Seth (3 page)

“She’s doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Molly
begins. “She’s had way too much to drink. You gentlemen wouldn’t want to take
advantage of an inebriated woman would you now? Couldn’t be good for your
reputations…”

“Look lady,” The stocky biker begins. “If you’re the ones
with the camera just give it over and we’ll be on our way.”

The hot one reaches into his jeans and pulls out a money
clip with about fifteen one hundred dollar bills in it. He strips off four of them
and holds them out in front of me just out of my reach.

“We’d be happy to compensate you for the camera.” He
says.

And my eyes go bonkers. This guy just keeps getting
hotter by the second. He’s got this perfectly symmetrical model’s face framed
by longish scraggly, dirty blond hair and a closely trimmed goatee. When he
flashes me a smile I can see his perfect white teeth and a flash of tongue. I
really wanna get to know that tongue.

“Come on doll,” he drools. “Hand over the phone.”

Without even thinking I get myself in trouble. “Oh shit!”
I say. It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it and all three bikers are
staring at me.

Molly kicks me in the shin and I can’t help but hop
around in pain so Molly grabs my arm and pulls me to her side.

“Where is it?” Asks Mr. Handsome.

“What’s your name gorgeous?” I ask.

“My name’s Seth.” He replies. “What’s yours?”

“Kimberly An-”

“Way too much information.” Molly says, interrupting me
before I give away my name address, phone number, and spare key to my apartment.

“Well Kimberly…” Seth replies.

“I love the way your tongue…my tongue… I mean, my name
sounds in…in your m-mouth…”

“Kimmy.” Molly hisses at me. “Let’s go…”

Seth takes a step towards me and he actually reaches out
and grabs my purse by the thin strap. His brazen move suddenly pisses me off
and I yank it from his hands. I never would have been able to do that if the
strap hadn’t have broken, but it has and I lurch away from him tucking my purse
under my arm.

For a brief second anger flashes across Seth’s handsome
features then it’s gone again. It was so quick I’m not even sure I saw it. The
other two bikers begin to close in on either side of me and it’s just a matter
of time before they’re searching us and finding the camera now that they’re
sure I’m hiding it. I take another unsteady step back and take a deep breath,
planning on unleashing a crazy loud scream when sirens split the night air.
Thank god!

The three men react immediately. They start backing off
and turn to make their exit, but not before the stocky one says his piece.

“We know you’re the one filming that little incident in
there. You know where we hang out; you know where our clubhouse is. That camera
better find its way in our hands by Monday morning or we’re coming after you.
You got that missy?”

I open my mouth to protest his threat, but Molly actually
puts her hand over my mouth forestalling any more damning comments from me.

“If we happen to come across it you can be assured it’ll
find its way to you.” She says.

Then my dream man and his two not so dreamy brothers
retreat to their bikes and make good their own escape. We climb into Molly’s
Honda CRV and take off, and as we’re making our way to my apartment I have this
nagging feeling about tonight. Something’s bugging me but in my alcoholic haze
I can’t quite put my finger on what’s bugging me. We ride in silence for the
twenty minutes it takes to get me safely to my front porch. Molly says her
goodbyes and takes off to her own home. I glance at the clock in the hall on
the way back to my bedroom. It’s nearly one in the morning. I am so tired that
the second I see my bed I just flop down on the down bedspread and am asleep the
moment my head hits my pillow and immediately I slip into a dream and when that
outlaw biker’s handsome face hovers above mine I have no escape.

“How’d you get in here?” I ask.

“It’s a dream darlin’ I can come and go anywhere as long
as I have your invitation.”

“I didn’t invite you into my room.”

“Of course you did. You haven’t been able to get me out
of your mind ever since you saw me.”

“And that gives you the right to just enter my dream?”

“I only come when and where I’m invited darlin’.

“Well I’m going to disinvite you then.” I threaten.

“Your certainly free to try.”

Some people have the ability to change their dreams and
lead them where they like. I am not one of those people.

“I’m still here.” He reminds me.

“Shut up!”

He complies. Then I do the unexpected and give him a
kiss. I meant it to be a quick chaste kiss. Like a goodbye kiss before shooing
him out of my dream but once our lips make contact I’m captive to my own
fantasy.

Almost immediately our lips part and give way to tongues.
As our oral entanglement increases in it’s sweet intensity I feel a hand slip
under the hem of my gown. I catch my breath as my skin reacts to his electric
touch. I almost can’t breathe as I anticipate his powerful hand on my nether
regions.

“You can’t do that.” I breathe into his open mouth.

“Stop me.” He exhales.

I can’t. I’ve dipped my tongue into forbidden waters and
it’s so unbearably sweet I cannot help but drink.

Strong hands slip around my waist, then slide down my
delicate skin to my ass, pausing an instant before pulling me into his inflamed
organ. There’s nothing subtle about his desires and he just takes what he wants
and since I apparently have given him my dream state blessing I can do nothing
to prevent the inevitable. His weight on my tiny frame mashes my breasts
against his smooth muscular chest and his narrow hips force my legs apart. He
enters me and stretches me with his fullness and alarms go off in my brain. I’m
cheating on my cop boyfriend with an outlaw biker. The sound of my guilt is
like a claxon in my brain and as suddenly as it began it’s over and I’m awake
reaching for my bedside alarm clock. It’s just past nine in the morning and the
bright sunlight is streaming into my room right into my eyes.

I cover my head with my other pillow and try to force
myself into a deeper sleep. I almost succeed until a single thought from last
night busts into my consciousness. My car! The police will run my plates and
that of anyone else’s there and they’ll come find me for questioning about last
night’s savage assault on the faux biker. By then they will have heard the
rumors of someone videoing the attack and they’ll be asking why I filmed the
whole event without taking time to call the police. Won’t that make me an
accessory to the crime? I’m no lawyer but this can’t be good. I should probably
delete the footage, but I still have this crazy thought in my head about a
story about the bikers who endorsed the guy who killed the Crusher then go to a
local bar and viciously attack a fellow patron. There’s a story there and it’s
gonna make my career. The more I think about it the better I feel. Isn’t there
a protection in place that prevents writers and journalists from having to give
up their source? My camera is my source and I shouldn’t have to turn it over to
the police. I really need to contact www.inthecage.com’s print magazine and
tell them I have an amazing story for them. Now I just have to write it

I’ll decide what to do later. In the meantime I think
I’ll go to Starbucks and sit and drink coffee and read my emails. I’m surprised
I don’t have a hangover after all I drank last night. I have a mild headache
and that’s about it. It’s a good thing too because tonight I have a date with
Sergeant Marc Moran, a deputy with the Solano County Sheriff’s Department. Our
first date was pretty spectacular as far as first dates with me tend to go. I
would never have consented to date a person in law enforcement, but Molly has
known him for several years and set me up on a blind date with him. It wasn’t
until an hour into the date that we got to the usual, what do you do for a
living stuff and he came out and said he was a sheriff. By then I was already
pretty attracted to him and I was willing to let it slide. There is something
to be said for a man in uniform; whether it’s the military, police, or my
personal favorite, a fireman. Marc is not super tall. He’s about five ten and
well-built but not bulging. He holds a black belt in some form of Jujitsu I
believe and has had many occasions to use what he has learned. He’s super clean
cut with very short black hair and a clean shaven face. His mother was from
Mexico and his father is your typical educated Caucasian male born and raised
in Arizona amongst a very large Hispanic population.

Dating Marc totally caught me off guard. He doesn’t walk
around like he’s god or something and he doesn’t go around exercising his
authority or is on any type of power trip like a lot of cops. Makes me wonder
how a nice guy like him actually got to become a Sheriff’s Deputy.

Six months later and we’re a couple. We didn’t become
exclusive until we had dated for maybe three months, then it just seemed like
the most natural thing in the world to commit to each other. Being a cop’s
girlfriend has been nice. All the guys at the station seem to be really good
guys and we all get along. Before I met Marc though, I had issues with cops in
general and it went like this.

My father did eight years on a minor charge that got
turned into serious time for resisting arrest and battery. My father is not an
aggressive person, but when the arresting officer took offense to a remark made
by my father and went ballistic; my dad just reacted in self-defense and put
the guy to the ground. About the time the cop went down, back up had arrived
and Tasered my father several times then arrested him. The DA tried to get him
for attempted murder despite the fact that when the cop went down my dad backed
off, but that didn’t matter to the cops. My parents stayed together for the
first three years he was in lock up but it got to be too much for my mom and
when a stable man asked her out she said yes. One year later they got married
and now I have a step dad who is a jailer at Clark County Jails; not the same
place my father did time but it was a huge slap in the face for dad. Here he
was unjustly imprisoned, and then his wife goes and dumps him for a cop. It
goes without saying that I haven’t spoken to my mom in something like 10 years
and my dad died six years ago of a heart attack. My little brother sided with
my mom and me with my dad so that pretty much wrecked our relationship.

For a while I thought Caleb would follow in his step
dad’s footsteps and become a cop but he got interested in computers and video
games and that was the end of his law enforcement aspirations. I went to school
to get a fire science degree with the hopes of becoming a firefighter and it
worked. I was halfway into my degree with I got hired on with WFD (Watsonville
Fire Department) and eventually became certified. I spent three glorious years
as one of the only two female firefighters in the department before I was
injured in a warehouse fire and broke my back in two places. It was a long slow
painful recovery but I was never able to get reinstated as a firefighter. Since
then I have been working part time as a 911 dispatch operator. I like it, but
at times it’s hard when I dispatch my old unit to a fire and I can’t come
along. Oh well…I knew the risks when I was hired and I really don’t regret it.
I had some wonderful experiences as a firefighter that I wouldn’t trade for the
world.

As I’m sitting at Starbucks sipping hot coffee I can’t
help but wonder what my brother would think if he found out that I am dating a
cop. It’s not my fault that he has chosen to ally himself with the wrong side
of the law. It pisses me off. Before my dad was thrown in jail, Caleb and I
were close. I basically have lost my entire family. I’m just about ready to get
up and leave when Marc actually walks in. He’s in full uniform and is obviously
on duty. He doesn’t see me right away and goes up to the counter to order
coffee. He can’t miss me going out so I am going to have to talk to him. Not
that it’s such a bad thing…but I don’t have makeup on and am wearing a
well-worn pair of sweats.

I pretend not to notice him when he approaches with
coffee in hand. When he finally addresses me I make a big show of being totally
surprised.

“Oh my god Marc, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I don’t often come here. It’s not my area but I had to
meet up with another officer and go over a call we both responded to. So what
are you up to this morning?” He asks.

“Nothing much.” I reply. “I just got up and decided I was
too lazy to go to Safeway to get beans to roast at home so I came here instead.
I don’t go here much either. You can sit down if you like.”

Marc hovering over me like this makes me even more
nervous.

“Thanks. I can’t stay long but I can chat for a minute.
We still on for tonight at 7:45?”

“That’s right.”

“Great. I was beginning to second guess myself. Hey… you
ever go to that new bar on Ocean Street?”

He can’t bring himself to say the name. Especially since
the sign has a pig riding Harley on it and the pig is dressed up in a cop
uniform.

“Yeah I go there…Molly likes it.”

“You know anything about the incident where those two
bikers attacked and tried to kill a patron for no reason?”

“No reason? Your kid-” I stop myself. I just gave away
that I may have been there or know something about it. Maybe he didn’t notice.

“You were there with Molly weren’t you?” He asks, keeping
his tone friendly.

“Uh yeah, for a minute, why?”

“Evidently someone caught the whole thing on camera, but
they won’t come forward. At least that’s the word on the street. You see anyone
with their camera out taking pictures or recording anything?”

I hate lying, but I’m not ready to turn myself in either.
Trouble is, the longer I wait, the guiltier I seem. If I turn it in now I may get
in trouble for hindering their investigation. I wonder if I can go to an
internet café and upload the video there and then send an anonymous email with
the video attached.

“I was there, yeah but it was pretty quiet for a Saturday
night, especially after the fights. I heard it got pretty heated up after we
left. What happened?”

“The fights?”

“The MMA cage fights at Arco Arena.”

“Of course, I heard about them. The last fight got
cancelled because some guy got beat to death I think.”

“That’s right.”

“So after the fight was stopped you went to the bar on
Ocean to relax and unwind a little?”

“Molly and I actually.”

Just then my phone rings and without thinking I fish it
out of my purse and look to see who’s calling - it’s Molly. I decide to ignore
it. I’m about to put it back in my purse when Marc asks to see it.

“Nice phone. Is that the new HTC from AT&T?”

“Yup.”

I stow it back in my purse.

“You know I’ve got this same phone I’ve been using since
I don’t know, a couple years ago and I dropped it last week and cracked the
screen. I heard the HTC is pretty cool, mind if I check yours out?”

Fuck! How can I refuse without seeming impolite or even
worse, like I’m trying to hide something? He knows I was in there last night
because I’m sure he ran my car through the police database. I’m also pretty
sure he thinks I was the one who shot the video. Why else the sudden interest
in my phone? I’m pretty sure he uses a department issued phone. My heart is
pounding in my chest and I have to fight to keep a smile on my face. He has to
know something is wrong. He’s a cop. He has to be good at reading people.

I set my phone on the table and slide it across to him.
If I’d have tried to hand it across the table to him I surely would have
dropped it from my shaking hands. He picks it up and pretends to admire the
aesthetics of it but I can tell he’s really not interested in how it looks. He
turns it on and makes several comments about the screen resolution, size, and
processing speed.

“This is amazing!” He says.

Then we get to the meat of the matter.

“This thing have a forward and rear facing camera?” He
asks.

I nod, not daring myself to speak. I’m sure my voice will
shake as badly as my innards right now.

“Smile.” He says and captures my most awkward smile ever.
“Beautiful resolution. I bet you lose a lot when you’re videoing, am I right?”

I somehow both shake my head and nod.

“Oh there’s the video camera right there. Looks like you
take a lot of videos don’t you.”

I nod.

“Hey this looks like-” He stops as his radio crackles to
life.

“3502 please respond to 3435 Acacia Drive for possible
5150. Female caller states that her ex-husband…”

And the rest of it just goes in one ear and out the
other. All I can think is that I just narrowly escaped being caught red-handed.
I seriously have to do something about that video.

“I am so sorry.” Marc apologizes as he gets up from the
table. 7:45 tonight?” He asks.

I nod again as he smiles and hurries out. I can’t believe
how close I just came to getting caught. I have to figure out how to connect
this to my computer and download the video to it. I tried to email the video
but the file was so big it refused to mail it. I’m sure my brother would have
learned how but I can’t just up and call him. Besides, I’m sure he’d delete it
to protect his new brothers.

If there’s one thing I don’t like about Marc it’s that
he’s a cop. Trouble is that is also why I respect him so damn much. I think if
he wasn’t a cop the attraction just wouldn’t be there so strong. It’s not that
I worry that he’ll get shot or something. It’s that I hate when he acts like a
cop with me. Like during coffee when he treats me like a suspect at the station
where he wants a piece of information but instead of just outright asking me if
I was there during the incident at the bar and did I take the video. Oh no, he
has to circle around the subject collecting information and waiting to see if
you’re going to implicate yourself or not. He did this one time when he thought
I was lying when I said I didn’t feel well and cancelled on a date. He had
actually stopped by my apartment to bring me some hot soup and when I didn’t
answer the door he thought I was out with friends or something. Instead of just
coming out and asking why I didn’t answer my door he goes on this investigation
that takes a half hour before he finally lets me know what the hell he is
trying to ask me. We had been going out steadily for maybe two months at the
time and I just about put an end to our budding relationship. But I let it
slide because he has to think that way for his job and thinking like a cop is
what keeps him alive; plus he wants to be a detective one day so he’s always
going to have this mind set. After that he hasn’t done it again except for a
little today and he’d better not bring it up tonight or he’s going to get an
ear full.