Isabel
It’s been twenty minutes, and we’re still congregated around Parish’s modest cubicle. Every once in a while, my father’s shouting reaches us.
“Is he going to be all right?” Parish shoots a concerned look toward my father’s office.
Rivero swirls a stirrer around a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. “That’s the kind of news a thirty-year career in intelligence prepares you for.”
“I highly doubt it,” I mutter.
“You have no idea the kinds of things we see.”
He’s right, but I don’t especially care. I’m pretty sure my parents’ marriage is ending right now. Unfortunately, telling my father the truth about Mariana is only the beginning. Once the dust settles, I’ll have to share more of the ugly truth if I’m going to convince Rivero that his accusations, or most of them, are misplaced. I’ve been his target since Martine’s death. They have to know about Chalys and their plan if we have any hope of putting a stop to it.
My father’s door swings open. His skin is ruddy and his hair is mussed. “Isabel, get in here. All of you,” he barks.
Just like that, I’m a little girl who’s scared to death of stirring her father’s ire. I walk briskly to the office. Rivero and Parish follow me, and we take our seats around the desk again. My father drops into his chair loudly.
“All right, Isabel. What the hell is going on? According to your mother, I’m not the only one who’s been kept in the dark.”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
There’s too much blood and discovery and deceit. I hardly know where to begin.
“Start wherever you want. Let’s hear it,” Rivero says.
I take a deep breath and start at the beginning for Rivero’s sake. My grandfather’s troubles with Chalys. My mother’s war on the Boswell family. The hit on my life that would have been a distraction from something a lot bigger than a twenty-year-old grudge, though I keep Tristan out of it.
I tell them about Felix and all the moving pieces we’ve uncovered from Simon’s plan. The ports. The drugs. Simon’s business plan with the rehabilitation centers. I point to the laptop, where they’re likely to find even more to substantiate everything I’ve told them.
“I know it probably seems like I’ve been at the wrong places at the wrong times, but this is why. I’ve been chasing down the truth so I could protect myself. I never realized I’d find something this…overwhelming.”
When I get to a stopping point, Rivero drops his head into his hands. “Holy fuck.”
I exhale a sigh of relief. My father’s rage seems to have simmered, because his expression is tense, like he’s trying to work out a very important, complicated problem.
“Why didn’t you come to me about this? We could have had people on this already. Who knows how far along this plan is already.”
Because you hurt me. You took Tristan from me. Because I didn’t want to watch your heart break over Mariana all over again.
I can’t tell him any of that with Rivero in the audience. One day I’ll tell him. One day we’ll make peace.
“As soon as I started to figure out the scope and scale of this, I planned to tell you. Why do you think I’m here?”
My father softens a little at that. No other reason would have brought me to DC so soon.
Rivero still looks like he’s in shock. His hands are steepled over his mouth. “I knew this was big. I don’t know how. I just knew it.”
Parish speaks up from his post beside my father. “This is an enormous operation they’re trying to pull off. One that I’m guessing they’ve protected pretty strongly. How did you find all this out?”
His question is the one I’ve been hoping no one would ask. Who are my sources? The answers open the door to another world of trouble that I’m not willing to bring into the light yet—or possibly ever.
“When my mother faked my death, I had to go underground. In the process, I met a lot of people who’ve been able to point me in the right direction.”
“What kind of people?” Rivero asks.
I’m not about to start naming names, even though I’m sure he would love it if I did.
“I found some friends along the way. Some of them were defectors. Simon has a team on the ground who does his dirty work. They’re paid to take care of people who get in the way of his plans.”
“People like you,” he adds.
“People like me. Because he couldn’t get to me, it set off a chain reaction inside the organization. For one reason or another, a lot of key players left. They weren’t necessarily on my side, but they weren’t on Simon’s anymore. And if you’re not on his side, you’re as good as dead, so getting people to help wasn’t always so hard because we all want the same thing.”
“What’s that?” Parish asks.
“To stop Simon. I won’t get my life back until he’s stopped. I’ll never be safe. And no one else who’s ever crossed him will be either.”
My father rises from his seat and starts pacing behind his desk. “We can get the DEA on this. That’s not the problem.”
“My team would have a field day looking into this guy’s ties,” Rivero says.
Parish raises his hand. “I volunteer to scour the laptop.”
Rivero scowls. “That’s FBI evidence.”
“Stop.” My father halts his pacing and stares down at all of us like we’re his pupils.
No one speaks until he does.
“We’re not turning this into a bureaucratic shitshow. We’ll waste time we don’t have working around all the fucking red tape between your agency and mine. We’re not doing that.”
Rivero stares at him. “What do you propose we do? I mean, we have to get people on this. Start tapping our resources.”
“We will. But we’re going to do it our way.”
Rivero stands up and starts pacing his own circle. “We can’t do this without telling anyone. I’m not losing my job over this so you can chase a grudge.”
My father brackets his hands on his desk. “You’re worried about losing your job over keeping this quiet?”
Rivero widens his eyes. “Uh, yeah.”
“We’re dealing with bribes at all levels of government. We’re dealing with Big Pharma. Banks. Criminals. All of it steered by some of the most powerful people in the country. You think people aren’t going to start losing their jobs—hell, their lives—as soon as they find out we’re sniffing around their operation? If we were stupid enough to publicly launch a full-scale investigation, they’d be throwing everything they could at us to stop it. You’d be the first to go. If you’re not squeaky clean, they’ll use whatever they can find to ruin you, first chance they get. And because Isabel’s right in the middle of this, they’re not going to let me anywhere near it.” He pauses and straightens. “And that’s just not going to work for me.”
Rivero shakes his head, more in disbelief than disagreement, I think. “How are we supposed to put a stop to this without an investigation?”
“We get the right people to launch their own investigations in their own jurisdictions. Get them a nice little care package of what leads they’ll need to follow. Then there will be fifty investigations to try to shut down. Good luck burying all of them.”
“And what about Simon Pelletier?”
My father doesn’t answer right away. I’m curious too. How do you begin to take someone like that down? Protected by endless money and the best legal teams, he’s likely to get away with everything, and then we’re not any closer to giving me my life back.
“Let me worry about him,” my father says.
Rivero laughs roughly. “You took an oath, you know. Don’t throw away your career over this.”
My father circles the desk slowly, stopping when he’s right in front of Rivero. Face-to-face, my father’s dominance is clear. Rivero might be younger and stronger, but my father has height and something you can’t see but can sense—experience, confidence, and determination like I’ve never seen before.
“I solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Are you going to stand there and tell me these people aren’t an enemy to our society?”
Rivero taps his foot on the carpet nervously. “No. I’m just… I’m just trying to be the voice of reason here. You’re obviously emotionally involved in all this.”
“So are you. You’ve been trying to hunt Isabel down for weeks with a degree of commitment I honestly wish I saw more of out of my own team. Maybe you don’t want to see justice as much as I do now, but you still want it.”
“I haven’t slept for a week,” he says with a hint of resignation.
“Then let’s be the good guys and shut this shit down. Together.”
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About the Author
Meredith Wild is a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author. After publishing her debut novel, Hardwired, in September 2013, Wild used her ten years of experience as a tech entrepreneur to push the boundaries of her “self-published” status, becoming stocked in brick-and-mortar bookstore chains nationwide and forging relationships with major retailers.
In 2014, Wild founded her own imprint, Waterhouse Press, under which she hit #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. She has been featured on CBS This Morning and the Today Show, and in the New York Times, the Hollywood Reporter, Publishers Weekly, and the Examiner. Her foreign rights have been sold in twenty-three languages.
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