Unlovable (30 page)

“
Hmm,” I said,
noncommittally, and unrolling the window a bit more, before
snuggling further into the seat.

We slid to a stop as Seth pulled up in
front of my trailer, “What’s wrong?”

“
Did you leave your bedroom
window open?” He pointed to my open window on the side of the
trailer.

“
No, there’s no heat, why
would I leave …” Someone must have broken in. I shoved the door
open, but before I could get out Seth was at my door blocking
me.

“
Stay here!” His fierce tone
left little doubt he wasn’t making a suggestion. He crouched low
and went around the side of the trailer, looking through the open
window. Coming back to the front, he pulled out his cell
phone.

“
I’m not waiting for you,
I’m going in. Hurry.” He stuffed the phone into his pocket, cutting
off the protests from whoever was on the other end.

He walked over to the car. “Don’t
follow me! Do you understand?” He flipped the passenger seat down
horizontal. “Get down low.”

“
Please don’t go in alone.”
Ignoring my plea, he locked the door and hurried off. He ran around
to the back of the house, hopping a rickety six-foot fence in the
process.

I panicked and cautiously climbed out
of the car. Unable to climb the tall fence, I ran straight to the
front door and opened it just a crack. To my surprise, the two
creeps from the park greeted me. Why can’t I get away from these
pathetically dressed goons?

“
Well, well, well. Lookie
who we got here,” the larger of the two said as he tugged the door
open widely. He grinned, or maybe it was a sneer, it was hard to
tell.

“
What did you do to my
mother?” I demanded, wiping the droplets of rain from my
face.

“
This old drunk’s your
mama?” he laughed. “Small world, ain’t it, girlie?” He ran a hand
over my cheek and clicked his tongue, his grin widening. “I’ve been
wanting to meet you something bad.”

“
Wh-What are you doing
here?”

Before he could answer me, Seth flew
through the window on the back of our trailer, and in his hands was
a huge black gun.

“
MET! FREEZE!” he shouted,
running toward me.

My new friend grabbed a clump of my
hair and spun me around so my back pressed against his chest. The
guy’s body odor was enough to stop a truck. It didn’t help my
queasy stomach.

“
Your boyfriend’s MET?” he
hissed banefully in my ear.

“
No, he’s a senior at Port
Fare High,” I said, doubting my own words. Seth was a cop? No, he
couldn’t be!

“
What’s your name, scum?” he
asked Seth.

He answered slowly. “Detective Seth
Prescott.”

“
Detective? What?” I was
sickened clear through my soul. The hand in my hair tightened, and
I let out a sob of pain.

Seth started toward me. “Come one step
closer, she dies.” As the man spoke, I felt something cold and hard
glide across my neck. A knife, an incredibly sharp knife. He was
barely applying any pressure, yet its keen edge nipped at my
skin.

Seth threw his hands up in the air,
his huge gun now pointing at the ceiling. “You hurt her, it will be
the last thing you ever do,” Seth vowed.

“
Do you have any idea who I
am?” The creep’s voice had gone from playful to rancorous. Seth
answered him with a shake of his head.

“
Alan, and this is my
brother, Bill.”

Seth looked bemused. Clearly, the
names meant nothing to him.

“
No? How about Dreser? Does
that name ring any bells?” he asked, spit flying from his
mouth.

Seth’s eyes widened. “Yeah,
thought so,” said Bill smugly. “And I’m willing to bet you remember
killing our brother, Jeffery?” Again, Seth shook his head. Bill
groaned loudly. “You killed him over in Syracuse, at Chuckey’s
Billiards! Does that–” Bill paused and smiled as Seth’s face now
registered fear. “Oh, yeah. You
do
remember, all too well.”

Stay calm,
Maggie
, I instructed myself. It felt as if
I were in a dream, a very bad dream, and any minute now I’d wake up
alone in my bed. Seth was a high school senior, like me, not an
MET… cop… agent…whatever you called them.

I ripped my eyes from Seth, looking
over to my mother. Her breathing was shallow and irregular, I
desperately wanted to see if she was hurt.

“
Let her go, then we’ll
talk,” Seth said. I turned my attention back to the three men.
Seth’s gun was now pointed at Bill’s head, but he was watching
Alan's every move.

“
I don’t think so, scum.”
Alan let go of my hair and aligned my body more fully in front of
his. There was no way Seth could take a shot and not hit me,
assuming he even knew how to shoot the dumb thing.

“
Your brother was dealing
heroin to 11 and 12 year-olds,” Seth said, his jaw clamped
tight.

“
It’s a free country,” Alan
flipped. Seth’s face tightened. “So you on some undercover
assignment at the high school?” Alan pressed.

Murder? Drugs? Undercover? Seth looked
at me, saying nothing, just looking.

“
Answer me, scum!” Alan
pressed the knife more firmly against my throat, a warm trickle of
blood began running down my neck.

“
Yes!” Seth bit
out.

No! He was just Seth, hottest guy at
Port Fare High. He ran a charity. He was a great cook. He was kind
and giving and he… loved… me…?

“
Let me guess, you were
assigned to keep an eye on little girlie here and her complete
waste of a mother.” Alan rubbed his cheek against mine and laughed.
“And I bet she thinks you’re really in love with her.” Both the
creeps laughed, and Alan hissed in my ear, “My bet is you’ve been
duped, girlie.”

My bet is the creep was
right
.

I began trembling. I was an
assignment? That was it? Yet, it made sense. Of course, I was an
assignment, to think I meant anything more to him was ridiculous.
He could have any girl he wanted, isn’t that what Zack said, so why
would he pick me… unless he had to. Trailer Girl was purely an
assignment. I’d fallen in love with an undercover cop who was only
doing his job. I meant nothing to him.

“
Maggie, don’t listen to
them. They are playing with your head. They’re drug dealers, and
their dad is a notorious smuggler,” Seth pleaded. But it was too
late. I knew the truth and was disgusted with myself.
What a stupid, stupid girl I truly am.

My knees gave out, and I started to
drop. Alan cinched his arm around my stomach tighter, so tight I
had to fight to breath.

“
Let her go, and we can work
out a deal,” Seth bargained.

“
Put the gun down, kick it
away,” Alan said, his hot breath licking at my ear. It was clear he
wasn’t taking any deal. Seth slowly set the gun down and kicked it
down the hall,
away
from the men.

“
Not a smart move, cop.”
Bill, whose brow was damp with sweat, now had a small silver gun
pointed directly at Seth. “You and your scumbag friends are–” His
rebuke was cut off by the sound of sirens, several
sirens.

“
Leave her, and let’s get
out of here!” he said to Alan.

“
Not without the girl! I’ve
waited—”

“
We leave now,
without
the girl, Alan!
We won’t be able to escape if we have her weighing us
down.”

“
What about him? Are we just
going to let him live? No way!”

“
Yes, he hasn’t paid for
what he’s done yet. We stick with the plan!”

“
Do you honestly think I’m
going to let you leave with her?” Seth interrupted. “There’ll be
ten cop cars here within seconds. You have no choice. Let her
go.”

“
If we let her go, he’ll
only follow us. We should bring her with us as a hostage,” Alan
said. He lowered his head again, running his cold nose along my
neck and inhaling. My stomach heaved.

“
I have a better idea. We
need a diversion, and I got the perfect one,” Bill said. It was the
last thing I heard. Regrettably, it wasn’t the last thing I felt as
my head was slammed into the doorframe. My world spun
away.

***

“
Maggie, wake up, please.”
Seth’s voiced reached into the deep dark hole I was in and pulled
me out. I felt his lips pressing against my forehead before
realizing I was on the floor. What in the world was I doing on the
floor? I forced my eyes open as I sat up. “Maggie! Are you
okay?”

It all came back to me in one huge
wave, a tsunami. Seth was a cop or MET or something. “You lied to
me,” was all I could think to say.

“
Can we talk about this
later? You need to be examined. There’s a huge lump on your head.”
I reached up, cautiously touching my sore head. Not only was the
lump huge, it was also very tender.

“
Where are those
men?”

“
They took off.” Sensing my
agitation, he moved away from me. “They won’t get far. Half the
force is after them as we speak.”

Half the… No more. No! More! I
stumbled over to my mom. Her breathing was coming out in short
puffs.

“
I didn’t find any injuries
on her. She may have gotten some bad stuff.”

“
Stuff?”

“
Ah… Drugs. Heroin, I’m
guessing.” He kicked at a loose piece of linoleum as he spoke,
never looking my way. “It could be alcohol, Maggie, but like I said
before, those two are drug dealers.”

So that was why a scrawny
girl and an alcoholic mother merited their own personal cop. They
thought my mom was doing drugs! Seth was posing as my friend so he
could… What? Arrest her? No. That wasn’t it. He would have done
that by now. Why
hadn’t
he questioned her, or even tried to search my
house for drugs?

Then it hit
me
. Because my mom was simply the bait. He
was using her.

“
And where exactly do you
think she’s getting the money for drugs?” I jumped up too quickly,
becoming dizzy. Seth reached out to steady me.

“
Don’t touch me! You lied.
Tell me the truth. Who are you, and what do you want with
us?”

“
I’m undercover MET, it
stands for Mobile Enforcement Team. Booker and I are on the drug
task force. I’ve been assigned to Port Fare High to try and find
out where the influx of heroin is coming from.”

It poured off his tongue so fluidly it
had to be the truth. That was why he and Booker seem like such good
friends, they’re cops together.

“
Over the past eight to ten
months, heroin use has skyrocketed in Port Fare.” Seth’s eyes
searched my face, trying to judge my reaction. I held myself still,
not giving in to my desire to fly into a rage.

“
You think my mother is
what, a dealer? A user?” My incredulous tone caused him to wince.
Good.

“
We feel she is somehow
involved, though we don’t know how yet. But we’re not after small
time dealers at the moment, Maggie, what we really want is the
supplier.”

What in that statement was
supposed to comfort me? This was
not
happening. The police were using
my mother for bait, but why was I befriended?

The next thought hit me like an
eighty-pound anvil to my chest. “You think I’m involved somehow,
don’t you?”

His silence was deafening. Finally, he
spoke. “At first, maybe a little, but I don’t anymore.”

 “
Oh, well, thanks.
It’s nice to know my
boyfriend’s
pretty sure
I’m not a
druggie.” I sat down next to my mom, burying my face in my
hands.

“
Maggie, my feelings for you
have nothing to do with the case.”

I shook my head, wondering if what he
was saying was just another lie. “You know how important trust is
to me, yet you’ve done nothing but deceive me.”

“
I couldn’t tell you,
Maggie. I was undercover, you’re involved, albeit indirectly. I had
to keep you in the dark. You were part of my…
assignment.”

It was at that moment my
heart broke completely. I should have known something was up the
moment he started talking to me. Of course, this beautiful man
could never really love the
unlovable
nothing
. He was only utilizing me to get to
my mother, I was merely a pawn.

“
Go away.” My voice sounded
strange to me, as if someone else was speaking. “Get out and go
away. Leave me, leave us, alone.”

“
Maggie. You’re
overreacting. Calm down. After your mother’s settled at the
hospital, and you’re checked out, we’ll go back to my place. You
need some time to let your mind catch up with all of this. I’ll
answer all your questions, well, the ones I’m allowed–”

“
GET OUT NOW!” I sounded
pretty brave for a small girl up against a guy with a big black
gun. The arrival of the EMT’s cut off my rant. They rushed in,
rattling off questions as they started an IV on my mom. Seth told
them he believed she might be under the influence of some kind of
illegal drug. I didn’t argue, I was in way over my head.