“She’s none of your business.”
“You don’t tell me what my business is.”
Rising to my feet at glacial speed, I leaned forward on his desk as he and his goons all lifted their guns and pointed them at me. If I could have ripped his head off before any bullets could get to me, I would have.
“She. Is. None. Of. Your. Business.”
Sarina
Everybody always said that love wasn’t supposed to be easy, but I didn’t think they could really be an authority on the topic unless they’d walked a mile in my shoes. Every day, I caught my mind deconstructing my life and trying to rebuild me into the Sarina Bell persona I’d created.
All my time with Ryan was like a picture-perfect postcard from heaven. He worshipped my mind, body and soul in the bedroom and everywhere else, paying homage to every square inch of my skin in his own good time.
We went Christmas shopping together, another first for me, and we visited his mom. He took me out and showed me off, and I hated to admit how enjoyable it was when I caught other women looking at me jealously.
I was twirling through a metaphorical field of flowers, in love, and then my old life had to butt its head in again. This came in the form of a meeting with Sergeant Shelton, who had finally received the lab tests back on the sample of F I’d given him, after several delays that weren’t explained to me.
According to the forensic scientists, not only was the sample I’d provided the highest quality they’d ever tested, it was completely pure. Ryan’s source was able to get F that hadn’t been cut at all, and Shelton’s excitement at that shone through his professional veneer.
This meant that my investigation might very well be starting higher up in the food chain than any of us thought. My heart sank when I heard that.
The higher Ryan was in the F supply structure, the more difficult it would be to protect him from prosecution, no matter what I did. Doing my job meant stabbing him in the back, but now it also meant plunging that knife into my own heart at the same time.
Sergeant Shelton noticed how quiet I was and gave his best undercover cop pep talk. He reminded me that I wasn’t the first undercover officer to go down this path, but then he surprised me by saying that I’d been in the field long enough to know that things happen that are never mentioned in the training.
He knew there were things going on that were never included in my reports and that was OK, there was always shit to work out from an undercover investigation. I got real quiet at that.
Just don’t forget who you are, and don’t forget who he is, he said.
For me, that was easier said than done. Love didn’t come along every day. What was the right thing to do? Turn my back on it? Break the heart of the first man who ever showed me what being in love felt like? I was an undercover cop. Was I still?
You’re the good guy, he’s the bad guy.
Shelton’s assessment was a lot simpler than mine. Regardless, with this new information and since Ryan didn’t seem to be volunteering any contacts, my orders were to step up the investigation.
If F was ultimately being produced by The Cannibals, we needed to get to the bottom of things. With several gang members reported missing lately, some turning up extremely dead, the feeling around the station was that some third party was gearing up for a turf war.
Was it about control of F as well? We had to find out, before countless people died, some of them completely innocent bystanders who’d be nothing more than collateral damage in a criminal underworld war.
Since then, I’d been following Ryan as much as possible, while keeping up appearances at college just enough to maintain my cover. I was exhausted with all this and the constant mental gymnastics it took to try to stay grounded, while Ryan spent every moment sweeping me off my feet.
Most of the time, he only went to the building in the middle of the industrial area that had been converted into a rented workspace, with offices, meeting rooms, phones and computer workstations available. This wasn’t news to me; Ryan told me he ran his cosmetics business from there when he needed to, and Sergeant Shelton confirmed that it was a real business that paid its taxes.
Today was different. Today, Ryan went into the Trafford Tower. My mind worked overtime trying to make up excuses for him. There were plenty of legitimate reasons to go into that building, but half of the businesses in there were suspected fronts for the Acardi Crime Family. The other half would probably be under suspicion too, if they were investigated closely enough.
Something Ryan’s mother said when I first met her was bothering me too. She said Ryan was always into chemistry. Top marks in his class all through high school.