Page 242 of Deep Cover

31

Cole

"Iought to blow your head off, you son of a bitch."

Daniel Knox. He was older than I'd expected, even knowing he was retired. Annie and her sisters were in their twenties, all the sisters, I thought, though only Annie mattered to me. But despite their ages, Daniel Knox seemed late fifties. There were lines on his face, roadmaps of what he'd done in his life.

Annie had been explicitly on his side regarding the charges brought against him for not quite towing the line with PD over the years. I wondered if now she'd have a different take on it. She didn't believe her father had done nothing wrong. She had only believed that her father had done things wrong in the pursuit of doing what was right.

Now, he considered himself on the side of the angels, but I was willing to bet Annie would have different thoughts.

He'd dragged me off into the living room where the unfortunate swap party had gone so horribly wrong and Vincent, already on his way to being out of his mind, had put in motion the events that would lead to everything we'd just gone through.

Somehow it seemed a fitting place to be forcefully dealt with by Annie's dad. Only I didn't intend for that to happen.

"For what?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was insane. "For what you've done to my daughter."

He'd glared me into taking a seat on the couch, but he was pacing my living room and I stood, moved purposefully around him and poured myself a sparkling water at the bar. "Can I get you something?"

He looked like a bull about to charge. He was a big man, with a big moustache and big features, nothing like his daughter. "You son – "

"I know. You told me already." I toasted him with my drink. I wasn't whistling past the grave yard or being smartass. I just refused to be afraid. I drank my water, put the glass down, and addressed him where he paced.

"When Annie was brought here – "

"Don't use her name." He snarled it.

"Her name is Annie. It's a polite thing for me to call her. I'm going to be polite. You're in my home. You could learn the same thing."

He showed me his gun.

I shrugged. "When your daughter was brought here, she had a hell of a fentanyl addiction. I know you're aware of it because she told me you are. The way she got here wasn't exactly standard."

He swung around to face me. "What do you mean?"

I shrugged again, one shoulder this time. "I have no lab, no medical office. I have no way to do blood draws and nowhere to send them if I did. But I have a natural substance from the rainforest which is proving to be amazingly effective at curing addictions while not causing a secondary. It has no nasty side effects and very few positive effects other than curing addiction. It gives the person who takes it a very slight increase in feeling awake and alert, and a little bit of - not euphoria but just feeling more at ease. And it cures addiction. Period. Annie can't get that anywhere else. I've given her a place to stay where she's safe and not exposed to drugs, and isn't working undercover."

He looked a little surprised at that, and then his mind connected the dots. "You found her through Dave Samuels." It came out a statement, not a question, and he wasn't wrong.

Samuels was a crooked cop and he'd been Annie's handler when she was deep cover. He'd essentially sold her to me, not that such things were possible in this day and age.

Except they totally are. He'd gotten the money and that was enough to get her trapped, tagged and bagged and sent my way.

Money can do anything, especially when the person on the receiving end is law enforcement and dirty.

Samuels had disappeared somewhere along the line. Shit happens when your motives are that dirty.

"Samuels knew I could help her."

"Bullshit!" He was in a flat out rage now.

"No, it's not. He did know I could help her. He wasn't in any way doing it out of the goodness of his heart." When I saw he knew where I was going, I said, "He was doing it for his checking account."

"Samuels vanished," Knox said.

"How about that."

He gave me a long look. "You've had her here in a cell. Locked down. You didn't allow her to be in contact with her family. You have a lot to answer for." His face kept getting redder and I thought about what Annie had said about his heart attacks and bypass surgery.

But I didn't do much to calm him down. Just pointed out that lockdown was typical for rehab, as was being out of touch with the everyday world. That was kind of the point.

When he started up again, angry questions that were all the same and were never going to actually get to Are you fucking her? Because he really didn't want to know, or Have you hurt her? if he'd heard about my proclivities, because he was outnumbered here and couldn't take the answer, I had my men step into the room. He'd brought four.

By now I had all eight called in. I had more money, more firepower, and Annie.

But in the end, they won where Annie was concerned.

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