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The day before I was going to get myself arrested was a quiet day. One where I took a walk, and then a run, where I did weight and came as close to meditating as my squirrely brain would put up with. One where I looked for every mistake I could possibly make and tried to find a way that I could circumvent it before it even came close to happening. At the end of the day I ordered a huge pizza – pepperoni, no fish! – and texted Cole, and tested my new phone, the one belonging to Erin Trace, a bad girl who stole cars and hearts and meth and probably didn't have a heart of gold.
The next day I went out and stole a Corvette out of a hotel casino parking garage. I wanted to steal a McLaren, but probably best not to be too showy…
…and suddenly I understood just why some people choose a life of crime and why people steal cars and for that matter, why people buy cars that cost more than their damn house.
The Corvette was fun. I liberated it out of one of the big Strip casinos and floored it onto Las Vegas Boulevard and everybody got out of my way. The car didn't bother with zero to 60, it more was after zero into orbit.
"Yeah!" First signal I figured out the radio. Second radio I found some Jessie J and some Nicki Minaj and that was followed by some classic KISS because fuck! How do you go wrong with Paul Stanley?
I was doing 75 on the highway out of town, heading south, no destination in mind when the lights and sirens showed up behind me. Too bad. I'd had a great fifteen minutes out of town, opening up that car and letting her run and I could have happily had another couple hours before they caught me, though I might have been in Tijuana by then. Or Canada. My sense of direction sucks.
I sat with hands on the wheel, trying not to grin. Actually the incipient grin was fading fast. The car was fun but what came after wouldn't be. It wasn't like I didn't understand what I was here for. Or maybe in for. But Cole's endorphins had taken over. Stealing a Corvette and driving insanely fast? It was a lot of fun. Maybe, considering what was coming next, I could be forgiven for forgetting what I was doing and enjoying myself.
NHP took its time. They called in the plates and since the car was stolen – had the owner reported it already? Probably; if it were my car, I'd check on it frequently – called for backup. And then we waited ,me in the sun in the desert, music still playing. Three times the cop shouted at me to turn it off but considering he was going to end up turning me over to cops who etc., etc., or taking me in himself? I thought I deserved some Imagine Dragons and then, icing on the cake, Metallica.
By the time the backup showed up, they were more than happy to order me out of the vehicle with their hands on their weapons. I got out with my hands up, which is trickier than it sounds from behind the wheel, and stayed that way until they grabbed me and forced me down on the car. Whatever happened to their body cams, I don't know, but their frisking me was – thorough.
All the laughter died out of me as the hands went up under the skirt I was wearing and into my underwear, as the hands made very damn good and sure there was nothing in my bra.
"This car has been reported stolen. Do you know the registered driver?"
It seemed a bit late in the game to be asking a question they should already know the answer to. It was on the very edge of possibility that I did know the owner and had borrowed the car and he – or she – forgot I was going to.
Yeah, I wouldn't buy that either.
There were four cops around me, all male, all kind of looking like cutouts from some anonymous yearbook. Mirrored sunglasses, short hair, average features, semi-muscled. They were in shape but they weren't going overboard. Without having them take off the shades I didn't think I'd be able to identify them if I saw them again.
The fun time – theirs – was over. I was cuffed and put into an air conditioned NHP car. The men stood outside talking, waiting for something to come back over their radios. The longer the time ticked by, the more I understood I'd already found the people I needed to be found by. So to speak. I was in the clutches of the right people. Any other arrest, even for grand theft auto, I'd already be on my way to Metro.
It was hard to know whether to shout or smile. Thing that people don't know and movies don't show is that the people going undercover, the people doing the things that keep other people safe, the people who risk their lives on the side of the law, we're no different than anyone else. Okay, little different, because ordinary people don't try to get caught by drug runners or human traffickers. Ordinary, sensible people steer the fuck clear of those worlds. Even those who, shall we say, "benefit" from the trafficking are watching themselves and not involved in any other way.
They know better.
We used to say back on my squad that it takes a special kind of idiot to purposefully go find someone to bring them nicely into the underworld.
I'd done it. I was on my way.
