Chapter Twenty-Four
Petra
Petra had a quasi-secretive job, one that the FBI tried to keep on the down low.
Recruited to the Bureau by Rowan Kennedy when they were fellow doctoral candidates in the field of brain security—or whatever it was that people were trying to call it now—their diplomas said Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology.
But that was only because the field of study was so new that there wasn’t yet a consensus on what else to call their research.
Rowan called himself a Doctor of Propaganda.
To Petra, that didn’t quite get the gist of her work.
Things were changing so fast—every single day, innovations brought sweeping changes to how humans navigate the world.
Was that a burden on the human brain?
How well did the brain adapt to such constant shifts?
Did the modern world present unprecedented dangers to human wiring?
There was no data until someone asked the questions and looked for answers.
It was true that back in the first days of steam engine trains, there was fear that if a woman were to travel faster than fifty miles an hour, the speed would fling a woman’s uterus from her body.
It was also true that fear of new technology was often just the fear of the unknown.
But this was absolutely a brave new world.
AI was changing a human’s ability to tell what was real and what artificial intelligence had created on command.
Reality was becoming ever more malleable.
Was that image an actual image?
Is that video something that genuinely happened?
Is the voice on the phone that sounds exactly like my child really my child?
Who the heck knew?
What the government knew was that the human brain faced a shape-shifting reality and that con artists would swing in and manipulate people in unprecedented ways.
The FBI sought to understand how the new manipulations could happen and how to get out in front of it.
There were, in fact, few laws that protected a human’s brain from a criminal attack.
Legislation took time.
Well-thought-out, effective legislation took even longer, requiring studies and a clear understanding of cause and effect.
Everything protective took time.
Everything calculated to con people changed at lightning speed.
Faster. Faster. Impossible to keep up.
The FBI hired Petra specifically to study doomsday cults and the fact that people—in historically unprecedented numbers—were succumbing to the draw and falling to their sway.
Why was this happening, and what were the ramifications?
Petra hated the term “cult” because it came with ideas about Kool-Aid drinking Branch Davidians.
Where Rowan’s expertise was in indoctrination and severing systems to gain power—much like what happened to Russia, then Türkiye and Hungary, and of course, earlier and most profoundly to women in Iran in 1979…
1979 wasn’t all that long ago; Petra’s mom was a freshman in high school. No, not that long ago at all.
Rowan studied how governments shifted people away from allegiances to family and friends, shifted morals and convictions, and shifted wealth from their citizens' pockets to someone else’s.
And that all fell under the term psyops—psychological operations.
Psyops happened in spheres of influence as large as a nation or as small as a doomsday cult.
These were the thoughts that danced through her brain as Rowan’s phone continued to ring.
Petra was exhausted, and she wanted to just drop the whole subject. But justice was a pressure that built in her until she came up with a way to find release.
And right or wrong, she wanted to hand this all over to Rowan.
Rowan, who had nothing to do with this kind of crime.
“Hey, sorry about that.” Rowan was in her ear. “I walked away from my phone.”
“I came across something. I’m sending you an article,” Petra dove right in. She pressed send on the newspaper article about the Johnsons’ crimes which summed things up more succinctly than the others. She waited, giving Rowan a chance to read it over.
“Jenny Johnson is the name you gave Avery a few minutes ago.”
“It is.”
“Guilty. Husband, guilty. Looks like you were hanging out with the riffraff.”
“They’re here on the island with their three small children.”
“You have a narrative running through your head. You sound damned stressed.”
“I’ve had a difficult couple of days. Listen, would it be okay if I rambled around a bit—sometimes processing out loud is the thing.”
“Be my guest. I was just taking a scotch over to sit in front of the fire.”
“Here are my thoughts in no particular order. Ask questions if you have them. The kids are young. I mean lovely young children, four, six, and eight are my guesses. If the parents go to prison—which is a given—even with a lighter sentence, they won’t be getting out until the youngest is in his late teens. The oldest will be an adult. They will have missed their children’s formative years. If I was a mother – and I am making this up from my imagination, obviously, but if I were their mother, I’d be freaking the hell out to be taken away from my babies. But she showed no signs of stress.”
“You’re also assessing that as a doctorate in psychology. There are norms in social patterns. But for this individual, you don’t have a baseline,” Rowan pointed out. “The woman could be a sociopath and not give a shit about her kids.”
“Possible, I guess. But I’m telling you there was something completely wrong with the packaging. Putting the interaction I had with this information about Jenny going to prison for a decade plus doesn’t add up.”
“You’re a hundred percent sure it’s her.”
“And her husband. The articles I read reiterated many of the details I’d learned over the day. The number of kids, the state where they live. It’s her picture, for goodness’ sake. I cross-referenced with articles and pictures of her in her races. The husband and kids are there at the finish line.”
“So, what was off?”
“The way she looked at her kids.”
“More.”
“If I were a mother on a last family vacation—not something in my experience, granted. But pattern recognition. This mom is two weeks away from not being able to tuck her kids in bed anymore, not give them a kiss when they wake up. I’ve seen other families have to deal with that kind of separation, so I do have a baseline. And this was not that. For example, let’s say that they came down here for this last vacation with their young children, and the next time this was available to them, the kids would be grown. I’d try to give them the best possible memories of a happy, loving, caring mother.”
“That seems reasonable. Is that not what happened?” Rowan asked.
“Mom and Dad were both laid back, kind of laissez-faire. It was just another day in the life rather than a time imbued with deep meaning. There should have been something buzzing under the surface, right? Like an undertone of bittersweetness. When the children were playing, and the mother was looking on, there should have been the sense that she was soaking it all in, imprinting her children and this event deep into her psyche to take out and remember on difficult days. There was none of that.”
“These are mother observations, not father?” Rowan asked.
“Dads don’t have ‘fetal microchimerism.’” Petra said. “Fair or not, I expect more from a biological mom.”
“And you’re going to explain all that to me so I can follow.”
“Fetal microchimerism is the phenomenon that happens when a baby is being born; part of their DNA passes through the placenta into the mother’s body. It’s stored in the mom’s organs, usually the brain, liver, and skin, and persists there. That’s the hard science supported by the scientific method and replications.”
“Now, the soft science and speculation?” Rowan asked.
“There’s the possibility that this connection is the source of mother’s intuition.”
“That research will never get funded,” Rowan said.
“True. But in this case, I would think that if microchimerism did connect mother and child, it would be blasting this woman, lighting her system up like a Christmas tree.”
“A chimerism tree?”
“You want me to laugh, but I’m too tired,” Petra said.
“Okay, Petra, as a former FBI profiler turned researcher of state-sponsored mind security, offer me your theory.”
“First, I have to talk to Avery when I get off from talking to you. I told Jenny about Holly Smokes. I need her to pass on a warning not to engage.”
“Yeah, that’s probably good. I’ll—hey, Avery, Petra needs to talk to you when we’re done.”
“Okay, I’m just running next door for a second to check on Mrs. Glasser before the ice storm. Should I wait?” Avery called. “I wanted to ask Petra what she knew about all the rescues today in St. Croix and see if everyone’s okay.”
“I think you have time,” Rowan called. He was back on the phone. “She has time?”
“I’m not in any kind of hurry,” Petra said. “This is vacation.”
Petra heard a door shut.
“What rescue today?” Rowan asked.
Petra briefly explained the situation on the island. “Avery saw that on the news? Must be a slow news day. And with a winter storm blowing in D.C.? Seems odd.” And since Rowan had an association with Iniquus, she added, “I am worried about Ash. All I know is that he was having respiratory issues after the boat fire. I’ll text you and let you know how he is.”
“Grateful for the information,” Rowan said. “The guy you pulled out of the blow hole is okay?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. Broken limbs at a minimum.”
“Shit, that’s brutal. How old?” Rowan asked.
“Twenty-seven. The untouchable age.”
“Not anymore.” There was a clink of the ice cubes in Rowan’s drink. “That fallacy’s been blown. I’m going to help you focus. I’d like you to share the story you’re telling yourself about the Johnsons.”
“I imagine that the judge understood the stakes for this family. If they were to flee, they could try to get to a country without extradition.”
“Could,” Rowan conceded. “But surely they had their passports confiscated.”
“Mmm. I was wondering if maybe someone should check on that.”
“The judge?” Rowan asked.
“No. Could the Johnsons, knowing they might lose their passports, have reported them stolen at some point? Asked to have them reissued? That way, they’d have nothing to hand over to a judge.”
“How would that be useful?”
“Depends on where they’re going,” Petra said. “They didn’t need passports to get this far. If they were in a different country and needed to show them to someone, would it flag anything? I think that depends on the entity and the country.”
“If I were on the lam, would I try to use my real passport? That seems risky.” Rowan trailed the last word, then said, “Okay, take a step back. What would I do if I wanted to get gone? I’d sell everything to get as much cash together as I could. That would make sense if I were going to prison for the next ten years—house, cars, furnishings, cash out the 401(k). Liquify any stocks. I could say that this allowed me to give the money to the kids’ caregiver – one would assume family. But you wouldn’t hand over the money until you handed over the kids, right? But Avery, you can’t pack that much money in a suitcase.”
“Bitcoin.”
“True,” Rowan said. “Easily bought, then untraceable and accessible anywhere in the world.”
“Exactly,” Petra exclaimed. “Then I’d go to a place that’s the farthest point from the contiguous US that I could without using my passport– maybe to a territory where federal laws have a lighter impact. Someplace like here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then I might go for a boat ride with the family one day.”
“Fishing trip,” Rowan said.
“With a cooler of food that’s actually stuff I need, backpacks with our clothes. Then I’d head to South America, where I’d get off at any local dock and, therefore, not be watched by customs. Buy a car for cash. Travel over borders at non-border areas, move slowly but surely to Colombia or Ecuador.”
“I’d probably head to the Solomon Islands,” Rowan said.
“Laos would be nice.” Petra looked out the window. Cooper knew where she was and was watching her. “Staying in Colombia or Ecuador would be a boat ride instead of a plane. Anyway, that’s what I’d do. I’d still be stressed about becoming a fugitive, but a lot less stressed than thinking I was headed to federal prison away from my kids.”
“I see,” Rowan sounded far away in thought. “It reminds me of an article I read about an Italian guy who committed fraud. Did you read about him?”
She shuffled her feet in the flip-flops that were thrust into her hands at the rescue with a “here, take these.” She realized that they were two different colors and sizes. “It’s not ringing any bells.”
“According to the reporting, this Italian guy tried living in places without extradition, but it was always tenuous. He could be rounded up and repatriated at any moment.”
“Where’s this?” She traced a finger around the hole in her dress.
“Dubai was where he had been living.”
“Okay, I can see where Italy might be able to craft some kind of diplomatic understanding if this was a big enough fish.”
Rowan laughed. “More of a public fish, so they didn’t want people to think they could get away with impactful financial crimes. Fish is an appropriate term here because the guy bought a barge and has been living on it in international waters.”
“How does he eat besides fishing?” Petra asked.
“He has a garden and some chickens. People deliver food to him.”
Petra stilled. “Isn’t that aiding and…nope, it wouldn’t be. When they hand over the supplies, they’d be on the high seas, too. Not that I understand the laws of the open waters. And I honestly don’t want to. I just have a really funny feeling about this family, Rowan. They’re so squeaky.”
“Squeaky,” he let his mouth play with the word as he repeated it. “I’m not sure how to imagine that.”
“Think of a family that is social media perfect. You know that she’s the kind of mom who unpackages her groceries and puts them in containers to stock her fridge, and she has tens of thousands of people watching her do it.”
“That’s a thing?” Rowan asked.
“Very soothing, apparently. Does nothing for me. But you can imagine the family I’m talking about. Dad is handsome enough. Mom is an international adventure racer who also bakes bread and is unperturbed by reality.”
“I’m pulling up social media and putting in a search for stocking a fridge.” Rowan went silent. “There are all of these people on here doing something called fridgescaping. They’re putting vases of flowers in their fridge.”
“A nice little pick me up, and they last forever in the cold like that.”
Rowan snort-laughed. “Tell me you do this.”
“Me? No. Hey Rowan, I don’t mean to take up your day off with things that aren’t in your wheelhouse,” Petra said. “Thanks for listening. Now that I’ve said it out loud to another FBI special agent, I feel like I’m no longer personally responsible.”
“Yup, you went and involved me.”
“There’s no crime,” Petra pointed out. “There’s only a path I made up in my head.”
“Still. I’m going to share this with Frost and see if she wants us to look into the passport situation.”
“Sorry. Thank you.”
“No problem.” There was the slam of a door. “Avery’s back and waving for the phone. Any other theories you wanted to share?”
“Nope. That’s it. Could you just tell Avery about Jenny for me?” Petra asked.
“Will do. And Petra?”
“Yes.”
“You’re supposed to be on vacation, so maybe leave the badge in the room’s safe and have fun.”
Petra reached her hand into her pocket to finger the necklace. “That’s the dream.”