by Elle Gray
“You exaggerate.”
I scoff at her. “You’re like this girl I knew back in high school who never studied－like ever－and yet still rolled into class and got A’s on every test.”
Astra looks at me, a mischievous grin curling her lips upward. “You’re talking about yourself there, aren’t you?”
“No,” I say immediately. “I’m definitely not talking about myself.”
I did study, but the truth of the matter is that school came easy to me. Not that I’ll tell Astra, that since it would blunt the point I’m trying to make. But judging by the way she’s looking at me, she’s not buying what I’m selling.
“You act I don’t know just how smart you are. Or that most people think you’re the best agent in this field office,” she says.
“That’s not even true,” I reply.
“Stop being so damn humble. You’ve done some amazing things in the time we’ve been here. Your star is on the rise, Blake. I wouldn’t be surprised if you made Director one day,” Astra tells me, her voice thick with sincerity.
I laugh and wave her off. “I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. Personally, I think you would make a far better Director than I ever would. You’re good with people and can navigate those political waters better than me.”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “The way you say I’m a people pleasing ass-kisser sounds so nice.”
I laugh and throw a piece of balled-up paper across the office at her. She laughs along with me and swats it away harmlessly.
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it,” I tell her.
“I know. It’s just fun watching you get all uptight about it.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Thanks for noticing,” she chirps.
I’ve had some success here; I won’t deny that. My investigations have taken a few major criminals off the board. But it’s certainly nothing to get complacent or big headed about. There will always new bad guys to chase, and in this modern day and age, with more information about how we conduct our investigations out there in the public sphere, catching them is getting more and more difficult.
The only way I can stay on top of things and keep that edge is to keep working. To keep grinding. And to never rest on my laurels. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that things can turn on a dime, and the moment you let yourself get smug about scoring a win is the moment you will lose. And in this game, you could lose everything. Including your life.
“Seriously. Come have a drink tonight,” she presses.
I groan dramatically. “I’ve got something cooking here though.”
“Is an arrest imminent?”
“No,” I admit.
“Are you even looking at a particular suspect right now?”
“I’m gathering the data and crunching all the numbers－”
“So, that’s a no,” she cuts me off.
I roll my eyes. “That’s a no.”
“Good. Then since it’s Friday night, and you’re nowhere near making a bust yet, you can gather the data, crunch the numbers, and work whatever voodoo you do, on Monday, and go have a drink with me tonight,” she argues.
I blow out a long breath, knowing she’s right. At the moment, I’m working on a theory, and that’s all. But as I look deeper into it, I really feel like there’s something here. It may just be a theory, but it’s starting to solidify. I really think there’s something there. Something that needs to be investigated. And having that taste of something happening makes me hate stalling my momentum, such as it is.
But if I’m being honest, I’ve had to slog through the last couple of hours, and I feel like I’m looking at so much information on my computer screen that I’m going blind. And perhaps a bit loopy as well. Maybe Astra’s right. Unplugging for a bit, then coming back and hitting it hard with fresh eyes will be beneficial to me and to the case I’m starting to build. Perhaps it’ll help me get my momentum back.
I look up at her. “Okay. I’ll stay for one drink, or until you find somebody to go home with, whichever comes first.”
She laughs. “Deal.”
Two
Barnaby’s Social House; Downtown Seattle
* * *
Whoever coined the phrase, “meat market” to describe a bar obviously had Barnaby’s in mind. It’s an 80’s-themed bar that plays nothing but music from that era. It’s full of neon, 80’s movie posters, drinks named after stars and films of the decade, as well as all kinds of memorabilia and kitsch. Clearly, the owner is stuck in the days of his youth or something. Most people think it’s got a fun, quirky vibe. But I find it kind of tacky and seedy that it preys on people’s sense of nostalgia. It’s kind of sad watching the aging patrons try to recapture their youth to songs that came out before I was born, but at least the drink specials aren’t so bad.
It’s also a well-known cop bar. Barnaby’s is the place local law enforcement and those of us from the field office all tend to congregate for whatever reason. There are also the hordes of badge groupies who descend on this place every night, of course. It’s a phenomenon I don’t personally understand, but if you’ve got a badge, be you a man or a woman, the chances are good that you can find somebody to take you home at the end of the night, if that’s what you’re looking for.
Which is why Astra likes this place. Barnaby’s is not our usual haunt, so I know when she talks me into coming here, it’s for a purpose. Aside from the attention and free drinks, Astra is guaranteed to find somebody to go home with for the night. Not that she couldn’t snag a guy basically anywhere we go, but for whatever reason, Barnaby’s has always been her go-to place to scratch that carnal itch.
“You know what your problem is?” Astra asks.
“Not sure I can narrow it down to just one.”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll only delve into your biggest issue.”
“Oh, well this should be fun then.”
“You don’t know how to lighten up and have a good time,” Astra says. “You’re so focused on work and being FBI Super-Chick that somewhere along the way, you seem to have forgotten how to smile and have fun.”
“That’s not true. I smile. I have fun.”
“Yeah? When was the last time you cut loose and had a good time?”
I quickly take a drink to give myself a moment to think. Unfortunately for me, I don’t really have an answer to her question. It’s not that I don’t know how to have fun. It’s just that I’ve been so focused on work that I haven’t really had time to go out and have any. Which is her point, of course.
“That’s what I thought,” she says, a triumphant smile crossing her face.
I harumph at her but laugh, taking the L on that argument. Taking a sip of my drink, I look out across the mob jammed into the bar and hope that if I ignore her, the lecture will just go away.
“Blake, you’re young. You’re gorgeous,” Astra presses. “You should be enjoying yourself. Your life. We only get one crack at this, y’know? You should be sucking the marrow out of life.”
No such luck, apparently.
“You did not just quote Thoreau at me,” I say dryly.
She shrugs. “Who?”
“Henry David Thor－forget it,” I say with a laugh. “I enjoy my life. I get a lot of satisfaction out of my job.”
“Spoken like a woman who hasn’t gotten laid in a really, really long time,” she says. “You get satisfaction out of your job? I mean, who says that?”
“There’s nothing wrong with getting satisfaction out of doing a good job,” I protest, cringing at how defensive I sound.
“Nothing at all. And the job satisfies me too. But you really should be getting satisfied by more than just your job,” she says with a laugh. “I mean, you know you could have any man in this bar, don’t you?”
I shrug. “I’m not the one-night-stand kind of girl. You know that about me.”
“Yeah, I do. But I hate to s
ee you alone, Blake.”
“I’m fine. I promise. Believe it or not, there’s more to life than men and sex.”
Astra takes a drink of her martini and nods. “Absolutely. There absolutely is,” she admits. “But men and sex make life a little more fun, interesting, and can provide us with a distraction when we need it most.”
I take a drink and look off again, letting her words rattle around in my mind as I savor the flavor of it. I’ll say this for Barnaby’s… they can make one hell of a White Russian. It’s about the only reason I ever agree to coming here.
“Girl, we are surrounded by death and blood all day, every day. We deal with some of the worst in humanity,” she continues. “Every now and then, we have to find a release. We have to find something to connect us to this world and get us out of our minds for a while. Away from the evil we see on a daily basis. And so far as I can tell, you don’t have that pressure release valve. You keep going on the way you do, grinding twenty-four/seven, you’re going to burn out, Blake. And I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
I’m loath to admit it, but somewhere deep down, I know she’s right. Burnout is pretty common among law enforcement, but it takes a variety of different forms. For some, it leads to a sense of ambivalence and sloppy work. Some just go through the motions. Others choose to simply walk away. And still others, when they hit critical mass and can’t deal with it any longer, choose to eat a bullet.
I don’t plan on doing any of the three of those things. I’m dedicated to the job, I do it well, and I’ll keep doing it because I feel like I’m making a real difference out here. How many lives have I saved because I got a monster off the streets? How many families have been kept together, didn’t lose a mom or dad, son or daughter, because I’m good at my job?
That’s what keeps me going. It’s what keeps me getting out of bed every single day. It’s knowing that I’m keeping people safe and putting monsters in cages where they belong that staves off the feeling of burnout. On the contrary, the thrill of hunting these evil people down never fails to send an electric charge through me.
“I know you’re not a hook-up girl. I get that,” she says. “But having somebody in your life can help take the edge off. It can turn a bad day into something better.”
“Or it could turn a bad day into something worse.”
“I never knew you to be such a fatalist, Blake.”
I shrug. “I’m not a fatalist. Just a realist. Relationships are complicated. Messy. They can really muck up the gears－”
“Or they could provide you with solace and relief from the unrelenting darkness we are immersed in all day, every day.”
A small grin touches my lips. “I never knew you to be such a poet.”
“There’s a lot you still don’t know about me.”
“That might be true, but there are some things I do know that I’d rather not. Things I can’t scrub from my memory no matter how hard I try,” I say with a laugh.
“What about that local cop you told me about? Arrington, right?”
“Paxton?” I ask.
She nods. “Paxton Arrington. Yeah, that’s the one. What about him? He’s filthy rich, drop dead gorgeous－”
“And my friend. He and I get each other,” I cut her off. “He also lost his wife less than a year ago. Even if I was interested in him in that way－which I’m not－it’s not even remotely appropriate right now.”
She raises her hand in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. I didn’t know that. My bad,” she says. “But my point still stands. You need somebody in your life, Blake.”
“I’ll get a cat,” I tell her.
Astra sighs and shakes her head. “I can see you shutting down, so I’ll get off my soapbox for now.”
“Thank you.”
A slow smile creeps across her face. “Don’t think I’m not going to keep pestering you about this. You need some balance in your life.”
“Thank you, Dr. Russo.”
“Speaking of a little balance in my life…”
I don’t even reply as a large, good looking guy comes over to the table, his eyes fixed on Astra. Because of course they are. He introduces himself as Detective Sergeant Renfrow… as if his rank is supposed to impress her. But she gives me a wink, letting me know she’s impressed with something.
“Well, I’ll take that as my cue,” I say and down the last of my drink. “I’ll see you later, Astra.”
“Yeah. Call me,” she replies.
Three
Wilder Residence; The Emerald Pines Luxury Apartments, Downtown Seattle
I stand on the small balcony off the living room of my third story apartment, glass of wine in hand, trying to get Astra’s words out of my head. Soft jazz music is playing inside the apartment, but outside, my ears are filled with the sounds of the city. To me, it’s the most beautiful music in the world.
I know most people think the sounds of a city－car horns blaring, people shouting, laughing, and talking, trucks rumbling, and everything that goes with it－is noise pollution. They say it’s loud and obnoxious. And yeah, I suppose there are days it annoys me too. But there’s always been something about it I’ve loved. Astra says it’s because I wasn’t born here, and I guess maybe there’s something to that.
I was born in Cockeysville and spent the first twelve years of my life out there. It’s out in the sticks in the middle of Maryland, boasting a population of about twenty-thousand people. It’s an affluent little community that isn’t without its charms, I suppose. But there isn’t a whole lot going on out there and it’s usually so quiet, even your thoughts echo. It’s a pretty place, but it lacks the sort of energy and vitality of a city like Seattle. I’m not quite the social butterfly Astra is, but I do like a place with a bit of life to it. I like having options, just in case I ever do feel like hitting the town. But believe me, Barnaby’s is not the place I’d choose.
Both of my parents worked for the NSA, which is situated at Fort Meade. They opted for the half-hour commute, rather than sticking us on base housing. They said they didn’t want us to grow up surrounded by soldiers, but with relatively normal, everyday people. They wanted us to go to normal civilian public schools and have that normal family experience.
And for a while, everything was great. For a while, I’d say I had the ideal childhood. Until it wasn’t. Until I came home from school one day to find that my entire world had come crashing down around me.
Draining the last of my wine, I wander back inside and refill my glass. It’s Friday after all, so why not? I pluck the framed photo off the shelf and carry it with me as I drop down onto the couch. As John Coltrane softly issues from the speakers, I look at the picture of my family. A family that was taken from me.
Kit and I both got our mom’s strawberry blonde hair and green eyes. My sister also got her long, lithe frame, and delicate features. I more took after my dad body-wise. I’ve always been lean, but I’m also toned and athletic. Probably because of his influence, I’ve always enjoyed sports and even followed in my father’s footsteps, becoming proficient in a couple of different martial arts.
Knowing how much I took after our father in temperament and interests, it often makes me wonder what Kit would have done. Would she have started to share our father’s interests as she grew? After all, I was eight or nine before I became interested in sports and the like. My best guess is that she would have turned out more like our mother, a bit of an introverted bookworm with a natural knack for computers. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see Kit follow our folks into the NSA.
“I still miss you guys. Every single day,” I whisper.
It was more than a decade ago, but the pain is every bit as fresh today as it was back then. Coming home to find what I did has stayed with me. I’ve done counseling. In fact, I still see my shrink, for all the good it’s done. But having that outlet isn’t a bad thing. Dr. Reinhart has given me some tools that have helped me cope when times get really dark. She’s helped me through some of my rougher mom
ents.
But what she hasn’t been able to do is take away the lingering pain completely. She says it’s a process, and that it’s going to take time for those wounds to heal. I personally don’t think they’ll ever heal completely, but I at least want to get to a point where I can look at photos, or think of them, and not have it be accompanied by a searing, blinding pain. But it’s been fourteen years now, and I’m not sure that day is ever really going to come.
What makes it doubly hard to get over is the fact that I may never know what happened to my kid sister. Unlike my folks, what happened to Kit－my sister, Katherine－is a complete mystery to me. She was just gone. At least I got to bury my folks. Dr. Reinhart says that helped me find some semblance of closure with them－whatever that means.
Personally, I don’t believe in closure. I think it’s a myth. Simply something we tell ourselves to help us feel better about things. I don’t know if you can ever truly get over a loss of the magnitude of the one I endured. To have the people I loved and everything I’ve ever known just ripped away from me like that? Yeah, I think that’s a wound that’s never going to fully heal.
But hey, I got to say goodbye to my parents, at least. Katherine disappeared from the face of the Earth like she’d never even existed. She was just… gone. Kit did exist, though. She was kind and beautiful, she had a vibrant personality that lit up every room she walked into, and I loved her fiercely. I still love her.
But I’m realistic enough to know she’s probably dead. As much as I’d like to say otherwise, I have little hope she’s still alive after all this time. I’d still like to know what happened to her all the same. If for no other reason than to lay her to rest and give her some peace. She deserves that.
I take a long swallow of wine as I look at the pictures, trying to focus on the fonder memories and reflect on happier days. It’s not easy when all I can seem to recall with vivid clarity is coming home and finding the lifeless bodies of my parents sprawled out on the living room floor. Their hands had been tied behind their backs and they each had two bullets in the back of their heads.
