Beard Up(15)

"Your women?" I ask. "The wives that you marry and then kill?"

He smiled pleasantly.

I wanted to beat the shit out of his face.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Them," he grins. "But that's neither here nor there. Fast forward a year after the Morrisons' son dies, and I'm a little higher on the totem pole. I do my jobs, get pats on the back by the big guys, and then go home." He crosses his arm over his chest, not caring at all that Mina's directly behind him.

Within hearing distance if she only opened the door. Me, I felt exposed. I'd never been in her neighborhood like this during daylight hours. Never allowed myself to be seen so openly.

To be seen was to allow my parents that much more of a leg up, and for right now, they didn't yet know that their precious baby boy wasn't dead by their handler's hand.

Yet being the operative word.

"But a little shy of a year, their son dies by his guard's hand, and then his guard goes and shoots himself because he fears what his employer might do when they find out that their prized weapon has been killed for not following orders-even though his orders were to detain, but never kill, if necessary," he paused. "But you, you look so much like their son-their new son-that I did some more digging. I've gone over my surveillance, and that night wasn't the first night I'd seen you. I'd seen you fifty-two other times, on one single camera." 

My stomach clenched.

"And I have this nifty face recognition software that has this special ability to focus on the eyes … eyes that look so much like their son's that I want to shout it from the rooftops that their sweet baby boy isn't dead after all … and guess who that man is … it's you."

I shook my head. "You have no clue who I am, and I'm not their kid."

My body locked, and I stared with no expression at all betraying my thoughts.

He didn't say anything, so I kept going.

"You have no fucking clue who you're dealing with," I told him bluntly.

He shrugged, as if he didn't have a care in the world. "You let me have her, and I'll think about not telling them."

I ignored his words.

"Go home or I'll drop you like the piece of shit that you are right here in the middle of her yard."

He grinned.

But he got in his car and drove away.

I watched him go, and then looked across the road at Lynn who was standing there, watching the entire altercation from his front porch.

He gestured with his head for me to follow him and then disappeared inside of his house.

Giving one last glance at Mina's front door, which was still shut tight along with every curtain pulled, I walked across the road. Straight into a nightmare.





***


"Listen," my boss, the head of the FBI in our region, growled. "This is big. I realize that you want to keep her safe, but … "

"It's my kid and my wife," I said bluntly. "Would you allow your wife and kid to fall into the hands of a serial killer? A man who we both know is beyond fucked up in the head? He's been working with my parents. He fuckin' knew who I was, or thinks he knows, so he went to them because he's a spiteful little asshole and wanted his candy that I took away from him. This could be dangerous for them."

My boss, a fucking chameleon if I'd ever seen one, was tall, muscular, and built like a runner. That was the only thing I could ever tell about him at any one given time. Sometimes he appeared old to me, while to others he appeared to be the same age. It was like he changed from day-to-day, and I had a feeling that it had a lot to do with what he did for the FBI as well as his other hobbies, not that I knew what those were. He was one of the smartest men I knew, and I'd follow him into hell if he asked me to … which was what he was asking me to do.

"The only way I see this working out is if you decide to stop pussyfooting around, nab this guy, and get him to testify against your parents. That's the fastest way out of this. But, for that to happen, you need to let him hang around for a bit. Two birds, one stone. You let him hang, but watch his every move, and wait for him to mole himself deeper into the organization, let him think his threat worked, then bust his ass. He'll plead a deal, and we'll get the information on your parents … information that we desperately need." He paused. "We've been working this case for six years now, and although we are closer to nailing them, we're not close enough to shut the operation down any time soon. They're too careful. Too high profile to kill … just think about that."

And that was how I ended up being at a bar in the middle of Chinatown, thinking about what Lynn had said.



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