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Fifty-Five

FBI Office, Quantico, Virginia

Three days later, 9:50 AM Eastern Standard Time

Jack would probably be in meetings with the director of the FBI for the foreseeable future. While the director had given his approval for the operation, its traumatic ending necessitated some explanation. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to Jack, and I was feeling the weight of that burden on my shoulders. After all, I had been the one to suggest a meet between Frank and Michelle. My mind kept going around and around, trying to untangle it all. Even looking back, given what I’d known then, I probably would have suggested it all over again—that is, without knowing the outcome. We should have just moved on her when she walked in the door, but we’d blindly wanted to go for the confession, for the solid proof. If only we’d known just how much she wanted for this all to end, to see her mission through. It pained me to admit how right on the mark Kelly had been about her leaving breadcrumbs for us to follow. But things were always clearer looking backward. The calls between Frank and Michelle had become shorter and shorter. There was already a wedge growing between them. We’d failed to discern the meaning.

Jack had assigned me with the task of interviewing Michelle Evans, and I had yet to meet such an interesting—and conflicted—person. I’d sat down with her after we brought her in from the Regency to the Baltimore police station. Michelle was sitting in the interview room, shoulders and chin high when I entered.

“Frank Evans was the devil.” Michelle speaks with such clarity and definitiveness.

“He was also your father.” Ancestry Labs had confirmed such to Nadia. Michelle had sent a sample of her hair and Frank’s for comparison.

“That’s just DNA.” She traces a finger in a circle on the table. “I’ll only be my mother’s daughter.”

I let a few seconds pass in silence, then proceed to remove crime scene photos of Wise, Miller, Sherman, Reid, Marsha Doyle, and the two victims from the Baltimore motel. I set out each one slowly and facing her.

Michelle’s gaze goes to each one as I lay it down, and she touches the corners for every one but Doyle’s. She stops all movement, sitting there still and pale, like she’d been struck.

“Ms. Evans—”

“Please call me Ms. Foster, my mother’s maiden name.”

“Who killed her?” I gesture to Doyle’s photo, and Michelle pushes it toward me.

“The devil killed her.” She sniffles and refuses eye contact.

She’d led us to the location of the Glock G19 that had been used to murder Doyle and the M40 that she’d used for sniping. She claimed both had been bought off the street months ago.

I lift the picture of Doyle. “Did you and your father work together to kill the maid?”

“No!” she screams.

“What about them?” I point to the motel victims.

“Check the handgun for prints! You won’t find mine on it.”

I straighten, slowly. Herrera’s officers who went back to Marsha Doyle’s building found a witness who was able to positively ID Frank Evans as hanging around the building. I tend to believe that he pulled the trigger on Doyle. I’m not sure where I stand on the motel victims yet. Neither Frank or Michelle can be placed at the motel, but management wasn’t exactly being cooperative with us or the police.

I put a photo of Frank on the table.

Michelle snatches it and crumples it into a ball. “I hate that man.” Tears fall down her cheeks, but otherwise, she doesn’t look to be crying. “He put me up to all of this. He put it into my head that they needed to pay for what they did to my mother. My mother was nothing but good and sweet and kind.” She throws the photo, and it just misses the side of my head. “She believed in forgiveness. Frank was evil, a coward. He left us to fend for ourselves. Mom was devastated. I…I…”

“You what?” I say kindly.

“I grew up, joined the Marines, and tried to find him.”

“You wanted to know why he’d left.”

“I did.” A sickly-sweet admission carries on a honeycomb voice. “I sought—no, hungered for—his approval.”

“Did you ask him why he left when you saw him at your mother’s funeral?”

Michelle bites on her bottom lip and nods.

“And what did he tell you, Ms. Foster?”

Her eyes glisten at the name, and a brief smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “He told me it was the fault of these men.” She spits on the photos of her victims. “He said their actions set all the heartbreak into motion for our family, and it was time to hurt them.”

“But you sent hurtful photos to some of their widows,” I say. “Why hurt them?”

“I sent them to all of the women.” She meets my gaze.

So, some must not have mentioned them or received them for one reason or another.

“You had to know the pictures would hurt the women.” I still wish for an answer as to why she’d sent them.

“I thought that by knowing what kind of men their husbands were, I might ease their grief.”

I nod, stuffing down any remnants of my personal guilt into a dark, dark place inside of me.

She looks down at the photos of all the victims again, and I see both sorrow and satisfaction sweep across her face when her gaze touches the four who raped her mother. “It’s over now,” she says and closes her eyes.

“Brandon?” Kelly’s bark pulled me out of my recollection. From the way she was staring at me with her brows arched, she must have been trying to get my attention for a while.

“Yeah?”

“You okay over there?” She was sitting at her desk, what used to be Zach’s desk, near mine.

“I’m good.” If I said fine, she’d jump all over that and try to profile me. “Guess I don’t need to ask how your first case was.” The best way to shift the attention from oneself was to quickly direct it elsewhere.

“Not really.” She took a deep breath. “I keep thinking I should have known this was going to happen.”

I wasn’t about to admit the same thing. Call it a matter of pride. “Sometimes things go sideways.”

She met my eyes, and I realized how ridiculous that was to say.

“Do you think Jack’s going to be all right?” she asked.

“I sure hope so.”

Paige walked toward us, holding a coffee. “How was that for your first case with the BAU?”

Kelly looked from Paige to me. “We were just talking about that.”

“I bet it was nothing like working with the Miami PD,” Paige said.

“Not even close. I was just telling Brandon that I wished there was some way we could have known she was going to shoot him and stopped it. If we had, Frank would be still alive, and Jack wouldn’t be fighting on our behalf with the director.”

“You don’t need to worry about Jack.” Paige took a sip of her coffee. “You never have to worry about Jack.”

I wished I had her confidence, but I really didn’t want to question it. Let me go on thinking everything would be fine, that we crossed all the T’s, dotted all the I’s. I noticed the worry shadowing Kelly’s face and felt like I had to bolster the new girl. “You’re right, Paige.”

“Of course I am. I’m always right.” She smiled, but I could see a fracture in the expression—only because I knew her so well.

It had been a rough case, and it had caused a lot of self-reflection. Something I personally wasn’t a fan of, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We rarely grasped how our actions had far-reaching consequences—so many, we could never see coming. Like those men who’d raped Estella wouldn’t have seen their act avenged decades later. They probably never even considered the emotional destruction they’d wreaked upon Estella and a young family she’d come to lose—might not have even cared. Or the suffering of a young girl hungry to belong and coming to feel she didn’t even have the right to exist. Or the pain of a man that tore him from his family and made him plot murder.

Sometimes I thought a crystal ball would be nice, especially when the feelings of guilt and regret resurfaced, but maybe not seeing the future was a good thing. If we knew what was coming next, there’d be times we’d swerve, and by doing so, maybe we’d become stagnant, living in fear. We’d certainly avoid the journey, and while it might be safer—more comfortable even—there’d be no fun or growth in that.