Growing and Kissing (39 page)

Sean

It was crazy...but maybe exactly the sort of crazy we needed. And the sort of thing I’d never have dreamed up: I was too mired in the way things had always been done in the drugs game. Only an outsider like her—with that big brain of hers—could have made the leap and come up with it.

“It might work,” I said slowly. “But do you realize who we’re getting into bed with, here? Malone’s an evil son-of-a-bitch but
the cartel?
They won’t waste time on speeches and intimidation. When someone gets in their way, they don’t use someone like me to scare them: they just kill them.”

Her eyes were big with fear...but then she lifted her jaw and looked resolute. “We’d better hope they like my offer, then.”

I looked at her for a long moment and then shook my head. I didn’t want her anywhere near those cartel bastards...but I couldn’t kill our only chance of saving Kayley, either. “Jesus,” I muttered eventually. “Okay. Alright. I’ll make some calls.”

The temperature was dropping so I stood up, moved behind her and sat down again, my legs either side of hers and my chest pressed to her back to keep her warm. She snuggled into me and the smell and feel of her copper hair as the wind whipped it across my shoulders made my whole body ache for her. The last six months had put us both through the emotional grinder: all I wanted to do was drag Louise into a deep, warm nest and hibernate with her for about a year. The dreams I’d had of her were coming back to me: the two of us happy in some idyllic life somewhere, rolling around in a meadow.

One more time. One more desperate play and then either we’d be dead...or free.

I pulled out my phone. Six degrees of separation: in the drugs game, everyone knows someone up and down the chain. Put enough links together and you can talk to anyone. The problem is getting them to trust you.

After an hour of pleading, threatening and promising, I finally got to talk to a guy called Francisco, who was the number two guy to Isabella Gallego, queen of the Gallego cartel. I laid it out for him: what we had, the ridiculously low price we were asking. “Two hundred and fifty thousand,” I told him, “and it’s yours.”

“What went wrong?” he asked. He sounded smart, and older than us. I imagined him with a gray-flecked beard. “Why aren’t you selling it locally?”

I closed my eyes and told him everything—even why we needed the money. Francisco went quiet for a long time and then said that he had to make some calls.

An hour later, he called back. “We’ll do it,” he said. “But the deal has to be done in Texas. We’re passing through there tomorrow night. Eight p.m.”

“You want us to get the weed to
Texas?”

“Don’t be late.” He gave me an address, then hung up.

“Did you really just say Texas?” asked Louise.

***

If they catch you with weed, you’re in trouble.

If they catch you with a
lot
of weed, you’re in big trouble.

If they catch you with a van full of weed, driving across state borders, you go to jail. Go
directly
to jail, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not ever think about seeing sunlight again. This was the most dangerous thing we’d done so far. I’d chosen the grow house location to be pretty much off the police radar. Even the mansion had been well away from prying eyes. But out on the highway we’d be an easy target.

We couldn’t use the van: Malone’s people would be looking for it. But we had virtually no cash left. So we went to the cheapest car dealership I knew, woke up the owner and bought the one vehicle with storage space that he had.

An ice cream truck. So old that I didn’t even recognize half the ice creams on the menu.

“It runs,” said Louise hopefully, revving the engine. “And it only has to get us there: one journey. Hell, it doesn’t even have to get us
back.”

I nodded, unconvinced. One little problem, one cop pulling us over and we were screwed. I double-checked all the lights and replaced a couple of bulbs that were broken. Then we loaded all of the weed into the truck’s empty freezers. Even with the plastic wrapping and the freezers shut, the smell of it still hung around in the air—there was just so much of it, in such a confined space, that there was no way we could cover it up.

By now, it was midnight. We had twenty hours to get to Texas and Google said the drive would take eighteen. It was going to be a virtually non-stop road trip.

I slid behind the wheel. “I’ll take the first stretch. You get some sleep.”

Louise climbed up into the passenger seat and started to get herself comfortable. Just before she settled down for the night, she leaned across and slipped her arms around my neck to kiss me. Immediately, the touch of her bare skin on mine made every little hair stand on end. Every muscle grew hard and tense, ready to grab her and pull her into my lap.

So I did. Just in case it was the last chance we had. I hauled her across the cab, making her yelp in surprise, until she was sitting on top of me, my cock instantly hard and straining at the feel of her. Then I kissed her hard, parting her lips with my tongue, closing my eyes, and drowning in her sweet, feminine softness. I imagined we were in some place with no more risks, no more danger, where no one could touch us ever again. And she responded, relaxing into me, leaning back on my arm so I could tilt her head back and kiss her even deeper. Her full breasts thrust out towards me and I ran a hand up under her top, gently squeezing one, feeling the warm skin and the hardening bud of her nipple stroke my palm.

She broke the kiss—just. Our lips stayed so close that each syllable stroked them together. “Did you really mean it?” she asked. “About going straight?”

I drew back just enough that I could look into her eyes. “I’ll find a church and become a bloody preacher, if you want me to.”

She pressed herself hard against me, then slid off my lap and onto her own seat. “Then let’s do this.”

I put the van into gear and we drove off into the night.

Louise

You may think you know what tension feels like. You’re wrong.

Tension
is driving down a highway with half a million dollars worth of drugs in the back, waiting for a cop to pull you over.
Tension
is driving knowing that one little mistake—a single dangerous overtake, drifting a mile over the speed limit—could result in the red and blue lights and then the death of someone you love.
Tension
is doing all this in a truck with scratchy, lumpy seats, a gear shift that feels like stirring a lead rod in a barrel of broken parts and the steering from an ocean liner.

For six hours straight.

Sean had driven for the first six hours. He would have kept going for longer but, when he roused me at a gas station to see if I wanted to use the bathroom, I looked at his drooping eyelids and insisted I take a shift. As morning broke, the cops came out in force. They were looking for easy tickets to make their quotas, but the traffic was light, so pickings were thin. That made us a prime target.

I’d never realized how much I zoned out on a long drive until I couldn’t do it anymore. Even when I was just sitting in my lane, cruising along, I was constantly checking the mirrors for approaching cops, checking my speed, checking I wasn’t doing anything else wrong. When a cop overtook us, I’d sit there bolt upright, arms so stiff on the wheel that my muscles screamed, eyes straight ahead. They’d get closer and closer and closer, right up alongside us...then they’d pass by and I’d breathe again. I was soaked with sweat by the end of the first hour.

Now it was nearly noon and I was a wreck. My hands throbbed from gripping the wheel so tightly; my thighs burned from the awkward pedal position, made for someone with longer legs than me; my arms, shoulders and back were on fire from the constant stress.

And it wasn’t just the drive itself. My mind kept going back to what we were attempting here. A deal with the cartel, people who made Malone, with all his heavies and his jazz club, look like a spoiled child. I’d seen the news stories. If they weren’t happy with the deal I offered them, they’d simply shoot us. And my plan pretty much guaranteed that they
wouldn’t
be happy. And even
if
we could somehow cut a deal with them, we still had Malone to deal with. Wherever we ran, he’d hunt us down—

An ear-splitting
whoop!
from behind me.
Whoop! Wh-wh-wh-whoop!

I checked the rear view mirror and saw the cop car, six feet behind me, lights flashing. The officer behind the wheel jerked his thumb for me to pull over.

Fuck.

Louise

Sean came awake fast, but there was nothing we could do except glance helplessly at one another. I slowed and pulled over at the side of the highway. The cop car’s siren cut out and it was suddenly very quiet: just the soft roar of passing cars and the desert wind whipping across the hood.

It
stank
of weed. The cop was going to smell it as soon as he got close.

“Open the windows,” Sean said quickly. “Open all the windows!”

I wound mine down—the truck was too old to have electric windows—and he did the same on his side. The wind blew through the car and lifted away some of the smell but, every time the wind died, it came back.

I heard a door slam. In my side mirror, I saw the cop climb out of his car and amble towards us. I looked across at Sean and he was grinding his teeth, hands twitching as if looking for something to hit, something to smash. But for once, violence wasn’t going to help us. Fighting the cops was out, as was running—we’d just wind up with every cop in the state on our tails.

All we could do was sit there and accept it. It was over.

The cop strolled up to my window.
God, he’s going to get a promotion for this,
I thought, imagining his face when he found the crop.
Cop of the year, probably.

I tensed as the cop leaned against the door and took off his sunglasses. “You know why I pulled you over, ma’am?” His voice had a deep Texas twang, homely and warm. At any other time, it would have been comforting.

“No,” I said gingerly.

“You were drifting out of your lane,” he said almost sadly. “Maybe drifting off a l’il bit? White line fever?”

My heart sank.
That?!
All my tension and care and it came down to
that
? I’d been worrying so hard about the cartel, I’d lost concentration for a few vital seconds. At the same time, I felt a tiny spark of hope. If that was all it was, maybe there was a slim possibility we could get out of this. The wind was blowing steadily through the truck, carrying the scent of weed away from the cop.
Please keep blowing. Please keep blowing.
“Um. I
am
kind of tired. Early start this morning. Forgot to have my coffee.” I smiled my most ingratiating smile. “I’m really sorry. I’ll pull over and take a rest at the next gas station.”

The cop tilted his head to one side. “Where are you folks from?”

I could still feel the wind against my cheek. I tried to do the same puppy-dog eyes that Kayley did to me when she was in trouble. “LA, sir,”