Taking the Highway

SOFIA KEPT HER ARM linked in his all the way across the lawn to the parking lot, pretending that he was escorting her, instead of the other way around. They didn’t speak as they passed the clock tower and the antique autos, across what felt like three kilometers of manicured grass. Her car, a midnight-black Banshee, unlocked itself at her approach and she walked him to his side of it and waited until he was settled in the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel. “Where to?”

Andre slumped against the door and mumbled his address to her companel.

“You live in Novi?” Sofia raised her eyebrows.

Andre was good and tired of that reaction. Single cops lived in the city if they could afford it. Married ones tended toward respectable blue-collar suburbs Downriver, full of hard-working people who were happy to call themselves Detroiters and grateful not to live near the oh-zone. But the wide swath of zone on the city’s west side cheapened property in Novi and points further west. The longer commute also meant fourths could command higher prices. It was the perfect combination. Andre could not only afford a house, but a house with a garage. A garage that—if there was any justice in the world—would hold a 2008 Dodge Challenger. So far, Oliver had refused to visit. Afraid he might have to approve.

“I live in Novi,” he said flatly. He didn’t feel like explaining. Not today. Not to her.

Sofia tilted her head in a half shrug and pushed the starter. The car tried to play music for her but she canceled all selections. They rode in silence.

Studying her profile in the river of passing lights, it occurred to Andre that he was being less than gracious. None of this was her fault. “Thank you.”

Sofia turned an incredulous look at him. “For what?”

“For getting me out of there. For shoving me in a car before things got worse. I’m sorry about that.” He concentrated on the dark screen of his silent datapad. His police phone implant was also silent. He’d shut it down as soon as he’d entered the car. He was done with this day. Sofia didn’t say as much, but he had the feeling she’d shut off her implant too.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said.

That brought his head up and around. “For what?”

“I didn’t want to jump into the middle of a family matter, but I was hired to work security and I didn’t want a fight.”

“Especially if the host is involved.”

“Look, I was hired to do a job and I did it. I couldn’t embarrass your brother, so I got you out before you two started slugging each other.”

“We wouldn’t.” Andre looked out the window at the river of cars below them. They were on 94’s service drive, about to get on. “We never have.”

“Never?”

“I’m ten years younger than him. I wasn’t worth beating up.”

“Really?” A sparkle of lights danced across her face as Overdrive took over. “I’d beat you up for free.”

“Oh. Tempting offer.”

“I’m serious, LaCroix. You, me, training mats. Any time you want.”

“Are you threatening to take me down? Offering?”

“Take down, not go down.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Shut up.” But she was smiling too.

“I don’t have to shut up,” he said. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Yes, I kind of am.”

“What are the chances of you abusing your authority?”

“You like taking orders?”

“Depends on who is ordering what.”

“You’re into the kink, are you, Andre?” Sofia waved her hands above the wheel. “A little spankety-spank?”

“We’re getting dangerously close to policewoman cliché. Are you going to cuff me to a bed and have your way with me?”

Sofia snorted. “You wish.”

And even though it wasn’t funny at all, he found himself laughing. Laughing so hard that his midsection hurt. He thought he was laughing at Sofia, but it didn’t feel spiteful, or justified. It felt like a release. He knew it was mostly delayed reaction to the tension of a public spectacle, but it was so good to cut loose. He’d been undercover in Internal Affairs, but there was something about this case that was different. It was more draining, more subsuming of his identity—which itself was odd since he was, in fact, being more himself as a fourth. Wasn’t he?

Sofia must have felt it too because her pout turned into a smile, and then she was giggling with him, holding her hand a few centimeters in front of her mouth.

Andre’s laughter vanished as quickly as it came. He grabbed Sofia’s hand, and without a thought, pulled her toward him. Her face turned to his and their mouths met. Her lips were soft, her tongue agile, darting against his teasingly, her mouth tasting faintly of the coffee she’d been drinking.

And then it was over and her eyes were wide, staring back into his. “This is a very bad idea.”

Andre breathed out and touched his forehead to hers. “I know.”

She put both hands on his cheeks and tilted her face to his. The kiss resumed with even greater urgency.



“THIS IS A BAD IDEA.”

“You’re right,” Andre said. “It’s a terrible idea.” He keyed past his alarms and swept her inside, kicking the door shut behind them without breaking away. Fastenings opened, buttons were slipped and in a few cases flew to freedom. A trail of discarded clothing followed them toward the bedroom, then veered to the couch. The light of moon and streetlight streamed in the window, painting her body in electric hues. Sofia moaned and pulled his head down to one of her tiny nipples, rock hard in his mouth. He traced circles around the aureole of the other breast with his fingertips and a long line down her body with lips and tongue.

She lay across the couch and parted her legs obligingly as he knelt between them. “Oh, Andre.” There was a husky roughness to her voice he’d never imagined. It was a delight to know it was for him. He tasted her, raising her taut legs over his shoulders and feeling her heels dig against his shoulder blades. She said his name again, twining strong fingers into his hair and then stroking his neck softly before grasping again, raising her hips and quivering, shaking, trembling, exploding.

She tugged his face up to hers and sucked softly on his lips and tongue, stealing his breath away and giving it back to him, warmer and urgent.

“So, do you want to?” Andre whispered.

“Want to . . . what?”

“Have your way with me. I think I have some zipcuffs around here somewhere.”

“Shut up and get over here.” Her hands reached down and grasped him with firm insistence, stroking, smoothing, relaxing, returning. He slid around her and onto the couch, lifting her by the hips and turning her so her thighs were balanced over his. She moved onto him slowly, so that the very tip of him grazed and traced her nether lips. She barely had time to grab his shoulders before he jerked her hips forward and buried himself in her.

It might have been seconds or minutes before the resulting kiss ended and they started to move together. Now the light from outside was a nimbus that played through Sofia’s hair and over her shoulders and only spilled across her face when she threw back her head and cried his name again. Too close! Too soon! He closed his eyes and counted prime numbers, trying to hold on.

He felt her clench around him and gasped when she bit his earlobe, hard. “Come. Right. Now.”

He shuddered, thrust, shuddered again. In the midst of the frantic grasping, clutching, straining, she gently closed her lips over his and shared a measured, calming breath with him, back and forth and back. She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. He guessed she was waiting for him to withdraw and pulled her closer instead. She giggled naughtily and moved in response. “Hmmm?”

“It’ll be a few minutes before . . .”

“Really?” she said lazily, rocking back a little and then forward to kiss him lightly, then back again. “How long do I have?”

Andre stroked the inside of her thighs, her lower belly, the underswell of her breasts. “How long do you need?”

Her breathing had quickened again and her voice gasped, “Not very long.”

He kissed her throat and she moved his fingers insistently to her nipples and held them there until he tightened, pinching softly, softly, harder.

“Yes!” she crowed exultantly, moving with greater and greater urgency. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”



“ARE YOU LIKELY TO get noise complaints from the neighbors?”

Andre laughed and explained that since he’d saved the entire block from being systematically burgled the previous Fourth of July, his neighbors were more likely to throw him a party than complain.

They moved to the bedroom at his suggestion and over her perfunctory protests about returning to her own home.

“You’ll just have to come back here and get me in the morning. My car is still over at the Village.” He had more arguments ready, but she acquiesced with a wicked grin.

“I figure I still owe you,” she said, reaching down to touch him gently.

“Are we going to keep score?”

She draped her clothes over the back of a chair, piling her underthings on the seat. She whistled appreciatively at the acreage of his bed and crawled in cautiously. “I feel like I might need GPS to find my way back out. What’s the story here? Orgies?”

“Too complicated.” He handed her some extra pillows before joining her. “I move around a lot when I sleep,”

“I bet,” she said.

“I used to fall out of bed when I was a kid. I can barely find the edge of this monster.”

They nested together, moving his squadron of pillows until they were comfortably inextricable. He spent a few minutes afraid she was going to bring up the potentially inflammable subject of what they would be doing about this tomorrow, but she was either as content as he was, as smart as he was, or just as terrified as he was. He hoped.

“Just promise me you won’t date my brother.” The words left his mouth before he could take them back.

Sofia snorted. “The one who gave me a score? Not a chance.”

“You heard that, huh?”

“I think he wanted me to hear.”

“I hate it when he does that.”

She snuggled into him, her fingers cool and slim and somehow right on his arm and ribs. He was contemplating going for a bottle of wine or suggesting coffee when Sofia asked, “Andre, why do you fourth?”

“Why not?” he answered easily. “Something like half our department moonlights.”

“Yes, but why fourthing? Why can’t you be a security guard like a normal cop?”

“I’m allergic to doughnuts.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not big and beefy. How am I supposed to bounce a room?”

“Don’t give me that. People respond to a shield and a gun and a certain air of authority.”

“That must be how you do it.”

Sofia sat up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” For a second, he wished she had asked him instead about their future together, then he shook himself. “What was the question again?”

Sofia threw a pillow at him. “Why do you fourth?”

“I like it.”

“I like tea, but I don’t make a second career out of drinking it.”

Andre grabbed the pillow Sofia had thrown and put it behind his head, considering. He thought of Bob Masterson, living nowhere, doing nothing, happy working a less-than-part-time job for almost no wages. He could never do what Bob did, but he understood what Bob got out of it. The pleasures of fourthing were immediate. Customers wanted you. They assumed they would like you. They chose you above all others and were happy to have you in their cars.

No one was ever happy to see a cop. Even if you needed them, even if they were on your side, the police only showed up when something bad happened to you. By the time you called the police, you were already having one the worst days of your life. Of course, Andre still felt the satisfaction of helping, of doing a good job, but the pleasures of being a cop were subtle and unsure. Sometimes, you gave your all and nobody cared. Sometimes you were even punished for it.

He meant to tell Sofia that, to explain it all to her, but what popped out was, “Job security.”

“Security? You’ve chosen the most insecure job there is.”

Andre smiled in the dark. “Not if you’re good.”

“Are you?”

“I get by.”

“So you’re not fully invested in fourthing, either.” Sofia rolled away from him, giving him her back.

Andre sat up and rubbed his left eye. How did she do that? Most women didn’t see through him so quickly. He retreated to his pillow nest, knowing at any moment Sofia would get dressed and leave.

He held his breath in the awkward silence. Sofia didn’t move, waiting for something, perhaps for the truth. It was worth a try. “My dad was an executive at Quensis. He gave them thirty years and they gave him a polished wingtip on the backside and not much else. Being your own boss is the only real job security. It isn’t that I don’t trust the department, but you know what they say about The Job. You fall in love with it—it doesn’t fall in love with you.”

Andre reached for her but she’d scrambled to the far side of the bed, an ocean of blankets between them. “I got promoted once—”

“Most people see that as a good thing.”

“—right after the biggest screw-up of my career.”

“And what this has to do with fourthing . . .”

He kept his eyes closed, not daring to look, attempting to hold her with his words. “You know I came over from Internal Affairs? I’ve seen the worst of both sides of the law. So many cops walking a line between arresting criminals and becoming one.” His voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else, someone bitter and old with it. “I guess as long as I’m a fourth, I can tell myself I’m not all cop and I’m not in danger of making those mistakes.”

He stopped. Here he was, with a beautiful woman in his bed, a fantastic ending to a shitty day, and he was ruining it by babbling nonsense. He moved cautiously to her side, laying himself along the length of her and gently kissing her ear. “What about you? Why are you a cop?”

“My dad’s a cop. Mom’s a social worker. I come by it honestly.” Sofia leaned into his embrace and he felt a glow in his chest. She would stay. “But we’re not talking about me.”

“Why not?” Andre brushed his fingers over her side, feeling her warm skin under his hand. “I like talking about you. I could talk about you all night. So, your dad was a cop. What’s it like to be born in blue?”

“He didn’t shield me.” Sofia’s voice was slow and sleepy. “Not from anything.”

“Yeah, all kids think that.”

“I chowed through a rare steak while Dad gave me every detail of a fatal stabbing. The blood didn’t bother me.”

“Jesus. How old were you?”

“I don’t know. About seven. It was just dinner conversation. The thing is, that was normal at my house. When I was nine, he taught me how to fight off a rapist.”

She didn’t say the rest. Didn’t have to. The way her body tensed told him she’d needed those skills, maybe not long after she’d learned them. Andre snuggled closer behind her, holding her until she relaxed.

He listened to her talk, trying to picture what it was like to be an only child of parents like hers. Sofia told him happier stories about her dad and her family and her childhood—Tigers games, sledding, Sleeping Bear Dunes—until she wore herself out and fell asleep.

He stayed awake long after, absently running his fingertips across her arm, thinking about family. What was it like to have parents who actually told you the truth about their jobs? All of it? What kind of family never hid things from the children? He hadn’t known his dad’s job was in danger until it was already gone. He hadn’t known Dad was an alcoholic until he’d drunk himself to death.

He watched Sofia sleep, content, wishing he could have some of that for himself. But if he couldn’t have her contentment, he could at least share it. He put his head on her pillow, matched her breath for breath, and tried not to think about his brother.