Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The little bell above the door jingled just as I finished the last bite of sausage on my plate. I glanced behind me, expecting another regular or perhaps even the waitress Trick had claimed would be in any minute now.
The duo who walked through the door were dressed in suits, and the moment I saw them the taste of syrup turned to ash in my mouth.
The man and woman both scanned the space with trained eyes, the shapes of guns hidden at their hips.
These weren’t just local cops coming in for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.
Everything about them screamed federal agent.
I watched them like a mouse watching a lion, wondering if I was about to be their next meal or if I was small and inconsequential enough to stay hidden and slip away beneath their notice.
The woman’s beige suit and sleek blonde bun left nothing for the eye to catch on, but as she turned, I realized I recognized her from the dossier that Noah had put together for me, profiling the five local FBI agents I needed to watch out for.
I was certain that the man beside her was not one of those local agents.
“Agent Anderson,” Trick said as he quickly moved away from Vera’s table to approach the newcomers, taking up all their attention with his greeting while simultaneously confirming what I already knew. “And SSA Shepherd. I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“Just visiting the family for the Fourth,” said the man. He had short, slicked-back brown hair and a closely trimmed beard. There was just a little grey coming in at the edge of his hairline and his voice was low and gravelly. “And it’s ASAC Shepherd now.”
“Congratulations,” Trick replied as I whirled back around in my seat, not wanting either of these people to see my face. If they were here for me they would have approached me by now, but that didn’t mean I was safe. Any agent worth their salt would recognize me if they got a good enough look.
I needed to go, and I needed to go now.
“I know it’s early, but that seems like a cause for celebration.” My hands shook, the rest of my body frozen in place as Trick continued to distract them. “Why don’t we skip the mugs and go right for the shots? Or maybe an Irish coffee—the best of both worlds.”
“I told you, Arlene,” the man—ASAC Shepherd of the FBI—said as I slid off my stool and picked up my dirty plate and half-empty cup of coffee, taking measured steps towards the kitchen as I tried not to draw attention to myself. “I can’t believe you’ve never taken a chance on this place.”
The kitchen doors still squeaked when I opened them, and they fell closed behind me before I could hear Arlene’s reply.
It didn’t matter. Setting my dirty dishes on the counter and giving a cursory nod to Amina, the line cook who was working the grill, I headed out the back door determined to get as far away from those people as possible.
As I stepped out of the back entrance, I hesitated, scanning the area just in case ASAC Shepherd’s explanation was a ruse. Just in case this was a trap.
The backside of Mug+Shots was the same as always, though.
Three parking spots for employees that were currently empty, a wooden staircase along the back wall that led to Trick’s loft, and two dumpsters that smelled like they’d been at their job for as long as Mug+Shots had been open, possibly longer.
A champagne-colored sedan pulled into one of the employee spots as I stood frozen, uncertain if I should trust the situation to be what it seemed or not.
I’d always been good at knowing when something was about to go sideways, picking out the patterns and putting the puzzle pieces together.
It was easy to predict something like a pacifier falling to the ground or a suspect going for a gun.
What the instructors at the Academy had called good instincts and what Angie had called good reflexes were just a side effect of seeing cause and effect everywhere I looked.
Staying two or three steps ahead of the competition was a skill I’d relied on my whole life, but the moment it mattered most I’d been blindsided. Monica’s body, laid out in her foyer, blood pooling under her. My hands on her throat. My hands, covered in her blood.
How could I trust those instincts now that they had failed me so thoroughly?
The door to the sedan slammed shut as a young woman with black curls and a round face got out of the driver’s seat. Melody, I suspected, though I hadn’t met her before and wasn’t looking to do so just now. She wasn’t a threat, but the longer I stood out in the open the more vulnerable I felt.
I blinked, shaking my head. I needed to move, to get somewhere safe before I could process what had just happened. Limbs numb and head full of static, I turned to the left and headed away from the employee parking spots and around the side of the building.
Once I was in my own car sitting in front of Mug+Shots I locked the doors and took a deep breath to steady my nerves.
I’d gotten too comfortable in the past few weeks.
Complacent. I’d let my guard down and if it hadn’t been for Trick’s quick thinking, I might still be sitting at that bar, arms cuffed behind my back with a one-way ticket to prison with my name written on it.
Several hours later I sat cross-legged on my bed, shoulders hunched as I stared down at all the pages I’d printed off at the local library.
Everything I could find about the local FBI agents and ASAC Coal Shepherd was in one file, and every detail about Monica Park’s murder that I could find in the news was compiled in another.
I’d purchased a whole pack of manilla folders along with my coffee creamer and a few frozen burritos before heading home. Then, I’d scoured every page I’d printed, looking for anything that might help my case.
Frankly, there wasn’t much to go on.
Aside from my own memory of that night, I had no alibi.
I’d left the FBI Academy, prompted by a text from Monica that I could not prove existed, only to arrive at her door to find her bleeding out.
Whoever had slashed her throat couldn’t have left more than a minute before me, and the local police had shown up less than a minute later.
Which only told me what I already knew; Monica’s murder was premeditated.
It wasn’t an accident that I had arrived when I did or that my prints had been found on the knife.
Whoever had arranged for me to take the fall was a professional, and their attack had been perfectly coordinated. Orchestrated, even.
The only piece that didn’t fit, the one thing they hadn’t planned for, was for Noah Delgado to break me out of that interrogation room before anyone could officially charge me.
I leaned down and wrote the words ‘Blind Spot: Noah’ and ‘Prints = Where?’.
Because if they had my prints, if they’d put them on the knife that had slashed Monica’s throat, then they had to have gotten them from somewhere.
I wasn’t the type to go out to clubs on the weekend like some of the other New Agent Trainees, which meant that either it was someone who had access to the FBI Academy and had picked my prints up from something I had handled there, or it was someone who had been planning their crime for over five months before putting it into motion.
I didn’t know which option was worse for me, but I knew which one I leaned towards. With the precision timing, the use of internal systems, and the victim being a Supervisory Special Agent, it was clear that Noah had been right. It was someone within the FBI who had framed me.
Which led me right back to Shepherd showing up at Mug+Shots along with another local agent, presumably with no idea that I would be there.
Everything I knew about the man came from information I had printed off at the library, and most of that was news headlines lauding his work on a New York task force several years before.
I had also found his social media and traced his local connections, confirming that he had once lived in Bend, and that his only son was Lachlan Shepherd—a local homicide Detective.
Coal had moved to New York five years ago.
If he had a wife, she didn’t have a social media presence and neither he nor his son ever spoke of her online.
Nothing I had found in my research had given me any reason to think ASAC Shepherd was in town to track me down, but even if Shepherd had nothing to do with Monica’s murder or my manhunt, that didn’t mean he was safe to be around.
My phone chimed, drawing my attention away from the papers in front of me.
I sat up, wincing as my spine cracked and popped from sitting hunched over my own case file for too long.
Pulling my arms across my chest to stretch out my shoulders, I blinked in surprise at the angle of the light, the shadows growing long in my apartment.
It was almost dark, which meant it was almost time to get ready for work.
Call me.
The text message from Trick was simple, but the moment I read it my heart began to race again.
It had been hours since ASAC Shepherd had arrived at Mug+Shots and thrown my entire life off balance, but if Trick had been worried about the man beyond the danger of me running into him, I assumed he would have messaged me sooner.
Unless he couldn’t…
I hit the call button and lifted the phone to my ear, flipping the folders closed and tucking them under my pillow.
As long as I kept my research out of sight and I didn’t let anyone I didn’t know inside my apartment, there was no harm in keeping it there.
“Hey,” Trick answered after only one ring, “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” I said cautiously. Was he really just calling to check up on me, or was there someone with him on the other side of the phone that we would have to avoid tipping off?
“It’s understandable if you aren’t,” he said.
I couldn’t hear anything in the background.
No customers chattering in the distance, or FBI agents breathing down his neck.
That didn’t mean there weren’t any. “I just wanted to let you know I’m sorry for how close that was.
I never in a million years expected the one other FBI agent I happen to know to come waltzing in, let alone bring one of his local agent buddies with him.
Especially not when he’s supposed to be out on the East coast.”
“How do you know Shepherd?” I asked. Apparently we weren’t dancing around the subject, and if that was the case then it was time to get some answers.
“I looked him up, you know. He’s got an impressive track record and a ton of good press.
Not the kind of man that a forger who runs a business called mugshots might call his friend. ”
“That’s because we aren’t friends,” Trick assured me, his voice going low. “I just happen to know his son. And don’t believe everything the news tells you. He might be a good agent, but that doesn’t make him a good person.”
“Noted,” I replied, moving to my clothes rack and sliding the few shirts I had from one side to the other as I was forced to choose between green, grey, or white.
“So I’m safe as long as I keep my head down and don’t let him see me.
But I knew that already, so was there some other reason I was supposed to call you? ”
“I just wanted to check in with you,” Trick said. “Make sure you hadn’t fled town after this morning.”
“You’re making sure I’ll be in for work tonight,” I guessed.
“I’m telling you I would understand if you needed the night off,” Trick corrected me. “I can handle the crowd on my own if you?—”
“On a Saturday night?” I scoffed. “That’s the best night for tips, and besides, you’ve been working yourself to the bone with all the call-outs today.
I know it doesn’t seem like it, considering I’m currently on the run from the FBI and fled the moment they showed up, but I don’t run. Not when I have another choice.”
“Are you sure?” Trick asked, and I felt equal parts touched and annoyed at the concern in his voice.
“It’ll take more than a brush with danger to scare me off,” I assured him, and then ended the call so I could get ready for a long night full of mixing drinks and pretending I wasn’t shaken by the idea that an FBI ASAC might walk back through the door at any moment and topple the carefully crafted house of cards my life had become.