by Elle Gray
“A little problem is right,” Astra adds, waving her pinky at him, which touches off bursts of laughter from our guys.
Graham looks down and his face turns a shade of red not commonly found in nature as he realizes his pants are down. He quickly turns his back to us, which seems to be some sort of a signal, because it’s at that moment all of us guffaw loudly at his expense. Graham takes a moment to compose himself—and tuck his shirt back in—and turns back to us, his face dark with rage.
“How dare you,” he hisses. “How dare you barge in here. And how dare you for being so disrespectful. I am a United States Senator.”
“Yeah, but you really are only the junior Senator,” Astra mutters, which touches off another round of laughter.
“All right, all right,” I say, trying to get control of the situation. “Senator Graham, we have a warrant for your arrest.”
“My arrest? What are you talking about?” he sputters. “Wilder, you have crossed the line. You’ve gone too far—”
Astra holds out her tablet and hits play. On the screen, we see Graham with some businesspeople who were meeting with him with the hope he would support their bid for a new casino along the Mississippi River waterfront. For a couple of minutes, everything seems kosher. But then they hand Graham a thick envelope, which he opens and allows us all to clearly see the stack of money inside.
The scene flips to the following day where the measure allowing them to build a casino is being voted on, and wouldn’t you know it? Senator Graham flipped his vote, which carried the measure and allowed the casino to move forward.
“You are deliberately misinterpreting that,” he shouts. “That is not what it looked like. You’re spinning this to make me look bad.”
“There is a lot more for you to watch if you’d like,” I tell him. “I guess now we know how you got that second home on the lake and drive such a nice car.”
“Screw you, Wilder.”
“Pass, thanks.”
“We also have a search warrant to allows us access to search your office, your home, and your apartment,” Astra says, handing him copies of the warrants. “I’m sure you’ll find that everything is in order.”
As if that’s their cue, the agents start tearing Graham’s office apart. He’s still standing behind his desk, his face pale, his eyes wide, and an expression of bewilderment in his eyes. I walk over to him, relishing every step.
“Please put your hands behind your back, sir,” I order.
He doesn’t comply. Instead, he turns and glares at me, the hatred on his face more than clear. I just smile sweetly at him.
“Hands behind your back, Senator,” I repeat.
“Senator for now,” Astra mutters.
He raises his hand and points at Astra, his face twisted with rage. He opens his mouth to deliver what I’m sure is going to be some clever and cutting remark, but before he can get it out, I grab hold of his arm and twist it savagely behind his back. He squeals in outrage as his head bounces off his desk. I slap the cuff on one wrist, then twist his other harm behind him and cuff that one too.
Grabbing the collar of his jacket, I yank him upward into a standing position. His hair is suddenly askew and his tie is all wonky. He looks disheveled, which will play great with the cameras that will be waiting outside. I’m hoping that Astra’s guy was able to put together a proper send-off for him.
“Hey guys, can you forward anything you find to the Seattle Field Office?” I call.
“No sweat, boss,” one of them replies.
Pushing Graham ahead of me, I hear him sniff. “Please,” he says. “Can you at least do me the kindness of taking me out a side door?”
“Oh, is that sort of like the kindness you were going to do for me, only if I dirtied up Kathryn Hedlund for you?” I ask.
“Come on, that was politics.”
“And so is this.”
We take him down to the first floor and march him toward the front doors. I can feel him trying to resist. Trying to push back against us so we can’t force him outside.
“Be a man, Tiny Tim,” Astra crows. “You created this mess for yourself. Now, you should suck it up and handle the consequences. You got yourself into this. Nobody else. So, it’s time to be a big boy—sorry, poor choice of words, but you know what I mean. Oh, and don’t forget to give them your good side, short stack.”
I’m biting my lip to keep myself from laughing, but Astra is not making his easy. Not at all. We push through the doors and step out into the morning sun and into the vast sea of reporters, all of them waiting for their glimpse of Senator Graham’s fall from grace. The crowd immediately begins shouting questions at him, yelling over one another as if they think Graham will answer. The click of the cameras is almost deafening.
“You’re going to pay for this, Wilder. I am going to get you,” Graham growls in my ear.
“Will this be before or after you spend twenty years in prison?” I ask.
“I’m going to talk to Hedlund. I’ll have her start a professional inquiry into you. Allege abuse of power,” he rants. “She’ll make you pay for what you’re doing.”
“Think so, huh?”
“I know so.”
We make our way down the long corridor that had been set up between the sea of reporters and to the black SUV waiting at the curb. We push him into the back seat, and I strap him in. It takes Astra a minute to climb in with her arm in a sling, but she manages. I climb in behind the wheel and start the engine, then pull away from the curb and drive off.
“So, speaking of Hedlund,” I say. “Astra, you want to do the honors?”
“Gladly”, she replies, twisting around in her seat to show him the screen of her tablet again. He flinches as if she’s beaten him with it, which makes me laugh. She hits play and on the screen, the reporter is talking about the “shocking new developments” in the botched raid on a peaceful compound.
“… again, if you’re just joining us, we’re standing outside Representative Kathryn Hedlund’s office waiting for her to step out and address the crowd, which is growing by the hour. We’ve all heard the testimony before the Senate Oversight Committee that the raid was planned and carried out by a joint FBI-ATF task force. Hedlund herself has denied having any role in the raid whatsoever. Yet, in this shocking new video taken from inside the FBI’s situation room, we can clearly see that it is Hedlund who is all but directing the raid and ordering SWAT teams to fire. Joining us next is a man who…”
“Show him the next one, Astra. Show him, I can’t wait to see his face,” I say with a laugh.
“On it,” she grins.
“I don’t want to see anymore,” he groans.
“That’s fine, don’t watch,” I say. “Just listen”
“Tonight, on Channel Four news at ten, we have obtained shocking new video that shows US Senator Daniel Graham bribing Seattle Police Deputy Chief Ricardo Torres. In the video, we can hear Graham asking him to, quote, ‘sideline Agent Wilder permanently.’ It’s a chilling message to send, and we can only assume that he is referring to the FBI’s Supervisory Special Agent Blake Wilder of the Seattle Field Office, who gained fame as one of the Bureau’s top profilers. There is still much we don’t know, but we are working to bring you the facts of the case. This, of course, has shaken up the SPD, who has announced that Detective TJ Lee will serve as interim Deputy Chief. Lee has vowed to look into this matter and bring much-needed reform to the SPD—”
Astra turns off her tablet and sits back in her seat, eyes facing front looking like the cat that ate the canary. I glance in the rearview mirror and can see the horror dawning on his face. He knows just how screwed he is now, and I can all but hear Graham screaming to himself inside. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Thirty-Two
Tranquil Hills Cemetery; Cockeysville, MD
The sky overhead is a dull, beaten gray, but the intermittent showers have left the world around us clean and fresh. A cool wind blows, stirring the leaves that litter the g
round as Kit and I walk up the hill toward the towering oak tree. We get to the top and look around. From here, we have a view of Cockeysville, our former home. The place we grew up. Or at least, the place we were starting to grow up anyway. The place where our lives were forever altered.
The town of Cockeysville is spread out before us. The leaves on the trees are vibrant shades of yellow, orange, and even red. After eighteen years away, it doesn’t look like much has changed down there, even if the entire world around it has. The town is quaint, but it’s gorgeous and I’m seeing it in a way I never did as a child.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to have an appreciation for the natural beauty in the world. I cling to it tightly, unwilling to let it go. It’s probably because I see so much of the uglier side of the world and its people on a daily basis. In fact, it’s that ugly side of the world that’s brought us here today.
It’s been a month since we put former Senator Daniel Graham, Willem Mangold, and all the members of the Thirteen we were able to round up in prison. Their trials won’t be calendared for some time, but when they are, I’m sure I’ll be called to testify, which will plunge me back into my first exposure to the ugliest side of the world. But I’ll do my duty eagerly. Actually, I’m more than eager to help put these monsters away for the rest of their lives. To dispense justice on behalf of our mother and our father.
And to dispense justice for Kit too, who had her life stolen from her every bit as much as our parents. Yes, she may be alive, but those parts of her I knew as a child are long gone. That innocence was killed the same day our parents were. The woman she’s become is remarkable in so many ways, but she’ll never be that little girl who was my kid sister again. I know that now. Where she once had unbridled joy and a zest for life, now she has a bottomless well of darkness inside of her. She finds joy in certain things, but she’ll never truly be joyful again. And that zest for life is gone entirely. Now, she moves from day to day, just trying to survive. She spends her days looking over her shoulder and trying to decide if that’s the day she should run.
“You doing all right?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
“Well, this is it,” I say. “This is their final resting place. We did it, Kit. We made it here.”
She looks up at me and I see her eyes shimmering with tears. She purses her lips and tries to bite them back, not wanting to let them fall. Kit usually has such amazing control over her emotions, but this time, that control has slipped, and the tears are spilling down her pale cheeks. I pull her into a tight embrace and just hold her, letting her cry for a little while. Eventually, she pulls back and gives me a sad smile.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
Kit turns and looks at the ground. She kneels down and wipes the leaves off the two black veined marble plaques I’d had set into the ground to mark the final resting place of our parents. She runs the tips of her fingers over their names, tracing the letters and the dates of their birth and death. She lays the flowers she brought between their plaques and just looks at them, letting the tears fall and making no effort to stop them.
“The plaques are beautiful, Blake.”
“I thought it seemed like something they would like.”
She nods. “I think you’re right.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze.
“Do you believe in Heaven?” she asks.
We weren’t a super religious family growing up, but our parents did always enjoy attending mass now and then. They thought the traditional services were beautiful and usually found something in the sermons that applied to them. My relationship with religion crashed and burned the day our parents died. I couldn’t understand that if there really was a God up there, why he would allow what happened to my family to happen. How could God let my parents be murdered and my sister abducted? It made me see God in a whole new and unfavorable way. I haven’t set foot inside a church since then. Well, not counting that bar in Seattle Paxton likes to frequent—but it’s not technically a church anymore.
“Do you? Believe in Heaven?” she presses.
“I guess. Sure,” I shrug.
“So, you think you’ll see our folks again after—well—after you die?”
“I suppose so. Where are you going with this?”
“I was hoping that if you do—if you see them again—that you could pass on a message to them for me?”
I laugh softly. “Why don’t you pass on your own message?”
She turns and looks at me, her eyes filled with sadness and torment.
“Because I’m not getting into Heaven. There’s no way I deserve to go to my eternal reward with the things I’ve done and the life I’ve lived.
“Kit, that’s silly.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. It is. “You’re a good person, Kit. You’ve got a good heart.”
“You don’t know half the things I’ve done, Blake. I mean, you know I killed people,” she says. “But I’ve done so much worse than that.”
It’s hard for me to imagine doing something worse than killing somebody. But I’m going to take her word for it. But even then, I still don’t think that’s a one-way ticket to damnation. I squat down beside Kit and look into her eyes, holding her gaze firmly.
“That’s what grace and salvation are for, Kit,” I tell her, trying to remind her of her Catholic roots. “Forgive yourself and ask for forgiveness. Do that and mean it, and you’ll see our parents again.”
“Think so?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think so.”
I kneel down beside her and help clean the rest of the leaves off their plaques. We sit there in silence for a while, each of us consumed by our own thoughts. But just being next to her brings me tremendous comfort. And I hope I do the same for her. Eventually, our silence melts away and we begin trading stories from our childhoods. It isn’t long before we’re laughing and reminiscing. All the goofy things Mom and Dad got themselves into. The time we went to a waterpark and Kit was too afraid to go on the big slide, so Mom held her in her lap and went down with her. The time I scraped my knee at school and Kit thought someone was bullying me, so she challenged a boy twice her size to a fight. The times Dad would come home and sweep us both up on his shoulders, even if both of us were too old for it. We didn’t mind.
My hope is that in time, Kit will learn to let go of the past. To let go of the pain. I know she’s never going to be little nine-year-old Kit again. She’s lost that optimism and energy for life. But I hope and pray that she can find a sense of joy that’s lasting, not just in small moments here and there. I hope that she’ll someday be able to remember all the good things about growing up here. That she won’t always associate our parents and our life before with pain and death. I hope she’ll one day be able to remember the warmth and love.
My phone buzzes and I look down at the text message I received.
“Annie wants us to come for dinner when we get back,” I say.
“She always wants us to come for dinner.”
“Right?” I bark out a laugh.
She turns to me. “Thanks for this. Thank you for doing this with me.”
I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “Of course. Anytime.”
Thirty-Three
Wilder Residence, The Emerald Pines Luxury Apartments; Downtown Seattle
“Hey Kit? You home?” I call out as I drop my keys into the dish on the table and set my bag down beside it. “I was thinking we could do Thai tonight. What do you think?”
I’m greeted by silence. After locking the door and setting the alarm behind me, I step into the living room and look around. She’s not curled up on the couch with her book and she’s not in the kitchen.
“Kit,” I call out again.
Thinking she’s perhaps taking a nap, I walk down the hall to her room and knock softly on the door. When I get no answer, I open it and step inside. She’s not asleep either.
&nbs
p; “Huh,” I say to myself.
I wonder if she’s out picking up food or maybe just out for a walk. I’m just about to leave the room when a strange feeling washes over me. And as I stand in the middle of her room though, I get the feeling that something isn’t right. I can’t place what it is right off the bat, but as I stand here, understanding slowly washes over me. The room feels empty not just because she’s not in it, but because she’s left. As in, left and isn’t coming back. The room feels vacant.
Feeling the icy grip of panic squeezing my heart, I quickly rifle through the drawers in the dresser and the desk, only to find them all empty. I run to the closet—it too, is empty. So are her suitcases. The realization that Kit’s gone—again—hits me like a sledgehammer. My legs are turning to jelly, so I sit on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands, letting the tears flow freely.
I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why she’d leave. Ever since we took down the Thirteen, things have been going amazingly well. We’ve really reconnected and started to build the family neither of us has had for most of our lives. Things couldn’t have been better. I don’t understand why she’d just pick up and leave like this without a note, without a heads up, without—anything. It makes no sense.
I know it’s irrational, but part of me is terrified she’s been taken again. Only this time, they made it look like she left on her own. As we worked the Thirteen case, I had assumed all along it was Mangold who’d orchestrated my parents’ death and Kit’s abduction. Finding out that it wasn’t him at all was a heavy blow. My assumptions were wrong. It seemed to be a common theme throughout that case.
But Kit told me the man who ordered our parents killed and her abducted was somebody else entirely. She didn’t give me a name—I’m not sure she even knows it—but he’s still out there somewhere. He’s still roaming free. And there’s part of me that’s afraid he’s taken her again as retribution for what we did in dismantling the Thirteen.
The sound of a phone ringing pulls me out of my head, and I leap up, sure it’s Kit calling to tell me she’s on her way home. I run down to the living room and snatch up my phone. It’s a video call from a number I don’t recognize. I’m just about to cancel it when something tells me to take it. My instincts are starting to recover and I’m beginning to trust myself again—though it’s still very much a work in progress—so I take the call.
