In Too Deep, Book 1, Part 2

[image: VitalikRadko]

Chapter 3 - And then gone

I sometimes have these mundane dreams where I go through my regular routine—get up, go to work, read reports, sit in meetings—but it's all a dream. There's nothing particularly fantastic about them other than their utter banality; it was just like real life, only in a dream.

The next two days felt like one of those dreams. Amanda and I did all the things we always did together before her assignment. We cooked dinner. We cleaned up. We made love. We watched old episodes of Castaway on our streaming service.

I took those two days off, so not everything was normal, but it still felt more like a long weekend than anything else.

But it wasn't a long weekend. We didn't bring up the undercover assignment, yet it was still ever present, the giant, white fucking elephant in an otherwise empty room. Every time I thought about it, I felt this unsettling loss of control.

We nibbled around the edges of it. Certain things were still kosher to talk about. "How are things with you and Julia? She still holding a grudge?"

Julia was another agent on Amanda's team, and as Amanda told it, had wanted the undercover assignment before the higher-ups decided that Amanda was a better fit.

"Well, she's still a raging bitch," Amanda said with a laugh. "But she's my acting handler, so you know, we're playing nice."

Armed with what I knew about Amanda's assignment, it occurred to me why Amanda had been chosen over Julia. "It's not easy being told you're not hot enough."

In my head, the statement had been borderline. As I watched my wife process it with a grimace, though, I winced.

"Sorry," I said.

Her face was a mask. "Uh huh."

I should have left it there. Thing was, that got me thinking. Julia was actually very attractive in an LA kind of way. She had dirty, but clearly dyed, blonde hair, fake tits, collagen enhanced lips, and a tan that was rich and ever-present. In short, she was the perfect stripper. In light of what I now knew about the nature of the assignment, I wondered why she hadn’t been picked after all.

“Actually, seems like Julia would have been ideal playing a… ideal for this cover.”

Amanda just looked at me, like she could will me to shut up about this with a stare. She knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t. “Maybe five years ago,” Amanda said.

The snarky response wasn't like Amanda, but maybe I was imagining it. After all, she was right. Julia was attractive, but in her late-thirties, she was on the older end of the girls I'd seen dancing at the Gold Club.

Seeming to realize how out-of-character she sounded, she added, “Bradley made the decision based on some of the intel we have from our man inside.” Bradley Hirsch was the agent in charge of this investigation and Amanda’s immediate boss. She didn’t elaborate on what the intel was, and I was too terrified to ask. “Honestly, though, I don’t think Bradley likes Julia all that much.”

“Why do you think that?”

Amanda shrugged. “Body language, mostly. I can’t really put my finger on it, but there’s tension between those two.” She cracked a smile. “Either they hate each other, or they’re fucking.”

There was the casual use of that word again, forcing me to confront the type of company she was probably keeping.

I didn’t call her on it, though. I let it go.

*

As troubled as it made me just thinking about the sexual aspects of her assignment, the sex was out of this world. I tried to tell myself that this was entirely because of the long month of abstinence. I'm sure that was a large part of it. But there were times when Amanda was gyrating in my lap, her hands on my shoulders, her long, dark hair spilling around her bare shoulders, that I couldn't help thinking about her Raven persona.

And that got me thinking about what else she had to do as Raven. She did lapdances, for sure, which would have put her topless and alone in a room with a stranger. Did she shimmy out of her panties? She'd shaved her pussy bald for the first time in her life; had she done that because guys would expect a stripper to look that way?

There were darker thoughts, too. Like how did she get the job in the first place. Amanda had no experience stripping. The FBI had someone inside, but did he or she have enough pull to get her the job? Or did she have to do something wilder to land it? Those ideas made me queasy. Mentally, I squirmed away from them, yet there was something else there. Something I didn't care to even admit.

So I didn't.

Instead, I focused on the sex. The reconnection. I was determined to give her something to look forward to returning to that was more than just a familiar home and open arms.

"Yes! Oh, yes, David!" Amanda panted as I rutted away. She was on her back, long legs wrapped around me as I took her. We'd been at it all morning and were covered in sweat. I'd already come once, but her cries were forecasting a second.

"You feel so good, baby," I said, groaning as she pressed her heels into my lower back. Had she always done that? Or was that a new trick of hers?

"I missed this," she said, her voice tight. She clutched the bedsheets on either side of her, anchoring her to the mattress as I fucked her harder. "Give it to me. Give it. To. Me!"

In that soft moment before orgasm, I imagined her in this same position with another man—a man who knew her as Raven the Stripper, not Amanda my wife. For an instant, I saw her as Raven, too, with a body built for fucking and a carefree attitude that welcomed it all.

I can take care of myself, she’d told me.

But what did that mean? How far would she go to make everyone believe that she was nothing more than a stripper?

It should have disgusted me. It should have sucked all the eroticism out of the moment. I should have gone soft inside her. Instead, I came. Hard. With her heels guiding me, I slammed into her and released whatever fucked up energy I'd been storing all weekend long—for the past two months.

Amanda moaned with me, feeling me fill her. She arched against me, pressing her tits against my chest. Jaw clenched, eyes closed, she came with me.

Even in my euphoric state, part of me wondered whether she was really with me? I buried that insecurity, even as my cock flagged and my body finally gave in to the fatigue. I rolled off her, both of us breathing hard.

"That was amazing," Amanda said. Her fingers touched mine between our heaving, sweat-slick bodies.

"Something worth coming home to?"

"Just one more reason, yeah." Amanda laughed. "When this thing is done, I'm going to have to come up with excuses to be away more if my homecomings will be like this."

"Please no," I said. The tone was light, but we both heard the heaviness in it.

Amanda rolled onto me, kissing me softly. Her body felt so good. Had she always felt this soft? This smooth? Or had she picked up a trick or two from the other strippers?

For a moment, I thought she'd say something about her assignment—some form of reassurance to me that the job was just a job. But we'd already had that conversation, and she seemed determined not to have it again. "So today, I was thinking we do dinner and a movie. I heard that theatre finally opened up. The one that serves wine and beer."

"Oh, you mean the one that'll cost $100 for the two of us?"

"So are you saying that I'm not worth it?"

I brushed her hair back. "Dinner and a movie sounds awesome." A date, like old times, was exactly the thing that we needed.

But when she hopped out of bed and headed for the shower, I couldn't take my eyes off the tattoo on her lower back. The raven. The reminder of where she'd go tomorrow. The queasiness was back, and I realized that nothing could hold it at bay forever—not sex, not dinner and a movie, not anything.

*

And as fast and surprising as Amanda's return had been, so did it come to an end. We were at the front door. She had a single roller bag with everything she needed. She wore a pair of cropped yoga pants and a long and loose tank top with a built in sports bra. She could have been headed to the gym or the yoga studio.

But she wasn't. She was going back undercover, part of which involved taking her clothes off in a room filled with leering men. And that's just the part of the cover that I knew about. It made me jittery.

"I love you, David." She hugged me tightly, then pulled back to look me in the eyes. We'd said that to one another hundreds of times—such a simple, throw-away phrase. This time, I felt the weight of its meaning.

She needed reassurance. She needed to know that after she did whatever she needed to do, I'd be here for her when she came home. The last thing she needed was to worry about me and my state of mind. That helped me put on a brave face.

"I love you, too, sweetheart," I said. The term of endearment felt so incongruous with where she was going. "Be safe."

I recognized the stubborn defiance harden in her face. That was the Amanda that I knew. "I will. Don't worry."

I pressed my forehead to hers, holding her close. "I'll be here. Go do your thing. Get those bad guys."

"Thanks, David." We shared one final kiss and I watched her climb into the cab that was waiting. 

I recognized the driver, a guy from her team. I didn’t know his name. He saw me looking and nodded. Surely he knew where he was taking Amanda, so what must he have thought about me, the husband who supports his wife—

No, I can't go there, I thought, although I didn't even know what I meant by ‘there’.

I waved at her one last time as the cab pulled away and suddenly I was alone again. 

Chapter 4 - Research

They say ignorance is bliss, and they’re fucking right. I wish that I’d never walked into the Gold Club with Brandon. I wish I could have kept on thinking that Amanda’s assignment had been some kind of white collar thing, tracking bad guys in boardrooms, not back rooms.

But I couldn’t. The truth was out there like a stain that I couldn’t stop looking at, and wouldn’t go away. I struggled through the days alone, trying to focus on work, trying to put my head down and make it through one day at a time, but I couldn’t. Not when my mind kept drifting to thoughts of what Amanda was doing right now.

Nights were the hardest because they held the worst possibilities. She could be at the strip club—she inevitably would be at the strip club on many of those nights—taking her clothes off on a stage. Or dancing for someone privately. Or going back to someone’s house to squeeze them for information.

That was the thing I needed to keep reminding myself. These were all means to an end. She was a tool for justice, for good, so that made everything just and good. Right?

Besides, she was still a federal agent. There was a line by the very nature of her job description. Or so I told myself. In truth, I had no fucking clue if there was or not, and the more it gnawed at me, the more I realized how little I knew about undercover operations. So I called my buddy, Ty Lawrence, to improve that understanding.

Amanda and I had gone to law school with Ty before he decided to drop out and join the police academy. He was a brilliant guy and had quickly excelled through the ranks of LAPD. By the time life took me and Amanda to Los Angeles, Ty was already a Sergeant. He’d worked more than a few undercover jobs during his time with a special crimes division, so I figured he’d be able to give me some context around what Amanda was doing.

But first, we just shot the shit. It had been too long since we’d had a beer.

“How you doing, man?” Ty said. He was an East Coaster like me and Amanda, but the years had converted him into a true LA detective. He wore his tan well, his thick, sandy hair looked like he’d just stepped off the beach, and unlike the stereotypical television cop, he was still in peak physical condition.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” I said, when I was anything but alright. “You?”

“I can’t complain. We’ve been busting our balls cracking down on this new designer drug that’s been floating around—’jazz’,” he said in air quotes. “But this is LA. Anyone really surprised? And if I can make a good impression, well, Lieutenant Murty’s retiring next month.” He grinned. “It’s a long shot, I may have an outside chance.”

“Lieutenant before you turn thirty. Impressive.”

“Not bad for a Columbia dropout from the Bronx, eh?”

I laughed. “Modesty doesn’t suit you. Feels weird.”

“And what about you?” Ty asked. “Married life treating you alright?”

“You know Amanda. I think you can probably answer that one as well as I can.”

Ty nodded. “That chick’s one-of-a-kind. Especially out here in LA. I date around, you know, but all these chicks are so superficial. It’s all about appearances for them.”

“That never was a problem for you before. You looking to settle down now?” Ty had always been something of a man-whore back in college. When Amanda and I were busy falling in love, Ty had a steady rotation of girls passing through the bedroom.

“You know, gets old after a while.” He grinned. “Or maybe you have no fucking clue. You’ve been hitched for forever.”

I thought of the wild sex I’d just had with Amanda during her two-day hiatus and couldn’t help smiling, no matter the uncomfortable circumstances surrounding that. “Like I said, you know Amanda. I really can’t complain.”

“Go ahead and rub that shit in.” Ty laughed, signaling for another beer. “So what’s up? You wanted to know about UC work?”

My heart pulsed. Now that we were here, I questioned whether I wanted to know after all. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that.

But I found myself saying, “Yeah. You’ve done it before, right?”

“Sure. Did a stint with vice. Then a longer one with narco. Great for the resume, hard as fuck on the head.”

“Yeah? How so?”

Ty took a swig of his beer. If he was bothered by the past, he didn’t show it. He might as well have been discussing what he had for dinner last night. “Well, to do it right, you have to get into the head of whoever you’re trying to infiltrate, you know? So, like, if I’m busting some drug pushers, I need to act like a user. I need to understand their needs; their desperation. So by the time I go up and make the buy, I believe I need the next hit bad.”

“But it’s all fake,” I said. I didn’t like the implications that this had on Amanda at all.

“Yeah, ‘course it is. But it’s still exhausting to do. Slipping into those personas doesn’t come without a toll. I don’t know how guys who do that all the time manage to stay sane, honestly.”

“Do they?”

“What do you mean?”

I asked, “Do they ever, you know, slip too deep into the role?”

“Yeah, it’s happened, I suppose. But that’s only the case with deep cover shit, and mostly that’s handled by the Feds.”

My body went cold.

He said, “Why the sudden interest, anyway?”

Ty could have sucker punched me in the face and I wouldn’t have been more stunned. His question yanked me out of it, but I still had no strategy for answering it. “Um…”

“Amanda working UC?” His smile suggested that it was a joke, but I guess my expression gave the truth away.

“No shit! So now, you’re all worried about her.” He nodded. “Things are starting to make sense.”

“I can’t talk about it, Ty. You know that. This is, like, really, really off the record.”

“So tell me more. What do you know?” he said, leaning in.

“I can’t.”

“Then I can’t help you out, friend. I need context to give you some.”

I thumbed the condensation on my pint glass, tracing an A before wiping it away. I really shouldn’t do this. This was so out-of-bounds it was crazy. Looking up at Ty and his open, you-can-tell-me-anything expression, I knew that I was going to. It wasn’t so much that I trusted him—although I did trust him—more like I needed to share this with someone, and Ty was as good a someone as any.

“I don’t know much about the case, but…” My face started to heat up. “...she’s working as a dancer.” I regretted telling him almost immediately. He went all wide-eyed, like I’d just told him that Christmas had been rescheduled and was now tomorrow.

Ty blinked, processed, and said, “A dancer? Like, she’s undercover as a stripper?”

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Get the fuck out of here. Amanda is stripping? As in, summa cum laude from Columbia Amanda? The girl who once punched a guy out for touching her ass Amanda?”

“Wasn’t that you?” I pointed out.

“Yeah, the one and only.”

We shared a laugh.

He leaned in. “Where is she ‘dancing’?”

“Oh no, I’m not telling you that. You just want to go and stare at her tits.”

Ty laughed. “Oh come on, can you blame me?”

“This was a total mistake. This shit is serious, man. Her life could be on the line here.”

Ty nodded, getting more serious. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m still, you know, in total disbelief. These guys must be some bad people for her to do that.”

“You’re not really helping me deal with this,” I said tightly.

“Sorry.” His sigh was deep and came out like a whistle. “Okay, so seriously, where is she, erm, dancing? Maybe I know something about it.”

“You just happen to be an expert on strip clubs in LA?”

“Hey, I’m LAPD. Maybe not an expert, but let’s just say I’ve got working knowledge.”

I thought about telling him, but decided against it. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve already said way too much. What I really want to know was…” I tried off, not sure how to ask this next part? My heart was beating so fast I thought I might have a heart attack.

Ty saved me. “You want to know if she’s fucking guys as part of her cover.”

My gut clenched. Yup, that was it exactly. “Not exactly that. Just, you know, whether that was something that happened undercover.”

“Ah, hypotheticals. Safe.” Ty nodded. “I think this will require a couple shots of Jameson. On me, please.” He signaled our server down and ordered us a round.

“I’m not going to like this answer, am I?”

Ty shrugged. “You asked. Still want to know?”

My stomach churned. “Might as well. I’ll think the worst now if you don’t.”

Ty nodded. “Well, it all depends. They frown on...sexual liaisons—especially the FBI—because it could potentially be used against them in court. Typically, UC agents are protected from testifying, and their actions are mostly cleaned up. But it happens. Especially when going deep.”

I nodded. I felt like I’d just chugged battery acid.

“But hey, that doesn’t mean that’s what’s going on,” Ty said reassuringly. “Just because it can happen doesn’t mean jack. Amanda’s a badass. I’m sure she’s figured out a way to keep things above board.”

“Yeah,” I said robotically. “Thanks.”

Our shots arrived. I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach the Irish whiskey, but I was sure as fuck willing to risk it. It went down like fire, but fire was better than the queasy sensation I’d been feeling a moment earlier.

“How long’s her assignment?”

“It’s been a couple months.” Things started to fuzz around the edges. “About one more left.”

“That’s rough, man. But try not to think too much on it. The Feds do that shit better than anyone, and you know Amanda—she’d only do this if it was important.”

It wasn’t really comforting at all, but I nodded like it was. “Thanks, Ty.”

“Hey, no problem. Give me a call if you ever need to talk.”

I rose, feeling shaky on my legs. “I will.”

“Seriously, man,” he said, standing with me. “Don’t keep all that shit bottled up. I’m your guy. Whenever.”

I looked at him for the first time, seeing a true friend. I had no intention of ever having this conversation again with another living being, but if I did, Ty was at the top of my list—maybe the only person on that list.

“Thanks, Ty. I’ll keep that in mind.” We even shared a man-hug on the matter.

“Oh, and David. I’m sure you know this, but you need to stay away from that club. You need to let her do her thing without meddling. Trust in her abilities to take care of herself.”

“Of course,” I said. Thing was, until that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to me to visit. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Good.”

As I picked my way out into the warm LA night and hailed a cab, all I could think about was Amanda dancing at the Gold Club. Was she there tonight? It was a Friday. It would be crowded. I could blend right in.

I’m not an idiot, my own voice reminded.

“Where to, mister?” the cab driver asked as I slid in. It smelled like vinyl and Pine-Sol.

For one weak moment, I really considered telling him to take me to the Gold Club. Instead, I gave him my home address and off we were into the warm night. I was drunk, but not that drunk.

Read Part 3 now.