In Too Deep, Book 3, Part 5

 [image: VitalikRadko]

Chapter 24: Trust and Illusion

There were moments in my life when I knew that I shouldn’t do something, did it anyway, and got away with it. Asking Amanda out back in college, for example. Going to the Gold Club for a second time, for sure. I’d done these things despite everything in my body telling me not to, and was rewarded for it.

As I was left alone with Kozlov, watching as he sent my wife away to run errands for him, I began to wonder if maybe this wasn’t one of those times. I’d been brave. I’d stepped up to take on this role. I was still electrified from the wild sex we’d just had. But now I was in the room with a coked up killer. Not a great feeling.

“Ray is correct,” Kozlov said as he eyed me. “At least you look tough.” 

It’s funny, but that’s not something anyone has ever said about me in the past.

Kozlov rubbed his nose, shaking his head out like a wet dog shaking off water, before adding, “And I know that if you do anything weird, I can just kill you.”

I did my best not to fumble or yelp as I got dressed, strapping the shoulder holster back on. How did a man make that threat as if he was talking about the weather?

“You can use that, yes?” he asked, nodding towards the gun.

I gave him a flat stare, meant to say, Of fucking course I can. Seemed easier than lying and risk having my voice crack like a teenager’s.

“I do not expect you to use it, but I did not expect to be running for my life right now, either.” He chuckled.

“Where are we going?”

Kozlov looked around the dingy interior of the motel. “To stop living like sewer rat. All I needed was a car and a driver, and now here you are.”

I watched him pack up his meager life here. It was so small now, fitting entirely inside a single duffle bag, and I might have felt bad for the guy had I not known better. He also did nothing to ingratiate himself to me, handing me his bag and making me carry it like his manservant.

I carried it down to the car that we’d brought along, which was actually Amanda’s own black Jeep Wrangler. We figured it was a more appropriate vehicle for “Dave” to drive than my Camry, although I also never anticipated having to drive Kozlov anywhere.

The Russian seemed a bit put out when he realized that the back seat of the Jeep was very small, and with his duffle taking up most of the back seat, he’d have to ride up front beside me. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses and slammed the door shut beside me.

“Where to, boss?” I asked.

He gave me the address without looking at me, his eyes seeming to scan the blank motel windows. “I cannot believe I lived here for so long. What a shithole.”

I didn’t respond. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who enjoyed smalltalk. Instead, I plugged the address into my phone’s GPS and started to drive. Ty must’ve been somewhere behind us,, although he had plenty of experience on tail jobs and it showed, because I never saw him. I clung to that lifeline, real or not, and drove.

I thought that we’d spend the whole ride in silence. I was good with that. The less we talked, the less likely he was to figure out what a fraud I was. My biggest fear was that he’d ask anything about my personal life or my job at the strip club that I could no longer name, or any of it. That welcome initial silence lasted all of the first ten minutes.

The snarled traffic on the I-5 must have gotten to him, because he finally spoke. “Do you know what is important in my world?” He still wasn’t looking at me, staring out the window at all the other people in their cars. “Having a solid understanding of the people I surround myself with. Everything else flows out of that understanding—who to trust, who to watch carefully, how far I can push someone before they break.”

This didn’t sound like a good line of conversation for me. This sounded like one that ended with him turning to me and saying, “And I now know who you are, David, husband of Amanda.” I kept my mouth shut and tried my best to keep my pulse down. I was glad he wasn’t seated right behind me, though. That would have felt even more menacing.

“I thought I knew those around me. I thought I knew my friends. I was a victim of my own hubris.” He grumbled something in Russian. “In truth, trust is an illusion. It is only good as long as everyone believes it. The key is to not be the last to believe, yes?”

I didn’t respond beyond a nod. He was too wrapped up in his own grievances to even see me.

“I will not make that mistake again.” He had his baggie of coke out, and took a long, loud hit before continuing. The man had a real problem. “You know what I mean. You must anticipate the problem before it becomes real trouble. You must anticipate it before you even let them into the front door.”

Right. I was a bouncer. “And when they become a problem,” I ventured to say, “they leave violently out the same front door.”

My heart was in my throat as I played up my role. How the hell did Amanda do this every day?

“Yes! Yes, you get it. They will all leave. Violently.”

I didn’t like the way he chuckled.

I wondered where we were going as the GPS led us into a nondescript stripmall in Garden Grove—the kind of urban sprawl that was invented in LA, and as a result blanketed the city. Specifically, we pulled up to a FedEx store. I gave Kozlov a questioning look as he reached into the back, unzipped his duffel bag and retrieved a package.

“Go in there and give this to Yuri. No one else. If he is not there, come back. Understood?”

“Yuri. Yes.” I took the package from him. It was surprisingly light. “It’s not a… bomb or something, is it?”

Probably not a good question to ask a coked up crime boss, but I also didn’t want to be an accomplice to terrorism. Kozlov’s laugh had an edge to it, but nothing more. He rubbed his nose and shook his head. “Yuri,” he repeated. “No one else.”

I sighed and got out of the car, pushing into the narrow shipping store. There was only one man, a younger guy with a ponytail and glasses, serving an elderly woman. He greeted me, then went right back to helping the woman. I got close enough to read his name tag. This was the guy.

As I waited, I examined the package. Something about the address didn’t add up. At first glance, it looked legitimate—a business address in Phoenix, some place called CrimsonLeaf Solutions. It was the care-of that made me reconsider. A single word in Cyrillic script-which I assumed was Russian. I couldn’t even read, let alone pronounce it. I wanted to take a photo of it, but by that time, Yuri was done with the woman and turned to me. 

“Can I help you?” His Russian accent was nearly imperceptible.

“Yes. A friend asked me to drop this off to you.”

When I handed Yuri the package, I watched him closely, and there it was—the widening of the eyes, the quick intake of breath. He adjusted his glasses and nodded. “One moment,” he said, going into the back.

It was all I could do to keep from bolting. I half-expected him to return, guns blazing. Or maybe not return at all. But when he did, he was the same nervous attendant as before. The package was gone, but in his hand was a key.

“Here you are, sir. And tell… tell our friend that I will take care of the package right away.”

I grinned with a confidence that I didn’t feel. My hand didn’t even shake as I took the key. “Do that. He will be pleased to hear it.”

“Right.” His smile was forced. He was afraid.

I knocked on the counter, turned, and left. 

Getting back into the Jeep, I turned to Kozlov. “Done. He gave me this.” I handed him the key.

“Very good. Very helpful. Now, we go south. Towards Newport Beach. I’m upgrading from Del Ray’s Motor Lodge.” 

He laughed. I drove. I was getting over the fear that I’d be shot in the back, but with Kozlov, I just couldn’t be sure. The trip was beautiful, Kozlov directing me through the affluent neighborhoods of Orange County. We went to the docks, where Kozlov bade me goodbye.

“I need you to do one more favor for me,” he said before getting out of the car. “This Saturday, bring Ray back here. We will have the party to end all parties, yes?”

“Sounds fun. Need some extra muscle?”

“Oh, do not worry about that.” I didn’t love the way he chuckled. “I’m counting on having all the muscle there in one place, but you would like to come, yes? Sure, why not. I’m feeling generous.”

With that, he got out of the car, slung his duffle bag over his shoulder, and walked towards the line of yachts.

***

“That couldn’t have gone better, man,” Ty said, holding up his pint of beer in celebration.

He had, indeed, been tailing me, and as soon as we’d cleared the immediate neighborhood of the marina, he accelerated up beside me and signaled for me to pull over. We parked along a side street and settled into a dive bar off Newport Boulevard.

“I think I almost crapped my pants three times during that exchange alone,” I said.

“But you’re not dead, eh? And now we know a lot more than we did before.”

I nodded, gulping down half of my own pint before setting it down. Only then did my nerves start to settle. “We know that Kozlov’s definitely not working with someone inside the FBI,” I said. “We know generally where he’s hiding out.”

“We know precisely,” said Ty, “Thanks to that AirTag you planted. Slip number 69, approximately. We also know that there’s something big planned for Saturday night at the marina.”

“Something about Chechens,” I added. “I didn’t quite follow that. And that stop we made in Garden Grove? That FedEx? His contact in there is a Russian kid named Yuri, who is scared shitless of him.”

Ty leaned in. “Mostly, though, he’s a paranoid cokehead who’s acting more like a trapped animal than some criminal mastermind.”

“So what happens next?” I asked. “Wait to see what happens Saturday?”

“Jesus, man, you really are bad at this, aren’t you?”

“Misty.” It was Amanda who answered, joining us at the table. Gone was the stripper girlfriend attire. She’d changed into a long sundress that looked a lot more at home here in Orange County. “Agent Mia Moore is the key to unlock the final piece of this puzzle.”

Ty nodded, like it was obvious. When I didn’t follow, he explained. “While Kozlov isn’t working with the FBI, that doesn’t mean that they’re all above board. There’s some sort of rogue element behind this operation. Could be one person. Could be a whole faction. They tried to assassinate him rather than arrest him. My guess is that they’re aligned with the Chechens.”

Amanda nodded.

“And Agent Mia Moore…” He paused, looked at Amanda and wagged his eyebrows. “Really?”

Amanda shrugged. “I mean, that’s her name.”

Ty laughed. “Okay, so anyway, Agent Moore didn’t seem on board with the murder attempt, which means one of two things: either she isn’t part of this conspiracy, or she is, but isn’t totally happy with it.”

“Either way,” Amanda said, squeezing up next to me. “She’s who we target next. Hi there, by the way. You did so well.” She kissed me softly before picking up my beer. “And I’ve got some ideas on how to do that.”

I savored the kiss as she took a big slug of my beer. “Just what did Kozlov have you up to while I played bellman and chauffeur?”

Amanda sighed. “Would you believe he had me raiding his stashes all over SoCal?”

“Jazz?” Ty asked. “Weed?”

Amanda snorted. “Worse. Cash.”

“You know, he went on and on about trust and how he couldn’t trust anyone anymore while I was driving him down to Newport Beach,” I said.

“Guess there’s at least one person he still trusts,” Ty said.

“To go clean out mailboxes in every FedEx from Los Alamitos to Santa Anita,” Amanda said drily. “And fuck some lowlife to score him some blow.” She made a face.

“That’s where he stashes his cash?” Ty said.

“Yep,” she held up a ring of at least a dozen mailbox keys. “Mails it to himself and leaves it there until he needs it.”

I told her about the Garden Grove FedEx and Yuri, and how fearful Yuri looked when I mentioned Kozlov by name. 

“Why wouldn’t he just farm that one out to you, as well?” Ty said it as if he already knew the answer.

“I guess there are still some things ‘My Nicky’ doesn’t trust me with, after all.”

Chapter 25: Misty

“Guy number one was the hiring manager, then, and number two was the client you had the threesome with.” Just saying that aloud still sent an anxious thrill through me.

“He was actually number three,” Amanda corrected. We were sitting in the far backseat of Ty’s Chevy Tahoe, parked down the street from a Manhattan Beach establishment known as Giggles, waiting for Ty to make contact with Mia Moore. We knew that she frequented this bar, a known meat market, and when our plan came together, Ty was more than happy to volunteer to serve as the bait. Not surprisingly, he knew the bar, too.

This wasn’t a surveillance thing. We weren’t set up to listen. There were no wires. We were just waiting for Ty to do his thing, and in the dark, it gave Amanda and I the opportunity to revisit some more of the past few months. Even cast in shadow, I could see that Amanda’s face was flushed as we veered back into talk of her twelve hookups. “Number two was a bouncer. Griff.”

I remembered the huge man who’d patted Brandon down and confiscated his jazz. The image of my slender wife with him jumped to mind, along with my erection.

“It kind of just happened. After doing it with Mark, it was easier to fall into that role—”

“Of promiscuous stripper slut.”

“Sure, yeah. After Mark, I realized that I was just… free, I guess.” She winced and reached for my hand. “God, I hate how that makes it all sound. I know that I wasn’t really. I had you back home—”

“It’s okay,” I said. And it was. “We’ve gone over this ground now. You got caught up in it.”

“I did, and after Mark, I started looking at all the guys around me as potential. I told myself that I was doing it to catch the eye of the boss, but honestly, I was just curious about a guy like… like Griff.”

“I remember him. He was a big guy.”

“In more ways than one,” she said, flustered, batting her lashes. My cock throbbed in response. “But that was a one-time thing. And honestly, he was just too big to be that great.”

I moved closer to her, slipping my hand between her thighs, which were squeezed shut. “Okay, so we know numbers one through three. Kozlov was…?”

“Six. Four and five were other patrons. One I did in the backroom, during a private dance. The other was another threesome. Honestly, neither were all that special.”

Funny that she could now say that a threesome wasn’t that special. I pushed my hand higher up her thigh. She was wearing an all black catsuit for the occasion, and I could feel her warmth beneath the thin material. “So tell me about one of the special ones.”

Amanda’s breath caught as I pressed my hand up against her mound. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, her eyes fluttering shut. “Number nine was my first experience with anal sex.”

Now it was my turn to catch my breath. “The one that turned you into a believer?”

Amanda’s laughter felt like a release valve for both of us. “Yeah, it was almost like a religious experience.”

“Did you do it for Kozlov?”

“Everyone and everything I did after I first slept with Nick was for Nick.”

It was a heart-stopping confession. I shouldn’t have been so turned on by it, but we were past the point of denial now. “Go on,” I said, pushing my fingers against her sex. “Tell me how you found religion.”

“You really do like hearing this.” She said it with wonder rather than judgment, shifting closer to me and licking my earlobe. “You like hearing that Nick had started prepping me ahead of time, getting me to wear larger and larger butt plugs?”

“Yes,” I whispered. She ran a hand over the crotch of my pants, tracing my dick.

“I got used to the pressure back there, and it was so sexy walking around with that secret nestled between my cheeks, but even sexier because I knew what came next. I just didn’t know when.”

“So when did it happen?” By now my pulse sounded so loud in my own ears that I could barely even hear my own question.

“Nick came over to my apartment with an associate. I never caught his name and I never saw him again, despite trying to dig up who he was. American guy, late 50s, but built like an action figure. Can’t quite explain it, but he was hot, and he barely spoke the whole time he was there.”

Amanda shivered, her hand slow and steady on my cock as she pressed her hips against my fingertips.

“This wasn’t a seduction, unlike the other men. There was very little foreplay. This man, he came in and he… he bound me to the bed. My hands were tied up behind my head, and my legs were spread way open and pulled back, tied to the posts. I have never felt so exposed—and this was about six weeks into my job as a stripper.”

Two weeks give or take before I turned up at the Gold Club. I eased my hand into her pants as she talked, finding her drenched.

“He shoved a ball gag into my mouth, too, so I couldn’t complain. All I could do was stare as this man stripped out of his clothes, folding them neatly on the bed before climbing aboard. Like I said, he was a tall man, lean, yet muscular, like an old panther or something. He made me watch him as he rubbed lube on his dick, just as meticulously as he’d folded his clothes. The fact that he barely spoke to me charged the whole situation. The only thing I remember him saying was when he was over me, his cock pressed against my asshole. He said, ‘Nod if this is what you want.’ I nodded without hesitation.”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t?” I asked.

“I have no idea. But in that moment, after all the prep, splayed open like that, I would have begged for it if I wasn’t gagged.”

“I take it he was good?”

“It was… intense. He was pretty big, for one, but also knew how to use it. He edged me so many times, getting me more and more comfortable with a harder fuck. By the time I finally did come, I was covered in sweat, my abs screamed at me, and I swear I nearly passed out. But he wasn’t done. He took a break. He and Nick went out into the living room to chat and laugh. They left me tied up, there to wait.

“Then he came back and fucked my ass again, this time a lot harder. And this time, he didn’t let me come. He seemed to already have the read on me. The way he matched his thrusts with his fingers on my clit…” Amanda shivered. “By the time he left, I felt totally strung out, despite never touching Nick’s stash or having a drop to drink. I played with myself for weeks after that, recalling how that felt.”

Amanda blinked, suddenly back in the present, there with me in a car. “So that was number nine.”

“You think he’s connected to all of this? Or just a random anal sex stud?”

Amanda giggled. “I honestly don’t know. Like I said, I went looking as best as I could. I let Julia know about him, but she couldn’t find anything.”

“Or maybe she didn’t want you to know,” I offered.

“Maybe.”

Both of our phones buzzed at once. Ty had made contact.

Coming out. Be prepared.

Amanda looked at me, and I nodded. “It’s show time.” Without another word, my special agent wife slipped out of the car and faded into the darkness. In the far back seat of the Tahoe, I crouched down and pulled a blanket over myself. Heat was trapped beneath my shirt, and my ears were still ringing with Amanda’s latest confession.

The wait was longer than I’d anticipated, and for a second, I wondered if maybe they weren’t coming at all. I almost pushed the blanket off to look when I felt the Tahoe shift. I risked a look anyway, wondering if they were already fighting.

Female laughter pealed through the night, and there, just a few feet away, I saw a woman’s back pressed up against the window. “Mmm, big boy,” she said playfully. I knew that voice—Mia.

Ty chuckled, kissing her, his hands trapping her against the car. “Some say ‘too big,’” Ty said.

“I don’t believe that’s possible, personally,” Mia said. “And I’ve had some experience.”

“Get on in, then, and let’s see.”

I held my breath as the backseat side door opened. The smell of booze and Mia’s perfume filled the cab. Ty climbed in right after her, shutting the door. “Now, where were we?”

“Right about here,” she said, a moment before they started kissing again. Hearing the loud smacks and soft sighs on the heels of Amanda’s story was torture. “But honestly,” Mia went on. “This is where I’d like to take it.”

The clank of a belt buckle being undone rang sharp and loud.

Before things could progress, though, the door on the other side of Mia opened. “What the—?” Mia said before she could react.

“Hey, Misty,” Amanda said, pulling the door shut. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Amanda, what’s going—”

“Uh, uh, uh,” my wife said.

I pulled the blanket off and rose back into the seat behind them, my thighs aching. I was covered in sweat. “We have a few questions to ask you.”

“You couldn’t have waited a few more minutes?” Ty said, who was just about to get a blowjob.

“You?!” Mia said, shooting a look at our old friend.

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal. And everything I said in there was true. Maybe after, you and I could—”

Mia elbowed Ty hard in the chest, so swiftly that we almost lost control of the situation. She was already squirming halfway out of the car when Amanda put her in an arm lock and yanked her back, immobilizing her between herself and Ty in a single practiced move. “We’re not going to hurt you, Mia,” she said, straining. “Just calm down.”

Mia seemed to quickly take in the situation and slumped back into the seat. “You’re making a mistake, Amanda,” Mia said, but the fight was gone. “They will not like this.”

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. I slipped out of the back seat of the Tahoe and circled around to the driver’s seat, turning it on and pulling us away from the bar. “I’m willing to take that risk,” Amanda said. “Let’s start with who ‘they’ is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Mia,” Amanda said. “I’m trying to be nice here.”

“Seriously, I don’t know! I swear. I just receive orders, and I carry them out.”

“What kind of orders?”

“Mostly it’s gathering intel. Sending along the whereabouts of our targets. Stuff that I’m already doing for the Bureau anyway.” Mia seemed resigned.

“And maybe kill Nikolai Kozlov?”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” Mia said with a gruff laugh. “You really did fall for him, didn’t you?”

The agent’s accusation ran through me like a lightning bolt. For her own part Amanda reacted as if slapped. “No,” she hissed. “I take issue with extra-judicial actions, especially ones taken against our only connection to a wider drugs network.”

“Well, I didn’t actually know that was going to happen. I was just detailed as part of the arrest team. We went ahead, me and Aguilar. He’s the one who started shooting.”

“Mike Aguilar?” Amanda said, surprised to hear the name.

Mia nodded.

“Was he provoked?” Amanda asked.

Mia shook her head. “No. He radioed in that the suspect was armed, but as far as I could tell, Kozlov had no clue we were even there.

“Surprise!” Mia said forced glee. “Yeah, Aguilar’s in on it. They’ve got dirt on him, too. They’ve got something on all of us.” She glanced at Amanda, looking… pitying. “They’ve got a lot on you now, too, honey. I’m surprised they haven’t reached out to you yet.”

“What?”

“Not a good look for an FBI agent to have a coke habit. Especially one who works specifically to take those cases down, and they’ve got plenty of video of you using.”

“Working the cover,” Amanda said briskly. Her voice was neutral, but knowing her like I did, I thought I heard a note of defensiveness in her reply. Ty probably did, too.

“You could have talked your way out of it. But it doesn’t matter. None of it was ever reported to Hirsch or the other higher ups, and it would look really bad for that surveillance video to come to light now.”

Amanda sat processing that. Then she said, “Is Julia behind this?”

“She’s certainly involved. My guess is that she’s just another fly like the rest of us, caught in the web.”

Amanda nodded, going back to weighing the options, when Mia volunteered something. “Look, it’s not so bad. There are perks. We mostly get left alone. We get compensated within reason. Most of what’s asked isn’t much different than what we’re doing anyways—“

“Other than murder,” Amanda said. “Acting as  an accomplice in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, and God only knows what else. And all of this working with a network with clear ties to terror cells–bonafide enemies of the state—the very institution that we are sworn to defend.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mia. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“You think you’ll have a choice?” Mia said. “They will come. And when they do, you’ll follow.”

My shoulders sagged as I listened to this. She was right. This was much worse than we’d thought. It wasn’t just that Misty was involved. We all were now.

Amanda, however, was already thinking ahead. “Maybe.” She took a deep breath in through her mouth, held it, and released it slowly. “Okay,” she repeated. Then she cocked her head at Misty, and the woman that I knew well and had always loved, said, “I can work with that. So, Mia, want to get your life back?”

We should be back on schedule. See you Friday!