Way Off Plan (Firsts and Forever 1)

We drove back to Dmitri’s house after leaving my parents (I’d flat-out refused to be babysat by my family tonight). Dmitri had been quiet on the ride home, and now he went ahead of me into the foyer and switched off the alarm. Catherine wasn’t due home with Joe for at least another hour. She was going through with the date in its entirely before bringing this guy home, tying him up and threatening him. Which I thought was kind of an interesting choice.

I hung back by the front door. He turned when he reached the foot of the staircase, seeing that I hadn’t followed him. And he asked me, “Are you going to forgive me if I go through with this plan?”

“It’s not my place to forgive you.”

He was quiet for a minute. And then he said, “I’m trying to do the right thing here. Ok, so my methods might not earn the Jamie Seal of Approval. But I’m still trying.”

“I know you are.” I leaned back against the door.

And he said, “I keep trying to tell you I’m a criminal, Jamie. But it seems like you keep being surprised when I act like one.”

“Look, who cares what I think? You’re doing what you think you should. And hell, even my dad, a decorated police officer, is down with it. So who am I to argue?” My emotions were in turmoil. I really didn’t know what to think, what to feel about any of this. What I really needed was some time alone to sort through all of it.

“You really don’t want to be here right now, do you?” he asked.

“I really don’t.”

He controlled most of his response to that statement, only flinching minutely. “Ok, so you should go,” he said. His voice was perfectly level. “But please, go somewhere other than your apartment. I meant what I said before about not being alone now that my uncle has shown his hand.”

I crossed the room to him and kissed his cheek, and said, “I’ll be fine. And I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” And then I turned and left the house.

I felt guilty as I walked down the stairs and across the driveway. I knew he had to be feeling rejected right now. But I just really needed a little time to clear my head, to get a handle on all of this.

I sat in my van for a couple minutes, my fingers laced on top of my head. This was all so incredibly fucked up. He was doing this thing tonight for me, to get my family to like him, to get my father the information he wanted. I was being an asshole leaving like this. Sure, I was thrown by the thing with my dad, still trying to come to grips with his willingness to bend the law to suit his needs. And ok, I was upset that Dmitri was so willing to commit a crime. But running away was not the answer.

I swung the van door open again to go back and talk to my boyfriend, and stopped short as a .44 Magnum was shoved in my face. A bald guy with a thick beard and a thicker neck grinned at me and said, “Well hey there, Jamie. Slide on over to the passenger seat like a good boy. And try not to do anything stupid.”

Chapter Sixteen

I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun. It was freaking huge, of course. The whole point of a .44 Magnum was the total intimidation factor. I kept my eyes glued to it as I gingerly climbed over the gearshift and sat in the passenger seat, keeping my movements slow and deliberate, trying not to give this guy any reason to blow my head off. In my brief career in law enforcement, I’d had guns pointed at me exactly twice. And let me tell you, it fucking sucked.

The panel door on the side of the van was wrenched open with its usual shriek of rusty metal-on-metal, and a second guy climbed in the van behind me. He had a gun pointed at my head, too. He smiled at me just like his partner had – such cheerful gangsters – and said, “Hand me your cell phone, lover boy.” I pulled it out of the pocket of my t-shirt and handed it over, and he shut it off and pitched it into a thick hedge at the edge of Dmitri’s property. Then he said, “Put your hands behind the seat.”

I hesitated for a moment, knowing that once my hands were tied I had pretty much zero chance of escape. That hesitation earned me the butt of a gun driven hard into the side of my forehead. I drew in my breath as pain shot through my skull, then did as I was told, pressing my eyes shut and waiting for the pain to ebb as my wrists were bound behind the seat. The blow must have broken the skin, because I felt a warm trickle down the side of my face. Well, fuck. Head wounds always bled like crazy, and losing a lot of blood right now wasn’t going to do me any favors.