by the window, watching the plants bow and weave in the wind, listening to the violence as gusts blew up and hammered and died down and blew up again, I wanted to run and run and at the end of the run, I wanted to start everything in my life all over again. There seemed to be some big, bright gold shiny promise out there waiting for me and I wanted to go claim it.

At the same time, I had no idea what that promise was. It was like wanting to set a bunch of new goals but first choosing the shiny, pretty journal to write them down in and looking for the perfect pen that wouldn't bleed through the pages and wouldn't clump and leave big dark spots of ink. And finding the perfect day when there's a couple free hours and nobody else home… and realizing by the time all the component pieces are in place, there's no way to remember what those exciting, this-is-going-to-change-everything goals were. Not sad, exactly, but all that new! Soon! Change! goals are now – huh? Well, maybe this could be changed…

Maybe because when I looked at new, looked at what I wanted to change in my life, it felt like first I had to finish my time with Cole in the Southern Nevada compound. That no longer had that much to do with fentanyl. The cravings had ended. I think Cole could have let me have Advil again and I wouldn't have taken half a large bottle in too short a number of days. Not that there weren't aspects of life I wouldn't have gladly found a way to bury and hide myself from. The medical exam, for one. If it was possible to have PTSD from something like that, I had it. Intrusive thoughts of the things he'd done to me hit me several times every day and there was nothing much to do with them but let the shame and horror wash through me like heat, leaving me damp with sweat and not with desire. Fury accompanied those thoughts, at what he'd done, at being stuck with the memories.

But the rest of the time, I'd become aware that I was there voluntarily. Maybe I always had been. Or maybe it was something I was sensing with Cole, that more and more he was tacitly acknowledging that I could leave. Contract or not. Maybe the damn thing would hold up if challenged – it had been drafted by attorneys, no matter how sick the bastards had to be to conceive of such a contract – but it didn't matter. I seemed to have set making it through this period with Cole as my own goal, my own ticket back to my own life.

And the longer I was there, the more I questioned what that life would be. PD was still covering me on sick time and since I had no expenses, that money was just building up. My father raised me to be self-sufficient and to work for the things I got. I'd have been slightly horrified of getting that much sick time covered and being paid when I wasn't working, but undercover had been 24/7 and eaten my life. I had no problem being paid back for that.

So as the night banged against the shutters and the plants in the desert bowed to the power of nature, I let the wild longing for something new fill me and tried to take comfort in knowing some time in the fall I'd figure out what that new life looked like. Until then I had battles to fight with Cole and runs through the desert and the dullness of yoga and the vileness of spinach and the things that Cole did to me that I hated.

And the few things he did to me that I liked. Even if most of those I couldn't admit to liking.

Cole woke me at dawn. The storm had washed through somewhere around three and the sun was coming up right around six a.m.

"Did you sleep here?"

I blinked up at him. I was covered with a quilt I didn't really need, bundled into sweats, and tucked up on the loveseat under the window. Sunlight was just creeping across the sky, which was full of wild silvery and salmon colored clouds.

"The storm, sir," I said, but I met his eyes. The excitement of the night still filled me.

Cole smiled. "Did it keep you awake? Looks like there's some loose roofing and some siding to be fixed. How are you with a hammer?"

That sounded good to me, the idea of working outside for a little while. "My Dad taught me. I can do home repairs and I can probably nail siding back up. What's the job pay?"

He pretended to scowl at me, hands on his hips. "How about no spinach for a week?"

"Or broccoli or Brussel sprouts," I said.

"You drive a hard bargain."

"Damn straight."

"Damn straight, sir."

I shook my head. "Some things don't work with sir at the end of them."

"Well, you're not one of them," he said. "Get up. It's time to run."

It was. The desert was swept clean and the sky was sparkling clear. The clouds were glorious in the sunrise and I kept almost tripping over my feet because I wanted to look up. Midway through our run we spotted a pair of coyotes jogging across the desert maybe 100 yards away from us, heads and tails up. They stopped to take in the crazy humans out in their desert, then continued on until way off in the distance they found the rest of their pack. Their yips of greeting came back to us on the clear air.

For a while we played, just jogging easily. And then for a while we raced, picking cacti and other landmarks to run to, challenging each other and arriving breathless and laughing.

We went out something like six miles, a little more than an hour heading out which meant an hour coming back, but I didn't care. Running felt fantastic. The things Cole insisted on, the running and lifting and maybe even the dreaded yoga were all making changes to my body. I'd been in shape before, but nothing like this.

Finally we stopped. This was already going to be a 12 mile run, somewhere in that vicinity. Right then I didn't feel any need for it to end but I knew about mile 10 I'd be cursing myself and cursing Cole and hating life. Ten miles was one of my walls.

"Ready to head back?"

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