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Diana
I pranced downstairs, scrolling through social media as I made my way into the kitchen. I wanted a soda. Or maybe a sparkling water. Oh, maybe there was an open bottle of wine I could syphon into a glass. I bounced down the stairs and started down the hallway, excited to get myself a snack and take it back upstairs. But the second those voices hit my ears, I stopped.
Ethan and the gang were sitting in the kitchen talking about something. And I immediately wanted to know what it was. The drink was forgotten as I stepped into the room, mindlessly walking around trying to make myself look busy. It was a room of the house I barely spent time in. Other than the occasional drink or snack whenever I was cooped up with nothing to do, I never came into the place. My father and I seldom ate at home, and if we did we always had something delivered. The three times my father attempted to cook, it hadn’t only been shit, it had been selfish.
The first time was when we celebrated my sixteenth birthday so he could take a picture for his re-election campaign, the second was when some other senators and their family came over and we had to play picture perfect, and the third was—well.
It was when he announced this fun little venture of running around with a security team.
I peeked up from my phone as I rested against the fridge and saw Ethan with his body hunched over the dining room table. Papers and envelopes were strewn all over the place and the three other guys sat around him, listening to him speak. He was still mumbling with that low voice of his. I couldn't figure out what he was saying. So, I opened the fridge to get myself that drink and walked over to the cabinet that held the glasses.
Which was much closer than the refrigerator.
“Mason, what have you found on the senator’s computer?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing. None of the emailed threats match up with the syntax or the aggression these letters have. I’ve sent the few to you that could possibly be related, but I don’t get the feeling they are. The timeline doesn’t add up, since they were all sent while the stream of letters came to the house. Not before. Which doesn’t fit with anything akin to escalation,” Mason said.
“Liam? What about the letters?” Ethan asked.
“The type of paper used is common. I mean, I could walk into any office store and buy it. Same with the envelopes. And I know you wanted me to run them for fingerprints, but there were none. Senator Logan’s were all over them, but there weren’t any others.”
“Not even smudged prints?” Ethan asked.
“Nope. Not even smudged ones. I did test a few of the envelopes for any latex or lambskin residue, and the latex tests came back inconclusive,” Liam said.
“What about the lambskin tests?” Mason asked.
“Nada. But the inconclusive could mean that latex residue was there at one point, and Senator Logan’s hands smudged it too much to confirm or deny. So, we might be looking at someone using rubber gloves,” Liam said.
My eyes crossed at all the technical details.
“Any luck tracing down anything from these damn letters?” Ethan asked.
My ears perked up at the sound of his voice. It was deeper. Rougher. More alert than usual. Not the nonchalant act I’d gotten out in public a few hours before. I reached for a cup and mindlessly opened my drink, keeping my ears fully trained on the conversation.
There was something in his voice that made me worried.
“The paper is too common, and the parts of the letter that are typed are nothing more than Times New Roman, one of the most common word processing fonts around. But, the handwriting does give us a way to chase some leads. I just haven’t done it yet,” Liam said.
“So, beyond that, the letters are useless,” Ethan said.
“Well, not quite. Since they’re all postmarked to the D.C. area, it means they’re filtering through the post offices. I’m working on pinpointing the postal station before I route myself into their security cameras. We can work back through the camera feeds to see if we can connect the dots that way,” Mason said.
Seems like a wild goose chase you guys are being paid a lot of money to do.
“Liam, I want you on the handwriting shit immediately. Mason, amp up your timeframe for those postal station security feeds. I want something to go on within the next couple of days. Because this latest postmark? It’s not good,” Ethan said.
Latest postmark? There was a new letter?
“When did it come in?” Liam asked.
“A few days ago. It’s the letter that sparked Senator Logan to come in and see me,” Ethan said.
“Then spit it out. What does it say?” Mason asked.
“‘Your lies will be exposed, your iniquities punished, until the next generation. You will be struck down with the righteous fury of justice.’.”
“Shit,” Liam said.
“The hell?” Mason asked.
“It sounds almost biblical, which means we could be dealing with a religious nut. And we all know how that ended the last time,” Ethan said.
Last time? What was the last time? Unto the next generation? Were they talking about me in that letter? What the hell had my father done to merit that kind of reaction? Signed a bad piece of paper?
A chill ran over my skin as I tossed the empty drink bottle into the sink. I grabbed my cup and put my face back into my phone, trying to ignore the chill running up my spine. It wasn’t the type of chill I enjoyed. Not by a long shot. I needed to get away from that conversation.
It was ridiculous anyway. My father was probably making it look like some crazy zealot was after them. They said so themselves that no other fingerprints other than my fathers were found on those letters. That was proof enough for me. He was sending himself some stupid ass letters and writing off business expenses to pay for a damn security team all to make himself look better in the polls. There wasn’t anything my father did during his day that merited some Old Testament revenge.
Still, there was something in Ethan’s voice that startled me.
“Okay. Mason, I want you to stop combing through the emails and help me with these letters. I want to pull out every reference that might indicate a threat to Diana. If she’s the real target, then we have to double-down security on her.”
I almost dropped my cup at his words. My father was playing a game with them, and I didn’t appreciate the insinuation that it was something more. They couldn't actually be serious, right? None of the things they were saying were facts. Just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. There wasn’t anything to these threats. For all we knew, my father was sending them to himself. And in the meantime, my father would get away with plausible deniability. Keeping me in the dark so I didn’t expose him for the idiot he was. But until then, it meant my fun little security guard would still be guarding me. Until they wised up and saw what my father was doing.
The game was afoot, and I knew exactly what my next play would be.
