In the end, she supposed it didn’t matter. Regardless of what story they had gone with, the most important question of all would not have been answered.
Her sister had killed their father. And if it had come down to it, Chloe would have killed him as well, if it meant saving Danielle. So that raised the question: did they both possess that same darkness their father had?
And now that they had worked together to hide such a sin, would that darkness have more of a hold on them?
Chloe fell asleep to the thunderstorm, sprawled on her couch. When her alarm clock shrieked from the bedroom the following morning, she sat up with a pain in her back, the result of so awkwardly sleeping on the couch. She walked to the bedroom, stretching her back out, and slapped the alarm button to shut it up.
She looked around her bedroom and realized that she had spent the last five days in something of a stupor. She needed to clean up. She needed to do laundry. She needed to eat a decent meal rather than something straight out of the microwave.
She wondered if she could call in and take a sick day. She was sure Director Johnson would see through it, but given what she and her sister had just endured, she thought he might be okay with it. She took a quick hot shower to loosen her back, hoping it might help her to come around and get out of the funk she’d been in. It helped a bit, though when she dried off and got dressed, she still liked the idea of taking a day or two off.
She was about to grab her phone to place the call, but it rang before she could pick it up. When she saw that it was coming from FBI headquarters, she cringed. So much for a day off, I guess…
She answered the call and listened to Johnson’s secretary give a quick Good morning, before transferring her through to Johnson’s office line.
“Agent Fine, did I catch you before you left for work?” Johnson asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Good. I need you in my office as soon as possible. There’s a briefing we need to go over if you’re up to it.”
Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she was up to it or not. What she did know was that if she did nothing but sit around her apartment for another few days second-guessing everything she and Danielle had done and fabricated, she might just start to go a little crazy. She toyed with the idea of passing on the debrief and feigning sick again but only for a moment. There was a potential new case out there. Of course she was going to take it.
“Sounds good,” she said, still not having decided if this was true or not. “See you in half an hour.”
She rushed through getting dressed and then wolfed down a quick breakfast of cereal and toast before leaving. Even doing that was a welcome change. Routine was a great way to get back into the swing of things. Even though she had only been feeling dreary for the last five days, it was five days that had set her back mentally and emotionally. Yes, she had reported in to work but once she got there, she’d felt like nothing more than a mindless drone, her mind on about a million other things.
But now that she was reporting in to work to get the details on a potential case, it felt different. For the first time since leaving Texas, she felt like she might be able to start moving toward putting it all behind her.
When she arrived at work, she wasted no time. She headed straight for Johnson’s office, wondering what sort of case he’d have her on. For some reason, she had somehow gotten something of a reputation as the agent who cracked the seedy cases in suburbia, the ones involving rich and spoiled adults who spent far too much of their lives hiding secrets.
Seems like I’d fit right in some of those neighborhoods, she thought. Because as much as I want to deny it, I now have secrets that I’m never going to outrun.
When she got to Johnson’s office, she started for the seat she usually occupied on the front end of his desk. But then she saw that he wasn’t at his desk. Instead, he was sitting at the small conference room table at the back of his office. And he wasn’t alone. There was one other man and a woman sitting with him. She had seen the man before; his name was Beau Craddock and he was somewhere quite high up on the bureau’s ladder—above Director Johnson for sure. She had never seen the woman before, but if she was in the company of Craddock, Chloe assumed she was also from further up the food chain.
“Agent Fine,” Johnson said. “Please have a seat.”
“Okay…”
There was only one other seat at the table, right at the very end. She took it, giving polite little nods to those in attendance.
“Agent Fine, let me introduce you to Deputy Director Craddock and Special Council to the Director, Sarah Kirsch.”
Craddock and Kirsch said nothing. Kirsch did manage a rather fake-looking smile, though.
“We’d like to hear the timeline of events as they occurred when you were out in Texas to find your sister,” Craddock said.
A cold knot of dread wound its way through Chloe’s guts. She looked directly at Johnson, confused. “Sir, I’ve gone through this two different times—once with you and once with the police. Is this really necessary?”
“Honestly, probably not,” Kirsch said before Johnson could answer. “But as it stands, you showed up on the scene where a man who is currently wanted for kidnapping and abuse had his victim. So yes, your testimony is worth hearing.”
Johnson gave her a shrug and a little what-are-you-gonna-do look. “Sorry, Fine, but the fact that you happen to be closely related to the abductee and the abductor doesn’t let you slide. It has obviously attracted the attention of higher offices. But, as I told them, everything checks out. There’s nothing shady going on here. They’d just like to hear it themselves.”
Nothing shady, my ass, Chloe thought. If there was nothing shady, you would have told me this was happening when you called this morning. Instead, you blindsided me with it. You’re trying to trip me up, you bastard.
But what could she do?
She sat back in the chair, feeling like she had just willingly placed her foot into a bear trap.
CHAPTER TWO
Craddock started the questioning. When he did, he wore a very small smile. She was sure it was there to try to make her feel more at ease, but it made it look like he was enjoying the moment of putting her through this torture.
“Agent Fine, how did you happen to know where your sister was?”
The truth, of course, was that Danielle had called her from a pay phone. But the truth would damn them both. She pulled up the story they had come up with as they had buried their father and recited from it.
“Honestly, it was almost a lucky guess. When I knew something was going on, I started trying to think of places my father might take her. Danielle once lived in Millseed—during a time in her life when she was verbally confrontational with our father. She used to tell me that the one time she spoke with him—during a visit to see him in prison—he told her she belonged in a place like Millseed. A sorry excuse for a town, drying up and dying. He said it would be a terrible place to die but maybe that’s what she deserved.”
“Was your father always so dramatic and good with foreshadowing?” Kirsch asked.
“Forgive me if I don’t want to discuss my father’s personality with you,” Chloe said. “Is this about a profile on my father or questioning me once again about all that happened?”
Craddock and Kirsch exchanged a perturbed glance before carrying on. Johnson stared her down, his expression conveying a simple message: Watch your tone.
“Can you tell us exactly what happened when you arrived?” Kirsch asked.
“The place was easy to find,” Chloe said. “Danielle