Agent with a History

  *****

  I was about to hail a cab figuring that would be safer than walking, when a squad car pulled over. The narcotics detective from the cell crime scene poked his head out the passenger window.

  “Heard what happened in there, raw deal! Can I give you a lift to your apartment? Might be safer that way.”

  I smiled with real appreciation, “Thank you, detective.”

  I opened the back door of the sedan and, in stunned horror, I felt a tazer jammed to my throat from somebody behind me on the street, and then I was tumbling into the back seat of the car.

  I lifted my head off the seat and coughed. I opened my eyes; I was still in the squad car.

  “Sorry Lisa, you’re a good detective and I hate to do this to you, but the powers that be say you gotta go.”

  “Then why don’t you just put a bullet in my brain and be done with it?” I asked slowly, as my faculties came unfrozen.

  My throat hurt from where the tazer had been jammed into it. I started to reach up to rub it when I realized my hands were cuffed together.

  “So, how’s it going to be?” I asked, trying to find out more of what was going on.

  “Harder than you deserve. Again, I’m sorry, it’s just the way it’s gotta be. No hard feelings.”

  And that’s as much as either of the two men in the front seat would say. I looked around and didn’t recognize where we were in the city at all, but it didn’t look good. I must have been out for a while.

  I saw a street sign and something seized up within me. This was a very bad section of the city. Cops didn’t come here and, if they did, they certainly didn’t come alone and unarmed.

  When I sat up straighter, I saw the items laying on the front seat between the two men; my badge and my gun.

  So, the betrayal went that far up the chain of command.

  I couldn’t say that I had ever thought of the Captain, of all people, as being capable of something like this. Just went to show a person the value of not trusting anyone. But that wasn’t right either, some people you could trust with anything.

  Rafferty would never have done this to me, even if they’d had his family at gun point. Instinctively, I knew that with enough leverage Sal might cave in, but I didn’t think he had any part in this. I had no one left that I could really trust, unless perhaps for one man.

  Could I really trust Flint?

  I was going to have to find out, because he might be my only chance, if I was to survive past today. Everything would come down to getting hold of a phone.

  The remembered phone number burned bright in my head with the urgency of my need. I had to get a phone!

  I’d never make it out of this section of the city alone, especially without a gun. The squad car came to a stop and the two men got out. The detective opened my door and started to haul me out of the back, but I resisted. He tugged harder and I gave up my resistance. We both stumbled backward from the car and I brushed into him.

  He reared back and backhanded me across the face as he drew his gun, taking aim at my head.

  “Nice try Lisa, but no dice! Don’t give us any more trouble or you’ll regret it! Take the cuffs off!”

  The patrol cop took the cuffs off as I stood still, nursing my split lip with my tongue. Both men backed away toward the car.

  “You’re going to regret not putting a bullet in my head while you had the chance, detective!” I said with meaning.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, before he slammed his door shut. They took off up the block of this slummy corner of the city, as if eager to escape hell.

  As soon as they were far enough away, I ducked into an alleyway, hoping to stay out of sight of any potential enemies, and brought the detective’s phone up to my ear, after feverishly dialing the number that Flint had given me.

  “Come on! Come on!” I whispered, as the phone rang and rang.

  I had almost given up hope, when Flint’s unmistakable voice came on the line, “Lisa?”

  I didn’t want to examine too closely the wave of relief I felt at the sound of his voice and words rushed out of me in a torrent.

  “They set me up! The Captain’s in on it and I don’t know who else! I don’t know who I can trust in the precinct! You said to call if I needed help and, and…”

  “You did the right thing,” he said cutting off my stammering. “Where are you right now?”

  I told him and the pause on the phone was telling.

  “That’s a bad area, Lisa!”

  I couldn’t help the quiver in my tone as I responded, “I know! I saw my badge and gun on the front seat of the car when they brought me here. I think they made a deal with a gang to make my death look like random mob violence.”

  I thought I heard muted swearing from the other end of the line. I didn’t know this man from Adam and yet I could tell he cared and I needed someone to care right now, because I was losing it.

  “If it's gangs they’ve made a deal with, they won’t just kill me, they’ll...”

  His voice cut me off, his tone serious and confident, “Nothing like that is going to happen to you Lisa! Understand me?”

  I nodded jerkily, forgetting that there was no way he could see such an answer.

  “We’re going to get you out of there, but you have to trust me!”

  I don’t know why I trusted this man, but somehow I did.

  “I believe you, what do you want me to do?” As I finished the words I saw movement further up the street from my hiding spot.

  “I’m on my way to you, but it will take me a while. I have some friends that are a lot closer to you and they are already on their way. Keep your phone on and with you. It’s probably best for you to keep moving away from where they dropped you off. And Lisa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Stay alive!” The phone went dead.

  It was clearly a gang coming down the street and they looked like they were hunting something; me!

  I ducked back into the side alley and made my way out the back end of it to the parallel street. Every person I met on these streets would be an informant against me.

  I ducked into side alleys and made my way up others. An old woman pointed me out to a group of gang members and for several fast paced moments I thought they had me, but I managed to slip away by ducking into an abandoned old building.

  I glanced at my phone as I leaned back against an old brick façade, completely out of breath. It had only been a little over a half hour, but I could have sworn that it had been an hour or more since I had called my one and only lifeline.

  Sweat rolled down my face and I felt my shirt sticking to me. My feet were killing me!

  The high heeled boots I had worn to work today had been more of a fashion statement and not a choice based on practicality. I wanted to take them off, but braving the refuse and debris littered streets in my bare feet would be risking my life in a completely different way than meeting my end at the hands of a gang. I wasn’t that desperate, yet!

  The thought of my bare foot plunging down onto a discarded needle, likely contaminated with HIV, was a strong enough thought to keep these stupid boots on my feet, for at least a little longer anyway.

  I heard a stirring at the other end of the alleyway and I took off running, as bullets began to splatter into the brick wall I had just been leaning against. I ran on down the alley. Bricks shattered to either side of me, coating me in red dust.

  I felt a bullet burn across the top of my shoulder and then another one past my outer thigh, but I didn’t stop running. Out onto the street there were more of them. This was bad!

  As a group they took off after me yelling, and for fear of falling, wounded from a bullet, I ducked down another side alley only to find myself deceived.

  It wasn’t a side alley. It was an old recessed loading dock and the battered old doors were all locked.

  “NO!” A sob of fear escaped, as the reality of how badly I was trapped swept through me
.

  I turned back to the main street only to find an eight gang member posse ringed across it coming towards me. I saw an old pipe and I grabbed it up. It wasn’t a great defense, but it was something.

  They drew closer to me and I could see they were laughing at my attempt at defense, even as their eyes scanned me up and down, hungrily. I took a firmer grip on the pipe and tried to push down my fears of what was likely to happen in this dark hole of the city.

  “Hey baby, we can just as well do you with your hands shot off as with them still on. Drop the pipe!”

  My grip on it remained and I watched, as the ringleader brought his pistol up, half hoping he’d miss my hands and kill me by accident.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. I happen to know someone who quite likes the lady’s hands the way the Creator made them.”

  The gang turned en mass to look at the speaker, who had approached out of seemingly nowhere to stand but twenty feet from them. He was on the slim side and wasn’t very tall, standing only about 5’6’’. But it was how he was dressed that was eye catching in an oddly eclectic way.

  He had a sharply creased fedora on his head, reminiscent of the gangster era of Hollywood, accompanied by a matching Dick Tracy rain coat. The outdated outfit was a little too ridiculous to take the individual wearing it seriously, but there was something about the smaller man that said seriousness was written all over him.

  The gang leader spoke as he lifted his gun toward the stranger. “What’s a little, white, funky dude like you interrupting our date with the half-breed chick for? I’m gonna plug you right where you stand, white boy!”

  The stranger tipped back his hat a little to reveal a pair of cold slate grey eyes and then coolly said, “You have five seconds to drop your guns and leave this place alive. I won’t warn you again.” As he finished speaking the man’s hands tucked the ends of the raincoat behind him, in the process partially revealing two low slung shoulder holsters packed with what looked like .45 caliber automatics from the same era as his clothes.

  The gang members looked at each other as if to say ‘Is this guy for real?’, and then dissolved into laughter, as they all started to draw their pistols. They were too late.

  I had been mentally counting down the five seconds. Their time was up. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  One moment the stranger’s hands had been at his sides and then they were holding the automatics, as fire belched out of them repeatedly. There had been eight gang members and there were eight shots, every one of them a head shot. It had taken less than a couple of seconds for the little man to clear the loading area.

  He stepped over the bodies as he came up to me. He glanced at the pipe I still gripped in my hands and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch.

  “The classic lead pipe was, no doubt, a lethal weapon, when wielded by the likes of Mrs. Plum or Scarlet, but the modern age calls for something a little more speed oriented I think.”

  He had holstered one pistol as he had approached and he reached behind his back with the now free hand to pull out a sleek looking 9mm, which he offered to me.

  The little man had a point. I dropped the pipe and took the offered pistol, instantly feeling better.

  “Thank you, mister...?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Tyre, at your service Ma’am,” he said, touching the tip of his hat brim before he turned and headed back out toward the street. I broke out of my trance and quickly stepped over the fallen gang members to follow after the man. Another book character of the same mysterious international private agency it would seem.

  Tyre may have lacked the physical presence of raw strength that Flint manifested, but he lacked nothing in lethality of skill. As we made it to the street he drilled three more gang members who came rushing up with guns, before I could even raise mine halfway.

  He stood there in the street and appeared to be waiting for someone, as he calmly reloaded his small cannons.

  Hesitantly I asked, “Do you have transportation out of here?”

  As if I had touched on the source of some private pain he grimaced and said, “Yes, unfortunately I do.”

  I didn’t understand his apparent pain at the thought of transportation out of here. Why would that be a bad thing?

  I heard a screech of tires, followed by the throaty roar of an engine with horses left over to spare. I turned to see a short bed, black dodge pickup peel around a corner a block down from us.

  Tyre didn’t seem concerned so I stayed beside him, even though it looked like the truck was going to hit us.

  The truck swerved to the side at the last moment and came to a screeching halt. The passenger side door swung out, as the driver leaned across the middle and pushed it open.

  A blast of an old country music ballad in full swing reverberated out of the cab of the truck to be heard over the sound of the engine.

  “Hop in babe!” came the salacious statement of the capable looking driver.

  I complied quickly, as I began to sense some of the reason for Tyre's grimace. I had no sooner gotten in than the driver stomped on the gas, flinging me back against the seat.

  Turning to see that the door of the cab had slammed shut, I, in a panic, turned back to the driver. “What about Tyre?” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, he likes the open spaces,” said the driver, gesturing with a hand to the back.

  I glanced through the back window to see Tyre crouched down with a semiautomatic rifle across his knees behind the truck’s tailgate.

  “Shouldn’t we stop and let him up here?”

  “What? Oh, he’ll be fine! Speaking of fine, you’re every bit as hot as the boss described you! Name's Galloway,” he said, reaching over to shake my hand.

  I shook it responding, “Lisa.”

  He hadn’t stopped his frank perusal of me, “Hey, could you please keep your eyes on the road a little more!” I said, not liking his in-depth study of my body or the alarmingly close course of the truck with the side of the street.

  “What?” he asked, staring at me blankly.

  He glanced out the front window and steered the truck back on track moments before we would have collided with a dumpster. “Sorry about that!” he said.

  I heard a semiautomatic rifle begin to talk and glanced back to see maybe three or more vehicles pursuing us. The bed of the truck began to fill with brass casings, as Tyre emptied clip after clip into the pursuing vehicles. I heard Galloway say something sharply under his breath and I glanced ahead.

  Several blocks ahead, the street narrowed and a car and an SUV swung broadways, barricading the street, even as gunmen poured out of them to take cover and aim at us.

  Galloway stuck his head out his open window and slapped the side of the truck loudly, before yelling out to Tyre, “I need a door opened up little buddy!”

  Tyre glanced around and saw the blockade. He laid the rifle down, crawled towards the back of the cab and started working away at something.

  “Oh my …!” My voice trailed off, as I saw Tyre lift a rocket launcher out of a case and up to his shoulders, as he stood up to aim it over the top of the cab.

  The plume of the rocket trail arched away in front of us and the car exploded in a ball of flames. Moments later, with the launcher reloaded, a second trail arched out and crashed into the SUV.

  “Hang on, honey!” belted out Galloway and I found the seatbelt in a hurry.

  “Oh God!” I said clutching the golden cross at my throat.

  We hit the burning vehicles.

  It really wasn’t as bad as I had thought it was going to be. The air bags didn’t even deploy and I said as much.

  Galloway looked over at me with a cheeky grin, “What air bags?”

  I just shook my head and glanced back to see if Tyre was okay. I was in time to see the lead pursuit car blown sky high as it passed through the burning wreckage of the other two vehicles.

  I watched Tyre set the
launcher down. There were no more signs of pursuit after that display of firepower.

  We drove for a while and Galloway broke into my thoughts with a question, “Are you okay?”

  I glanced over at him and was surprised by his look of concern. He indicated my cheek and I touched it to find that I had been crying. I hadn’t known I had been crying.

  “Thank you for coming for me,” I said fervently.

  His jovial demeanor restored, he smiled back at me, “Don’t mention it. Me and Tyre save maidens from gang raping hordes every day.” He said it as a joke, but in reality that’s just what they had done.

  After several more minutes of driving, Galloway pulled the truck over to the curb. “It would be a little conspicuous to drive this truck any further, as bad as it's shot up. The safe house isn’t far from here. Tyre will take you there while I ditch the truck.”

  I nodded and got out.

  Tyre was instantly by my side, directing me. Walking wasn’t what I wanted to be doing right now, the way my feet felt, but I had to play by their rules. We walked several blocks and I got a lot of, ‘What happened to you?’ looks. Tyre pointed ahead at a town house door and said, “That’s it. The doors open and it will lock behind you. Flint should be along any minute. I’ll stay around the area just to make sure everything stays okay.”

  He turned to go, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you for what you did for me back there.”

  He’d lost his hat, but he touched the air where the brim would have been anyway.

  “Anything for a lady,” he said softly, before continuing on along the sidewalk.

  I limped up the stairs and turned the knob, halfway believing that the door wouldn’t open and that I’d be left exposed here all by myself. The door opened and with a sigh of relief I stepped in and closed the door. Bars slid out of the wall and clanged shut and steel mesh slid down from the ceiling, as I shut the door. Breathing heavy I stepped back from the door. They’d warned me.

  It would take an explosive charge to get through the locked door now. I was further off grid at the moment than I had perhaps ever been since growing up on the island. Just what had I stumbled into?

  The house was elegantly furnished and immaculately clean and I, in comparison, felt dirty and disgusting. Light streamed into a sitting area and I sat down on the corner of an ottoman.

  Everything seemed to catch up with me in that moment. My angst over visiting my father, Rafferty’s death, and now the fear I had experienced today. It was all too much to hold onto and I fell apart in the quiet sanctity of this safe place.

  I sobbed hard as I clutched myself with my arms. I was all alone!

  Through the blurriness of my tears, I saw Flint kneel down in front of me. I don’t know where he came from, but that didn’t matter. He was here and I was glad to see him, stranger that he was. I melted against his chest, relishing the strength of the arms that closed securely around me.

  How had I managed to live the twenty seven years of my life without the comfort I felt from the big hands rubbing my back and the comforting aroma of his masculine presence? I didn’t know, but I never wanted to be without it again!

  He held me for a long time and then, picking me up, said, “We need to get you cleaned up. I bet a nice, hot shower would feel good.”

  That did sound really good. Dimly I noticed that he was climbing stairs and then he set me down in a luxurious looking bathroom.

  “You’ve got fluffy towels, a fuzzy bathrobe, and all that feminine hair gunk you females seem to think you need. I think you’re set.”

  I smiled a little. This must be a female’s domain.

  Whose female?

  He answered my jealous question without meaning to do so, “This all belongs to a female coworker of mine. You’ll probably meet her sometime in the future. Use whatever you need to, I know she wouldn’t mind. She has clothes in the other room. The pants might not fit, as you’re several inches taller, but you’re both similarly curvy and well…” he stumbled for a second, “endowed, so the shirts and other stuff should fit.”

  I could see him struggling not to, but his eyes drifted downward to see the evidence of his words.

  I minded it a lot when the Galloways of the world eyed me over, but Flint was different. I wanted him to look.

  He looked away, out the door. “Well, you have what you need. I’ll lay out some clothes for you. If you throw your dirty clothes into the other room, I’ll get rid of them.”

  He started to go without ever looking back at me. “Flint, could you do me another favor please?”

  He looked at me, “Sure anything!”

  “Could you get me some more comfortable shoes to wear? I can pay!”

  He glanced down at my boots and visibly winced, “Ouch! Yeah sure, what’s your size?”

  I told him and he was gone, closing the door behind him. I stripped off everything, noticing the bullet burns on my shoulder and thigh for the first time. I had been very lucky. No, make that blessed.

  The bullets hadn’t really penetrated; they’d just burned a few skin layers off and bled a little. They’d burn in the shower, but they needed to be cleaned.

  I gathered up the clothes and the boots and, standing behind the door, I dropped them all outside into the other room.

  I heard him coming to pick them up. My head rested on the door. How was I going to tell him?

  Unbelievably I felt my lips curl into a smile. This was so unlike me!

  “Flint?” I called out softly.

  “Yes?”

  I bit my lip trying not to let the humor I felt come out in my tone. “You said I’m several inches taller than your coworker and I bet I’m a little wider in the torso and just bigger in general all around.”

  There was silence on the other side of the door.

  “Her bras and underwear probably aren’t going to fit, even though we may look the same cup size.”

  Not waiting for a response, I continued, “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  I heard the clothes fall and then Flint scrambling around the room.

  He came back; “Go ahead,” came the husky response.

  I told him my sizes and that of shirt and pant sizes as well.

  “Okay, I got it.”

  “Flint?”

  “Yes?”

  How did I explain the hellish atrocities of female clothes shopping to him?

  “Just because you buy clothes that match the sizes that I’ve given you, doesn’t mean they’ll fit me.”

  “What?” came his reasonably doubtful reply.

  “Different manufacturers size women’s clothes differently than the size they are supposed to be.”

  “Well, that’s stupid!”

  I couldn’t deny him the logic of that statement. I told him what store to go to and the brand names.

  “This is going to take a little while,” he said hesitantly.

  “That’s okay.”

  I heard him leaving and I called out, “I appreciate this a lot, Flint!”

  I couldn’t make out his reply.

  I thought of him bumbling around the women’s department at my favorite store and a gurgle of laughter escaped me. The picture of him, all big and masculine, sorting through lingerie in search of my size was priceless.

  I could never have imagined being so intimate with a man as to feel comfortable with him picking out my clothes for me. I had thought that would never be a possibility in my life, but it was and I was enjoying every moment of it.

  “Oh, I hope he’s not color blind!” I said to myself with a groan, as I stepped into the hot shower.

  After a long shower I took a bath, completely spoiling myself. I made full use of the bath oils and general plethora of female gunk, as he had put it and came walking out of the bathroom cinched up in the fluffy bath robe at the same time as he came walking through the door with bags in each hand.

  A lot of bags!

&n
bsp; What had he done, bought the whole store?

  He was looking at me with an unsettled look on his face, as he took in my robed appearance, wet hair and all. I rather liked the impact I was apparently making on him.

  He seemed to gather his wits about him and set the bags down on the bed.

  Coming to the bed beside him I exclaimed, “You didn’t have to buy all this! You must have spent a fortune!”

  He hadn’t stopped looking at me and I watched as he shrugged, “Money isn’t a problem at the moment and I thought you could use a few extra changes of clothes.”

  I fingered the material of a shirt as I softly asked, “Why?”

  He looked away for a moment and then back to me and sighed, as I studied him intently.

  “To be bluntly honest, you’re in a lot of danger. You’re in danger while you’re with me and when you’re not. I like to think that I’d be able to keep you safer if you’re with me and, to that intent, I plan on taking you with me when I leave the country in a few days.”

  “Is keeping me safe the only reason why you’re taking me with you?”

  He shook his head, “No, it’s not the only reason.”

  I looked down at the clothes, “By now I know that you must know I play a significant role in finding what I think you and a lot of others are after. Is that the other reason why you want me with you?”

  He met my renewed stare with an equally matched intensity of his own. “I’m fully aware of how important you are to what I’m looking for and knowing that is why I think you’re safer with me. But it’s not the reason why I’m taking you with me, other, that is, than also keeping you safe!”

  “To trust what you’re saying involves putting quite a lot of trust in you. I’ve been betrayed before.”

  “Not by me!” he said firmly, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “Okay, I’ll go with you willingly, but I’m keeping a gun at all times.”

  “Absolutely! Have three or four of them if you want. Now, I imagine that after all of today’s events you’ve worked up a bit of an appetite.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I was starving.

  He must have read the answer in my expression, “Get dressed and I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  He had started to turn away, but then stopped, “I almost forgot. There was some blood on your clothes?”

  “Just burns, nothing serious.”

  He pulled a little first aid kit out of a bag. “Still, you should take precaution and get it cleaned and bandaged properly.”

  Something wild went through me and I brushed by him and sat down on the bed in front of him. Reaching up, I pulled the robe off my shoulder.

  He just looked at my bare shoulder and said, “I meant you.”

  “Well, you’re here, so why not?”

  He opened the kit and soon had the burn cleaned and bandaged. I let the robe slide back and then I pulled it up to reveal the outside of my thigh.

  Hesitantly, he kneeled down in front of me and soon had it treated as well. He glanced up at me and, as if more to himself than to me, he said, “I should probably go now.”

  He got up and went to the door and I followed him.

  A little desperately I asked, “Flint?”

  He turned back and I leaned up and kissed him.

  He deepened the kiss and my hands were on their way up to wrap around his neck, when he caught them and leaned back, breaking the kiss.

  We stared at each other, breathing heavy for a few moments. Why had he stopped?

  “Today has been a very emotional day for you. Trust me, I’m not against kissing you and a lot more, but I’m not going to take advantage of how you’re feeling right now. I think by now you’ve guessed how very much I want you, but I’m man enough to win you on my own merits and not take advantage of a weak moment on your part. Take your time getting dressed and, when you’re ready, I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  He let go of my hands, stepped back and closed the door softly.

  I rubbed my hands into my eye sockets savagely.

  What had I been doing?

  What must he think of me?

  This wasn’t like me at all!

  As embarrassed as I was right now, I wished I was still kissing him. One thing was for sure, he was showing me that I could trust him, even as I increasingly discovered that I couldn’t trust myself, especially around him.

  I looked through the clothes. He had done a very good job! Not everything was stuff that I would have bought, but it wasn’t going to look bad on me either. It was just different, more colorful than my more reserved color choices often were.

  Now all I had to do was to get dressed and go face him, after the fool I had made of myself. That wasn’t going to be easy.