“Miss Lewis as well?” Dean asks.
“Yes, I think organizing crime is in violation of her probation at the least.”
My heart starts beating like crazy. “You can’t take her in!”
Agent Luta raises her eyebrow in question. “Why not, Morgan?”
I stand up and push my barstool back. “Because in the last half year I’ve had a seemingly innocent sick girl turning into a stalker that had me at knife point not once but twice, before she almost had O kill himself to get rid of her. Then we’re being blackmailed, which ends up with my friend getting abducted. We’re dealing with a murder. A murder! Julia Collins has been murdered! And now we’re being blackmailed again, and she’s threatening to kill one of my guys if I fuck it up. So what do you think her superiors are going to do when they realize we’re to blame for screwing up their… deal? Whatever you call it. They’re going to retaliate and kill my guys. And I won’t have that!”
By the time I’m done with my little speech, I’ve worked myself up in a proper panic attack and it feels like I can’t breathe anymore. Dean is rubbing circles over my lower back, and I’m half a second away from asking Gil for a brown paper bag. I have no idea why he’d have those in a BDSM establishment, but somehow I’m certain he would have them anyway. Stranger things have happened here, I’m sure.
“Miss Pike, we’re here to make certain nobody gets hurt anymore, not add to your burdens. We’re really sorry all of this is happening to you. But we have to do something to make this stop. Something’s got to change if you want anything to change,” Agent Luta says with a kindness and a warmness in her voice that I really appreciate at the moment.
And just as quickly as it came on, my panic subsides again.
There really is no other way out of this mess than going straight through it. And I guess that’s what we’re doing.
“Have you sent her the address yet?” Agent Sanders asks.
“No, I’ve waited until you told me what to do. I have no clue how to do this.”
O had sent me the address he had found earlier that afternoon, and it’s been burning a hole in my pocket ever since. Helping a criminal is surely like the gateway crime to the harder stuff, and I don’t want to become that person.
“Well, I suggest you hand us over the address and we’ll take over. We’ll also make sure to take Miss Lewis in whether she’s with the shipment or not. She knows too much and making threats is definitely breaking the terms of her parole.”
Dean presses a kiss to the side of my head. “Just hand it over to them babe, it’ll be okay.”
I sigh, because I’m tired and done with all this shit. Once this is all over, we need a vacation. Or a hibernation beneath a pile of blankets with a never ending supply of Mac ‘n Cheese. Well, Dean’s homemade Mac ‘n Cheese, because even I have to admit it’s better than the boxed one. So that means that Dean can’t go into hibernation mode… I sigh again. This is not the time for my mind to start rambling, so I will it to shut the fuck up.
Scribbling down the address on the back of a beer coaster, I slide it over to the agents. Special Agent Sanders picks it up and puts it in his breast pocket.
Special Agent Luta lays a comforting hand on mine, making eye contact. “You did the right thing, hunny.”
I wish I would feel the same.
After saying their thank yous they make their way out and leave me sitting at the bar with Dean and a whole bunch of extra sighs. Gil makes me a drink. It’s very, very, pink and even tastes pink. I down it without thinking about it, drowning my worries and misery in alcohol. If I can’t hibernate, at least I can be irresponsible and pretend my troubles don’t exist for a while.
We spend some time sitting at the bar until Dominium opens up for the general public. I don’t expect there to be many people at four in the afternoon on a Thursday, but there are people showing up anyway. I guess some people go to a bar after work to unwind, and others go to a BDSM establishment.
A gorgeous woman dressed with long dark curls walks in. She’s followed by a man with equally long hair in a ponytail wearing a kilt and boots. Both seem to be in good spirits already. They make their way to the bar, where Gil greets them both by giving them a one armed hug as if they’re friends who he hasn’t seen in a while. I’m a little too far away to eavesdrop, but I see Gil hand them a key to one of the backrooms, where they immediately proceed to go.
I raise my brows in question to Gil, who smirks at me while he walks over.
“Regulars?” I ask as I take the last sip of my drink.
“Yeah, they come over to work out some stress related issues every once in a while.”
“But they seemed so happy,” I murmur, genuinely confused.
“Working out your issues doesn’t have to be a burden. They just found an outlet to work through it.”
Can’t argue with that, although I’m intrigued. Dean scoots his chair over to mine and our sides touch. He’s reminding me of his indecent proposal to go into the kitchen that morning for some stress relief, which we never followed up on. Well, we did go to the kitchen, but we ate the remaining cookies instead. Being in Dominium so close to one of my guys is enough to get me going, and I guess my arousal shows on my face, because Gil laughs.
“Go follow those two, they’re in the last room. There’s a window there. You can see them, they can’t see you. They know the window is there, actually get off on it. Both of them are into a bit of voyeurism. I think it’s a show you want to see.”
I scrunch my face at him, because my imagination is running rampant right now, and I don’t know if reality or my fantasy is worse.
Dean lays a hand on my lower back, signalling me to follow him when I let myself glide off my chair. He guides me to the room Gil mentioned and I feel nervous butterflies in anticipation of what we’re walking into. Watching people do their thing here is kind of naughty in itself, now isn’t it?