by Shandi Boyes
I return my focus to Tobias when he covers my warm hands with his dead-cold ones. “G-g-give her this.” My brows furrow when he adds, “Make s-s-sure she knows.”
When he shoves the slither of paper at me again, I snatch it out of his hand, dump it down the front of my bulletproof vest before screaming for the medic. Tobias convulsed through his last two pleas, and the cooling of his skin is all too familiar. It’s as cold and as white as Joey’s was when I attempted to resuscitate him.
The memories it bombards me with are sick and twisted. They have me responding in the way a deranged man would. Instead of pressing my hands down on a wound no longer pulsating since Tobias’s chest is still and lifeless, I wrap them around my Sig Sauer P226, storm to Leesa cowering in the corner of the room, grip her chin, then ram the barrel of my gun between her teeth.
She doesn’t recoil or flinch. She begs for me to kill her, to free her from the hell she’s about to emerge in, to let her join Paavo on the other side.
I almost answer her pleas.
The only reason I don’t is because Associate Deputy Director Agent Rogers tells me to stand down. He walks through the carnage being highlighted by the spotlights of helicopters hovering above, his shoulders high, his brows pinched.
From the stories Grayson shared, his father hasn’t been on the field in years, so his arrival on the scene tonight announces that an ambush by a Sicilian criminal entity will seem like a walk in the park after the department heads are finished with Tobias’s team. Heads are about to roll, so I may as well go down in a blaze of glory.
The guns of my comrades swing my way when I discharge three bullets into the brick wall Leesa’s head is resting on. Her cheek will hold the scold of my bullet casings for years to come, but it will be nothing compared to the wound she inflicted on Tobias’s daughter’s heart.
3
Brandon
My eyes lift from the inch by three-inch-long piece of paper in front of me to Grayson when he slumps into the chair next to me. He was the last of our team to be debriefed. The strain shows on his face. His father made him go last for a reason, and it’s the sole reason I stayed here waiting for him. I know what it’s like to be raised by an anal-retentive man who thinks the sun shines out of his ass, so the least I can do is lend Grayson an ear if he needs to vent.
“How’d you do?”
Grayson scrubs a hand over his recently clipped hair. “Four weeks. You?”
“Six months,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
Grayson chokes on his spit. “You got a six-month suspension?” When I jerk up my chin, he coughs out, “How? I’ve been here all day. Other than tearing our team apart, the highest suspension was two weeks. So, why the fuck is yours twelve times that?”
I commence my reply with a shrug. “Supposedly loud noises, such as a gun firing close to someone’s ear, does more than scare them.”
Grayson is smarter than he looks. He reads my riddle in a way no one ever has—no one since Melody. “Could have been worse. I would have inched back the trigger when the gun was still in her mouth. She deserved to die after what she did.”
In sync, our eyes stray to the room at the end of the hall. No one will admit it, but we know Tobias’s body is in there being prepared for transport to his hometown of Tiburon.
I stare at the door for several sobering minutes before switching my focus back to Grayson. “Has anyone told his daughter?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I was told I wasn’t privy to that information.” I didn’t know you could hear a jaw tick until now. “Want to get out of here? Grab a beer or something? If I don’t blow off some steam, I’m going to shoot someone… again.”
I contemplate Grayson’s offer for all of three seconds before shaking my head. As much as I don’t want him shooting up the place, I failed to save Tobias, so the least I can do is make sure he makes it home. I did the same thing with Joey. I drove with him in the back of the ambulance from the ranch to the coroner’s office in the city. If Tobias was being driven to his final resting place like Joey, today’s trip would have been a lot longer than the two-hour one Joey and I took six years ago, but since he’s being flown home, it will be around the same amount of time.
When Grayson stands to his feet, I copy him. “Reach out when you’re back? Or better yet, come find me. They may have dismantled our team, but we’ll always have each other’s back.” When I lift my chin, he slaps my shoulder twice before pulling me in for a man-hug. “And call your girl. This shit has gone on long enough.”
Stealing my chance to reply, it’s way too late to mend that bridge, he tousles my hair before spinning on his heels and stalking down the corridor. My lips curl into an ill-timed grin when his exit occurs with his middle fingers being projected at the office his father, and several executive members of the Bureau remain.
I stop watching his dramatic exit when my name is called. When I crank my neck, the agent in charge of Tobias’s transportation asks if I’m ready to leave. Nodding, I slip the piece of paper Tobias handed me into the pocket of my trousers before following the agent’s solemn walk.
As suspected, Tobias’s body is in the room Grayson and I were staring at. He’s covered by the same plain white sheet the first responders covered Joey with, but one of his arms isn’t lifelessly flopped over the edge of the gurney. Thank God. I don’t think I could have handled seeing that image for the third time in my life. The first was Mr. Gregg’s.
“Is he going straight to a funeral home?”
The unnamed agent shakes his head. “A coroner from San Francisco will meet the transport team at Tiburon. Although he was killed on duty, we need the exact cause of death cited on his death certificate.”
“His carotid artery was severed.” Shock resonates in my tone. I’m not a medic, but the cause of Tobias’s death is as obvious as the sun hanging in the sky.
The agent pulls an agreeing face. “I’m aware of that, but if we want Agent Fedora to spend the remainder of her life in jail, we need to ensure the defense can’t come back with anything.”
“What could they possibly come back with?” I’m shouting, and it’s unacceptable, but I’m not as good at reeling in my anger as I was once. It takes practice, and I’ve had no one to practice on for a very long time.
My attitude takes a step back when the agent replies, “They could say his death was a result of a heart attack, not the stab wound to his throat. That he bled out quicker because of the blood-thinning medication he was on. Or they could even go as far as saying he died because the tumors in his lungs grew unmanageable, and his death just happened to correlate with the events of last night.”
“He had lung cancer?” I sound shocked. Justly so. Despite being double the age of every man in his team, Tobias was the fittest. “Did his daughter know?”
The agent hangs a clipboard onto the end of Tobias’s gurney before moving to wash his hands in a stainless steel sink on our right. “His daughter?”
“Izzy…” I pause before correcting, “Isabelle.”
He yanks two towelettes out of the dispenser next to the sink, dries his hands, then dumps the napkins into the bin. “There’s no mention of a daughter in any of his files. Tobias was never married.” He checks the clipboard again to ensure he’s not missing anything before disclosing, “He moved his father into his property not long after he joined the Bureau. He passed away the beginning of last year.”
“Then who’s cited as his next of kin?”
He flips over two pages on the clipboard before lifting his eyes to me. “A detective in Ravenshoe. Regina W—”
“Wamba?” I interrupt. That was the only name other than Isabelle that Tobias mentioned on repeat. “He must not have updated his information because he has a daughter…” I stop when I realize I could be spilling secrets that aren’t mine to share. If Tobias kept Isabelle’s identity on the down-low, he did it for a reason, much like Mr. Gregg kept Melody’s hidden. “Unless I was mistaken. Perhaps she was his girlfri
end?” I pull on the collar of my shirt, acting as if I just dumped myself in a sticky situation. “Awkward.”
“Indeed,” the agent agrees, laughing.
When he commences pushing the gurney toward the exit at the back of the holding room, a Ziplock bag full of Tobias’s personal belongings slides down the sheet. They’re items that were found on Tobias and in the drawer he kept locked at headquarters. The information inside could be invaluable to someone seeking his true identity.
“Do you want me to hold them for you?” I offer, my voice friendly.
Once again, my smaller build and boyish features work in my favor. “That will be great. Thank you.”
For the two-hour flight from New Mexico to a small airstrip in Tiburon, I search for clues about Tobias’s daughter in his belongings. Not a single shred of evidence about his private life is found. Not one. There are no pictures. No birthdates registered in his cell phone. Nothing. All I have is the sequence of numbers he handed me.
I’ve worked the numbers around multiple times to see if they’re an anagram for a date of birth, an address, or case file number. Nothing has popped up. I’m truly stuck as to why Tobias used the last of his strength to hand me this sheet of paper, and I lose the chance to deliberate further when the cargo-like plane lands in Tiburon.
After slipping Tobias’s piece of paper into the pocket of my trousers, I return his belongings to the foot of his gurney. The solemnness of his death hits me full force when I follow his gurney out of the back of the plane. There’s no twelve-gun salute, no line of agents honoring his years of service. There’s no one—not even his daughter.
My voice cracks when I ask the agent wheeling him out to stop. “Can you give us a minute?”
He looks a little surprised by my request, but he grants it, nonetheless.
Once it is just Tobias and me on a tarmac as empty as my life has been the past six years, I find his hand through the sheet, press my lips near his ear, then whisper, “I’ll make sure Isabelle gets your message. I won’t let you down.” I calm the rattle of my vocal cords before continuing, “It was an honor working with you, Tobias.”
After a final squeeze of his hand, I raise my right one to my temple to salute a man whose death should be more honorable than it is. Once again, this country has lost a true hero, and once again, they’re none the wiser to their massive loss.
When my hand falls back to my side, the agent standing under the hangar returns to wheel Tobias into a waiting hearse. When the wheels of the gurney get stuck in the ramp, he gives it an extra push, sending Tobias’s belongings toppling to the ground. Since I didn’t zip it back up, the contents inside disperse in all directions.
“I’ll get it,” I assure the agent when he curses his supposed stupidity.
Because there aren’t many items to gather, I have them collected rather quickly. It’s only the impressive bounce of a first-edition copy of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy I’m required to scamper for. It’s lodged under the seat my backside kept warm the past two hours.
When I scoot across the checker-plate material of the plane’s flooring, my heart rate increases. Tobias’s book is open, and the sunlight coming in from outside reveals something I didn’t notice earlier. There’s a circular indent around one of the letters in the book. It appears to be written in Russian, but the symbol in the word resembles an ‘H.’ There are no other pen markings to make the gouge noticeable, just the solemn pressure of a pen nib, proving someone circled that exact letter.
With my back facing the agent, I fan through the remaining pages of Tobias’s book. My already sky-high heart rate jumps up another notch when I discover several more indents scattered throughout the book. Just like the first one I noticed, the letter circled represents a letter in the English alphabet.
Since the agent’s attention is fixated on guiding the wheels of Tobias’s gurney down the ramp without additional incidents, he fails to notice me slipping Tobias’s book into the breast pocket of my jacket.
His eyes only raise to mine when I hand him the Ziplock bag that’s noticeably emptier than it was a few seconds ago. “Everything good?”
“Yep, everything is fine,” I lie.
4
Brandon
Twenty minutes later, I’ve deciphered a majority of Tobias’s hidden message. It appears to be an address in Tiburon. It’s not the one cited on his FBI credentials. Although I’m confident I’ve decrypted his code correctly, a six-digit cryptology remains on the bottom of the long sequence of numbers. It’s not a zip code or telephone number, and it doesn’t appear to correspond with the code he hid in his book. It can’t be a date of birth because the letters don’t correspond with any months or dates when decoded.
I could spend an additional twenty minutes combing for clues, but with my inquisitiveness higher than my wish to spend more time at a morgue, I slip Tobias’s book into my pocket, farewell the agent I traveled with the past three hours, then exit the coroner’s office via the main entrance.
It takes a little longer to hail a taxi than I’m used to. This side of the country isn’t as reliant on cabs as those on the east side. As my taxi weaves through the hilly landscape, I recall the last time I traveled these roads. I wasn’t alone, and my company was an undoubtably attractive female.
When you put two moody, single, heartbroken people in a hotel room for the night, what outcome would you foresee? If it were for me to do my job without my moral compass being led astray, you still have a lot to learn about me.
I didn’t go down the same destructive path Madden and Phoenix did after Joey’s death, but I wasn’t an upstanding member of society either. Honestly, if I didn’t have Tobias and Grayson constantly riding my ass, I’d most likely be either living in the gutter or following in my father’s footsteps.
Both outcomes are as bad as the other.
My ‘altercation’ with Olivia wasn’t a hiccup I needed in my life, but at the end of the day, it was something that needed to happen. It got my head back into the game, and gave me the determination to ensure nothing like that ever happened again. Do I hate her for being the motive behind Melody and I not speaking for the past three years? In a way, somewhat. But in all honesty, I’m more pissed off at Melody than Olivia.
We separated because she cheated on me. Yet, I still reached out to her within a month of her leaving me to offer her my friendship, but the instant it appeared as if I was moving on, she cut me off cold turkey. The dozen or so text messages we exchanged each year before I sought her help didn’t compare to how close we once were, but still, I thought she’d give me the chance to prove I didn’t do what I was accused of.
She didn’t.
She didn’t give me the time of day.
Her silence is affecting me more than her. The last I heard she was dating some rich schmuck she met while interning at the DA’s office in Los Angeles. They moved back to my side of the states when Melody commenced her final year of law at Browns. Part of her scholarship was to intern under a division my father was in charge of. I still can’t believe that out of all the people in the world, she ended up working for the man who did everything in his power to keep her out of her university of choice.
To this day, I haven’t unearthed the cause of my father’s motive. Phoenix swears it’s because he didn’t want people to know his son was dating a ‘disabled’ person, but I believe it was more than that. My dad is a shallow, heartless man, but he keeps that side of himself hidden when he’s running for office. Furthermore, Melody would have helped his campaign. Diversity is everything in politics.
I stop reminiscing about jaded memories when my cab comes to a stop at the front of a modest weather-clapped property perched over the Tiburon esplanade. It gives off the vibe of a family home, but it’s a little unkempt like no one has a spare minute to run a lawn mower over the ankle-high grass or to trim the bushes hedging the fence line.
After digging a bundle of bills out of my pocket, I hand them to the driver of my cab. “Come ba
ck in around twenty minutes.”
“For this amount of coin, I can wait.” His eyes gleam as he stares down at the four twenty-dollar bills wrapped around a Benjamin Franklin. I’m on a modest third-year agent salary, but old family money reached my bank account not long after my twenty-first birthday. I rarely touch it, but for circumstances like this, I don’t mind dipping into funds I hope never to need.
“I’d rather you circle the block and come back in twenty minutes.” I don’t know about you, but a taxi idling at the front of a property for twenty minutes would be highly suspicious, especially with how high gas prices are. “Actually, make it fifteen. I don’t think this will take long.”
“All right.” After shoving the notes into the top pocket of his lint-riddled vest, the taxi driver pulls away from the curb.
While running my hand down the lapels of my suit to make sure none of his lint transferred to me, I commence walking down the cracked footpath. I’m halfway down when the front door of the residence creaks open. I don’t know why, but I step behind a thick bush in desperate need of a trim, hiding from the woman I’d guess to be around twenty-two perhaps twenty-three bounding out of the door. If I were a person who still trusted my gut, I’d say because it isn’t time for us to meet just yet.
“Wait! Please.” She chases down the taxi I ordered away, her jog hindered by the mountain load of textbooks she’s holding close to her chest.
When the driver seeks my gaze in the rearview mirror, I signal for him to stop. The unknown beauty with chestnut hair and a petite body smiles a blistering grin when the taxi’s brakes squeal through the crisp morning air, doubling her attractiveness.