Federal Discipline Page 11

  “We haven’t even had anything to eat and you’re already at it,” she laughed.

  “Oh I’d love to be at it,” he said, palming her panty clad bottom.

  The mood changed. Jamie found herself with her palms pressed against the kitchen counter, her panties pressed to the side as Jack slid his cock deep inside her pussy. There were no doubt still traces of his semen inside her as he thrust up and in, pushing her up to her tippy toes as he fucked her swiftly.

  Jack, she was quickly learning, was a very ardent lover. He liked to take control, to wrap his hands around her waist and hold her steady as he worked the thick length of his cock in and out of her wet pussy, soft sounds of lust and lubrication filling the air as she was filled over and over again.

  “Jack…” she moaned his name, squirming her rear against him as he held her there, completely wrapped around his dick. She squealed again when he dropped one hand from her waist and instead wrapped it around her pussy, pressing the rough pad of his fingers over the hood of her clit as he began riding her home with hard, fast thrusts.

  Caught between his cock and that insistent hand, Jamie cried her orgasm to the kitchen tile just moments before his shout of pleasure matched hers. He pulled out, his cock still dripping cum. It was rolling out of her, thick and hot. With one hand on the back of her neck, he reached between her legs and rubbed it in, making sure her cunt was well glazed with his essence. She came again, a smaller climax rippling through her, leaving her quite weak.

  “You’re insatiable,” Jack rumbled behind her, keeping a hold of her so that her weak knees did not give way.

  “I’m insatiable?” She looked over her shoulder at him and shook her head. “You’re the insatiable one, Mister.”

  He chuckled, kissed her again, and slapped her bottom. “Go grab a shower,” he said. “We’ll be late for work.”

  Showers. Work. They all seemed so mundane when compared to the pleasure that was still washing through her veins.

  “Can’t we just take the day off? Sit around drinking coffee?”

  “Serial killers don’t take the day off,” he said, swatting her again. “Off you go, agent.”

  “I bet they do take days off,” Jamie grumbled. “I bet they have amazing days off.”

  “Shower, Jamie,” he repeated. “Now.”

  There was an unspoken threat of spanking in his tone. She wasn’t in the mood for that sort of thing so hot on the heels of ecstasy, so she obeyed the order and took herself off to the shower to clean up.

  *****

  Later that day, sitting in the office, both dressed professionally, Jamie wondered if they’d really had sex at all. Jack certainly wasn’t behaving any differently toward her. He was just as authoritarian and serious as ever.

  She, on the other hand, was most distracted. Every time she met his eye, she felt a blush spreading across her face. Jack pretended not to notice it, though she was sure he did. Jack noticed everything. He had eyes like a hawk. A sexy, detective hawk.

  Crossing over to his desk under the guise of doing some work, Jamie pressed alongside him, bending over in such a way as to draw attention to her cleavage which was much more visible than usual owing to the tactical undoing of top buttons one and two.

  “Cut it out, brat,” Jack murmured under his breath. “Save it for when we’re off the clock.”

  “But I’m horny now,” she whined in kittenish tones.

  His response was quite unexpected. He lifted one of those dark brows at her and said one combustible word. “Good.”

  “Good?” she whispered back. “What do you mean, good?”

  “It means I like that you are on the boil, my little brat. But you’re going to have to wait until we get home to have that sweet cunt of yours tended to. Until then – hands off.”

  “What do you mean, hands off?”

  “I mean you don’t touch yourself without my permission,” he drawled. “You can be as horny as you like, but you won’t masturbate or touch your pussy until I do.”

  Jamie’s mouth fell open with a mixture of surprise and despair. “That’s not fair. You can’t enforce that.”

  “I can,” he said. “I can spank your bottom bright red if I discover you’ve been pleasuring yourself on work time. Now come on, agent. We have a suspect to interrogate.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “He’s a friend of the Bramptons, a man with a military and criminal history as long as your arm.”

  “I thought the military didn’t let people with criminal records join.”

  “That was the old days. They’re a little more desperate for manpower the last decade or so,” Jack said. “Marlon Jones, the man we’re going to be questioning, was picked up yesterday at the Bramptons’ address. He appeared to have been in the process of breaking and entering.”

  *****

  “I didn’t stab Theodora Brampton.”

  The statement came out of the mouth of a man who looked like he probably had stabbed Mrs. Brampton. He looked the stabby kind. Mean, small eyes, a heavy brow and a wide set body that gave him the impression of a human bulldozer.

  Jack knew well enough not to judge people by their covers. He did, however, occasionally judge them on their records, and Marlon Jones’ record was a spotty one at best. Several convictions for burglary, a couple for possession, one for dealing. None for any violent activity though, which was what lead Jack to consider believing the man.

  “I used to know Lee a long time ago,” Marlon said. “We went to the same high school. He was the nerd, I was the jock.”

  “You were friends?”

  “Not really. We had an arrangement. He helped me pass tests. I made sure he didn’t end up inside his locker.”

  “And that arrangement carried over into adulthood?”

  “About six months ago, I get a call from Lee. Says he wants to catch up. So we do. He’s married now, got a house the size of a circus. I ask him what he wants from me. He asks if I can get him some drugs.”

  “Which you did.”

  “I don’t want to incriminate myself…”

  “Okay, so he asked you to get him some drugs.”

  “Yeah,” Marlon said. “And he asked and he asked and then he ended up owing me some money. That’s why I was at the house. I knew Lee was dead and I wanted my money. I was going to ask his lady, but she wasn’t there, so I went in. The door wasn’t locked.” He smirked at Jack and Jamie. “That’s not breaking, is it? It’s just entering, and you’re allowed to enter.”

  “So Mr. Brampton owed you money.”

  “He owed everyone money,” Marlon said. “That big house, that wasn’t his even. That was her family’s house. Mr. Brampton, Lee, he just married rich. But he was always borrowing money.”

  “Mr. Jones,” Jack said. “Without incriminating yourself, to your knowledge, did Lee Brampton have a drug addiction?”

  “Did he have a drug addiction?” Marlon laughed. “Yeah, you could say he had a drug addiction. You could say he’d snort anything small enough to fit in his nose, too.”

  “Cocaine?”

  “Cocaine, speed, glucose, heroin, oxy, ritalin, you name it, he snorted it.”

  “Glucose?” Jamie asked the question.

  “Yeah, straight sugar. He said it was good for a sugar rush.”

  “What were Mr. Brampton’s religious beliefs, if any?” Jack moved on down the line of questions without so much as skipping a beat.

  “We didn’t really talk religion,” Marlon said. “We were more interested in the nearest score.”

  “And did he score around the time of his death, as far as you’re aware?”

  “Not with me,” Marlon said. “He was into some new stuff.”

  “New stuff?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Marlon said, glancing around as if he might be overheard. “But Lee’s dead and I don’t owe anyone else my loyalty. There’s this guy. A chemist or something. Anyway, he has, like, I don’t know, a group I guess.
They call themselves Berserkers. And he gives them this drug and it makes them powerful. It’s like, LSD and meth and mushrooms all rolled up into one.”

  “Berserkers?”

  “Like those crazy Norse fuckers,” Marlon said. “The ones who used to go on rampages, fucking shit up.”

  “You have a name for this chemist?”

  “They call him Einstein. That’s all I know.”

  “And how do you get the drug? How did Lee get the drug?”

  “You have to be initiated. There’s a ceremony. You take the drug and then you do something… Lee never told me what the something was. Just told me he was going to get a new life. He hated trying to fit in. He hated trying to be normal. He wanted to feel like he was on the battlefield. Had all these ideas about being an eternal warrior…” Marlon broke off. “Lee was pretty fucking nuts at the end there.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a name? Someone Lee might have been in contact with?”

  “I don’t rat,” Marlon said.

  “Sure you don’t,” Jack agreed. “Just say a name and we’ll make sure you stay nice and not incriminated and not going back behind bars for a whole host of drug offenses.”

  “Blaze.” Marlon said the name without hesitation. “And I didn’t have anything to do with it, not that sick shit.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Jones,” Jack said, closing Marlon’s file. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  *****

  “So he’s going to get away with everything he just confessed to, right?” Jamie asked the question as they left the interview room.

  “I don’t care about some street level dealer. He gave us what we need,” Jack said, striding along. “That was the lead that breaks this case wide open.”

  Jamie followed after him, barely keeping pace without running. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re going to talk to Agent Mullaney. We’re going to set up a sting. Infiltrate this group.”

  Things happened fast from there. Jamie kept her mouth shut for the most part and trailed along as Jack briefed his colleagues about the information they had and what they planned to do. A sting operation was agreed upon. There was only one question. Who was going to go in undercover?

  “What about her?” Agent Mullaney, a mustachioed man with a gruff demeanor and a picture of his entire extended family on his desk, pointed at Jamie.

  “No,” Jack said firmly. “Jamie is a rookie. She is not going undercover on this.”

  “She’s perfect for it,” Mullaney said. “She’s a trained agent familiar with the case. We don’t have to waste time briefing someone else. Give her some acid washed jeans, grease up her hair and she’ll look like any street kid.”

  “Thanks,” Jamie said dryly.

  “Seriously,” Mullaney continued. “If this guy is recruiting, which he has to, seeing as his members keep dying, then he’ll be on the lookout for strays like her. She can use the informant’s information to get in with the group, and then she can get us a lead on the kingpin.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Jack refused flatly.

  Mullaney gave him a keen look. One that made Jamie’s heart sink. “Is she an FBI agent or your girlfriend?”

  The question shut Jack up for all of a minute. “They know who she is. Someone broke into her apartment, remember? Left a calling card?”

  “She’s not going to go in there looking like herself,” Mullaney replied. “We’ll get her a false nose, make-up for the teeth, clothes, etc.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jamie said, interrupting before there could be any more arguing, before she and Jack could be outted as more than case agent and rookie. “I’ll have a wire, right? If anything goes wrong, you’ll come get me.”

  “Sure we will,” Mullaney said. “Now let’s go and get these scumbags already.”

  *****

  Jamie didn’t recognize herself once they were done with her. A prosthetic rubber nose glued in place over her own changed her appearance significantly, as did thick layers of silicone based make-up in the form of sores and acne. Her teeth were painted yellow brown to match the kind of wear seen in junkies and she was dressed in clothing so worn and old that it had probably come off a body somewhere. She didn’t ask about that. She didn’t want to know.

  “Our contacts have put us in touch with a man who goes by the name of Blaze,” Mullaney briefed her in the van, which was parked down an alleyway in a not at all good area of town. “He thinks you’re a runaway looking for a good time. And he likes to show runaways a good time.”

  Jamie cringed inwardly, thankful for the fact she looked about as rundown as the neighborhood they found themselves in. Hopefully her appearance would save her from any untoward attentions.

  “Here,” Jack cut in, placing what looked and felt like a small piece of putty behind her ear. “This will act as a coms device. You’ll be able to hear me, and we’ll be able to hear you.”

  “If I can hear you, won’t other people be able to hear you too?”

  “There’s a small risk,” Jack acknowledged, “but we won’t talk much. Only when necessary. Remember, you say the safe word phrase and we get you out of there.”

  “Fuck off, fuckers,” Jamie said, grinning.

  Jack nodded. “That’s the one. Remember. This isn’t a drugs bust. You’re there to get information. As much as possible about where this stuff is coming from and who is supplying it.”

  “I remember,” Jamie assured him.

  “Okay, you’re ready to go,” Mullaney said. “We’ll drop you here, circle around and tail you. Good luck.”

  With that, Jamie stepped out into the cool, clear light of day. Or really, the dark, shadowy and fairly fetid air of a back alley. Her heart was beating about a million miles a minute as she walked towards the street, her shoulders slumped, feet dragging every now and then like a junkie down on her luck, yearning for a fix.

  Reaching the corner of the alley, she leaned against the wall and waited. The van was long gone in the opposite direction. She was on her own.

  It didn’t take long for her contact to show up. He was a tall, gangly man in a black death metal tee shirt and enough rings and piercings in his face to set off all the detectors from there to Albuquerque. He didn’t look evil, per se. He looked a little bit high and he smelled like personal hygiene took a back seat to the business of rolling in patchouli oil.

  He nodded at her. “You Jax?”

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping her nose on the back of her jean jacket sleeve. “You Blaze?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He looked her up and down, and to Jamie’s horror, seemed to like what he saw.

  “You got the stuff?”

  “Naw baby, it doesn’t work like that,” Blaze said. “This isn’t some street score. This is a lifestyle.”

  A lifestyle. Wow. They were really selling this shit. Jamie shrugged. “I heard it gets you pretty fucking high.”

  “High. Low. All around,” Blaze said. “It changes everything. Better than any crystal you ever smoked, sweetie.”

  Sweetie. The word sounded perverse falling from those chapped, metal plundered lips.

  “Well, hook me up,” Jamie said. She didn’t have to feign impatience. She wanted this shit over with. Blaze made her skin crawl. Something in his eyes, or rather, the absence of something in his eyes. He was looking at her like a lizard might look at a cricket

  “We’ll see if you’re worthy first. Come on.”

  They walked a few blocks to the old manufacturing district. There hadn’t been much in the way of production there in years and most of the old buildings were chained up, broken windows and broken doors occasionally boarded up, occasionally left to rot.

  “This is the temple,” Blaze said. They were stopped outside an old factory of some kind, beside a rusting metal door with a pentagram sprayed not at all inconspicuously across the surface. The same as had been under Mrs. Brampton’s chair. The same as had been in Jamie’s own bathroom. Seeing that asymmetrical, poorly painted symbol brought
it home to Jamie just how real it all was. She hoped like hell Jack really was not far behind.

  “Come in, initiate.”

  Blaze was laying it on thick as he pushed open the door and let Jamie inside. There wasn’t much light in there, what little there was came through dirty windows and was supplemented by dripping candles which had been placed over every available surface. It would almost have been romantic, if it weren’t for the faint whiff of human decay Jamie could taste in the back of her throat. Something or someone was dead.

  She couldn’t worry about dead people at that moment, because there were six live people sitting around on old couches. So that’s what happened to the couches people left out on the roadside, Jamie thought to herself. They were dragged into old factories and turned into makeshift beds for the high and the insane.

  “These are the Berserkers,” Blaze said. “These are the high priests.”

  “Emphasis on high,” one guy said. He had a shaved head, a safety pin through his nose and he was wearing a Just Say No tee shirt. An ironic drug addict.

  The others laughed at his joke, not with any real humor, with the pitchy whine of jackals who have just spotted their next meal.

  “You’re about to be initiated,” Blaze said, producing a baggie full of ominous looking red powder. “You’re about to take the sacrament.”

  Someone had been teaching him big words.

  “Where does this shit come from?” Jamie looked at it suspiciously. “Doesn’t look like nothing I seen before.”

  “Because it’s nothing you have seen before,” Blaze said, tapping a line of the stuff out onto the back of a purloined road sign. He handed her a dirty cylinder of cardboard. “Go on,” he said, his eyes lit up with a peculiar sort of intensity that was downright scary. “Have a sniff. That’s what you came here for, right? You came here to score? Well baby, you just scored.”

  Jamie was beginning to have severe doubts. “And what if I don’t want this nasty street shit? I wanna know where it comes from.”

  She heard the sound of more than one gun being cocked. “Then that makes you either a rat or a coward, and we don’t like rats or cowards.”