Betrayal: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 6 of 9

by Gary Sapp

searched Grace’s eyes for signs of deception. Intelligence was her business meant that liars and lying was her business as well.

  And yet, all he found in those beautiful brown eyes was concern…and something a great deal more personal at stake in all of this. Sure, this plea for his help was about sparing her leader, a man that she’d respected and admired from harm—

  “Grace, you are in love with my brother.”

  She exhaled.

  “I am.”

  “You have my sympathies.” Chris said without smiling.

  “I’m serious, Agent Prince.”

  “So am I,” Chris had always berated his younger brother for how insensitive he’d been towards the women who had come and gone and come again in his life. He’d adored his boys for sure, but the mother of his children was a little more than a necessary evil in his life.

  But now Xavier’s questions about matters of the heart back at the church after Denise’s funeral made more sense to him now.

  “I believe you, Grace. And for what it’s worth, that is the lone reason that I’m not arresting you here on the spot.”

  “Arresting me?” Grace’s voice sparked with a flame of anger. “You wouldn’t be in a position to do anything of the sort if I hadn’t personally helped you.”

  “No doubt,” Chris replied. “But that doesn’t change that the fact that you and your people made a volatile situation even worse with the initial proposition of a deadline for retrieving Atlanta’s missing children. Pandora initiated this. No one knows that fact better than I do, but A House in Chains’ deadline presented a variable that wasn’t there before.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “A deadline is something tangible. Your people made a bad situation worse for everyone involved. Thank you all for the rising tide. There are thousands of lives across this city and country at stake now more than ever before.”

  Grace stood suddenly. Chris found it highly unlikely that the young woman was used to being lectured, especially by a virtual stranger.

  “Point taken, Chris, now drop. It.” He could see the veins in neck throbbing. She ran her fingers across her flawlessly arched brows for a moment. “I don’t see you trying to take my guns are handcuff me so I gather you’re going to let the arresting me part pass. More importantly, are you going to help me or not?”

  Chris sat his coffee cup on the counter and strolled off until he found himself standing in front of Hoshi’s picture.

  Matters of the heart were always the most pressing, the most difficult of them all.

  “How imminent is this threat?” Chris spun back around. “And my investigative gut tells me that this threat you speak of doesn’t originate from my colleagues or even an assassination attempt by Pandora.” He hesitated before he spoke again. “You believe the threat is homegrown. It’s Quincy Morgan—or those who maybe loyal to him.”

  Grace got up and got her purse.

  “I’ve said enough already. I’ve probably said too much. But I do need an answer from you Chris Prince and I need it right now.”

  He’d hit on something alright. Chris rubbed on his hairless chin with a thought.

  “If Xavier’s safely tucked away in my custody can you steer enough members of your Circle away from any retaliation you may already have planned.”

  “Threats don’t mean anything if you’re not true to your work.” Grace said but looked away. She exhaled audibly. “I’ll try, Chris, but you should know that parts of our operation is already under way as we speak. Hundreds of Roosters…hundreds of white people who are directly or consciously responsible for injustices and acts of violence against people of color have or are being culled right now. This campaign began after the initial deadline passed. Don’t ask me to speak any more on this matter.”

  Chris turned away from her so she couldn’t see the anguish in his face. He had to contemplate the gravity of what she’d just told him. Now he was faced with a grave decision for the second time in the past few hours.

  He should have brought in Serena Tennyson when he’d been given a chance. He should have kept his composure. And yet, he knew that it wasn’t every day that a man learns that his father had been alive for a number of years after the world had presumed him dead—wait, it was past time he test a theory of his.

  “Grace, do you remember a man named Agent Bass from your days at the academy?”

  “Do I?” Grace smiled was a streak of light on a rainy day. “The man hated me. How is the old fart?”

  “He’s dead,” Chris said as a matter of fact. “But my reason for bringing him up is that I remember him bragging to everyone at the bureau outside of your hearing all the time. It’s how I first learned about you. He said that you had the most natural gift for absorbing and then deciphering information that he’d ever seen in his four decade career. He told everyone that you knew how to quickly separate fact from fiction.”

  “He was a good instructor. Despite our differences, I learned a lot from him.” Grace walked past the counter to where Chris was still standing next to Hoshi’s painting. “You’re not bringing up the memory of a dead man for nothing, Chris. What do you have to show me?”

  “The only thing that may save a man we both love from continuing a walk towards his own destruction.”

  An hour later they returned from the school site where the corpse of his dead father, the Caretaker’s remains was still where Chris had last seen them. Christopher Prince was surprised that Serena didn’t have them removed. She must have been pressed for time just as it seemed that everyone involved in this was. He hoped that was a good omen.

  Grace asked if she could use his laptop. Soon after, Chris watched as she typed in an encrypted password and hopped on a secured FBI database that even he didn’t have clearance for with relative ease. Her long fingers worked fast but she never looked as if she was hurried. Seconds later a picture of Chris Prince’s father, Isaac Prince appeared on his computer’s screen in full HD and Chris choked up. Grace had used the information provided by Serena’s documents, fed it into the database, and the network had provided a detailed sketch of how his father would have appeared if he were still living today.

  The results were astonishing.

  “Everything I’m learning from the database tells me that this documentation is authentic.” Grace said over her reading glasses. “The dental work, the available DNA strands, even the fingerprints match within a probable 98 to 99 percentile range. I’ve run it through the system twice so I would be damned sure. What’s left of the corpse is Isaac Prince.”

  “The Caretaker,” Chris watcher her reaction and she noted his. She looked away a moment. Grace looked as if she realized that this was more than just data to him—the fact that this was his Dad was starting to sink in to her.

  She closed the lap top, pushed away from the dining room table and crossed her legs at the ankles.

  “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t surprised by this finding, Grace?” He asked her. “You knew somehow.”

  “I suspected.” She admitted to him. “I know that he was your father. I know this must hurt like hell, I respect that, but the professional intelligence officer in me has so many questions for you. How did you know he was there? When—“

  “Serena Tennyson asked me to follow her there.”

  Grace stood up suddenly.

  “Tell me that you killed her, Chris.” Grace’s neck had that strained erectness about it again. “Tell me that you left her body in that old abandoned school with your father.”

  He could only shake his head.

  Grace looked at tile on his floor.

  “Again, I’m sorry for you and Xavier, Chris. I know how difficult a time the coming days will be for the both of you.” Grace squeezed his arm.

  Chris won’t tell her about the darker secrets that he’d only shared with Xavier and Angel. He can’t share with her where and why a deeper pain in his heart exist with his discovery of his father’s remains. He also didn’t tell her about the d
ire diagnosis that his personal physician gave him earlier in the evening. It wasn’t any of her business anyway. How can he even begin to trust this woman or his own judgement on these very personal matters entirely?

  But Grace Edwards had exhibited her professionalism and expertise through this conversation so far.

  It wasn’t too late for him to return that professionalism and expertise.

  “I take it that you know where Xavier is, or at the least where he should be?”

  Grace nodded hesitantly.

  “I think I do. Finding him will be the easy part. Getting you past the Peacekeepers, especially his privatized security force won’t be easy.”

  “Then take me to your leader, Grace.”

  And then Agent Christopher Prince got busy.

  He moved to gather the rest of things that would be needed if the two of them had any chance of pulling this miracle out of the hat. He charged up both of his phones, stored a couple spare clips of ammunition in an old gym bag and filled his wallet with some $100 bills that he had stashed away for a stormy day.

  With Grace waiting on this side of his front door, Chris made a final stop next to Hoshi’s portrait. He ran the tips of his fat fingers over Hoshi’s lips. A part of him wonders if he’ll ever see this portrait again. He looks around the room. This apartment was never special to him but it has been his home since he and Denise divorced all those years ago.

  He looked towards where Grace Edwards was standing in his foyer past expecting her patients to be well past an