Page 420 of A Matter of Time

I didn’t have a chance to say anything. I was half carried, half dragged down three flights and taken out the opposite way to how I had come in. The two officers who had taken charge of me complained back and forth that they did not work for the FBI but instead for the city of Dallas. I was put, not into the back of a black-and-white, but into the back of one of the FBI SUVs. It was a black Chevy Suburban, not a police SUV, but the kind anyone could drive, even if you weren’t a federal agent. As they shut the door and locked me in, they were talking to each other outside the car. Both of them agreed that if Calhoun wanted me in lockup, he could take me there himself.

Sam had explained to me over the years that a lot of the time, federal agents would just come into a situation and throw their weight around. Since they could, basically, take over whatever they wanted, he said that at times, it could feel like they were glory hounds, or that they didn’t respect the work of subordinates. I wondered, even with Calhoun calling Dallas his city, if maybe he worked here, but wasn’t from here, and perhaps that made a difference. Rubbing the people the wrong way, treating them like servants, I suspected, was why I was not secured other than being cuffed. I wasn’t in a secure cruiser with a partition. I was instead in something quite roomy and comfortable. They also hadn’t attached my cuffs to anything. I’d just been given an order to “stay put.”

Really?

Stay put?

I waited to move until I couldn’t see either of them anymore.

Once they were gone, I climbed out of the back seat, into the front, and got out through the passenger side door. I closed it once I was out so nothing would look amiss, and with the tinted windows, no one could tell whether I was in there or not.

It was Calhoun’s own fault for being a nozzle. Please and thank you always went a long way, I found.

Calmly, slowly, I walked around the side of the building and down the street. A block away, I ran. At least, since they had taken my phone, I wouldn’t be in trouble for not calling Sam.

TWENTY

Most people thought I was stupid. It came with being younger than thirty, blond, and kind of an airhead. So while it was true that I had the attention span of a goldfish—oooh castle, oooh castle—I could actually use my brain for complex reasoning. I didn’t go to the hardware store or anyplace else to get the handcuffs off. I hailed a cab with the handcuffs on, and asked to be driven to a store that specialized in adult sex toys.

“Awww, man,” the cabbie said, shaking his head. “That’s fucked up. You should break up with your girl.”

“You’re not even kidding,” I agreed. “I mean, I look like an escaped prisoner or something with these on.”

“Yeah, ya do.”

“Thank you for stopping.”

“I promise you, compared to other guys I’ve picked up, this ain’t nothin’.”

“You should write a book.”

“That’s what my wife says.”

“Confessions of a Cabbie or something like that.”

“I like that title, man.”

“All yours.”

When we reached the sex shop, I had him fish a twenty out of my pocket. He appreciated it and even opened the front door for me. Once inside, I explained to the cashier that my boyfriend had lost the key for the cuffs we had bought the day before. She laughed, her manager laughed, the guy in charge of the viewing booths laughed, and the stock clerk got the bolt cutters and separated my hands before another stock clerk, coming back from break, picked the locks on each cuff for me. They were impressed by how real they looked as they tossed them into the steel wastebasket behind the front counter. I gave the manager a fifty and asked him to buy everybody lunch. He invited me to go line dancing with them after work, since I was obviously in the market for a new boyfriend. I graciously declined before ducking out of the store.

I caught another cab, had the driver take me to a Radio Shack, and purchased what felt like my tenth prepaid phone. As soon as I was outside, I dialed my own number.

“Jory, goddamnit! Where the fuck are you?” Sam asked when he answered on the second ring.

“Do you have my phone?”

“Obviously,” he barked. “What the hell happened? You were supposed to wait!”

“Ask Agent Calhoun.”

“No, I know he…screwed up. He said… Shit, are you cuffed?”

“Not anymore.”

“Jesus.” He deflated. “Baby, you⁠—”

“I gotta get out of here, Sam. If I stay, I’m gonna get hurt.”