For the next few months, Hannah lived in the warehouse. There was a deli on the corner of Southland and another smaller street that was run by some Mexican immigrants and they had sandwiches and salads that were very good. They were an elderly couple that liked Hannah a lot and were sad to see where she was living. Their son had tried hitting on her but to no avail. She wasn't interested in any of that. They had an ATM in the store and that's what Hannah used in order to withdraw money from her and Chris' account to pay for her ice. She knew that sooner or later he would notice the decline in the account and want to come find her. She couldn't let that happen.

Her car was always full of gas and stood closer to the deli so that it wouldn't get stolen if it was parked on the street. Though Hannah was now sleeping on a cot in a dirty warehouse and taking repeated hits of ice, she still was very health conscious. So she would return home as often as she could to get a change of clothes, shower, and get any odds and ends she needed. On one such visit, she switched out her purse for an old backpack of Chris' that would blend in more with her new hobo lifestyle. It was very durable and it could fit a lot more than her meek purse ever could and it was a lot more comfortable to lug around. She didn't have to worry about it getting stolen from underneath her; it looked in really bad shape on the outside but was completely intact on the inside.

She would always go home when Chris was at work and never on the weekends. She didn't want to see him at all. After what happened with the whole Sister Grace fiasco and realizing he was having an affair with Scarlett, he was literally the last person on the planet that she wanted to see. She also knew that his parents were probably giving them space to figure their own life out. So they were safe from any more unannounced visits from them. Her life was very simple; when she was high on ice she would wonder around the neighborhood with Shanel at night and during the day. Because Shanel was one of Randall's girls, no one bothered them. No one wanted to get on Randall's bad side. He was the drug hustler for that neighborhood and for the most part, kept the drug prices decent.

Chris, meanwhile, noticed one day that his backpack was missing but Hannah's purse was back hanging on a door handle as well as she had put clothing in the laundry basket. He smelled them and they reeked of wetness and mold. He couldn't imagine where she was nor had he any way of finding out. One day, he decided to wash her clothing and was just sorting through them before tossing a pile into the washing machine when Scarlett came over. She was incredibly horny and wanted to screw him right there in the laundry room until she saw him handling Hannah's clothes.

"What are you doing?" She asked him.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" He replied without looking her in the eye.

"You're really washing her clothes? She can't stick them in the washing machine herself?"

"She's never home, I don't know where she is, and it's really the least I can do." Chris sighed. Scarlett rolled her eyes.

"Since when do you care? Quit being a little bitch and come fuck me." She challenged him.

"How the hell am I a little bitch for washing my wife's clothes? You do laundry for your kids."

"That's hardly the same thing. My kids are small and don't know how to operate one of those. Hannah is an adult and if she wanted to wash her damned clothes she would! Now come here!"

"Go wait in the living room until I'm done. Then you'll get what you want." Chris wasn't budging. He didn't like to be ordered around.

"What am I, a Doberman? Go sit and wait....I didn't come over to wait while you play cleaning lady. I want you to fuck my brains out. I want to blow you. You do what I want because it makes you feel good and I make you feel so so good; don't I daddy?" She got closer to him and put her hand on his crotch and started to stroke.

"Yes you make me feel oh so good and I enjoy when you blow my lights out but I'm busy so come over in a few hours and all of this will be done." He said.

"Screw you! You can use your hand tonight! I'm not waiting around here! Fuck this shit!" She yelled at him and slammed out of the house.

Chris glanced after her and sighed. For the first time since this whole thing began, he really missed Hannah. She would never have acted that way. After he was done with the laundry, he walked around the house thinking of her. He noticed her cellphone was still gathering dust in the place she had left it months ago. He picked it up and grabbed his keys. He got into his car and drove to the Verizon store about 10 minutes from the house and changed the battery in it along with getting it an Otterbox. He found one in the store that was dark blue with a tree and rainbow on the back. Then he took it back home and charged it. He hoped that the next time she came home; she would take it with her.

He then made himself dinner and ate alone like he did most nights. Scarlett would always come after her kids would be asleep but he never had dinner with her unless on the off chance she felt generous and invited him next door to her place to have dinner with her kids. Her children didn't care about who he was to their mom; all they knew was that he lived next door and was nice to them. Scarlett would only spend the entire night at Chris' when her 3rd ex-husband came to pick up the kids every other weekend. He liked all of her kids, even the ones that weren't his. For all of her moral inconsistencies, the one thing one couldn't take away from Scarlett was that she was an amazing and loving mother to her own kids; even if they were all conceived as pawns in whichever relationship she was in at the time.

With all of that, Chris thought as he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, he was still unwilling to give up Scarlett. She was his drug and he was completely addicted to the sex they had. He was starting to believe that he loved her. That was very confusing for him. He worried about her when they were apart, more so then he ever did Hannah though he now thought that considering that Scarlett was tucked away in her bed next door each night and Hannah was who knew where, perhaps he was worrying about the wrong person. But Scarlett was right in one thing; she made him feel very good with everything she did to him. She knew exactly what would make him come apart as if she invented the act of sex. And as she said that afternoon, he did in fact use his hand as he thought of her before falling into a semi content sleep.

Next morning, across town at the DEA office, Special Agent Allen Roberts sat at his desk going over his cases. All were big but his biggest was on a man that went by the name of "Scorpio". He was the biggest kingpin druglord in all of Dallas if not Texas as a whole. He had massive connections in Mexico where the cartels were located and he was the one who distributed drugs all over the state. He was a major enigma and Allen didn't know his real name or how to find it out. Scorpio was very careful to cover his tracks. The DEA suspected that he dabbled in many areas of the illegal trade including organized crime.

Allen's biggest goal was to learn who this man was so he could put him in prison for all eternity. He was responsible for not only drug distribution but money laundering, illegal gambling, sex trafficking, prostitution, and murder. His rap sheet was one of the longest Allen had ever seen in his entire career as an agent. Scorpio was a very dangerous man with an armada of men with their ears to the ground always one step ahead of the law. As Allen was thinking about Scorpio, his rookie partner Ryan Dresden walked in.

"Morning Allen." He said as he sat down next to his partner.

"Good morning kid." Allen said shaking his head as he came back to the present.

"So what's the status on the Scorpio case? I know we have a few raids to go on in general for other cases, but I was wondering if there was any news on this one?"

Allen looked at his partner with a one sided smiled. Ryan reminded him of himself when he was just starting out in the federal world; all hung ho and raring to go. Ryan Henry Dresden was a DEA agent for only two years. He was born in Crofton, Maryland on a farm to Henry and Kelly Dresden. His mother was a pediatrician and his father a veterinarian. He had a younger brother named Scott who was in college in Chicago. Ryan thought he would run the family farm after college until one of his best friends in high school overdosed on cocaine and ecstasy. That act changed his life.

It made him angry and determined to get drugs off the streets. If regular students like his friend could get their hands on something so lethal, then it was an epidemic that he wanted to help stop. He graduated from Georgetown University nearly a whole decade after Allen did but they had that in common as well as being in the same two fraternities. He studied law and psychology in college and though was originally looking at the FBI, it was the DEA that recruited him and sent him straight to Dallas where he was partnered up with Allen who was a seasoned veteran already and someone Ryan looked up to immensely.

Allen showed Ryan the Scorpio file which had all of the information about the illusive man and the up to date notes including contacts with CI's or Confidential Informants. It reminded them both of the days of the real mafia guys like Al Capone, Albert Anastasia, and Lucky Luciano where no one wanted to snitch on the boss. Ryan was a history buff and the mafia had always interested him. It was very hard to get any of these guys to come forward because even if the DEA promised to protect them, somehow they always wound up dead. It frustrated Allen to no end as he needed concrete proof of Scorpio's dealings so that he could give it to the federal prosecutor. And right now they were still around square one with a slight hint toward square two idling between diddly and squat.

There were other cases and raids that were supposed to happen soon but those were decided upon when there was the go ahead from the upper brass. Just then as they were sitting there and discussing all of the raids and the surreptitious Scorpio case, Allen's phone rang and when he picked it up it was one of his CI's on that case. He said he had really big news about something Scorpio was doing or someone who was coming after him. Apparently, there was a paper trail. Allen and Ryan looked at each other as Allen had put the man on speakerphone; seemed like they finally got the break they were praying for. This sounded like a hot lead and they weren't going to pass it up.

Hannah meanwhile, was told by Shanel that Randall wanted to meet her. She had been living in the warehouse on Southland St. for 6 months though it seemed like forever. She never made a big deal about meeting Randall and kind of just thought of him as a friend of Shanel's. It was that fact alone that made Randall curious to meet this new addition when he wasn't busy doing his business. He didn't live in the warehouse but had a few places that he called home around the area. Two were actual houses and the rest were squatter locations just like the warehouse.

Hannah and Shanel walked up to the third floor of the warehouse and there was Randall surrounded by girls on a cot, smoking crack, and drinking out of a medicine bottle. He loved mixing the two as one was an upper and one was a downer. The stuff in the medicine bottle was what they called "syrup" on the streets but was really cough medicine with codeine. It was very easy to OD on especially with something as potent as crack but then again, what wasn't? Randall was a mix of ancestry; Mexican, Native American, Spanish, Irish, African, and Norwegian. He spoke 5 languages and was over 6 feet tall. He regarded himself as the cheap cowboy version of Hugh Hefner; Dallas Pimp Daddy.

He had a good sense and intuition of people even in his drugged out state. He looked at Hannah and knew immediately that she would never be one of his girls. She was not the street walker type; suburban girl next door definitely but not going to fuck a John just to get him some more money. The fact remained there was something awfully raw in her eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time and she did buy ice from him so he didn't care if she stuck around or not. He invited her to one of his residences when he heard that she was ready to score her next hit from him.

When they arrived at the house, it was a two story; yellow boarded house that looked like someone's grandma would live there. It had couches in the living room, the kitchen was a mess, and Hannah had no idea what the upstairs looked like because Randall told her and Shanel to sleep downstairs; though he changed his mind about Shanel later. As he didn't have any ice on him that night, he promised Hannah that his first load the following morning, would go to her. She agreed. She liked "fresh" drugs and Randall made sure that the ice he sold her was as clean as possible. Lots of drug dealers would cut their dope with other substances that would be even more dangerous than the regular drugs on their own. Randall stayed away from those as his girls were on drugs and the last thing he wanted was to be responsible for someone's death on his watch.

If they died while they were with a John that was a different thing, he didn't feel responsible. He was a very confusing person. Maybe because he did try to model his behavior on that of Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends; he was very affectionate with them but he was also very manipulative. And if someone wasn't happy, they knew where the proverbial door was. He reckoned that there were always girls out there to find to be part of his harem. He was always locked away in a room of one of his houses or in the warehouse with a few girls. Those that slept with him would get free drugs. Shanel was always keyed to be his primary girl. It didn't always happen but she was damned if she didn't try. She was also very jealous of any extra attention he would lavish a different girl often lashing out by pushing or pulling hair. On more than one occasion, Hannah had witnessed that and was shocked by the display. Randall meanwhile treated it like it was just another day at the office.

That night, Hannah fell asleep on the couch in the living room while Shanel was upstairs with Randall and 3 other girls. It definitely sounded like a massive orgy but Hannah was used to all of the noises by now and it didn't bother her one bit. She was fast asleep when out of nowhere, there was a loud bang and the front door was broken inward as she lurched awake startled. In her fuzzy state of mind, she saw men dressed in all black from head to toe and carrying some serious firepower and flashlights come blazing in. They started screaming:

"DEA!!! SHOW YOUR HANDS....NOW!!!"