by Elle Gray
“It’s complicated,” I reply. “Selene told me finally chose to live for herself, on her own terms, rather than let herself be used as a prop by her mother. She said that her mother was as irrelevant to her new life as she’d been growing up. Hedlund took exception to that. To say the least.”
“Wow. That is some story,” Graham notes.
I shrug. “It’s not a story, Senator. It’s the truth.”
“I believe you,” he replies. “It would just be nice if we had that video from the Bureau’s situation room to back it up.”
“Yeah well, Hedlund obviously has a very long reach,” I reply. “She’s got her own minions doing her bidding inside the Bureau.”
Graham let out a long breath. “I’m going to be frank with you, Blake. It would be helpful to me if Representative Hedlund’s star weren’t shining quite so bright.”
The admission takes me slightly off guard. I mean, I know politics is a bloody, bare-knuckle business. You can’t get anywhere unless you’re willing to climb over the bodies of your enemies. Or in some cases, even your friends. I don’t pay attention to the goings-on in DC all that much, but even I know that Graham and Hedlund are supposed to be good friends. So, to hear him saying he’d like to tarnish her reputation for his own benefit is surprising to me. But probably not as surprising as it should be.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have all the respect in the world for Kathryn,” he clarifies. “But the truth of the matter is that I have larger aspirations and need to generate some… traction. Positive traction.”
“Is that why you ambushed me by making my hearing public?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Unfortunately, yes. You are collateral damage in all of this,” he admits. “I do apologize for that but to play this game, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty.”
“You mean, you have to be willing to destroy the reputations of people doing the job the right way,” I reply, struggling to keep the heat out of my voice. “People who put their lives on the line every single day for the good of the people.”
“As I said, it’s an unfortunate reality of this business,” he counters smoothly. “I know you do a good job, Blake. I’ve heard of the good work you’ve done—and are doing. But in a position of higher office, I can affect a lot more change. Protect a lot more people. On the whole, my job is more important in terms of the greater good.”
I blow out a disgusted breath. “The greater good,” I mutter. “Unbelievable.”
The more he says, the more I don’t like him. I want to slap him silly. That he’s openly admitting to throwing me under the bus to better his own fortunes is appalling. Even more galling is how casually he mentions it. As if destroying my career was no consequential than the weather. To say I’m not feeling a little bit of pain and a whole lot of fury would be a lie. This is exactly why I hate politics and politicians.
“It would be really helpful to me if you could help me find something to—slow—her meteoric rise. Nothing permanently damaging, mind you. Just something that will knock her down a few rungs and help slow her down. Something to give me a chance to get a proper foothold,” he goes on. “There’s a proper order to things, Blake. A pecking order. And it’s not her turn yet. She needs to get that message. Needs to understand it.”
He’s telling me that he’s running for President in the next election cycle without expressly saying it. My guess is that Hedlund, who belongs to the same party as Graham, is planning her own run and he’s trying to clear the field. It’s an interesting dynamic, to say the least. But not one I necessarily want to go getting myself caught in the middle of. I’m of the opinion these two should settle their own food fight on their own and leave me out of it.
Graham sees me hesitate and frowns. “How about this? You help me slow her rise and I will ensure the focus of our investigation is steered away from you and your team. You’ll all be cleared and can go on about your lives like normal. Your team will be safe.”
I don’t say anything. I sit there for a long moment, letting him think whatever he wants to think. I have absolutely zero desire to get involved with this. But the fact that he’s using the safety of my team as collateral for his little war with Hedlund fills me with a special kind of rage. The kind of rage I don’t feel often. I’ll admit to having a temper but the sort of rage I feel right now isn’t normal for me.
“Do we have a deal?” he presses.
“You’re running for the presidency, aren’t you?” I ask.
A greasy smirk slides across his face that turns my stomach. He spreads his hands out, palms up, and gives me a shrug.
“I can neither confirm, nor deny that,” he replies. “Not at this time anyway.”
“And Hedlund is going to throw her hat into the ring as well,” I add, gaming the whole thing out in my mind.
“That is the rumor.”
I know he’s still looking for some sort of reassurance that I’m going to do his bidding. I have no intention of doing anything for him though. Frankly, I don’t like him any more than I like Hedlund. They’re two sides of the same corroded, dirty, sleazy coin as far as I’m concerned.
“So, do we have an accord, SSA Wilder?”
“Believe me when I say, she is the last person I want to see elected to the office of the presidency,” I tell him.
It’s a non-answer, really. I mean, it’s a truthful statement. She really is the last person I want to see win an election. But it doesn’t give Graham the reassurance he was looking for—even though he thinks it does. It doesn’t tell him I’ll be on his side or do the things he wants me to do. But he seems to think that I’m on his side, which is good enough for me.
“There’s one more piece of business we need to discuss before you go,” he says.
“And that is?”
He purses his lips and looks down at his desk for a moment as if considering his words. It’s all performative, though. He’s known exactly what he was going to say long before I stepped foot through his door. I know that, and he knows I know that. But this is the game he’s insisted on playing.
He finally raises his gaze to me and those dark eyes of his have gone completely cold. There’s an anger burning behind them—an anger he wants me to see, just to drive his point home.
“In this business—even in your business—it’s good to have friends, Blake. It’s good to have friends in high places, so to speak,” he says. “Conversely, it can be downright fatal to make enemies of those people in high places. I’m speaking of your career, of course. Do you know what I mean?”
I can hear the message behind his words. It’s not my career prospects he’s talking about. It’s something more. And the sly grin on his face only confirms that fact for me. I’m not exactly sure what message he’s trying to get across to me, but whatever it is, I hate it. My hackles are raised and my defenses are on full alert.
“What I’m saying, Agent Wilder, is that you should take care to avoid sticking your nose into business that’s not yours,” he goes on. I don’t miss his sudden shift from friendliness to referring to me by my title. “You just never know what sort of blowback you might bring down on yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Blowback? For what? And what is it you’re trying to get me to look the other way about, Senator?”
“Nothing specific,” he smiles. “I’m speaking in generalities.”
“That’s not what it sounded like to me.”
“I assure you, I was merely making an observation. Offering a little constructive criticism, if you will,” he says. “It’s always good to consider who you’re impacting when you’re running your investigations.”
“And here I thought I was only impacting criminals.”
He shrugs. “It’s not always that black and white,” he says. “In a good deal of cases you work, there are always shades of gray. It’s those cases, the gray ones, that you want to apply what I’ve said here today.”
“Uh-huh,” I reply.
His e
yes are locked onto mine and he’s still wearing that grin on his face. My mind is racing with a thousand different thoughts. I’m trying to figure out what message he’s sending me and on behalf of whom. The list of people it could be is long.
“Do we have an understanding, Agent Wilder?”
“Sure, Senator,” I nod. “Whatever you say.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment. “All right. Then you’re dismissed,” he says. “But remember, Blake. Watch your step.”
Confusion and irritation in equal measures swirl around inside of me. The conversation took a turn I didn’t see coming and it caught me a little flatfooted. As I walk out of his office, I’m still trying to figure it all out. He obviously wants me to not just dirty up Congresswoman Hedlund, but look the other way on one of his buddies. It seems like that good ol’ boy’s network is working hard to cover each other’s backsides again.
God, I hate politics.
Ten
Sound View Memorial Park; Seattle, WA
The day is overcast, chilly, and a light drizzle has been falling all morning. Seems appropriate for the day’s activity, though: I’m standing alone next to the open grave.
The rain beads on the polished wood surface of the casket hovering over the hole in the ground that feels more like a bottomless chasm. A spray of white lilies sits on top of the coffin, and I watch as a fat raindrop drips from one of the petals and slides down the smooth wood surface.
“Be free, be strong, be proud of who you have been, know that you will be mourned and missed, that no one can replace you, that you have loved and are beloved. Move beyond form, flowing like water, feeding on sunlight and moonlight, radiant as the stars in the night sky,” the minister recites from his book of blessings. “Pass the gates, enter the dark without fear, returning to the womb of life to steep in the cauldron of rebirth. Rest, heal, grow young again, and may you find rest and peace in the next world.”
And with that, the pastor closes his book and turns to me, the service over. He takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, a well-practiced smile of sympathy on his face.
“Thank you, Reverend Wells,” I say. “That was beautiful.”
“I pray you find peace and healing.”
I watch as he opens his umbrella and walks away, his part in this little tragedy done. Turning back to the casket, I allow myself to think back to some of the better times I had with Mark. I can’t lie, there were some good times. And even now, knowing who and what he was, as I look back, I can’t believe he was faking it all. The laughter and the passion were just too genuine. The way he’d look me in the eyes and tell me that he loves me, his voice earnest and sincere—that couldn’t have all been an act. Not even Tom Hanks is that good of an actor.
“Or maybe I’m just an idiot,” I mutter. “Naïve when it comes to matters of the heart.”
I sigh and open my own umbrella, though at this point it seems useless. I’m already damp from the drizzle. When it comes to love and relationships, I know that I’m naïve in ways I’m definitely not in other areas of my life. Especially my professional life. Mark is—was—the first serious relationship I had that made me really think about the future in new and different ways. For the first time, I thought about being married and perhaps even having kids.
Those were things we hadn’t really discussed in any great detail or specificity, but they were things that always seemed to lurk in the background. I had never entertained the idea of children. I didn’t want to put off my career. But when I fell in love with him, I started thinking differently and felt some of my priorities changing.
Now that he’s dead, and what he truly was has come to light, I’ve retreated back into my shell of self-preservation, of course. I’ve tried to scrub every trace of Mark Walton from my life. But a couple of days after getting back from DC, I got a call from Rebekah Shaefer, my friend at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. Apparently, nobody had come to claim Mark’s body. It was still sitting in one of their refrigerated drawers.
It’s not surprising, since he wasn’t really who he said he was, so any family he may have had likely wouldn’t even know he was dead. If he had any family—and that’s probably a pretty big if, given his line of work—they’d never know what happened to him. To them, it would be like he simply fell off the face of the Earth. Vanished without a trace. It’s a sad existence if you ask me. To die utterly alone without a single person to mourn you is just tragic.
But that’s the life he chose. Mark chose to give up a normal life and things like friendship and love to pursue this career. He chose to work for the Thirteen. He chose to enter my life and spy on me, and I hate him for it. But even though I’ve cleansed my life of his presence and harbor more bitter feelings for him positive ones, I can’t entirely purge him from my heart or mind. And it’s because of those moments we shared—those moments I know couldn’t have been false. It’s well beyond irritating.
And because of that, because I can’t just press delete and have him disappear from my memories and my heart, that I knew I had to do something for him. I couldn’t just let him be buried in some potter’s field, even though that’s probably what he deserved. So I had Rebekah release his body to me and I provided for his funeral. But there’s something horribly depressing about holding a funeral for one. Well, two, if you count the man in the casket.
I feel a presence behind me and don’t even need to turn around to know who it is. I grit my teeth and shake my head, my anger starting to rise like a dark, malevolent tide.
“I would ask if you have no shame or respect,” I start, “but we both already know the answer to that question.”
“I find it interesting that you would choose to bury him yourself. I mean, didn’t you tell me before that you two broke up?”
I round on Deputy Chief Torres, my eyes narrowed and burning with hatred. He’s standing about five feet behind me, his hands on his hips, his right hand holding his coat back far enough that I can see the Glock in his holster. I’m not sure if it’s accidental or if he’s trying to intimidate me again, but knowing Torres as I do, I’m going to assume it’s the latter.
“You have no right to be here,” I hiss.
“It’s a public cemetery,” he shoots back with a mocking grin. “Of course I have a right to be here.”
“You know what, I’m sick of this garbage,” I growl. “Arrest and charge me. Have me indicted. Do it now or get the hell out of my life, or I swear to God, I will spend the rest of my life raining hell down on you, Torres. I will make it my life’s work to see that you lose your job, are stripped of your pension, and are thrown into prison. How do you think you’d do in gen pop out at Clallam Bay? Or how about Monroe?”
I drop my umbrella and hold out my wrists for him to cuff if he so chooses to prove my point. He looks at me and I see his smarmy smile slip for a moment. It’s restored in the blink of an eye, but seeing the flash of uncertainty in his face, as brief as it had been, was worth it. When he doesn’t take the bait, I lower my hands but refuse to pick up my umbrella, leaving it where it fell instead.
“Throw me in prison, huh? That’s cute,” he says. “Yeah, good luck with that. See, I haven’t committed any crimes—”
“And neither have I,” I cut him off. “And yet, strangely enough, you continue prattling on with this deluded fantasy that you’re going to send me to prison.”
“Murder seems like a prison-worthy crime,” he replies.
“Sure, if I’d committed a murder.”
“You burying this guy—your ex,” he says. “Some might interpret that as a sign of guilt. Isn’t that what you big, smart profilers would say?”
“We big, smart profilers would also say that your obsession with me and this need to insert yourself into my life—which we can now classify as stalking, by the way—points to a possible narcissistic and psychopathic personality disorder,” I fire back.
“Obsession,” he chuckles. “That’s cute.”
“And just in case
you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a cop too. I know how to make things look like something they’re not just as well as you do,” I hiss. “Probably even better, because I was trained by the best—federal will always top local simply because we have more resources at our disposal. So, you should probably keep that in mind.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Just making an observation,” I say, throwing words he’s said to me back in his face.
“You should watch your step, Agent Wilder,” he frowns. “And you should really think twice about sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. You just never know when it’s going to come back and bite you.”
He flashes me that smarmy smile again, then turns and walks off. I’m so angry that I’m trembling, and it really is taking every ounce of my will to keep myself from storming after Torres and beating the snot out of him. And just when I think that dam of my resolve is about to break, I feel somebody take my hand and give it a firm squeeze. It’s so sudden and unexpected that I jump and start to pull away. But Kit holds me in place with a surprising strength and gives me a wan smile.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp. “Jesus, is everybody following me today or something?”
She grins. “I was curious. You were so mysterious about where you were going this morning that you piqued my curiosity.”
“So you followed me.”
She shrugs. “Good thing I did, or I guarantee I’d be bailing you out of jail for assault right about now.”
I shake my head. “You probably wouldn’t be bailing me out for a few hours yet. It would take me a while to process me.”
She laughs and squeezes my hand. Torres crests the hill and disappears from our view, the danger passing. I slowly start to calm down and come back to myself, but Kit hangs onto my hand anyway.
“Who was that guy?” she asks.
“That was Ricardo Torres, Deputy Chief of the Seattle Police Department,” I tell her. “The biggest thorn in my butt that I’ve ever had.”
