by Blake Pierce
Adele shook her head, confused. She turned back toward the curb. “Mother?” she said, her voice shaky. She was now in the park at night.
“Cara,” voices whispered around her from the looming, dark trees.
She stared. Twenty-two years old. It had all ended at twenty-two.
Her mother lay on the side of the bike trail, in the grass, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding…
Always bleeding.
Her dead eyes peered up at her daughter. Adele was no longer twenty-two. Now she was twenty-three, joining the DGSI, working her first case—the death of her mother. Then she was twenty-six, working for the FBI. Then thirty-two.
Tick-tock. Bleeding.
Elise Romei was missing three fingers on each hand; her eyes had been pierced. Cuts laced up and down her cheeks in curious, beautiful patterns as if gouged into felt, glistening red.
Tick-tock. Adele screamed as the blood pooled around her mother, filling the bike trail, flooding the grass and the dirt, threatening to consume her, to overwhelm her…
Adele jerked awake, gasping, her teeth clenched around the edge of her blanket, biting hard to stop the scream bubbling in her throat.
She sat there in her bed, in her and Angus’s small apartment, staring across the darkened room, breathing rapidly. It was all right; it was over. She was fine.
She reached out, groping for the comforting warmth of Angus, but her fingertips brushed only cool sheets. Then she remembered the previous night.
Adele clenched her teeth, closing her eyes for a moment. The air felt chilly all of a sudden. She reached up and brushed back her hair. Every bone in her wanted to lie back down, to return to the warmth and safety of her covers. Sleep frightened her sometimes, but her bed was always a welcome shelter.
She forced her eyes open, clenching one fist and bunching it around her pajamas beneath the covers.
Safety and warmth bred weakness. The Sergeant had often said, when she was growing up, that the difference between sluggards and winners was their first decision in the morning. Those who put their heads back to the pillow would never amount to much in life.
And while she was no longer a six-year-old little girl, Adele still swung her legs over the side of the bed, kicking off her covers. slapping her feet against the vinyl floor. With practiced and deft motions she made her bed, arranging her sheets and tucking the corners of the blankets beneath the mattress.
She moved across the room toward where the turtle sat in her glass display case. She and Angus had argued about the gender of the creature—they still weren’t sure. Angus thought of him as a boy, yet to Adele, the turtle was clearly a girl. The thought of Angus sent a jolt of discomfort through her, and she swallowed, pushing back the surge of emotion.
Using the provided spoon, she measured the turtle’s food into its aquarium, watching the creature meander slowly around the habitat of small stones and faux leaves. Gregory had woken up before her—how embarrassing.
She glanced at the red numbers on the digital clock by her bedside. 4:25 a.m. Perfect. She’d woken before the alarm had gone off. The start to any good routine required an attuned body.
Adele quickly dressed into her jogging clothes and left her apartment. There was no sense in waking early unless she put her time to good use, so 4:30 to 6:00 every morning was the slot for her morning run. Some people listened to music while they exercised, but Adele found that it distracted her. Effort and discomfort required attention.
When she returned from her jog, Adele went directly to the cupboard over the stove, dragging out a box of Chocapic. She wiped sweat from her forehead and focused on her breathing as she poured herself a bowl of the chocolate cereal. She ordered it from France—a small luxury, but a childhood favorite. They didn’t make cereal the same way in the US.
Adele grabbed her cereal and a spoon, then hurried to the shower. Small habits compounded through time. Minutes wasted in the morning led to minutes wasted in the day. Angus had often teased her about eating cereal in the shower, especially that time when she’d accidentally swallowed soap, but it was another habit of hers she refused to give up. The secret to success lay in routine.
It was as she stepped out of the shower, toweling her hair with one hand and carrying an empty bowl in the other, that Adele heard her phone chirp from the other room.
She glanced at the digital clock beneath the steamed mirror, frowning. She kept a clock in every room. 6:12 a.m.
Strange. Who would be calling her this early?
Adele quickly dried off and got dressed, pulling her shirt on as she hurried out the bathroom door and stumbled into the kitchen.
“Hello?” she said, lifting the phone to her ear.
“Agent Sharp?” said the voice on the other end.
“Yes?”
“It’s Sam. We need you to come in.”
Adele frowned, lowering her faded, plastic Mickey Mouse bowl into the sink. “As in now?”
“As in an hour ago. You better hurry.”
“You sure? I was told I had three days.”
There was a sigh on the other end and the sound of voices in the background.
“Vacation is going to have to wait, Sharp.”
“Can I ask why?”
“The Benjamin Killer dropped another body last night. How soon can you—”
“I’m on my way.”
Adele didn’t even clean her bowl—normally a sacrilege in her house—before rushing to don her work clothes, shoes, and jacket and racing out the door.
Twenty-six. Twenty-five. Twenty-four.
CHAPTER FOUR
Speed limits often felt like suggestions when new leads developed in a case. Still, Adele did her best not to rankle San Francisco’s finest—especially not this early in the day. The closer she got to the heart of the city, the more the traffic slowed.
She tapped her fingers against the wheel in frustration, berating the drivers around her silently in her head. As she glared out of the tinted window of her Ford sedan, Adele couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Angus was right. Maybe she was married to the job.
A three-day vacation—that’s what they’d promised her. Yet, here she was, rushing into work the moment they snapped their fingers and whistled. Just like a good little girl.
Adele clenched her teeth, pushing the thought from her mind. It wouldn’t do to dwell on such things. Especially not with what was at stake.
Who had he killed? Would they be able to find new evidence?
“I’m coming for you, you bastard,” she murmured. “I’ll get you this time.” Adele had spent years trying to shed the accent developed over a life lived overseas. But when she got upset or angry, traces of her heritage would peek through, making themselves known in the lilt of her words. “Damn it,” she muttered, slowing her speech, flattening the vowels. “Damn it,” she repeated, more precise, more careful. No emotion. No accent. “Damn it,” a final time. Hours like this, in front of a mirror, had all but chased the reminders of her past from her speech.
She nodded in satisfaction, then glanced over and realized the woman in the lane next to her had her window down and was staring at Adele, her plucked eyebrows high on her fat-injected forehead.
Sheepishly, Adele rolled up her own window. She flashed a smile and a wave, then stared resolutely ahead for the rest of the slow, snail’s pace of a drive. She made one more stop just before reaching the office—pulling through a Starbucks drive-through and grabbing a large black, no sugar.
She reached the private lot for the San Francisco field office a half hour later. The two layers of security hadn’t caused trouble once she flashed her ID. She adjusted her jacket and doubled-checked the buttons as she hurried into the east branch through the elevator from the car park.
Another row of metal detectors and men in suits with bored expressions, who smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes, eventually gave way to a long, beige hallway.
“Agent Sharp,” said one of the older men, tipping an imaginary cap in her dire
ction from where he squatted on a three-legged stool between the metal detectors.
“Hey, Doug,” she greeted him with a wave. She smiled at the man, admiring the neat press of his collar and the shine of his shoes. “Looking sharp as always.”
He chuckled, a low, rasping sound. Doug had been a field worker about twenty years ago, but had taken some shrapnel on his last assignment which had confined him to the office. His inability to make rank, however, had nothing to do with shrapnel and everything to do with a complete disdain for office politics. Some in the office thought the elevators needed a “Beware of Doug!” sign. He rarely played nice with others, yet had taken a fondness to Adele that had nothing to do with her gender or her looks. She extended the black, sugarless coffee on top of the X-ray machine, leaving the steaming liquid next to the security officer’s scarred hand—two fingers were missing, also courtesy of the car bomb that had claimed his career.
“Just how I like it?”
“Thick and bitter with a little bit of caffeine,” Adele said, stepping through the security checkpoint and retrieving her briefcase on the other side.
“Just like you, Doug,” said one of the other men with a snorting laugh.
“Shut your mouth, slick,” retorted the guard. His expression soured, but he turned so the other man couldn’t see and winked at Adele, a twinkle in his gaze.
She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m enabling you. Caffeine is a killer—mark my words. Give it fifteen years and the FDA is bound to—”
“Yada, yada,” Doug said, and then he tipped the coffee, downing half the cup in two gulps. “Feel free to enable me all you want. Anyway, don’t let us old fogeys keep you, sport. You got the shimmer.”
She turned to leave with a farewell wave, but then paused, heel half raised. “The shimmer?”
“In the eyes. Something’s brewing, right? No—don’t tell me. Might bump my head.”
“Not enough clearance. I get you. But you’re right. Something is up. I’ll see you fellas around—Doug, Steve.” She nodded to both men in turn and then hastened up the beige hallway, her shoes tapping against the marble floor and squeaking every few steps.
She took a turn past an old-fashioned water cooler and some potted plants, then hurried along a row of tight cubicles. The familiar sound of polite murmuring as folks went about their business, answering calls, printing, faxing, clicking away at their keyboards—all of it filled her with a nauseating sense of dread. There were those in the Bureau who wanted her behind a desk. The thought alone terrified her more than any bullet or case.
She reached an opaque glass door set behind a large, rectangular pillar, which nearly completely obscured the door from view. She swallowed, her hand reaching for the handle. For a moment, she paused, listening, gathering her thoughts. Who was this latest victim? Why had he taken a month-long break from his killing? She’d done good work, but he’d slipped through her fingers before. The bosses had to realize that, right?
From the room, she could hear a quiet murmur of voices—one of them soft, even-toned, the other fuzzy and diluted through the glass.
She turned the handle, tapped a courtesy knock with the hand carrying her briefcase, and then pushed into the room.
Three figures waited for her. One sat by the window, a balding man with a long nose, down which he peered into the street below. Another man, taller than average with a strong jaw and a pen behind one ear, sat by a desk, eyeing a large fifty-two-inch TV screen over a conference table.
The other woman in the room was also sitting, but on the edge of the table, her suit pants stained just over the pocket. All three of them, including the face on the TV, reacted to Adele’s entrance.
“Sharp,” said the tall man with a nod. “Glad you could make it.”
“Sam,” she said, returning the gesture of greeting. “What did I miss? And who’s the pixels?”
“Sharp,” said the woman seated at the table, turning slightly so she faced the door. Lee Grant was one of Adele’s few friends in the department, and though she kept her tone professional, there was a weight of concern behind her glance. “How was your flight?”
Adele shrugged. “Long, boring. Sleazy lawyer in business.”
Grant rolled her eyes. “The usual then?”
Adele chuckled softly. “About the sum of it.”
“Well,” said Agent Lee, “we were waiting for you to get started. The pixels, as you put it, belong to DGSI exec Thierry Foucault. I believe you two have a history.”
Adele’s eyebrows invaded the personal space of her hairline, and she circled the table, setting her briefcase down and turning for a better look at the screen. A hawk-faced man with thick eyebrows and even thicker cheekbones glared out from the screen, his eyes flicking around the room. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” she said, slowly, racking her brain for any memory of the man’s face.
“The young lady—this is Sharp?” said the face on the screen, still giving the appearance of scowling, though Adele was starting to suspect this had more to do with the arrangement of his features than of his current mood.
Adele tilted her head in a nod.
“I was still at the embassy when you worked for DGSI.” The speakers crackled for a moment, and Adele leaned in, straining to hear. The sound cleared a moment later as Foucault continued. “Four years? Five? A pity you left. France can always use talent like yours.”
Adele had no doubt her file sat in front of the executive, but she kept her smile polite. “It was four. I learned a lot in my position in Paris. I doubt the FBI would have recruited me without the experience.”
“This is the way of it, no?” said Foucault, smirking through the screen. “France creates the things most valued by America, hmm. It is no matter… I—I did wonder,” he said, slowly, his eyes flicking down for a moment, confirming Adele’s suspicion about the file. “Why was it you left, eh? Not the weather, I hope.”
Lee glanced toward Adele, then quickly interjected, “Perhaps now isn’t the best time to discuss it,” she said. “We ought to focus on the task at hand.”
But the man on the screen was already wagging his finger. “No, no. It is important DGSI knows who it is we work with. France is no jilted lover—it is important we know who we take back, hmm?”
Adele tried to conceal her frown. What did he mean take back? Agent Lee tried to interject again, but Adele cut her boss off.
“It’s really quite simple,” said Adele, hiding her frown behind pressed lips and an impassive stare. “I tracked a killer in France, and he didn’t turn out to be who I thought he was. I felt like it was time for a change.” Bleeding. Bleeding. Always bleeding. Adele shivered as her dream flashed through her mind, but she stowed the thought with a swallow and a proud tilt of her chin. She shrugged toward the screen, feeling her suit jacket slide across her shoulders.
Of course, she wasn’t mentioning the months of PTSD after tracking the killer and discovering he wasn’t the culprit behind her mother’s torturous murder. Nor did she feel it appropriate to mention the American forensic psychologist whom she’d traveled to the States with, hoping to set down roots. Chances were, Foucault had all of it in his little file, but as far as she was concerned, it was nobody’s business but hers.
“Does that settle it then?” said Agent Lee, glaring at the screen. She pushed off of the conference table and strode past the man with the hooked nose still standing quietly by the window.
“There is nothing to be settled,” said the screen.
“Not yet, no,” Grant replied, still frowning. “But it might be in everyone’s best interests to let the bygones pass and discuss the events of last night.”
Adele felt a flash of gratitude for her superior. Lee Grant wasn’t just named after two generals on opposing sides in the American Civil War, but she commanded an authority that any agent would willingly follow into battle. Lee’s eyes often narrowed in such a way that they became little more than stormy slits in her naturally tan comple
xion. The child of an American and a Cuban immigrant, Lee was one of the few people in the office who understood Adele’s roots, especially given the less-than-six-year age gap between them.
“Well,” said Foucault, his voice echoing slightly through the TV speakers. “Do we wait for more, or may we begin?”
Grant glanced at the fellow by the window, who had yet to breach his silence. “I don’t see any point in prolonging any further.”
“Very sorry, very sorry, Executive Foucault,” said the man with the hooked nose at last. He turned away from the glass and leaned his hands against the conference table, staring at the large screen. “Special Agent Sharp has been working this case stateside as Agent Lee mentioned before—we thought it best she was here.”
Adele didn’t recognize this man, but he had the suit and the attitude of a diplomat, or some sort of low-level supervisor who only came out of the woodwork when agencies needed to play nice.
“As for formal introductions: this is SAC Lee Grant,” said the suit, indicating Adele’s boss. “She’s overseeing the investigation. You obviously know Agent Sharp. And Sam Green works for tech.” The tall man with the pen tucked behind his ear who was seated behind everyone gave a polite little wave, but remained silent.
Foucault nodded politely at each in turn. Then he said, “A pity we could not meet in better circumstances. I have more information since last we spoke. The missing girl is named Marion Lucas. Twenty-four years of age. We are still waiting on some tests, but it is with relative certainty that I can inform you the body we found yesterday matches the pictures provided by Marion’s mother.”
“You mentioned on the call something about shallow cuts,” said Agent Lee, trailing off and allowing the silence to fill the space between her and the TV.
For the first time, Foucault’s lips formed a thin, grim line. “I’ll have someone in the office send the report along.” He gave the smallest shake of his head, causing a strand of slicked hair to fall over his eyes, which he brushed back with one hand, sighing with the motion. “I’ve got to warn you. It isn’t pretty.”
