Chapter Twelve
Dean
––––––––
“YOU WANT ME TO FILL you in?” I asked Rafael, and I could practically see the curt shake of the head he gave in response.
“I’ll come to you,” he replied. “Where are you right now?”
“I’m at the safehouse in Wrigley.”
“I’m a few miles away,” he replied. “I’ll be there in a half hour or so.”
He hung up before I had a chance to respond. It was pretty much what I expected of him. He was never the guy who sat around waiting for a response – he would always get moving as soon as he could. It was one of the many things that made him such a good boss, actually.
As for me, I was starving, and I knew I needed to eat something before he got there – I wanted to be as well-fed and rested as I could be, to make sure I didn’t forget a single detail of what had gone down.
Well, apart from her, of course. I would be writing her out of the story the first chance I got. There was no need for him or anyone else to hear about Arianna, or what had happened between us. I knew it had been hot, but there was no way I was going to make myself look worse in the eyes of the people I worked for by admitting I’d shared a bed with a woman who was so clearly not someone I should have been anywhere near.
Normally, there was some food kicking around in these safehouses, but I didn’t get so lucky that day – the place was barren, and I went through every cupboard in the kitchen, only finding one ancient tin of instant coffee. I made myself a cup, hoping the caffeine would do something to kick my ass into gear, but by the time I heard the knock on the door, I could feel my stomach grumbling for something more.
I headed to answer it, and sure enough, there he was – Rafael. And he was holding two large pizza boxes, and a plastic bag through which I could see the brand logos of the cheap beer we usually had together.
“You know me too well,” I remarked as I grabbed the pizza box from him and flipped it open – all meat, cheese, and fresh crust, just how I liked it. I took a large bite and groaned with relief. Damn, I was fucking starving.
“Come in,” I told him, jerking my head to indicate he should enter, and he took a step over the threshold. He had been the one to help set up these safehouses in the first place, and, while this one wasn’t up to much, I had him to thank for the fact I had anywhere at all I could go once I was back in the city.
He headed to the kitchen and opened a couple of bottles of beer, handing one to me. I took a long gulp, closed my eyes, and tried to remind myself I was really back. I didn’t have to put on the act any longer. I was home.
As I ate, I eyed my boss, trying to work out just what it was he was expecting from me. I knew I had to come up with something here, something to cover for what had happened with Arianna – or maybe, I should come clean, tell the truth, and hope for the best.
“So, how in the name of holy hell did you actually end up back here?” he asked me once he had finished his first beer; he knew better than to try and talk to me while I was hungry. We’d worked together long enough for him to understand that part of me.
I sighed. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was being back here, maybe it was some combination of the above, but I didn’t want to keep it from him any longer. Yes, I was getting myself in trouble, by admitting I’d had anything to do with someone who wasn’t specifically approved by the Bureau, but she might have been important, and I didn’t want to pass up the chance to figure out exactly what was going on with that girl.
“So, I was at a meeting with the Vogons,” I explained. “With Ian, one of the guys I was working with when I was with Terrence...”
I filled him in on as much of the encounter as I could, recounting how Ian had sent me running after he had gotten shot. How I had made a break for it through this hotel area, and ended up running in to a woman I had never met before.
“She got involved,” I explained, speaking slowly, carefully. I didn’t want him to find out more than that until I got a feeling of how he was going to react to me getting involved with someone else.
“The woman at the hotel?”
“Yeah, she hid me and sent them in the other direction,” I replied, shaking my head. It still didn’t make sense to me, even now, with more time to think about it. Why the hell had she decided to put herself in harm’s way like that? There was no chance a woman like her wouldn’t know what she was doing, throwing in her lot with me, but it hadn’t stopped her. Was it just because she wanted to get me into bed? It hardly seemed like a good enough reason, but I couldn’t come up with anything else that explained the way she had been acting.
“And what happened after that?” Rafael pressed. He sounded doubtful about this whole thing. I didn’t blame him. If I’d been hearing this story, I would have assumed at least some of it was fakery or exaggeration. But it wasn’t. She had really dived into the middle of my mess to pull me out. And I was starting to feel more and more guilty that I’d left her behind. What if they tracked her down, what if they decided she must have been in on this from the start? I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have just dumped her there with no warning.
“She...she drove me to the airport,” I continued, knowing how insane this story sounded, and doubting it was getting much more believable with each passing word.
“She drove you to the airport?” Rafael repeated after me, sounding surprised. I nodded.
“Yeah,” I replied. I didn’t mention the part where she had stolen a car to do it; some part of me was still intent on protecting her, I supposed, as payback for what she had done to me.
“I thought she was done with me then, but she came to find me and told me the Vogons were in the airport and looking for me,” I went on. “She bullshitted her way onto the flight back to Chicago, but she wouldn’t tell me who she was.”
Rafael furrowed his brow. I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not – but he must have known I wouldn’t lie about something as serious as this. Some woman had decided to put herself in the middle of my mess, and she had been the one to get me out of there. If it hadn’t been for her, I might not have been standing there in front of him at that moment, and he knew it.
“What happened to her? Where is she now?” he asked. I had to do a little editorializing from here on out – no need for him to know I’d slept with her.