I Am Justice

by Diana Muñoz Stewart

  Justice bent forward, hands against her stomach. “I hate him.”

  It might not sit well with her, but she should know what he suspected about Cooper. Sandesh got out of his chair and dropped to his knees. He smoothed out her hair. “Justice. Judging by his condition, Coop resisted interrogation. And you should know, he painted pictures of you and Hope. They were all over the apartment. I think—”

  Her head shot up, nearly hitting him. “Don’t. Don’t say it.” She wiped angrily at her eyes. “He was an asshole. And Bridget. Bleeding heart. She brought Coop here. Probably hoped we’d have a relationship. Macro-view. Like she has more of the bigger picture than anyone else. Please. She’s so much into peace that she won’t even eat dairy from a cow. That has to screw with your head.”

  Macro-view?

  Leland moved around the desk, pressed a button on the phone. “Tucker, where is Bridget Leigh Parish?”

  There was the clicking of a keyboard, a moment of silence, and then, “In her office.”

  “Have someone bring her to Mukta’s office on 4B. Posthaste.”

  He clicked off. Leland exhaled a sound coated with age and regret and acceptance. “While we wait, I think we should discuss how we’re going to eliminate the very real threat Walid still poses.”

  Chapter 58

  Justice appreciated the lifeline Leland had thrown her. He knew that action was better for her than the silent brooding of waiting for Bridget and thinking about Cooper.

  Cooper.

  Dead.

  Tortured.

  She’d never understood before that saying about people who weren’t “comfortable in their own skin.”

  Now emotions sliced worries across raw nerves. She had always known what was right: her family. And what was wrong: those who went against her family. But damn it to all hell, losing Bridget felt wrong. She wanted to scratch at her arms, legs. Anything other than endure this helpless, aching hurt.

  Cooper dead.

  Bridget a traitor.

  Enough. Focus on Walid. And sarcasm. “Going after Walid with all the school scrutiny going on right now will be super easy.”

  “Easy or not,” Sandesh said, his voice military sharp, a knife honed to its finest edge, “we have to assume Walid knows who you are, Justice. So we get him.”

  Overprotective? “Think the FBI will want to tag along?”

  Sandesh laughed.

  “About that,” Leland said, “Sandesh has a good idea about how to get you out right under the nose of the FBI.”

  Justice’s heart jumped up and cheered, doing the splits, pompoms and all. “Oh, Sandy, you’ve been busy.”

  “Well, the first part was easy. Your birthday.”

  Her birthday? Her stomach turned over. “We’re going to have a party?”

  The hammer of condemnation left a loud gong of silence. She didn’t care. This was crazy. Having a party after all this shit.

  The jingle of Momma’s bracelets disrupted the stillness. “This is what we do, Justice. Distract with one hand, so no one looks at the other. In this case, the FBI will have their hands full with the guest list and the party. They won’t pay attention to your antics.”

  “My antics?”

  Leland and Momma exchanged another look, this one slightly uncomfortable. Probably some kind of silent signal, because Leland took over. “You do have a reputation as a party girl. One of the Parish Princesses.”

  Gag. She hated that. “Yeah. So?”

  “So you make a show of getting drunk. Grab the mic. Thank people for coming. Say it was your best birthday ever. And then say something about Sandesh. Some innuendo. The two of you dance. Make it obvious you are going to leave and be together. Alone.”

  Leland. The man couldn’t be direct.

  “Basically,” Justice said, “dry hump Sandesh on the dance floor, make everyone uncomfortable, so when we leave, they assume we are going to fuck and not going to Mexico to take down a sex-slaver.”

  Sandesh coughed into his hand. She looked over at him. A red flush covered his face. What? Something she said? “Come on, Sandy. You know you love it.”

  “I’ll admit I like your version better than Leland’s.”

  She smiled. Her chest still felt tight, but better somehow with him here.

  “But how about once we get there? How do we…? Leland, Tony mentioned something about a letter. One in which he outlined a plan to take the Brothers out separately. He said he’d figured out how to get into the compound.”

  Leland’s broad shoulders tensed.

  Okay. “You know what I’m talking about?”

  He sighed. “The letter was a rather senseless rant at your mother for perceived wrongs, and also gave his plan for the BG operation. He wanted it brought to a vote.”

  Momma turned her face to him. “But now, the plan might work.”

  Leland, implacable Leland, reddened. “Perhaps. If we can get Dada’s man to help bring our agents inside.”

  “She’ll do it.” Justice was sure of it. “But we have to promise to bring Juan out with us.”

  Someone knocked on the door. Everyone in the room froze.

  Bridget.

  No one spoke. No one moved. No one breathed.

  If Justice could have put a knife to the tension, it would probably have snapped back and killed someone.

  Justice got to her feet and moved so she stood by the side of the desk. Sandesh did the same. Momma stood with help from Leland.

  Finally, Momma managed, “Enter.”

  * * *

  Standing in Momma’s inappropriately whimsical office, Bridget looked like a cross between a yogi and a math nerd with her lopsided bun and dark-framed reading glasses. Her face held a serene expression.

  Justice wanted to slap her. She’d just accused the woman of betraying their family, of conspiring with Cooper, and she stood there as if purity itself.

  “What the fuck, Bridge? Say something.”

  Bridget eased her shoulders back. She had great posture. “I am ready for whatever punishment you see fit to give me.”

  “You admit this?” Momma leaned a hand on her desk. Her eyes, always so clear, seemed cloudy and confused. “Tell me, Daughter. This is important. If you have any reason to cover for another, you must not. We need to be able to trust the others.”

  Bridget turned her head. “You don’t have to worry about the others. You can trust them.”

  Justice’s stomach rolled, hit a guardrail, and plunged over a ravine. She wanted to walk over and shake Bridget. Ask her what she ever did to deserve that kind of hatred. But she put that shit on hold. Sort of. “Why? Why did you do it?”

  Bridget shook her head. Her eyes darted back and forth between her and Sandesh, Momma and Leland. “It was done to keep you safe. To keep all of you safe.”

  Justice pointed a finger at her. “Safe? Telling Walid I was after him in Jordan, giving him step-by-step directions to track and find me, to kill me? How was that to keep me safe?”

  “That wasn’t how it happened. Cooper was a go-between. Walid’s men tracked his digital trail, found a computer in his apartment that was being used to track you.”

  Tracking her? And Bridget was worried about Justice’s soul?

  “How was it tracking her?” Leland asked. His normally gruff voice even deeper, sounded like he’d eaten a razor blade.

  A hot flush crept across Bridget’s cheeks. “Using a copy of the software the League invented to ping and track the GPS. That way, the risky act of checking League computers was unnecessary.”

  Justice’s stomach rolled again. The locket felt suddenly hot against her skin. Not a locket. It was a miniature of her father’s betrayal. She walked to her sister, stabbed a finger at her chest. “You deserve to lose your memory of this place. You deserve to no longer have any of this.”

&nb
sp; “I’m willing to accept that. Would you be?”

  What? Was she seriously going to turn this into some kind of lesson? “No, Bridget. I wouldn’t. But I would never do what you did. I would never choose to betray you.”

  Bridget looked down at Justice’s raised finger, then over at Sandesh. She shook her head. “You did betray me, us. If you hadn’t, Sandesh wouldn’t know about our operation.”

  Bridget stared at Sandesh. For his part, he stood at military attention, silent as he watched the family falling apart before his eyes. “Everyone makes mistakes. But only a chosen few are given a second chance. Cooper loved y—”

  “No, Bridget! You don’t get to talk to me about love or mistakes. What I did, what I revealed, came from being backed into a corner. Something that happened when I tried to rescue a girl. Someone who never would’ve been saved if not for the League. What you did almost got me killed, and you did it because you no longer believe in the League.”

  Bridget’s chin lowered the slightest bit. It was the only sign in her straight-backed, light-me-on-fire-and-I-won’t-blink posture that let Justice know she might have struck pay dirt. And she wanted pay dirt. She wanted Bridget to feel something. All that equanimity shouldn’t mean she couldn’t be properly punished. Or hurt. Like she’d hurt Justice.

  Bridget lifted her head. “You’re wrong. I never stopped believing in the League. It was the League that stopped doing what it was designed to do. It was founded to rescue people. Ask yourself, are the kids here rescued? Or are they warped warriors being trained to break the law?”

  “Warped? The laws are warped. The laws don’t work. Or haven’t you watched the news? Men everywhere see us as evil. They see our normal emotions as something that need to be repressed. And apparently you do too. We can’t all suck up the pain, Bridge. We can’t all cut ourselves off from the world.”

  “I do none of those things.” Bridget seemed pissed now. She breathed slow and carefully. “I pay attention. I look for opportunities to advance our cause. I do this without violence. And it works. Mostly.”

  Mostly? What a joke. “Bridget, the ‘mostly’ is what we’re worried about. The girls like Cee and Juliette and that little Russian kid. They need us to fight for them. Do you think that men are going to suddenly stand up for us? Do you think…?”

  She stopped. She couldn’t finish. Men had stood up. Men like Sandesh, who had kept her secret, gone to find Coop, and now stood beside her while she railed. Men like Tony and Leland. And men raised in a world far away from the League. Like Gracie’s John. Like Dada’s Juan.

  Bridget stared at her knowingly. “It could work. Not just a band of sisters, but all of us, together. Men and women working to change the laws or see them enforced.”

  “You want us to give up covert ops to concentrate on lobbying? And what about in other countries? If we’d done what you wanted, Bridget, a twelve-year-old girl would, at this very moment, be a victim of the man I killed. But she’s free and safe. And you are wrong. So get out. You’re wasting my time. I need to plan another soul-fracturing murder that will set free women in need of rescue.”

  Bridget wavered. Her eyes swept over to Momma. Her shoulders finally slumped. “I’m sorry for my lies.”

  She walked to the door and opened it. A member of Mantua Home Internal Security, Eugie, stood there. She would isolate Bridget and keep her from any more of her bullshit. Until things were clear with the FBI, until they could find a way to M-erase her that eradicated League information but allowed her to keep family memories.

  Sandesh walked over to Justice. He put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wiped moisture from her cheek. “Are you sure?”

  She swallowed, felt it overwhelm her, and broke down. He took her into his warm embrace, hugged her close, and held her until she had no more tears, no more strength, no more energy for rage.

  Chapter 59

  Standing in the doorway between his walk-in closet and his essentials-only bedroom, Sandesh undid his bow tie. It looked like crap.

  Damn. He was nervous. He hated the idea of using Justice’s party to publicly sneak off with her.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. He just wasn’t into making that kind of spectacle. The party would be filled with feds and people and paparazzi. He and Justice getting hot and heavy on the dance floor and sneaking off together would start a lot of press and rumors. Fortunately, not one of them would suspect that they’d really run off to Mexico to kill a human-trafficker.

  He turned his head. “Don’t eat in my bed.”

  Sprawled out across Sandesh’s gray comforter, Victor dug into the bag of Lay’s salt and vinegar chips. “Chill, dude. You want the information or not?”

  Beautiful. Tied it wrong again. “Yeah. What did you find out?”

  Victor shoved a handful of chips into his mouth, chewed. He shrugged. “On Mukta. Basically, what you’d expect. Attacked with acid, then adopted by two aid workers, a wealthy lesbian couple. They trained her in the art of business. She’s got a shit ton of degrees. Maybe she got interested in all that science when she was a kid. She had a couple of serious surgeries on her face. That’s where she met her right-hand man, Leland.”

  “Really? She met him in the hospital? Was he sick?”

  “No. Had a younger sister with leukemia. She was at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia when Mukta was there having one of her surgeries. Leland and Mukta met then.”

  “The sister?”

  “She survived. Gotta love CHOP. Anyway, fast-forward a couple dozen years. Sister marries. Has a kid. Has a couple of domestic disturbances on record. Nothing major. Then one day, she up and goes missing. The police suspect the husband. No proof. The husband takes the kid and disappears.”

  Sandesh moved into the bedroom. “This guy killed Leland’s sister? What happened to the man? What happened to the kid?”

  Victor dusted crumbs from his shirt, which fell all over Sandesh’s bed. “Well, this is where it gets interesting. The father disappeared with the kid, but he resurfaced six years later when he reported his son, then eleven, missing. The kid had run away from home. Six months after that, the father is dead. Suicide. Apparently, his conscience had gotten the better of him. In his suicide note, he admitted to abusing his son and killing his wife. He told the police where to find the sister’s-slash-wife’s body. Later, the kid was found and adopted. By the Parish family.”

  Sandesh felt goose bumps down to his toes. “Tony? Tony was the kid. But Justice told me she was responsible for his adoption. She’d found him in an alley.”

  Victor stopped with a chip midway to his mouth. “Why lie about it to her?”

  He wasn’t sure. But this was the kind of shit that made him crazy. Did Tony know that Leland was his uncle? “Maybe because he was the first boy. They probably figured he’d be accepted even less if people knew he was related to Leland. They’re big into unity.”

  Victor stuck the chip into his mouth. “They’re big into something.”

  Sandesh met his eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Meaning?”

  “The records on the father’s suicide suggested he had been in a fight earlier that day. Apparently, there were bruises all over his body.”

  Sandesh froze. He knew exactly what Victor suggested. Maybe the reason the family had lied about Tony was because they didn’t want to be associated with the death of the father. Could be right. And he didn’t feel right telling Victor otherwise. He was his partner and as much in this as Sandesh, though he knew little. “So what do you think?”

  “Yeah.” Victor reached into the bag. “Well, I think the Parish family is into some strange shit. And I have to wonder how long it will take the FBI to start piecing it together. After the attack two weeks ago, they’re still investigating the school, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Does this ha
ve anything to do with why you were chased from Zaatari?”

  Sandesh waited a moment before responding. “Do you really want in on this?”

  “No. No I don’t. Do you?”

  Sandesh detected a splinter of annoyance in Victor’s voice. Couldn’t be helped. He was crossing all kinds of lines here.

  Victor crunched down on another chip. “Why you going to this party?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Forget the fact that there were bombs dropped on the place not too long ago. And that the students flooded out faster than water from a broken damn. Getting caught up with these people endangers the IPT. The mission.”

  Sandesh shook his head. “What I’m doing is necessary to keep the mission safe.”

  Victor put the Lay’s bag on the nightstand. “It’s not worth the money, man. Walk away. Learn whatever the fuck you needed to learn. Get back to letting go of the bad shit and back to making some good shit happen.”

  The tie was as good as it was going to get. Sandesh pulled on his tuxedo jacket. He ran a hand through his hair and disregarded the judgmental look on Victor’s face. “Look, Justice is the good shit. And her family…most of her family are the good guys.”

  “Is this love or business?”

  Both. And more. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Sure. Hurry along. Chase after that chick like a groupie tailing a tour bus. But you better hope that bus isn’t lined with explosives. Because this kind of stuff gets a guy killed.”

  * * *

  The night doorman held open the front door as Sandesh exited his building. “Good evening, Mr. Ross. Your limo has arrived.”

  “Thanks, Al.” Normally, he would’ve driven himself, but Mukta had insisted on sending a car. And she’d made a good point. He didn’t want his own car hanging out on campus while he and Justice flew to Mexico.

  Sandesh skirted construction tape—they were always doing some construction here—to get to the limo.

  He introduced himself to the driver, slipped inside the car, and closed the door.

  The driver walked around the car and got in. Sandesh eyeballed the guy behind the partition. A limo driver who trusted his passenger to shut his own door? It was a new day in America.