In Chaos (Undercover Book 3)

by Adalind White

  Skye loved the song because she too, was destined to conquer monsters. Sooner or later, she would leave her desk job with the OCD. She would go back on undercover missions. I knew it, I feared it, and, when time would come, I would not try to talk her out of it.

  I went into the kitchen to drink some water and I saw her note.

  I love you.

  I smiled at the white paper placed in the middle of the spotless table. The warmth in my chest turned to ice in a split second. Skye had never left me sweet notes before. On the heels of our conversation from last night, I’d be a fool to believe this was a lover’s treat.

  My heart raced insanely when I rushed into our bedroom. I hoped beyond reason to be wrong.

  When I left the house that morning, the bed was a messy tangle of sheets and the room was littered with our toys. The serious discussion was followed by hours of lovemaking.

  As I feared, I opened the bedroom door to a sterile cleanliness.

  My hand trembled when I looked in the wardrobe, to confirm what I already knew. Skye’s clothes were gone. Our toys were arranged in their drawers.

  Mechanically, I went into the bathroom. Her makeup and other things were gone. I splashed cold water over my face and the back of my neck. She had even done the laundry. My clothes were in the dryer. Only my clothes.

  I dragged my feet back to the kitchen and went through the motions of making a coffee to keep moving. If I stopped moving, I might remain frozen for hours.

  Skye’s note on the counter made my soul bleed.

  She had made her choice. It hurt more than I expected. Understanding why she left was no way near close to making it bearable.

  I love you.

  She had said it last night, too. The sadness in her voice almost moved me to change my mind.

  “You know I love you, too,” I told her.

  She had squeezed me hard in her arms. A pang of guilt threatened the walls of my decision. What if I was wrong? Maybe I should accept the risk and have a child with the woman I loved. Maybe her genes would balance the odds and our child wouldn’t have to endure my family’s curse.

  The thoughts buzzed through my head as they’ve been doing for weeks.

  What if what if what if…

  What if our child wouldn’t be born with the severe bipolar disorder that plagued my mother, my brother and my sister? My mother and my brother had both succumbed to their lows and took their own life. My sister was the only one to make it to thirty, but her brain betrayed her and, in a manic episode, she risked and lost her life.

  Before Skye had moved in, I had flashbacks of my childhood every time I came home. Her presence here kept the ghosts at bay. We made new memories in this house. But the old ghosts slithered from my waking days into my dreams.

  How many nights had I woken up drenched in cold sweat? How many times my dreams had taken me back to the morgue where I identified my sister’s body? Or took me back to our old bathroom where I found my mother?

  All those years ago, I had cleaned up the house of my mother’s presence as best I could. Starting with the empty alcohol bottles. I tried so hard to be more useful to my sister than my parents had been.

  Skye had removed the traces of her presence in an attempt to give me a clean slate. She was lying to herself if she thought that I was better off without her. Just as I had deluded myself that I could do a better job of raising my sister without my mother around.

  I love you.

  Not for the first time, I closed my eyes and pictured myself walking to a park holding my child’s hand. I could hear the patter of little feet. I could feel my hand being tugged by the child eager to get to the playing area. It always went the same way. I sat down on an imaginary bench, observing my child with clinical detachment, trying to discern between childish excitement and the symptoms of the manic phase. Even if I could imagine I didn’t see warning signs, I knew that I would keep looking. Always observing. Always on guard. Always in fear.

  “I love you, too, Skye,” I said in the silent kitchen.

  #

  My life seemed to split between before and after the day Skye left.

  A few weeks after that day, Katherine and I were on our way back to the station from interviewing a suspect. The small crease between her eyebrows told me that she was thinking about more than the afternoon traffic, or our current case.

  “You know I passed the Captain’s exam a few months ago?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  My mind jumped ahead of the conversation. She was a second-generation cop, one of the most decorated women on the force, it was only natural that she should be moving up.

  “The Chief sounded me out if I’m interested in taking over Precinct 38. Their Captain wants to retire.”

  “Congratulations,” I said wholeheartedly. “Precinct 38 is not the easiest beat in the city, but you can do wonders there. They certainly need new blood.”

  She darted an inquisitive glance at me as if she had expected a different answer.

  “Katherine, you know you should do this,” I said. “You could have had this job long ago if you wanted. About time you stop putting your career on hold for me.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment, but remained silent. We made a great team, but she could do more good from behind a Captain’s desk than picking up criminals one by one on the street. If anything, her decision was about five years overdue. I’d been selfish not to bring up the subject in all this time.

  “Are you sure?” Katherine asked.

  “Of course,” I assured her. “You’ll be an amazing Captain.”

  “And you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I could use a change of scenery.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “You will get another partner and I’m sure with your track record, they’re going to let you choose.”

  She was right, but I couldn’t go through another adjusting period. Before Katherine, I had had a dozen partners with whom I couldn’t work, and that was over a decade earlier. I had gotten considerably more peculiar in the meantime. Most other cops didn’t find me or my methods very palatable.

  “The chances of finding someone like you are slim,” I said and meant it. “And I don’t want to adapt to someone new.”

  “Then I won’t do it,” she said. “You can’t quit—”

  I interrupted her.

  “Duncan has been offering me a position with the Agency for years.”

  “Duncan? Your old mentor?” Katherine said. “You never told me.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. She knew me better than I thought. She was right to suspect that I’d be lying to spare her feelings. I knew her, too. She was wondering if a job offered by the man who trained me during my Army days was good for me, especially since he now worked for the CIA. I didn’t know that myself. Did I want to go back to interrogating suspected terrorists? I shrugged and she shook her head.

  We shared a smile at the silent conversation. I was going to miss our wordless talks. Katherine was the only person in the world with whom I could do that.

  “Is that something you’d really want?” she asked.

  “He said it’s mostly a teaching job,” I told her. “Or I could put in for early retirement. So, it’s either teaching or getting out for good. I think I’d prefer teaching.”

  “You will miss the hunt,” she said.

  “So will you,” I replied. “But things change.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  The way she said it made it clear that she wasn’t talking just about this change. Of course she had figured out that Skye had left. It would be just like Katherine to postpone telling me about her decision to give me time to recover. I would miss her unobtrusive kindness.

  “I wish they had someone like you teaching when I was in the Academy,” Katherine said.

  The tremolo in her voice got to me. It touched my heart and at the same time, made me feel the bitter taste
of guilt. She cared about me. I had vaguely assumed that, over the years, she had let pass many opportunities for my sake. Now I wondered how much of her career I had ruined. If she hadn’t gone to the bat for me time after time, her record would be spotless. Catching killers had been my priority, to the detriment of my career and my partner’s career.

  “I wish there was someone like me in the Academy, too,” I said sincerely.

  It would have prepared my colleagues for working with someone like me. At least that wasn’t going to be a problem at the Agency. They knew exactly what kind of person they were getting. I tensed thinking of the thorough background check before they officially hired me.

  #

  Half a year after that day, I was at my monthly visit to my therapist. Since I started working for the Agency, this visit is a six-hour drive from Chantilly, Virginia to his office in Brooklyn.

  The familiar sight of Doctor Simmons’ office soothed my nerves. In the seven years I’d been his patient, he hadn’t done much to change the layout. I could pick up on small improvements. A fresh coat of paint without changing the color. Reupholstering the couch to look as new, yet exactly the same material and color as if it were self-regenerating. Were his more obsessive patients bothered by the office plants growing?

  It worked though. It was a place I felt safe to open my mind and probe into the uncomfortable areas. This was the place where I first talked to anyone about the burden of being the only one in my family not afflicted with bipolar disorder. This was the first and last time I admitted that I resented growing up as the minder of my siblings. So much guilt blended with those feelings. What kind of person was I to resent sick people for things out of their control?

  “How are you coping?” Doctor Simmons asked.

  “I didn’t call her,” I said.

  It amazed and scared me to say it. For weeks, I poured my energy into not thinking about Skye. Not thinking about her didn’t mean I didn’t keep up with her career. I stayed friends with her first handler, with her LAPD Captain, I reacquainted myself with people I worked with while I was in the Army and I even kept in contact with Viktor Petrov so that I’d always know about her.

  Weeks had passed, then months. I missed her more intensely than I had ever expected. Sadly, I had always expected her to walk away.

  “Why?” he asked.

  I looked at him annoyed. He knew why. But this was the game. I had to say it aloud.

  “Because she was right to leave.”

  “But it still bothers you,” he observed.

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t bother me. It hurts, but it doesn’t bother me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She has no idea what it’s like,” I said. “She thinks that her luck will overcome the odds. I can’t play Russian roulette with a child’s life.”

  He looked at me, expectantly. I shook my head and went on, repeating the arguments I’ve been debating in my own head from the moment Skye moved in with me.

  “Not all people with bipolar disorder become alcoholics like my mother,” I said. “Not all of them end up killing themselves. I’d be careful, I’d know to look for the warning signs. I’d know how to deal with the disorder and how to teach my child to deal with it.”

  These had been more or less Skye’s arguments. Except she hadn’t phrased them quite like that. She’d said we, not I. These were the arguments for the light.

  “I don’t think I can go through it again,” I said, adding the dark arguments. “I don’t want to risk resenting my child. I was ten when my mother killed herself. She killed herself after Richard died. She killed herself because she failed her eldest son. Maybe she feared she would fail me and Carol, too. Her guilt killed her and I did nothing to help her. To stop her. Rationally, I can make the case that I was too young to know what was going on. Too young to stop her. But I can’t not feel guilty.”

  “You were able to protect your sister,” the doctor said.

  “Protecting her isn’t the same as helping her. When I went into the Army, I left Carol on her own. I abandoned her.”

  “You helped her as much as you could,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  I hadn’t realized I was pacing up and down the floor. I sat back in my chair. Strangely, it relaxed me.

  “My fault or not, I have a 100% failure rate at caring for someone with a mental disorder,” I said. “Skye is young and she deserves a chance to make a good life for herself.”

  “Do you think she will be able to do that or you hope so?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. In the depths of my soul, I knew that Skye’s attachment to me was so deep, she might never recover. It hurt to admit that even without me, she might never build the life she deserved.

  Or worse.

  The worst path I could imagine for her was the most probable one. She would follow her talent and go into increasingly dangerous missions. One day, my inquiries about her would turn up nothing.

  “Do you want to call her?” he asked.

  My shoulders slumped.

  “No.”

  I didn’t want to call her. I wanted her to show up again, and take me back without asking for the one thing I would not give her. The selfishness of the thought seared through me. I wanted her to abandon hope of a life without me.

  What kind of monster wants that?

  #

  An year and a half later, I was still asking myself that question on my way to his office. The Agency’s recruitment department sounded me out about hiring Skye. Our relationship hadn’t been secret, but it hadn’t been common knowledge either. It was a note in my file, and when they did a background checked on her, my name must have popped up.

  “How do you feel about it?” Doctor Simmons asked.

  The trite phrase amused me, but I let it go. He used it sparingly and this time, it was an eminently appropriate question.

  “I’m surprised it took them so long to poach her from the feds,” I said.

  He looked at me, waiting for the real answer. I leaned back in my chair, and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

  “I didn’t say anything that could have changed their mind,” I said, closing my eyes.

  How did I feel about it?

  “It will make things easier for me,” I said, surprising my shrink. “I’ll be able to check her file directly,” I explained.

  He made a note on his pad, disapproval clear in the tiny adjustments in his posture. Eighteen months had passed since that day and he was despairing at my inability to stop checking on Skye.

  We hadn’t made any progress since that day but when he asked me if I wanted to stop therapy, I refused. This was the only place where I allowed myself to talk about her. The only place where I could admit I used my contacts to find out where she was. The only place where I could say out loud how much I was afraid when she was on a mission. It was my way to contain the undying love and the uncontrollable fear.

  “Will you work with her directly?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, suppressing a shudder.

  If it were up to me, Skye would never find out I was working for the Agency.

  “She will remain in LA probably,” I said. “When she’s not sent abroad.”

  My voice quivered slightly. I trusted Skye’s abilities but that only made things worse. My remote stalking kept me informed of how good she got. That only meant she would keep getting dangerous assignments.

  Each time I checked her file in the following months, my fears were confirmed. New entries alternated training camps and dangerous missions. I could live with the fear as long as her status was “active”. I dreaded the day when I would see any other word in that field.

  The routine was interrupted one evening. I stared at the entry for a full minute. Not training. Not a new mission.

  “March 10-15. Langley VA. Sinclair Hotel. Conference.”

  Chapter 3. Skye – Detective Walker

  The coffee from the machi
ne on this floor tasted like the muddy water I had to drink during my ATF training. It took me three days and three nights through the forest to find my way out.

  I could bring my own tea, but I didn’t want to have too much comfort sitting behind a desk. I was a field operative. I needed to get out of here. I needed a new challenge.

  The cute kitten on the calendar hanging on the wall of my cubicle failed to make me smile. I liked cats just fine, but the calendar still showed a week and three days until my testimony on an old case. A week and three days in which I had to limp my way to this suffocating cubicle. The Agency kept me in stand-by until that was over.

  I never thought I would miss those cold and scary nights in the forest.

  Another sip of the horrible coffee. Another page of the tedious brief. It was going to be an anonymous testimony. That used to be fun at first. I enjoyed going to court wearing a false beard and man’s clothes the first few times I got to do it. It also gave me a sense of security that the people I befriended and betrayed would never find out who I was. Maybe it was the terrible coffee and the gloomy grey morning, but this time… something felt wrong.

  As if to confirm my fears, my handler showed up. Ben Stone looked like a tired and surly civil servant. I envied his nondescript appearance. If he trimmed his eyebrows, he could play the part of a mob accountant as well as a Harvey Keitel type of cleaner. For all I knew, he had lived his own hundred lives before they put him in charge of other people’s fake lives.

  The cloud of unease lowered even more in my heart. Special Agent Stone was too busy to swing by my desk for no good reason. He had other agents in deep cover to look after, other covers to invent, other new people to train.

  He’d done his job in my regards. He had watched out for me while I was under. He even managed to pull me out without major body damage, which was a feat not all my handlers managed.

  “Good morning, Walker,” he said. “Come with me.”

  “Morning,” I said, and followed him.