Chapter 9 Grayson
GRAYSON
I understand why. Regretfully.
The merchandise is not for sampling by low-ranked goons like Samuel. The women organizations like his kidnap are for the top of the food chain. They’re for the men and women who want untouched, virginal surrogates. They would never accept a woman men had manhandled and passed around.
That’s why Samuel is getting his rocks off with his own version of a surrogate.
He’s done the same thing a few times during the past four months. His antics only came to light when he got a little rough with a mother-to-be, and she reported him to the local authorities.
Elise showed up dead earlier this month, which has me suspicious that her murder is why Samuel chose an alias for his date tonight.
Though tense, Macy stays composed as she questions Samuel. She mentions her baby bump multiple times, implying that she’s afraid it might turn him off.
Samuel assures her it doesn’t, and although Macy gets close to making him slip on multiple occasions, mainly while his focus is on her extended stomach, he keeps his cards close to his chest.
I don’t see him getting close to spilling anything decent until he has spilled his load inside of Macy. Since I refuse to allow that to happen on my watch, I light up Samuel’s temple with my sniper scope again, wordlessly announcing to Macy that her time is up.
She flares her nostrils, but after a quick gesture of agreement, she relays my message to Samuel. She slips her hands down his boxer shorts, as he’s endeavored to force her to do multiple times since he stripped out of his pre-cum stained trousers, and then she grips his junk in a determined hold.
Samuel jerks back in an instant, his expression pained. “Whoa, hold on, sweetheart. Not all men like it rough.”
“Really?” It’s fucked to admit this right now, but Macy’s sexpot voice could make any man hard. Myself included. “Because from what I’ve heard, Sammy, you like it rough.”
She clamps down on his genitals so firmly this time around that I stealthily move out of the bathroom and into the main room of the penthouse without alerting Samuel to my presence until he smells my cologne.
“What the fuck?” he murmurs, shocked by my arrival. “Whatever kinky shit you two are into can stay between you. I’m not interested.”
His cheeks redden when Macy’s grip makes even me grimace. She’s seconds away from castrating him with her bare hands. “Once again, that isn’t what I’ve heard, Sammy.”
When Samuel thickens below the belt more with every squeeze, Macy yanks her hand out of his boxers before using a tactic that all agents apply to subdue and arrest a criminal.
She pinches the pressure point in his shoulder, folding his knees out from underneath him, before she twists him away from her.
I realize she’s taking it one step further than what we learned at the academy when she pulls back the wrist she tugged behind his bulky frame. She yanks Samuel’s hand so far back that she is seconds away from snapping several bones in his wrist.
Her voice is no longer sugary sweet when she demands, “Give me something on the baby-making ring in this state, and then maybe you can walk out of here without a conviction.”
She’s lying, but Samuel doesn’t know her well enough to realize. “I don’t know anything.” He sobs like a baby, stupidly believing Macy will go easy on him now that his appendage isn’t on the line.
Big mistake.
A snap cracks through the penthouse when Macy dislocates one of his fingers before she moves toward a second one. “Give me something on the baby-making ring you work for.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Crack.
“I work in construction—”
Crack.
If Samuel is a pianist, he will need a new occupation. He’ll have trouble holding a pen at this rate.
“This is your last chance, Sammy.”
“I swear to God, I don’t know anything.”
Crack.
Macy eyes his crooked fingers on his right hand before she reaches for her gun. It dawns on me that she didn’t solely pack a gun for her date. Her bureau-assigned pistol smuggled the knife that we used to cut potatoes for the dinner prep meals we made while waiting for our lunch to cook.
She looks at me, her expression serious despite the panic flaring through her eyes.
She usually plays good cop during interrogations like this, and the changeup is evident on her face.
“I figure if it slices through bones with no issues, it will slice through the vessel that feeds the corpus cavernosum like a hot knife through butter.”
Samuel swallows harshly, like he is aware of the repercussions of a failing corpus cavernosum, but Macy still spells it out to him.
“The corpus cavernosum is one of the two chambers in your penis that fills with blood when you want to achieve an erection. If it can’t fill with blood, say from a severed blood vessel”—she makes a noise of a rock sinking into a bottomless pond before she lines up her knife with said blood vessel—“nothing works.”
Samuel’s throat bobs as he shoots his eyes to me. “Come on, man. Don’t let her do this.”
“Oh… now you want me here. I thought you weren’t into that?”
“I’m not… I just… oh god, please. I don’t want to live without a functioning dick.” Big, panicked breaths separate his pleas. I get it. Honestly, I do. A knife anywhere down there warrants a panic attack. Macy knows that. That’s why she’s using it as an interrogation tactic.
“Last chance, Sammy.” She projects confidence, like she won’t struggle with her decision to play bad cop for days on end, her voice full of fake cruelty. “Or say goodbye to little Mr. R—”
Before she can get out the nickname of Samuel’s wang, he folds like a lawn chair. “I don’t know the full details of the operation. We’re merely transport.”
To prevent Samuel from hearing Macy’s relieved sigh, I take the lead on our impromptu interrogation. “And waste disposal?”
He doesn’t hide the shame in his eyes when he agrees with my assumption.
“Where do you collect them?” Macy asks, restarting her interrogation, her voice tinged with optimism.
“I don’t—”
Macy’s knife digs into his flaccid cock firm enough to nick him.
“I’m texted when needed. The location changes every pickup. I’m not lying. I swear on my baby sister’s life.”
“Leave your sister out of this.” Macy’s sneer picks up with anger as her eyes bounce between Samuel’s wet pair. “I know you know more than you’re sharing, Sammy. I can smell the deceit on you.”
“That’s because I’m married.”
Another lie. Another nick.
“I only transport the girls… but I overheard one of the men talking about a Lamaze class in San Diego.” I don’t understand his expression when he says, “I assume that’s where they get the recruits from.”
“Where?” Macy barks out, more clued on than I am. “We need an address.”
“I don’t know…” His words are screams, the pressure of Macy’s knife enough to sever. “Honestly, I don’t know the exact studio, just that it’s run on Wednesdays, and that one of the boss’s girlfriends runs it.”
He’s telling the truth, but Macy still struggles to remove her knife from his cock.
I meet Macy’s gaze, have a private conversation, then pull my badge out of my jacket and flash my credentials.
“Samuel Ezekial, you are under arrest for multiple counts of transportation and disposal of human bodies, interference with a corpse, trafficking, and whatever else I can pin on you between now and your hearing.”
With Macy’s knife still pressed against his junk, he sings like a canary. “There’s nothing else. That’s all I did. I just transferred the women. They were already dead. I swear.”
He sucks in a full breath when I pluck him from the floor, cuff him, and then walk him to the detectives waiting in the hallway.
Detective Montrose reads Samuel his rights in full while guiding him toward a commandeered elevator, like his dick isn’t hanging out of his boxers and nicked up.
I wait for the commotion to settle about the department’s “big fish” before I spin to face Macy. She looks incredibly guilty, but nothing will control my anger. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have been seriously hurt.”
My eyes fill with disbelief when she replies, “I know.” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“But I had to do it. This date has been in the works for weeks. It took four months of sexting for him to agree to a phone conversation, and another seven weeks for him to agree to meet with me. He only set a date an hour before you arrived on my doorstep.”
“Then you should have run it through me.”
“And have you pull me off the scent?” Although she is asking a question, she doesn’t wait for me to answer her.
“I had to do this, Grayson. It was the first time we had a chance to see this outfit in person since I arrived here. I couldn’t risk getting you involved and then having the bureau trample all over it. ”
“So you put your unborn child in harm’s way instead?”
Though my words hurt her, she stays resilient. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same if you were within sniffing distance of whoever you’ve been seeking for the past thirteen-plus years.”
“This isn’t about me!” I shout, hating how easily she can read me. No one has ever had that ability—not even Cameron.
“Bullshit!” Macy retorts. “You’re not good at understanding the pain of the victims’ families because you studied psychology. It is because you’re one of them.”
She dominates the bullseye, but I act ignorant. “I could take your badge for this.”
She plays me at my own game when she replies, “You could. But you won’t, because just like Alex knew you were the top agent to solve this case, you know I am too.”
Since everything she said is true, silence reigns supreme for the next several minutes.
It is highly uncomfortable, and I fucking hate it.
I’m not solely angry that she kept this from me. I am also furious that she endangered her life and that of her unborn child.
After a beat, I talk through the lump forming in my throat.
“This is your collar, Agent Machini, so you can do the write-up for it.” She hates that I’m keeping this professional as much as I do.
We’ve never kept things formal. But today is different.
Today, she put her life on the line, and I’m not willing to let that slide.
“I expect a copy to be in my inbox before you rest tonight.”
Sighing, Macy briskly nods before she gathers her belongings and heads for the door.
Before she exits, I call her name, still not willing to let this go.
Although she doesn’t glance back at me, I’m certain I have her attention, because her shoulders sink when I say, “Do anything like this again, and the only report you will be writing is your resignation. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Special Supervisory Agent Rogers. I understand,” is the last thing I hear before she exits the hotel room that reeks of deprivation and disappointment.