The Institute: Daddy Issues (25 page)

“…so we’re lucky that Vice chose that time to make a raid al­though I was pissed at the time that they’d do some­thing so clue­less. And don’t worry about that in­form­ant Berkley told you he had in the PD—that’s been taken care of.”

The Cap­tain seemed to be wrap­ping up his brief­ing, for which I was pro­foundly grate­ful. He’d kept us in his of­fice for at least an hour. Even though the lash wounds on my back­side made by Salt’s belt had mostly healed, it was still pain­ful to spend too much time sit­ting.

“Very lucky,” my part­ner growled softly. “Andi might have died oth­er­wise.”

“I would have if you hadn’t saved me.”

“Saved you by half killing you,” Salt muttered, look­ing down at his hands.

“You only did what I asked you to,” I poin­ted out. “And it was bet­ter than…than the al­tern­at­ive. It was the only way to coun­ter­act the ef­fects of the Please other than—”

The Cap­tain cleared his throat. “Well, yes. I think we can all agree De­tect­ive Saltanov did only what was ne­ces­sary.”

Salt muttered some­thing in Rus­sian, still look­ing at his hands.

“Salt…” I tried to catch his eye but he wouldn’t look at me.

Great. In­wardly, I sighed. This was the way things had been between us for the two weeks since the ab­rupt end of our time at the In­sti­tute.

Everything had gone re­mark­ably well in the af­ter­math. The Vice de­part­ment’s tim­ing had been in­cred­ibly lucky, des­pite the fact that they hadn’t had any idea they were but­ting into an on­go­ing un­der­cover in­vest­ig­a­tion. They’d had a re­port of a huge ship­ment of heroine be­ing smuggled through the In­sti­tute and had come to break up the party. In the pro­cess they had nabbed Berkley and his Baby­girl slash lab as­sist­ant Mandy, as well as all the mak­ings of a first-class Please lab.

Also, thanks to Berkley’s need to have the fi­nal say while he was re­cord­ing what he hoped would be a steamy sex show by my part­ner and I, we’d got­ten his com­plete con­fes­sion on tape. The Dir­ector of the In­sti­tute was go­ing away for a very long,
long
time and Mandy was headed up the river too.

Things really couldn’t have worked out bet­ter—ex­cept for the dis­tance that the whole sorry situ­ation had put between me and my part­ner. I had tried to reach out to him sev­eral times—though it hurt my pride to do so—but he al­ways re­buffed me. I thought he might hate me now for all the sick things we’d been forced to do to­gether and to each other while we were play­ing “Papa” and “
mishka”
but I couldn’t help wish­ing I might be wrong.

Still, so far Salt was giv­ing me no in­dic­a­tion that my guess wasn’t cor­rect. He wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t look at me, and would barely speak to me. I didn’t want to let him know how much that hurt so I tried to keep it to my­self, tried to tell my­self that things would get bet­ter between us. But when? It had been two weeks—how long would it take for us to get back to nor­mal? A month? A year?

As if you really wanted to go back to nor­mal,
whispered a little voice in my brain.
What you want is what you can never have again—to be Salt’s Baby­girl and hear him call you “mishka” one more time. To know that your “Papa” still loves you.

I tried to push the voice away. It was all stu­pid bull­shit—everything we had been forced to do to­gether was just for show, I told my­self. And it wasn’t like I had ac­tu­ally
en­joyed
any of it. I was just as glad to get away from the crazytown en­vir­on­ment of the In­sti­tute as Salt prob­ably was. Right?

Right,
I told my­self firmly.
And Salt will come around even­tu­ally and then everything will go back to nor­mal.

I hoped.

“Fine,” I said stiffly, look­ing away from my part­ner and stand­ing to go. “Is that all, Cap­tain? Can we go now?”

“I’m afraid not.” The Cap­tain soun­ded ex­tremely un­com­fort­able. “I’m sorry, Sug­ar­baker, but there’s one more thing I need to touch on be­fore we wrap this up.”

“Oh?” I raised an eye­brow at him. “What’s that?

“It’s the fact that De­tect­ive Saltanov has asked for…for…”

“A new part­ner,” Salt fin­ished for him.

“What?
What did you say?” I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Lit­er­ally—all the breath left my lungs and I couldn’t seem to fill them again. I had been stand­ing, ready to leave the Cap­tain’s of­fice. Now I sank back down on the hard wooden chair and looked at Salt.

He stared back at me, his face a mask I couldn’t read.

“I am sorry, Andi, but it must be this way,” he said.

“I…” I didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t have hurt me more if he’d pulled out a gun and shot me—that was how pain­ful his be­trayal was. “So you’re leav­ing,” I whispered be­fore I could stop my­self. “Dump­ing me like every other man in my life. Leav­ing just like my—” Some­how I caught my­self and man­aged to stop there but not be­fore I saw the pain flash in Salt’s eyes.

“I am
sorry,”
he said earn­estly, his tone a little softer. “But I feel that after what I did—”

“No, no—please. No ex­plan­a­tion ne­ces­sary,” I said briskly. In­side I felt like dy­ing but I had shown enough weak­ness already. It was time to pull my­self to­gether.

“Andi—”

“You’ve fi­nally had enough of me—just like the other two part­ners the Cap­tain tried to put me with,” I said stiffly. “I un­der­stand, Salt—really I do. It was just a mat­ter of time.”

The Cap­tain stirred rest­lessly in his chair.

“I don’t like this,” he said ab­ruptly. “This doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Well, it’s not up to you, is it Cap­tain?” I forced my­self to stand back up, even though my legs felt like they might give way un­der me. “Salt needs a change and far be it from me to stand in his way.” I lif­ted my chin. “I’d like to add some­thing to his re­quest though—I want a new part­ner too. Im­me­di­ately. I don’t care who it is—just make it hap­pen
today.”

“These things take time, Sug­ar­baker,” the Cap­tain re­minded me, frown­ing. “Time and a hell of a lot of pa­per­work.”

“I don’t care about that,” I snapped. “Salt wants out, then so do I. I don’t want to have any­thing else to do with him and I’m sure he feels the same way about me.”

“Andi—” Salt began again, a pained ex­pres­sion com­ing over his face.

“
Andi, Andi, Andi,
” I mocked him furi­ously. “Just stop talk­ing—stop say­ing my name, you son of a bitch! You’ve already said everything there is to say—everything that mat­ters.”

“No, I have not,” he growled, frown­ing at me. “I must tell you—”

“I couldn’t split the two of you up right away even if I wanted to—which I damn well don’t,” Cap­tain Douglas roared, in­ter­rupt­ing us. “Be­cause this case is still hanging over our heads.”

“What are you talk­ing about?” I had my arms crossed and I tapped my fin­gers im­pa­tiently. “I thought it was all tied up with a bow on top.”

“Not quite.” The Cap­tain sighed and ran a hand over his face. “There’s still the little mat­ter of the evid­ence.”

“Do you not have everything that you need?” Salt asked. “Equip­ment from the lab, Berkley’s con­fes­sion…”

“Yes but we also still have all the evid­ence col­lec­ted by the hid­den cam­era equip­ment,” the Cap­tain said quietly. “I need to re­lease it to the judge but there are parts of it…” He cleared his throat. “Parts that might need to be, uh,
ed­ited
out.”

“You can’t do that, Cap­tain.” I was shocked. “That’s tam­per­ing with evid­ence.”

“Look, Sug­ar­baker, I’m not talk­ing about get­ting rid of any of the vids show­ing the Please Lab—which Berkley
was
stu­pid enough to re­cord, by the way. I’m talk­ing about cer­tain, uh,
in­tim­ate
events that you might not wish a judge or jury or the gen­eral pub­lic to see if they got out.”

Cap­tain Douglas’ face was red and I could tell that he’d watched the tapes he was talk­ing about—the im­ages of Salt and I in our room do­ing…oh God, do­ing all
kinds
of things I didn’t want any­one know­ing about.

“My God,” I whispered, feel­ing sick and faint for the second time that day. I grabbed for the back of the chair. “If those got out…”

“
Now
you’re get­ting the idea,” the Cap­tain said grimly. “Those parts of the tape don’t really do any­thing to make our case. And I don’t really think any­one but you and your part­ner need to see them.”

“He’s not my part­ner any­more.” I couldn’t keep the bit­ter­ness out of my voice and I couldn’t look at Salt as I spoke.

“He is for a little while longer, Sug­ar­baker,” Cap­tain Douglas said gently but firmly. “At least un­til the two of you re­view these videos and de­cide what parts you want me to ‘lose.’” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small flash drive. Reach­ing for­ward, he placed it at the edge of his desk and looked at me mean­ing­fully. “Do you un­der­stand?”

“This should be up to Andi,” Salt said in a low voice. “She is the one who should de­cide—”

“I want you both to de­cide
to­gether.”
The Cap­tain glared at us. “I mean it—find some time out­side of work and go through these. And it needs to get done
soon.
I can’t hold this back for much longer.”

“Fine.” I reached for the flash drive but Salt got to it first. He fol­ded it in his big hand and looked at me.

“I will come to your house to­night. We will re­view these to­gether.”

I re­fused to meet his eyes.

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“It is,” Salt said quietly.

“Good.” The Cap­tain slapped his desk with fi­nal­ity. “Come back in to­mor­row and tell me what you want to do.”

What I wanted to do was go dig a hole and bury my­self in it but I couldn’t say that out loud. Couldn’t give my bas­tard of an ex-part­ner the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing how badly he had hurt me—how deeply his treach­ery cut.

In­stead, I lif­ted my chin and left the Cap­tain’s of­fice with my head held high and my heart aching.

It’s your fault,
whispered a little voice in my head.
Your fault he left and he’s never com­ing back.

I knew it was true but it didn’t make his be­trayal hurt any less.

The knock on my front door startled me. I was stand­ing in the kit­chen, cut­ting up ve­get­ables for a crudités plat­ter to serve while we re­viewed the video evid­ence.

I know mak­ing a tray of snacks sounds stu­pid but it was what I had done the first time Salt had ever come over to my house, not long after we’d be­come part­ners. I for­get why he came—prob­ably to re­view evid­ence from some case or other. Any­way, I had made a ve­get­able plat­ter with sour cream dip and now I found my­self do­ing it again. I don’t know why—maybe I was try­ing to take my­self back to the time be­fore I’d cared about my part­ner as more than a part­ner. Maybe I wanted to re­wind the clock and pre­tend noth­ing had ever happened between us.

Now, how­ever, I de­cided it was a ri­dicu­lous idea. It wasn’t like I could pre­tend away the hurt in­side me—the gap­ing hole of loneli­ness that had opened in my chest where my heart used to be. All I could do was try to hide it and get through this night as well as I could.

The knock soun­ded again. I threw down the knife and, leav­ing the half fin­ished car­rots and cel­ery on the cut­ting board, went to an­swer the door.

Salt was stand­ing there look­ing very tall and grim with the flash drive curled in one large fist. He has his own key to my place so he could have just let him­self in but clearly he wanted to keep things formal. Well, fine—I could do that too.

“Good even­ing, De­tect­ive Saltanov,” I said evenly.

Salt didn’t look happy but he re­turned my greet­ing in kind.

“De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker,” he rumbled, in­clin­ing his head.

“Won’t you come in?” I stepped aside to let him enter. Nor­mally when we went to each other’s houses we made ourselves at home. Salt al­ways went right to my re­fri­ger­ator to see what I had to eat. But now he stepped in­side and then just stood there. It was a re­minder to me that things weren’t “nor­mal” between us and never would be again.

“This way,” I said shortly, and led him to my liv­ing room as though he didn’t know the way.

Salt fol­lowed me si­lently and had a seat on the couch when we got there.

“The flash drive?” I asked.

Word­lessly, he dropped it into my hand.

I went over to my laptop and plugged in the flash drive. Thanks to Salt, who had found a way to hook my com­puter to my tele­vi­sion, I was able to bring the im­ages up on my large flat-screen.

I grabbed the re­mote and, since Salt was sit­ting on the couch, I took the love­seat which sat per­pen­dic­u­lar to it.

It hurt my heart to do that—to sit away from him. I couldn’t help re­mem­ber­ing all the times we had sat to­gether on my couch to watch movies. Salt had never ac­tu­ally put his arms around me or cuddled me—we hadn’t got­ten that phys­ical un­til our time at the In­sti­tute—but we al­ways sat close, our thighs touch­ing. And some­times when the movie was long or I was tired, I would lean my head on his broad shoulder and just rest there. Once or twice I even fell asleep and only woke up when Salt was tuck­ing an afghan around me to keep me warm.

I would never be able to do that again, I real­ized. Never be able to draw com­fort from hav­ing his big, warm body so close to mine. We were never go­ing to have an­other movie night and I was never go­ing to fall asleep with my head against his shoulder. We would never—
Get over it,
I ad­vised my­self roughly.
He doesn’t want you any­more. And can you blame him? Look how needy you let your­self get at the In­sti­tute. Look at all the weird things you did to­gether. Salt was prob­ably just act­ing but not you, Sug­ar­baker—no, you got into it.
Deep
into it. You
liked
be­ing a Little—play­ing the Baby­girl to Salt’s Papa. He prob­ably knows that and it dis­gusts him. You drove him away your­self by be­ing too damn needy and strange so don’t start moon­ing over him now. Just be­cause he’s sit­ting on your couch right now doesn’t mean he’ll ever want you back as a part­ner or any­thing else. He’s already gone.

My lec­ture to my­self didn’t make me feel any bet­ter but it
did
make me feel a little stronger. I poin­ted the re­mote at the screen and clicked it on, ready to watch.

“Wait,” Salt said, as a scene of the two of us en­ter­ing the room at the In­sti­tute came on the screen.

“What?” I paused the im­age for a mo­ment and looked at him.

“I think it would be mis­take to erase
all
im­ages of the two of us.” He ges­tured at the screen. “Would be bet­ter to keep some of the less…em­bar­rass­ing ones.”

“Right. Makes sense to avoid sus­pi­cion,” I ac­know­ledged. “So I think we can agree that this one stays?” It was just the two of us get­ting com­fort­able in the room and look­ing around. It must have been the first night we were there.

“Yes.” Salt nod­ded.

I picked up a yel­low legal pad and pen I’d placed on the arm of the love­seat earlier for just this pur­pose and made a note.

“All right. Mov­ing on.” I fast for­war­ded the im­age and saw the two of us sit­ting on the couch to­gether. Then I saw Salt pulling my feet into his lap and tak­ing off my shoes and socks. I couldn’t help re­mem­ber how won­der­ful his big warm hands felt when he mas­saged me.

“Do you wish to leave this part or not?” Salt asked me.

I cleared my throat. “Well, it is kind of awk­ward but not, you know,
ob­scene
.”

“Noth­ing we did was ob­scene,” he said quietly.

“Oh no? You pre­tend­ing to be my ‘Papa’ and me pre­tend­ing to be your ‘Baby­girl’ wasn’t ob­scene?” I snapped.

“No,” he said simply.

“Right.” I didn’t be­lieve him a bit. I had heard how he really felt about what went on in the In­sti­tute loud and clear when he’d told Berkley that it was sick and he was dis­gus­ted by it.
Dis­gus­ted by
you,
don’t you mean, Andi?
whispered a little voice in my head. Yes—that was ex­actly what I meant. I forced my­self to look at the TV again and tried not to think about it.

On screen, the foot mas­sage was fi­nally over. There was vid feed from the bath­room too but the cam­era in there had been fo­cused on the tub so you couldn’t see either Salt or I shower­ing or do­ing any­thing else—for which I was grate­ful.

Salt and I went about our nightly routine—well ex­cept for the part where I ex­amined his back which made me un­com­fort­able to watch be­cause I re­membered the past pain he had re­vealed to me. At last, I went to bed. The cam­era angle switched to the bed­room—did they have some kind of mo­tion sensors so the cam­eras only clicked on when someone was in the room? Or did who­ever was watch­ing just as­sume the ac­tion would be wherever I was?

I thought the scene would be nor­mal but I had for­got­ten about my night­mare that first night. There was no sound and only min­imal light but I saw my small shape huddled un­der the cov­ers and watched as I sat up, clearly agit­ated. Then the bed­room door burst open and Salt’s tall frame was sil­hou­et­ted by the light shin­ing be­hind him. He came to the bed and gathered me into his arms. Ten­derly, he cradled me to his chest and sat down in the large rock­ing chair to rock me like a child.

I felt a wave of long­ing as I watched the scene and then an equal wave of shame raced over me. I was a grown wo­man, for God’s sake—why was I wish­ing to be rocked and com­for­ted like a little girl? It was stu­pid and weak and it made me angry with my­self and with Salt too for act­ing the way he had.

“Look at this,” I com­plained, point­ing at the TV. “Why did you have to do that in­stead of just wak­ing me up and telling me I was hav­ing a bad dream? Now we don’t have any­thing even re­motely nor­mal to leave in the video.”

“I wanted to take care of you,” Salt said in a low voice.

“Oh, you took care of me all right,” I muttered. “You son of a bitch.”

“Andi—”

“No. Don’t start.” I held up a hand to stop him. “You do
not
get to feel bet­ter about be­ing a com­plete shit by try­ing to ex­plain it away. Just keep your mouth shut and let’s get through this.”

“How am I be­ing ‘com­plete shit?’” he asked, his voice a low, angry growl. “I am giv­ing you what you
should
want.”

“I should want to be be­trayed and deser­ted by my part­ner?” I de­man­ded. “No, stop—don’t an­swer that. Let’s just go on.”

Be­fore he could protest I fast for­war­ded the video, which was just a nor­mal one of us sleep­ing, to the next night.

“Oh boy,” I muttered as I watched Salt bathing me in the big tub. “This has to go for sure.” I star­ted to fast for­ward it but he said,
“Wait.”

“What are we wait­ing for?” I de­man­ded, frown­ing at him.

“I just…want to see it.” His deep voice held a note of wist­ful­ness.

“What—you want to watch us be­ing per­ver­ted to­gether?” I said roughly, fast for­ward­ing.

“How is this per­ver­ted?” he asked softly. “I am wash­ing you, that is all.”

“Yeah and in a minute you’re go­ing to be shav­ing me,” I poin­ted out, my cheeks get­ting pink. “Look—there.” I poin­ted to the screen where he was per­form­ing the ex­tremely in­tim­ate ser­vice for me. It was hard to watch, hard to see my­self be­ing so na­ked and vul­ner­able and stu­pid, let­ting Salt into my heart as I let him touch my body. How much more cliché could I get? “And there,” I con­tin­ued point­ing at the screen again. “Where you
kissed
me in a very, uh,
in­ap­pro­pri­ate
place. How is that not per­ver­ted?”

“I should not have done that,” Salt ac­know­ledged in a low voice. “But I wanted so badly to taste you.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat and I fumbled with the re­mote. I meant to fast for­ward the scene on double speed but in­stead my thumb hit the pause but­ton. The screen froze just at the place where Salt was pla­cing a soft, gentle kiss on my freshly shaved pussy.

“Crap!” I tried to un­pause the scene on the TV but I was all thumbs.

“Here. Al­low me.”

To my sur­prise, Salt got up and came to sit be­side me on the small love­seat. He took the re­mote from me and pressed play, re­sum­ing the ac­tion.

Of course that meant that we had to watch him dry­ing me off and tak­ing me into the bed­room where he rubbed the cool­ing oint­ment onto my bare be­hind. Then I turned over for him and he star­ted rub­bing my pussy while I writhed shame­lessly like a cat in heat un­der his touch.

“God!” I could feel my cheeks burn­ing as I watched my own wan­ton dis­play. Clearly this part of the video needed to be erased for sure. It looked like my part­ner and I had de­cided to make our own private sex tape. “I can’t be­lieve I ac­ted like that!” I muttered.

“I can,” Salt said in a low voice.

“Thanks a lot.” I glared at him, reach­ing for the re­mote.

“I am not mak­ing a com­ment on your vir­tue, Andi,” Salt said stiffly, keep­ing the re­mote just out of my reach with one long arm. “I am talk­ing about the drug that was in your sys­tem, mak­ing you act as you did.”

“What?” I turned to him, un­com­pre­hend­ing. “What the hell are you talk­ing about?”

“The Please,” he said. “It was in the punch.”

“Yes, I know—I drank a whole glass­ful of the stuff like a fuck­ing idiot,” I snapped.

“You were tricked by Berkley—we both were,” Salt poin­ted out. “But lab re­ports showed that punch was drugged every night—not just dur­ing our last din­ner. You were drink­ing it all the time, Andi. It was build­ing up in your sys­tem, mak­ing you re­act to me in the way that you did.”

“Bull­shit,” I said flatly. “I barely touched it those other nights.”

“You must have drunk more than you thought. Look,” he said and fi­nally hit the fast for­ward but­ton.

The scene jumped again, this time show­ing the med­ical wing. At first Berkley and the damn se­cur­ity guard were spank­ing my pussy as I writhed in my bonds. I felt Salt tense next to me and a low growl rose in his throat.

“I should have got­ten there sooner,” he said in a tense, angry voice. “I should not have al­lowed them to hurt you.”

“You got there as soon as you could,” I said neut­rally. “See?” As we watched, Salt burst into the room, dis­lo­cated the se­cur­ity guard’s arm and nearly choked him to death. Then he ar­gued an­grily with Berkley who handed him the thick, black plug.

Just see­ing it, even on screen, made me feel in­cred­ibly un­com­fort­able. I squirmed in my seat as we watched Salt go down on me, lick­ing and suck­ing my pussy as he in­ser­ted the plug into my tight rose­bud.

Fi­nally, I couldn’t take it any­more.

“Salt,” I said through grit­ted teeth. “Is there a
reason
we’re watch­ing this? It’s fuck­ing em­bar­rass­ing!”

“Yes,” he growled. “To prove a point. You would not have ac­ted like this—would not have al­lowed me to treat you in this way—if you had not been com­prom­ised by the drug in your sys­tem.”

“Is
that
what you think? That’s just…it’s not true, Salt.”

“It
is
true,” he in­sisted. “I took ad­vant­age of you, Andi. Did things I should not have done—things you would not have al­lowed me to do if you had been your­self.”