Powerful Men 2: Four More Alphas Who Seize Control (4 page)

The organization was headed by Al Duncan, a kind-hearted old liberal, who just didn’t really have the punch and panache to make something big of it. When Jennifer came aboard five years earlier at the age of twenty two, Building Bridges had been little more than a mobile soup kitchen. Now they were preparing to branch out into other states with their educational programs and had secured funding far and wide from colleges, charities and even multinational companies who approved of the work they’d been doing. The only reason Jennifer herself wasn’t president was because it might send a bad message to potential patrons and investors to have someone so young in charge.

But the fact that the position would be hers one day, and probably soon, was a given. Jennifer demanded it. That’s why she worked so hard, so tirelessly, to defend the rights of the downtrodden and the disenfranchised in her city. That would be
her
legacy.

She stepped up to the counter and smiled at the youngish, cute cop on desk duties that night. She knew this one pretty well. He was one of the better ones.

‘Hi Joey,’ she smiled, ‘the captain in? I have an appointment.’

Detective Joseph Gonzales spun on his chair and smiled up at her. ‘Jennifer,’ he grinned, ‘I was wondering when you’d turn up. Don’t you ever take a night off?’

‘Do you?’ Jennifer smiled. ‘Do any of these guys?’ She gestured at the
raggle-taggle
group of hookers, pimps and players lounging around the station.

‘I guess not,’ Joey grinned. He flicked back his soft black hair. ‘You look good,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ Jennifer replied, ‘now is the captain in?’ She wasn’t going to be brushed off that easily.

Joey studied her face coyly. ‘You really have an appointment?’ he asked. ‘The captain told me not to let anybody disturb him tonight.’

‘Ten PM: Saturday night,’ Jennifer nodded, ‘on the dot.’

‘Ok,’ Joey shrugged, ‘but be warned: the big guy’s in a bad mood tonight.’

He reached down and pressed the buzzer on his desk.
‘Captain?’

‘
What?
’

‘Uh Jennifer De Le Cruz is here to see you, she says she has an appointment.’

‘…
Oh God damn it!
’

The line went dead for a second. Joey glanced up at Jennifer with a look that said he was glad he wasn’t in her shoes right now. A moment later, the captain came back on the intercom.

‘
Fine,
send her in.
’

‘Yes sir,’ Joey said and flicked off the switch. ‘Good luck in there,’ he grinned to Jennifer, ‘and remember – if you need help there’s like, a gazillion cops just outside the door.’

‘Thanks Joey,’ Jennifer replied, ‘but I think I can handle it.’

She walked past his desk towards the Captain’s office as Joey Gonzales checked her out from behind, trying to be discreet about it but failing completely.

She pushed open the Captain’s door.

‘Captain Leahy.’

Captain Mick Leahy was the ruler of this little slice of Hades and the hardships that plagued the streets around his station showed on his face. He was only forty years old or so but he looked a little closer to fifty. He was still handsome, but his hair was silver and his face was lined. His eyes were stern and serious but he had a mouth that looked like it could have a wicked sense of humor from time to time.
Though Jennifer had never seen it.

‘Miss De Le Cruz,’ Leahy greeted, without getting up from his desk, ‘please sit. What the hell’s the matter with you now?’

Jennifer sat down. The Captain liked to get straight to the point. That suited her just fine, because so did she.

‘James De Cali,’ she said, sliding a picture of a teenage boy beside a bicycle across the desk. Leahy didn’t pick it up.

‘Who?’

‘James De Cali,’ Jennifer repeated firmly, ‘he’s a straight-A student from a broken home. He works part time at Chang’s Convenience Store just down the street from here to support his mom and baby sisters. Right now, you’ve got him in lock up accused of grand theft auto downtown.’

The captain stared at her. He didn’t blink. ‘Well I guess he shouldn’t have done the crime then, huh?’ he said.

Jennifer sighed wearily and took a deep breath. She hadn’t expected it to go over easily, but did he really have to make everything so damn difficult for her? ‘Captain,’ she said, ‘if James hotwired that car, you think I’d really be here?’

Leahy shrugged. ‘Well you are, aren’t you?’

‘The kid’s innocent Mick,’ Jennifer said, ‘he was across town with his sweetheart in Strikes and Aces Bowling Alley when the crime went down. We’ve got scores of alibis, so there’s no question how this is going to go. Why not just let him out and save on all the paper work?’

‘Miss De Le Cruz,’ the captain sighed, ‘I trust my men. They say this kid did the deed,
then
I go with that. If they’re wrong then that’s for the courts to decide.’

‘Yeah,’ Jennifer asked, smiling knowingly, ‘but do you know who the arresting officer was? Liam Ryan.’

The captain tried not to let it show on his face but she could see it plain as day: that absolute Oh Fuck moment. Liam Ryan was the
baddest
bastard on the force, a near sociopath who did whatever the hell he wanted. At that moment he was currently embroiled in a corruption scandal involving payments from drug dealers, amongst other things. Word on the street was that he’d go down for it too and the only reason he hadn’t been suspended already was because the mayor himself was his uncle-in-law.

‘Like I said,’ the Captain repeated, ‘I trust my men. I know this feels like something else to you right here, but to us it’s a warzone.
A war that never ends.
And if my boys don’t have the comfort of knowing I’ll go all the way to the line for them, then what the hell else do they have?’

Jennifer studied him closely. It was an honorable sentiment – she couldn’t fault him on it, even if it did go against most of her leanings. The guy was all
man,
there was no doubt about that.

‘And what?’ she asked, ‘so I should just let James De Cali rot in that cell, while his family struggles to make bail? While at the same time you and I and everybody else is this damn city knows that Liam Ryan only picked him up so he could get back to drinking beers and cruising for whores like he does every other night he’s supposed to be on duty?’

‘Girl,’ the captain warned, ‘you watch your mouth.’

Something in his voice got to her. She felt a little shiver run down her spine and reproached herself for responding to it. She decided to try a different approach.

‘He’s a good kid Mick,’ she said, ‘God knows there’s not many of them left these days. Don’t ruin another one.’

A strange look came over the captain’s face. For a moment she almost saw him as he once must have been, back when he was a fresh-faced young recruit, back before the harsh realities of the city had wiped away the idealism. She was right about this one and no matter how his gut told him to respond, she could tell that he knew it too.

‘And what if he’s not?’ he asked, ‘what if the kid’s guilty? You know what that’ll do to me, if I pull him out now?’

‘He’s innocent,’ Jennifer said, ‘trust me Mick.’

The Captain sighed. He looked at her sideways, a slight smile touching his lip. ‘God damn it,’ he said, ‘how the hell do you do it, kid? How do you stay so pure and moral out there amongst all that sin?’

Jennifer smiled. ‘Well first I made a promise to myself,’ she said, ‘but that wasn’t really it. Because after that I made a promise to the people and
that’s
what brings me back in here every single night.’

Mick Leahy stood up and leaned forward towards her with his knuckles resting on the desk. He towered above her – even in his autumn years he was still built like an ox and toned like an Olympic swimmer. ‘You’re a good kid,’ he said, ‘don’t you have a boyfriend worrying about you out here?’

Jennifer shook her head and smiled. ‘Don’t have time for a boyfriend,’ she said.

The Captain nodded to himself. ‘Well so say I do this for you now? I’m really sticking my neck out on the line here. I’m
gonna
need a little insurance. You’ll have to show some leeway.’

He was smiling and there was a mischievous, playful look in his eye. Jennifer sensed that he was going to let James De Cali go that night, but what else exactly was going on here? It was uncharted waters, whatever it was.

‘What are you saying?’ she asked, swallowing more noticeably than she’d intended.

‘Well if I let one prisoner go,’ the Captain smiled, ‘what does that say to my boys? What does that do for morale?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll need someone else in his place. Hell, those guys out there won’t accept anything else.’

Jennifer felt a jolt in her belly as he spoke. She knew what he was talking about now, but she didn’t believe it. In her line of work, not only did she not have the time for a boyfriend but she didn’t have time to find any casual partners either. A vibe and a saucy novella
was
about the best it got for her and she tried not to think about it too much besides that. She pictured Joey Gonzales’ cute face as he waited on reception outside, how he’d obviously thought he’d been clever in checking her out without her noticing. She thought about what he’d said earlier, about the gazillion cops out there. The captain nodded slightly and narrowed his eyes as he read all this on her face.

Well this may have been pretty damn unexpected, but if Jennifer prided herself on one thing it was the ability to react fast to anything life had to throw at her. She felt an engine start up inside her body, as coils of heat throbbed down towards her loins.

‘You’ll let James go?’ she asked, her voice high and her eyelashes fluttering girlishly at the powerful giant above her.

‘If you give me someone in exchange,’ the Captain nodded darkly.

‘Do you mean… like me?’ Jennifer asked, peering up at him. She raised one of her legs and lifted it over the other, pressing the flesh of her thighs tight together.

‘Oh I’d imagine you’d do perfectly.’ The Captain said. He stepped out from behind his desk and Jennifer gasped quietly as she looked at him. His crotch was bulging with his massive erection. The guy was fit to tear her right open by the look of that thing.

‘You’re something special De Le Cruz, you know that?’ he said, his voice slow and deep. He came towards and lifted her wrist. She did not try to resist. ‘So much passion and
belief,
all cooped up in such a sexy little body. I bet you’d like to let that fire out once in a while, huh?’

‘Hmm mm,’ Jennifer nodded, biting her lip.

‘Well now you don’t have a choice,’ the Captain said firmly, snapping a pair of hand cuffs tight on her wrist, fast as a whip. ‘Jennifer De Le Cruz, you’re under arrest.’

Her nipples were getting hard and swollen, her cunt was getting wet. This was too good to be true. ‘On what charge?’ she asked in a girlish voice.

‘General disobedience,’ the Captain smiled, ‘and inciting police arousal.’
He clasped the other side of the handcuffs to her chair. ‘Wait here.’

As Jennifer rubbed the cool metal around her wrist with her free hand, the Captain went to the door and opened it.

‘Gonzales,’ he barked, ‘James De Cali, go down to lock up and cut him loose. Then round up the boys and come back here. We’ve got an interrogation to do.’

A wave of pleasure washed over her as she waited in the chair. Would Joey know what the Captain meant? How did she feel about that? Would he think any differently of her? Did any of that fucking even matter now?

The Captain closed the door and came back to her side. He reached up and ran his hand slowly through her silky hair. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you know how many of those guys out there have wanted to have you to themselves like this? You know how many times
I’ve
wanted to have you?’

Jennifer could feel the excitement well up inside her. Her pussy was so wet and sensitive
now,
she clenched it tight and lifted her free hand up defensively to her chest. So the Captain was going to take her, but what about the others? Just what would this interrogation entail?

The Captain took his hand away. ‘Of course, your organization does have a lot of sway,’ he said, ‘I’m sure if you really wanted to, you could get out of this right now and walk away. You understand that, right?’

‘Yes Captain,’ Jennifer whispered, looking up longingly at his sexy lips. She wished he would kiss her.

‘Good,’ the Captain smiled, stroking her head again, ‘because once we get started here, we’re going to go hard and heavy. That ok by you?’

To answer Jennifer cocked her head back and opened her mouth lustily. ‘Kiss me,’ she sighed.

The Captain ran his thumb along the side of her face and into her lips for a second. ‘Not just yet,’ he said and then let her go again. He walked back to his desk.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in!’ the Captain barked.

Jennifer went rigid on the seat, bracing herself for whatever would happen next. The door opened and four sexy young police officers walked inside. The first one, a cute black guy froze when he saw her and grinned widely.