Chapter 20 #2
I stared at her in confusion, waiting for her response.
“Well, it’s like I said. They wanted to move me again. But after reconsideration of my case, I was removed from the program.”
“What do you mean? When was this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Shiloh shrunk back in her chair, shoulders curved in.
“You’re mad.”
“Yes,” I sighed, running my hand through my hair. “What the hell? I thought WITSEC was for life. I just don’t understand why they would remove you from the program when there are still people out there that want to harm you.”
“It’s complicated. It was better for me to get out than to stay in.”
I huffed a sigh of relief. “So, you’re not in danger anymore?”
“So, long as the past stays in the past and I keep using my new identity, I shouldn’t have any problems.”
“Why didn’t you say that when we were talking the other day? Is that why you’re so nervous about us being together now? Because you aren’t being protected by them anymore?”
She shrugged.
“Did they really just let you leave? Is this…is this because I asked you to stay?”
My stomach twisted with regret.
“You might have been the catalyst for this change, but it was my tantrum that caused this.”
“Tantrum?” I repeated with a quirked brow.
She scoffed. “Yeah. I threw a fit because I didn’t want to move.”
I blinked in disbelief trying to picture Shiloh acting like a petulant child.
“What did you do?”
She sighed heavily and my stomach clenched with fear.
“I might have told my handler Bradley that I was going to off myself if he made me move again.”
“What?” I stared at her, thinking maybe I’d misheard her. Oh no. No, no, no. I didn’t want to be right about her intentions.
“It was stupid. I was being a brat. But it pushed me to ask about getting out. Well, pushed my therapist to ask about me getting out.” She looked up at me as she explained.
“I was assigned a therapist when I moved here to help with the transition and stuff, and she knew I was in WITSEC just doesn’t–didn’t know the details of why. ”
I nodded trying to process everything.
“So, she was the one to ask about you leaving the program?”
“Yeah. And Bradley wasn’t happy about it, but when it came down to it, there really wasn’t a reason for me to stay in if I was so miserable. There are no immediate threats. I mean, everyone I was supposed to testify against was killed and I kind of just fell off their radar.”
“Killed? Everyone was killed?” She nodded. “What do you mean you fell off their radar? They don’t know that you were an informant?”
This was too much information at once and I was struggling to keep up.
“No,” she shook her head.
“Okay, go back a little. So, the FBI approached you the night before your faked death to start informing and then what? Why did the gang have to fake your death?”
“I told you. A job. I couldn’t just leave school or…you. So, the simplest solution was to make me disappear.”
My eyes bugged out. “Wait, they knew about me? Like knew we were together?”
Shiloh winced and nodded slowly.
“Fuck.”
“I didn’t want to get you involved. I didn’t mean to…I promise I never intended for them to know about you or your family.”
“Shit,” I mumbled, sitting back in my chair. “So, you disappearing…that was for our benefit? So that I didn’t come looking for you?”
“That was part of it, yeah. Carlos didn’t want to deal with any loose threads.
Adrian knew about us, knew about your family, knew about Sebastian and his family members in the gang…
I don’t know how much of that information was shared with Carlos, but Adrian made it clear that there would be people looking for me if I just disappeared. ”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Holy shit,” she repeated softly.
“So, then you were working with the FBI for what…” I mumbled under my breath, counting off the months, “another year, right?”
“I wouldn’t say I was working with them at all until the very end. And that was another year and seven months.”
“Where were you? In Texas still?”
Shiloh nodded and I blew out a breath.
“I-I mean this is the kindest way possible, but what did a seventeen-year-old girl have that…” I trailed off and my stomach churned, the food threatening to come back up.
What the fuck do you think they wanted with a seventeen-year-old girl, Nox?
Prostitution, human trafficking…Fuck. I didn’t want the answer and based on the expression on her face I could tell she didn’t want to give it to me right now. I switched gears.
“So, I’m sorry for Googling, but I didn’t find anything online about any gang members being put into prison. You’re saying that you never had to give any testimony in court?”
“Los Siete,” she took a breath, “Los Siete had a code. They called it ghosting. If you betrayed them, they would kill you before you made it far enough to tell the cops anything. Made you disappear. It’s what they did to my brother.
Had his death ruled a suicide. And as soon as Carlos was arrested, as soon as any of the members were arrested, they started dropping like flies.
The gang, they aren’t just some small group of criminals in Granby.
There are seven jefes. And they operate in several states.
The FBI wanted to take down all of the jefes at once, otherwise they’d just keep growing and replacing their jefes. ”
I nodded slowly. None of those details were public knowledge.
My brain tripped as I realized what she said. “Wait, wait, wait. Los Siete, that means ‘the seven’, right?” She nodded and I continued. “So, there’s seven different leaders and Carlos was just one of them?”
“Right.”
“So, all the leaders were arrested?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She pursed her lips. “I honestly don’t know. I just know that the FBI’s case had gone to shit. They tried to salvage it by arresting who they could, which included Carlos, two of his inner circle members, and a couple of other members that I’d never seen or heard of before.”
I sighed, sinking back in my chair as I processed what she was saying.
“But if they were all killed, then that means you didn’t have to testify in court?”
She shook her head. “Well, no. It’s…complicated.
The court process, the way it works is that the attorney general has to give the defense the list of witnesses who are going to give testimony.
And, these witnesses were supposed to be protected, but…
they weren’t. Of the five people arrested, only three of them made it through the chain of custody to the prison system to wait for a trial.
The other two were killed almost immediately after being arrested. ”
“Okay,” I nodded. “So, you were going to testify against the three they had arrested?”
“Maybe? I don’t really know what the original plan was.
All I know is that the witnesses for those cases started getting picked off, and the whole thing was falling apart for any hope at making it to trial.
And then only Carlos was left alive. The FBI had kept me a secret from the AG, I was their smoking gun.
Which meant I was…I was the only witness left alive.
So, the FBI pulled me out, put me into protection right before the preliminary hearing, where they would have to disclose me as a witness to the defense.
But then Carlos killed himself. At least that’s the official story.
I’m sure it was a hit to make sure he never made it to trial. ”
“Then, why place you into witness protection if no one knew you were going to testify?”
“Well, I was already in the program to protect me for the upcoming trial. And taking out Carlos didn’t really mean much to the rest of Los Siete.
Everyone is expendable, replaceable. And they’re still operating.
I might have disappeared, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t believe me to be a threat if they found out where I was, realized I had been involved with the FBI. ”
“So, they thought that these people you were going to testify against would actually make it through the hearing and that you’d need to be protected.”
Shiloh nodded. “There was another informant, who was supposed to testify…you, um, you met him.”
My brow furrowed as I thought back to anyone I had met back then.
“Wait, you mean your ex-boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Adrian. Los Siete discovered he was a rat after the arrests and…” she cleared her throat, looking across the room. “They killed him. Killed his little brother too.”
“Fuck,” I whispered. I reached out, pulling her hands into my lap. “Why would they let you leave the program?”
“It was my choice. I was willing to accept the risk. Moving again wasn’t going to change the fact that I could be discovered by anyone at any time. I wanted to be in control for once. And…I didn’t want to leave you without a chance to explain myself.”
“You’re not scared?”
“No, I’m definitely scared. But that’s my normal. What I’m most scared for is the people I care about. I don’t want anything to happen to you or my friends if shit hits the fan.”
I wrestled with the fact that Shiloh was no longer under the protection of law enforcement. Wrestled with the fact that if she was discovered we would not have any help.
Shiloh pulled her hands out of my grip. “Are you still mad?”
“Hm?” I blinked up at her. “What? No. I mean, I’m kinda annoyed you didn’t tell me sooner, because now I definitely want to get a firearm for the house. I just don’t know how you do it. How you manage to keep going, and now you won’t have any help from law enforcement…”
Shiloh and I stared at each other in a moment of silence.
I knew she had secrets, but this was much bigger.
She’d been through hell and back and instead of cowering in fear, she was living life to its fullest. She had friends, a normal job, and place to live.
If I was in her shoes, I didn’t know how I’d ever leave my house again.
I would be forever looking over my shoulder, forever questioning everyone’s intentions, forever paralyzed by the fear of someone finding me and hurting me.
“Do you think I should have stayed in the program? Do you think I was stupid for leaving.”
I leaned my head onto my fist, propped on the countertop as I studied her hazel eyes. “No. Not if it was hurting you. Do you still feel that way?” Her brows furrowed. “Do you still want to kill yourself?”
I swallowed, nervous to hear her response. But I wasn’t going to sugarcoat things with her anymore. That was one mistake I refused to make again. Shiloh seemed to consider the question and I held my breath, waiting for her to respond.
“Its…” She paused, looking out the window.
“It’s weird. I don’t want to die; I want to cease to exist. Like, sometimes I wish I could just disappear…
I just want everything to stop. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, and I know that dying would hurt you and my friends, so…
I mostly just wish I never existed in the first place. ”
I reached out to pull her hand back into my lap. She didn’t turn her gaze toward mine as she continued.
“I think most of all, I’ve just felt trapped.
Like a lab rat. And just when I think the jig is up, I get shocked back to life only for the cycle to repeat itself.
My whole life I’ve never felt like I had any control, never felt…
” She sighed deeply, pulling her hand out of my grasp as she stared blankly into her bowl of food.
“It only took three years for us to run into each other. How much longer before I run into someone else from my past? A day? A week? A year? I refuse to give them the satisfaction of finally ending my life. I thought you coming back was a sign that it was finally time. That’s why… that’s why…”
Her eyes flicked to mine and I knew. I knew.
If I hadn’t driven past her at that exact moment, if I hadn’t forced her to get into my car, if I hadn’t refused to give her bag back, if I hadn’t convinced her to stay the night…
“That’s why you were so mad,” I said on sigh, my head falling into my hands as I leaned over the counter. “Because I had stopped you from…from killing yourself.”
I shuddered at the sickening realization that all of my fears had just been confirmed.
“What was your plan?” I asked, turned my head to face her.
When the silence dragged on, I stood up and pulled her out of her chair and into my arms. She was stiff as a board as I squeezed her tightly against me, breathing in the sweet scent of her shampoo.
“So, the only reason you’re alive right now,” I had to pause, had to breathe through the anguish, the nausea, the fear, but Shiloh nodded against me.
“The next time you feel like you want to disappear, you think of me. You. Think. Of. Me. You think about how much it would kill me to have to bury you again. How much I would miss you. How much I love you.”
“That’s not fair,” she mumbled against me.
“I don’t care,” I gritted out, holding her closer. “I don’t care if it’s mean, or if it’s the wrong thing to say. Us meeting…wasn’t so that you would take your life. It was so that you would finally live.”
Shiloh dropped her shoulders, leaning the weight of her body into mine, and slowly, so slowly, she wrapped her arms around me.
My hands fell to the backs of her thighs and I picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid with her glued to me, our limbs intertwined, like I might be able to stitch her to my soul and keep her here for all of eternity.