34. Val
THIRTY-FOUR
VAL
Late fall was as brown and dreary as I’d remembered.
Only weeks after Agent Walsh’s phone call, I resigned from my position at the Eleventh District Police Precinct, paused the lease on my apartment again, and boxed most of my belongings for storage.
The strange and uncomfortable feeling of not having a home nagged me constantly.
I thought of Tipp, Montana, every single day.
Training was grueling and intense. I learned more about procedural law enforcement than I ever thought possible.
Tactical training made my muscles ache. As a woman, I had to work twice as hard to prove that I was capable.
Proving I was more than my exterior was exhausting and demanding, but it left little room for anything else.
Whenever Evan and our time together threatened to surface, I refocused and shoved it down.
At night, in the quiet moments before I let sleep take me, I ached for him.
The day I logged in to my email, I stared at the full inbox. I read his first email twenty times.
Shock .
Sadness.
Elation.
I warred with the emotions that coursed through me.
The emails from the unknown address came every single day.
I couldn’t stop myself from reading them.
Night after night, I curled up on my couch in my shitty dormitory and stared out the window after reading them.
Over and over, I read them and pictured Evan as he wrote them.
My view was the brick wall of the neighboring building, and I missed the wide-open spaces, the towering indigo mountains of Montana.
A thousand times I almost wrote him back, but stopped. There was no place for me at Redemption, and Evan needed to move on with his new life. He deserved it and so did Gemma.
After my return to Chicago, Chief Dunleavy and Agent Walsh congratulated me.
My time at the ranch was considered an extended interview, which I’d passed with flying colors.
The ATF National Academy was grueling, but fascinating, and because I’d spent all my energy trying to not think about Evan and the people I’d left behind in Tipp, I did nothing but study and learn.
As a result, I was the newest member of the Chicago Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Spanning northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and eastern Wisconsin, we were responsible for investigating armed violent offenders, career criminals, gun traffickers, and gangs.
Mostly I pushed paper.
At a glance, I had everything I had ever wanted, and I couldn’t be more miserable.
My skin felt too tight. Nothing seemed right despite the fact that professionally things were finally clicking into place. Trouble was, there was a hole inside me that couldn’t be filled. I would be hollow forever.
On my lunch break, my mother called. I debated letting it go to voicemail but knew pushing it off was only a detriment to Future Val. I sighed and answered her call.
“Hi, Mom.”
After a disapproving cluck of her tongue, she continued the conversation in Spanish.
“It wouldn’t kill you to call me for a change. A mother worries, you know.”
I rubbed my weary eyes. “It’s been busy.”
“You should never be too busy to call home, mija . You work too hard.”
“It’s a tough job.”
“Work like that is no place for a woman. Why can’t you get a job that doesn’t require a gun and those ugly pants? You could have been a schoolteacher. Settled down and started a family.”
I sighed. She still didn’t understand that I wanted to be so much more than the roles society and our community told us were appropriate.
“I know.” Over the years I’d learned that it was easier, and faster, to agree with her disapproval of my life choices. Mom’s mention of a family had me immediately thinking of Evan. Did he even want kids? My tan skin and his blue eyes would have made some beautiful children.
Fantastic. Now I have something new to obsess over.
She prattled on, doubling down to tell me all the adorable things my sister’s children were doing.
They lived in the suburbs, and Graciela took after my mother and had decided to stay home to raise her kids.
I loved that for her, but I needed something more .
I was built for more. I thought clawing my way up the ladder was going to be what fulfilled me, but I was slowly learning that I still felt empty.
“The work I do is important.”
“There is nothing more important than love, mija . Remember that.”
My mother’s words clanged around in my head.
There is nothing more important than love.
I had filled the lonely hours with work since I left Montana, but no matter how I filled the days, it still hadn’t left me. I thought about Evan and Gemma, Ma and Robbie, even Ray, every single day.
I couldn’t stand not knowing what they were up to, despite the emails that came.
I only read them every few days. My heart couldn’t handle more.
Scott had told me how genuinely shocked Evan looked when his brother, Parker, showed up at the ranch.
He was even more stunned that Parker had a wife in tow.
Apparently, that was new and altogether unexpected.
Michael had been arrested. Bruno, his hired muscle, had squealed on him the moment he was interrogated.
Apparently, in Chicago, no one had been able to find Evan.
He’d been a ghost. Michael had also been keeping tabs on Parker in hopes he’d lead him to Evan.
When Parker found out that Evan was in Montana, Michael had followed him out west.
But something was off.
My intuition was humming and I couldn’t let it go.
How did Parker know Evan was in Montana?
I needed to talk this through with someone—see what theories I could shake loose. My fingers opened the contacts on my phone, and I was dialing my old partner Eric’s number before I could second-guess myself.
“Rivera! How’s life in the ATF, Agent?”
I did my best to infuse as much fake happiness as I could muster. I swallowed hard. “It’s great. You know, getting to know the ropes. It’s a lot more procedural than I was expecting, but I’m sure it’ll get busy soon.”
My friend gave a noncommittal grunt.
I could feel his judgment through the phone. I had to change the subject. “So the reason I’m calling ... I, uh, was going through some old case files and came across some information. Thought we could run through it, for old time’s sake.”
“’Course. What do you got?”
“What do you know about a man named Parker Marino?” I chewed my lip as I waited for him to answer.
“How do you know that name?”
“I can’t tell you that. But you have to trust me. Please. Who is he?”
Silence rang in my ears for a few beats. Finally, he spoke again. “Parker Marino fell off the face of the earth a couple of months back, and we’ve been looking for him. He was my informant.”