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18
Annie
Labor Day weekend came and went. School started. My leave ended and my CO called me in to a secure location. There were meetings. We made plans. My team was put together.
This time it would be starting in three days. I had warning. John gave me such a significant look that the rest of the team was staring.
I still wasn't comfortable with it so I asked. "John wants me to let my fiancé know I'm going undercover and will be out of touch. That's the extent of it. I have a new phone and the only person with the number is my father."
A few quick glances between people then.
"He's a good cop," Alex, one member of the team said. "What's happening to him sucks."
"Not the point," John said.
"No," Alex agreed. "But I mean that I trust him. And I’m good with you letting your SO know. This job is hard on relationships."
There was scattered, hyper-laughter around the room at that as the other three men and two women agreed. So this time I wouldn't just vanish on Mark.
Good for me.
I was not looking forward to it.
A week later I rode back to the same clubhouse where I'd been with Jesse. I took my own bike, registered to Lily Alder. I carried everything I owned in a backpack. I was fresh out of prison and temporarily clean and I hurt all over and I'd lost my man.
Approaching the clubhouse, my memory offered up times with Jesse. Drinking beer and bullshitting with the guys at the kitchen table. Fucking in the room off the kitchen and knowing everyone out there could probably hear everything.
The time Jesse hit me so hard during sex because I didn't react fast enough when he told me how to move.
The time that Jesse took care of me after I dumped the bike I was riding. He patiently picked pebbles out of the skin on my thigh, and treated the injury as gently as he could with antiseptic.
Mark had never asked about the series of tiny scars up and down that leg. They certainly hadn't been there when we got together.
I pounded on the clubhouse door, directly below a Brotherhood insignia of roses and skulls, a little like the Guns N Roses logo or even the Grateful Dead.
From inside the house I heard heavy boots crossing the floor and one of Jesse's soldiers looked out. Damien was well named. He was creepy as that kid in The Omen movie. He wasn't big, but he was lean and he was definitely mean.
"Lily. What the fuck are you doing here. You heard about Jesse?" There was honest sorrow in his voice and at least no contempt for me.
I'd take what I could get. "I heard. Paid my respects from jail."
He raised his brows. Damien was nearing forty. Salt and pepper ponytail. Mostly salt in the scruffiest beard on the planet. His leathers were well worn. He had tattoos I could never quite make out blurred across his knuckles. He did not smell good.
I did not want to ride on the back of his bike. The plan was for me to ask for an intro to another group up in Vancouver. Hopefully I wouldn't have to hook up with any other riders before I got there. I had a fake record in place that had me jailed in Portland for the past couple months. Past that everything was up to me.
It felt weird to be back in the clubhouse. My eyes kept straying to the room off the kitchen where Jesse and I had fucked so many times.
Three of the soldiers were in the house, Kev, Tony and Damien of the warm welcome. "We'll ride with you. There's a Brotherhood there. You out on bond?"
That was the story. Get out of the area for a while into another where the dope was flowing too fast and too strong and too many people were dying. Same organization but fewer people who had known me with Jesse and fewer still who had ever run into Rodrigo's real Lily. Because in Vancouver there was the same MO, fentanyl on the street and the Brotherhood selling to kids who were younger and younger.
It didn't even have to be my last assignment. If I was there when a bust went down or a buy went south because the buyers were cops, I could do some fake jail time in Portland or in solitary in Washington, followed by my hard luck story getting me in one more door.
That would make Mark happy. I'd probably be edging up to twenty-five by then anyway. I could go in a different direction, go after gunrunners or something like that, but I'd be used up for drugs unless I transferred to another city and probably another state. Too many chances of running into the same people.
Too bad. I had a serious hard-on for stopping opiates from getting into the hands of kids.
Or anybody else. Nobody was stronger than this shit.
