Chapter 8

Sara

Sara was 5’1″ with strawberry blonde hair and serious curves. Her boobs were most of her upper body and her personality was bubbly and light.
We met while sitting in the lounge area of the escort agency. In the lounge of the office you would usually see the girls on their phones or freshening up their makeup and watching movies. Pretty woman was the usual movie of choice and I always found that completely ironic. The sheer thought that these women still had hope for love after seeing the lust driven and perverted tendencies was always amusing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I hoped for love as well but I knew it wasn’t going to come to me through a call with one of these John’s.  Sara was on her phone waiting to go on a call when we started chatting in the lounge. It didn’t take long for me to see she had a bright and bubbly personality and we both were laughing at the movie choice in no time. A call finally came in asking for 2 girls that were comfortable with each other. I knew what that meant, they wanted a threesome. Sarah confided she had never done that but she already had decided that if she was to do the call she only felt comfortable with me being the other girl.  We went on the call together and the whole time we basically stayed laughing and keeping it light while I tried to make her as comfortable as possible with our call for the night. At the end of the night she and I had become friends enough that Sara invited me over for dinner at her place the next night before work. I accepted the invite and loved the conversation while we ate lasagna and garlic bread. I made the comment that it was a shame that I was leaving the agency and moving to Vegas in a few days and I could tell instantly that she was just as disappointed in losing a new friend as I was. I barely had to say anything else before she chimed in that she hated to see me go and wished she could hang more with me. By the end of dinner she had made up her mind and was putting a plan into action of taking a week off and driving with me to Las Vegas.
Three days later she was hopping into my beat up bronco with WaChee and I, ready to adventure.
We were like two giddy school girls laughing and playing with my CD player picking tons of great road tunes. She was such a light energy that made me think of what my life could have been like if I didn’t have such a dark past.  Before I began planning my trip I had spoken to my high school friends Tamara and her sister Karen and we decided to meet up in New Orleans since Karen lived and worked there now.
Sara and I were high on life when we arrived in Nawlens. We got to Karen’s later in the afternoon only expecting to hang out for the night and grab dinner so we could be on the road the next morning. Boy were we in for a whole new game plan. Karen and Tamara had decided we were going to go drinking since they both joked that they had never seen me drunk in all the years they knew me. To say that any place we walked into dropped into a quick audience as all 4 of us would walk in was an understatement. Karen was slightly shorter than me with dark long hair and a thin build, Tamara was a little shorter with deep red hair, fair skin, green eyes and freckles and then there was Sara the shortest. It was as if you had a menu in front of you of every type in one group and the guys would clear the bar area for us the minute we walked in.
I barely remember buying more than 3 drinks but we never were empty handed. It was almost 5 clubs later and a ton of laughter that I was feeling the effects of the alcohol taking its toll on my stomach. See I had never gotten truly drunk but 2 times in my life there were a few times I was very tipsy but they never qualified as drunk to me. My stomach was always the first to feel it, and once it got to that point I knew it was time to expel the liquor and get ready for my body to hate me by morning. I walked straight into the next club and left the girls to the bar as I went to puke. When I returned it was time to call it a night. Karen refused to believe I was drunk and I had to let her in on my secret. The only reason no one ever knew I was drunk was because I would just shut up and sit back and watch everyone once I got close and then drink water the rest of the night. She finally agreed to call it a night. The rest of the crew was definitely drunk and ready for our exit. I don’t remember climbing the last 2 flights of stairs to the apartment or stripping before I hit the couch.
The next day Sara and I were so hung over that only the hair of the dog settled our day. It was almost 3 days later when we both agreed we needed to leave or we would stay drinking forever in that town. We barely made it to Baton Rouge before we pulled into a hotel and decided to get a room for the night. WaChee wasn’t exactly easy to hide in hotels so we were thankful that the hotel gave us a room at the back that we could sneak him up the stairs into the room and it would’ve been smooth sailing if it wasn’t for the fear factor moment of a lifetime.

Sara and I had grabbed everything including WaChee and started to head up the stairs when all of the sudden all we heard was the yells of federal agents doing a drug raid. We both froze mid climb and just gawked at each other while our hearts nearly came out of our chest and we heard “DEA FREEZE! EVERYONE ON THE FLOOR!”

We had brought some party favors but not much, Sara was partial to pills and weed, meanwhile I was usually carrying a little coke to keep me level while drinking. We sat there in complete heart attack mode and sat on the steps now laughing as one of the DEA agents came down the stairs and saw us. It must have been a sight because he laughed and told us that we were ok and they were just busting a meth lab on the other side of the room. Sara and I had now completely gone into a sober adrenaline rush. Once we got to the room, sleep was no longer a mission and all we could do was laugh.
The next morning we hit the road and kept on with our journey.
We stopped in Texas for dinner and to get a hat from Texas because Sara refused to leave Texas without a hat. After we finished eating we were leaving the steakhouse and I was opening the truck door when WaChee nearly lunged, growling and barking at a guy I hadn’t noticed that had followed us out and was directly behind me. He tried to make light of being behind me but ended up turning tail and leaving. Sara and I had a reminder that we needed to keep our eyes open at that point. WaChee earned his steak that night.
It was a stint until we came up on border patrol in New Mexico. Sara and I had stashed our party favors in our bras after the baton rouge ordeal and it was in good thought. Once at the border patrol they asked us to exit the truck and pulled out WaChee so they could search the vehicle. As we sat in the holding cell while they searched and had the drug dogs sniff the truck all we could do was laugh and joke about how this trip was definitely the most memorable one ever. After an hour they let us go and we couldn’t be happier for the release. We kept driving until we decided on a hotel and then planned on trying to find Sara’s mother in lake Havasu since her mother traveled with the local Indian tribe there. Sara hadn’t seen her mother in years since she had left to be with the new boyfriend and wanted to try to see her while in the area. We spent an entire day trying to track down her mom with no success. By the time we hit the southern Cali border patrol both of us were frazzled.
We had pulled into the line of cars and Sara broke down and pulled all her pills out and a few tabs of acid and decided to eat it all. I tried talking her out of it but before I could get out the full objection, she had already popped them in her mouth and swallowed them.
When I pulled up to the patrol officer and she asked if we had any fruit to declare, it took everything I had to not completely lose it laughing as I looked at Sara and said,”Yeah HER”.
We pulled out of the border patrol laughing hysterically and wondering what else was next.
I made it an hour before Sara was fast asleep for the rest of the drive into Vegas.
It was almost 9pm when we came over the mountains and the bright lights of the city showed the way.
Sara woke up just in time to see the beauty and realize her acid was now in full swing.
I had planned on visiting a cousin that I learned had moved to Vegas first so that I could get time to coordinate with Joe and scrotum before completely settling in Sara to the whole situation of how I knew them. As far as she knew I was going to go back to a boyfriend. So we stopped in at my cousin’s and let WaChee settle in for the night as I took Sara out on the town to enjoy while her trip continued.
We spent the night at the casinos bar hoping and by the end of the night, the floor could’ve been the best bed in the whole world but we didn’t care.
Sara spent an extra week playing in Vegas with me before leaving on a plane back to Florida. It was after she was gone that I finally got a hold of Joe.
I had sent them money to get us a place and upon my arrival they still hadn’t secured anything. It was then that I could see the whole connection start to unravel. At first we still connected but I could feel the pulling away so I didn’t bank on staying with him.
I was now living in my truck with WaChee trying to find a place and make sense of everything. The guys were giving me the cold shoulder and scrotum was now throwing a fit that I had brought WaChee with me. It wasn’t even a month and the whole plan had fallen through and now I was trying to find ways to make it easier. I went out after work at the shop for a drink and to try to talk to someone about a job and had to leave WaChee in my truck which was parked in front of Scrotum’s shop, in the warehouse district away from normal traffic for 2 hours. When I came back, he was gone and my truck looked like there had been a struggle. I was completely broken. He had traveled so many times and he was content with sitting in a truck while I went into places to eat so I never thought it would be a problem especially to have someone steal him.
I cried and searched the surrounding streets that night for any signs of him. The next morning I spent hours calling every animal shelter in the city and then drove to every one of them looking for him and writing reports. I searched every shelter every day for 3 weeks. Sleeping in my truck or occasionally crashing at my cousin’s place long enough to shower and make calls. I was trying to find work and nothing was working. At one point I met a beautiful young Indian woman who was escorting and she hired me to be her lookout and safety net in case of anything happening while she found clients. I enjoyed hanging with her since she was extremely sweet and I learned that she was also a mother just trying to make ends meet for her family.

One night while I was waiting for her to finish with a John, I hid at the back of the casino on a video poker game. A guy approached me. I didn’t even acknowledge him at first but he kept hitting on me and I tried to avoid his advances. Finally after almost 20 minutes of him trying to talk to me, I made the comment for him to leave me alone because he couldn’t afford me. When he asked how much,I figured I’d throw a large number out and he’d go away. I told him 5 grand and that’s when he informed me he was a cop and arrested me for solicitation of prostitution. FOR FUCK SAKE! As he led me away in cuffs I was seething. By the time we got to the precinct I was down right pissed and told him that it was entrapment since I didn’t even approach him. My phone call was to my friend to have her bail me out. I was bailed out before I was brought in front of the judge all while a few of the officers kept hitting on me. By the time I was released I had already decided I was done with Vegas. I gave the Indian couple my truck and signed over the title, called Sara and caught the first flight I could back to Florida.

She picked me up at the airport and brought me right back to her place to recover from my whole ordeal. A week later I had a miscarriage. Unbeknownst to me I was almost 2 months pregnant with Joe’s kid. The stress had kicked it right out of me and now the last of my money went to a doctor to make sure I was going to be ok.
Sara welcomed me to stay with her with open arms.
As I lay recovering on her futon we finally had the talk that needed to be said. I told her all about my family, my real name, why I went to Vegas and who Joe was to me. I owed her that much. She was the only person to be there in my moments of need and play. I filled her in on my life up to that point and that’s when the Universe revealed who she was too. She informed me that her dad was a pilot and flew for drug runners and that he lived in the keys now that her mother and step mother had left him and her two siblings. She named 2 of the men that I knew as uncles, as the guys her dad worked for and my world got a little smaller.  Here in Sara I found a comrade. We both knew the struggle and she was just as alone as I was. We bonded that night and realized no matter what we had found each other by fate. For the first time in a long time I didn’t have to lie to anyone including myself. That night we started planning the next steps in life.
That was the moment I gained my biggest ally.
Sara helped me start to look for work. While she worked I became the perfect house guest. Cooking and cleaning and doing everything while I had no money. I was completely broke. All the money I had given Joe and Scrotum disappeared,  and most of my savings went to surviving and the trip out there and back so I was down to absolutely nothing.
I had contacted Tamara to try to reconnect one night so that I could start to get out of my own head.
We met at a bar for a drink that she wanted to buy since I told her about my predicament. While sitting at the bar talking, her boyfriend of the month called and after a few minutes he hung up. She got irritated to the point of crying because he hung up too fast and didn’t say that he loved her. It was at that moment that I realized just how far away from her world I was. When I tried to calm her down she screamed at me that I didn’t understand.

She was right. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Here I had just lost EVERYTHING I cared about in the last 4 years, compromised Everything and done so many things in order to just survive only to be at this moment completely broke, having just had a miscarriage and living on a futon. It all seemed trivial to be that upset over a phone call because of 3 basic words that no one ever meant anyway. At that moment all I could do was say goodbye to Tamara and walk away.

Sarah and I shared a bottle that night while realizing that we were mentally worlds away from the others around us.
This was the start to the partnership and understanding that I always wanted in a friend, all it took was me going through complete hell to find her.

From that moment on we were together everyday wherever we had any time outside of her work and me finding a job. We would climb out the window of her efficiency at night and sit on the roof of the apartments overlooking the people and watch while laughing at the trivial shit they did and drinking. It was a routine as much as we could have one. The only serious routine was every Sunday, we would make strawberry daiquiris and order a blooming onion (or three) and sit on floaties in the pool while trying to imagine life like this all the time. She would get stoned and I would usually crack up at her crazy antics.
It wasn’t long before I started working again at another escort agency since the original one I worked at had been shut down by the cops and moved. I was happy when I could finally get enough money to move off her couch and into an apartment just downstairs from her . My back door was literally 10 feet from the stairs to her apartment so we never were far apart. I had found a woman that had passed away in the area and her family was giving away her furniture so my place was furnished in a day for free.
I was still dealing with nightmares and my PTSD was still in full swing from everything. I would Boobie trap my doors and was thankful I had rocks under my windows. Every night I would place empty beer bottles just balanced enough on my doorknobs so that if anyone opened them they would alert me. I had my gun under my pillow and closed all doors that led to me just so I had warnings. Sara would constantly scare the bejesus out of me by ignoring everything and barreling into my apartment. Truth be told I almost shot her a couple times and then realized I needed to change weapons so that I wouldn’t accidentally kill her.
I had been back in Florida all of 4 months when I got a call from my Uncle John, telling me that the DEA Had reached out to him trying to find me so that we could talk. They had questions and knew that he was the only one in the family that they could reach out without getting the door slammed in their face. Thankfully he had asked as many questions for me as he could about the why’s and had been assured that they only wanted to talk and I wouldn’t be detained. He was given a number to the lead agent on the case Sean and was told to give it to me if he found me.
I remember getting the call from him and writing down the number and just staring at it… Did I really  want to go down that road? Would I really walk out of that meeting? What did they want to know from me? I had a million questions. So now I had to figure out how I was going to do this. For all I know this could be a trap. It could be someone pretending to be an agent. What if I went in and with what I knew and what I had to do they arrested me and I never came out of the interview.
I needed to contact Sean and put my mind at ease. I could care less about Billy, as far as I was concerned that man could be taken out the next day and I would only want confirmation so that I could set my mind at ease to finally feel freedom from him in my life. I worried more about how I was going to be able to be free from his deceptions. I worried about my safety still because I didn’t know if anyone knew we were on the terms we were. Did Billy want me dead after everything? I needed to start living instead of surviving. I was keeping my head under the radar and still going by my fake persona. All my identity as far as everyone in my life was concerned was My fake, I had a fake id, fake social and she was years older with my fake birthdate. As far as everyone knew I was 25 years old and just another escort dumb blonde named Rina from New York. Little did anyone know except Sara and the few people I would still talk to that it was me, the 20 yr old Florida native related to the mob, family girl. So I decided I would call him but I had to be smart about it all.
It took me a week to figure out exactly how and when. I decided I needed to make a “just in case” envelope. In case I didn’t walk out of that meeting I needed certain people to be warned so they knew what to do next. I made an instruction list of people to call and how to call them(they couldn’t be called from any number tied to me). I left exact instructions just in case I was taken into custody. Now all I had to do was contact Sean and hand over the envelope to someone I could trust. Sara was the only person I could see in my life at that moment that would understand the severity of the situation. As much as I didn’t want to give her that responsibility I knew she would be the only one that wouldn’t open that envelope unless it needed to be done.
Now it came to calling Sean. I looked and searched for a week for random Pay phones in the city and then settled on one that was somewhat close but not too close to my place. It was a mental breakdown. If I went too close they could find my place easier and follow me, if it was too

far they would know and look in the opposite direction, so I settled on a random one north of my place in the middle of nothing I really couldn’t be attached to. Now all I had to do was pick up the phone.

After a full night of mentally preparing myself with a bottle of rum and trying to think of every outcome possible that could derive from calling Sean I finally made the call. Once I presented who I was, Sean went from the official greeting to a much more relaxed tone. He thanked me for calling and he understood how hard it must be for me. He was showing sympathy as I’m sure they trained him so he could pull more info but I already expected it. I was used to the game but this was also my chance to get information from him. We agreed to meet at his office. He reassured me that it was just to talk and fill in the blanks and assured me I wasn’t being detailed.

Three days later I handed the envelope to Sara as she hugged me and you could see the panic in her eyes. It was my last hoorah if I wasn’t going to come back and the levity was not taken at this moment by her.I had her drop me at the bus and took the long bus ride to the DEA head office.