by Shandi Boyes
“Thank you so much. My uncle would have shot me if I missed another class.”
She bundles her books into the back of the cab before slipping in behind them. She’s halfway in when her head suddenly pops back out. My first thought is that she’s spotted me hiding behind a bush at the front of her home, but the generous tilt of her jaw soon exposes my error. She’s noticed the military cargo plane in the air—the same plane the Bureau chartered to deliver Tobias to his final resting place.
She watches it for several long seconds, her chocolate-brown eyes twinkling in the low hanging sun, her brows pinched. Only once it disappears behind a thick cloud does she fully enter the idling cab.
If she hadn’t mentioned an uncle, I would have happily declared she is Tobias’s daughter. Now I feel far from the scent. Excluding Isabelle, Tobias doesn’t have any known living family members. His father passed away at the end of last year, his brother died decades ago, and his mother was never cited in any records.
Rumors circulated that Tobias’s dedication to eradicate sex trafficking rings was because of his mother, but since those rumors were mostly based on speculation rather than facts, I brushed off the agent’s comments.
Lies always travel further than the truth.
I learned that the hard way many times the past six years.
Once the taxi disappears into a gulley, I move out from the bush and make my way to the front door of the residence disclosed in Tobias’s anagram. Even aware it most likely will go unanswered, I press in the doorbell. When its old-style buzz goes unheard, I jimmy the lock, or should I say, ‘I attempt to jimmy the lock.’ Tobias’s security is tight, meaning I’ll need more than a credit card and a bobby pin to gain access.
While observing the area for nosey neighbors, I slip down the side of the paint-peeled property. I whistle like I’m calling the family pet to get a treat to ensure no attack dogs are waiting in wake before climbing over the six-foot steel fence.
“Fuck it,” I grumble to no one when my trousers snag a bent piece of wire. My descent saves my dick from being sliced, but my thigh isn’t as lucky. It’s now harnessing a nasty three-inch-long gash.
“Hello… is anyone home?”
It takes me a few seconds to remember why the hunt for my gun comes up empty. I had to hand it in at the commencement of my suspension. It’s probably being logged into evidence as we speak, then Leesa will have more than bad-mentoring to argue when she pleads her case.
“My name is Brandon James. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
When my introduction falls on deaf ears, I test the back door to check if it’s locked. It is, but the lace curtain on the window is thin enough I can see through to the kitchen. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, the standard kitchen you find in many homes. Even the photographs on the fridge are the same. They show Tobias a good three decades or so ago with his arm wrapped around the shoulders of a much smaller and somewhat younger African American woman.
There are several pictures of them, but I’m more interested in the ones scattered between them. It’s a timeline of events that leave no doubt that Tobias had a daughter. Even from a distance, I’m confident in declaring she was the woman who left here only minutes ago.
Isabelle looks around three or four in the first photograph up until a recent one that appears to be her first day of college. She’s easily identifiable via her chocolate-brown eyes and button-shaped nose.
When I spot her in an image with a woman I swear I’ve seen before, I dig my cell phone out of my pocket. Because the fridge is on the far wall, and the picture is at the bottom of the stack, I can’t get a good view of the stranger’s face, but hopefully, the zoom on my phone will fix that.
After flattening the camera lens on the back of my phone against the glass, I wait for the familiar click to sound through my ears before dragging it back down. The quality is horrendous when I zoom in, but no amount of pixilation can detract from my belief that the woman photographed with Isabelle is Katarina Rouse, once lover of Henry Gottle, the mob boss of New York.
What the fuck?
Is this how Tobias and Henry met?
Is Katarina Isabelle’s mother?
She has the same dark, wavy hair and petite features, but I’m still cautious. There are reports that Henry orders wakeup calls for any men stupid enough to date his ex, so there’s no way he would have left Tobias breathing if he’d slept with Katarina. But what other reason would there be for Isabelle and Katarina to be photographed together? She’s clearly young, and there are no additional pictures of them, but still, this is a development I never saw coming.
With my curiosity at a pinnacle, I check all access points of the house to gain unlawful entry. When my inspection of the multiple windows and doors fail to grant me entrance, I move toward a garage-type shed in the back corner of the property. It’s daringly sitting on the edge of a cliff, appearing more hazardous than safe.
My lips twist when the sliding door opens with only the quickest pop of the mechanism. It has a silent alarm rigged into the tracks, but the wire cutters in my multi-combination pocketknife soon stop the speakers above my head alerting the neighborhood to an intruder.
The space inside is more appealing than its outside shell. It appears to be an office. A desk faces the Tiburon vista I mentioned earlier, but most of the space is gobbled up by shelves and shelves of files. They’re four shelves deep and at least ten shelves long. The number of files here is nothing compared to the Bureau’s field office in San Francisco, but it’s impressive for a private file storage unit.
A smile tugs on my lips when I take in the paperwork scattered across the desk. For the most part, the drawings at the bottom of the stack appear to have been done by a child, and they’re all signed Izzy, but the ones on top show an advancement in technique that comes with age. There are also a number of college papers, theses, and textbooks.
The evidence proves Isabelle was raised here, but why did Tobias hide her location?
“Why, Tobias? Why go to so much effort to hide your daughter’s identity?”
While seeking answers to the many questions filtering through my head, I pace down the first line of shelves. When I drag my finger along the files, dust kicks up. It isn’t the only thing spiking, though. So is my heart rate. The sequence of text written across the files is in the same configuration as the leftover code on the anagram Tobias gave me. A letter and two numbers followed by another letter and another two numbers.
After removing the sheet of paper from between the pages of Tobias’s book, I head in the direction of the first letter on the code. I find the I’s rather quickly, and even faster than that, I’m fanning through the files until I find the ‘09’ section. My heart rate slows when I locate a file with the exact sequence of code I’m chasing. It’s not overly thick, but the information inside is nothing like I was anticipating.
Isabelle isn’t Tobias’s daughter.
She was purchased on the black market when she was six.
I crash into the shelving when I take a step back, shocked about the next tidbit of information I unearth.
Isabelle isn’t like the many other children stolen to be sold.
She has the blood of mafia royalty.
She’s a Popov.
Vladimir Popov, Col Petretti, and Henry Gottle, Sr. are names commonly exploited during training at the academy. Excluding terrorist hub leaders and world diplomats we’re not allowed to mention, the men stated above are three of the top ten most wanted by the Bureau. They all have mafia connections, they have all been in the game for decades, and they have over twelve billion dollars in assets funding their organizations.
The Popovs are only second to Gottle—not that Vladimir would ever agree with that. They’re rivals. So much so, at one stage, rumors are Vladimir and Col joined forces with the hope of taking Henry down. Clearly, they failed, but it’s said their union is the reason Henry branched out years ago.
Could that branch ha
ve extended to the CIA?
With my discovery giving me more questions than answers, I continue flicking through Isabelle’s file. I discover the reason Tobias wanted me to know this information when I find an envelope at the very back of the file. It’s addressed ‘To the agent who watched me die.’
A set of instructions are printed on the back. They’re brisk and to the point.
Return the file to its rightful position.
Leave the envelope inside in a place Isabelle will find it.
Leave.
That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Tobias was never known for a fondness of words.
My throat grows scratchy when I carefully pry open the envelope the instructions are printed on. The envelope inside is an inch shorter and half an inch narrower than the one casing it. It’s pink in color and appears as if it was written quite a few years ago. The familiar handwritten font on the front is faded, and the edges are frayed. Even the greeting is as direct and forward as Tobias had always been.
To Isabelle
There are no other markings on the envelope, and it’s sealed shut. A DNA test isn’t needed to know Tobias sealed it, though. A hint of the aftershave he wore every day I knew him is lingering on the paper. It’s embedded in almost every inch of this office, revealing he spent more time here when he was home than the main house, meaning I know the best place to leave Isabelle’s envelope.
I’ve only just propped the envelope onto the desk scattered with drawings and old case files when the crunch of gravel under tires sounds through my ears. When I peer out the sliding door I jimmied open only twenty minutes ago, a curse word spills from my lips. Isabelle has slid out of the back of the cab. She’s racing my way.
“I’ll be just a minute, I promise.”
When Isabelle yanks open the sliding door I thankfully remembered to close, I sink into the far corner of the dusty space. Her head slants to the side when her attempt to punch the security code into the box on the side wall is met with a faulty keypad. It’s flashing an alert that the system has been disabled.
“Stupid piece of shit,” Isabelle mumbles under her breath as her eyes stray to a section of the roof that looks only weeks away from succumbing to the weather damage coating it.
When she paces toward the desk where I placed her envelope, I disappear into the shadows of the shelving. She spots the envelope in an instant, and if the way her eyes water the longer they swing around the room is anything to go by, I’m confident she knows its significance.
I watch her in silence when she lifts the envelope off the table and presses it to her lips. Tears stream down her face when the scent I noted only seconds ago filters into her nose, but she keeps relatively calm… until her finger slides under the seal.
The longer she reads Tobias’s handwritten letter, the more her face scrunches up.
A few seconds later, a gut-wrenching sob breaks through the hand she clamped over her mouth. When the absolute grief surging through her becomes too much to bear, Tobias’s letter floats away from her body as she takes a stumbling step backward.
After crashing into the glass sliding door she rocketed through only thirty seconds ago, she slides down it until her backside meets the floor, and her cheek rests on her knee. She appears as if she wants to scream. I can see the hurt in her eyes, but she bites on her palm instead, keeping her grief hidden from the world like she’s not allowed to show her pain.
The terror on Isabelle’s face and the hollow nothingness in her eyes are almost identical to the expression Melody wore when I found her under the bed after her parents’ accident. She just lost her entire world, and there’s nothing I can do or say to prove any different.
I want to comfort her, the urge is somewhat overwhelming, but before I can, the taxi driver beeps, reminding Isabelle that even though her life may be falling apart, it’s still business as usual for everyone else.
That’s the most vexing part about grief. How quickly everyone else moves on. The same thing happened with Joey. His friends returned to their studies the week of his death, Madden was deployed a week after that, and our father didn’t even last thirty-six hours before he went back to work. It was only Mom, Phoenix, and me who were left suffering. Phoenix turned to drugs and alcohol, I turned to vengeance, and our mother spent the next six months in bed.
Melody wouldn’t have fared much better after her parents’ deaths if she weren’t required to attend school for her finals. Since giving up was never an option for her, she couldn’t stay in bed for months on end. In a way, it helped her move on from her grief, but I’ve often wondered if my push for her to live a normal, grief-free existence was the reason she cheated on me. People become complacent when they get bored. Perhaps that was what happened to Melody and me?
My thoughts shift back to the present when the cab driver’s second beep leaps Isabelle into action. She drags the sleeve of her shirt over her wrist before using it to clear away the contents spilling from her nose. Once her face is clear of tears, she stands to her feet, sucks in three big breaths to dislodge the sob in her throat, then shouts at the taxi driver that she won’t be a minute.
When she moves to the desk to grab a forensic science biology book from a stack of four, her steps are extra shaky. I think I’m in the clear when she heads for the sliding door, but just before she exits, she remembers about Tobias’s letter.
I scamper back when her bob to scoop it up from the ground has her spotting my shoes under the shelving. I curse my stupidity a million times in my head before switching my profanities for excuses as to why she shouldn’t call the police on me.
All my plans fly out the window when she murmurs the quickest, “Thank you for telling me.”
She doesn’t wait for me to acknowledge her praise or to tell her I’m sorry for her loss. She just spins on her heels and hot-foots it to the taxi idling halfway down her driveway.
I wait for the cab’s engine to replicate the annoying buzz of a mosquito before moving out of my not-so-inconspicuous hidey-hole. The longer the playdown of Isabelle’s grief rolls through my head, the more the image of her face is replaced with Melody’s. They have a lot of similarities. Not in appearance—excluding their brown eyes, they’re quite the opposite, actually—but they both did lose influential men in their lives without anyone knowing exactly how far their grief extends. There’s just one notable difference. My family rallied around Melody. We propped her up when she had no one.
Isabelle doesn’t have that same crutch.
Or should I say, didn’t have?
She does now.
Tobias said I was to deliver his letter then walk away. He didn’t specifically state how long it had to be between the stages of his instructions.
Brandon
Six months later…
“You lucked out, man. From what I heard, Theresa is a witch.” Zayne, a recently recruited agent at the Bureau, backhands my chest like he’s talking to a fellow rookie. This is one of many reasons I hate having a boyish face. “Are you packing heat?” When I raise my brow, wondering what the hell he’s on about, he snickers. “From what I heard in the academy, if you can keep up with Theresa in the bedroom, she’ll keep you out of the trenches.”
“I’m not sleeping with my superior officer.” I know how bad the consequences are when you slip between the sheets with an informant, so I’m as sure as fuck not going down that path again. If they’re in any way associated with the Bureau, my dick is staying in my pants. I don’t care how attractive they are. “And I suggest you stop listening to rumors if you want to last longer than six months in the Bureau. As far as rookies are concerned, your chances of fucking anything went out the door the day you arrived at the academy.”
Zayne keeps talking, but I’ve lost interest in our conversation. It isn’t that he bores me, I just have a more appealing development occurring than to care what a wannabe hero has to say. Isabelle’s old Buick just pulled into the lot of the Bureau’s training field office in San F
rancisco. She looks good compared to the last time I saw her. The weight she lost in the four days from finding Tobias’s envelope to his funeral has been put back on, and the hair she used as a shelter during proceedings is pulled up and away from her face.
Her attendance at Tobias’s funeral went unnoticed by the assembly of FBI agents and bureaucratic hierarchies because she hid at the back like Melody did at Joey’s funeral.
She had a good reason to hide.
I’m still struggling to work out Melody’s objective.
A smile tugs at my lips when I notice the paperwork Isabelle is clutching. It’s one of the half a dozen applications I slid through her mail slot the past six months. She finished her studies not long after Tobias’s death, but she kind of drifted between nothingness ever since. It was clear she needed something to occupy her time other than her grief.
Her strength I’ve admired from afar the past six months had me confident she’d ignore my gentle push if she weren’t ready. The fact she’s here proves she is eager to move onto the next stage of her grief—the onward and upward stage—the one full of hope that the world couldn’t be so cruel to the same person twice.
The one stage of grief I no longer believe in.
After personally delivering her application to the agent manning the reception desk as Tobias would have taught her, Isabelle pivots back around to face the exit. Our eyes nearly collide, but a picture on the side wall gains her attention before they lock and hold. It’s a photograph of Tobias on the wall honoring fallen agents.
Just like the morning she found out about Tobias’s death, pain fills her eyes, but there’s also pride shining through. Tobias was her family, I’ve been her shelter for the past six months, and now the Bureau will be her savior, once I push her application through the right channels.
Brandon
Eight months later…