Day Five:

Wednesday, July 12th

Laguna Beach, California

Jasper

2:13:46..45...44...43...

Three hours passed far too quickly, and I was disappointed it took that long to get things in order. It wasn't a simple request by any means; three hundred pounds of grass wasn't something that we had lying around and on hand at a moment's notice. Besides, we still had to drive down to Chula Vista, which was still an hour and a half away from Laguna. Fuck, we're running shit too fucking close, and that caused me great panic and anxiety, and no amount of blunts was going to lessen it. How the hell were we going to fulfill it? If it weren't for Edward keeping me focused, I would have stood frozen, unable to think or do anything, and wasted even more time.

Edward said, "Call him."

He meant Eric. He was the main guy who ran our Laguna greenhouse. Over the past four years, our business had grown so much that we needed to outsource to several people I trusted. Eric was one, and the other guy was Daniel, but both men worked together to shoulder the burden. It was too large to keep between Edward and me. If I were to run it by myself, I wouldn't be able to do my important work. Edward stayed in town year-round, and he was able to oversee a lot of our main greenhouse in Laguna, and occasionally he would go down to Huntington Beach, Encinitas, and even Santa Barbara to ensure quality control. If the Baja Cartel never came along, we considered expanding in Oceanside. We had a spot in this massive warehouse and could produce over a hundred plants. It was a huge deal, and I was excited about the possibilities.

I was fucking sick to my stomach. The seriousness of our situation hit me like a sledgehammer. The fact that they had lifted Bean and forced Edward to put a gun in his mouth was traumatic. Those images were hard to forget. What if I lost them both? How would I even survive? Would life even be worth living after that? It was hard to fucking imagine.

"Get it together," Edward said to me as we pulled up to the Laguna greenhouse.

From the outside, it looked like your typical beachside condo, but that was the least of what it was.

"Okay," I said, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms.

Eric met us at the door. He frowned, taking in my disheveled and stressed appearance. "Yo, J, you look like shit. Are you okay?"

"You got it?" I blurted out.

He said, "Everything is ready to go." Edward and I followed him through the foyer and into the living room. "My boys had to go all the way to Santa Barbara to get you three hundred pounds. It nearly wiped us out. We've only got thirty or forty pounds left."

Of course, the fucking cartel wanted to deplete us of our supply. It would take months, maybe up to a year, to fucking get it back.

Upon entering the main room facing the ocean, I noticed twenty people packing jars full of grass and carrying them out to the garage. They were loading one of our vans. That's what we'll be transporting to Chula Vista.

"Thank you," I said.

"So, who am I working for now? You or them?" he asked.

The confusion was understandable; you can't pass-off this much product on someone else and still call yourself the boss.

"You'll know tomorrow," I said. It depended on whether we lived through the night. "We owe you, Eric."

He handed me the keys to the van. "Have a safe trip."

0:45 14...13...12...11...

Driving down the 5 with about a hundred mason jars filled with weed, I was doing ninety miles per hour, and it still felt too slow. If we were a minute late, how would they respond? Did we even have a ten-minute grace period? I wasn't about to test the theory and make the mistake of finding out. They would kill Bean without batting an eye.

Leaning over, Edward said, "Slow down, man. The cops are like bees all over."

"We have forty-five minutes," I said, easing off the gas so we could maintain the speed limit. There were fifty miles left to go, and if the traffic stayed clear, we could make it in time. It would be close but doable.

Another thirty or so minutes passed, and we were in complete silence. We didn't even bother with the radio.

Edward said, "It's the next exit."

I complained, "We've got seven minutes."

"We'll make it with plenty of time to spare."

I didn't trust the lights or the traffic, so I increased my speed. The dial climbed to seventy, to eighty, to ninety-five, and then to one hundred twenty-five—that's when I passed the fucking state trooper. He was in the slow lane, and I didn't see him until it was too late.

"Oh, shit!" I braked, and the speed fell to sixty, but I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror, praying that the cop would stay in his lane.

Edward said to me, "Just relax." He was glancing out of his window, also keeping tabs on me.

The oxygen seemed to be sucked out of my lungs as I kept my eyes on the cop instead of the road ahead. We were less than a mile from our exit, though.

The cop then got behind us and followed closely.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said, trying not to panic.

"Fuck," Edward said, looking toward the rear window. "Drive real cool, Jasper."

"Three hundred pounds! We're dead, man!"

"No, man." Edward loaded the shotgun he had brought, just in case. "He's dead."

My eyes bulged out of my skull. "Are you fucking crazy?" I shouted. "You can't shoot a cop!"

The shotgun made that distinctive sound as Edward snapped the barrel back into place. "Put one big thought in your head," he said. "Bean is not going to die. Forget everything else."

"Oh, God! Please, Mr. State Trooper, don't pull us over," I said in a sing-song voice. "It's not your night to die."

Edward held the shotgun to his chest and prayed under his breath, trying to psyche himself out.

"Edward's going to shoot you. I'm not gonna lie." The song continued as my eyes remained fixed on the rearview mirror. Strangling the steering, my knuckles turned white from the strain, and sweat poured off me like fucking rain.

Edward said, "Hey, this is our exit."

I pulled into the exit lane and the cop turned on his lights and sirens - the dreaded red and blue lights, and a woo, woo, woo.

Edward exclaimed, "Shit," as his grip tightened around the gun.

"Shit!" I echoed, and we looked at each other. "This is it, man."

I was so stressed to the max, but he gazed back, calm and ready. That scared me more than anything. The cop was going to die, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I saw it all go down too. The cop would approach me, ask for my license and registration, take a peek at all the drugs in the back, and then Edward would blow a hole through his chest.

I stopped that train of thought in its tracks.

The big thought I needed to keep at the forefront of my mind was that Bean wasn't going to die.

Why did anyone have to die?

Then, as I eased the van right into the exit, the cop didn't follow and sped past us.

"Fuck!" I exclaimed in an exhale.

Edward shook his head and shifted the gun toward the floor. "Hard right."

Turning onto the vacant street, I glanced at the dash clock and panicked. "Two minutes, man! Where do we go?"

"They're watching us."

My cell phone rang from the cup holder. Edward grabbed it, flipped it open, and put the caller on speaker.

"Yes?" I asked.

A man with a thick Hispanic accent said, "Go two blocks. Look for a fish store."

"Okay, I see it."

"There's an alley behind the store; turn right."

Obeying his instructions, I pulled the van into a small lot behind some buildings. The main focus was a little shed-like structure painted in stripes of red, green, blue, and white. In front of the building was an altar with skulls, flowers, and a female skeleton wearing a white dress and veil. Above her head was a wooden cross, also rolled in white lights.

"Park it over there."

"Should I shut the engine off?" I asked, shifting the gear into park.

"No."

I looked out the window but still saw no one.

Edward pointed straight ahead as a pair of headlights came into view. "Stay cool," he said.

Two cars drove up from each side and cornered the van as they parked. Four men with guns jumped out and encircled us. They opened our doors before we could react and yanked us out. They were yelling in our faces and giving us orders in Spanish. It was, 'Don't fucking move. Keep your hands where we can see them,' and that they'd fucking kill us if we tried anything. Edward left his shotgun on the van floor, and I was grateful. We had to keep Bean alive, and starting a gunfight with these assholes wasn't a great way to achieve that.

The men forced Edward and me against the shed, not once removing the guns they had aimed at our heads. They patted us down, finding nothing - not even Bean's knife. I closed my eyes in relief. We were unarmed. Once they realized we weren't a threat to them and they had the upper hand and control, they seemed more at ease.

However, that doesn't mean they are our friends.

"Hey, puta." I couldn't tell you what the guy looked like; all I saw was the barrel of a gun as he aimed it at my face. "If anything goes wrong, if anybody follows us, the girl dies slowly."

And with that, the men retreated, pulling the van we had arrived in and one of their cars. They left the black blazer for us. I was dazed and feeling off-balance. My adrenaline was through the roof, and for the third time that day, I thought it was the end. You could call me the most naive drug dealer out there, but like I told Edward, I got into this business for two reasons: to help people get off Big Pharma and to fund my philanthropy - in that order. The riches were a bonus, not a requirement.

Going over to the SUV, we saw a black suitcase on the passenger's side seat. Edward popped it open with the four-digit code BC had given us. Inside, there was money, to the tune of five hundred thousand dollars, and a cell phone.

He said, "Let's go."

We both got into the Blazer, me in the driver's seat, and I pulled out and headed back home. The only thing that made me feel better was knowing we would be able to find Bean.

Edward said, "They paid in full." His tone was flat.

"Not entirely."

"Bean," he replied, and his eyes lit up like mine with hope.

The familiar and sickeningly jaunty tune of the cartel was set on the phone's ringtone.

My stomach tightened as Edward flipped it open.

"Yes," I answered, but I heard nothing. Edward pointed toward the visor, which had a symbol of a phone. I pressed it, and the call came through the car's speakers.

The same distorted voice blared. "We're happy to see you've learned to honor your partnership."

Edward and I glanced at each other. Yeah, like, right, you only fucking forced us into this shit.

"What do you want from us?" I asked.

"The same things we agreed upon. Three years. Except," a female voice switched over, "now, motherfuckers, it's 70-30."

I mouthed to Edward, "That has to be Elena."

He agreed by nodding.

Reina Elena was rumored to be the leader of the Baja Cartel, and this fucking confirmed it.

"The first payment was received."

"And Bella?"

"Isabella will be away for one year."

"One year?" Edward barked out. His eyes were wide and wild with disbelief.

"All right, Edward… ssh," I said, holding up my hand and trying to get him to calm down with a look: Don't fuck this up!

Luckily, Elena didn't hear him and continued. "At the end of this year, she'll come home. Fail to meet the terms of our partnership at any time, and the girl will die very badly."

The line disconnected; it was too quiet. The bomb she dropped gutted us both.

Edward scoffed. "One year? Bean won't make it three weeks."

"What if we offer them cash? Right now?"

He said, "They're going to kill her anyway."

"Don't fucking say that."

"They're going to make us jump through these fucking hoops until they get what they want. Then they're going to kill her, and then they're going to kill us."

"Look, we made a three-year deal. She's out in one. They want the money."

"You don't know shit. You're talking to the Taliban."

I rolled my eyes. "Right. Okay."

"They don't give anything back."

"All right, all right. But they paid for the drugs, didn't they?"

Edward leaned toward me and spoke clearly and slowly. "Savages don't make deals, Jasper."

"They're a business, Edward," I argued. "Think about it. We're smarter than they are."

"Yes, in botany."

I smiled as my ego inflated, but I quickly wiped it away.

"Every man in her fucking life has let her down. She's in this shit because of us," he said.

"I know," I whispered, the guilt ripping through me.

"When I said, "Kill them." "They can't come up north. There's too much heat on them." You said, "No, let's talk about it." How's that working out for you?"

I knew he would throw that shit in my face. "That's your answer for everything. Just fucking kill everybody!"

"How's that working out for you?"

"So, what? Is this my fault?"

"I didn't see you stick a fucking gun in your mouth, Jasper!" Edward was in my face, yelling; the calm he had tried so hard to keep under wraps had exploded. The trauma of that night had a way of causing many ripples. "I haven't left a man behind in my whole fucking life!"

"Do you think I could?" I shouted back.

He sat back and shook his head. "We can't leave her there," he said.

The loss of Bean was too much for him, and he thought I was giving up on her. It only occurred to me what he was actually saying. We had been playing by the cartel's rules, and they fucking fucked us. They took our girl and used her to get what they wanted, but what assurance did we have? Edward was right. No matter how strong Bean was, the year of unimaginable treatment by them would change her forever. Every day, a piece of her soul would be chipped away until she was nothing. We couldn't wait one more minute.

"Then let's get her back."

AN: Thanks for reading!