In Too Deep, Book 3, Epilogue 1

 [image: VitalikRadko]

It's done! Sort of done, anyway. I definitely want to write one more fun, totally gratuitous, very smutty epilogue, but this is the proper ending to a book that's been years in the making. Thanks again to everyone here who's helped me get it across the finish line. It's a real testament to your passion that even one missed day stirs up so much!

I'll work on a final epilogue (hence why this one is epilogue 1) although it may be reserved just for this audience, fan service to you all. So let me know what you'd like to see in the comments below.

Chapter 37: Loose Ends

I could only hear the seagulls through my left ear. My right was still ringing, even after three days, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get my hearing back. Still, I was alive and for the first time, felt like I could move on.

I looked out past the beach, out at the blue water of the ocean. It was clear today, nothing but blue skies all the way to the distant horizon. I sucked in air, tasting the salty ocean breeze, smelling the brine of the water. Closing my eyes, I could feel the sun on my face. I couldn’t help smiling.

“David…” Her voice sounded like it was coming up through water. “David.” Or a dream. 

“There you are, David.” She spoke into my good ear, and like that, I snapped to. 

“Oh, hey.”

Amanda looked like a new person. She actually wore a pant-suit today, her dark blue blazer cinched at her waist by a single, golden button. Beneath, her collared shirt was crisp white, unbuttoned enough to hint at cleavage in a way that she never would have in the past. Her hair was twisted up in a bun.

“Hey, back,” she said, snuggling up behind me and nuzzling my neck.

The FBI had moved us out of our apartment, into a safehouse way up the coast, far from the hustle of LA. Far from all the noise.

And there was a lot of noise. LA was a shitshow, and the news didn’t even know the full extent of it. Nikolai Kozlov had been taken into custody by the FBI. The evidence against him was immense. His network had been so conveniently gathered into one place by Bradley Hirsch, and while they weren’t all murdered, they were now also in custody.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“I’m tired of debriefing. Talking to all the suits.”

I turned, leaning against the balcony and pulling her close to me. I ran a hand up the lapel of her blazer. “Don’t judge me, but I’m liking you in a suit.”

“Mmm, or me getting out of my suit?”

“That, too.” I pulled her in for a kiss, warm and familiar—yet still not totally familiar. “So tell me what you learned? There’s still so little news that I can believe.”

“And that’s by design,” she said. “After a spectacular shootout aboard a fancy yacht, we got the bad guys. There were casualties.”

“One of which was the Regional Deputy Director of the LA office of the FBI, shot by his own agent. Don’t tell me that they’re going to exonerate him post-mortem or something.”

“Oh, no,” Amanda said with a laugh. “No, he’s taking the fall. This one’s too big to cover up.”

I went a little cold at the implications. “And what about you?”

“Me? I’m nobody. Just a peon in the machine. That’s the company line, anyway. That’s the case for all of us in his little rogue operation.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes, even Julia.”

“What about that guy who tried to kill Kozlov?”

“Aguilar? He’s being reassigned to North Dakota, pretty sure. Something like that. Desk job for life.”

“And us? A desk job for life will be a very slow and painful death for you.”

“Yeah…” Amanda said, her expression pensive. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“About… us?” A bubble of worry throbbed through me. I wondered if that would always be there. We’d come a long way since I realized that she was working at the Gold Club—and having sex while she was—but some things were still raw. That kind of thing took time to heal.

Amanda seemed to realize where my head was going. “What? No, honey, not like that.” She didn’t make excuses or try to invalidate my feelings. She’d even suggested counseling to help us move together into the future. I appreciated the effort. “I… I think I’m going to quit my job.”

“Quit? But this has been what you’ve been working towards your whole life. You… sacrificed so much. You…”

“I went to a dark place because I thought it was what I had to do to get the bad guys,” she completed.

“And you got them.”

“I did.”

“Jazz is off the streets.”

“It is,” she agreed, then qualified it, as she always did: “For now, anyway.”

“You even took down a rogue cell within the FBI.”

“Bonus points for me.” She was suffused with quietly sarcastic exuberance. “Yay,” she whispered. “But also, I lost my way. I almost lost you. I’m not doing that again.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I was thinking of dancing.” When my eyes went wide, she laughed. “Kidding, kidding.”

“I have a feeling you’d be pretty good at it.” I pulled her into my arms. “You don’t have to do this for me, you know.”

“And I’m not.” She ran her hands up my chest, fixing her blue eyes on me. “I promise you, I’m not going to wake up some day and have regrets. These past few months, they’ve been an awakening, in a sense. I know that sometimes the price paid is too much. Even for justice.”

“Hanging up your spurs?”

The sun had begun to set, turning all that azure blue into a deep, endless orange. She smiled. “Ride into the sunset with me?”

“Is that a euphemism?”

Amanda cracked up. “Can be.” She took my hand and dragged me towards the house. “Come on, let’s make it one.”

***

I traced my hand along Amanda’s lower back. Her skin was still damp from our vigorous “ride into the sunset.” It was dark outside now, and while we needed to get up and get something to eat, we both were content to just lie in bed naked together.

“So this’ll start fading in a few weeks?” I asked, my fingers following the swirls of Amanda’s fake raven tattoo.

“I think so. I’ve never let it go that long.”

“You should have it inked permanently.” Even I was shocked by the words that came out of my mouth. Amanda rolled onto her side to stare up at me, eyes wide.

“What?”

“She’s a part of you now. The raven. It would be almost wrong to say goodbye.”

“A part of me, but she isn’t actually me.”

I ran my eyes over her naked body. “What about something more subtle then. Like raven wings on your shoulder blades.”

We cracked up together. “I’m not sure you know what ‘subtle’ actually means.” As our laughter faded, though, she was thoughtful. “I’ll think about it. I don’t hate the idea…”

We rearranged ourselves, the cover half-on, half-off. The door to the beach was still open, and I could hear the surf outside despite the ringing in my ear. “What happened on the boat, leading up to Friday night? You were with Kozlov… with Nick… for a few days.”

“Yeah. On that big, beautiful boat of his.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t just play Scrabble and get caught up on Castaway.”

“How did you know? I still can’t believe Chelsea didn’t win.” She was nervous, and that made me nervous. But also so turned on. I wondered if I would be able to give up this life on the edge.

“It’s okay, Amanda. You can tell me.”

“We fucked. We… we made up for some lost time. We couldn’t leave the boat, so there wasn’t a whole lot to do, other than do… it.”

My hair felt like it was on fire. “And you liked it?”

“I didn’t hate it.”

“You liked it,” I insisted. No more dithering.

“I did. He… he made me put on that collar you saw me wearing the last night. He made me wear it the whole time. Sometimes, I was naked. Sometimes, I was out on the yacht’s deck in a bikini. But the collar was always on.”

I was hard now. The more she spoke, the more I swelled. “What did he make you do?”

“As his confidence grew, he started to bring people over. Irina was one of the first.”

“She was in on it?”

“No, but she was a loyal employee at the Gold Club and I guess they had that Russian bond thing. He tied me up and made her edge me all night long. By the time they finally let me come, I would have done anything.”

“Did you?”

“Well… kind of.”

“Who?”

Amanda pushed me onto my back and mounted me. She wasn’t at all surprised that I was erect. “Couple financiers that… Kozlov knew.”

“You still want to call him Nick.”

“Habit. I don’t have feelings for him.”

“I know.” I did know. She hadn’t rushed to check on him when she’d come down into the engine room. She hadn’t gone to see him in prison. I knew that she didn’t have feelings for him, but what I wondered was how she felt about the world that he gave her access to, and the woman that he unlocked. “So financiers?”

“I… ‘knew’ one already, and got to know the other pretty intimately, too. Remember how Julia was tied up to the bed in the end? I tested those bonds out first.”

“Wish I saw that.”

“Maybe we can try it again. I didn’t think I’d like being restrained, but there was something freeing about giving up control.” She rode me faster, as if demonstrating that while she sometimes liked giving up control, she wasn’t about to make it a regular thing.

“They took turns using me.” She rocked her hips faster, eyes glazing as she relived the moment. Then they stopped taking turns and did me together. They strapped a ball gag on me when they DPed me.” She fucked me harder.

“Still tied to the bed?”

“Yes. It was fucking crazy.” She moaned. “Fuck, fuck…”

“And then did you come?”

“Only when Nick climbed over my face and rammed his dick down my throat. He told me that I couldn’t. He told me that he’d punish me if I did. But I couldn’t… uhhh… couldn’t hold back any… any longer.”

“Don’t hold back, Amanda,” I said, hands on her hips, helping her bounce.

I joined with her, thoughts of her airtight tryst blazing behind my eyes. She knew how my mind worked now, and how much the idea of her being bad haunted and excited me.

Amanda collapsed next to me. This time, I was truly spent. “What happened to the financiers?”

“Indicted. Money laundering charges mostly, tied to the flow of jazz money.”

That reminded me about something. “I watched your very first encounter with him,” It was funny how I still hadn’t told her about that. “You in his office. He made you do coke.”

“He liked making me do drugs. It was one of his fetishes.”

“And do you?”

I appreciated that she didn’t immediately tell me no. “It was a part of the experience,” she said slowly. “I can see why people lose their lives to it. The rush, the euphoria, feeling untouchable. It’s seductive, and so scary how easily you can get sucked in. Jazz was particularly insidious, especially the latest version of it. But I never took it home with me, and I only ever did any of it when I absolutely had to. Like I said before, I picked up a few tricks to minimize it, but it wasn’t always possible.”

“How about Friday night at the party? I saw Irina pass you that pill.”

“Yeah, I didn’t swallow that. Another thing I’ve gotten good at are things that involve my tongue.” The joke broke the tension, but Amanda wasn’t going to let it go. “I’m going into rehab later this week, and I’m taking it seriously, David. I’m familiar enough with the industry to know that some things can’t be done on their own.”

“And you don’t have to.” I pulled her close and kissed her. “You’re never on your own, okay?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the bombs. I found them when I was snooping around early Friday morning. I nearly aborted the whole thing before Julia informed me that the triggering devices were fakes. Nice job bringing her in, by the way. I hate to say it, but I don’t think we could have done it without her.”

“It’s funny how terrifying an abused dog can be when it slips the leash.”

“Hirsch was setting her up to take the fall, should things go south. She was his contingency plan. It’s making things pretty fucking hard now. If Hirsch was anything, he knew how to navigate government bureaucracy.”

“Should I feel sorry for her?” I asked.

“That bitch? No.” But after a laugh, Amanda added, “But I suppose we do owe her a little for actually confirming that it was Hirsch pulling the strings. But… no, don’t feel sorry for her. She’s not going to jail. She’ll be fine.”

“You know what’s not fine?”

“What?” Amanda asked, those big blue eyes filled with concern.

“My stomach. It’s very empty.”

“Oh.” Amanda mock-frowned and hit me gently.

“Jumpy much?”

“Probably for the rest of my life.”

***

I saw Julia just one more time after that. I was picking Amanda up at the rehab facility in Anaheim, waiting for her in the parking lot when Julia emerged. She was dressed for work—blue pantsuit, aviators, her long, blond hair falling loosely around her shoulders. 

At first, I didn’t think that she saw me standing there, leaning on my Camry. I was almost okay with that. I still had mixed feelings about the woman, despite our shaky alliance. But then again, we’d been through some shit together.

I waved at her, catching her attention. When she looked my way, the stern and disapproving woman that I was so used to just wasn’t there. She actually… smiled. “David,” she said, walking over to me. “Here to pick up Amanda?”

“That’s the plan.”

She pushed her sunglasses into her hair so we could see each other. “Lucky her.” I couldn’t tell if she meant to say it aloud.

“You had to go through it, too?” I asked, nodding at her duffle.

“We all did. Mandatory, you know, but also… it was quite a scene on that yacht.”

“Ah, yeah. Glad… um, glad you… made it?” Jesus, this was awkward.

Julia felt it, too, but was more amused by it than put off. “Hey, I’m sorry that I fucked you. In your office, I mean.”

“Really?” That was surprising.

“No, not really. But it seemed like a thing you wanted to hear.” She had this way of smiling at me that made me feel like an awkward kid all over again. But I wasn’t. Amanda had changed, and so had I.

“Hey, I do want to know one thing,” I said as she started to wheel away. “One thing that’s bugging me.”

“Just one? Go for it.”

“Why did you send the video? The first one, I mean. It was a huge risk with some pretty dire consequences. You had no idea how I’d react.”

“Ah, the video.” Julia nodded, as if expecting this one. She set her bag upright and leaned against the car beside me. “It’s pretty simple, really. As I explained earlier, you put us in some real shit. Amanda was close to getting into Kozlov’s good graces, but when you showed up on the scene, she lost her mojo, and you, Dave the Muscle, were the only one who could give it back.”

“But how did you know I’d react that way to that video? Plenty of other men would say, ‘Fuck this, I’m changing the locks and finding a divorce lawyer.’ In fact, nine times out of ten, that’s probably the end result of a stunt like that.”

“Sure, fine, if we were taking a random sample. But none of this was random. You don’t think the FBI did a psych analysis of you, too, before deciding to send your wife under? And I don’t mean just Hirsch’s band of merry men, but the legitimate ones? We had a general idea of your devotion, who you were. The rest was just… intuition.”

She straightened up and slipped her sunglasses back down over her eyes.

“Plus, I think your sense of risk and consequence is different from mine. Worst case, you get your wife killed and live out the rest of your days burdened with guilt. Or maybe not. Maybe you hate her and are happy it ended that way. Maybe you just never speak to her again.” I wondered how much of this was auto-biographical. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have let it happen, even if the powers that be—may he rest in fucking hell—didn’t care much about that kind of collateral damage.”

“Thanks for that?”

“You don’t mean that, and that’s okay. I’m at peace with things now. I did some bad shit—some really bad shit. Part of it was because I had to. Part of it is… stuff that I’m working on. But look, David, I hope you have a great life. I’m… happy for you and Amanda.”

It sounded like it was a hard thing to admit, but as odd as that, it also sounded sincere.

“I hope you find someone else one day,” I said. I even sort of believed it.

Julia surprised me by grabbing me and pulling me into a bear hug. I ended up hugging her back, and despite all of my complicated feelings for this woman, it felt good. “I hope I do, too,” she whispered. She stepped back, looked me in the eyes, and smiled. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her mirrored aviators. “Goodbye, David.”

She was gone before Amanda emerged, although I got the feeling that my wife had been waiting inside until all was clear because the first thing she did was give me the same firm bear hug as Julia. She nearly squeezed all of the air out of me. Then, she said, “You two work things out?”

I didn’t find the jealousy that I was expecting. Amanda was smiling.

“Uh, yeah. I think?”

“Never can tell with that one,” Amanda agreed. “For what it’s worth, after spending a week with her, I think—I think—that I’m sort of… kind of okay with her, too. I at least understand her more. Despite being the right hand  of the worst traitor to work in the Bureau since Robert fucking Hanssen, she’s actually always been straight with the people she works with.”

“She wanted what we have.”

Amanda drew me into her arms. “I know, and I’m done taking you for granted.”

“You do any thinking about what you’re going to do next while you were in there doing yoga and meditation or whatever?”

“I thought a lot about it,” she said.

“And?”

“And I still don’t know, and… and that’s kind of exciting. While I was in there, I realized just how much of my life I’ve planned and plotted out. I was supposed to be deputy director in some branch office after this. This was my big break. But it all feels hollow.” Unshed tears glistened in her eyes, threatening to spill over at any moment. Her voice wavered. “Except… except for you.”

My heart ached for her. “Oh, Amanda.”

She tried to smile away the tears, but the more she attempted to wipe them away, the faster they flowed—here was a woman finally learning to be truly vulnerable.

Her watery eyes locked onto mine. “I’m done planning my life out.” She shook her head resolutely, a single tear trailing down her cheek. “Whatever comes next, all that’s important is that it’s with you.”

The End

Or, should I do a MCU thing here? "Amanda and David will return..."

And as I said above, there will be one more epilogue, less about tying up loose ends and more about... this being erotica! So leave a comment. Tell me what you think. Next week, I'm going to create a post about the creative process to get this thing done before I launch into the next story.