The Lost Sister (Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller Book 7)

by Elle Gray

  I narrow my eyes and read the small words written in a simple, yet striking script.

  “Do Good Work,” I read out loud.

  “That’s the first tat I ever got,” she tells me, rolling her sleeve back down before I can get a good look at any of the other tattoos. “It’s a reminder for me to always, in everything I do, to do good work. To leave this world a better place than I found it—no matter what. I got it because…”

  She pauses for a second, memories clearly flitting across her eyes. Mo has never opened up to me before. I want to ask her, but I know she has her own history, her own guarded secrets that she has a right to keep hidden. Either way, I’m glad for her trust—just as I am glad that I can trust her.

  “…Because I know firsthand what it’s like when people who have the ability to do good work, don’t,” she finishes. “And I never want to be that.”

  I frown and look down at the folder in my hand and think about the people who’ve died already because of this. Three sitting Supreme Court Justices, my parents, their entire working group, Gina Aoki, Mr. Corden, and even the man I knew as Mark Walton. The danger is unlike anything I think I’ve ever faced before. It’s more present. More real. And it’s a danger I don’t know that I want to expose my team to. I don’t know that I can deal with losing the people I care most about in this world.

  “I want to see this through. All the way to the end, Blake,” Mo continues. “I know you can use my help. This is just too big for you to do on your own.”

  “I don’t know, Mo. You’ve already done a lot—”

  “All the more reason for me to stick around and see this through. I’m not worried about any danger this assignment brings. This is part of the job, whether we’re chasing a murderer or a conspiracy,” she says. “Also, what better work could I do than to take down a major conspiracy ring like this?”

  That draws a laugh out of me, and I shake my head. The truth is, I can use her help. I honestly can use all the help I can get. I just hate the idea that I’ll be putting Mo in danger if I let her press forward with me. But she seems more than willing and she’s not walking in with her eyes closed. I’ll make sure she knows exactly how dangerous this will be. I’ll remind her every single day if I have to just so she doesn’t forget.

  “All right. But we are going to need to be really careful in how we go about this. We tell nobody aside from Astra,” I tell her.

  “What about Rick?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. I don’t…”

  I let my words trail off as I see her frown and look away. I can already tell by the look on her face that she’s told him what’s happening.

  “Please tell me you didn’t pull him in,” I groan.

  “Who did you think got me access to all the financials?” she asks sheepishly. “He’s better at the tech stuff than I am. But he can keep his mouth shut. I mean, you didn’t even know he was working on this with me.”

  A wry smile touches my lips. She has a point. But that means my whole team is running a shadow investigation without official authorization or approval. Of course, if Hedlund is going to blow my team up, going out with a win like this—taking down the Thirteen and saving the country from their corruptive and murderous influence—would be a pretty sweet note to go out on. Talk about a feather in our caps.

  “All right. But this is to be kept in the strictest confidence beyond our working group,” I say. “The circle starts and ends with us.”

  “Aye aye, captain,” she replies.

  “You sound way too excited for what we’re up against,” I note. “Like I said, we’re going to have a talk about your definition of fun.”

  She laughs and heads for the door. “I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow, boss.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Once she’s gone, I look at the box for a long moment before dragging it over to where my laptop is set up on a desk in the corner. After that, I go and pour myself another glass of wine, then start digging into the records Mo brought over. Might as well make good use of my time rather than sit here and stress out about my sister.

  It’s a welcome distraction.

  Five

  Wilder Residence, The Emerald Pines Luxury Apartments; Downtown Seattle

  The sound of the front door closing, followed by the scuff of furtive footsteps on the hardwood floor, jumps me awake. Adrenaline floods me and I instantly tense, my body at the ready for whatever might come. I’m stretched out on the couch, concealed by darkness, but my weapon is over on the kitchen counter. It might as well be a thousand miles away for all the good it does me over there. Remaining perfectly still, I focus on the sound of the footsteps and see the figure quietly moving in the dark. It’s like a shadow moving among the shadows.

  I reach out cautiously, as not to make a sound and flip on the lamp on the small table next to the sofa, flooding the room with light. Kit jumps like I just goosed her with a twenty-thousand-volt cattle prod and wheels around, her eyes wide in shock.

  “What are you doing? Are you trying to scare me to death?” she hisses.

  “What am I doing? What are you doing?” I fire back. “Why are you sneaking in here like that? You startled me creeping around in the dark.”

  She sighs. “I was trying to keep from waking you up. Why are you sleeping out here on the couch anyway?”

  “I was doing some work and I must have fallen asleep.”

  I look down at the floor and see the file I’d been going through lying scattered on the floor, the pages fanned out on the ground. I slip off the couch and start to gather the fallen pages together as Kit leans against the loveseat and folds her arms over her chest, watching me. I stack the papers together, knowing I’ve made a complete hash of the order they were in. It’s going to be a pain in the butt putting them all back together the right way.

  “Wonderful. That’s just great,” I mutter.

  I sit down on the edge of the couch then glance at my watch, feeling a bubble of anger bursting inside me.

  I look up at my sister. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s a little after two,” she replies. “What, were you waiting up for me or something?”

  I sigh and scrub my face with my hands, then blow out a frustrated breath and look up at her again, doing my best to control my emotions. I know they’ll only make things more complicated than they have to be. It’s hard though. This is my sister and right now, I’m having a hard time shutting down the emotions. After everything I went through after she was taken, it’s not easy to be calm and logical about—well—much of anything.

  “I was worried about you, Kit,” I tell her. “You didn’t leave a note. You didn’t call or text me. I had no idea where you were.”

  “I was out,” she says simply.

  “Out where?”

  “Does it matter?” she replies, sounding like a petulant teenager.

  “It does,” I tell her as wave after wave of frustration crashes down over me. “I was worried something had happened to you.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “And how was I supposed to know that? All I know is that you were gone when I got home and I had no idea where you were,” I say, my voice growing colder. “I know you’ll think it’s ridiculous, but for all I knew, the people you escaped from came back for you.”

  She frowns and looks away for a moment as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. Kit lets out a heavy sigh then turns back to me.

  “You’re right,” she admits. “I didn’t think about that. I’ll make sure to leave a note next time just so you aren’t up all night worrying.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “So, what were you doing out this late?”

  “I just had some things to do.”

  I frown, not liking that she’s still being so evasive with me. “Kit, what’s going on? What could you possibly have to do here?”

  “Things, Blake. Stop interrogating me,” she snaps.

  “I’m not interrogating you. I just want to know wha
t you were up to,” I fire back. “I mean, according to you, Annie, Maisey, and I are the only people you know in Seattle. So, who were you out with?”

  She throws her hands up in the air and lets out a derisive snort. Kit walks into the kitchen, shaking her head and muttering under her breath. I get to my feet and follow her. She’s pulling a bottle of water out of the refrigerator when I step into the kitchen. She hands me one then takes another for herself.

  “Thanks,” I say and twist off the cap. “Are you on drugs, Kit?”

  “Jesus,” she mutters and shakes her head. “No, I don’t do drugs.”

  “Was this like a Tinder thing or something? Is that why you were out?” I press. “You were hooking up with somebody?”

  “Give me a break,” she growls.

  Kit rolls her eyes, and her face darkens, anger etched into her features as she uncaps her bottle and takes a long swallow. I do the same as a quiet moment passes between us, the air in the kitchen crackling with tension. I put the bottle back down on the counter and look at Kit. It’s still unbelievable to me that she’s standing here, alive and in the flesh after all this. She’s grown into a beautiful woman—and is just as stubborn as she was as a kid. But it’s more than that. She’s being secretive and I don’t like that. Not at all.

  I mean, she’s a grown woman and is entitled to her secrets. But there’s something off about her. When I look into her face, I can see something just below the surface. It’s as if she’s wearing a mask and every now and then, it will slip enough to allow me to see there’s more underneath it. Something dark.

  Some days, the mask slips. It’s not frequent, but every now and then a glimmer of something else slips out and I notice a haunted look in her eyes. Kit is careful about concealing it. But now and then, I can see it clear as day.

  Having trained in psychology, I understand her position. After what she went through, I’d be more surprised if she didn’t have some lasting scars. If she wasn’t haunted. But I think this goes even beyond all of that. She’s being cagey and evasive. This isn’t about her going out just to blow off some steam. This is something more. Something darker. I can see it in her eyes.

  “Kit, I want you to be honest with me,” I tell her.

  “And I need you to trust me.”

  I bite back the bitter laugh that threatens to burst out of my mouth. I’m upset but I’m not dumb enough to think that would go over real well. And the last thing I want to do is make the situation any worse than it is. I don’t want to push her away—not when I only just got her back. But at the same time, I need to know what she’s getting herself into. I know so little about her life, I need to know what I have to expect.

  The truth is, I don’t trust her right now. Am I grateful for her return? Yes. Do I feel the bond of family and sisterly love that I’ve been missing? Absolutely. But trust—we’re not quite there yet. And that’s mostly because she has been so mysterious and willfully enigmatic about what happened to her and about what she’s into now. She is entitled to her secrets. But I’m entitled to my feelings about her keeping those secrets from me.

  Having been with the Bureau as long as I have, seeing the worst in people is kind of a force of habit for me. It’s second nature. I spend my days chasing down the worst scum the world has to offer. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t become a little jaded and cynical over the years. Probably because of that, it’s become easy for me to see when people are hiding things from me. And it’s made it incredibly hard for me to trust anyone. Not just Kit, but pretty much everyone except those few people in my inner circle.

  I know on one level, I should trust her. Part of me feels that I’m a monster for not trusting her. She’s my sister, after all. But hard-won experience has taught me that when you open yourself up and give your trust to somebody without them having earned it, more times than not, you’re going to be disappointed. Sometimes catastrophically so. In my life, trust is always earned. It’s never given. That’s even more true these days when I feel like I’m surrounded by enemies.

  “You don’t trust me, do you?” she asks.

  “Kit, it’s not that easy,” I tell her. “If you knew what I’ve been going through—”

  “I can’t know, since you won’t tell me,” she cuts me off angrily. “And yet, you get upset with me for not telling you what I’ve gone through. A little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “And you’re not my mother, Blake. You can’t demand to know—”

  “No, I’m not your mother,” I snap. “Because your mother was murdered.”

  She narrows her eyes and clenches her jaw. “You say that like I wasn’t there the day it happened. Like I didn’t watch as our parents were murdered right in front of me.”

  Her words hit me like a baseball bat to the midsection, driving the air from my lungs. Of all the horrible things I ever imagined she was subjected to all these years, it never once occurred to me that she might have been witness to our parents’ murder. I guess I was so consumed with the idea that she was being trafficked and all the degradations she was being subjected to that I never stopped to think about it. I see now what a terrible oversight that was. I can’t even begin to imagine the psychic scars the whole experience has left on her.

  Kit is bristling with rage burning in her face. Her eyes are shimmering with tears, but she’s keeping them from falling, letting her anger override her grief. That’s something we’ve always had in common: preferring to be mad than sad. It’s just another confirmation for me that this is, in fact, my little sister.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, Kit,” I tell her. “I didn’t—think.”

  “No. You didn’t,” she replies, her voice cold as ice.

  Without waiting for me to reply, Kit turns and storms off. I flinch as the bang of the bedroom door slamming echoes through the apartment. I feel miserable for what I said and the feelings and memories it seemed to have stirred up in Kit. I notice, though, that she walked off without answering my question, and I’m left to wonder if that emotional blow-up was by design.

  Six

  Parking Lot E; Seattle Field Office

  Kit still hasn’t come out of her room by the time I’m about to leave for work, and it makes me laugh. I remember a time when she was five or six and got so mad at me for accidentally setting her Barbie on fire that she locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out for just about an entire day. My parents weren’t amused but I thought it was hysterical. I realize this situation is a little more serious, but it just reminded me of that time so long ago.

  After getting ready for work, I lock all the files Mo brought over in the fireproof safe I had installed in the closet. When Kit came to stay with me, I locked all the sensitive materials of the Thirteen case in there. Like I said, trust is earned. I hate having to think that way, but it’s prudent and practical. Until I know I can trust her, I don’t want her involved in anything to do with my investigation into the Thirteen. For all I know, she’s part of it. I know it’s not likely but have to operate as if it’s a strong possibility anyway.

  I stop at a red light and send her a text letting her know I’m leaving, but she doesn’t respond, of course. I’m hoping that by the time I get home, she’ll be speaking to me again, but it’s pretty much a toss-up at this point. It’s been bothering me the whole drive into the shop honestly. I hate this wedge between us. I want to open up and let her in. I want to trust her. She’s my sister, for God’s sake. But I just can’t afford to. Not right now.

  I glance in the rearview mirror and see that my tail is still back there. I picked him up about a block out of my underground garage. He’s kept a discreet distance, but he hasn’t been trying to hide the fact that he’s been shadowing me. The glare of the morning sun on the windshield is keeping me from seeing exactly who’s behind the wheel, but I can only assume that it’s Torres. It’s a Dodge Charger with smoked windows. Just screams unmarked cop car to me.

  There’s one ca
r between the Charger and me as I go through the security gate outside the field office. I keep an eye on the rearview as I pull through and head for my usual spot out in lot E. I slide into my regular stall, grab my bag, and hop out of my car. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I casually lean against the trunk, fold my arms over my chest, and wait for him. It doesn’t take long as I see him turn down my aisle and slowly cruise toward me like a shark gliding through the water.

  He pulls to a stop in front of me and powers down the driver’s side window. Just as I thought, it’s Torres. He looks at me with a smarmy grin on his face as he opens the door and steps out. He leans against the door and folds his arms over his chest, mirroring me. We’re standing about five feet apart eyeballing each other fiercely, neither of us speaking for a long moment.

  “Saw your hearing on CSPAN,” he finally breaks the silence. “Looks like it was pretty rough.”

  I shrug. “As they say, looks can be deceiving.”

  Torres chuckles. “Yeah. They say a lot, don’t they?”

  “They certainly do.”

  “Still, they were grilling you pretty hard,” he says.

  “If you say so.”

  He grins at me. “Got a feeling you’re going to be going through some really rough days in the not-too-distant future.”

  I chuckle softly. “Oh, are you talking about the pipe dream you’re having about indicting me for a pair of homicides you know I didn’t commit?”

  Torres shrugs. “All I know is where the evidence is leading me,” he says. “And right now, it’s leading in a very specific direction. That’d be toward you, just in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” I reply. “And I’m not worried in the least. Any evidence you manage to drum up will be false and we both know it.”

  “If you say so,” he says. “But you know how easy it is for a halfway competent ADA to get an indictment. And what will you do if you’re indicted, SSA Wilder?”