A Proposition To Consider

Part 3 of a multi-part short story.

Click HERE for the first part.
Click HERE for the second part.

**********

Jenna easily swallowed her self-satisfied smirk. It was brilliant, really. There was no way she was going to get paid for this run, since Officer McSexy was bound to keep her from making contact. She certainly wasn’t going to just hang around till her return bus left and risk being searched and possibly arrested. Besides, she really didn’t like drug dealers—her ex had ended up being one. That’s what broke them up, actually, her confronting him about it. Him stealing her car was his way of getting back at her for refusing to help him cover up his “extra-legal” activities. And this run had come through one of Eddie’s old buddies, so there was a good chance she’d just picked up the kind of job she’d refused to do for Eddie in the first place.

Not getting paid in money meant making sure she got paid in satisfaction. That meant recruiting McSexy to help her tag her mark, which would allow her some small revenge and make her like a good guy. Heck, she was a good guy. She didn’t even jaywalk or double park. Granted, it had taken a vigilant cop to keep her honest this time, but that’s what cops were really for, right? Keeping honest people honest when circumstances tempted them to stray. She may be down on her luck and a bit desperate, but she could still say she was honest.

“What I’d like to know, is why you told me who you were looking for.”

Jenna spun smartly, eyes going slightly wide when she realized that Officer McSexy had been sneaking up on her while she’d been thinking about using him to climb out of the mess she’d gotten herself into.

“I mean, you’ve got to know just what it was you were smuggling,” he drawled sarcastically.

“Yeah, I knew,” Jenna agreed.

“And you know that I can’t legally stop and search you,” he added, a hint of steel edging his drawl. Jenna nodded. This was the United States of America and despite the efforts of Homeland Security, ordinary cops still needed a search warrant. Telling the judge he smelled dope on her when the dope was triple sealed would not have washed, even in a shifter town like this. “So why?” he asked, throwing his hands to his side.

“You tell me,” she said with a shrug. “I’m a down-on-her-luck PI. I get offered a job running a sealed package for a client. I realize its drugs but I don’t have an actual name for my contact or my employer. If I refuse the job, they find someone else with fewer scruples. If I take the stash to the cops in Seattle…”

“They’d arrest you without asking questions,” Officer McSexy finished, a sarcastic twist to his lickable mouth.

“Or I bring the ‘package’ to its intended destination and try to make contact with the local cops,” she finished.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Because I figured you would have some clue who this ’fat Aussie bastard’ I was told to look for was. And you’d be more inclined to nail him and not be content to just get a half kilo of shit off your streets.”

“And?” McSexy asked leadingly.

“And that’s all I’m giving you ‘til I know if you want to play ball.”

“What’s in it for you?” he asked point blank. Jenna shot him a slightly belittling half-smile and said nothing. He shifted from one foot to the other, agitated but clearly thinking it over. “I gotta take this up with my chief,” he finally said.

“Fine with me, but don’t take too long. I’ll drag out trying to find this asshole as long as I can, but I can only stretch it so far in a town this small.”

“How do I get ahold of you again?” he asked, sounding suspicious of her agreeable response.

“I’ll leave that up to you, sweet cheeks. This is your town; you’ll know better than me how and when to contact me without the mark figuring out he’s being set-up.”