“College?” Gabe asked.
“Don’t sound so damn surprised.” I pinched his nipple. “It’s downright insulting.”
“Ouch!” I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I felt the sheets moving as he rubbed his aching nipple. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. Damn!” He paused for a second and then asked, “What was your major?”
I prepared myself for his reaction. “Accounting.”
The bed shook from him laughing so hard. “What? Why?”
“It’s a story for another night,” I told him. There was no damn way I was telling him anything else that night. My pride had taken enough blows.
“Oh, come on.” The pout in Gabe’s voice eased the tension in my body.
“Not tonight, darling. I have a headache,” I said primly.
“Oh yeah?” Gabe took my words as a challenge.
I didn’t even bother pretending that I didn’t want to feel him inside of me. I opened my arms and my soul so that his goodness and light could fill me, banishing the remnants of my past until all I felt was him. It was quite some time later when Gabe collapsed beside me and pulled my sated body to him. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel the solid thumping of his heart beneath my hand. “You matter to me, Josh.”
Had I not already loved him then, I would’ve fallen so hard.
“THIS IS SOME CRAZYshit,” Adrian said the next morning at the station. “I just can’t get over the street value of those drugs.” He rubbed his hand over his face and exhaled a heavy breath. “We’ve never had a bust that size in this town, or even in Carter County.”
“I can’t believe we have no clue who put them in the locker,” I responded. “I find it awfully damn convenient the camera equipment isn’t working. How long do they think it’s been offline?”
“They’re not sure,” Adrian replied. “It’s hard for me to imagine the drugs have been in that locker for long. If I’m a drug dealer and I hand off a stash like that to a pusher I’m expecting the money to come rolling in right away.” Adrian shook his head in disgust. “You have a lot more experience with drug busts coming from a big city like Miami. What do you think?”
“It’s hard for me to believe a dealer is going to trust a high school kid with that kind of volume. We could be looking at a mule, but the same doubts apply.” In my experience, drug dealers only trusted teens to sell a little at a time. They had to turn in their cash before they could get more. Did that mean one of the adults in the school was involved? I had more questions than answer at that point.
Captain Reardon approached our desks with his long purposeful stride. “I hope you miraculously crack the case today. I have a family dinner tonight and I’ll never hear the end of it,” the captain said before he returned to his office. It was the first time he ever said anything about his personal life in front of me. It was a testament to how much the drug bust weighed on his mind.
Adrian and I grabbed another cup of coffee then headed to the school to conduct interviews with the staff and a few of the students who had lockers around the one where the drugs were found. I expected the morning to go by fast and to be rather dull; it turned out to be the exact opposite.
Our first stop was the principal’s office. It was like any other principal’s office I had visited during my misguided youth. Principal Rogers’ office had the same boring tile floor and nondescript wall coloring as I expected to find, but the person sitting behind her desk was a surprise.
“My name is Delaney Sampson and I’m the superintendent for the Blissville School District.” Her tone was very professional as was the handshake she offered before we settled down to business. Then shit got real. “I’ll be overseeing the interviews today due to Principal Rogers’ suspension.”
“Suspension?” Adrian asked. His confused tone of voice matched my thoughts.
Superintendent Sampson sat up taller, her posture looking so rigid she might break. “That’s what I said.” Her tone of voice was short, clipped, and as bitterly cold as the wind outside that day. I wondered if she was related to Deputy Dickhead when she first introduced herself. The arrogant look on her face that was identical to his negated my need to ask. Her demeanor told me that she didn’t like to be questioned or asked to repeat herself. Too damn bad.
“I think we both know that Detective Goode heard what you said. He wasn’t confused, he was questioning,” I told her. Slipping into the role of bad cop was so damn easy for me. I had no use for misplaced arrogance and stupidity. “What we want to know, and have the right to ask,” I added so that there wouldn’t be any confusion, “is why she was suspended. Don’t give me the standard lecture that investigations involving school district personnel are kept private either.”
“It’s to protect…”
“No, you’re not protectingher,” I said, interrupting the spiel she was about to give me. “What you’ve done is cast suspicion on her in the community and we’d,” I gestured between Adrian and myself, “like to know why.”
“It looks really bad for Mrs. Rogers,” Adrian added. “The largest cache of drugs in our county’s history is discovered and the principal is suspended the same day or the next.” He shook his head.
“I’m not really concerned about your approval,” she said icily. “The fact is that someone had access to our school building and tampered with our video equipment under her watch. I’m not saying she was involved, but she was careless.”
I disliked the woman immensely. I promised myself that it wasn’t personal and had nothing to do with Josh, but I wouldn’t have placed my hand on a bible and swore that it was the truth. “Couldn’t the same be said about you?”
“Well, I…” She stuttered and blustered like she’d never been challenged before meeting me.
“I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot.” Adrian held his hands up in the air, attempting to calm the situation. He was just as quick to fall into the role of good cop. “We asked, you answered. Let’s move on.” After receiving a barely perceptible nod from her, Adrian continued. “Let’s start with the students and then interview the staff who had access to the video equipment and master key to the lockers.”
The superintendent’s reply was a brittle, “Fine.” She looked at her list and rattled off the names of the two students on the list that Mrs. Rogers made. “Let’s start with Regan.”
