by Mary Calmes
“No, ma’am,” I replied, now taking the time to study her face, liking her dimples, her kind smile, her deep brown eyes, dark sepia skin with the gold undertones, and the intricate braids swept up carelessly into a bun that looked heavier than her hair fork could actually hold in place.
“I’ve read your file.”
“Mine?” I was surprised.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She stared at me until I got it. “He had you check me out.”
“He did.”
“But that makes no sense.”
“Like I told you, he’s always prepared.”
“But he just told Cullen he had no idea who—oh,” I said, jolting with the realization of what I knew, for certain, about my boss, that being caught off guard was not an option for him. “If Mills hadn’t filled the position, he wanted to be ready.”
“Yes.”
“So I was on the back burner this whole time?”
She nodded.
“That’s kinda scary, right?”
“It’s something, yes.”
I took a breath. “Well, give it to me. What did you tell him?”
“I said that you seem to have a natural drive to create a family.”
“Explain it to the whole class, willya?”
She raised her thick eyebrows. “Cabot Jenner and Drake Ford?” I opened my mouth to correct her because those weren’t their last names anymore. “Yes, yes,” she hushed me. “I know, you put them into protective custody and changed their lives.”
“I guided them a bit.”
“And Josue Hess?”
“He’s only been with me for a little while.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “With you. I heard that.”
“I just want to make sure that you’re not mixing up regular—”
“Where are Wen and Han Li now?”
“They’re at the hospital in protective custody, waiting for their… stepaunt, I guess is what you’d call her, to collect them.”
“Why weren’t they placed with this aunt to begin with?”
“They’re not really related to her.”
“Explain.”
“I got permission to contact their mother’s stepsister, who lives in San Antonio. She’s going to graduate school there, and she’s agreed to take the girls.”
“And how are you keeping them safe?”
“Well, the sister, Rowan is her name, she’s related to Mrs. Li through her father’s second marriage. Rowan was his second wife’s kid when Mr. Wu, Mrs. Li’s dad, married her.”
“So Mr. Wu, Mrs. Li’s dad, was Rowan’s stepfather.”
“Yes.”
She smiled kindly, tipping her head for me to go on.
“So Mrs. Li and this Rowan are stepsisters and—”
“I got that, but how does that keep the girls safe? I mean, if you found out, don’t you think other people will be able to?”
“It’s a stretch. I only know because the girls told me. Mrs. Li and Rowan were friendly, but they had a big gap in their ages. They only met after Mrs. Li’s father, Gene, passed away.”
She nodded. “I like the sound of this, of them having family, but you still haven’t convinced me of the long-term viability of your plan.”
“They’ll have exactly what they would have had if their parents had lived. They live on their own with federal marshals checking in on them, plus I put them on SRT status until they’re both eighteen and—”
“SRT status?” Her eyes were wide. “How did you get that put in place for two non-high-profile witnesses?”
Special Response Team status was for emergency lockdown situations in case an entire family had to be moved at a moment’s notice. It was normally reserved for organized crime families, cartel heads, or people who had turned state’s evidence. It was not usually put in place for witnesses testifying against single individuals.
“I told them that because the girls were abused, it makes them especially likely to reach out to old friends of theirs, old friends of their parents, people they used to know, which in turn makes them vulnerable to discovery.”
“But you don’t actually think they would do that, do you?”
“I have no idea. They didn’t do it when they were in hell these past few months, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
She scrutinized me. “But you let the office there in… where?”
“San Antonio.”
“You let them think it could.”
“It just puts them on everyone’s radar so they can’t slip through the cracks again.”
“That’s very smart. Did you include that in their transfer paperwork?”
“I did.”
She nodded. “That’s quick thinking, Jones, to have it in as part of their official plan.”
“You know as well as I do that whatever stipulations are included in a witness plan initially are a pain in the ass to get changed.”
“Very true.”
“So this way I figured there would be no question that their aunt would be accompanying them if the new living arrangement was ever discovered.”
“And the aunt was fine with this? Being uprooted if there ever came a need?”
“She said she was all-in for the girls,” I reported, leaving out the fact that Rowan Wu was livid when I told her how Wen and Han had been living. Why hadn’t she been contacted after her stepsister was killed? Wasn’t it usual to ask family before anyone else?
I had no answers for her other than to say no one had any idea about her or her connection to the girls until I was told.
“Well, that seems like a good thing, then, if I want to take them,” Rowan had said over the phone. “And I do want to take them. I may not be mother material, but I can be a kickass aunt.”
I had no doubt. Her absolute willingness to jump in spoke volumes. She had already lined up a therapist for the girls.
“It sounds as though you’re confident about this new arrangement,” Maureen said.
“I am, and the girls can contact me as well. They have my cell number.”
“When are they leaving?”
“They’ll be taken to San Antonio by judicial transport tonight.”
“So the girls only told you about this.”
“Wen did, yeah.”
“Because she knew you.”
“Well, she doesn’t know me that well, of course. She just remembered me from when I did her intake paperwork. I haven’t seen her since then.”
“Which was one time.”
I nodded.
“You must make quite an impression.”
Me?
It was a weird thing to say, because I doubted that was the case. “Actually, it’s Ian who makes the impression. I sort of fade into the background when he’s around.”
“And yet, not for little girls who are looking for a savior.”
“Savior’s laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”
“What do you think Wen Li would say? She saw you at the hospital today by some freakish stroke of luck, and her whole life changed in an instant. Do you think she sees you as her savior or not?”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“Exactly. A little girl looking for a miracle.”
I shook my head. She was jumbling things up in my head. I knew who I was, and some kind of hero wasn’t it. There was a difference between doing your job and going above and beyond. I did more for Josue and Cabot and Drake because it had been that way from the start. But Wen and Han Li had not been on my radar because they weren’t supposed to be. It hadn’t been my job to….
“Ah,” Maureen said, flashing me a quick grin, pointing at my face. “You got it. It was supposed to be Sebreta Cullen’s job to stand between the world and those girls. She didn’t do it, she didn’t perform her job, and as a result, atrocities occurred. It is heroic in certain instances to simply do what you’re supposed to, and Custodial WITSEC is one of those jobs. If you drop the ball here, it�
��s a child’s life.”
We fell quiet, just looking at each other.
“You know this is all just crap, right? I mean, I’m not the long-term solution here. You heard Kage: I’m the interim guy. He’ll find the person he wants directing this department. I’m just filling in until he finds a new you.”
“I think you’re the new me.”
“That’s just silly. We don’t even look alike,” I quipped to try to soothe myself after the bomb detonated in my chest. How could she simply say something like that and think she wasn’t turning my whole life upside down? Because if I was the new her, then where did that leave my partnership with Ian? Where did that leave me as a member of the team that had become a vital part of my life? The unit was my family. Leaving was not an option.
She gave me a bright grin. “The question truly is what you can live with and what you can live without.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have to be a hero every day? Do you crave the excitement of being in the field?”
I would miss being with the others, but the fugitive pickups, the chases—just everything I’d done that morning with Kage—none of that was really me. Ian was the guy who liked kicking down doors; I liked the mop-up part of it, protecting the innocents, extricating them from filth. That was the part that gave me satisfaction, the knowledge that I’d set someone on a new road. “I like helping people,” I told her.
She nodded. “Will you miss your partner?”
“Well, actually, I’m married to my partner.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, surprising me. “But what I mean is will you miss working with him during the day?”
Absently I touched the stitches in my eyebrow, and it hit me that I hadn’t really worked with Ian in weeks. It seemed like he was loaned out to SOG or on ops with them almost daily now. It was why I wanted to make sure he ate in the morning, because he’d walk in the door after me at the end of the day like a ravenous wolf. I didn’t get to look after him over the course of a day anymore because I didn’t see him.
“Custodial WITSEC is the liaison between social services and underage witnesses.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Also reports of child abuse, including endangerment, physical as well as environmental neglect, issues of adoption, and things like college placement all fall under our purview.”
“Well, I had to put Cabot, Drake, and Josue all in college.”
She smiled. “Yes, I know you did.”
“So at least that part I can do.”
“I understand that you yourself were once a ward of the state.”
I glared at her. “Exactly how long were you studying up on me?”
“Sam has had this idea for a while—as I told you—of you in Custodial. You must have done something that impressed him.”
Again came that feeling of surprise because that was not at all the impression I got from him on a day-to-day basis. “He always acts like all I do is piss him off.”
“It’s probably more that he worries about you getting hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she mused.
“Not physically.”
“No.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t think that’s it.”
“You were in the system,” she commented. “Were you homeless at eighteen when you graduated from high school?”
“Yes.”
“So you had nowhere to go except college.”
I nodded.
“Well, that might be a lot to make you relive over and over, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. It was a long time ago.”
“Over and done is not the same thing as seeing other children carry their belongings from one house to another just as you did.”
I felt the tightness in my chest as I remembered that, remembered having to leave people’s houses and feeling like I was nothing, my clothes and knickknacks in garbage bags, making that whole experience that much worse. I was worthless—so was everything that was mine, which was why now, today, all my possessions were quality.
I spent too much on shoes, socks, everything, anything. I knew that, and I knew why. It was why people became hoarders: because once you lost it all, had not one thing to point to and call your own, it was a brand seared into your soul. The second that changed, once you could have whatever, buy whatever, there had to be more and more until the hole inside was all filled up.
I got lucky there. When I turned eighteen and went to college, I met the four women who were still my dearest friends. Through them, because we all lived together and they shared everything with me from food and money to paintings on the walls and rugs on the floor, from their TVs and game systems to getting me a phone for Christmas… as a direct result of being shown that friendship was the real prize, not stuff, I learned the ebb and flow of possessions. I didn’t become a hoarder, though my shoe collection was vast, but kids I didn’t know also needed to learn those lessons. Trust took longer, trust I had just recently mastered with Ian coming into my life, but maybe I was supposed to pass on something. Pay it forward, as it were.
“You’re thinking really hard,” Prescott apprised me.
“Yeah, I do that sometimes.”
She chuckled.
“Not often, mind you.”
She sighed deeply. “Well, tomorrow’s your first day here. I suggest you go talk to your partner and find out what he thinks about all of this. At this point this is an interim assignment, and it’s up to you what you want it to be. I know Sam Kage, and he would never simply do something without asking you; that’s not how he works. You just need to figure out what it is you want.”
I did. She was right. If Ian wasn’t my work partner anymore, and if he actually wanted to be transferred to SOG, then did I still want to be a marshal? Was the real thrill of the job being with him? And if I wasn’t his partner, did Ian still want to be one? But maybe I was misreading the guy I loved. Maybe he was just helping out because he missed being in Special Forces, and that desire would fade over time.
“I think you need to figure out your life, Miro Jones.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Chapter 3
SINCE MY day was over at six, I went back down to our office, got an apple from the ridiculously large basket in the break room that was currently filled with, among other things, papaya and mango, and stopped at White’s desk after I grabbed my mouse off Becker’s. Why someone had to move it every frickin’ day was beyond me.
“Hey,” I greeted him, sinking down into the chair to his right, propping my elbow beside his inbox. “Any luck?”
White grunted. “No, and I checked through all the human resources files today.”
“You realize if Kage ever catches you or Sharpe in there, you’re dead.”
He shrugged. “I figure I’ll blame Kowalski.”
“How you figure?” I asked, then took a bite of the Fuji apple. “Didn’t he just leave on that fishing trip with his family?”
“Yeah, he left right after the op this morning. Ching called him about Hicks, though, and he felt like crap when he found out you got hurt.”
“Well, that’s all heartwarming and shit, but that doesn’t change what has to be done.”
He scoffed.
“What? If he would just tell us what the hell Jer stands for, we wouldn’t have to go looking through all the records,” I said indignantly.
“You realize you sound ridiculous,” Sharpe commented from his desk.
“Kowalski’s the one who’s bein’ a dick.”
A month ago I mentioned to White that only Eli knew his partner’s real name and that he wasn’t telling, and wasn’t that annoying? What followed was White and Sharpe pushing and digging to see if Kowalski or Eli would break. Neither had, not surprising in the least, so now whenever both of them were out of the office—like Kowalski now taking his annual vacation with his brother and their extended family, and Eli chauffeuring his cou
sin around—White and Sharpe and I were left snooping. It wasn’t like we were giving up nights or work hours to the quest, but when we had any downtime… we tried to dig up Kowalski’s full name from somewhere. Sharpe had even looked up old yearbooks and pretended to be from the homecoming committee and called his mother, but she was smarter than he was and told him if he did it again, she’d tell her son. Nobody wanted that, so we closed the door on that angle.
“All his paperwork actually says ‘Jer’ on it,” Sharpe pointed out. “Are we sure Jer isn’t just it?”
“It’s not,” White assured him, gesturing at me. “On Miro’s paperwork it just says ‘Miro,’ and we know that’s not right.”
“This is an excellent point you’re making,” I commended Sharpe. When he actually looked at me after I spoke, he jolted like I’d startled him. “What?”
“You look like shit.”
“I got beat up and hit with a gun,” I reminded him. “Can I get a fuckin’ break?”
“Yeah, but aren’t you going with us to drink with Kohn and his cousin?”
“Yeah, why?”
Sharpe gestured at me.
“What?”
“You’ve got blood all over you.”
“Which is why I gotta go home and change.”
“No, no, no,” White grumbled. “You go all the way home, and we’re stuck waiting on you for hours to eat. Just—” He looked at his partner. “Don’t you have extra shirts in your locker?”
“Lockers” were what they had at the gym; these were more like tiny hall closets with locks on them. You could hang a couple suits, store a couple pairs of shoes in the cubby at the top, and that was about it.
“I don’t have anything that’s gonna fit him,” Sharpe groused. “I’m taller than he is.”
“Yeah, but he’s got a lot more muscle.”
There was a pause.
“Pardon me?”
I started laughing.
“Fuck you, Chandler, more muscle my ass!”
I realized with a heave of breath that I missed Ian and wished he were here.
“Where the fuck is Doyle?” Sharpe complained, looking at me. “Is he home? ’Cause if he is, he could bring you something.”
That reminded me that Ian had driven today because after work he had to go see his father out in Marynook. Ian had been sketchy on the details, but I suspected Colin Doyle wanted to talk about Ian’s stepbrother’s upcoming sentencing on drug charges. Ian also alluded to the fact that his father found some old photo albums that belonged to Ian’s mother and wanted to return them. So since he planned on doing that, I was going with Eli and Ira to have drinks, and then Ian was supposed to rendezvous with us for dinner. I wasn’t surprised there were no messages or missed calls from him, and none of the guys had seen him since he left with SOG earlier.