Chapter Four

 

RYAN

 

They were trying to sweat me. It would have been cute, if it wasn't so boring. It's not every day that you get to watch someone go through their entire playbook, step by step. It's certainly a new experience for me. But still—that cop thought he was going to scare me. Now they thought they were going to sweat me, and it would be cute—if it wasn't so boring.

They'll send someone in soon, I'm sure, a friend. Maybe it'll be that redhead. Finally, they'll offer me a plea deal, and all I have to do is sign a confession, plead guilty in a court of law, and report the names of… what is it now? Three or four people, I reckon.

That's how it always is with these cops. No vision. They want it quick and painless for everyone, and it doesn't much matter what all I confess to, I'll get two years tops, and then I'm back on my merry way.

I should've hired better guys. The kinds of guys who would see this shit coming. But it doesn't matter now. I'm already in this mess, and I just want to get back out of it in one piece.

The door opens, seemingly for the hundredth time. The man, too straight-laced to do anything to me. Then a light of hope, just for me—Oh, praise the Lord!

At least, that's what they want me to think. She's working with him, and I'd be a damned idiot to trust anything she says, but at least she's back in the room again with me.

I let my smile show as she walks in, carrying a couple plastic cups no doubt filled with water. When she puts one down on the table, I reach for it.

I already know the drill. They try to put the screws on me for a while, then they come back with a cup of coffee or a glass of water or whatever the fuck.

The nice guy comes in to tell me that they don't want anything to happen to me. The mean guy tells the nice one to stop being such a namby-pamby. Then they turn to you, and they want you to beg Mr. Nice Guy to save your bacon.

The woman picked up the cup before I could close my hands around it. I do my best imitation of not giving a shit. She takes a step back, now, and I can see in her expression that I read the situation wrong.

She's not the good cop. She's the bad cop in a world of bad cops. Well, it's nice to at least work with someone telling it like it is for a change.

"Beauchamp, we've got you nailed to the fucking wall."

Her voice is nice, as nice as her tits, and they're out of this world. She's got a bit of huskiness to it, like she might have done too much smoking or too much shouting or both.

"I'm sorry, Miss—"

"You shut your fucking mouth. You think we want to hear from you? Fuck you, you small-fry piece of shit."

I can't afford to get riled up over that kind of shit, but I'll be God damned if I'll let anyone talk about me like that. That goes double for doing it right in front of me. The fact that she's a woman isn't going to get her off.

Instead, the chains around my wrists are what get her off scot-free. I can feel the steel bracelets digging into my wrists.

"What the fuck do you want, then?"

"What we want is for you to know that we fucking own you." She set the cup down, a tiny reminder of how thirsty I was. "You can't do any God damn thing without us knowing about it. If we let you go, ever, it'll be because the United States of America decided to let you out, you slimy son of a bitch."

A snarl was already starting to form when she started saying it, and now I can feel my face, twisted in rage into a horrifying mask of fury. Even I can tell, though, that's exactly what she wanted.

She wants me angry, because there's not a thing I can do about it, no matter what I try. Well, I'm not going to let her get to me, not forever. I've got better things to do than let some bitch get my goat.

"Fine. You want to let me go, let me go. I promise I'll never do it again, massa—you kin' trust me!"

Nobody laughs, me least of all.

"Danny, get out of here."

The guy who's been trying to get a staring contest going, the one sitting on the other side of the table, looks over his shoulder for a minute. I guess that's his loss. You break eye contact, you lose, right?

"You got him?"

"Oh, I know exactly how to deal with this smug snake son of a bitch."

"Raven," I corrected her. It felt like the right moment to smart off.

"Shut the fuck up, you moron."

The guy across the table stands up, the sound of the chair scraping on the floor ringing between the concrete walls around us. "I'm not finished with you, Beauchamp. Not by a long shot."

He's already loosening his tie by the time the door presses open, and he's gone by the time the door slams shut behind. Out of my memory, like he was never even there.

Not, on the other hand, like this woman in front of me. She's got a hell of a lot more going on in my head. And besides that, it's clear that she's running the show. If I want to figure out what's up, then it's going to be talking to her.

She settles into the steel chair opposite me again. She's got to know what she's doing to me, the way her shirt is cut, the way she leans forward onto her elbows, propping her breasts up on the table so that they stay in sight.

The way she presses them together with her elbows, giving me a perfect shot of her cleavage. The smile that splits her face tells me all I need to know. Of course she knows what she's doing. She's doing it on purpose, after all.

"Ryan Beauchamp, born March twenty-first, nineteen-eighty five to one Martha Beauchamp. You grew up in Dayton, is that right?"

"Cut the bullshit, lady, who are you and what do you want?"

"Is that you, Ryan?"

"Say it is," I shrug. "What's it matter?"

"For my records, because you're not going to be around answering questions forever."

"No, I'm not. Eventually, one day, when you get done with your goddamn song and pony show, you're gonna tell me what you fuckin' want from me, and I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life, or I'm going to give it to you."

"And you want me to tell you what it is we want, exactly?"

"Damn right."

"Fine, if you say so." The woman leaned forward more, pressing herself up so I got a look down her blouse, a look I couldn't help noticing. "I want everything you know, and everything you're ever gonna know."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"You have a real dirty mouth, you know that, Beauchamp?"

"Don't like it? Wash my mouth out with soap."

"Is that how your mother did it?"

"You shut your mouth about my mother, how about that?"

"Oh, a sensitive subject, I see."

"Why don't you just tell me what the fuck you wanted?"

She took a deep breath, straightened back against her chair, and then she did.