by S. K. Lessly
My focus returned to my wife and her silence when she didn’t reply. My frown deepened. “What is it? What did you find?”
Before she could say anything, the conference room’s door opened, and in walked Malcolm, Curtis, and Junior.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re working on for Shane,” Malcolm said as he took a seat at the table.
Junior took the seat a few chairs away from Malcolm, but that didn’t save him from the hard stare coming from the large man.
“Jun, man, you might as well tell him. You know he’s not going to let up,” Curtis chimed in as he took his seat next to Junior and away from Malcolm, the bulldog.
I noticed Junior look over at Kenya before he sat down. The look of desperation came over him before my eyes fell to her. Then he quickly looked back at my computer. I slowly turned to my quiet and now fidgeting wife and then back at Junior. What the hell was that about?
“Damn straight, I’m not letting up. You’ve been held up in that office of yours for at least a week. You’ve been assigning other people the shit you should be looking into yourself and I want to know what’s so important that you’ve been putting everyone else off for Shane.”
I couldn’t stop my eyebrows from rising after hearing that bit of news. This was the first I’d heard Junior passing off work to his minions.
Junior sighed and pushed his glasses up securely on his nose. He looked at Malcolm. “I haven’t been assigning anything to anyone that they weren’t able to do. Phone taps and background checks; it’s what they were trained to do. If there was anything more sensitive, I handled it.”
“Okay, so, what you’re doing for Shane is sensitive? Is that what you’re saying?”
Junior shook his head and looked back at Kenya. Now, I distinctly saw something pass between those two and I didn’t like it. I removed my arm from Kenya’s shoulder and leaned into the table lacing my fingers in front of him.
“If it has something to do with the case we just wrapped up—” Malcolm began.
“No, it’s something else.” Junior’s eyes narrowed on Malcolm, showing a little grit as he did so.
“Oh, yeah? What is it?” Malcolm asked, his voice developing a slight edge to it.
Curiosity now piqued, I decided to speak up. “Yeah, Junior, please enlighten us on what has you so bogged down that you are unable to perform your duties.” I stood from my seat and headed in Junior and Malcolm’s direction.
Junior’s eyes grew large. He looked from me to Malcolm frantically and shook his head. He nervously ran his hand over his hair.
“You two bullies leave him alone,” Kenya warned.
“Sweets, we aren’t bullying him. We just asked him a question.”
I turned toward her, completely annoyed at this point. Yup, there was definitely some shit going on and my wife was right in the middle of it.
“Exactly,” Malcolm argued and diverted his attention back to Junior. Malcolm stood from his seat just to take the one closest to Junior. “What does my little brother have you working on?”
“None of your business! Now leave Junior alone.”
All eyes shot toward the entrance of the conference room. Shane stood there dressed in his Class A uniform. I thought he looked like the perfect poster boy for the army; stiff, militant, and hard as nails. A few of the men and women in the room stood and saluted as he crossed the threshold of the room.
Shane returned the salute before he closed the door behind him.
“What’s going on, Shane?” I asked, coming up to my brother’s left.
“Nothing I want to get into right now,” he responded, looking from Malcolm to me. “Junior is checking something for me off the record so stop harassing him.”
“What is it? Does it have to do with this office? And why did you tell the little squid to drop everything and only work on what you told him to if it’s off the record?” Malcolm asked.
Shane sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, Malcolm it doesn’t have to do with this office, but it is important. I won’t know how important until Junior does what I asked him to do. So, let him get to it. Now, if you want to speak about it further, you can see me in my office. Right now, I want to get this meeting underway.” Shane looked around and brought his eyes back to Malcolm.
“Where’s Misty?”
Malcolm shrugged. “I saw her in the office earlier. She should be here soon.”
Before Shane could reply, Misty walked in the door behind him. She was dressed in her usual: white V-neck tee, skinny jeans, a blazer, and heels. Her hair fell down the back and sides of her face. I had always thought Misty was a knockout. Anytime she walked into a room, she managed to capture everyone’s attention. I’d seen guys practically wipe the side of their mouths staring at her.
It didn’t shock me when Curtis said, “Damn, woman, you always know how to make an entrance with your sexy self.”
What did shock me was the murderous look that came over Shane’s features. It wasn’t obvious to anyone else because the scowl appeared and disappeared quickly. However, I had seen it and as my eyes moved to Malcolm, it seemed that I wasn’t the only one who had.
“You’re late as usual. Find a seat so we can get started,” Shane instructed, turned, and headed for his seat next to Junior.
Misty stood there for a brief moment, staring at the back of Shane’s head before she mumbled something he didn’t hear, turned, and headed in the opposite direction.
I didn’t move. I just stood there in awe at the silence that followed my partner. I knew Misty. We’d been partners for years. I was privy to most of her secrets. I was also aware that this woman could be deadly, especially her mouth. She had a sharp tongue and didn’t have a problem with using it. If anyone said anything crazy to her, she was guaranteed to come back with a nasty reply. No one was above her reproach. The woman had no filter. She had said some crazy shit to both Shane and me countless times. That was why I was so shocked. Misty hadn’t come back with a reply at all. She simply did what she was told.
“Holy shit,” I whispered before I found my own seat.
Shane cleared his throat and all eyes fell on him.
“Okay, ladies and gents, let’s make this meeting quick. I’ve been summoned to the Pentagon after this and I want this case wrapped up in a pretty bow before I leave. Junior, let’s start with you. Tell me everything you’ve learned about the crime scene the other night.”
*******
Kenya
I have a secret. Well, it’s not a secret per se. It’s more like information that I don’t want to share.
Umm… yeah… okay, it was a secret. But for me, saying it my way just made me feel better. I seemed to be very good at keeping secrets. I had kept the fact that I was being tortured by my boyfriend from my family for a very long time, but it’s not like they would’ve cared. I had spent months hiding my true feelings of love from Josh. I had my reasons for keeping my mouth shut back then. I was afraid. Afraid that my family wouldn’t believe me and afraid that I would die.
I was scared to tell Josh how I felt about him because I didn’t want to lose him. Then after a while, I allowed my heart to believe him when he told me he wasn’t going anywhere. I figured that I would have time to tell him how I felt. Well, that time almost never came and it hurt to think he would have gone on with life not knowing how I felt about him. So, I vowed that no matter what, I would never keep anything from my husband. I had honored that vow all the way up until now.
It all started when Shane charged Junior, Nickels, and me with finding whatever we could on Dennis Simon, the child molester, and his operation. The three of us sat huddled together with our laptops and went to work searching the web, looking for anything we could find on Simon. By the end of the week, we fell short, which was very frustrating. Three of the top minds in the world were looking for evidence on one person and all we could find were minor infractions equivalent to unpaid parking tickets.
Let me explain to yo
u what we had so that you can understand why we felt like we had failed. We had all the evidence we needed to convict someone of first degree murder without the smoking gun. What we had was called circumstantial evidence, but if you think about it, people had been convicted with far less. Yet what we had wasn’t enough to bring Simon down.
In light of that, we continued to dig deeper. I was charged with finding the financial evidence to help convict Dennis Simon. I looked for any mysterious accounts that he had hidden from the world, who he sent money to, and most of all who sent him money. At first, I couldn’t find anything incriminating. Simon banked with a very well-known financial institution in the Grand Cayman Islands.
There was nothing discovered in his transactions that hinted to any criminal activity. Shane told me not to worry about it, and he took what we’d gathered and gave it to the FBI. Being the hound that I was, I kept looking. I hated what Simon was doing, and I knew he wasn’t the only one selling kids over the black market. Whoever was in bed with this disgusting individual needed to be stopped by any means necessary!
It took me a week and a half of searching day, and sometimes night, but my hard work and dedication paid off. I found something. As a matter of fact, I found the golden egg, the jewel of the Nile, the smoking gun.
Through my heart-wrenching research, I learned that Dennis Simon was a member of a private international banking institution called Order of the New World or ONW. I had learned about the existence of this private international banking institution within the Black Web. The Black Web was where the scum of the scum lived and where the underground crime world lived. You could find everything in the Black Web if you knew what you were doing. From drugs, to guns, to slaves, to assassins; you could find it there. I had never heard of this bank operating within the banking family, which brought a lot of red flags to my mind. I knew about every bank in the world. You had to if you wanted to be successful in the financial world.
Ironically, discovering this information wasn’t what I was keeping from my husband, it wasn’t what kept me up at night either; well not most nights. No, what I found toxic for me and as quiet as it was kept the entire team, was the list of members that banked with this institution. I know that I needed to meet with the team. However, I believed that I needed more information before I went to everyone with my discovery, which included Josh.
As much as I wanted to bring my husband in on what I’d discovered, I had to keep him in the dark. But believe me, I hated every minute of it. Keeping secrets from Josh made me sick to my stomach. However, my reasons for my deception was warranted. What I was keeping from him could enrage him to a level that would start World War III and I couldn’t let that happen.
I wasn’t naïve to the kinds of things my husband was capable of doing. He never discussed the things he’d done in South America to keep me safe, but I saw the aftermath. After everything settled down, my warrior and hero came back to me a little fractured. I had lost him for months to nightmares, paranoia, and clean-up trips to make sure what he and Shane had done in the dark didn’t come to light. For such a long time, I worked to get my husband back. And admittedly, I still had work to do.
I leaned back against my desk chair, rubbed my belly, gaining comfort from my little girl. During my last prenatal visit, my doctor warned me to take it easy. He said that my blood pressure had risen to a number he didn’t like and if it went any higher, he would put me on bed rest. Hearing him say those words freaked me out even more. Thank God that Josh was away on a work assignment and had missed my latest appointment. Otherwise, I’d probably be home in bed right now.
I shook my head and took a deep breath. I was on borrowed time with this assignment. I was clever but not that clever. Junior and Nickels could’ve easily found the information I had. All they had to do was discover a fraction of what I’d found and the rest would’ve fallen into place. The difference between them and me were the stakes. They had nothing to lose, but I did.
What I needed was a plan. It was important for me to figure out what to do next with the data that I had found. Typically, when I was having problems with a case, I would talk it over with Josh. He and I would bounce some ideas off of each other and figure out the best course of action when it came to collecting data. The reason why that would help in this situation was simple. There was a lot of data that I’d found. What I needed to focus on was the relevant data, details that could lead to somewhere. That’s what I needed help on, and since asking Josh was clearly out of the question, I decided to go to the next best person.
I stood from my chair, ambled around my desk, and went to find the help I needed. When I arrived at her office, the door was closed. I knocked lightly, said her name, and slowly opened the door. Misty was sitting at her desk, her face buried in her hands, her fingers gripping her hair tight. She looked up at me, something strange in her eyes. I moved through her doorway.
“Hey, you busy?” I asked as I closed the door behind me. “I have something I…” I started to say but the sheer panicky look all over her face made the rest of my words take pause.
I moved quickly to her desk as she rose from her seat.
“Misty. What’s—”
“I slept with Shane!” she blurted loudly, completely freaked out.
I stopped moving and stared at her. I knew my eyes were as wide as my ass right now. Did I just hear her right? “I’m sorry, come again.”
“I slept with Shane,” Misty repeated.
It was then that I finally breathed. Misty on the other hand looked like she was about to turn blue.
I decided to ask just to mess with her. “You slept with Shane as in you two…”
She closed her eyes tight and bobbed her head up and down. “Yes, Shane and I bumped uglies. He hit a home run tapped all three bases, and slid home just for kicks. We had relations, fornicated, screwed. He put his part A into my slot B.”
I closed my eyes, feeling my stomach churning the lunch I’d eaten a while ago. “Please… That’s enough. I get it. You two had sex. But are you sure you’re referring to my brother-in-law, Shane Cooper?”
Misty shifted her weight to her side and gave me an annoyed look. “Yes, your Shane Cooper. What other Shane would I be speaking of?”
I moved closer to her desk and sat in one of the club chairs facing her. “Well, there’s that Shane guy that’s part of Echo team on the fifth floor. You know the one that’s about your height with heels and bald with muscles coming out of his face.”
Misty nodded and sat on top of her desk, her legs dangling over the side. “Yes, I know who you’re talking about, and first, eweee… I’m not that desperate to get laid, and even if I was it wouldn’t be with halitosis Kowalski. Hell no, I would kill myself before I’d sleep with him.”
“Aww, come on.” I shook my head. “Kowalski is a nice guy.”
Misty laughed and looked at me as if I were a clueless child. “Please, girl, I eat nice guys for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even if he could get rid of the bad breath, he juices. That’s why he’s so big. So, you know what that means.”
When I looked at her puzzled, because I was, she shook her head and added, “He has a little wee-wee.”
“How do you…” I started to ask when I realized the comparison she was making between taking steroids and the size of a man’s penis. I shook my head. “Poor thing.”
Misty nodded. “Yeah, poor thing. Anyway, I wouldn’t date him if someone paid me. He’s average-looking at best, and that’s not enough for me to crossover. He’s off his meds like all the time. He’s short as hell. And that’s violation number two.”
I nodded my head in agreement, afraid to ask what I really wanted to, which was ‘What was violation number one?’ I decided to switch gears. I could tell Misty was shaken by the news she just revealed, but I didn’t see anything wrong with her and Shane hooking up. I smiled. “So, you and Shane… I can see that.”
Misty gave me such a panicky look; as if Jesus Himself had walked inside this room
.
“What?” I asked as I sat up.
“Don’t you see? This isn’t a good thing.”
“Why isn’t it? Misty, you have feelings for the man.”
“What? I don’t—”
“Oh please, woman,” I cut her off. “You’ve told me as much countless times.”
She frowned. “When? I don’t remember.”
“Yeah, you used to spill your guts whenever you saw Shane hugged up with Casey.”
“Who?” she asked, looking completely confused.
I just looked at her. I wondered if she was messing with me, but she really looked genuinely confused. I said, “You know Casey. Uh… What do you call her? Malibu Barbie.”
“Oh her? Yeah, you know I don’t know her real name. She’ll always be Malibu Barbie to me.”
I shook my head and replied, “Anytime Shane and Casey were together, you’d drink yourself into a stupor. And the times we were alone, you’d spill your guts to me.”
“Shit, Sweets,” Misty grumbled. She leaned over bringing a steady eye to mine. “What the hell did I say?”
I shook my head, lifting my hands up in surrender. “You didn’t say anything crazy. You just told me how Shane deserved better and that Casey didn’t have a clue what or how to handle such of an amazing man like Shane. Those were your words, not mine.”
Skeptical, she pitched one eye into her forehead. “I said that?”
I nodded. “Yes. Countless times I might add. So, I put three and three together and got nine.”
She laughed. “I think you need to get your math together, genius.”
I shook my head. “No, I was counting you, him, and a lot of kids.” I leaned closer to her desk, resting my elbows on the smooth surface. “Come on, Misty. You can’t tell me you don’t want to spend eternity with Shane Cooper. The man is hot as hell.” I giggled and shook my head. “I remember when I first met him. I almost passed out when he smiled and hugged me. Wow, I still blush a little when he calls me Sweets. He’s an amazing guy. He’s charming, funny, smart, a badass, and looks hella good in that uniform of his. You can’t tell me you don’t want to spend forever with him.”