Not Our Daughter

One

Thirteen years and three months later

Special Agent Mark Burns was used to people obeying his orders. He’d been with the FBI for more than twenty years, had worked his way up into a prime DC position, and was well respected by nearly everyone. But his teenage daughter, Izzy, was not one of his subordinate agents. She seemed to revel in scoffing at his requests. Burns gave her a lot of grace and didn’t push back too much right now. The divorce had been brutal on his fifteen-year-old. Izzy already didn’t want to spend her designated days with him. He was careful to not shove her even further away. She’d made it very clear she blamed him for ruining her family . He lived at the office. He was never around enough. He abandoned Mom all the time for work. Of course her parents had grown apart. It was all his fault.

Burns still had not told her it was her mother who’d had the affair. He knew it would only further destroy her. And clearly his ex-wife, Nicole, had no intentions of sacrificing herself in this situation by telling their daughter the truth. Even after exposing his wife’s cheating, Burns still hadn’t wanted the divorce. It was just not the way he was raised. His parents had been married for fifty-four years and counting. They didn’t have a perfect marriage, but they’d stuck it out through thick and thin. Burns wanted to put in the counseling work and somehow make it right between them again. But Nicole clearly just wanted out. He figured she wanted to get caught. It had not been a difficult case for him to crack.

“I thought this morning was fun,” he said, sitting behind the wheel of his Ford Explorer as he drove Izzy back to her mom’s. “Did you?”

Izzy looked over at him with a serious scowl. “The zoo, Dad? Really? That’s your idea of fun? Do you think I’m still ten years old?”

“Okay, maybe it was lame. Sorry. But the ice cream was good, right?”

She just rolled her eyes and stared off—a move she’d perfected since the divorce. But Izzy was right. He was definitely out of touch. He hadn’t initiated much one-on-one time with her in the years before the marriage blew up, so he was still learning what she thought was fun at fifteen. So far, it seemed to be sitting undisturbed in the second bedroom of the barren condo he’d recently rented and spending hours scrolling through social media until her time with him was up. But he wasn’t going to stop trying.

“I keep asking you what you want to do, Izzy,” he said, turning down a street into his old neighborhood, where Nicole still lived in their house. “But you never tell me anything .”

“That’s because I don’t want to do anything with you,” she muttered, staring out her window. “Can’t you understand that?”

Burns sighed, pulling up to the curb outside a standard two-story redbrick that looked like most of the other houses in this middle-class, suburban neighborhood. They’d moved out of their downtown apartment and into the house when their daughter was only two years old. Burns had wanted Izzy to have a backyard. He’d expected to be there forever. His parents still lived in the same home where he’d grown up, back in Louisiana. He and Nicole had put in a lot of sweat in the early years to make their new place feel like a home. He missed the warmth and comfort of the house. His condo had white walls with nothing on them yet. He barely had any furniture. Probably why Izzy didn’t want to spend much time there. But he was still too numb about his marriage imploding to set up a new home.

“Listen, I’ll try to think of something better next time,” Burns said, putting the car in park. “Have a great rest of your weekend.”

Izzy grabbed her duffel bag from the floor, got out, and walked up the front sidewalk to the house without even saying goodbye. Burns slumped in his seat, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He kept telling himself things would eventually get better, to just give it more time, but he was starting to doubt it. The distance between him and his daughter was killing him inside. Whether Izzy believed it or not, she really was his whole world.

His phone buzzed. He grabbed it from the cup holder.

Agent Davis. His right-hand man.

“It’s my day off,” Burns answered. “Hell, it’s your day off, too, Davis.”

“I know. Sorry, boss. But I thought you’d want me to call about this.”

“What’s up?”

“Not sure yet. Could be nothing. Could be something. But we just got a ping on a financial account we’ve been monitoring that’s been dormant for over thirteen years.”

“What case?”

“Greg and Amy Olsen.”

Burns perked up. “You’re kidding me?”

“You remember that one?”

“Vividly. Are you at the office?”

“Of course. I can get more done on Saturdays around here.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Davis was waiting for him outside his office when he arrived. Because it was Saturday, his thirty-year-old lead agent was dressed casually in a well-pressed brown polo, designer blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. He looked like he could be in a clothing ad for Abercrombie & Fitch. Davis had been an all-American lacrosse player at Maryland back in college. Tall, with lean muscles, he still looked like he could dominate on the field. Burns was the antithesis of his right-hand man and felt admittedly insecure standing next to him when attractive women were around. He was twenty years older, five inches shorter, and owned a regular dad bod, and his thinning hair was quickly graying on the sides. He hadn’t always been this soft. He’d once played baseball at Louisiana Tech. He knew he’d have to get in better shape if he ever wanted to get back into the dating scene. Davis kept urging him to download one of those stupid dating apps. Apparently that’s what everyone was doing these days. It was the new normal. But just the thought of it made him want to vomit.

“Nice shorts,” Davis said.

“Shut up,” he replied. He’d worn a pair of Hawaiian swim trunks and a New Orleans Saints T-shirt to the zoo that morning because there was a ride where they might get wet. But Izzy had shown no interest in going on it.

Burns opened the door and led them inside. The office wasn’t much. L-shaped desk, two guest chairs, window view of an adjacent steel and glass structure. The Washington Monument was hidden somewhere on the other side of the building.

Davis handed him a report. “JM Bank, Cayman Islands. Account opened thirteen years, two months, and twenty-seven days ago by someone named Ethan Jones. Deposited one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Hasn’t been touched until this morning.”

Burns remembered tagging the account as suspicious because it was opened from the same bank Greg Olsen had been using on the day he’d disappeared—even though he’d never been able to officially tie the two names together. He’d forgotten all about it.

“How much was withdrawn?” Burns asked.

“Every penny, boss. With interest, it was around two hundred and twenty-three thousand.”

Burns sat in his leather office chair and started scanning the report. Over $220,000 transferred out after just sitting there for thirteen years. Why?

There was a name listed for who had accessed the account. Cole Shipley. Bank of the West. Fraser, Colorado.

“What do we know about Cole Shipley?” Burns asked.

“Not much, really. We’ve started looking, but there’s not too much out there. He appears to be a teacher at a tiny private school in Tabernash, Colorado. There’s a listing with that name in the school directory. But we’ve found nothing on social media.”

“Any photos?”

“Just one, in the school directory. I attached it to the back of the report.”

Burns flipped to the end and stared at a glossy profile printout of a man who looked to be in his forties with wavy, shoulder-length hair, glasses, and a well-trimmed brown beard. He took in the face for a moment, searching for any resemblance to someone he’d exhaustively hunted more than a decade ago. Greg Olsen had short hair, was clean shaven, didn’t wear glasses, and was slightly pudgy. They looked completely different—except for maybe the eyes. He couldn’t be sure. It had been so long.

“Any mention online of family or other known associations, clubs, activities?”

“No, boss. It’s weird. But then this is small-town America. Tabernash only has, like, six hundred people in it. So my guess is there’s probably not a lot of folks around there who post too much on the internet.”

“Or maybe he’s someone who’s covered his tracks for more than a decade.”

“Maybe. This was your personal case?”

Burns nodded. “Back when I worked in Austin, a long time ago.”

“Yeah, I read the file. Kinda crazy.”

“It was. And something that’s haunted me for years.”

“I bet. You don’t lose too often.”

“We got an address for this Cole Shipley?”

“Yes, sir—98 Cozen’s Pointe Circle, Fraser, Colorado. In the Rocky Mountains, next to Winter Park ski resort. About ninety minutes from Denver.”

“I doubt this is anything. But call the Denver office. Have them send someone out there to poke around. Tell them to lie low but try to get some photos and ship them my way.”

“Will do.”