White Lines III

 

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For Dee Dee

May your beautiful soul rest happily ever after in Heaven

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Monique Patterson, you are my biggest motivator, my most honest critic, a true visionary, an overall genius, and best of all, an excellent friend! I will never be able to thank you enough for your role in my career.

Sara Camilli, you are a tremendous asset to my career. You give me great advice, you push me when I need it, and you look out for my best interests. On top of that, you are an incredible woman who juggles many roles at once. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with you, and I look forward to what the future has in store for us as a team.

My readers, you are so very special to me. Please know that I read all of your feedback with a smile. It's an honor and a privilege to write stories that make you happy, sad, angry, or a combination of all three. I appreciate your support so very much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

 

1

MOMENT OF TRUTH

Sunny looked around her cell helplessly. She sat in a small, dirty room with one tiny, grime-coated window, a filthy cement floor, a toilet that smelled and looked as if it had never been cleaned, and one old wooden bench upon which she sat now.

Sunny's tearstained face was set in a grimace. She had stopped crying long ago, but the tracks of her tears were still evident, colored in by streaks of her mascara. Her usually bright eyes were vacant, as she stared down at her hands and tried to wrap her mind around what had happened thirty-one hours ago. She had counted each one of those hours as she stared at the clock on the wall, its second hand ticking by like a bell tolling in her head.

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head in disbelief, fighting back the tears that threatened to rush forth once more. The reality of her situation was just too terrible. Sunny was in a Mexican prison cell, charged with cocaine possession. The baggie she had tucked into her purse when Malcolm surprised her on the seedy side of town had been discovered by customs agents at the airport. She cursed herself for forgetting about it. She had slipped. BIG time.

Sunny had been interrogated in hostile tones for hours. Like rapid fire, the police hurled questions and accusations at her in broken English, demanding to know where she had gotten the drugs. They spoke amongst themselves in Spanish after questioning her nonstop all night. When she heard them discussing all of the American money they had discovered in her purse, she couldn't resist telling them in fluent Spanish that every penny of it was theirs to keep if they would only let her go. One of the rough-looking female guards had gotten pissed off instantly. Sunny wasn't sure if the woman was pissed off that she had offered a bribe or if it was the fact that her Spanish was better than theirs. But the next thing Sunny knew, the guard had snatched her by the collar of her shirt. Glaring, she had gotten in Sunny's face so close that Sunny could smell her hot, vile breath.

“
Pendeja
! It's already ours to keep and you're
still
going to jail!” The guard had spat on the floor in front of Sunny and then sealed it with a look of pure contempt. Since then, all of the guards had been speaking to Sunny rudely in Spanish, and watching what they said to one another while in her presence. They seemed to be convinced that she was part of some big cartel. They had accused her of attempting to smuggle the small amount of coke as some kind of trial run to test the customs agents' thoroughness. They wanted to know whose drugs they were, how long Sunny had been working for them, and what role Malcolm played in all of it.

Malcolm.

As her thoughts turned to him, Sunny closed her eyes once more to keep the tears at bay. She had really fucked up now. She wondered where they had taken him after separating the two of them immediately after they discovered the cocaine in her possession. She imagined that they must have interrogated him just as mercilessly as they had her. She prayed that he knew to keep his mouth shut and say absolutely nothing. Malcolm wasn't from her world. He didn't think like she did, wasn't as quick on his feet. She began to pick at her nails, absentmindedly, chipping away at her fill-in. She was tired, hungry, and scared to death. She imagined that Malcolm must be, too. And then there was the issue of the man they'd left to bleed to death in a cab ride gone horribly wrong. She needed to get the fuck out of Mexico.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. One of the guards entered the room. He was accompanied by a stout Mexican man wearing a cheap suit and run-over shoes.

“
Abuego
,” the scowling guard mumbled before leaving as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving Stubby behind. Sunny sized up the poorly dressed man standing before her, who would be acting as her attorney. She felt a pang of guilt as she thought about her
real
attorney—Malcolm—being detained in a room nearby.

The man introduced himself as Marcos Gomez. He sat down beside her on the wooden bench, and set his briefcase down on the floor in front of him. He smelled of unfamiliar cologne and hand sanitizer, an oddly comforting combination that put Sunny at ease. She felt optimistic. Hopefully, he could find a way for her and Malcolm to get out of this mess.

Sunny began talking animatedly to her makeshift attorney, telling him in anxious, hurried Spanish that she hadn't been given a chance to call anyone since her arrest. She thought that surely inmates were allowed one phone call here as they were in America. Anything else seemed inhumane.

Mr. Gomez tried to suppress a smirk at Sunny's audacious outrage. Here she was, under arrest for drug possession in a foreign country and indignant still. He asked her if she had ever been arrested before. Sunny shrugged, unsure how that was relevant. He read between the lines, and assumed that her shrug was a “yes.”

“
Para drogas
?” he asked. For drugs?

Sunny hesitated before answering. “Once for marijuana. The other time was for driving with a suspended license.” She watched him write that down.

“But, I was booked, given a phone call and released both times. Nothing like this!” She hadn't brushed her teeth nor been given an opportunity to shower since her arrest. She had no access to her luggage, and had sat in the same panties for far longer than she cared to. Sunny had barely been given anything to eat and she wondered how long she would be forced to endure this nightmare. She felt disgusting.

Mr. Gomez listed the charges against her.

“Drug smuggling, possession of narcotics, and conspiracy.”

“I wasn't smuggling anything or conspiring with anybody! Those drugs are not mine!” Even though she was aware that she was lying, Sunny convinced herself that this was all just a misunderstanding. She hadn't been smuggling
on purpose
, and the small amount of coke she had in her possession certainly didn't warrant her being held for this long under these conditions.

Gomez nodded, seeming to understand her frustration.

Sunny sighed, heavily. She dragged her fingers through her hair in exasperation. “Who was I supposedly conspiring with?” she demanded. Her thoughts turned to Malcolm again. Oh, no! Did they think that
he
was her coconspirator in this imaginary drug-smuggling ring?

“Are you representing Malcolm, too?” she asked.

Gomez frowned, confused. “Who is
Malcolm
?”

Sunny looked at him like he was crazy. “My codefendant,” she said. “The guy I was with at the airport.”

Gomez, still looking bewildered, sifted through some papers in his briefcase. He seemed to find what he was looking for, paused on one page in particular, and slowly read a section of it. He shook his head.

Sunny cleared her throat, impatiently.

“
Señor
Dean, yes?” he asked.

“Yes!” Sunny was growing impatient with this man.

Gomez shook his head again. His expression was bleak, and she knew instantly that there was bad news.

“Malcolm Dean has already been released. He flew back to the U.S. yesterday.”

Sunny's heartbeat quickened and her stomach turned. She heard a ringing in her ears.
“What?”
Suddenly she felt sick, bile rising in her throat and sweat pooling at her brow.

Gomez scanned the document in his hand once again. “He gave a statement. He
said
that the drugs belonged to you alone, and he had no idea about any of it. Since the drugs were found in
your
luggage and not in his, they allowed him to pay a sum and leave Mexico immediately.”

Sunny felt like she might pass out. “He gave a statement?” she repeated, incredulously.

“
Si
,” Gomez confirmed. He shook his head, and Sunny felt comforted by this gesture. Even he knew that Malcolm was a bitch for abandoning her this way.

“Apparently, he is an attorney in the States, and assured us that he had no knowledge of your drug-related activities. He has paid his way out.”

Sunny sat in stunned silence.
That muthafuckin' bitchass bastard!
she thought
.
She was seething. But above all, she was hurt. She had fallen for Malcolm despite all of the alarm bells ringing in her head telling her not to. And now, here she was, crushed and abandoned. Locked up abroad. She should have known better than to trust him.

“Okay, so I need to do the same thing,” Sunny said, snapping her fingers to illustrate how quickly she needed this all to be dealt with. Malcolm was a coward, she decided, and she would deal with his punk ass when she got back to the States. But, right now, she needed to get the hell out of Mexico before someone connected her to more than that small amount of drugs in her bag. “How much do I need to get out of here?”

Gomez stared at her for a moment, silently. Finally, he responded.

“The price for
you
could be very high. Your friend is an attorney, and he did not have the drugs in his possession. He claimed that he barely knew you, and that he had no idea what your involvement is in the cocaine trade. His situation was different. Yours will be tougher.”