Page 4 of Deep Cover

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"Pumpkin? You didn't have to come."

"Yes, I did." I had my dad to myself briefly, my sisters off in the cafeteria talking about whatever they talked about when they got together. They were scattered around the west, in Sacramento, in Reno, in Portland. Portland meant Sarah was only three hours away from me and I still didn't see her. She didn't even know I worked narcs or that I was undercover at all, and still I didn't fit into her white picket fence daydreams.

Dad looked tired more than anything else. He's fifty-nine and a retired police officer, a detective who raised four girls. Maybe he has a right to look tired.

Our conversation was stilted. How could it be anything else? There were doctors coming in and going out because he was in cardiac ICU still and there was my mother coming in three times during the fifteen minutes I was given and dad sending her away. There were nurses. There was the hushed murmur because there were other patients.

There was my own fear that I was drowning. Just being out of the clubhouse, I was already itching to get info on yesterday's fucked up buy, both needing to know and dreading the info on the deaths.

"How bad is it?" I asked and saw his face relax.

"You're the only one who asks me that." He reached up and smoothed my hair back.

I snorted. "Of course I am." Didn't have to say anything more than that. He knew mom was a throwback somehow to a fifties wife and my sisters were – not that bad. They just weren't us. Him and me. He was the reason I kept going when the job required being so deep cover I was fucking the gang leader. He'd had to do some dodgy things in his career too. He wouldn't understand that aspect where I was concerned – I was still his daughter – but he understood more than anyone else.

"They're doing a bypass." He let go of my hair. "Fifty-fifty I make it through, if I read their reluctance to tell me jackshit. If I do, though, full recovery. Enough about me. You being safe?"

"Sure, dad. That's why I work narcotics."

His eyelids were starting to lower but he grinned at that obvious lie. "That's my girl."

I wasn't out of cover but there were protocols in place so I could check in with Dave Samuels. y handler, the closest thing to a contact, and the guy who's supposed to pull me out if the whole operation goes south, but I think we all know that would never happen. When it all goes bad there's never enough time.

"Do you need out?" he asked. After the previous day's fuck up, it was logical that was his first question.

There are protocols for everything, safe words, so to speak. Not that I couldn't walk away if I had to. Nobody gets to determine my life to that extent.

"No." I was twitchy. In a Starbucks in a different city. It didn't feel like Jesse would have me watched, but I knew a lot about his business. There's more to the motorcycle gangs than leather vests and beards and boots. His business was organized, lucrative, and totally illegal. ATF, DEA and Seattle PD narcs – everybody wanted to take down the Brotherhood. They had ties with the Bandidos and the Mongols, and the Brotherhood was growing exponentially and putting more and more China white on the street.

I wasn't ready to pull the plug. It was too confusing, trying to figure out how I'd go work as a uniformed cop and go home every night or every morning to have coffee with Mark and sex that didn't involve a fist hitting the pillow beside my head. Or anything else possibly hitting anything else.

The advantage of looking underage was working in the schools. The Brotherhood was dealing to younger and younger buyers and China white wasn't just heroin anymore. In this context it was fentanyl, a whole hell of a lot more dangerous, more potent, more addictive, more deadly. I'd gotten involved with a high school sting, going back to school and making friends and making contacts and making buys. Until there was enough information and then I didn't go back in to PD, I moved to another location, stayed under, and found my way to Jesse.

Because during the time I was in the school system, I got to know some of the kids who were using, including Lorelei.

I went to her funeral.

"Not ready to come in. Just checking in." My eyes couldn't stop going from customer to customer in the shop, making sure I didn't see any faces I recognized. No one from Jesse's world watching me.

On the other end of the phone, Dave hesitated. "You saw your dad?"

"Yeah. There wasn't a cover break for that."

"Listen, you're going to hear this anyway because it's going to probably hit the news. There's an internal investigation, looking at a handful of cases your dad worked on."

I closed my eyes. "What?"

"It's not just him. It's everyone who worked those cases."

It wasn't starting with him - that's what Dave could have said. But it would come down to my dad. Because not everything he'd done was above board. I knew that. There are great cops out there who never violate a single rule and who get the job done. There are dirty cops, of course.

Then there are those who push the line a little. Not everything they do is true blue. My dad fit in that category. He'd never told me, never let slip the smallest detail. But I knew.

But he was proud of his career, proud of what he'd done, proud of the crap and the dealers he'd helped take off the street. Now he was sick, trying to get through open-heart surgery. If I stayed undercover, I couldn't even testify on his behalf.

If I didn't, more girls like Lorelei would die.

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