Confessions Of An Old Lady (16 page)

Chapter 30

“Agent Rockford…what could
possibly
be so important that you felt the need to call me at
four o’clock in the fucking morning
? Please at least tell me you found Sonny Jackson.”

“Um, well, sort of. That’s what I’m calling about, Renley.” I paused. He probably thought it was for dramatic effect, but really it was because I couldn’t make the rest of the words come out of my mouth.

“Well, great. You found him. Now, call me in the morning and tell me all about it. I’m going back to sleep.”

Before he could hang up, I quickly shouted “Wait!”

“Oh my God. What is it, Rockford? What can’t possibly wait three more hours?” Now he sounded pissed. This was going worse than I had imagined.

“I’m not coming back.” There. I just spat it right out there. Just like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Silence. No response.

“Renley? Are you there? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, of course I heard you.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything. Don’t you even want to ask me why?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know why. I’m not stupid, Rockford. It’s me you’re talking to here. Don’t you remember, not less than four days ago, I was about to pull you from this assignment, because you’d fallen in love with Sonny Jackson? I let you convince me that it was nothing more than a school girl crush. How stupid of me. But that’s my own fault for believing you. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

This time I was the one who didn’t respond.

“Well, of course it is, Olivia. What the fuck are you thinking? And what do you mean by you’re
not coming back
? Kingston’s going to be pissed, but you’re a tough girl. You can explain it to him. If you do it just right, you might not lose your job. But I’d expect a transfer to Alaska, at the very least.”

“I mean that I’m leaving the DEA. You guys would have fired me anyway, once you found out that I…I…well, I warned Sonny about the raid.”

“You did
what
? How could you do that?
Why
would you do that? You compromised an entire mission just so you could—”

I interrupted him. Now I felt I should defend myself, despite my prior lack of judgment. “I didn’t exactly
warn
him so much as I convinced him to stay home. I didn’t give him any intel or inside information. I just couldn’t send him in there to be arrested, or worse, killed. He’s not the bad guy that we thought, Renley. Really. He’s really a great guy once you get to know him. He’s gentle and kind, and—”

“And you think he loves you too, don’t you?” he shouted back at me.

“He does love me. I believe him, Renley. I just couldn’t allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison, when it would have been my fault for setting him up. I just couldn’t do that to him. Not to mention the fact that you guys killed at least two of our…I mean, his men. Sonny would have wound up with a bullet in his chest if I didn’t convince him to stay home!”

“Agent Rockford…not only did you compromise a mission, you put your fellow agents in jeopardy as well as the Agency’s reputation—all for what? A roll in the hay with a bad-boy biker? Well, let me tell you about that man you say you love, Rockford. He’s a hardened criminal. He’s suspected of killing a rival gang member a few years ago. He’s suspected of buying, selling, and distributing hardcore drugs, as well as weapons. Now, tell me, Rockford, is that someone you really feel like throwing your entire career away for?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t find the right words. Plus, it was clear that Renley wouldn’t understand anything I said anyway.

“Answer me, goddamnit!”

I jumped so high in the air at the sound of Renley’s shouting that my head nearly hit the roof of the car. Sonny must have heard him yelling, because he looked as if he would pummel Renley if he was anywhere within his reach. I placed my hand on Sonny’s shoulder and shook my head side to side—my way of telling him to calm down.

“I know about all that, Renley.” I hadn’t known about the rival gang member, but I would ask Sonny about that later. “But he’s a victim of his environment. It’s all he knew growing up with a father like Leroy Jackson. All he’s done his whole life is try to survive one day to the next. Has he done things that aren’t exactly legal? Well, yes. But he’s a truly good and honest person. He’s treated me with nothing but respect and love and you should see the way he is with his friends and family. No one loves more deeply than Sonny Jackson.”

“I’ve heard enough, Rockford. You’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it. You know I have to tell Kingston immediately, don’t you? What do you think he’s going to say when you come in here Monday and try to explain to him—”

“I’m not going to be there, Renley,” I said, interrupting him mid-sentence.

“You’re what? Where are you going to be exactly? Or do I not want to know?” he asked sharply.

“I can’t tell you. Plausible deniability, and all that.” I smiled even though I knew Renley wouldn’t be smiling.

“Fuck plausible deniability. Tell me where you’re going,” he commanded in a tone that brooked no argument.

“I can’t do that, Renley. The Monsters of Mayhem are trying to kill Sonny and me both. We have to get away from here, and fast. So we’re leaving in a couple of hours for an undisclosed location…at least for a couple of weeks. Once we’ve had a chance to sort out our thoughts and come up with a plan, we’ll come back and I’ll talk to you then, okay?”

“Olivia Rockford, don’t you hang up this phone!” Boy, did he sound like my father in that moment! “You know we’ll be able to trace you, don’t you? You haven’t already forgotten how to be an agent, have you?”

“Well, that’s fine. But I’ve done nothing illegal and neither has Sonny. Arlington won’t approve you traipsing off to…wherever…just to come find me and yell at me some more about my life decisions. I’ll be back, I promise. Tell Beauford and Kingston I’m sorry.”

With that, I clicked
end
on the phone before Renley could lecture me anymore. I had done what I needed to do, although it wasn’t done lightly. I knew I had just given up a career that had become a big part of my life. Even though I knew I was making the right decision, I folded over and broke down into soft sobs. Sonny gently placed his hand on my back and rubbed it in small circles.

“You did the right thing. You didn’t want them to fire you, right? You had to quit before they could do that. Now it’s me who’s sorry that you’re in this position. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still have the career you loved so much and you wouldn’t be on the run for your life.”

I sat back upright and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. I had remembered what my mother told me when I was little:
When you’re feeling sad, have a good cry for ten minutes and then move on with your life
.

“No, Sonny. It was my choice. And I made the right one. It’s just hard to believe I’ll never be an agent again. With what I’ve done, they would never have me back and now it’s just a little scary to think that I might spend my life waiting tables or flipping burgers, that’s all.”

“No, you’ll find something else that you love, I promise. Plus, you have me.” I looked over at him and he was flashing his goofy grin that I loved so much. It made my tears turn to laughter. I took in a deep breath and let it out. I had done the hard part and now all that was left was for us to make it to the airport and to get on that airplane safely.

***

I must have dozed off for quite a while, because Sonny tapped my leg lightly and I was startled awake. It took me a couple of seconds to realize where I was.

“Sorry to wake you. We’re almost there,” he said, pointing out the front windshield. I looked out and saw the airport straight ahead of us. There were planes flying low above us as they either arrived or departed the tarmac. I felt a sudden rush of relief wash over me. We had made it. Within just a couple of hours, we’d be on one of those airplanes, ascending into the sky on our way to beautiful Valencia.

We returned the rental car to the Hertz return desk inside the airport and made our way to the ticket booth. I had booked us flights on the internet using e-tickets, so we didn’t have physical tickets in our hands and had to check in at the kiosk set up at the United Airlines station. After tapping the screen a million times, it seemed, our tickets were finally printed and we had them in our hands. Almost there.

The line for security wasn’t
that
bad, considering we were on a red-eye flight to, of all places, O’Hare Airport, where we would change planes and get on a Delta Airlines flight straight to Spain. We both took off our shoes, but I wished I’d have thought about having to do that and not worn my big clunky boots with all the lacing and unlacing I had to do. Sonny’s boots slipped on and off without laces, so he made it through faster than I did.

But, most likely because of his appearance, Sonny was “randomly” selected for a pat-down, while I got to go through the full-body x-ray and was told I was “good to go.” I stood there, trying not to giggle as Sonny held his arms out to his sides and looked like he could murder somebody as the TSA agent gently patted him down from head to toe. I knew he was humiliated. I couldn’t help but enjoy myself just a bit, though.

When Sonny’s humiliation was finally over, he put his boots back on and we headed for our terminal, 13B. We had some time to kill, so we went to the Starbucks and ordered my favorite—a double-tall caramel macchiato, with whip—to help me wake up. I remembered that Sonny didn’t drink coffee, so he just ordered an Awake Tea and a slice of banana bread, which we intended to share.

Amazingly, we found a small table over in the corner of the store, where we both could sit. We sat there, slowly sipping our respective delicious drinks and chatting as if we were just your average couple, headed for a destination wedding or a honeymoon. I felt certain that, despite Sonny’s rough exterior, we blended in quite well.

As we chatted, I noticed Sonny was paying less and less attention to what I was saying. He seemed to be distracted all of a sudden and looking off at something behind my head. I snapped my fingers in front of his face.

“Sonny! Earth to Sonny! Did you hear me?” I had been talking about the beaches I wanted to visit along the Balearic Sea while we were in Spain.

“Don’t turn around,” he said, barely moving his lips. “I mean it,
do not
turn around. But I think there’s someone watching us.”

Of course, what did I do? I turned around. Sonny kicked the tip of my boot with the tip of his under the table.

“I said don’t look!” He was whisper-shouting at me when I turned back to face him.

Since my glance behind me was so brief, I wasn’t able to see anything, really, other than a bunch of travelers walking hurriedly down the walkway toward their destinations.

Sonny leaned in closer to me across the table and whispered, “There’s a man sitting over to your left, behind you, at terminal 12A. He’s just sitting there reading the paper, but I’ve been watching him for the past five minutes and he’s never once turned the page of that paper. No one reads the same page of the paper for that long. He’s watching us.”

My heart rate began racing immediately. I knew in my gut that he was probably right. The odds of us fleeing from both a criminal motorcycle gang
and
the federal government and not being followed were slim-to-none. But a girl could hope, or at least that’s what I’d thought. The question was, however, who was watching us? Was it one of Eddy Walters’s men? Or could it be someone from the federal government watching us? But I’d booked my tickets online, which would have been easy for any agent to quickly look up. And did they really care where we were going? Or did whoever this man was already know where we were headed and was he going to get on the same flight as us? Follow us all the way to Spain? I felt nauseous and it wasn’t just my pre-flight jitters—although I’d flown many times, I’d never been on a plane across the ocean before.

“Whatever you do, don’t let on that we know he’s there. Act casual, if you can. Surely you learned how to be stealthy in your agent training, right?”

I nodded my head. Sure, I’d been trained on how to blend in, how not to be discovered, but the fact of the matter was we’d
already
been discovered by this mysterious man, whoever he was working for. All I could do in that moment was pray he wasn’t one of the Monsters.

“What do we do?” I asked him in barely a whisper.

“There’s nothing we can do. If he’s a fed, he’s probably just wanting to figure out which airplane we get on and where we’re going, just so he can report back to your boss, or whoever wants to know. If he’s one of Eddy’s men…what’s he going to do? Shoot us right here in the airport? He’s made it past security already. He must have bought a bogus ticket, just so he could get past them and follow us. Same thing as with the feds, he’ll probably follow us to our gate and just see where we’re heading. Just play it cool, as if we never noticed him. He can’t hurt us, whoever he is.”