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I'd kept her before she fascinated me. And only for that reason, I told myself on a regular basis. Whether or not I believed that anymore was open to speculation.
Annie Knox. Came back to Vegas to go to school. I had no doubt during her absence she'd been alpha as ever. She'd probably ended her engagement, which couldn't have been hanging on by much, and if she was smart, she'd told her father she needed a break from being his closest daughter and friend, because having someone committed is even more controlling than anything I'd do.
Letting her go was hard.
Letting her go again would be almost impossible. It wasn't something I was planning to do.
17
Annie
I came, I warned, we conquered - together.
Time to go.
I went back into the room that had been mine – my cell, anyway – and reclaimed my t-shirt and socks and running shoes. The socks were soaked from my run through the desert. They were the magic kind of athletic socks made out of recycled milk cartons that wick the sweat away from your skin. That doesn't mean the sweat doesn't soak in. They were clammy damp and I didn't want to put them back on. I didn't want to run in just my shoes with no socks. I couldn't run barefoot through the desert because the desert floor is made up of sharp: thorns, stickers, small rocks, dried branches.
I didn't seem to be able to make a decision about the very things that would help me leave. Maybe I'd ask for a ride. One of the security guards could take me back into Vegas.
Cole would know now I was going to one of the colleges. There were three where I could get a degree in criminal justice, though one would be a two year and the other two were four year degrees and – and what the hell, he'd find out fast enough. Anyone could. For me to have heard about a raid that was happening in southern Nevada, from someone interning for the DA's office, I had to be in Nevada, not the convenient, population-heavy cover of Los Angeles. There were rural community colleges and branches of universities in Nevada's vast rural areas, but I'd heard about the raid and come on foot.
He wouldn't even have to look anything up online.
Not that I'd tried to hide where I was living and learning or even considered it.
So why was I lying on my old bed, staring up at the ceiling and feeling a familiar, anxious, speedy pulse between my legs?
That thought was enough to make me sit up. From the living room, I could hear Cole's guests. I dressed slowly, hanging the dress back up and putting it back in the closet that had been mine. I sat on the bed to put on my shoes and found I was sitting with one shoe in my hand, still wondering about what to do with socks. Or without socks. And finally it occurred to me there was an entire drawer of running socks. When he wasn't stripping me naked and punishing me in the open desert, Cole St. Martin was outfitting me and training me to run endurance-style miles. He'd reinvigorated my love of running. Or love-hate relationship.
Which was perilously close to my relationship with him.
Don't think 'love' and 'Cole' in the same sentence.
Don't think relationship. It's not a relationship and it's over anyway.
Don't think.
But I was still sitting there with one trail running shoe in my hand, no socks, no idea what I thought I was doing. Sooner or later Cole would realize I hadn't come back out of the cell.
That wouldn't be good. I wasn't sure which reason would make it not good. Because I was acting like it was still my space and it wasn't anymore because I'd left it behind?
Because I was acting like I wanted to stay?
Because I was acting like I wanted him to come get me?
Or maybe nothing that he'd notice. Just my own fear about going back to a life I'd just started creating for myself and one I was both proud of and liked. I was suddenly a single twenty-five year old ex-cop heading for a career in federal law enforcement. I was a second degree black belt. I had my own place. I was living on my own earnings from Seattle PD. I didn't have to depend on anyone.
I was going to school and I wasn't that much older than the other students. Except I was. I was seven years older than a lot of the other freshmen. That made me a "nontraditional" student and wanting to push the glass ceiling and be a DEA agent made me a woman with a nontraditional career.
In terms of life experience, the good and the bad, I wasn't just five years older than a lot of the students, I was more like decades older. I'd done shit and had shit done to me. I'd been shot at. I'd been shot. I'd been to the rainforest with a sexual sadist, which sounded like the title for a very strange memoir.
I laughed quietly to myself. Maybe when this was all over – whatever "all this" was and whatever constituted "all over" – I would write that memoir. In the meantime, I liked the new life I'd created for myself. Liking it put me at risk of losing it. Not because I liked it. But because I might take steps to protect it. That was the superstitious side. The logical side said things can always change and I would be sad if the new life changed. So many of the lives I'd already led had been somehow less than full.
Undercover meant hiding who I was.
Being PD meant working with men who didn't always want to accept me for who I was.
Being a cop, working undercover, meant being a leader and living autonomously, both of which I'd been really good at.
