CHAPTER 26
Kyle
Two months later…
The gravel crunches under the tires of my rented sedan as I pull into the driveway to my sister’s house. She has no idea I’m coming, but she won’t be overly astonished at seeing me alive. After I was pulled out of Misty Harbor that night Jane got attacked, I insisted Andrea be told what had happened. The trial wasn’t very far away and, after fucking things up with Jane so bad, I just couldn’t go another goddamned day with my sister thinking I was dead. It was one lie I simply had to rectify. So I had Joe visit her, because telling her I was alive after she’d mourned me was not something that could be done over the phone.
From that point and until the trial started, I was seriously sequestered away, but Joe arranged for me to talk to Andrea and we’ve had a few conversations. They’ve been short and have focused on nothing but good stuff, which includes mostly her joy I’m alive and my joy that she has a baby on the way.
That all changes as of today, for I am now a free man.
The trials did not go all the way as expected. I was called as the first witness and my testimony lasted four full days. It was solid enough that attorneys representing defendants asked the judge for a half-day recess so they could “discuss things”. Within just a few hours though, Zeke Powell, the president of Mayhem’s Mission, was accepting a plea deal that would give him a shot at parole in thirty years versus life in prison with no possibility of parole. For that deal, he gave up Senator Latner, and from there, all the dominoes started to crumble.
The only thing left unresolved was proving who put the hit out on me. The man who broke into Jane’s house who I subsequently killed wasn’t any known killer for hire. There had been a cash deposit into his bank account for five thousand dollars two days before he showed up in Misty Harbor, but it couldn’t be traced anywhere. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind it was Senator Latner who was behind it, and it was a pitiful attempt to snuff me out. But none of it matters because Latner will be spending the rest of his days behind bars.
The final plea deals were all executed and approved by the judge just two days ago. The day after the deals were finalized, I gave my notice to the ATF that I was quitting. While my actions were vile and inhumane much of the time I was undercover, I know deep in my heart I’ve ultimately saved lives by completing my mission and, for that, I’m proud.
But despite that, I really need to leave it all behind. The scars run too deep, the memories are nothing but bitter, and I don’t have a passion for justice anymore.
As soon as I exit the car, the front door of the stilted beach cottage that belongs to Andrea and her husband Wyatt flies open. They live right on the sandy dunes of the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and it’s hot as hell even though we’re breaching the end of September.
Andrea trots gingerly down the steps, one hand on the rail and the other holding her swollen belly, but her eyes are pinned right on me.
“Jesus Christ, slow down, Andrea,” I hear from the top of the stairs, and I look up to see Wyatt coming down behind her. I’ve only been around him twice, but he’s a decent dude. Works for the local police department while Andrea practices law. Ironically, they met while on an undercover assignment when Andrea was working for the FBI prior to her moving here.
I don’t bother to look at Wyatt again though, because I only have eyes for my sister. So like me with the same blond hair and blue eyes, and even our predisposition to work in law enforcement. But we’re different in that she’s always had the sunny, bubbly personality and I’ve always been more circumspect about things. Over the past few years, while Andrea has been settling into married life and setting her eyes on raising a family, I’d been running drugs, guns, and selling women into slavery. Her sunny disposition has only gotten brighter, while my glass runs less than half full and mainly has a thick layer of sludge on the bottom.
“Even though I’m seeing you with my own eyes,” she says softly as her flip-flops hit the gravel and she walks into my arms, “I’m just having a hard time believing you’re really alive.”
I engulf her, pull her as tight as that pregnant belly will let me, and lay my cheek on the top of her head. My voice is gruff with emotion when I tell her, “Believe it, sis.”
We stay like that for several long moments until I feel Wyatt’s hand on my shoulder. I lift my head and turn to find him looking at me with respect and appreciation. I’ve talked to him a few times on the phone as well these last several weeks, and we’ve talked about the sacrifices that had to be made while working undercover.
Andrea is the first to pull away, and her eyes are shining with happy tears that she unabashedly ignores as she smiles at me. “I hope you packed a lot of clothes so you can stay for a really long visit.”
“Got nowhere else I need to be,” I tell her.
And that’s the sad truth.
♦
“All those years,” Andrea murmurs as we sit on her back deck the next morning, watching the waves roll in. It’s just dawn and the sun is peeking over the horizon. She found me out here about twenty minutes ago, and we shared our coffee together as we watched the sun rise, turning the sky pink, orange, purple, and then blue. “And I never knew you were undercover.”
“Isn’t that the point?” I say, my tone matter of fact.
“Well, of course,” she admits freely. “But I was FBI. I should have known. I’m trained to know those things.”
I reach over and pat Andrea’s knee to commiserate. I had told her last night the long and involved story about how I became an ATF agent, and what led me to go undercover. She knows that I joined the ATF with the sole purpose of infiltrating Mayhem’s Mission, so she was purposely kept oblivious to it all.
“Did you love her?” Andrea asks, and the question should feel awkward because we’ve not been close in years. I absolutely could not let us be close because I never wanted Zeke or anyone in that club thinking they could use Andrea against me if things went south.
But her asking me if I loved her isn’t awkward, and I answer her with brutal honesty.
“No,” I tell her softly. “But I cared for her a great deal.”
The “her” is Jacqueline Martin, a woman I’d dated for several months while I was working the oil fields in eastern Wyoming. It was good money and I was able to work on my criminal justice degree at night. I was close friends with Jackie’s brother, Darren, who was a local deputy sheriff. It sort of naturally happened that I started dating her and, because she and her brother were close, we all hung out a lot. While I wasn’t in love with her, I cared about her deeply.
When she went missing, it hit me hard, but it hit Darren and his parents harder. She was a dental hygienist and had gone to work one morning, left at her normal time, and never made it home. Three months after her disappearance, when the local law enforcement ran out of leads, a miraculous turn of events happened. The ATF showed up with some loose information they had about a notorious biker gang known as Mayhem’s Mission, who were suspected of numerous criminal activities, one of which was sex slavery. There was some consideration thrown around that Jackie could have been kidnapped by them.
“I can’t tell you how that made me feel,” I tell Andrea as we stare out over the ocean. She knows I’m talking about Jackie’s disappearance. “But there I was… sitting with a degree and no real direction in life, and I just knew… when Darren told me about the ATF’s involvement, I just knew that I had to join in on it.”
“You thought you could save Jackie?” Andrea asks.
“Not really,” I admit with a heavy heart. “I had accepted that if she’d been taken, she was probably long gone from the area. But I hoped I could find answers that could lead to her. More than anything… I wanted to bring them down.”
Andrea turns her head and looks at me. “All those years of your life… committed to that one cause.”
“Wasn’t easy,” I say as I reach out and take her hand. We both turn back to look at the ocean, and it fills me with some measure of peace. “I had to get on with the ATF first, and because Darren had always kept me involved with the investigation of Jackie’s disappearance at the local level, I was no stranger to it when the ATF got involved.”
“Was it your idea to go undercover?” she asks softly, and I sense the hesitation in her voice. She’s asked the question, but I can tell part of her doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Yeah,” I admit to her. For a woman I didn’t love, but did care for, I hatched a plan to try to achieve justice. “I presented it to them and offered to do it. I had to take their entrance exam and make the cut as an agent, just like any other. But after my initial training, I immediately went undercover.”
“It’s when you relocated out to Jackson, Wyoming,” she says in remembrance. “You told me you wanted to be a motorcycle mechanic.”
“Well, that was sort of the truth,” I say with a chuckle.
She’s silent for several moments, but then she gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m proud of you, Kyle. I honestly cannot imagine the horrors you’ve faced. And I know that you had to sacrifice yourself to get the job done. You ever want to talk about it, I’m here. You want me to mind my own business, it’s done. I’m here for whatever you need.”
I squeeze her hand back in grateful acknowledgment, and my lack of words tells her clearly I’m not ready to talk about any of it.
Except, well… maybe one thing.
“I met someone while I was living in Maine this summer,” I say in an abrupt change of subject.
Andrea sits up straight in her deck chair and turns to me. Her eyebrows are aimed high as she gives me a smirk. “Really? Tell me all about it.”
I shrug. “I was in hiding. Using an alias. Couldn’t be truthful with her.”
“Not exactly the right time to get involved with someone, right?” she asks.
I laugh, because damn if that wasn’t the entire problem. “She got under my skin,” I admit to my sister. “Just kept pushing at me, and finally… well, I just sort of went with it.”
“What’s her name?” she asks, and I hear that dreamy, romantic tone in her voice. Wyatt admitted to me last night after Andrea went to bed and we were sucking down a few beers that she was operating on pure hormones these days, which means whatever emotions she was feeling were intensified.
“Jane,” I say softly, and I’m truly surprised that it hurts as much today to think of her as it did two months ago when I walked out of her life.
Andrea settles back in her chair, and I release her hand. I slouch down, propping my feet up on the railing that runs the length of her back deck.
“Tell me about her,” Andrea prompts me.
And while I have no desire to ever tell Andrea about the horrors of my life while I was in deep with Mayhem’s Mission, I’m oddly okay with spilling my guts to her about Jane.
Maybe because I have nothing to lose at this point.
“She’s an artist,” I begin my story. “A good one at that. Mainly watercolors. I have one of her paintings in the backseat of my car. No clue where I’ll end up settling, but that will be the first thing that gets hung.”
Andrea smiles, her tone sounding dreamy again. “I can totally see you with an artist. I bet she’s quirky, isn’t she?”
“So quirky,” I admit with a sad smile. “But she also reminds me a little of you.”
“Of course she does,” Andrea says with a huff. “I’m fabulous, after all. Tell me more.”
And I do.
I tell Andrea every bit of it.
The initial and swift attraction I tried to fight.
The way Jane pursued me in that incredibly sweet way, inching her way under my skin.
The attempt at friendship when we both knew that would never work.
Vaguer details about the intimacy we developed.
Shamefully admitting to Andrea that I never intended to make anything permanent with Jane and that I used her.
And finally, the self-hatred I’ve been bearing these last eight weeks that I brought danger into Jane’s life and almost got her killed. I admit to my sister that I couldn’t get out of Misty Harbor fast enough after all of that went down. Jane rightfully reacted badly to being attacked in her own home and then finding out that I’d been lying to her all along. She had every reason to push me away, and when she did, I took the opportunity and ran. I let the government hide me away, and I tried to put her out of my mind.
“You are so totally gone for this girl,” Andrea murmurs when I finish.
“I am. But I fucked it up too badly,” I tell her. “Ruined it.”
“You don’t know that,” she offers helpfully.
“I do,” is all I say. I can recall with keen detail the look on Jane’s face when she found out the truth about me, and it wasn’t even the entire truth. She didn’t know about any of the bad stuff.
“You don’t,” she pushes back at me. “You haven’t even had a meaningful conversation with her to know that. You absolutely cannot assume you know her feelings just based on that one interaction after it all went down, at a time, which I’ll remind you, must have been incredibly stressful for her.”
“What are you saying?” I ask guardedly, trying to keep any hope from filtering into my reasoning. It’s self-preservation, really.
“I’m saying that you need to go to her and talk,” Andrea says as she turns to look at me. She shifts in the chair, reaches out, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Kyle… you deserve something good. She’s the thing you deserve. But you’re going to have to go after it.”