Author's Note
: I debated if this story belongs in Group Sex or Reluctance/Non-Consent and decided on Reluctance/Non-Consent as the work includes instances of mild reluctance with clear power dynamics between the characters.
"Your hand is shaking," Agent Dennis O'Connell said. Aubrey looked down. He was right. A tremor ran down her arm. She set the white Styrofoam coffee cup on the cramped Dodge van's floor and rubbed along her forearm to relieve the tension.
"There's nothing to worry about. We have done this a million times. You're in good hands," Dennis said.
"I'd feel better if I was wearing a wire."
"These guys will pat you down the moment you step through the door." Agent Hugh O'Connell said.
Dennis and Hugh O'Connell weren't related, at least not as far as anyone knew, but Aubrey swore their families crawled out of the same dark valley in Ireland. In their forties, they were big men. Their stomachs poured over their belts and their bullet shaped heads plugged into their shoulders, their necks having long since disappeared. They had matching mustaches and identical buzzcuts a Marine Corps barber gave them back in 66 when they volunteered to go to Nam.
"What if I need backup?"
"You see that window?" Dennis pointed through the van's bug smeared windshield across the parking lot.
"I see it."
In the center of a strip mall made of dusty brown bricks topped with an even browner awning sat a discount electronics store. Tape decks and speakers filled its window. In the upper-right corner a burnt-out neon sign advertised RCA televisions. The window needed a good washing.
"If the deal goes sideways, you grab a chair or something heavy and bust the window. We'll see and come running." Through his cheap charcoal grey suit, he patted the service pistol holstered under his arm. "Trust us. You're in good hands."
"It's just nerves."
"That's why they shouldn't let women do this kind of work," Hugh said as he stared down his nose into the bottom of a coffee cup.
"You gotta cut the cave man shit already. It's the 80s," Dennis said.
"Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with lady cops. They can type up my reports back at the station and hand out parking tickets, but narcotics? Give me a break." Hugh sneered and rolled his eyes.
I can hear you! She wanted to scream. The back of the van was all of a sudden too small.
"She's a cop like us. Give her a chance."
"Whatever." Hugh finished the last sip of his coffee and tossed the cup under the front passenger seat. "She gets one chance," he said and pointed a finger at Dennis, "and then I get to say I told you so."
Dennis waved a dismissive hand at Hugh and turned to Aubrey. "All right," he said, "makeup looks good. The big hoop earrings work. Jeans hug the ass. Let's see what we're working with, unzip."
Aubrey pinched the zipper of her grey hoody sweatshirt and hesitated. This was humiliating. She had graduated the academy, proved herself in patrol, and volunteered to be the first female in narcotics. After everything she had accomplished, she was still a pair of tits. But she wasn't going to stop. Compared to all she had been through, everything she had to overcome, what was a little flesh? She pulled the zipper down.
"No good. You gotta look the part." Dennis' sausage fingers slipped inside the neckline of her scoop halter top and wrenched the fabric down below the tan line on her breasts. "Push them together some. Good. Pull your hair into a tight ponytail." He snapped his fingers twice and said, "Hugh, give her some of your gum. You'll want to smack it like you're from the valley."
As Aubrey pulled her golden-brown hair into a high ponytail, Hugh fished a stick of spearmint Wrigley's from the right pocket of his too small suit coat. He offered the gum and let his eyes linger on her chest.
Dennis jabbed Hugh's ribs. "Pick your jaw off the floor buddy."
"What?" Hugh's head snapped up as if Dennis woke him from a deep sleep. "No, man. I have daughters her age."
Hugh scowled, put on the most wounded face he could manage, and crossed his arms over his chest. He shifted in his seat, but not before Aubrey glimpsed the bulge running alongside the crease in his slacks.
Hugh's erection should have offended her, but instead a small pride welled in her. After years of wearing ill-fitting police blues never designed for a woman's curves, she had forgotten clothes could feel sexy. It was the point of the outfit after all—to make men think with their dicks.
"Can we get on with this?" Aubrey said.
"Slow down. Don't go running off half-cocked. Let's go over the plan step by step," Dennis said.
"The informant and I go inside. I follow her lead. She buys. We report back. Anything goes wrong, I bust the window and you two knights in shining armor come to the rescue."
"What's your name?"
"Candy."
"The CI's name?"
"Tori."
"You got it. Nothing to it. You'll do fine."
"Or you can quit now and go back to knitting," Hugh said.
She wanted to punch Hugh in the throat and watch his beady little eyes bulge out of his fat face as he struggled for air. Instead, she said, "I'm not quitting."
"Of course you're not, sweetheart."
"I said cut it Hugh." Hugh offered up his hands in mock surrender.
Dennis continued, "Look, Aubrey, training is over. This is the real thing. No shame in backing out, but when you step out of this van, there is no looking back. You're Candy and you need to score snow coke. You gotta sell it. A bit of the shakes is okay, you're playing an addict. But you gotta act like you need that high more than anything in your life. There's no such thing as a casual junky."
"I said I'm not quitting."
"Good. If you do this, probation is over and you—"
"That's our CI right there," Hugh interrupted. His chin jutted out towards the parking lot.
Aubrey gathered her purse and slipped out of the back of the van into the harsh mid-morning sun which bounced off the blacktop and forced her hand over her eyes in a protective shield. Dennis closed the van door behind her. "Don't forget to chew the gum," were his parting words.
Around the corner of the strip mall next to a green dumpster overflowing with black trash bags stood Tori, sucking the last drags from a menthol cigarette. Her steel blue eyes darted over the parking lot until they came to rest on Aubrey, who was now Candy.
When Aubrey drew near, Tori folded her arms and blew a column of smoke over her shoulder. She stood five and a half feet tall. Skinny, not boney but lean, with a small chest and long legs; she would have been too skinny if not for her bubble butt. She wore black and nothing but black. Black fishnets under a torn black mini skirt. Black t-shirt exposing her pale midriff and black eyeliner. Black high-heeled boots that ran up her calf only to quit a few inches below her knees. A silver ring in her right nostril and bleach blonde hair done in a pixie cut completed the look.
"You Candy?" she said.
"Yeah. Tori?"
"The one and only." Tori flicked her cigarette, which hurtled end over end through the air until it struck the dumpster and exploded in a shower of cherry sparks.
Aubrey pulled a stack of twenty-dollar bills from her purse and handed them to Tori, who slid the bills inside her shirt, under her bra strap. To Aubrey, Tori's movement were those of an old pro. One who knows the score. She envied Tori's calm.
Aubrey said, "Can I bum a smoke?"
"That was my last."
"Too bad. I could use one."
The California sun baked the pavement, so they walked in the shade of the strip mall's awning. Tori in front and Aubrey trailing behind. A jumbo jet climbed off a nearby runway. Its engine strained to pry the metal tube away from the earth, shaking the concrete below their feet and rattling the store windows. For the moment the plane flew overhead the roar drowned out all other sounds, then the drone of cars racing down the nearby interstate returned.
As Aubrey tottered along the storefronts, she admired Tori's strut. Tori made it look easy in heals twice as tall and half as wide as her own. The academy didn't teach a class on how to pull off walking in hooker boots.
She wasn't prepared for any of this. Dennis and Hugh had thrown her in the deep end of the pool to see if she could swim; no less a pool they knew nothing about. They had never wandered into a dealer's unarmed and dressed like a whore, of that she was certain. Their idea of undercover work started and finished on their asses in the back of a van.
The first storefront they passed was dark and a sign offered a number to call for a leasing office. The next door read '1b' and nothing more; no hint what might lay behind the snapped shut white metal blinds caked in dust. Ahead stood the discount electronics shop.
Tori rapped her knuckles against the steel door. On the other side feet shuffled and an impatient muffled voice told them to wait a minute. Soon a face pressed against the spy hole and then a series of locks slid. The door opened with a cheery jingle of bells hung on the handle, the sound you would expect entering a small-town hardware store.
Inside, a cramped hallway led to a second closed door with a security camera perched above the frame, its red eye blinked as it watched the stout bald man in a sleeveless white tank top run his hands over their bodies. He moved swiftly, never lingering or squeezing, not uttering a word. As he bent down to run his hands over Aubrey's calves, she noticed something pressed against the small of his back: stuffed in his pants was a snub-nosed revolver.
The pat down finished, he pounded the side of his fist against the inner door, producing a hollow bang, bang which echoed on the other side. His hand came to rest on the doorknob. A moment passed, then a buzzer sounded, and he pulled open the inner door with a click of the latch.
That's bad. Real bad. Aubrey stared down a narrow flight of stairs leading to a basement. The O'Connells said nothing about a basement. How could she call for backup without a window to break?
