Fearless Leader (Juxtapose City) (28 page)

Still, despite the theatrics with Black Sola enjoyed Jake’s company when he acted like a man. Like himself, Jake clearly hated Calyx Starr. Jake obviously recognized the threat the empath held for the team and wanted him gone. Sola liked that. He'd already put Jake down as a potential ally in the future. It was always wise to keep track of such things.

But most disturbing of all to Sola was what was happening between their leader and the empath. Late at night Sola had heard the two men's doors closing at odd hours. Sometimes the men retired at the same time as though they'd been together. He didn't completely believe that -- Black seemed to firmly believe in keeping boundaries between himself and his subordinates -- but Starr was a freak. Who knew what he was doing to mess with the team leader's mind? If Starr was influencing Black in any way Sola needed to stop it.

Sola didn't know what everything meant -- on some level he was afraid to look too closely -- but until he understood his teammates better he couldn't get comfortable in JC2. He needed some leverage first. So he'd planted himself in front of a computer once everyone had left the houses and returned to digging for clues about his new leader.

After just under an hour of hiding his trail by going through a handful of hacker 'washers' -- scrambling websites used by hackers to prevent their computer's numerical identity from being recorded and thus rendering them traceable -- Sola had managed to break into the Juxtapose City Main Municipal Jail, a.k.a. Hangway.

He'd followed a hunch, driven down that route when every other attempt to learn more about Lieutenant Black had met with a dead-end. Black's trail was as cold as a corpse and no amount of nudging would bring it to life again. He needed to find a thread that took him deeper and what could be deeper than the captain himself?

Sola, like every other man at the department, had heard the rumors about the two men's relationship. Such things were inevitable when the leadership of JC2 had been given to someone like Black who had no proof of experience in the field or in leading a team of men but who was young, attractive and clearly very dedicated to what he did. Maybe too dedicated. Sola had learned in his career that men like Black would do anything to accomplish their goals and there was often a very fine line between using legitimate methods to get the job done and crossing over into those hushed up, unspoken means that everyone suspected of Black. It didn't take a rocket scientist: Black was a good-looking kid. Captain Dickerson had a history of taking advantage of hookers and snitches. It wasn't a hard leap to make.

So Sola had latched onto the Black-Dickerson connection and searched the captain's records for references to JC2's leader. After two hours of eye-straining Sola had found his break: Black's records had been sealed by Dickerson's order, #CD445-62. That order had only ever been applied to files pertaining to Black. But Sola found that particular red flag not only in the department's files but also in Hangway's.

It had caught Sola by surprise. He'd spent another forty-five minutes trying to determine if it was linked to Black's possible employment as a corrections officer within the jail. But the file wasn't tied to Human Resources. It was located in a deeply buried subdirectory within the prisoner directory.

No amount of hacking from this computer would break into this file and Sola quickly gave up trying. But though he couldn't read what was in the file it got the sergeant to thinking.

What could Black's connection to the prison population of Hangway be that was so bad it needed to be sealed by the captain? Sola had already tried searching for a criminal record on Black and came up empty. He'd found no evidence that Black had ever stepped foot in jail.

That's when Sola had expanded his thinking beyond the box. What if Black hadn't been a prisoner but had been an arresting officer? What if there was a scandal there? Maybe a prisoner had tried to blackmail him? Or maybe he'd pulled together a sloppy case that brought his ethics into question?

Or... what if Black had put an innocent man behind bars? A man that had been killed while in Hangway.

It was a possibility. Captain Dickerson, thinking with what was between his legs, would need to cover that fatal mistake in order to promote Black to lieutenant and appoint him as the leader of JC2. Sola wouldn't put it past the man. The captain, while someone he respected for his position, nonetheless struck Sola as the type of man who
would
risk his career for that. It always amazed him what some men were willing to do for a piece of ass.

"Gotcha," he said again and this time his grin was sharp, edged with anger. He might be shooting in the dark with this theory but his gut told him he was getting close. Whatever Black's secret was it was looking more and more like something very dark and dirty that would crush Black completely. It might even be something Sola would enjoy revealing if it meant removing a corrupt officer from the force.

He sat up as he heard the garage door slam. Belatedly he realized that the low purr he'd heard in the background must have been Black's electro-bike. Sola cleared the cache on the computer and accessed his favorite hunting website. He noted with pride that the photo of his double take down of two deer was still on the community post board. Too bad he couldn't stand the taste of venison. He'd probably enjoy hunting a lot more if he could actually eat his kills instead of dumping them out in the fields.

Black's bedroom door slammed upstairs. Sola glanced at the ceiling. Black rarely showed a lack of restraint in anything he did. It was something Sola could grudgingly admire in the younger man. Control was the key to life, Sola believed. If you didn't take control, if you didn't go on the offensive in every aspect of your life you left yourself open to get screwed. Sola had learned that lesson well. He'd taken it to heart.

He spent another few minutes on the hunting site then clicked to an online weapons magazine and checked out the new rapid-fire guns being introduced this month. God, he loved guns. There was something about the solid feel of the weapon kicking back in your hand when you pulled the trigger that made Sola half hard just thinking about it.

He jerked his hand from his pants when his PRU buzzed. Captain Dickerson's face filled the screen and for a painful second Sola's heart stopped. But then he reminded himself that he'd been careful to cover his tracks. The captain couldn't know anything about his hacking.

"Captain Dickerson, sir. What may I help you with, sir?"

Dickerson ignored his deference. "Sergeant Sola, where is your lieutenant?"

"He just returned home, sir."

"Alone?"

Sola wondered briefly if the captain was testing him. "I only heard one set of footsteps on the stairs, sir. Someone else may be on the bottom floor; I don't know. I'm in the computer room. Studying the Glock A8," he added, because it never hurt to show your dedication.

To his disappointment Dickerson didn't appear to have heard him. The older man was frowning, his eyes distant. "Find Lieutenant Black," he ordered. "Give him your PRU."

Sola almost asked why the captain didn't just call Black on
his
PRU, but wisely kept his mouth shut. "Yes, sir," he said and left the room.

Black sat cross-legged on the carpet and stared at the bounty he had spread before him. It was like a buffet for the underground. Glass vials of G-28 lay on the carpet, their bright green liquid shining like slivers of emeralds within. The tubes lay amidst every tablet of Bliss that he'd found in the silver case the captain had given him.

What should he start with? Black tapped his finger against his teeth, considering. He could start with the Bliss and get a nice, mellow high started. Then when he took the '28 it would extend that high until it broke into brilliant, crystal euphoria.

Or, he could take the '28 to clear his head and get his adrenaline up, then chase it with a handful of Bliss tabs to smooth out the edges.

It had been a long time since he'd done drugs. He wasn't sure if he missed it exactly, but he missed the escape it provided. You didn't care if you were about to be hit by an electro-craft when you were on drugs. Nothing mattered and no one mattered least of all yourself and all of your problems.

That's what he craved right now. Blankness. Happiness. Anything but what he currently felt which was tearing him up inside. He'd thought he could fool them all with his act. For almost a year he'd done a pretty good job of it. But in the end you can't hide a tiger's stripes no matter how much paint you use.

Even Starr had seen through to who Black really was, had seen that Black was not a police lieutenant worth respecting but common street garbage who didn't deserve better than what the empath had tried to do to him. Black fingered a sheet of Bliss tabs that looked like so many innocent candy buttons. If everyone knew why fight it? Temptation called.

What the hell are you doing?

He frowned,
that
wasn't Temptation. He shoved the voice to the back of his head. An attack of conscience was not what he needed right now. He needed to fly away for a while until he could sort things out and figure out where he would go, what he would do. Until he figured out how far he needed to go to get away from Dickerson's influence.

And throw away everything that you've given up? Everything that you've done for him?

"I didn't want to do those things," he muttered. The sound of his voice startled him in its misery. Anxiously, he put down the Bliss and picked up a vial of '28 and shook it, watching it fizz.

But you did do those things and you did them for a reason. To get away from
this
.
Do you want to go back? You know that he'll drag you back if you cross him.

Black knew. Of course he fucking knew. It was why he never said no, why he never fought. He owed Dickerson big time. He owed...

That's right. You owe him for the pathetic life you're trying to ruin right now. You don't have the right to throw yourself away like this. This isn't your life. This isn't your body. They're his. At least for now.

For now. Black stared at the liquid within the vial he held. Someday this would all change. Someday he would be a free man and if by then he still wanted to kill himself with drugs he would have the right to. And someday if he wanted to be something better – well, he could be that too.

But you've got to get there, first. Don't break now. You've come so far. Don't break. Not for them.

He raised his free hand and studied the long burn mark across his palm from when he'd grabbed the tail pipe to get away from Starr. The captain had raped Starr. Black had known it the minute he'd pulled off his helmet back in the garage. And yet even though he'd known, even though his insides had seethed with rage, he'd done nothing. Said nothing.

His own reaction didn't surprise him. He knew he wasn't good at facing things. He wasn't good at reacting. To feel emotion meant placing yourself on a tightrope over a huge hole full of despair, agony -- you name it -- and trying not to fall into it. That hole scared Black. He'd been trapped in it before. Only recently had he managed to climb out of it and he wasn't about to go anywhere near that edge again.

He hated what had been done to Starr. Detested it. No one deserved such treatment. But at the same time to sympathize and give the empath a shoulder to cry on meant stepping onto that tightrope and Black couldn't do it.

So Starr had tried to force him to react.

Black understood the reasons behind the empath's attack, but -- oh, god -- why had it had to be
that
way?

Because he's an empath and he knows how to hurt you.

Black closed his eyes, fighting down the bile in his throat as his mind tried to drag him back to that moment when he'd been held down over the motorcycle and he'd felt Starr trying to push his way inside. Black shivered with nausea, his hand closing around the vial of G-28. It was a good thing the empath hadn't been able to get an erection because Black might have tried to kill him afterwards.

No. Forget
might
have. Black would have killed him.

But it didn't happen and Starr's still a living member of your team. A hurting member. So what are you going to do about it? How are you going to help him?

Black opened his eyes tiredly. The rage was still there and it was white-hot, consuming him from the inside out. He knew what he needed to do. He just wasn't so sure he could do it. He didn't know if he had the guts. And now that he'd succumbed to Bliss yet again he wasn't so sure he could stay away from it.

He rubbed at his dry eyes just as a tiny click reached his ears. Even before he'd lowered his hand he knew that his last bit of luck had just deserted him.

The door to his room opened and it was like a scene from a movie: everything became slow motion. Black felt his own eyes go round, echoing Sola's. The sergeant's face went white as he looked down at Black surrounded by all of his drugs. Black instinctively tried to cover up the incriminating evidence but the moment his hands came in contact with the sheets of Bliss he knew he'd just made the ultimate mistake: he'd just made himself look ten times guiltier. Icy blue eyes fell to the '28 still in Black's hand and they hardened.

"Sergeant," Black said in a voice he had to push through his tight throat. "I didn't give you permission to enter my room."