Consuela
“Sonia!” I call as I walk into my sister’s apartment.
“In here!” she yells from the second bedroom. Franny begins to yowl at the sound of Sonia’s voice. I put the carrier down on the parquet floor and open the door.
Franny skitters free, dashing toward the back of the apartment. I leave the carrier and follow. Sonia sits on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom, legs crossed, a bright pink suitcase open in front of her. Franny purrs like a locomotive and rubs up against Sonia, too excited to even accept the petting my sister is trying to administer.
“Luisa at school?” I ask.
She nods. “I dropped her at Todd’s,” she says, referencing her ex-husband. He lives very close to Luisa’s school.
Sonia looks up and smiles—she is so beautiful it pulls at my chest. It’s similar to how looking at Dan feels, maybe even heightened because my emotions have been so aroused today. Stop thinking about Dan.
Sonia cocks her head. Long hair, the same dark chestnut as mine but with a gentle wave, slides over her shoulder almost to her waist. Her skin is sun-kissed after a few days in Puerto Rico, warming it to a wonderful golden terra cotta. Her rich brown eyes framed by pitch black lashes glitter with curiosity—she senses something is up with me. “What’s going on?”
I shrug. “Nothing. How was the trip? How is everyone?” I sit on Luisa’s bed. Sonia and Mami were visiting relatives and old friends. Both our parents were born on the mainland, as were Sonia and I, but we still have deep roots on the island. I have not been in years, though…something Mami gripes about, but I have not taken a vacation since joining the Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
Sonia watches me with narrowed eyes. “Good,” she says slowly. “Are you and Richard having problems?” she asks instead of continuing to answer my question.
I glance down at the engagement ring on my finger. “We can change the world,” Richard had promised. Then we picked the ring out together. It’s simple and expensive. We thought about how the media would describe it when we choose it. Couldn’t be too flashy, or too expensive. It needed to be appropriate for a future First Lady. My stomach lurches. What have I done? I am not this two-faced woman. I am loyal. I am good. What is Dan doing to me? What am I doing to myself?
“Consuela?” Sonia draws my name out, rolling it around and forcing me to meet her gaze again.
I won’t be able to keep this from her, not now that I’ve slept with him. My cheeks grow hot. Her eyes narrow more. Shit.
“Give me your phone,” I say.
Her brow furrows. “It’s in my purse, in the kitchen.”
I get up and head to the galley kitchen. Sonia scrambles to her feet and follows, Franny winding between her ankles, trying to trip her. My sister navigates the cat and stands in the entry to the kitchen while I rifle through her bag. “What are you doing?” she asks.
I put a finger to my lips, then place both our devices in the fridge. I lead Sonia back down the hall to her bathroom. Turning on the shower for white noise, I gesture to the closed toilet lid, offering her a seat. She takes it, her face a mask of concern.
I take a deep breath. Okay. “I’m in love with another man.” Sonia gasps. “He’s an asset.”
Her eyes widen and she leans forward. “What?”
I rub a hand over my face as steam from the shower begins to fill the small space. “He’s brilliant.”
“Wait.” Sonia puts up a hand, palm forward. “You need to back up. Way up.” She takes a breath. “Okay, how long has this been going on?”
“I slept with him last night.”
“Slept with him!”
“And this morning.” I chew on my lip. “And once at like, I don’t know, in the middle of the night…we just kind of…”
Sonia is staring at me with wide eyes, her mouth a round O of surprise. My face is hot, but the band around my chest is a little looser.
“Let me just…,” Sonia starts and then stops.
“There is more.”
“There’s more?” she asks, her eyes going even rounder.
“He fucked me.” Sonia nods, her expression changing to you already said that but not so crudely. I shake my head, trying to clear it. “I mean, we had a deal, and he…well, he broke it.” Her eyes turn stormy as protective rage fills them. “And his doing that has seriously damaged my career, like possibly irreconcilably. Or at least. I mean…” I sigh because I can’t tell Sonia any details. “If it came out that I slept with an asset, that would most definitely ruin my career. But what he did, it will damage me, badly.”
“Did he know this?”
“Yes.”
“And he did it anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Puñeta.”
“But, well, he has his ‘reasons’. I mean, he worries that the—” I take a deep, steam-filled breath trying to figure out how to explain this to Sonia without revealing classified information. She waits patiently. “Okay, so let’s say you had a gun.”
“I do.”
“Not you. The royal you.”
“I think that’s the royal we.”
“Work with me here, Sonia.” She nods. I continue. “A gun can be used for good or bad.” She nods slowly. “This asset, he made a weapon for us, something very powerful, and he doesn’t trust the U.S. government with it.” She shrugs like she gets it. “Sonia, remember that I work for the U.S. government.”
“Yes, and I trust you, but I don’t trust the rich white men in power, and neither should you.” We stare at each other. I’m supposed to marry one of them. He’s one of the good ones! Then why in God’s name did I cheat on him with a vigilante who is ruining my life?
The band around my chest tightens again.
“Okay.” Sonia stands, her expression falling into one I’ve seen a million times. I’ve been looking at this thoughtful, we can figure this out face my whole life. It comforts me deeply. Sonia always has a solution. I take another deep breath. “You’re okay,” she promises, meeting my gaze. “We’ve got this.”
Tears burn my eyes. She wraps me in a hug, and the scent of her rolls over me, comforting. “I’m sorry, conejita,” she says, using the pet name little bunny. “You look very sad.”
I cover my face with my hands. “I just can’t believe I did this.”
“Fell in love with him?”
“Slept with him!” I drop my hands and pace away to the door—it’s not a big bathroom, and the two steps I’ve gained are not doing it for me. I need to go to spin class or boxing. I need to punch something and run at the same time. “Why couldn’t I just kick him out of my apartment?” I return to the door and press my forehead against it. It is too hot and steamy in here.
“The heart wants what the heart wants, but that does not mean you have to give in to it. Not like this, anyway. You should not have cheated on Richard, it’s wrong.” There is a but hanging in her tone.
Over the past five years Richard and Sonia have come to an uneasy peace, but she has never been enthusiastic about our relationship. Not only is Richard almost ten years older than me, he also insisted on keeping our relationship a secret for the first three years. Only in the last two has he been seen in public with me, and he didn’t talk about our relationship until he started contemplating a run for president and therefore needed a wife.
Sonia has never said anything, but I can read her face. She knows a Latin wife in law enforcement would help him in the districts he will need help in. She doesn’t even know that said future wife also started to examine secret algorithms—the kind that worry Dan so much—which could help him sway the electorate…
I bang my head gently against the door. I agreed to help Richard in ways I never should have…
“I have to break up with Richard.” I groan. “I can’t believe it.”
“Consuela,” Sonia says. I turn around, leaning my back against the door. “It’s okay to end your relationship, if you don’t want to marry him. But…” She chews on her lip for a moment. “You seemed so happy when he proposed.”
“I know.” I cover my face again. “I wanted to. I don’t know.” I sigh, it sounds pathetic and I take a deep breath, grounding myself. I refuse to feel bad for myself. This is my mess. I will clean it up. “The reality is I was already in love with Dan but in such deep denial about it that Richard finally proposing to me after the two of us talking about it so much felt like an escape. I wanted to marry him and be done with it.”
Sonia suppresses a smile at my naiveté.
“Shut up. I know that is not how it works.”
“And here I thought you had a degree in criminal justice, not psychology.”
My gaze catches on Sonia’s toothbrush next to her daughter’s in a Minnie Mouse cup. “When you and Todd got together, you were so happy.”
“We were so young, you mean,” she says, crossing her arms and smiling.
“Yes, you were young and in love, and when you divorced it was so…adult.”
“We recognized we didn’t belong together anymore. We were lucky that neither of us strayed.”
A flush runs up my neck. “Do I have to tell Richard what happened?”
“Depends on what you want to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want to marry him? Or break up with him? Do you want to hurt him?”
“No, I don’t want to hurt him.”
“What about marry him?”
I shake my head. “I still think he’s a good man and would make a wonderful president, but…”
“You don’t love him.”
“No, I did. But, Sonia, I don’t know that he ever loved me back. He is so…”
“Calculating. Yes, I noticed that.” Her expression is grim. I can almost feel the I told you so floating in the steam between us.
I close my eyes, seeing Dan’s face, his sober expression as he told me what he’d done. “I can’t believe I did this. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience.”
Sonia steps forward and takes my hand. “Consuela,” she says, low and careful. “You are a good woman.” I open my mouth to protest because good women do not cheat on their fiancés, they don’t blow up their careers by trusting and falling in love with assets that shouldn’t be trusted or loved, but Sonia forges on, cutting me off. “In your heart you know what you need to do.” She pushes a lock of hair behind my ear. “I know you will do what’s best.”
“You have so much faith in me.”
Sonia grins. “It’s because I’m brilliant, you know?”
I laugh, the panic I’ve felt all morning still there but eased a little by our connection. It is impossible to say how I will dig myself out of this mess, but I do know Sonia will be there as I climb.
I avoid my own gaze in the mirrored wall of the elevator as it descends.
My low heels echo in the cement parking structure, one story underground. Sonia’s building is one of the few that has this convenience, and she has two parking spots—her divorce settlement worked out for everyone. Not all relationships end badly.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise and I stop walking, my ears straining, my heart suddenly hammering. I am not alone.
I turn slowly, scanning the shadows between the cars, watching for movement around the pillars. A scuffling sound pulls my muscles taut. The fluorescent light above me flickers, dipping me into darkness and out again. My hand moves inside my open coat to my holster.
The lights wink out. I am in total darkness. Pulling my gun, I slowly breathe in, blinking, listening. With my free hand I find my phone and pull it out of my pocket.
Running footsteps coming straight at me.
I hit the flashlight app, holding the light up. A man is racing toward me, long hair wild, eyes flashing in the beam of my light. What the fuck?
“Freeze!” I yell, aiming my gun at his chest.
He stumbles to a stop, breathing heavy. His hands are empty. “There is someone after me,” he pants.
A red checkered shirt collar pokes out from under his tan canvas jacket. He’s wearing hiking boots and worn jeans. His dark hair is shoulder length, his skin pale, and beard patchy. Patchy’s eyes are bright…gleaming with intensity. He turns in a circle. “You’ll pay!” Patchy yells into the darkness.
He’s mentally ill. Why the fuck are the lights out? Patchy begins to reach into his jacket pocket. “Don’t,” I warn.
“You’re one of them,” he sneers, taking a step toward me, his hand still in his pocket.
As if my morning could get any worse, now I’m going to have to shoot someone! “It’s okay,” I say gently. “You’re okay, no one is after you.” Please don’t make me shoot you. Please come back on, lights!
A movement in the shadows behind him materializes. My breath catches in my throat. The figure moves with exquisitely fluid grace—if water hunted, this is what it would look like.
Patchy turns, his fist flinging out in a sloppy punch. The shadow ducks it easily, then comes up, striking a brutal uppercut. Patchy crashes backwards, landing in a jumble of limbs on the pavement.
My eyes root on the attacker, now exposed in my flashlight beam. Dan shrugs like a kid caught toilet papering a tree on Mischief Night. But he just knocked a man out with one punch. An uppercut no less.
Dan bends down and grabs Patchy’s feet, dragging him behind a pillar, shielded on both sides by parked cars. I follow, my heart rampaging in my chest. The lights flicker back on, illuminating the garage.
“He’s been following me,” Dan says, looking down at the prone figure. “I just planned to bring you a coffee. I wanted to see how it went with your sister. I’m sorry you had to get involved.” I feel his attention on my face but I’m staring at the man on the ground.
“Who is he?” I ask, spying part of a tattoo on his neck—it’s obscured by his shirt collar. Crouching down, I move the material aside. It’s an A with an automatic rifle in the place of one leg. I should photograph this but how do I explain where I found it…
“They call themselves the Action Men.” Dan makes a disgusted snort. “They think they are saving the world. They’re delusional.”
“I know about the Action Men, Dan,” I say, annoyance edging my voice.
“This idiot,” Dan says as he lowers down next to me and begins to pat the guy down, “is wrapped up in a dangerous conspiracy theory. His disappointment with himself, coupled with his fear and loathing for anyone different, has turned him into a powerful weapon.”
“Who’s deploying that weapon?” I ask.
“They seem to be deploying themselves—sharing information online in a new way since Billy Ray Titus’s death,” he says, referencing the recently deceased leader of a far-right faction of the men’s rights movement.
He was one of the most influential figures we tracked with Dan’s algorithms. Billy Ray Titus preached a toxic mix of misogyny and white supremacy, calling it pride and nationalism. He never used the term Action Men, but it was born in the wake of his death. They planned to take “action”. These guys were not known for their eloquent use of language.
“The group is getting crazier—less organized but more dangerous. Lone actors are harder to watch.” Dan pulls out Patchy’s wallet, pockets it, and then continues his search. He finds an ankle holster with a pistol in it.
A shiver of revulsion rises in my throat. “Dan.” My voice is low, and he meets my gaze. “I need those algorithms back. We need to know what’s going on.”
“You don’t need my algorithms to track what is happening on forums and social media, Consuela.” His voice is low and angry. “My algorithms help change minds. You have all the tech you need to find out what they are saying to each other.” He pauses, staring down at the Action Man. “They are sharing information in new ways; the fact that he could find me…”
The rumble of the parking lot’s metal security gate rising pulls both of our attention. “Go,” Dan says. “You’ll be late for your meeting with Declan already. I’ll take care of this guy.”
I shake my head, trying to parse out all the crazy in that sentence. Forget for a moment that Dan knows about my meeting with Declan, and recognizes I’ll be late. “What are you going to do with him?”
Dan’s brow furrows. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’m just going to…” His gaze tracks to where headlights are coming around the bend. “You need to go,” he says, pushing me toward my car.
He’s right.
I step out from our hiding spot. The vehicle comes around the bend as I unlock my car with a flash of headlights and a quick beep. The other driver waves, and I hold up a hand in return, forcing myself not to look back at the pillar concealing Dan.
Declan Doyle is in my office when I arrive…twenty minutes late for our meeting. “Sorry,” I apologize, hanging up my coat.
“No worries,” he says, from my worn couch where he’s made himself at home. “Everything okay? It’s not like you to be late.”
I give a tight nod, at once appreciating that he expects punctuality from me and annoyed that my tardiness opens a conversation about my well-being. Because I am not okay.
“I’m fine, had to drop off my sister’s cat. Let’s get started.” I take the armchair in front of my desk and pivot to face Declan on the couch.
“Okay.” He puts his phone down next to him, his gold watch slipping from under his starched cuff. Declan Doyle’s navy-blue suit is nicer than it should be, he has family money and uses it to great effect in the wardrobe department. His cufflinks are black obsidian, and his tie pin matches. With his amber honey colored skin, ruggedly handsome features and tailored suit, he looks like he should be walking in a GQ fashion show, not sitting on my crappy couch. “So what’s going on?”
“I wanted to bring you in on something.” He nods for me to continue. “I’ve made a deal with Sydney Rye.”
“A deal? How so?”
I explain the plan that Sydney and I hatched in Costa Rica.
Declan leans back into the couch, brown eyes wide. He takes a few deep breaths. “Amazing,” he finally says. “Let me just try to understand this a little more.” I nod. “You took the deal we made with Robert and basically reshaped it to work for Sydney. She is going to gather evidence against Robert, using the assets she inherited when he was playing dead—that’s quite brilliant, really.” His eyes lose focus. “Unlike Robert to leave such a hole.” He shakes his head as if clearing it. “Then, once you have gathered enough evidence of his wrongdoing, you’ll arrest Robert, and Sydney will get immunity for testifying against him.” I nod again. “Who signed off on this?”
“I got Judge Herlert to do it.”
“Herlert?” Declan nods because it makes sense. She would always rather get the bigger fish. “I still don’t think it will work.”
“Why not?” I ask, incredulous. “This is tight.”
“Not that tight, Consuela. Come on.” He sits forward. “I get what you’re trying to do here, but Robert is connected. I mean, really connected. Taking him down would mean implicating all the people who have protected him over the decades.”
“Exactly.”
Declan shakes his head. “I don’t know that you want to open that can of worms.”
“Obviously I do.” We stare at each other for a moment. “Do you think what we did was ethical?” I ask.
“I’m proud of the work we did.” Declan doesn’t even bristle. “Bringing down some of the most powerful international criminal organizations—I mean, Consuela, we killed it.” His eyes glint with pride as he leans back again, relaxed success personified.
“We basically sold a woman as chattel to do it.”
Declan shakes his head and waves a hand, as if to knock my assessment to the side. “Sydney can take care of herself, and Robert isn’t a monster.”
“Isn’t he? Can she? Do either of those things matter?” I’m sitting at the edge of my chair now, while Declan stays reclined on the couch.
He sighs, as if I’m being dramatic. “Consuela, you have to break a few eggs.”
“Sydney Rye is not an egg. She’s a person.”
His gaze darkens. “One person, who can handle herself—”
“Why shouldn’t we take down Robert Maxim?”
“I think you’ll find the answer to that as you try.” Declan stands, his long body unfolding with athletic grace. He looks down at me. “You may want to ask Richard why.” He begins to walk past me, heading for the door.
I stand. “What are you talking about?”
Declan, his hand on the doorknob, turns back to look at me. “Every politician wears a collar, Consuela. And Robert has a lot of leashes, ”
“What does that mean?”
“Ask your fiancé. Then see if this is something you still want to pursue. I’ll pass on joining the task force, though.” He opens the door and leaves, closing it behind him.
Coward. Can this morning get any crappier?
I sit down at my desk and power up my computer. I’ve got a half hour before I’m supposed to meet Sydney. I should call Richard and ask him about what Declan said…but…
Closing my eyes, I lean back in my chair. It creaks. I have to end it with Richard. I have to decide if I’m going to tell him about Dan. What excuse can I give him? It’s me, not you. A laugh bubbles up in my chest but by the time it makes it to my lips, the mirth has transformed into a sigh.
What is wrong with me?
My phone pings, and I open my eyes to see a message from the head of my tech team, Patrick Yellen, who has been babysitting the algorithms since Dan left. I open it.
Something is wrong.
I take a deep breath before picking up my phone. I chew on my lip, hating that I knew before Patrick and didn’t tell him. But obviously I couldn’t explain how I knew he’d be facing a shitshow when he got in to work this morning. Shoving my own feelings away, I dial his number. It’s time to search for solutions, not lament the past…