by Emma Harley
After almost an hour of driving, she had pulled down a desolate road with no lights. No houses could be seen for miles, so she pulled up alongside a string of trees, blocking her from view of the main road. JJ pulled up behind her, and they unloaded the weapons into the boot of her car. He carried over the box Jonathon had gave them and slammed the boot closed. Raina stalked back over to the van and grabbed a rusted tin of turpentine. JJ watched silently as she splashed it over the inside of the van and jumped out.
“Give me your lighter,” she demanded breathlessly.
He handed her the little silver lighter and she pulled out the photograph of the Raven, rolling it into a tube and lighting it on fire before touching it to the floor of the van. Flames erupted throughout the inside, licking at the dirty walls and destroying any evidence of them. She strode back to her car and took off, JJ chuckling to himself.
“Is that why you’re called Phoenix or is it just a coincidence?” he teased. Raina smirked.
“I just leaned into it.”
JJ used the journey time to tell Raina about everything he’d been up to since their last mission together, detailing his holidays and trips abroad, although she barely registered the words he spoke. The file under his seat was a constant presence, every word inside would describe how badly she had failed her family, every bloody picture may as well have had her name on it. She was entirely to blame, and she had swallowed that truth daily just to try and function in a normal life.
“Phoenix?”
Her thoughts drifted to the back of her mind as she looked at JJ’s concerned face. “Yeah? Sorry I was off in my own world,” she mumbled, driving down through an old estate. He tapped his fingers rhythmically on the dashboard.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Raina feigned ignorance as she left the estate and turned off onto a mountain road.
“There’s nothing to talk about, I just want to get this bitch and rip the life from her,” she casually explained. JJ bobbed his head in mock acceptance before leaning back in his seat.
“You know we all have your back. No one thinks you’re a robot, it’s completely normal to be angry or upset or whatever you’re feeling right now.” Raina scoffed as she pulled into a driveway and circled around to the back of the farmhouse they had just arrived at.
“Did you pull that line from a self-help book?”
Before he could answer, she shut off the engine and strode up to the back door, knocking twice, pausing then twice again. Alicia answered the door and came out to help unload the gear from her car. Raina grabbed the file from under the passenger seat and was about to go inside before Davin stopped her.
“There’s a cow shed to the side, put the car in there.”
After parking her car in the manure smelling shelter, she stormed back to the farmhouse, desperate to get started. The windows were boarded up from the inside, and the whole house smelled musty, like it hadn’t been aired out in decades. Despite how old everything seemed, it was clean enough, warm and safe. Jonathon had left instructions taped to the refrigerator; no lighting the fire, don’t take the boards off, and keep the cars hidden. He had also crammed the fridge and cupboards full of food and left a substantial amount of alcohol, much to Izak’s delight. Alicia tossed Raina a can of cider and slid half of a pizza across to her.
“Eat and relax, we’ll get some rest and start this tomorrow with fresh heads.” An order, not a request.
Raina chewed on the cooling pizza and forced herself to swallow. She didn’t want to rest, not while Thea was missing and an international criminal was out for her blood. It was pure revenge that sent the Raven after her family, and the bitch had been on the loose for a month. She wanted to find her and end her. And sitting eating pizza wasn’t going to make any progress.
“Phoenix.” Davin’s voice broke through her daze and five pairs of eyes scrutinised her cautiously.
“I don’t want to sit and rest. I’ve been doing nothing for weeks while she’s been on the move. I’m already miles behind her and I need to get ahead. So go sleep if you want to but I need to get started. Your families are safe, mine isn’t.” Raina stormed past Davin and into the living room. She tipped the box of files out onto a coffee table and started flicking through them, ignoring the pointed glances of her teammates.
Davin leaned against the door, watching her carefully.
“I’m taking the lead Phoenix.”
Raina slammed the files down to look him square in the eye. “What?”
He crossed the floor to pick up a file that had fallen on the floor and set it gently on the table.
“I’m taking the lead this time. You’re angry, I get it. But we need someone with a clear head giving us orders. You made me your number two on the missions, I’m taking over for this one. And I don’t want to argue about it, you said yourself our lives are on the line too. I’m not letting you lead us into an ambush because you’re too hot-headed to see clearly.” Raina glared at him but remained silent, picking a file back up to look through it. The rest of the team had been watching from the kitchen, and Alicia flounced in, clearly disappointed.
“I was expecting you to fight him on that one Phoenix, you’re getting soft,” she taunted, slurping berry cider from the can. Raina didn’t bother to dignify the insult with a response, she picked up another file and tossed it to her.
“Why don’t you give your jaws a rest and get to work Mullins,” she sighed, plodding into the kitchen. She dug through the drawers looking for supplies, finding tape, some markers and a ball of blue wool with two knitting needles stabbed through it.
Raina shoved an armchair away and tossed two canvas frames onto it, leaving an open space on the yellowed wall. She taped up a picture of the Raven and turned to the team, who had silently assembled behind her to observe.
“We’ll start with what we know, and we need to see if there’s anything we missed. Someone leaked my information, and that’s where we need to start. Only one person knew where I was living, and that was my aunt. Likewise, I was the only one knew her address except my cousins, and I think it’s safe to say none of them leaked anything, they knew they would have been targeted then too. So first we need to work out who knew about it, hopefully something in the files might give us a clue.”
Davin didn’t move to grab anything, instead just stared her down while the others began flicking through pages and photographs. Raina picked up a slim file and stepped towards him.
“I don’t mind you taking the lead Davin, but since my family is probably being tortured by her as we speak, I’d rather not wait until morning. I’ll be your number two and you make the calls, but I’m not taking this slow. If it was your sister missing, would you be sleeping soundly right now?” she snapped, slamming the file against his chest. His jaw dropped into an ‘o’ as she flopped onto the armchair and swung her legs over the side.
“How did you know about my sister?” he asked quietly.
The rules within the team were simple. Unless it pertains to the case, they were to know as little as possible about each other. Raina wasn’t even sure what age they were, if they were married or had kids, none of them knew anything unnecessary. The rule had been bent slightly in a few rare circumstances, medical information namely. And on one occasion when they discovered that Alicia had no one to name as her next-of-kin, they had learned that very few of them had living family to speak of. She flicked her eyes to the papers she had given him.
“It’s in your personnel file,” she mumbled, tapping her fingers on the fat folder she had taken from her car. Alicia’s eyes went wide and she scrabbled through the mountain of papers.
“Our personnel files are in there?”
Raina rolled her eyes. “You guys realise we’ll have to clear each other first right?”
They looked between themselves worriedly as she continued – “we were all on that mission together, and we all knew how to contact each other when no one else could reach us. I trust you guys, but we have to m
ake sure the leak isn’t in the team.” Raina lifted out the files with their names on them.
“We’ll do this like a Secret Santa. You can’t pick your own name,” she handed the files out and swapped over with Davin.
“Damn Nick I thought you were just our tech guy I don’t know you had a PhD,” Izak mumbled, prompting Nick to lean over to peek at his file.
“Did you think I was born with that knowledge or something? I obviously learned it somewhere idiot,” he sighed, before bursting into laughter, “ALICIA WAS IN BEAUTY PAGEANTS!”
He flashed the picture to the team as she dived to pull it from him. Raina chuckled at the picture before it was wrenched from her hands.
“Damn Mullins, you look like a frozen yoghurt.” JJ examined a picture carefully before turning it to the room.
“Izak, did you wear crop tops as a teenager?”
Izak almost flew across the room to pull the picture from JJ’s hands, screaming curses at the government.
“There are a thousand other pictures they could have chosen and they choose this one,” he sighed, defeatedly dropping onto the sofa, “The government is just one big conspiracy theory, I don’t care what evidence you try and show me. They’re aliens.”
Davin let out a chuckle, “Guys want to see Phoenix dressed as a princess on her birthday?” Raina’s chest dropped as Alicia dived to grab the picture, settling in between JJ and Izak as they leaned in to peek.
“Your dad would get it though, how old was he in this picture?” Alicia swooned, giggling lightly.
Raina’s stomach churned and she swallowed hard. “I’ve never met my father, he won’t be in pictures.”
JJ passed the picture over to her.
The room started spinning and she couldn’t breathe as the pressure coiled around her lungs like a snake, squeezing the oxygen from her. Sure enough it wasn’t her father, but she knew damn well who was kneeling before her in that picture.
“This is impossible, someone must have modified these photos,” she whispered, dropping the picture onto the table. Nick picked it up and examined it carefully.
“It doesn’t look like a chop job, what’s wrong with it?” he asked, passing it to Davin. Raina paced along the room, rubbing her face.
“That’s Logan Blanchard. I met him back in July when his brother hired me to work for them. He looks exactly the same now as he does in that picture, so it can’t possibly be him. Someone must has doctored that picture.”
Davin slowly reached for his gun and pointed it at her.
“Sit down Raina.”
She froze with deadly stillness as the others stared at Davin.
“Sit.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” JJ growled, his own gun in his hands aiming at Davin before anyone else knew what was going on. Davin sat the open folder down on the table with two pictures on display. One was Raina and her mother, with Thea and a very familiar woman, the other had them joined by Kalen, Elias and Logan Blanchard, alongside another man she recognised with a heart-wrenching pause.
“Do you want to explain why the Raven and Brent Ironwood are in these photographs?”
Raina’s throat dried out and her head was spinning. Too much was happening. Logan knew her mother, and the Raven knew her mother. The target they had killed years ago, Brent Ironwood, seemed to have been friends with her mother. They knew each other, and they had known her too. Was that the reason they hired her? To track her down for the Raven?
Raina’s silent meltdown was too obvious to her team. Davin holstered his gun while Alicia taped the pictures to the wall.
“We need you to talk Phoenix. This all keeps coming back to you somehow,” JJ commanded, tapping harshly on the folder she had avoided reading through, “Start with this Blanchard guy.”
Raina’s body felt numb, detached from her brain as her thoughts screamed in her mind. She watched her heavy arms move as though someone else had control of them.
“I was hired by Kalen Blanchard this summer. I had plans to go to university, so I was looking for a job and a place to live. He hired me as a tutor for their younger brother, although I wasn’t there long enough to meet him,” she clarified, breathing heavily as their eyes settled on her, “Logan Blanchard is his brother. In the interest of full disclosure, he seemed pretty smitten with me before I was taken into protection. He was keen to keep me at the manor.”
“You sound like a model employee,” taunted Izak. She rolled her eyes and continued.
“Parents didn’t live with them, Kalen never explained why, but said Vincent lived with their mother. That’s the most I know about their background.”
Alicia shifted in her seat as she examined the picture of Logan and young Raina, “So if he was in his early twenties in this picture, you slept with a 40-something year old?” JJ snickered as Raina snatched the photograph from her hand.
“This is the part I don’t understand. Logan hasn’t aged, neither has Kalen or Elias judging by these pictures. And if this is in fact the Raven,” –she jabbed the woman’s face on the wall – “then she hasn’t aged at all either. Something is wrong with these photographs.”
Davin stared between the pictures, shaking his head in disbelief. He ran a hand through his ebony hair, his shirt rising slightly to show a glimpse of toned, dark abs.
“Well let’s assume those photographs are doctored because any other theory is complete nonsense. Why would someone do that?” Raina shrugged, the defeat on her face lacing her voice.
“Maybe pointing us to the family? I can assure you I have no recollection of ever meeting the Raven, nor the Blanchard’s before I was employed by them. But maybe they somehow knew my mother?”
Questions gathered more questions, and no answers were coming. Every photograph they taped to the wall was adding an extra thread into the mystery. Raina knew there was some connection to her, but that line of thought was branching off into more paths than she could follow. Within an hour, the wall was covered in post it notes and blue wool, and nothing made sense at all.
Nick had gotten his laptop up and running, and was searching for anything that would help untangle the mess of information they were currently staring at. Alicia had handed out coffee to everyone in a bid to energise the dull tones they were speaking with while Raina had sat with her pupils glued to their improvised board, waiting for a spark of enlightenment.
The yellowed glass clock on the mantel chimed ten o’clock and a thought creeped across Raina’s mind. She stood up and wandered around, taking note of the random pieces of art hung sparingly throughout the house. The furniture was unmatching, one armchair was cream, the other green and yellow patterned while the sofa was a grey fabric, almost shiny with age. As she traipsed upstairs to examine the bedrooms, she noticed the bedspreads were all the same, identical plain colours with thin, worn down pillows. There were very few ornaments, mostly empty vases sat on the windowsills.
The team stared at her as she returned to the living room, chewing on her thumbnail deep in thought.
“What are you thinking Phoenix?” called JJ, observantly watching her pacing the floors. She ignored him and turned to Nick.
“Can you dig up anything about the Blanchard parents? Apparently they were divorced, and I assume the mother won full custody of the youngest son. There must be a marriage certificate or record of a divorce at least.”
Nick smirked, “Give me five minutes.”
Davin cocked his head at her as JJ flung his arms in the air in exasperation. Raina turned to them.
“This is a safe house right? What do you notice about them? All of them, not just this one.”
Davin shrugged as Alicia looked around the room, waiting for something to jump out at her. JJ came in from the kitchen and pointed at the furniture.
“Everything is ugly as sin?”
Rolling her eyes, she held up one of the canvas frames she had taken off the wall earlier.
“Everything is tossed in, the furniture won’t match, there�
��s cheap art on the walls, and no family photographs. No photographs, no personal touches whatsoever. Nothing that can link back to whoever bought or owned the house, so if anyone ever came in here, they wouldn’t be able to tell anything about whomever lived here right?”
Davin shrugged again and this time JJ mirrored him.
“What’s your point though?”
“The Blanchard manor didn’t have a single photograph of the family, no baby pictures, and no pictures of them as kids. They had expensive art on the walls, but not a single photograph throughout the whole house,” she mused, running through everything she noticed about the house, a flashing memory coming back through her mind.
“Nick, check for records of a sister.” Davin’s deep amber eyes went wide.
“Did you ever meet this sister?” She shook her head.
“Actually it wasn’t the Blanchard’s mentioned her. Their driver picked me up when I first arrived, he was the one mentioned an absent sister, he said he’d never met her. The brother’s never spoke about her and to be honest I forgot there even was one.”
Nick jumped and motioned to the others. “This is interesting.” Raina and the team huddled around his computer before he swatted them away, “Give me some room dammit.”
“Just tell us what you found,” sighed Izak. Nick rolled his eyes before returning to his screen.
“It’s more like what I didn’t find. There’s no record of either parent, or a young son. No birth certificate, no death certificate, no marriage or divorce. There isn’t even tax records for them, which is very strange since they seem to own so many businesses. It’s like they don’t even exist. But here’s where it gets more interesting.” He paused to take a gulp of his coffee, much to the irritation of his team members.
“Ahhh,” he sighed happily, before a light backhand on his arm from JJ made him return to his brief.
