Chapter Thirteen
The ringing of a phone wakes me up. For a moment my brain tells me to sleep through it since it isn’t my ringtone.
“Felix, the phone,” Lane says.
“Hmm?”
“Answer the phone,” Lane says as he shakes me awake.
I grudgingly reach over and turn on the light, so I can find the ringing phone. “Hello?”
“Good morning, I have a call from a Janice Dixon, would you like to accept?”
“Yes,” I say, trying to piece together who that is as my fuzzy mind slowly clears.
“Hello?” the woman says. Her voice is soft, but there’s an element of wariness to it that I can easily hear.
“Hi…hold on, I’ll give you to Lane,” I say.
“Okay…thank you.”
I hold the phone out and push it into Lane’s hand. He takes it as I draw myself up against him. Not for the comfort, but because I have to hear what’s going on.
“Janice?” Lane says.
“Oh God, Lane. You know how good it is to hear from you? Lane…I’m scared.”
“What’s going on? The department didn’t tell me anything since they don’t seem to think I’m of any use,” he says.
“On Wednesday, James came home for the night. He had heard all about you guys getting ambushed at the hotel, but by the time he’d heard about it, Mick was already heading out to get you.
So, he planned to meet up with you in the morning, but he went out and never came back.
I was at work, so I didn’t even think anything of it.
I assumed that’s where he was at. When he’s busy it’s not unusual for him to not text me or anything, but when he didn’t call to tell me he was going to be late for supper, I started to get worried.
I called his boss, but he said James hadn’t shown up.
He didn’t find it unusual because he thought he was dealing with your situation.
It’s been four days now. Why would they want him?
He wasn’t even involved, was he? Oh God, Lane… what are they going to do to him?”
“Janice, he knows nothing about it. I don’t know why they would even want him, okay? I’ll find him though. You mind if I come over and take some of James’s equipment?”
“No, of course not. Take anything you want,” she says.
“Alright, we’ll be over in a bit.”
“Okay,” she says. “Thank you, Lane.”
“Of course,” he says as he hangs up.
“I’m sure I don’t have to retell you any of that,” Lane says.
“Nope,” I say as I take the phone from him and hang it up. “I’m a superior eavesdropper.”
He snorts. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
“Yup.”
“The really sad thing is that I can tell you’re proud of this skill…and it’s really not a favorable skill.”
“Don’t be so jealous, Lane. I’m going to take a shower.”
“What time is it?”
“Noon,” I say as I glance at the alarm clock that says 6:24.
“What?” he asks, startled.
“I know. You slept a long time, especially when we’re all like…in a hurry to not die and stuff,” I say.
His surprised expression disappears. “It’s not noon,” he says. “You’re so annoying.”
I laugh as I get up. “It’s around six-thirty,” I say.
“I take back every nice thing I said to you last night,” he says.
“Well, I take back all the nice things I said to you as well,” I say with a grin. “I regret opening up to you.”
He tries to bite back his smile. “I regret asking you to open up for me.”
“Good,” I say.
“Good,” he says with a laugh. “You’re such a brat.”
“Maybe,” I say.
I head into the bathroom and pee before brushing my teeth. Lane just smacks the door open and steps inside without bothering to knock. I spit the toothpaste out in the sink and look up at him. “What if I was taking a shit?”
“Not like I can see anything,” he says. “You want to know the worst thing about being blind?”
“Not seeing anything?”
“No, it’s not seeing the look on your face when I leave your ass here and never come back,” he says.
I laugh as I stare at him in surprise. “That’s harsh. Alright, alright. What’s annoying about it?”
“Sitting down to take a piss so I don’t pee on everything. It’s so gross in public places because you’re like is the toilet seat down? Is there a lid? And you have to feel around and it’s disgusting.”
“You could just…ask me, you know?” I say. “Here, I’ll put the lid up for you.”
I reach over and put the toilet lid and seat up for him then step back to watch.
“Thanks,” he says, and I almost feel bad about it, until I watch him sit down and nearly fall into the toilet.
He jumps up as laughter escapes me. “I’m going to murder you,” he says as he grabs for me.
I rush through the open door, but I can’t stop laughing as the naked man chases me.
“I take back every nice thing I have ever said about you,” he says as he follows my laughter as I back away. Eventually, he has me cornered against the door leading out into the hallway.
I put my hands up as I am pressed into the corner. “I’m sorry, Lane. It was an accident,” I say. “I thought you said you wanted to try standing up to pee.”
“No, I didn’t say that!” He grabs me around the waist and starts dragging me toward the bathroom.
“You still care about me, right?”
“No! Not at all,” he says as I struggle to get away, but the man’s arms are like vise grips. I struggle and wiggle, but he’s holding me far too tight as he drags me over to the toilet.
“What are you doing?” I ask, suddenly alarmed.
“I’m going to stick your face in the toilet since you find it so funny.”
“No! DON’T YOU DARE!” I yell. “I thought you couldn’t find the toilet.”
“Oh, let me show you how well I can find it,” he says as he drags me. I grab onto the bathroom counter and refuse to let go as he tugs me.
“Lane! Please! It was just a joke! Your butt washes off, my face won’t! I’ll get some disease.”
“Good, I hope it’s as horrid as your personality,” he says as he lets me go.
“No, you don’t. You love my personality,” I say as I head over to the shower. He is messing with the toilet himself as I climb into the shower.
I adjust the water before sinking back into it. Lane yanks the shower curtain open and feels his way into the bathtub. He grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me out of the way before stepping under the water. I slip my hand around him and turn the knob all the way to cold.
He jumps forward, out of the water, and slams into me. I nearly slip on the edge of the tub but manage to grab onto Lane’s arm to steady myself. Before I know it, he’s grabbed me and spun me around, holding me under the frigid water.
“Stop! Stop!” I push against him and struggle, but he just smiles at me. The water is like ice pounding down on my head.
“Why? Why are you so mean?”
“I don’t know, Lane,” I admit as I push against him. “I guess I didn’t get enough love as a child.” He has planted his feet and my measly weight is doing nothing to move him. “Lane, it’s so cold that I can’t even admire the flexing of your arms as you pin me in place.”
That’s when I realize that I can just reach behind me and change the temperature, so I do.
“Alright, Lane, we need to talk.”
“About?” he asks as he lets go of me now that I’m not struggling. A compliant victim is never as much fun.
“I don’t know…maybe about all this stuff that’s going on. This Red guy is doing all this shit, why can’t you just arrest him? I mean…isn’t that an option?” I ask as I squeeze some shampoo out of the small complimentary bottle.
“Victor Red actually has no felonies. He’s never been to jail. He’s never been caught with drugs, weapons, nothing. He’s never done anything illegal…that we can blame him for. We need to prove that he’s involved in the distribution of drugs. That was what I was doing when I was working for him.”
“Ooh…are you a bad boy turned good?” I ask as I put the shampoo in my hair before handing him the bottle. “That sounds sexy.”
“No, I was working undercover. That was my job. We, of course, have an idea of what is going on, but we can’t pin any of the higher-ups because they never do anything wrong.
They’re running a hundred percent legitimate company dealing with loans.
Victor Red is smart, he never does anything illegal, so he can never get anything pinned on him.
He has men that work under him just for that .
If he wants someone shot, he has a man for that.
We catch the man, we arrest him, Victor Red is out one man, so he hires another.
We weren’t accomplishing anything . The Chicago Police Department had suspicions he was trafficking drugs.
But because there was no solid proof, nothing had come of it until a cop nosing in the area had been murdered.
The case was then passed over to homicide, which is where James and García work.
As they started digging, they began to suspect that the roots of this organization went much deeper than they could ever imagine.
So that’s when I was brought in. My job is working as an undercover agent.
I do not belong to their department, but I was working with them because it is technically still their case.
It was my job to find out more. If it was a drug case, it would move over to the DEA’s hands.
“It was hard to get anywhere in Red’s organization, but I have a talent with weapons that most don’t have.
It helped me rise faster than I should have.
It also caused me to have more eyes on me.
I started in security and slowly started to work my way up.
I was careful. I lived that life and it was hard as fuck to live.
While working undercover, I didn’t associate with anyone from the department other than my handler.
I had been involved with the operation for four months when my handler was killed while working another case.