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17

Caught

Vanessa

“Are you sure you didn’t say anything that could have clued them into our operations?” It was the third time Eddie had asked her in the last ten minutes. He was at the table alone. A notebook lay open on the surface, the pages covered with an unintelligible chicken scratch.

“Eddie, again, no. What could I have possibly said that would have given them even the smallest hint of what the Collective is up to? I don’t even know what the Collective is up to!” Vanessa threw her arms up, chest heaving as she glared at him. He had started in on his interrogation of her from the moment she had walked through the door of the Collective’s headquarters. He was hell bent on finding a reason for why the latest operation had failed, and why a woman that they had promised to save was taken before they could reach her. The extraction team had no choice but to watch from a distance as the woman was led away in cuffs by the very detectives that Vanessa had been tasked with keeping an eye on.

“It wasn’t even their district,” Eddie said, frowning as he flipped a page in the notebook, penciling in more notes halfway down the page.

Nausea rolled in her stomach. No matter how much she wracked her brain, she couldn’t recall a single thing that Detective Reid had said that could have clued her into him knowing about any of the Collective’s movements. “I thought we were in a blackout…”

Eddie scoffed, slamming his notebook shut and placing it in his lap. “One of these days you’re going to have to stop being so naive.” He didn’t look at her when he said it, instead spinning his chair around and slamming his palms onto the handrims with unnecessary force to propel himself over to his workstation. He fisted his fingers in his hair for a few seconds, letting out a frustrated grunt before he channeled his rage into his work with furious typing.

She turned away, walking into the kitchen where Liam was cooking eggs on the old stove. The counter dug into her lower back as she leaned next to him.

“Are you staying for lunch?” He glanced at her before returning his attention to his task.

“I don’t know what he expects. I’m doing the best that I can with those detectives, and with keeping an eye on Senator Ross,” she said in a low tone. A chill spread over her skin, sparking a wave of goose flesh down her arms as she thought of the woman in the hands of the police. She crossed her arms over her stomach, eyes beginning to sting. “I don’t know what he expects,” she repeated in a whisper.

“Don’t take it personally,” Liam said, quiet as her own words, “he doesn’t mean it.”

She shook her head.

“He’s just frustrated at the turn of events,” he added.

“I understand that, but why blame me? You two didn’t even tell me that we were active again.” Her chest ached at the thought that she could be judged untrustworthy by the organization that she had helped them create. Across the apartment, Eddie was flipping through his notebook, occasionally stopping on a page and typing something into his system. “Sometimes I hardly feel like I’m a part of this anymore.”

She swiped at her face, wiping away the tear that had landed on her cheek. She could understand, for the most part, why they had to keep her at a distance from Mrs. Ross’s interactions with the Collective. Given who she worked for, there were too many variables, but not for whatever new cases they were taking on in the meantime. She spent more time now with the Senator, and talking to the detectives, than she did with her friends. It was easy for her to focus only on what was in front of her when she wasn’t here, alone in a room that wasn’t empty.

Liam turned off the stove, dumping the food he had made into a bowl on the counter, and setting the pan in the sink before returning to her. He pulled her to him, his sweater impressing its weave on her cheek as he hugged her. “You know how he can get,” he said. “He’ll calm down. This case is hard on all of us.”

She pulled back, his hands remaining on her shoulders. “At least the two of you have each other,” she sniffed. She was being petulant, she knew, the bitter taste of her next words coating her tongue before she said them. “You left me all alone out there.”

Hurt crossed Liam’s features. “Vanessa—”

“I’m going to go, I’m just in the way here,” she said, shrugging off his hands and moving for the door despite his protests. She looked back at him before she left the apartment. “Let me know if I can actually be of any use at some point.”

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16

The Early Bird

Detective Reid

Reid’s late night call with the Operator, and the struggle to go back to sleep after, played havoc on his schedule. For the first time in over a year he was running late for work. An icy wind assaulted him as he walked down the street, burning his cheeks. The sky was filled with dark heavy clouds that cast his world in a dreary grayness. It was comforting, in a way, like nature had decided to wash away the facade of the city to reveal the world around him for what he already knew it to be: bleak and hopeless.

Crossing the street in front of the precinct, he dreaded the gloating that James would be sure to put him through once inside. The front doors opened as Reid stepped up to the curb, a shock of red breaking through the steely gray view and James leaned out of the entrance.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Reid said in return, “get it out of your system.”

“What? Oh, no, not that.” James tilted his head to the side. “Well, we’ll get into that later. A tip came in. The Iris Collective is back at it again.”

It was like he had forgotten how to breathe. He had just been talking to the Operator a few hours ago. How proficient of a liar was she to give him no indication that something was about to happen? His eyes moved back and forth as he replayed their conversation in his mind and wondered what from it, if anything, had been true.

“Yeah,” James said in response to his silence, “you picked the wrong morning to be late. Get your ass in here.”

Reid ran up the steps and through the door that James was holding open for him.

“They killed another husband?”

They were speed walking their way through the building to the bullpen.

“They tried,” James replied with a crooked smile.

“Tried?” The toe of his shoe caught on the carpet. He caught himself on James’s shoulder as they kept walking. They had never seen the Collective fail to remove the husband before, but then again, how many of the vigilante organization’s attempts did they even know about? “The husband is alive?”

“Alive,” James confirmed, “and pissed.”

Captain Gibson was talking on a phone outside of his office. He waved them over as soon as he saw them enter the bullpen.

“Hold on, Jackson,” he said, resting the phone on his shoulder as Reid and James stopped in front of him. “You filled him in?” he asked James, who nodded. “Good, I have uniforms controlling both scenes.”

“Both scenes?” Reid asked.

Captain Gibson glared at James.

The redhead shrugged, failing to control his smirk. “I mostly filled him in.”

“One here, one across the river. Captain Jackson of the six-oh-three was kind enough to hand it off to us,” Gibson explained, lifting the phone from his shoulder. “Get to work.” With that dismissal, he went back to his phone call with the captain of the other district.

Reid headed for his desk, unlocking the top drawer. He clipped his holstered gun to his belt, followed by his badge. James followed, grabbing the keys for Daisy from his own desk. He was already wearing his own gun in a shoulder holster, hit badge shining from his waistband. They made eye contact over their desks.

“So, they are operating in other districts.”

“Looks like it,” James replied.

“Why are there two scenes, more than four miles apart?”

“I have no idea,” James said as he pulled a coat over his green button down, and smiled. “Let’s go find out.”

The drive to the first scene was short, six blocks in the opposite direction of Reid’s apartment. They found what they were looking for on the side of Florida Avenue. A silver Buick was sitting halfway over the sidewalk, the front end on top of a lightpost. The light was laying down, the top end laying across the stoop of one of many row houses on the street. The front wheels of the car hovered a foot in the air, unable to touch the ground with the post wedged under the engine block. Oil coated the sidewalk.

James parked behind one of two police cruisers that were blocking off the scene. An elderly white man in a suit was yelling at the uniformed officers, gesticulating wildly.

“That’s the husband,” Reid asked with a grimace. The man looked old enough to have great grandchildren.

“Yeah, he doesn’t look very happy,” James said, cutting off the engine.

“Would you be, if it were your wife?”

James turned to Reid with a knowing look and smiled.

“I guess it’s a good thing I never got married.”

“More like, it’s a good thing you actually have a choice,” Reid countered, opening the passenger door. The man’s yells were easy to hear as they stepped out onto the street.

“I don’t care what your captain told you to do! You can’t keep me here! I have rights!”

Reid almost laughed. James did laugh.

One of the beat cops made his way over to them, an expression of relief flooding his face. “About time,” he said in a gruff tone. He was fifteen years their senior, with old boxcar scars on his skin that gave him an especially dogged appearance.

“Can’t handle a little old man, Howards?” James loved to needle the old cop.

“I’d love to handle him, the miserable old bastard. I’m sure I could show him a thing or two,” Howards said, glaring back at the old man that was now laying into a rookie officer in the absence of any other targets, “but Cap’t said he’s all yours.”

“Oh, goodie,” James said.

“What have we got,” Reid asked.

“Man is Gerald Evans. Said his car stopped responding, no brakes or steering, causing him to jump the curb and hit the pole. We found this.” Howards walked over to one of the cruisers, reaching through the open front passenger door to grab something sitting on the seat, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger. It was a small memory stick, no bigger than the eraser top of a pencil. “It was plugged into the car’s computer.”

James made a noise of annoyance, pulling an empty evidence bag from his pocket. He held the open end of the bag out to Howards, who dropped the device in. “Maybe don’t handle the evidence without gloves next time,” he said as he removed the strip over the adhesive and sealed the bag shut.

“Whatever,” Howards grumbled.

“It’s not whatever,” Reid said, echoing James’s annoyance at the officer. “You probably destroyed any prints that may have been on it. Do you know how hard it’s been to get ahead on this case? The last thing we need is some careless beater fucking it all—”

“Who are they?”

Reid, James, and Howards turned around. The old man was staring at them, his question having been directed at the flustered rookie cop he had previously been yelling at. Reid walked over to the man, holding out his hand.

“Mr. Evans, I’m Detective Charles Reid. This is my partner, Detective Jamison.”

The old man recoiled from Reid’s hand like he was being offered a rotting piece of roadkill instead of a handshake. He sneered as he looked Reid up and down, and spit on the ground an inch from Reid’s scuffed brown shoes.

“I won’t be talking to any Arabs,” he said, to the rookie, not to Reid.

The rookie officer smirked, and James took a step towards the ancient husband.

“Hey!”

Reid held up a hand to shut James up, smiling at the old man, and tracing the back of his teeth with his tongue. He tapped the fingers of his other hand on the side of his thigh, one at a time until he reached five, and then he spoke. “Officer Howards.”

“Detective,” Howards responded from behind him.

“I’m granting your wish.”

The old man’s glaring eyes shifted from Reid, to Howards, and back again.

“Please escort Mr. Evans back to the precinct,” Reid said. He broke eye contact with the old bigot and walked back toward James’s car, stopping to clap a hand on Howards’s shoulder as he passed him. “Take the scenic route.”

A new glee awoke in Howards’s eyes. “My pleasure,” he said.

Reid got into the passenger seat of the car, joined in quick order by James, who slammed the driverside door harder than necessary, breathing heavy.

Reid raised an eyebrow at him. “You good?”

“Let’s just get to the other scene.”

As James pulled the car out from behind the cruiser, they had one last glimpse of officer Howards shoving the old man against the side of his patrol car as they pulled away. The smile that spread over Reid’s face was impossible to control, really.

“So,” James started a few minutes into the drive, “why were you late?”

Reid considered what to tell him, if anything. Oh, no reason, other than staying up late to have an unrecorded bleeding heart conversation with the woman he was supposed to be investigating. That conversation would go over well.

“Couldn’t sleep. You know how it is.”

James gave him a side glance, his face saying without words that he didn’t believe the excuse, but he let the subject drop without protest.

A pang of guilt echoed Reid’s chest. James was right, he didn’t trust him, but how could he? In the nineteen years since Wilkins was elected, he’d gone through more than ten different partners before James had transferred into the precinct. He tried not to think of the first, and the rest lasted less than a year each. Nobody wanted to be partnered with the only brown cop in the district. Eventually there would come a day that he and James’s partnership came to an end, and he would pay the higher price, as he always did. Cursed from the first was the popular slogan, if he recalled correctly.

The drive across the river continued on in silence until James pulled the car over in a modest neighborhood. A single police cruiser was sitting in front of a red brick house, and a few neighbors were lingering about on the stoops and sidewalks, trying to get a look at what was happening at the home.

“Damn rubber-necks.”

They exited the car and climbed the front steps of the home, ringing the bell to be let in by the officer inside.

“It’s just you here?” Reid asked. “They had two on the old man.”

The patrolman shrugged. “My partner’s with the suspect. Hasn’t been all that much to do here.” He turned and led them to the living room of the home, where another officer was standing inside the door. Sitting on a sofa in the center of the room, was a nervous young woman.

“Jesus.”

James had said it under his breath, but the silence in the room assured that everyone heard it. Reid couldn’t agree more. In front of them was a woman who looked like she was still a week shy of her eighteenth birthday. She wore a pretty yellow sweater dress, but it didn’t hide the fading bruise above her collarbone, or her swollen left cheek that was maroon with broken blood vessels. Her eyes, red and puffy with her tears, stared at them with undisguised fear.

A white hot inferno roared inside of him when she pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, causing her sleeve to fall. On the skin of her wrist was a red ring, raw and scabbed. The old man had bound her.

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15

Wake Up And Smell The Contradictions

Vanessa

The vibrating cell phone cast a glow so bright that she could feel it through her eyelids. She groaned and pulled the comforter over her head, sinking into the warmth under the heavy blanket to escape the chill of the room. She had been sleeping like the dead, a rare occurrence for her these days, until the nuisance on the nightstand had started its drumming. The hollow buzzing, amplified by the wood of the bedside table, stopped after a minute. Her muscles relaxed, mind drifted, and soon she was on the edge of a pleasant unconsciousness. Then it started again.

Growling out a sigh, the air of the room was like ice as she reached an arm from under the covers. It took a few slaps on the nightstand for her hand to find its target, and she pulled the phone into the warm pocket under the blanket as soon as it was in hand. Squinting against the searing light, she slid a finger across the bottom of the screen and tucked the glass against her cheek.

“Hello?” Her voice cracked like dried mud.

“Operator.”

Like the flip of a light switch, her mind went from semi-sleep to alert when she heard the relieved voice of Detective Reid in her ear.

“Long time,” the man said. “Did I strike a nerve in our last conversation?”

There was no animosity in his voice, but she resented him throwing her words back at her all the same. She had been visiting Eddie and Liam the last time she had talked to the detective, having to report in on everything she had observed at the event for the Prime Minister the night before, which wasn’t much. The Americans complained about the Indians, the Indians complained about the Americans, and they all pretended to be civil to each other’s faces. On Senator Ross’s arm she was able to make small talk with many dignitaries, foreign and domestic, but they never made it within twenty feet of President Wilkins or Prime Minister Das. If she didn’t know any better, she would think that Ross was avoiding the possibility of an interaction with the world leaders, something for which she was grateful. As much as Eddie would have loved to know what the two most powerful men in the room talked about that night, Vanessa was happy to keep her distance. Wilkins and Das were two sides of the same coin, and both sides scared the shit out of her.

Detective Reid’s morning call had interrupted her and Eddie’s discussion of the dinner party, and was put to an end in a hurry when Eddie noticed the direction the call was going. She hung up as soon as he told her to do so. In the week since, she had avoided any calls from the detective, and would have continued to do so had she thought to check who was calling before answering the phone tonight. Her exhaustion could take the blame on this one.

“I don’t see the point in engaging in a one-sided conversation, Detective.” She spoke in a low tone despite being alone in her apartment. “What time is it?”

“About that…” His voice had an echoing quality to it. “I want to apologize.”

“For calling at this ungodly hour, or for acting like an ass?”

He chuckled. “Both, I guess,” he answered. “My family is everything to me. I can’t see straight when I think anything bad might happen to them.”

Silence filled the call as she contemplated his apology. It sounded sincere enough, but she wouldn’t put it past the detective to do anything to try to gain her trust back or trick her. Even so, she was harboring her own guilt about her role in their last few interactions. She had relished in shoving his hypocrisy in his face, hoping to shatter the glass house he was living in, but she hadn’t meant to make him believe that his wife and son were in any danger. In retrospect, she imagined that she would have had a similar reaction to him were she in his shoes, maybe worse. Between the detective’s duplicity and the rescue of her by the Senators at the party, she wasn’t so sure she knew anymore where good stopped and evil began.

“You could get yourself killed with that temper.”

“I know,” he sighed. “James laid into me pretty good after everything.”

She smiled at the image, and interjected before Reid could say anything that may make her change her mind. “I’m sorry too. It wasn’t my intention to make you believe that your family was in danger. I can promise you that we never have, and never will, come anywhere near them without your knowledge. Though,” she added as an afterthought, “I’m still going to count you flying off the handle as a point for my team.”

“What?” he asked her in confusion.

“Oh, I guess I’ve never told anyone about that. It’s stupid.” Her face burned. “I like to keep a tally for each time we get one over on each other. It… keeps things interesting… I guess.” Her voice puttered out like a spent candle. It was as if she had just revealed herself to be too immature for the reality that she found herself in, and maybe she was. Eddie and Liam may be her age, but every other player in their game had at least a decade on them.

“Oh, right,” he responded fast and without judgement. “James has something like that too. He has you in a dead heat. I suspect he’s taking bets about it on the side, with the other officers. You two would probably get along well, actually.”

Relief warmed her chest. “Well, we’re up by two, so I’m not sure how well we’d really get along. He can’t even count to two.”

Reid’s laughter rang out in her ear, and she smiled.

“What could he possibly think gave you guys a two point bump?”

“You think I’m going to tell you? That would destroy our advantage,” he said with amusement.

“No,” she laughed, “I suppose that would be too easy.”

Their laughter faded, replaced by another moment of silence. In a million years she never would have imagined having a companionable silence with the austere detective, but then, unexpected experiences with the men in her life were becoming increasingly common. She decided it best to take advantage of his sudden bout of good will, whether real or strategic on his part.

“Can I ask you something, Detective?”

“Sure,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.

“Is it hard for you… to do this job?”

He sighed, and she wondered if he felt conflicted in the same way with the two lives that he was living; that of the oppressor, and of the oppressed.

“Sometimes,” he answered.

She waited for him to elaborate, holding her breath, but received nothing but his silence in return. When she opened her mouth to ask him if he was still there, he finally spoke.

“They acted like I should be grateful to be given the choice.” He paused again, his voice distant in a way that had nothing to do without however far away he was from her. “Stay on the job, follow orders, and my family would be safe from the horrors of the ghettos. Rock the boat…” He didn’t finish the thought, leaving her with the implication before he continued. “It wasn’t a choice, not really.”

The underside of her comforter was a dark abyss as she searched for the right response to his confession. None of the words that filtered through her mind seemed appropriate when held up against the gravity of what he had just told her. He saved her from her indecision as he continued on again.

“I think the worst part is having no one that I can talk to about it. I can’t burden Amina with my demons. She already does so much for our family, and I won’t add to her troubles.” His voice grew quieter still. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you.”

“I can only imagine what it’s like, to police those who are like you.”

She cringed as soon as the words left her mouth.

“I do what I have to to protect my family,” he said with a hard voice. “I seem to recall a remark from you about your family being unworthy of their lives as well.”

“I’m not like you,” she said in response to his implication, and she wanted to believe it. “I didn’t sell my soul to save them.”

“Didn’t you,” he asked. “I don’t recall murder being particularly good for one’s soul.”

She listened to his heavy breathing on the other end of the line. It seemed that the Detective’s period of good will had expired.

“It may not be,” she said, “but we kill the monsters that prey on the weak. We don’t help them to commit their horrors.”

“It must be nice,” he said in a wistful tone that was dripping with his insincerity, “to live a life without contradiction.”

“Ha!” The exclamation burst from her before she could stop herself. No contradiction? If only that were the case. Her head was full of so many contradictions that she often found herself worrying about her ability to continue keeping it all straight. She knew there would come a day when she would say the wrong thing to the wrong person, or would act the wrong way in the wrong situation, and that would be it for her. Not a possibility, but an inevitability. Her life, what little of it that belonged to her alone, would be over. Just like that. It was a day she lived in constant fear of.

“I really wish it were that simple,” she whispered.

His response was not immediate, but it came without animosity.

“I believe you.”

“Ouch.” One corner of her mouth lifted. “Bet that hurt to say out loud.”

He laughed, and she heard the strange echo she had noticed at the start of the call.

“Where are you?”

“The stairwell. I didn’t want to wake Amina.”

“Not at the precinct?” Surprise lifted her eyebrows. “Is that allowed?”

“You weren’t answering when I called from there,” he explained.

“Well, I only answered at this hour because I forgot to check who was calling. Don’t count on it happening again.”

“I guess I should take advantage of my good fortune, then,” he joked.

“You haven’t already?”

A smile colored his voice as he asked, “What’s the Collective up to these days?”

She rolled her eyes, sighing through her own smile. “Goodnight, Detective.”

“Will you answer my next call?”

“We’ll see,” she said, and hung up the phone.

The screen indicated the time to be ten past three in the morning, and she pulled the covers tighter around her body. If she was lucky, she might be able to get another hour of sleep before her alarm for work would go off.

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14

The Reid Technique

Detective Reid

Reid entered the precinct the next morning with a fire he hadn’t felt for a case in some time. After his conversation with the Operator the previous night, he was more determined than ever to catch her, however many others worked with her, and then burn her little organization to the ground. He entered the precinct to find James already in, eating something greasy at his desk. He didn’t acknowledge the fact that this was the first time he had seen James in the building before the start of their shift.

“Let’s go,” Reid called to him as he approached their desks.

“Oh… kay,” James responded in confusion, shoving the last of his breakfast sandwich into his mouth before grabbing his notes and following Reid into the conference room. The recording tech was already in the room, a younger heavyset man with rosy cheeks and curly hair of a mousy brown color. He was setting up the equipment they used to record any of the calls they had with the Operator. He looked like a teenager.

“Dial me in,” Reid ordered the tech as he walked in.

The kid jumped in surprise at the sudden appearance of the detectives, and hurried to finish routing the phone through his recording equipment.

“Reid, what’s going on?” James asked him while they waited for the tech to finish. “You run out of here like a bat out of hell yesterday, and now—”

“Shh,” Reid held up a hand to silence his partner as the tech started the call. The phone sat ringing on the table between them. He didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say right now, least of all James, his temper already on a hair trigger. The other detective opened his mouth to start arguing with him again, but was interrupted by the sound of the call being answered on the other end of the line.

“Detec—”

“Who are you working for?” Reid demanded. He wouldn’t be giving the Operator the chance to dive into the usual games she liked to play with them.

James looked at him with surprise and confusion. This wasn’t the strategy that they had agreed to take when it came to their conversations with the mysterious woman, but he could not care less about playing by her rules anymore. As far as he was concerned, she threw the rulebook out the window of her own accord when she decided to bring his family into the conversation.

“It seems I struck a n—”

“How many are in your organization?”

“Why would I—”

“Where are the headquarters of The Iris Collective?”

He fired off his questions without giving her the opportunity to collect her thoughts, let alone the time to answer them.

“Reid,” James started in with a whispered tone of warning.

Reid ignored him and directed another question at the woman on the phone.

“Why did the Collective go quiet for the last month?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she shot out quickly.

Her voice sounded flustered. Good.

“Tell me what you’re planning.”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“I…”

“Tell me your name.”

“No!”

“Who are you? Who’s in the Collective?”

“Stop—”

“Who’s your next target, Operator? Tell us!”

“You,” she began, and stopped, this time pausing due to an interruption on her end. A muffled sound came from the phone on the table, and the line went dead.

“What the hell, Reid?” James started in on him as soon as they heard the call end. “What was that? Are you trying to burn the only lead we’ve got?”

“You got that?” Reid asked the tech.

“Yep, all eighteen seconds.”

“Why did the call end? Was that us?”

“Nope,” the tech responded, not looking up from his laptop. “The call was definitely disconnected from her end.”

“What was that at the end, just before she hung up?” He was sure he had heard something.

The tech pressed a combination of buttons, then played the audio, the sound now directed through the speakers instead of his headphones. Reid listened, but didn’t hear anything.

“Replay it.”

The tech maxed the volume and played the audio back again. There was a sound, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

“Great,” James deadpanned. “That was worth it.”

The tech pulled his headphones on again and fiddled with something on the screen, replaying the half second of audio several times. The sound didn’t play in the speakers again.

“This is the best I can do with this system,” he said, lifting his headphones off and holding them out to Reid. “I can clean it up more when I get back to the equipment in my office, but it definitely sounds like another person to me.”

Reid accepted the headphones and put them over his ears, nodding to the tech to play the recording. He listened to the blip on the recording replay several times. He squinted, as if the act could help his ears to function more efficiently. He wasn’t sure how the tech could hear a voice in the recording. All he was hearing was a loud hissing sound of air, with the barest hint of muffled notes coming through underneath all the interference. If he hadn’t already known there was something to hear, besides the hissing, he wouldn’t have caught it at all. He still wasn’t sure he actually was hearing it, or if he was imagining it because he wanted to believe it was there.

He took off the headphones, and James grabbed them from his hands, placing them over his head with a glare at Reid. He took them off and tossed them onto the table after a few seconds. The tech tried, and failed, to catch them before they skittered over the edge.

“That’s great, Reid. What if she never talks to us again, and that’s all we’re left with?” He pointed at the laptop with the miniscule audio blip. “That’s nothing!”

James could be right. If he burned this connection, that was it for him. It was too big of a case to fumble without consequence. He turned to the tech again.

“How sure are you that it’s a voice, and that you can clean it up enough for us to hear it?”

“Mm,” the tech looked up to the ceiling tiles as he thought about it. “eighty-sixty?”

“Are you asking us?” James asked.

“No, sorry. I get surveillance stuff like this all the time. I’m positive that it’s a voice, and that I clean up the recording enough to be able to hear it.”

Reid sighed. “Ok. Clean it up and bring it straight to us when you’re done with it.”

“You got it, boss.”

James watched the tech with an annoyed expression while he packed up his equipment and left the room. Reid made to leave the conference room after the tech, but felt James grab his arm to stop him.

“Reid, stop,” he said, and reached in front of him to shut the door to the conference room. “Tell me what’s going on. I’m your partner.”

He sighed and turned to face the other man, but said nothing.

“Really?” James shook his head in exasperation. “You can’t do this on your own, man.”

“What do you know about it?” Reid rebuffed.

“What? You think my pasty, pale complexion blinds me to everything around us?” James waved a hand in a circle in front of his face.

Reid scoffed at him. “Don’t pretend you know what it’s like to be me.”

“I’m not. I’m just telling you that I have eyes that can see, and ears that can hear. You think I don’t know that I’m the only one here willing to partner with you? You think Captain didn’t warn me when he assigned me to be your partner when I transferred over? You don’t think I’ve noticed in the last two years that no one in this whole damn precinct, outside of me and the captain, will even talk to you? Hmm?”

Reid glared at the carpet.

“You’re here because you solve cases. What exactly do you think happens if we bomb this case, or if I’m reassigned?”

“If you don’t want to be here,” Reid said tightly, “request another transfer. Captain’s office is just outside this door.”

“Jesus Christ, man,” James was almost laughing in his exasperation. “You don’t want to trust me, fine. I listened to the recording from the call last night.”

Reid looked away and shook his head.

“What did you expect me to do when you refuse to ever tell me anything? God! You’re like the worst partner ever!” James paced to the other side of the room, his hands on his hips. He leaned his head back and let out a defeated laugh, running his tensed hands through his hair. The copper locks fell into his face as they were dislodged from where they had been tucked behind his ears.

“I could have said the same thing about you.” Reid’s quiet voice filled the silence that was left behind after the tirade.

James turned around to look at him with a dumbfounded expression.

Reid stared back apathetically.

The clock on the wall ticked the seconds away.

James’s lip twitched, but Reid broke first. They laughed long and hard, harder than Reid had laughed in years. His stomach hurt, and he was wiping tears from his eyes by the time Captain Gibson was banging on the door of the conference room, telling them to get back to work.

“God, you’re the worst,” James said with a chuckle, wiping his eyes with the backs of his thumbs.

“I know,” he said as he tried to avoid another fit of laughter. “I’m just so sick of playing her little games. The Operator,” he said her title with derision. “We’ve talked to her how many times now, and we haven’t learned anything new since the first call? We don’t know what they’re up to, how many of them there are, where they’re operating from, or if they’re even in this city. If they’re still killing, we certainly haven’t noticed. We can’t play defense anymore. It’s time to go on offense.”

The smile left James’s face. “Is your family ok?”

“Yeah, they’re fine.”

“That’s good.”

They moved out of the conference room, to a few curious glances from the others in the bullpen, and made their way over to their desks.

“So,” James said, plopping down in his desk chair and leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head. His shirt stretched taut over his stomach, pulling on the buttons and causing the fabric to bend in the space between. “You just thought you’d try out your little offensive play without informing me or Captain? Are you insane?”

Reid smiled. He would have thought the same thing had it been James who steamrolled the call.

“Worked, didn’t it?”

“Well, she hung up, so no.”

“Yeah, but she hung up because of something on her end. The tech will clean up the audio.”

James looked at him with mild disgust. “You put too much trust in that kid.”

“What? You don’t trust the squints?”

The redhead’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Wow, Charles Reid, that’s racist.”

Reid’s mouth fell open, “What? No! He’s not even Asian!”

“Right,” James said, “And I’m not a ginger.”

“I meant like that old show.”

James gave him a disbelieving look.

“Oh come on, you must have seen it. The FBI guy in it, he calls the scientists and tech guys ‘squints,’ because… they squint at things.”

James grimaced and sat up to start going through the paperwork on his desk.

The more Reid tried to explain the expression, the worse he felt he was making himself appear, until the corner of James’s mouth twitched.

“Oh, fuck you!” He collapsed against the back of his chair, causing it to lean back suddenly and giving himself a momentary panic that he was going to fall.

“No thanks, I’m saving myself for someone pretty.”

Reid glared at him.

James laughed. “Racial epithets… Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Oh, please,” Reid said, shame burning his neck. “Like I haven’t heard what everyone here says about me.”

James moved a stack of handwritten notes onto a stand next to his computer screen and started typing them into the system.

“You should hear what they say behind your back.”

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13

“Friendly Rivalry”

Vanessa

“That’s your job, remember?”

“I’ll kill you myself! You hear m—”

Vanessa jerked her head to the side to avoid the detective’s yelling in her ear, and hung up the phone. She was standing in the atrium of the Waldorf, where a number of people were scattered throughout the space. A nearby couple was staring at her with open curiosity.

“Politics,” she said to them, holding up her phone with an awkward smile. “It never seems to end.” The couple smiled in understanding, turning back to their conversation. Vanessa sighed as she retreated from them. Those in the government were nosey at the best of the times, always trying to get a leg up on their peers.

The atrium was pleasantly warm, despite the chill of the autumn air outside. She was attending a dinner party, being held in honor of a visit from the Indian Prime Minister, Dayaram Das.

The Indian government was closely allied with President Wilkins’s administration, sharing many similar policies and beliefs. Where Wilkins believed his race was meant to be dominant in this country, Das believed the same of his own race in his country, and put a number of restrictions against any who were deemed less worthy. Either man would be persecuted for existing in each other’s home states were it not for their political status; a contradiction that they chose to never acknowledge. Though, Vanessa couldn’t recall a time that Wilkins had deigned to visit Das in India. The President rarely ventured outside the borders of the city, let alone the country. If any world leaders wanted to do business with Wilkins in person, they had to come to him.

Not one to squander an opportunity to show off the wealth and splendor of his administration, the President had invited delegates from several more close allies of the United States to join in on the fun. In attendance were several hundred delegates from various nations, including Denmark, Russia, Turkey, Sweden, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and of course, India. Even Japan had sent a small group of representatives.

Three days ago, Senator Ross had handed her a heavy binder that was filled with the pictures of all foreign delegates who would be in attendance, along with bullet point summaries of everything they knew about them. She did her best to memorize as much of the information as possible, but hadn’t made it more than halfway through the more than five hundred page document in the time available to her. This was the first political social event that she had been encouraged to attend since joining Senator Ross’s staff.

It was much as she expected it to be, with the powerful men in attendance taking the opportunity to discuss policies and deals that they were all hoping to make progress on. Many agreements would be made tonight, over the dinner plates and endless drinks. Time would tell if they still held firm in the sobriety of the morning. What Vanessa hadn’t expected was the number of men that were treating the event as an opportunity to act like hormone-riddled frat boys looking to add notches to their bedposts. She had fended off no less than six drunken advances before the detective’s call gave her an excuse to get out of the dining hall.

Vanessa slowed as she spotted two of the esteemed foreign dignitaries darkening the atrium with their presence. They had a member of the waitstaff cornered between them. The girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen, while the two men were easily in their fifties, and drunk. She didn’t recognize them from the names and pictures she had managed to read in the dossier, but she had no trouble placing their accents. One was a delegate from India, the other was speaking the King’s English. Coming to a stop, she kept her distance—not wanting to intervene for the trouble it would surely bring her, but not wanting to leave the girl on her own with the men either.

“I really should be getting back to work,” the girl said, followed by a nervous laugh. She was hugging an empty serving tray to her chest like a piece of armor. The men were holding the drinks that had no doubt been on the tray when the girl first arrived. The girl made to move forward, but the man on her left stuck out his arm to prevent her from going any further.

“You don’t have to leave so soon,” the man said, his eyes looking everywhere but the girl’s face.

“I thought American women were supposed to be more outgoing,” said the other. Their laughter filled the air.

“I can’t get involved,” Vanessa mumbled, but before she could turn away, the girl’s eyes made contact with hers, a silent plea. She hesitated another moment, until one of the men swept the girl’s hair aside and leaned his face into her neck.

Her legs were moving before she knew what she was doing, heading straight for the group, but not before the girl reacted. She shoved the tray she was holding at the man to push him away, causing the drink he was holding to spill amber liquid down the front of his expensive tailored suit. He dropped the crystal tumbler in his surprise, and it shattered magnificently, scattering the sparkling shards across the dark polished stone floor. The second dignitary grabbed the girl’s arm to stop her from leaving, the man with the liquor soaked suit stepping toward her with a furious look in his eyes.

“You little bitch!”

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt.”

The two men directed their anger at Vanessa. She kept her eyes on the girl that stood between them, lest she lose her nerve. The girl’s wide eyes stared back with undisguised fear and desperation. Vanessa smiled at her.

“Senator Ross would like another glass of the cabernet when you have a chance.”

The waitress gave her a confused look, and Vanessa raised her eyebrows in an impatient fashion. “I’m sorry, are you hard of hearing?” She willed the girl to take the out.

“Oh!” the girl said, standing straighter. “Of course, Miss, I’ll take care of it right away!” She stepped out from between the two men, but the one with a hold on her arm pulled her back to them.

“What the hell,” he said, holding onto the girl like a possession while he glared at Vanessa. “There’s staff all over this building. Find someone else.”

She couldn’t argue with that logic, but as luck would have it, she didn’t have to.

“Vanessa!”

She spun around. Senator Ross, Senator Barron, and Ross’s chief of staff, Grant Cooper, were walking toward her from the direction of the doors that led into the building. Dressed in crisp black tuxedos and stern expressions, they exuded an impressive authoritative air as they crossed the atrium, purpose in their strides.

“Senator,” she greeted him with a breath of surprise as the three men stopped in front of her.

“Do we have a problem, gentlemen?” Ross looked to each of the dignitaries in turn, and then pointedly down at the waitress’s arm, still held in a tight grip. The man dropped his hold on the girl.

“No,” he said, voice terse. His companion said nothing. “Perhaps a dance with your girl then, if the staff are off limits?”

Vanessa’s stomach dropped as the man leered at her, and she felt someone step close to her back.

“By all means,” Ross said as Grant strode with a lazy air to stand behind the men, “you’re welcome to take the risk.”

The man, who had been watching Grant from the corner of his eye, looked at Ross, eyes narrowing. He glanced over her shoulder before giving Ross a smile. “Perhaps not.”

“Wise choice.”

Grant stepped forward, a grin on his face as he slapped his hands onto the shoulders of the men. “Come on, gents, let’s get you a new drink.”

The men looked annoyed, but after a moment they straightened their jackets and began to walk in the direction of the bar. Vanessa moved out of the way to let them pass. Grant, stopping beside her, leaned in with a smirk and bumped her shoulder.

“You’re insane,” he whispered, before following the troublesome men to the bar.

He sounded… proud. It was the first time that Grant had said something so generous to her. She watched him go. It wasn’t until he and the dignitaries had reached the bar that she had enough courage to face the rest of the group that remained. Senator Ross was talking in hushed tones with the young waitress, his hands in his pockets.

“You’re sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, sir.” The girl was shaking, her eyes bright, but she nodded.

“I can talk to your boss,” he said, “get you the rest of the night off.”

“No,” she said in a rush. She took a deep breath. “No, sir. Thank you.”

“Ok,” he smiled. “Off you go.”

The girl mouthed a silent thank you to Vanessa as she passed her by, the corner of Vanessa’s lips twitching in acknowledgement of the gratitude. Then the girl was done, and she was alone with the two Senators, one of which wore a stern expression.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Ross, flinching to the side when something touched her neck. Her chest struggled to fight the chill that had taken over at the unexpected contact. Barron was holding the white rosebud that she had purchased from the flower vendor, an apologetic look on his face. She reached up to touch her hair where it had been.

“It was falling out,” he said in explanation. “Allow me.”

She held still as a statue, not daring to breathe as he reached over her bare shoulder to return the flower to her hair, the sleeve of his jacket brushing against her skin. He was gentle, purposeful, fingers running down a wisp of her hair as he pulled his hand away before taking a step back.

“There,” he whispered, a soft smile playing on his lips. He turned his head and nodded at the older Senator.

“Barron,” Senator Ross acknowledged with his own nod.

She and Ross watched the blonde man walk away, back to the entrance of the building to return to the party. She wished he would have stayed, to have a witness to her termination, if anything.

“Senator—”

“Are you ok?”

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Vanessa.”

“I didn’t mean to get involved, but I saw that girl, and what those men were doing and—”

“Vanessa!”

She stopped.

Ross looked down at her with a furrowed brow, face devoid of any of the anger she had expected to see. “Are you alright,” he asked again.

It was far too many seconds before she realized that she was gawking at him. “You’re not angry?”

He grinned.

“God, no,” he laughed. “Any chance to get one over on our illustrious allies.”

“What? Why?”

He shrugged as he searched for the words, settling on, “For fun.”

She grimaced. “Is this some macho thing that I’m too feminine to understand?”

He laughed again.

“No. Well, maybe. These functions are terribly boring, so we invite in a little friendly rivalry, provided nothing gets too out of control.”

She hated to ask, but she wanted to know. “What exactly would constitute ‘too out of control’?”

Ross looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think you want the answer to that, my dear.”

She shivered. “Will we get into trouble for stopping them?”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. They’ll be reluctant to admit their defeat at the hands of some Americans, let alone a woman.”

“Please,” she scoffed, “as if I did anything to change their actions. They only stopped because of you, and even then…”

“Don’t discount your involvement, and don’t worry about them. They’ll find a way to get us back in some fashion before the night is over.”

She hugged herself, sick at the idea that rescuing one girl may have doomed another to her fate. She wanted to argue about the women being allowed to be used as fodder for the games of the men in attendance, but having pushed her luck enough for one night, she chose a less perilous path.

“How did you know what was happening?” The curiosity in regard to his perfect timing was burning at her.

He reached out, resting a warm hand on her shoulder, and turned her with him to face one of the many bright windows that lined the perimeter of the atrium before dropping his hand to his side. Their reflections stared back, lit by the much brighter interior of the building, which gave her silver blue dress a golden cast. The incandescent lights at the top of the atrium reflected off of the glass in a thousand golden orbs. It reminded her of Christmas.

Turning his head back to her, he raised his hand in front of himself, letting it fall forward at the wrist until he was pointing at the window. He raised an eyebrow and looked back in the direction that he was pointing. Beyond the little orbs of light that danced on the glass, there was an unobstructed view into the dining hall where the party was being held. Senator Barron walked into view, making his way between the tables until he reached one halfway into the space, approximately thirty feet from the window that they were watching him through. He shook the hand of a man at the table, the Indian ambassador, then put a hand on his chest and said something while smiling his charming smile. An apology, if she had to guess. His eyes glanced up, finding hers. He winked at her before going back to schmoozing with the other political figures at the table.

“Oh,” she said, heat spreading over her face and neck. She had neglected to consider the view from the windows before intervening with the waitress. “Right.”

“Privacy can be scarce at these events. Grant saw you approach the men,” Senator Ross explained, “and informed me that you may need assistance.”

“He was watching me?”

Ross glanced at her, and then back into the dining hall. “It’s his job to see everything.”

“So Grant tells you, and you two grabbed Barron and ran to my rescue?”

“Well,” the Senator tilted his head in thought. “Barron was the muscle.”

“That makes sense,” she laughed. While Ross and Grant were tall, they were slender. Barron stood a head taller and twice as broad. “He is a big man.”

Ross let out a scoff of agreement and shook his head. “Absolutely massive.”

She held the side of her hand to her mouth, trying not to find too much amusement at the expense of one of her rescuers.

Ross offered his arm to her. “Now come,” he said. “I must mingle, and I use a buffer.”

“Of course,” she said, taking his arm so he could lead them back into the party.

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12

The Next Generation

Detective Reid

Reid’s finger stayed glued to the red button on the phone’s base for several seconds. The last thing he had expected to hear out of the Operator’s mouth was the names of his wife and son. How did she know that? What else did she know? He jumped up, chair hitting the wall. Gathering his notes and jacket in his arms, he left the conference room that had become their new base of operations.

James looked up at the sound of the door opening. He was sitting at their usual station, looking like he was ready to fall asleep. “How’d it go?”

Reid didn’t answer, hurrying over to drop his notes on his desk.

“What’s wrong?” James stood, now alert.

“Shit,” Reid whispered to himself, turning back to the conference room. He stopped mid-step, abandoning the thought and returning to his desk again. James was beside him now.

“Reid, what’s happening?”

Unclipping his service weapon from his belt, he locked it in the top drawer. As much as he wanted to take it with him, it was too much to risk. Outside of work hours he was a citizen, and citizens weren’t allowed guns. Only the secret service was permitted to carry weapons outside of work hours. “Stop that recording,” he told James as he sidestepped him on his way to the exit.

“Where are you going?” James asked. “Reid!”

He didn’t stop, pulling his jacket on as he shouldered his way through the double doors at the front of the precinct. Two uniformed officers on the other side of the glass jumped back with a curse. “Sorry,” Reid said as he passed, jogging across the street. Turning down the road that would lead him home, he broke out into a run.

The city blurred around him. All of his usual ruminations that plagued him on his walks were silent now, and his lungs were on fire by the time he reached his building. Keys already in hand, he shuffled through the rings of brass and steel until he found the right one, jamming it into the handle of the security door. He took the stairs two at a time. Half the steps didn’t make the climb to the seventh floor much faster. From the bottom to the top, every fear, every scenario that could be happening to his family had gone through his head. His hands were shaking—standing at his front door—and it took him two tries to get the key into the lock before he could push it open with one violent thrust. The heavy metal door bounced off of the wall with a bang as he stumbled across the threshold.

“Charles?”

Amina stood a few feet from the door, hand over her heart, and eyes wide with panicked worry. He went to her, touching her cheek, scanning her face.

“Is anyone here?”

Confusion mingled with her panic. “Just me and Rayan.”

“Are you sure,” he asked.

“Charles,” she whispered, “tell me what’s wrong.”

Before her hand could cover his, he pulled away, heading down the hall to their son’s room. The door was open. Inside, Rayan was sprawled out on his stomach, playing with his toys like it was any other day.

“You can’t park here,” his little voice proclaimed, waving a small plastic policeman in his left hand at the die-cast car he held in his right.

Reid didn’t stop to check on Rayan—the boy displaying no signs of distress—instead walking past him to open the closet. He pushed aside the clothes, the hangers scraping against the old wooden rod. Behind was a bare wall, and nothing but a few pairs of shoes on the floor. Shutting the door with a click, he knelt down to look under the twin bed that was in the opposite corner of the room. The wool rug scratched at his cheek, and the underside of the bed was free of intruders.

The adrenaline rushed out of him as he stood, inviting every physical sensation back in. His legs burned, muscles twitching. His skin was cold and damp beneath his jacket. He turned away from Rayan, facing the wall to hide his face as every emotion assaulted his senses. They were fine. Amina and Rayan were fine. The muscles around his ribcage stretched wide with a gasp of air, and he grunted as the breath left him as quickly as it had come. He leaned his forehead against the wall, the surface cool against his skin, and closed his eyes. They were fine.

“Stop right there, carpet kisser!”

Reid’s eyes snapped open, panic forgotten. He turned his head in a slow motion. Rayan was standing with his arms stretched in front of himself, hands clasped together in an imitation of a gun. A gun that was pointed at his father “What did you just say?”

Rayan smiled, his shrill laughter ringing out as his clasped hands fell between his knees. “I’m the curfew man, Daddy!”

His insides opened like a chasm as Rayan laughed his tinkling laugh again.

“No, Rayan… Don’t do that.”

The child stopped laughing, a confused look replacing his amusement. “Why, Daddy?”

“Because—” Reid stopped, not knowing how to explain the complexities of racial disparity to a four year old. Especially given that said four year old hadn’t had to experience the same level of treatment as other children like him. Sitting on the rug, he brought himself to Rayan’s level. “It’s not a good thing to say.”

“Why?”

“It just isn’t.”

“Is the curfew man bad?”

“Yes. No!” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. The last thing he needed was for Rayan to be scared of the policemen that were posted across the street from their apartment. There were regular posts at the entrances to every ghetto, making sure the people stayed within the bounds of the walls at night, and to intervene when things got rowdy throughout the day. Only a certain type of man was assigned that posting, the kind who enjoyed it: the fear they instilled. “It’s complicated, Rayan.”

“What’s compidaded?”

A hand landed on his shoulder, light and gentle. Amina was smiling down at him with a sad understanding. She sat next to him, facing Rayan.

“The curfew man is just doing his job, baby,” she said, “like Daddy. It’s our job to listen to the police and get home before curfew, right?”

Nausea rolled in his stomach as he listened to Amina explain to Rayan how not to break a law that only applied to people who looked like them. With all of the ‘why’s’ that followed in the conversation, she danced around the realities of the subject like she had done it a million times before. The realization that she probably had done it countless times before hit him like a bucket of ice water. He was gone all day long, every day. How many conversations like this had she had with their son?

Reid stood, waving for them to stay put as he left the room. Tracing his previous steps, he opened the front door and left the apartment. Down one long hallway, and then another, he passed door after door until he reached the one with a window at the end of the second hall. The creaking of its hinges reverberated off of the concrete walls as he stepped into the stairwell. Letting the heavy door slam shut behind him, he pulled his phone from his pocket and sat on the top stair. The number had been memorized since the first time he had spoken to her.

It rang three times. He hung up.

He pressed redial.

It rang three times.

He hung up.

He called again, listened, and hung up again. Despair began to melt into a glowing hot anger within him. He dialed again. This time, it rang only once before it was picked up.

“What?”

There she was.

“Do you think you’re funny,” he asked her. “Do you think you can say whatever you want and get away with it?” His voice rose as the fire in his chest burned brighter. “Do you think you can threaten my family, my son, and that I won’t hunt you and every last member of your organization down like the fucking dogs that you are?”

His breathing was rapid, as if he had run up the stairs for a second time. This was his family she was playing with. His family. The idea of any harm coming to them was more than he could cope with. After all this time, after everything, he would not allow them to be subjected to the horrors that this country had to offer. What did she know of the things that he did in service of that objective? Nothing. She knew nothing.

“Tsk tsk, Detective.”

His hands itched with the need to reach through the phone and strangle her.

“We would never stoop so low as to hurt the innocent, something you should know. That’s your job, remember?”

“I’ll kill you myself! You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you myself!”

When he got no response, he pulled the phone away from his ear to see that she had hung up on him. It slammed into the wall opposite him with a crunch of shattering glass, falling onto the landing at the bottom of the flight. A dark mark marred the wall where it had hit. His legs collapsed beneath him—he couldn’t remember standing up—slipping from the top step before coming to a stop on the second. Fingers tangling in his hair, his whispered sobs filled the quiet of the cold stairwell.

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11

Keeping Score

Vanessa

The pocket of Vanessa’s trench coat was vibrating as she stepped off the busy rail car, as it had the entire ride. Eddie had been kind enough to route the isolated hotline to her personal cell phone, she being the Collective’s official liaison to Detectives Reid and James of the five-oh-one. So far, it was off to an aggravating start. She pulled her phone from her pocket once she was on the sidewalk outside of the metro station, glaring at it. Taking a deep breath, she shoved her irritation down before answering.

“Detective, how lovely to hear from you again.”

“Operator,” Detective Reid’s voice greeted her with a genial tone. “Are you avoiding my calls?”

“No, darling.” She said as she weaved between the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. “Whatever would give you that idea?”

“You sound out of breath,” he said, forgoing any opening banter. “On your way to meet your cohorts?”

“What cohorts?” Her shoulder bumped a man who was walking in the opposite direction. “Excuse me. Sorry.”

“Where are you?” Reid asked. “Sounds public.”

“You know, Detective, I’d like you more if you didn’t skip the pleasantries.”

“I’d like you more in jail cell,” he responded.

She laughed. “I’m sure you would. It’s a shame that’s never going to happen.”

“We could always start checking camera footage.”

Stopping dead, several individuals were forced to veer around her, with more than a few angry looks thrown in her direction. She scanned her surroundings. There were at least forty individuals talking on their phones within sixty feet, with several more with ear pieces or typing on the screens of their devices. She smiled, moving to stand in front of a flower stand.

“If you want to waste your time checking every camera in the city to find one of tens of thousands of individuals who are on their phones at any given moment, you’re very welcome to do so. I certainly wouldn’t mind the break from your calls. All of that is assuming, of course, that I’m D.C. with you,” she finished. “Am I, Detective?”

“Got me there,” he said.

Glancing over the selection of flowers at the stand, she pulled one from the colorful buckets. It was a white rose, in the early stage of its bloom. “You should probably get used to that,” she said, miming to the stall attendant to cut all but a few inches from the long stem of the flower. She held her phone between her ear and shoulder as she dug in her sequined clutch for cash. She hated this bag for its impracticality, being too small to hold more than a few items, but it was the only bag she owned that matched the silvery-blue gown she was wearing under her coat. She would admit that she liked the way it sparked in the cold night air, though really, who didn’t like things that sparkled? Exchanging the money for the flower, she thanked the stall attendant.

“Get used to what?” Reid asked as she moved over to stand in front of the mirrored windows of a nearby boutique.

“Losing,” she answered. She turned her head to the side and pushed the stem of the flower into her hair. It was gathered in a low bun, with a few strands hanging down in a carefree appearance that took her forty minutes to perfect. “How is your investigation going, anyway? Are you any closer?” She pulled a blush gloss from her bag and put on a sultry voice. “Should I expect you at my door this evening, Detective?”

A laugh, which was quickly stifled, sounded in the background of the call.

“Hello, James,” she said, hoping that she was correct in her assumption of whose laughter she had heard.

“Miss.”

She gave a single fist pump in celebration as she heard his amused voice, before continuing to apply her gloss.

“Doing well,” he asked.

“I am,” she said, popping the small tube back into her bag. She gave one last look at her reflection, spinning to see every angle, before starting down the sidewalk again. She would have to remember to add a point to her tally later. The calls with the detective were infinitely more fun when she kept track of the little victories. She was up by two.

“How about your friends, how are they doing these days?”

“Come now, Detective Jamison, you know better than to think that I would fall into such an easy trap.” The creaking of what she could only imagine was someone leaning back in an office chair filled her ear. She saw the red-headed detective taking a casual stance in the office space she had created for them in her mind.

“A guy can dream,” he responded with a sigh, fitting into her imagined view of him perfectly, and then the line went silent.

She checked if the call was still connected. It was. “Hello?”

There was another moment of silence before the dead air of the room they were in came back into existence.

“This is Detective Reid. I’ve kicked James out. It’s just us now.”

“Us and the recording tech,” she responded.

“No.” He sighed, followed by the sound of a pen scratching on paper. “Just us.”

She wondered if he was keeping a scoreboard of their conversations as well, and what this new angle was. “Is this allowed, you talking to me on your own?”

“Tell me,” he said, ignoring her question.

His tone was quiet and sincere, as if he desired to know all of her deepest and darkest secrets. Her nerves to lit up with electricity, and she pulled her coat tighter around herself.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“To help people.” Her response was automatic. It was what she had been telling herself from the moment she and her friends had decided to start the Iris Collective. Well, from the time that they really started it.

She and Eddie grew up on the same street in the suburbs of the city, in a world that was almost unrecognizable to the one they lived in now, and then things changed. Slowly at first to her childish mind, and then faster and faster, picking up speed like a car rolling down a steep hill. One day everything was normal, or what she knew as normal at the time, and then Eddie wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore. His parents couldn’t afford the cost of a private education, and she would visit him each day to share her homework so that he wouldn’t fall behind. She had believed that his absence was temporary, that his parents would fix whatever mistake the school had made. Stupid. She never could understand back then why his chair bothered people so much.

By the time she met Liam in her freshman year of college, she and Eddie had already been kicking around the idea of rebellion for several years. It was nothing more than a dream in times of frustration at their government. Then the Mercy Protocol happened, and few years later the Resurgence Act. By then Liam and Eddie were together, and Liam refused to go back to his family no matter how much she and Eddie encouraged him to do so. He chose to give up his freedom for Eddie. ‘There’s no point in freedom if I can’t have it with you,’ he had said. The Iris Collective was born shortly after.

“To help people,” Detective Reid repeated her words back to her. “You must know the consequences for this. There will be no trials, no peers to judge on the rights and wrongs of your actions. You’ll just be guilty. Why go through all of this risk for a bunch of people you don’t even know? What about you? What about your family? Have you really thought this through, Operator?”

Vanessa turned onto a less populated street. The sun was set, and the click of her heels on the cement bounced off of the old buildings around her as she walked. She could see the busy flurry of activity at her destination a few blocks up the road. The lights of the event made the rest of the street feel dark and cold in comparison. Slowing her pace, she contemplated the Detective’s question.

She had a family, of course. Everyone did. She stopped talking to them when her sister had threatened to turn Eddie in just before he and Liam went into hiding. Her sister had married a man who was a member of the party, and her parents supported the marriage with enthusiasm. When it came to Vanessa, they pretended to care, but were more concerned about the damage their reputation would suffer if anyone found out that their youngest daughter was living with a gay man. Disability they could forgive, but homosexuality was a step too far. She couldn’t leave Eddie behind like they wanted and so she left them instead, as much as she was able. Her father was still legally her guardian, and one day soon he would be responsible for choosing her husband. She dreaded the day more than her conversations with the astute detective.

“I found my family,” she said in answer to his questions. “This government doesn’t deem them worthy of their lives.” Hot anger bloomed in her chest—at this conversation, at her memories. “And what of your family, Detective? Does Amina gaze at you with pride for the work you do? Does little Rayan want to be just like his father when he grows up?”

The line disconnected.

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10

Getting Warmer

Detective Reid

Going home would be pointless now, after his phone call with the mysterious Iris Collective. He wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. As soon as the line went dead, he wrote down everything he could remember from the call. The number, how and where he found it, the woman and her unusual greeting. The rest of the early morning was spent calling the number repeatedly, to no avail, until he was no longer alone in the building. Detectives of the precinct began to trickle into the bullpen as the five o’clock hour passed. James, industrious as he was, sauntered in exactly five minutes after his start time.

“Need you,” Reid said as he walked by, not bothering to check if the other man was following him.

“Ah, come on!” James said. “I just got here!”

“Don’t care!” Reid called over his shoulder. James let out a loud sigh behind him before his heavy footfalls began to follow.

Leading the way into an unused office along one of the walls of the bullpen, Reid held open the door until James passed through it. Directing the redhead to one side of a large conference table, he shut the door behind them. The table was empty, except for an old office phone in the center.

“Ok,” James shrugged his arms. “I’m here. What do you want?”

“I–”

“If you say anything that has to do with the cold cases I just saw next to your desk,” he interrupted, “I’m leaving.”

Reid stared. “You done?”

He raised his shoulders, a mocking look on his face. “Am I?”

“Wow, you are not a morning person,” Reid sighed as he pulled his phone from his pocket and set it on the table. He made a deliberate show of starting an audio recording.

James smirked. “What, so thin on leads that you’ve got to interrogate me now?”

“Shut up.” Reid pulled a clear evidence bag from another pocket, the business card inside, and put the conference phone on speaker. He dialed the number. “I want you to listen.”

As the phone began to ring, James leaned over the table and grabbed the bag from Reid’s hand. Reading the text on the business card with a furrowed brow, he mouthed a silent question at him, “Iris Collective?”

Reid smiled and held up a finger as someone appeared on the other end of the line.

“Detective,” the same feminine voice from the previous night greeted them. She sounded more assured than she had been before.

James gave him a skeptical look.

“Hello again,” Reid said to the woman on the phone. “I didn’t expect you to answer,”

“You left me little choice,” she returned, “calling like a love-sick school boy as you were.”

“Testy today. What’s the matter, didn’t get enough sleep?”

“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” Her voice was teasing.

Reid smiled. “Yes, I would.”

James looked at him like he had lost his mind, and Reid couldn’t help the quiet laugh that escaped his throat. He could only imagine what the other man was thinking.

“So,” he continued, holding James’s gaze, “you’re the one I’ve been looking for these past months.”

James’s eyes widened moving from Reid to the phone.

“So sorry, Detective. I have no idea what you mean,” she responded.

“Come off it, will you” Reid said, done with their dance. “I’ve already verified that this ‘Iris Collective’ doesn’t exist in any known database, and that this number is being routed through a seemingly endless network of proxies all over the world. Not exactly subtle.”

“Oh alright, you’ve caught me,” she sighed. “Only, I’m still here—free as a bird, in fact—so I’d wager that our methods have been entirely effective.”

James’s jaw dropped.

“Fair enough.” He pulled his pad from his back pocket and jotted down a quick note, tossing it to James, the other man snapping out of his shock long enough to catch it. “How about we start with something more simple?” He asked the woman. “Tell me your name. I’ve already told you mine, and I’d very much like to know who it is I’m talking to.”

The woman laughed, high and deliberate. “I’m not so sure divulging that information would be in my best interest, Detective.”

Reid leaned forward, palms against the table. “Then what should I call you?”

There was a long moment of silence before the woman responded.

“You,” she said, “and however many of your friends are listening in on this conversation, may call me The Operator.”

The line went dead.

“Alright, Operator,” Reid whispered, stopping the recording on his phone before giving his attention to his partner. Wide green eyes stared back at him.

“How in the hell did you pull this off?” James asked.

“I found that,” Reid indicated the card in the evidence bag that James still clutched in one hand, “stuck in the bottom of one of the file boxes. It’s been there all along. I called the number last night and this…” He waved a hand in the air. “Operator, answered.”

“Interesting title,” James said as he stared down at the card, “The Operator.”

“Almost implies that it’s her job.”

“And what she said earlier,” James added.

“Yeah, I caught that too.”

James held up Reid’s notepad. One the page was a single word, ‘our,’ underlined twice.

“It’s almost as if hers isn’t the only job in this Iris Collective,” Reid continued.

“But one of many,” James finished. He stared down at the card again, nodding in agreement to an unspoken question. “We should take this to Captain.”

Reid slid a form across the table, a request for additional resources to open a special investigation. It was already filled out. “Way ahead of you.”

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9

The Operator

Vanessa

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out that it was you?”

Senator Ross’s face was hard as stone, shadows carving out his features, as he took a step toward Vanessa. She stepped back in return. They were alone in his office suite, but for one unexpected visitor. Behind Senator Ross’s shoulder stood the indomitable President Wilkins. He was wearing his usual attire: a trim black suit and long black overcoat, beneath which a white shirt and white cravat provided a stark contrast to the otherwise gothic appearance. He stared at her with amusement in his eyes, like a cat that had cornered a mouse. She was his plaything, and his smile never left his face as he stepped up to the Senator, whispering in his ear.

“Of course she didn’t, Dixon.”

“I—”

“What more could you have expected from a woman?”

“Senator—”

“Disloyalty comes so naturally to them.”

“What? No! I—”

“Led by their emotions.”

“Stop! I didn’t—”

“One almost couldn’t blame her for being such a stupid girl.”

Ice flooded her veins. President Wilkins’s smile widened.

“Why is he here?”

Before today, she had never met the man. Senator Ross said nothing, staring at her with an unreadable expression.

“Senator, please!” she begged. “I don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t done anything!”

“DO! NOT! LIE!”

Wilkins’s smile was gone, his face having morphed into a burning fury as he screamed each word into the dark corners of the room. Her body flinched at the sound of it, her own scream contributing to the noise as Senator Ross rushed at her. There was nowhere to go. Her legs were slammed against a desk behind her as she was pushed back, one of the Senator’s hands clamped over her wrist, while the other cut off her airway. His grip on her throat held her high as she struggled, the pointed toes of her shiny black pumps scraping at the carpet in a futile attempt to gain purchase. Her scratching at the hand that choked her only served to make his grip tighten.

“Good, Dixon,” President Wilkins said, his smile returning to his face. “You know what you have to do.”

The phone on the desk behind her began to ring. The room was filled with the clunking sounds of her struggles: a scrape of shoes on carpet, the creaks of wood and thumping of their bodies against the polished mahogany of the desk, the gagging and wheezing as she tried to steal a breath. It was all encompassed by the ringing, bouncing off of the walls in endless reverberation like violins under the domed chapels of the Basilica. A blackness was closing in—inking across the faces of the two men—until there was nothing left but the burning of her lungs and the now constant ring of the phone in her ears. And then, when the burning faded, and she sank into the cold embrace of death’s shroud—

The silence of her apartment was shattered by her yell as she flew from the bed, gulping the stale air of the bedroom in desperation. The baggy shirt she wore clung to her skin, damp with sweat, and the sheets were darkened where she had been laying. Her neck was smooth and unbruised underneath her fingertips, but her chest still ached with each breath. The chill of Senator Ross’s hands had yet to leave her skin, and neither would the ringing leave her ears. The ringing… Spinning on a heel, she stumbled over a discarded pair of pants on the floor as she made her way to her desk. The laptop screen was blinding in the dark, a flashing red box indicating an incoming call on the Collective’s hotline. An old cup of coffee clattered onto its side, splashing the contents over the edge of the desk as she swept her hands across the surface in bid to find her headset.

“Fuck!” she whispered, icy droplets landing on the tops of her bare feet. Her hand knocked into foam covered plastic, the headset, and she latched onto it. The padding over the earpiece was half soaked in yesterday’s sugar-free double shot soy caramel latte, the drink soaking into her hair as she pulled the device over her ear before opening the line. She would kill Eddie for not informing her that the Collective was back to full operation.

“Thank you for calling the Iris Collective. What is the name of your closest living confidant?” The greeting was automatic.

“Hello,” a man’s voice responded.

A cold wave of panic assaulted her as the memory of her dream flashed across her mind, and dispelled as quickly as it appeared. This wasn’t the commanding Wisconsinite accent of Senator Ross, neither was it the crisp voice of President Wilkins. Her skin felt cold and dry against her palm as she rubbed her face. The man on the phone continued to speak in her ear.

“This is Detective Charles Reid of the five-o-one. Your number was found at one of the crime scenes of a series of homicides. May I ask who it is I’m speaking…”

The man’s voice came to a sudden and deafening halt, and she dared not to breathe lest she let more of their secrets slip from her lips.

“Did you just say, ‘closest confidant’?”

Shit.

“It is odd,” Detective Reid continued. “What sort of business would answer the phone at such a late hour, and ask a question like that?” The hint of confidence in his voice told her everything. She was well and truly fucked.

“Detective,” she said, voice quavering with nervous energy as her mind raced to think of something, anything, that could erase the last few minutes from existence. What she would give for a time machine, or a swift death. “I’m afraid you’ve called at a rather inconvenient time,” she said, the words falling out of her in a rush. “I’ll have to call you back at a later date.”

“Wait!”

His voice was cut off as she disconnected the call, and her choked inhale filled the darkness. The laptop screen began to flash again, ringing through the small speakers of the computer. The detective was calling back.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, lowering herself into the chair in front of her desk. “Go away.” The call continued to ring for another minute before it stopped. She pulled up the number for the headquarters, but when she clicked the call button it landed on a new incoming call instead. “Fuck!”

“Don’t h—”

The detective’s voice was cut off as she hung up on him, calling the headquarters before another of his calls could make it through. As the ringing filled her ear, the screen flashed again with another call from the detective. It seemed an eternity passed that she waited for someone to answer, the detective’s call disappearing from the screen after a moment, and then reappearing as he called again.

“Come on… Pick up.” Her knee bounced in a fast rhythm, and her eyes began to sting.

“Hello?” The groggy voice of Liam replaced the ringing in her ear.

“Liam?” She pushed her headset tighter against her ear. “Thank God! Get Eddie. Now.”

“Ok,” he responded, his voice now alert. His footsteps retreated into silence.

A tightness closed over her throat in a terrifying mirror of her nightmare as she waited for him to return. His footsteps were accompanied by his and Eddie’s muffled voices as they returned to her.

“Vanessa?” Eddie’s voice was hardened with worry as it filled her ear. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Eddie—” Her muscles tightened further, like pulling air through the needle-thin tube of a coffee stirrer. “A call…the helpline… they found us!”

Hot tears burned trails down her cheeks and she gasped, a sob breaking free from the choking hold of her anxiety. Labor camps and torture, firing squads and red-splattered brick filled her head. She was dead. They were dead. The world around her devolved into a dizzying pinprick of light at the center of her vision.

“Vanessa!” Eddie’s voice shot through her panic like a bullet at an execution. It held a calm authority that was oddly reminiscent of Dixon Ross. “I need you to calm down and tell me exactly what happened,” he said. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“Ok,” she said on an exhale, inhaling deeply. “Ok.” He listened silently as she recounted her call with the detective.

“It’s not ideal,” he said when she had finished.

“Not Ideal? Eddie, extracting Margaret Ross is not ideal. This… This is a disaster!” Any moment now, her windows would alight with red and blue flashing lights. A barrage of Capitol Police, led by this Detective Reid, would break down the door to her apartment. Their flashlights would converge on her like a spotlight, exposing her for the useless little girl that she was. There would be no way out, and no way of stopping them dragging her from the building. The last images of her life would be from the cellphones of her neighbors—sold to every news station in the country—half naked outside of the ratty old Baltimore Ravens shirt that was still soaked in her sweat. She had stolen it from her father when she first moved away from home. If she was lucky, her embarrassment would kill her before the government did. With this in mind, she grabbed the pants that she had tripped over from the floor and pulled them on, a thick pair of joggers.

“It’s fine,” Eddie said as she tied the drawstring. “Just listen. After our last mishap with your lovely Senator—”

Nausea rolled through her stomach at the mention of him.

“—I added some additional security to our digital operations, though it probably wasn’t necessary,” he added. “They wouldn’t have been able to track our hotline before, and they definitely won’t be able to now. At least, not with anyone they currently have on their payroll.”

“How could you know that?” she asked.

“Uh,” he said, letting the exclamation stretch and bleed into his next words, “I’ve been keeping tabs on them?”

“What? Why would you do that? Is that even safe?”

“Safe is debatable.”

“Eddie!”

“It’s fine, Vanessa,” he laughed. “It’s just to keep an eye out, in case we mess up at any point.”

“Like I did tonight?” Heat crawled over her face and neck.

“No. Not like tonight,” he said. “This wasn’t your fault. We can’t control if someone doesn’t follow all of our instructions. It was bound to happen eventually.”

She sighed, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. “You’re sure they’re not going to show up at my apartment tonight?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “I’m looking now and there’s no chatter mentioning anything in your neighborhood. There is a call out about a member of the House on 10th and South Carolina. Apparently someone is in trouble for engaging in high-end prostitution.”

“They were selling themselves?”

“Uh, nope, looks like he was in the market to purchase.”

“Who?” She shook her head. “Actually, I don’t want to know.”

“Just as well,” Eddie said. “They haven’t mentioned who it is, and it looks like they’re letting the guy off with a warning.”

“What a surprise,” she said, feeling no surprise at all.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Shame they didn’t name him. That information could have gotten you closer to the Senator.”

“I’m not sure I want to get closer to him,” she mumbled. There was silence in her ear for a moment before Eddie responded.

“Vanessa, if you want out of your position… We can find someone else in the government. It doesn’t have to be you.”

“That’s not what I meant.” A call flashed on the computer screen. “Shit. He’s calling again.”

“Ross?”

“The detective.”

“Oh, right.” The clacks of keyboard keys sounded in her ear. “Let’s see what we can find about this persistent Detective Reid. Ah, here we go.”

The laptop beeped, a popup message from Eddie appearing on the screen. Opening the file in the message, she was greeted with Detective Charles Reid’s personnel file. “Holy shit, Eddie,” she said. “Exactly how far does your reach extend?”

“You know,” he mused, “I’ve never put it to the test. Seems needlessly risky.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she said as she perused the detective’s file. In the corner of the first page was a picture of him in his Class A’s. “He’s not what I was expecting,” she said, scanning the image. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen in the picture, skinny and fresh-faced.

“His skin tone is certainly darker than the average cop,” Eddie agreed. “Looks like he started in the year before Wilkins took over, no transfers himself, but wow.”

“What?” She pulled her gaze away from the image, scanning the text on the page.

“He is not popular,” Eddie said. “Fifteen partners in 20 years.”

“How did he keep his position,” she asked. “I thought Wilkins had everyone like this removed from higher positions shortly after he took office.”

“He did,” Eddie said. “But this guy was just a rookie back then. He may have been kept on back when they needed the help to control the population. Yeah, here,” he added, the laptop beeping with a new message, a link taking her deeper into the pages of the file. “He’s definitely a good ole boy,” Eddie continued. “Looks like he does what they want, and he’s good at it. I see why they’ve kept him around.”

“Oh, great.”

Eddie laughed. “Yeah, just our luck. Looks like he worked the protests, and the relocations, a couple of firing squads. Jesus. That’s one way to earn some loyalty credits.”

The political executions of forty-two were carried out before she was old enough to understand what was happening in the country, only hearing about it offhand through the conversations of the adults in her life. Her own parents believed that it was the moment that turned the country toward a bright new future after the devastation of the Greater Depression. Eddie’s parents saw it as the moment that the last flame of democracy was snuffed out for good. ‘A dark stain on the history of the country,’ they used to say.

“What the fuck?”

Eddie’s voice broke her from her thoughts.

“What,” she asked, but received no response. “Eddie?”

“He was there.” His voice was so quiet she almost didn’t hear it.

“Where?” The pages of the document scrolled on her screen as she searched for what he was seeing. His strangled whisper told her the answer before she could find it.

“The Mercy Protocol.”

A clatter, immediately followed by Liam’s voice. He was calling Eddie’s name repeatedly. An uncomfortable image filled her mind, one she had seen before: Eddie breaking down. Only, instead of Liam comforting him, it was her hands grasping onto the blonde’s shoulders. Her useless words of comfort whispered into his ear.

The Mercy Protocol was enacted when they had become adults. She and Eddie were ready to tackle the world, and had gotten a run down apartment together when she started college at eighteen. They were supposed to update Eddie’s records, but being young and thankfully stupid, they had neglected to do so. Two months later, the Mercy Protocol went into effect. Special squads of police rounded up everyone with known disabilities, arresting any who tried to hide them. A squad of police went to Eddie’s last known address, his childhood home on the street they both grew up. Not finding him, they arrested his parents instead. It was all she could do to stop him from turning himself in to save them. For weeks they waited for a squad to show up at their door, only they never did. Whatever happened to his parents, they never gave up their son.

The whispering continued on the other end of the line for several minutes before Eddie returned to the call, his voice rough. “Are you still there?”

“Of course.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Eddie, you don’t have to apologize to me.”

“Do you think he…”

“I don’t know,” she said, knowing what he was asking. Did Detective Reid take his parents? “I hope not,” she continued. “There were a lot of squads.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he sniffed. “Could’ve been anyone. I, uh, I’m taking you off of Mrs. Ross.”

“What? Why? We can’t abandon her, Eddie, not after we told her we’d help.”

“No, I know,” he said, “but he’s already heard your voice.”

As if summoned by their conversation, a new call from the detective started flashing on the laptop screen. She ignored it.

“Why should that matter,” she asked. “Everyone who calls hears my voice.”

“Well I don’t want him to hear anyone else’s,” Eddie said. “It doesn’t matter as much as Mrs. Ross does.”

“Oh, shit. What is this? What are you planning?”

“Is he still calling?” Eddie asked.

The call from Detective Reid flashed two more times before disappearing from the screen. “Yeah, he just did.”

“Ok. He’s a good detective, he’s not going to give up.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to understand that,” she said.

“Someone else will handle Mrs. Ross,” he explained. “You’re going to handle the Detective.”

“Handle him? Any idea of what that might entail?” Scenes from old spy movies played in her head.

“No clue,” Eddie laughed. “You’re just going to have to wing it. Answer when he calls, don’t give him any details, and try to learn how close he’s getting.”

“Oh, is that all?” Eddie had a knack for making everything sound as if it were terribly simple. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, she had been able to fool the men of the government on a daily basis. What was one more wolf in the pack, an especially tenacious wolf with an acute sense of smell, but a wolf all the same? “Do you hate me?” she asked.

“Only on Tuesdays, you know that.”

The corners of her mouth lifted in spite of her annoyance at her new assignment. “Right. How could I forget?”

“You’ll do great,” Eddie assured her. “I think we’ll actually be able to use this new connection to our advantage, if we play it right.”

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8

The Freezer

Detective Reid

Reid was sitting across from James in a booth at their local diner, brimming with frustration. Right when he was starting to see a pattern in the killings, they stopped. It had been a month since they had worked the case of the dead man in the master bedroom. The missing wife remained at large, much like the previous ones, but then… nothing. No more murders, no more missing wives, and no more poisoned men.

They did have a few things. The toxicology reports had finally come in, so they now knew what had killed the men. Cyanide, the lot of them. Other than that, each of the wives made a call to a close friend or relative on the day of the murders. Every recipient of these calls, also women, had denied their occurrence. Reid’s first instinct was to believe that they were lying, after all, he and James had the phone records of the suspects. They could plainly see that the missing wives had made these calls. It wasn’t until he and his partner received the phone records of the alleged conspirators that they saw that these women were telling the truth. There was no record on their end of receiving any calls at the times they should have. James put the tech guys in their precinct on it, but they had yet to figure out how the records were altered, or which of the records were changed. His gut told him that the missing wives were the liars, and that their friends and families were unlucky enough to be used as their distractions. It would be too much coincidence for each of the women who never received the calls to all have the same excuses, the same terror, and the same tears during their interrogations. They were more innocent than the victims of these murders. His and James’s inability to get ahead in this case left a constant burning under his sternum.

“Can you stop glaring at the table like an angry statue? You’re making it hard to enjoy my breakfast,” James said from across the table, interrupting Reid’s thoughts.

“Sorry,” he responded, shaking his head. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. Why did they suddenly decide to stop?”

“Who?” James’s face showed that he knew exactly which ‘who’ Reid was referring to.

“James—”

“No, really Reid. Who?” James asked again, his voice raising a few decibels. “Who’s the big bad that’s orchestrating the systematic killing of husbands by their wives? What’s their name? What do they look like?”

Reid’s teeth ground together as his partner waited for an answer. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly!” Marnie gave them a look of irritation from behind the bar, and several heads from other tables turned their way. The redhead leaned in close and lowered his voice before continuing on, “and without any more activity from whoever was doing it, then this investigation is colder than the bodies of those men in the morgue. It’s dead, Reid. When, or if, they decide to make another appearance, we’ll do what we can to catch them. Until that, the regular boring old homicides will have to do. Now, simmer down, grumpy face, and eat your food before you hurt the cook’s feelings.”

“Yeah, fine,” he relented, followed by a sigh. Picking up his fork, he began mixing his eggs and hashbrowns into a yolky, white and golden amalgamation. The glass ketchup bottle was cold in his hand, despite being left on the table at all times, and he tapped the raised numbers on the side of it. A sizable glob of the tangy red paste fell out to cover his food mash.

A disgruntled noise came from James’s side of the table.

Smiling, Reid shoveled a forkful of the mixture into his mouth with relish. “Mmmm,” he moaned, opening his full mouth to lick the extra ketchup that he had missed from his fork.

“You’re actually the worst,” James said, his face scrunched and eyes squinted as he watched him eat. “Poor cook might be rethinking his whole career after witnessing that.”

His partner may have been content with waiting for whoever was behind the murders to kill again, but the thought of that was a restless buzzing under Reid’s skin. He stayed behind after James went home for the day, using the excuse that he needed to finish up some paperwork.

“Paperwork?” James had asked. “Since when do you have paperwork?”

“I’ve been busy, a lot on my mind,” was Reid’s vague response.

Though his paperwork was admittedly unfinished, it would have to remain so for another night. Once he was sure James was gone, he hauled the evidence from the previous murders out of storage. Sitting in the chair behind his desk, he contemplated what was in front of him. Five innocuous brown boxes, representing the murders of five men. He slid four of the boxes from the desk, stacking them two high to the right of his chair, and opened the fifth. Inside lay the evidence for the murder of John Salinger, the first in the chain. Well, the first that they knew of anyway. Mr. Salinger was found at the front door of his home. The toxicology was clean, except for the presence of a lethal dose of KCN, otherwise known as potassium cyanide.

It would have been simple for the wife to poison the man, and in this particular case, it was as easy as handing him a packet of sugar for his morning coffee. The evidence techs had found traces of the chemical in one of the several empty white packets on the table, as well as in the husband’s half empty mug of coffee. One sugar packet could easily hold twenty times the dose of poison that would have been needed to kill the man. He was doomed from the first sip. Much like the other homes, this one was spotless outside of the body and the unfinished breakfast on the table. Wife, luggage, clothes, and passport: all missing. They had written it up as an especially resourceful case of matricide, until it happened again.

He set this first box to the left of his chair before pulling a second box onto his desk. Daniel Hall, potassium cyanide, wife gone. Opening the other boxes he found more of the same.

“Alight,” he sighed. Restacking his hoard of evidence, he grabbed the first item from the top box. It was the toxicology report. He examined each page thoroughly, looking for anything that they may have overlooked in their investigation, but there was nothing new. He placed the report to the side and grabbed the next item from the box, their notes, examining them just as he did the previous report. Again, nothing new. Continuing in this fashion until the box was empty, he repacked it and grabbed the next case in the sequence, and on and on he went.

Several hours passed, the other officers in the precinct trickling out as they finished their own work, until the light at his desk was the last ward against the shadows that had taken over the building. Stubble scratched against his palms as he rubbed at his face. Setting aside the last few items from their most recent case file, his mouth stretched wide in a yawn as he leaned back. A cup of coffee sat abandoned on the desk, losing its allure by the third toxicology report. How easy it was for these women to mask the bitterness of a swift death beneath the surface of the dark liquid. A renewed anger at the simplicity of it left a persistent ache at the base of his skull. Would they have needed some mysterious third party to help them commit these murders? Cyanide was hard to come by, but not impossible. A single individual could achieve the same result with a few visits to one of the black markets in the ghettos, though a conspiracy would be more helpful to his career.

There were no more promotions left for him, and only solving cases kept him in his position. Though, if this case is as big as he thinks it is, that could change. Defying the laws was treason, and an organized treason was rebellion. The first rebellion in seventeen years. To stop that could secure his family years of goodwill with the administration, and possibly a position above his current station. But if whoever was behind the murders never killed again, then the cases would go back into their plain brown boxes, and be sent to the freezer. That was the name of the room in the basement where they sent cold cases to gather dust. Once a case entered the freezer, it almost never came back out.

Sighing, he pulled his phone from his pants pocket and called the only contact in his favorites. It rang twice before his wife’s voice answered.

“Hello?”

He laid his head back, staring at the ceiling tiles. “I’m sorry, Amina. Did I wake you?”

“No,” she said. “I was reading.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. She was lying, her raspy voice giving her away. Amina always did her best not to burden him, even with the little things. It was something she had started before their son was born, as if his stress somehow mattered more than hers.

“I missed dinner.” His smile faded.

“It’s ok,” she whispered.

His response was cut off by the distant cry of a child. It stung his eyes.

“Rayan’s awake,” she groaned, followed by the sound of shifting blankets. “I have to go.”

“Ok,” he whispered. “Give him a kiss for me.”

“Are you coming home now?”

“No, not yet,” he said as the crying grew louder in his ear.

“What’s wrong, my darling?” Amina asked. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Rayan’s answer fought its way through his tears. “I want Daddy.”

“I have to get back to work, I love you.” The words rushed from him, and he disconnected the call before she could respond. The phone clattered onto the desk, and colors bloomed behind his eyelids as he rubbed at them. “Get ahold of yourself,” he whispered, taking an unsteady breath. Phosphenes danced in his vision when he opened his eyes, floating like ink in water until fading back into clarity. Picking up the first box, he began to go through it again.

It was well past two in the morning by the time he finished his second run through the evidence. It didn’t matter. There was nothing new, nothing they had missed that could be used to keep the cases open. In a few hours, Captain Gibson would come in and have the boxes sent to storage. He’d missed the time with his family for nothing. At least he would have plenty of time to spend with them once they were moved to the ghettos.

Standing, he snatched the only empty box from the floor, stopping when the motion elicited a noise from within. Tilting it to view the inside, there was nothing. Cardboard made up the walls and folded flaps at the bottom, all of the contents that normally filled the box currently spread across his desk. He shook it from side to side, and there it was again. Click-clack, the sound of something small knocking against the walls of the container, something he couldn’t see. Lifting the folds that made up the bottom of the box, a plain white business card stared up at him. There was no mention of anything like it in any of the case notes or lists of gathered evidence. The cardstock was smooth beneath his fingers, with indentations where the text had been embedded in the paper. As far as business cards went, it wasn’t particularly memorable, with nothing but a business name and phone number listed in black on one side. No email or physical address, no images, and nothing on the back. The Iris Collective; not a business that he could recall seeing before, but he didn’t know every business in the city. Picking up the receiver from the phone on the corner of his desk, he tucked it between his head and shoulder and dialed the number from the card on the keypad.

It rang.

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7

Blackout

Vanessa

The next time Vanessa was able to slip away to visit the Collective, Eddie started in on his interrogation the moment she entered the door.

“Well, what did she say?” he asked. He and Liam were sitting at the table.

“Hello, Vanessa! How are you, Vanessa? It’s so nice to see you again, Vanessa!” Her mock cheerfulness was strained as she hefted several heavy bags into the old apartment. Bags which she had just carried up four grueling flights of stairs. “Oh, and thank you for the grocery delivery, Vanessa! We would, quite literally, starve without these thoughtful supplies!”

The men stared at her with carefully blank faces, neither of them moving to assist her.

“You know,” Liam said, “I think she may be using a bit of sarcasm, there.” He looked at Eddie, the blond stroking his chin like a cartoonish villain beside him.

“You know what, I think you may be right!” Eddie said, looking back at his partner in a very poor imitation of shock. Both men turned to look at her with an identical level of exaggeration in their expressions.

“You guys…” Her words came out in a pathetic whine as she did her best not to give them the satisfaction of a laugh. The handles of the plastic bags were digging into her arms. “Come one, I’m going to drop these.”

Liam finally took pity on her. Taking a few wide steps from the table, he slipped the handles of the many bags from her arms. No doubt the welted red ribbons on her skin would remain for the rest of the night.

“Sorry, love,” he said as he set the groceries on the kitchen island. “You know we can never resist a bit of a tease when you come around. It gets so incredibly boring here with no one but Eddie to entertain me for weeks on end.”

“Hey!”

Eddie looked affronted, and Liam winked at her before beginning to unload the items one at a time from the bags.

“Oh please,” she said as she joined Liam at the island to help with the unpacking, “I’m sure you two can find any number of ways to keep each other entertained when I’m not around.”

“Okay!” Eddie said, interrupting Liam before he could respond with anything too indecent. “Really, Vanessa,” he continued, throwing a glare at his partner, “what did old lady Ross say?”

Piling bottles of condiments into her arms, she turned to the ancient refrigerator. Much like the rest of the building, the appliances were showing signs of their age in the form of chipped and yellowing paint. The fridge was missing the pull bar on the door—having disappeared long before they took possession of the apartment—but it kept the edibles cold, and that was all they needed it to do.

“She seemed agreeable,” Vanessa said in answer to Eddie’s question as she started organizing the items in the fridge. An empty ketchup bottle sat on one of the old wire shelves. It made a thud as it landed in the trash can next to the island. “After a fashion.” Another empty bottle, some so empty as to be useless, and a handful of expired items began to appear the longer she examined the contents of the ice box. Each thunk into the trash can was equally as satisfying as the first, the drumming of organization.

“Whoa!” Liam said, stooping to grab a labelless container that she had tossed. It had less than two tablespoons of a peppered white liquid inside. She slapped his hand away from it.

“No!” she said, as if admonishing a child. “Look at the date on the bottom, that expired six months ago! I’m not going to let you two idiots unintentionally poison yourselves while I’m gone, and I’m taking that trash bag with me when I leave.”

Liam’s face fell as if she had foiled his secret plans to return the items to the fridge as soon as she was gone. In all likelihood, she probably had. For a man that grew up in the privilege of wealth, he was one of the most conservative people she knew when it came to spending money.

“After a fashion?” Eddie asked. “And what exactly did this ‘fashion’ entail?”

She scrunched up her nose before turning to him, having held out the hope that he wouldn’t enquire further. She was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to approve of her methods.

Mumbling an unintelligible response, she grabbed the lunch meat from the counter and buried her head in the refrigerator. The pretense was weak, and unfortunately for her, Eddie was no idiot. He immediately caught onto her ruse.

“Vanessa,” he said, drawing her name out in a warning. “What did you say to her?”

She emerged from her hiding place, avoiding his eyes. “I told her that we didn’t have a choice on whether to help her or not.” For a moment Eddie looked relieved, until she added, “and that we couldn’t trust her.”

His response was a question, dragged into the world by a sigh. “What the fuck, Vanessa?”

Liam, smart enough to keep quiet, gave only a slight raise of an eyebrow before grabbing an armful of dry goods and walking into the pantry. She glared at his back, the coward.

“It’s what she needed to hear, Eddie! She wasn’t going to agree to letting us help her otherwise. It wasn’t until I was honest with her that she actually started to talk to me.”

“Ok,” he responded, rubbing his forehead. “Alright, it’s already done. I don’t want to argue about something we can’t change.”

“How unusual.”

Liam’s head was peering around the barrier of the open pantry door. Vanessa pressed her lips together as Eddie’s annoyed look sent the other man back into the cupboard.

“So, how are we going to do this?” she asked. “I told her I would try to update her soon. Preferably I call her back within the week if we want to stay on her good side. People like her aren’t exactly used to waiting for what they want, but she does understand that it may take us longer than our usual timeframe given who she’s married to.”

“This won’t be like any operation we’ve done in the past,” Eddie said, stroking his chin—unironically this time. “It will take significantly more planning, more resources, and it could be months before we’re ready to execute.” He took on the tone of a college professor giving a lecture, for which the information would absolutely be on the final exam. Vanessa always thought that Eddie would have made an amazing teacher if he had lived in a different country or a different time, far away from this world that he and Liam weren’t allowed to exist in.

There wasn’t space given to gay men, or women, or those of various gender identities. They were the first to be attacked—more than a decade before the ghettos—because Wilkins and his band of Fundamentalists decreed it. Before the segregatory neighborhoods came to be, it was cheered by many as these individuals were rounded up and executed in grotesque public displays. If everyone hadn’t been so distracted with rejoicing in their own bigotries, they would have seen that the weapons pointed at those they hated would soon be pointing in their direction as well. Anyone still in their proverbial closets that were able to hide, most likely still remained hidden to this day. That is, if they weren’t in the camps. The government was clear in its message to everyone who wanted to live a life that was considered abnormal under their laws: Don’t.

“There are going to be so many obstacles on this one,” Eddie continued, interrupting her thoughts, “and not just her husband, AKA, your boss.” He looked at Vanessa. “She’ll also have a secret service detail with her at all times. At least one when she’s alone, and probably more whenever the Senator is around. Not to mention the fact that they don’t exactly live in a typical household, within a typical neighborhood, where people like to keep to themselves.

“She’ll have to keep up appearances while she’s waiting. I’ve read what I could find on her and the Senator throughout the day, and they’re not exactly homebodies. Apart from the obvious notoriety that comes with being married to a Senator, she’s known for being in the public eye quite a lot—running various groups for women of her status, as well as a non-profit or two. She likes to dine out at all the high end restaurants, even when she’s alone. In fact, with how much they go out to eat instead of eating in, I’d actually be shocked to learn if either of them know how to cook. But on top of all of this, she and your Senator Ross are always in attendance at a minimum of three governmental or social events each month.”

“They don’t have much choice,” she said. “Wilkins requires all of the important government officials to make regular public appearances.” She was lucky to be low enough on the totem pole to avoid having to be seen in public so often, but she would still be required to attend the bigger functions with Senator Ross as a member of his staff. Grant had explained it as showing the rest of the world how well our country was doing. She often wondered if the other countries of the world could see through the polished surface to the filthy reality below.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “things would certainly be a lot easier if Wilkins wasn’t such a damn showman.”

“It sounds impossible.”

“It is,” Eddie said, “or… it has the appearance of it.” His brow furrowed as he stared off into the empty space in front of him. He seemed to have forgotten that Vanessa and Liam were still in the room with him.

“Babe,” Liam said. “What is it?”

“I have an idea,” Eddie said slowly. “I’m not sure if it will work. I need to think on it some more.”

“Think on what?” she asked. “What’s your idea?”

“I’m sorry, Vanessa. I can’t tell you,” he responded. “You know how it works. No department can know what another department is up to.”

“Yeah, yeah. Compartmentalize to keep everyone safe, blah blah blah.” His rules made sense. Should anyone manage to get arrested, they wouldn’t have enough knowledge to bring down the entire organization. The Iris Collective would survive to fight another day. “It would just be nice to not be out of the loop on a case that’s a little too close for comfort,” she added.

Her sole job within the Collective was to be the point of contact for anyone that would call their helpline. She knew nothing of what the other departments did outside of what she could guess or assume. It was a safe bet that the extraction department was responsible for shuttling their clients from their homes to the safe house after the husbands were dealt with. Past that, she had no idea if they had any other functions that they were expected to perform. She had learned well enough in the last year how pointless it would be to argue with Eddie about it, and Liam would never seek to betray his trust by telling her. She had already tried that route before, and she wasn’t sure if Eddie told Liam more than the others to begin with. He wouldn’t want to put Liam at more risk than was necessary, and only he knew exactly how much that was.

“Vanessa,” Eddie said with a shrug.

“Fine,” she conceded with a huff.

“There is one thing I can tell you, because I’ll have to tell everyone,” he said. She and Liam watched expectantly as they waited for him to continue. “We’re going to have to go dark for a bit.”

“Dark?” she asked, hoping he didn’t mean it in the same way as they had for those hours on the night Mrs. Ross had first contacted them.

“Blackout,” he said. “No more activity until further notice.”

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6

Mrs. Ross

Vanessa

When Vanessa showed up to work the next morning, a not so subtle trepidation was knotting her stomach. He must have known that she had been trying to contact his wife. She must have said something to him in her panic, a mistake. A tell. Could he see her in that apartment as he spoke to her? She slunk into the staff room like a thief, making a beeline for her desk without a word, not even a ‘good morning’ to Grant. Keeping her head down, she wouldn’t even let her eyes stray to the door that stood between her desk and the Senator’s office.

Grant was typing something on his laptop, his fingers moving swiftly over the keys. The click-clacking of his keyboard was the only noise in the office, but not the only noise in the building. She could hear them—the capitol police—the distinct sound of the boots that only they wore drifting in from the hallway. It grew louder with each passing second as they grew closer. Any moment now they would be storming the office. She would be hauled away to the most horrific prison, tortured until she reached a point of insanity so potent that she would sell out her own mother to make it stop. Boots, at least ten pairs, right outside now. Grant glanced up, and their eyes met. Did he know?

“Vanessa!”

Senator Ross’s voice struck her, flashing into her thoughts. The jolt of it knocking a cup on the corner of her desk—the pens inside it falling—a pitter-patter like rain as they hit the carpet. It was as if he had yelled directly into her ear. She looked at the door to his office. It was still closed. She swung her head back to the open door that led to the hallway, the boots. A group of capitol police appeared, and then disappeared, as they marched past the open door.

“Feeling alright?” Grant asked, a small smile playing on his lips as his eyes moved from the open door to Vanessa. He stared at her a moment, before pointedly looking at the mess of pens on the floor.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, sliding from her chair to scoop them into her hand, dropping them back into the now righted cup. “I’ll just…” She pointed to Ross’s door.

Grant’s eyes narrowed above his impish smile.

“Yeah.” She turned away from the man and entered the second office.

“Door,” Senator Ross said the moment she entered, not looking up from his reading.

She did as he said, slow and deliberate, the finality of the latch clicking home turning her insides to ice. It was not unlike the last time she was called into his office. He didn’t invite her to sit, so she stood on display in the middle of the room, waiting. Several minutes passed, and her hands tingled with the need to do something, anything. The Senator’s fountain pen scratched away as he scribbled notes in the margins of the documents he was perusing. A few times he made a noise of annoyance, crossing out entire sections of the text on the pages, immediately followed by more notes. An eternity passed before he put his pen down and looked at her.

“So?” he asked. His face was flat—neutral—without a hint as to his mood. Searching for the right answer to give him, she came up empty.

“So?”

He smiled. “I would have thought your late night would have had you better prepared for this.”

With no clue of the meaning behind his words, and having no response that wouldn’t incriminate herself, she said nothing. The only outward indication that she had heard him was a subtle shake of her head.

“The notes?” he asked. “For my meeting with the President?”

“Oh!” A tidal wave of relief hit her, and she huffed out a laugh. “Of course, I’m so sorry. They’re on my desk.”

His face became bemused. “What did you think I was talking about?”

“I don’t know,” she lied. “My mind just went blank and I panicked.” Well, one lie and a truth, anyway.

The Senator stood, gathering the ink-covered documents from his desk, and walked around her to the door. He waited for her to precede him as he held it open. The staff room was empty when she entered.

“I sent him on a mission,” he said, catching her questioning look at Grant’s empty desk.

“A mission?”

“We’re testing the waters for an amendment to bring to Wilkins,” he said. “You know how he won’t do anything that may upset his favor with Congress. As if anyone would need to do anything to the man. The need to be liked by a room of his peers will be his downfall one day. Ego is the greatest king killer, after all.”

Vanessa’s mouth dropped open. “Dixon…” She was losing her mind, that must be it. The stress finally broke her. There was nothing else that could explain her hearing those words, in that order, from this man’s mouth. “You could be executed for saying something like that,” she whispered, despite them being the only two in the office. If anyone should walk in and overhear him… She could be arrested for hearing the words as easily as he would be for saying them. An assumed collaborator to his treasonous thoughts.

He smiled, as if amused by her reaction. “It’s a good thing it’s just us here then, isn’t it? My notes?”

She grabbed the notes from her desk with numb fingers and placed them into his waiting hand.

“I’ll be back after lunch,” he said, and then he was gone.

A few minutes after he left she realized that she hadn’t moved from the spot where he had left her. Every possibility she could imagine was running through her head. To say something like that out loud to her, he’d have to be an idiot, something she knew him not to be. He was intentional.

“Good thing it’s just us…” she whispered his words, tracing the curve of her ear as she thought. “Good thing it’s just us? A test?” Her hand dropped, and she sat heavily in her chair. He was testing her loyalty, pushing at a boundary and waiting to see what she would do. It was effective, and insane. If she told anyone, he wouldn’t make it through his meeting with Wilkins. The secret service wouldn’t hesitate to drag him out to the south lawn and shoot him. But if she told no one, and he made it through the meeting unscathed… “Trust.”

The top drawer of the desk buzzed, breaking her from the puzzle that was Senator Ross. She pulled the handle and grabbed her phone from inside. There was a message from Eddie.

Update?

“Shit!”

She had been so caught up with loyalty and tests that she forgot what she was supposed to be doing. Grabbing her laptop, she opened the helpline and dialed the number for the perplexing Senator Ross’s wife, pulling on her headset as the call began to ring.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered, and Vanessa recognized the voice of Mrs. Ross on the line.

“Mrs. Ross, this is…” She stopped, never having had to give someone a name before. All the other women gave her the name she would go by with each of them, but she hadn’t gotten that far with Mrs. Ross. “I’m returning your call from yesterday.”

“Oh, it’s you,” the other woman responded, irritation slipping into her tone. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again after you hung up on me.”

Vanessa’s face burned with shame. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. We had to take precautions, given your status.” Silence greeted her. It stretched on, and she checked to make sure the call was still connected. It was. Whatever the woman wanted to hear, it wasn’t what Vanessa was saying. “I… We couldn’t…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly. Mrs. Ross wasn’t like the others. Something about talking to this woman flustered her. She took another breath, and her lips moved in silence as she exhaled. Trust. “To be honest, ma’am, we weren’t sure if your request was sincere, considering who you’re married to. We had to make a decision on whether or not to believe you, and if we should risk helping you at all.”

“Hm,” the older woman said. “And what did you decide?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “That we never really had a choice to begin with.”

Laughter filled Vanessa’s ears. Mrs. Ross was laughing.

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5

The Iris Collective

Vanessa

Vanessa did her best to make herself small in the crowded subway car. Humidity and random coughs emanated from the sea of people, bodies being jostled against each other with each bump of the tracks below. She hated it. She would have much preferred to take a cab, or even walk, but the busy train afforded her a certain degree of anonymity that she had no choice but to take advantage of. She couldn’t afford to be easily spotted as she made her way to her destination, should anyone be tracking her. Even with the tightly packed crowd though, she still felt vulnerable, as if one hundred sets of eyes were scrutinizing her every move. She pulled her ball cap further over her forehead to help shield her face as the train pulled into her station.

She walked the few blocks from the subway station casually, stopping to take in the sights and shops—dismal though they were—as she went. The Collective was strict in regard to how careful its members should be when visiting the building that functioned as their headquarters. They did what they could to avoid looking as if they weren’t supposed to be there, and they never headed straight for the building from the train. It turned what would normally have been a five minute walk into a twenty minute walk, but it was worth it if it helped to keep their location a secret.

After more than enough meandering, she finally reached her destination: one of the many unassuming brick buildings in the old neighborhood. She pushed the button for the fourth floor apartment, pulling the front door open when she heard the sound of the buzzer.

The building had been abandoned for at least a decade before the Iris Collective had taken possession of it. Previously, it had been the home of four mid-sized apartments, one for each floor. Likely lived in by a handful of government officials, as with many of the apartments in the city, but those days were long over. The door to the street opened into a private, communal lobby, with old brass mailboxes inset into one of the walls. A closed door on the right led to the first floor apartment, but otherwise most of the space was taken up by the wide staircase that faced the door she had just entered. The flight flared out like a flower as it reached the first floor landing. The stairs were faded where the wood stain had been worn away from the years of people traversing up and down the steps. The walls were covered in a faded ornate wallpaper that was peeling in some places, and in others, entire sections of the once colorful design were missing. Though, the thick layer of dust on the windows darkened the interior enough to partially obscure the poor state of everything around her. It certainly wasn’t much to look at, but keeping their headquarters in a derelict building—surrounded by other derelict buildings—was a great help in their desire to fly under the radar.

Vanessa jumped as a click sounded on her right. She was on the third floor landing, staring at the door to the third floor apartment. Her heart raced. It was closed, as it always was. Trying not to blink, she watched. She thought she saw the handle move, but she could have imagined it. Approaching the door, she tried the handle. It didn’t turn.

“God,” she said under her breath, returning to her climb, “could you be more paranoid?”

As she reached the fourth floor landing, voices drifted to her from a door that was left a few inches ajar. She pushed it the rest of the way open—the peeling paint on the pitted wood crumbling into a gritty dust beneath her palm—and was greeted with the sight of Eddie having a fierce debate with Liam.

“How can you say that?” he yelled, his hands waving in the air as he gesticulated. “Give me the knife!” He made a grad for a large knife that Liam was holding, the latter lifting it out of Eddie’s reach with ease.

“Whoa! No, no. I’m not going to let you ruin our lunch again with your crazy, and frankly uncivilized, beliefs. Diagonal is the only correct choice here,” Liam said. “It’s far less messy.” He plunged the knife into a sandwich that was sitting on the butcher block countertop of the kitchen island, cutting it into two equally portioned triangles.

“Still fighting the good fight, I see,” Vanessa said as she joined the two men in the kitchen. They both turned their heads at the sound of her voice.

“Oh, thank god,” Eddie said as he pivoted his wheelchair to face her. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him. He’s ruining my lunch.” His soft blonde hair fell into his eyes as he waved his arm in Liam’s direction.

She grimaced at him. “Sorry, my darling, but I have to side with Liam on this one. Diagonal is the superior method for sandwich cutting.”

“Traitor,” he mumbled into her shoulder as she leaned down to hug him.

“You’ll get over it,” she laughed, moving around the island to greet Liam. “It’s good to see that you two haven’t changed one bit since the last time I was able to stop by.”

“And we never will,” Liam responded, leaning down to give Eddie a kiss on the cheek where he was pretending to sulk in his chair.

“Well, maybe this hair,” Vanessa added, lifting a lock of Eddie’s hair in her hand. “It’s getting long.” He waved her hand away like a particularly annoying insect, and she flapped her hand back at him as she walked away.

Where Eddie was pale and slight in his build, Liam had a strong form and broad shoulders. His skin was a stunning shade of tera-cotta, if a bit lighter than usual from his long stints being cooped up in the apartment. To put it in simple terms, the man was gorgeous. Vanessa loved to tease Eddie by wondering aloud how it could be that he managed to snag a man so far out of his league. All in good fun, of course. She had never known two people that were more in love than these two. They would give up the world to spend one more day together, a fact that only made her love them more.

Liam placed the sandwich halves onto two plates, and set them on the table that was just outside of the kitchen. “Did you want anything, Vanessa? I can whip up another one real quick if you’re hungry,” he offered.

“No, I’m good, but thank you.” She took one of three chairs at the table, while Liam took another. Eddie, having finished his sulking, rolled his chair up to the empty side and pulled his plate toward himself. He had apparently decided to abandon his stance on the cut of the sandwich.

“So, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” Eddie asked around a mouthful of meat, cheese, and vegetables. Liam shook his head, a look of disappointment directed at the blonde. The two men had come from entirely different backgrounds, and no matter how many times Vanessa had seen Liam try to impress upon Eddie a sense of refinement, it never seemed to take. It did amuse her to no end to watch him keep trying, though. She imagined that Liam, to some extent, missed the life he used to have before. Not that he would ever say it. His family—the Borjas—were among the top one percent of the top one percent. He had abandoned that life years ago.

“I was in the neighborhood,” Vanessa said vaguely in response to Eddie’s question. The two men at the table immediately stopped what they were doing to stare at her in silence. “Ok, fine,” she relented. “I wanted to see if everything went smoothly with Nicole.”

“Oh, that,” Liam said. “Yeah. We extracted her this morning. She’s safe and sound, spending a few days at the safe house before she’ll be moved out of the city.”

“Good,” she sighed. As calm as she needed to remain when talking to the women who called in, it was a far cry from how she really felt on her end of the line. It was rare, but every once in a while they would lose a client. Usually due to the husbands killing them before the Collective was able to intervene. Once, a woman had been killed by her husband after the man caught her poisoning his beer. Vanessa couldn’t help but wonder if that one would still be alive had the Collective not gotten involved. The woman would still be miserable, and abused, but she’d also be alive. Each woman Vanessa helped left her a nervous wreck inside until they were safely out of harm’s way.

“Speaking of,” Eddie began after swallowing the last bite of his lunch, “we’re going to have to switch up our methods a bit. In fact, we should have already.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him. “It seems to have been working very well, so far.”

“Yes, it has,” Liam agreed, “but using the same method for too long is going to leave a trail that could be very easy to follow if someone ever cares to look close enough.”

“Exactly,” Eddie interjected. “The longer we stick to any one method of removing the obstacles, the more at risk we are of being discovered. It’s already a miracle we’ve lasted as long as we have without detection.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

She thought about it, and she could definitely see how it would appear odd. They hadn’t been operating long, just under one year. It had taken them some time to set up their system. Eddie had to create the program they used from scratch so that he could be certain of its security. It also took quite a lot of time to make the right connections and develop their methodology. After that, it was as simple as choosing who to help first, and Vanessa dropping their number into the purse of the woman as she walked by. Easy. The women passed the number to others on their own. Everything after that point was trial and error. They experimented until they found the most efficient and reliable way to pluck these women out of the system, and make them disappear. The poison worked like a dream, and they stuck with it, but the boys were right. Anyone who looked close enough was bound to notice that there had been a sudden uptick of men dropping dead under similar circumstances.

“What are you thinking?” she asked them. “Most of these women barely have the stomach for what we already ask them to do. I can’t imagine that we could get any of them to do it if we were to send them a more personal method of disposal. That’s the whole reason we settled on this poison in the first place, isn’t it?” She worried about how successful they would be with finding new ways to rid the world of these horrible men.

In their planning phase, they had considered leaving the men alone, thinking it would be easier. Well, it would absolutely be easier, but on further discussion, they decided that it would be unethical to allow the men to continue. There was no point in saving one woman if the man could turn around and remarry within weeks. The abuse would continue with the next one. Too many men didn’t care who they hurt, as long as there was someone there to feel the pain. Poison was the easiest, fastest, and least involved kill method they could find after months of research. How could they expect these women—already living in hell—to do anything more intense than mix a simple powder into a drink?

“They’re terrified of these men,” Vanessa emphasized.

“I know, Vanessa,” Eddie said. “We’ve got a few ideas that w—”

A sound from the living room interrupted their conversation. A steady beeping was coming from Eddie’s workstation. His battle station, as he liked to call it. A title that often resulted in a shared look and an eyeroll between she and Liam when Eddie wasn’t looking. They followed the sound into the living room, Eddie stopping his chair in front of the desk.

The system took up most of the living space in the room, with just enough left over for a loveseat and a pitifully small TV. A stack of cinder blocks helped to bring the screen to eye level. The living room bled into the kitchen, the two rooms divided by the placement of the dining table. The walls were empty of decoration, though the ripped wallpaper, water stains, and exposed brick fit the aesthetic well enough.

Eddie typed a code into the keyboard, and six large screens lit up his face as he looked for the source of the noise. “It’s a call on the helpline,” he said, all the casualness of their evening gone from his voice. “Did you bring your laptop?” he asked, glancing at Vanessa.

“Wha—no. I left it at my place in case someone stopped me on my way here.”

“Hm.” He smirked in approval of her thought process. “No worries, I can route the call through my terminal. It’ll be on speaker though. Sorry,” he added. “Headphones are broken, and I haven’t gotten around to fixing them yet. Just pretend we aren’t here.”

With that said—and a few taps of the keys—the call screen she was used to seeing on her own system appeared on one of the center screens. Eddie rolled his chair backwards to allow her the space in front of the desk. Her stomach flipped. She was used to talking to the women in the privacy of her own home. Eddie and Liam observing her made her throat run dry. She did her best to get over herself, rubbing her sweaty palms against her jeans, and trying to focus on the fact that there was a woman on the line who needed their help. She settled her hand over the mouse and clicked. Her hand jerked, the cursor missing the call button entirely. She cleared her throat and clicked the mouse again. The line opened, a hiss of ambient noise whispering through the speakers.

“Thank you for calling the Iris Collective. What is the name of your closest living confidant?” Her usual opening line felt stiff and awkward with the addition of her audience.

“Jesus, I thought you would never answer,” an especially irritated woman’s voice came out of the speakers. Vanessa was thrown off guard by the woman’s tone. She looked to the men behind her for help, but they were too busy holding their hands over their mouths in an attempt to stop their laughter from reaching the microphone. They clearly had very different ways of handling the shock of the caller’s greeting.

“Hello?” The woman’s voice rang out again, more irate than before, which only served to make the men laugh harder at Vanessa’s expense. She glared at them, and Liam—still letting out whispered giggles—grabbed the back handles of Eddie’s chair. Eddie’s hands were still clamped tight over his mouth, but it didn’t stop a few wheezing laughs from escaping the cage of his fingers as Liam wheeled him away. She shook her head at their retreating backs. Idiots.

“Yes,” Vanessa said, turning back to the wall of screens. “I’m still here.”

“My God, I was told you could help me, but based on your inability to conduct a simple phone call, I may have been misled.”

Vanessa’s eyebrows drew together as another round of muffled laughter came from somewhere behind her. The woman’s voice was older—more mature—her tone evoking a certain level of authority each time she spoke.

“I apologize,” Vanessa responded, keeping her own tone calm and even. “I’m not at my usual workspace. Please, tell me what we can help you with.”

“Don’t you already know? Isn’t that what this number is used for?” the woman said, giving Vanessa the off-putting feeling of being talked down to. Yes, this woman was definitely older.

“O—Of course, ma’am.” She stuttered as she struggled to avoid mirroring the combative tone of the angry woman. There was a squeezing sensation in her chest. “I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t know why it is that you might be calling. Only that I need more details to know how we can best help you. Every case can vary in circumstance. Would you mind telling me your name to start with? We can move forward from there.” Vanessa sent a silent thank you to the universe. Her daily dealings with the powerful men of the government helped to teach her how to placate people of a certain level of entitlement. Agree and supplicate, rinse and repeat as necessary.

“Yes. Alright. I’m sorry. This is all new to me,” the woman said, calmer, though only slightly less aggrandized than before.

“Of course,” Vanessa responded. Now they were getting somewhere.

“My name is Margaret. Margaret Ross.”

Vanessa didn’t hear anything else the woman may have said, as several things happened at once. Eddie rushed forward and slammed his hand onto the keyboard, having to hit it twice to punch the button he was aiming for to end the call. Liam rushed around the apartment, pulling the curtains closed over each window as he went. Eddie pushed her out of the way, as she was staring at the screen where the call had been, like a statue. He started typing furiously on the keyboard, producing loud clacking that filled every corner of the room. A few seconds after he started, all six screens went black in concert with the lights in the apartment being extinguished.

“What the hell?” She yelled at Eddie as she came out of the momentary paralysis that the woman’s declaration had inspired. Eddie shushed her as he moved over to one of the windows that looked down on the street below. Liam was peering through a crack in the curtain of another.

“Anything?” Eddie asked.

“Nothing yet,” Liam responded. He didn’t take his eyes off the street.

“I don’t understand,” she started, only to be shushed again, this time by both men. “What is going on?” she continued, despite their protest, though she changed her volume to a whisper to avoid another shushing.

After a long moment, Eddie finally moved away from his window, stopping his chair in front of her. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice hard. There was a finality in his words that didn’t make sense to her. “We can’t help her.”

“What do you mean?” She was sure she had misheard him. “We have to, that’s the whole point of us,” she said.

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s too high risk, not to mention the danger it could put you in, given that you work for her husband.”

“I’m perfectly aware of the risk, or did you think I didn’t immediately recognize the name of Senator Ross’s wife?” There was a burning blooming under her ribcage at the idea that he might believe her too naive to understand the seriousness of their situation. “I know that it could burn my position. I’m willing to do that if I have to. We can’t just leave her on her own, that’s not what we do. She called to ask for our help!”

“The hell we can’t!” Eddie’s words reverberated off of the crumbling drywall.

“You guys, stop. Let’s sit,” Liam said, abandoning his watch to attempt to diffuse their argument, but she and Eddie were already in too deep.

“You can’t be serious, Eddie! ‘Call us all women who need our help, oh, unless your husband happens to work for the government, then you’re on your own!’ What kind of bullshit, fucked up policy is that? If I’m placed with a man in government when my number comes up at Family Planning, which seems more and more likely given the men I’m surrounded with on a daily basis, are you going to abandon me as well?” Her voice broke, and her chest heaved as she stared into his eyes. A deep ache of betrayal filled her at the stance he had decided to take on this issue. For the first time, she felt that she may not be able to rely on their organization—the one that she had helped to create—if the time ever came that she would need it.

“No… Vanessa, that’s not what I meant. I—”

“What, Eddie? You what?” she asked through her clenched teeth. “You think that I haven’t thought this through, but have you? What do you think would happen if we start to pick and choose who to help based on social and political status? What’s going to happen if the women stop believing that they can trust us? Think of how many will die at the hands of these… these men, when we could have been there to save them. It would be the first two years all over again. We’d just be guaranteeing that things went back to what made us start this in the first place. Not to mention,” she said, reflecting his words back to him, “the fact that Margaret Ross has the ear of the Senator. She knows about us, knows that we exist. What happens when we tell her that we won’t be helping her? I’m sure she’ll be anything but fine with it. Are you willing to risk that she might tell him about us, and what we do here? From where I’m sitting, the risk was already there from the moment someone gave her our number, and it’s not going to be increased anymore than it already is by helping her. We trust the women to pass on the number to someone who needs it. She has the number… We have to help her.”

Liam placed his hand on Eddie’s shoulder to put a stop to any response he was about to voice. “She’s right, Eddie.”

Eddie covered Liam’s hand with his own. “I know.”

They ended up sitting in the dark for another two hours at Eddie’s insistence, his reason being that they still didn’t know if the call was a trap intended to track their location. Vanessa dug a boardgame out of a closet to help them pass the time. Periodically, one of the men would look through the curtains to make sure no sudden activity was brewing outside the building.

“It was Plum, in the study, with the candlestick.”

Vanessa picked up the worn yellow envelope, held together with a hope, a dream, and plenty of scotch tape. Pulling out the cards, she set each one face-up on the board. Professor Plum, the study, and the candlestick.

“This game is no fun with you, Eddie.”

He smiled as he gathered the cards and reset the board for another round. “I can’t help it that I’m smarter than you two.”

“I see how it is,” Liam said, before reaching over the table to attack Eddie. The hushed laughter from the two men whispered across the apartment, and she couldn’t help but smile as she shook her head at them. Their night continued in this fashion until finally, a few minutes after nine, Liam checked the window for the last time. “I think we’re ok,” he said as he stared down at the street. “If anyone knew about us, they would have been here by now.”

“So, what now?” Vanessa asked. Silence greeted her in response. It was a loaded question, they all knew. Do they call the Senator’s wife back, acknowledging and solidifying the risk they were already pressured with? Do they ignore that she had called, destroying their credibility, and potentially risk Vanessa’s job and life anyway? In the end, the decision would fall on the slender shoulders of their—mostly—fearless leader. She and Liam looked to Eddie to make the final call. They had agreed at the beginning of this journey that he would be the one in charge of their operations. His teasing aside, he was the most intelligent person in the room, and far more equipped to see every possible outcome that could arise from each of their options. So they waited. He sat deep in thought, his eyes moving gently from side to side as if he were reading a book, examining something beyond the physical space that they occupied. After several minutes of silence, he looked at them. His shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath, and let it out again.

“Vanessa,” he said.

She gave him her full attention.

“Call her back.”

She and Liam let out identical sighs of relief, and then Liam hopped out of his chair to turn on the lights. Vanessa followed Eddie back to the desk, with all its dark screens. They sprang back to life with a flash as he powered on the system, bathing the both of them in white light. Her eyes ached for a moment as they adjusted. He brought the helpline back up on the same screen as before, and a few clicks of the mouse had the number Mrs. Ross had called from pasted in the outgoing call box. Eddie paused to look at Vanessa for confirmation. She nodded, and he activated the call.

They listened as it rang and rang and rang. The apartment was filled with the sound as it blared from the speakers, the call wanting to be answered by the woman on the other end of the line.

“Do you think she’s gone to bed?” Vanessa asked no one in particular.

“I don’t know.” Eddie’s response was difficult to hear over the ringing. “I suppose you could try again tom—”

He was interrupted by a silence. The call was answered.

“Hello?”

They froze, much as they had during the first call with Mrs. Ross.

“Hello?” The man’s voice filled the air around them like a dense fog as he repeated the word louder upon receiving no response. It pushed in on them from every angle.

Eddie gestured for Vanessa to say something, but she shook her head, gone mute. It wasn’t until he gave her a shove toward the desk that she found her voice again.

“S—Senator Ross. Hello? Can you hear me? I’m sorry, I—I think my service isn’t very good here.”

Eddie gave her a look that said, ‘Really? That was the best you could come up with?’ She raised her eyebrows and shoulders at him in a flinch. Vanessa would welcome him to throw his head onto this particular chopping block if he thought he could do any better.

“Vanessa?” Senator Ross asked. “Is that you?”

“Uh, yes, Senator. It’s me. I just wanted to call real quick to confirm that the meeting with President Wilkins is still on for tomorrow morning,” she said, using the first thing on his schedule that popped into her head.

“Yes.” He drew out the word slowly, like a question. “Is there a reason that it wouldn’t be?” His tone was searching.

“Oh, well, you know… The man is always so busy. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s canceled on us.” Her nose scrunched as she cringed at Eddie and Liam, wishing more than anything in this moment that they could rescue her from the call. Liam returned to her a cringe of his own, and Eddie’s head fell into his hands. The blonde clearly believed that they were doomed, and she couldn’t say she disagreed with that assessment.

“Yes, I suppose he has, hasn’t he?”

The three of them threw their arms into the air in a silent celebration, their faces overtaken by their astonishment of the Senator’s agreeable response.

“Well,” continued Senator Ross, “no worry of that happening this time, but I appreciate you calling to confirm. Did you need anything else, Vanessa?”

“No, sir—Dixon—that was all I wanted to check up on.” The effort to keep her relief from her voice was almost as overwhelming as the conversation. “Thank you.” She reached for the mouse to end the call, but the Senator spoke again before she got the chance.

“And, Vanessa?”

“Yes, Senator?”

The silence was loud as the trio collectively held their breath.

“Do try to call at a more reasonable hour next time.”

Her lungs deflated with a silent huff of air.

“Yes, Senator.”

The call disconnected, the three of them collapsing in an adrenaline-fueled haze. Eddie slumped over in his chair, a hand to his chest, and she and Liam sunk to the old floor boards. Liam rested his forehead against Eddie’s knees, the latter tangling his fingers in the former’s dark curls. In the last year, Vanessa couldn’t recall a single time that they had come as close to exposing themselves as they had tonight. She laced her fingers, squeezing her hands together in her lap to try to stop their shaking.

“I thought we were goners…” Liam said, monotone, staring at the floor like a man who couldn’t see it. The shock seemed to be hitting him full force.

“We nearly were,” Eddie replied, having his own vacant staring contest with the wall. He was absentmindedly running his fingers through Liam’s hair in a repetitive motion, whether to comfort Liam or himself, she wasn’t sure. “If not for your quick thinking,” Eddie added after a moment, blinking and looking over at Vanessa where she was leaning against one of the legs of the desk. He reached a hand for her, and Liam sat up to follow Eddie’s example, with the addition of a smile.

She grabbed each of their offered hands, completing the circle that centered them. “I’m glad I have you two,” she said. She had tried many times before, mostly at night when she couldn’t sleep, to imagine where she would have ended up in this fucked up society if she didn’t have them. The picture was never clean, shifting and warping over time, but she was certain that a life without them would hold little meaning for her. There already was nothing of meaning for her outside of these walls, and this circle. “Nothing like the imminent threat of prison, torture, and probable death to remind us of what’s really important.”

“Aww…” Liam pulled her to him, wrapping her in his long arms. His warmth was a balm for her anxiety. “We’re happy we have you too,” he said. “So unlike you to get all lovey-dovey!”

“Yeah,” Eddie interjected. “You sure it’s not that time of the month?”

“I’m not above hurting a cripple.” Her reply was muffled beneath Liam’s arms, and the two men began laughing. She quickly joined them, laughing harder than she had in years. Their delirium was a result of the adrenaline rush wearing off, she knew, but she didn’t mind. A few moments of joy at the end of this unexpectedly stressful night, even if chemically induced, was well worth it. Once her laughter had calmed, she extricated herself from Liam’s warm embrace.

“So,” she said, falling back to her earlier question, “what do we do now?”

“We’ll have to try again at a time when we know your Senator is away,” Eddie answered. His eyes narrowed, and a smile grew on his lips. “Maybe this meeting with Wilkins can be helpful in more ways than one.”

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Congrats on finishing chapter 5! What do you think of the story so far, and this inciting incident? I hope you’re enjoying it. Feel free to comment with anything you think needs another look, or tell about your theories if you have any. I’d love to know all of your thoughts. :)

I am trying to edit faster so that I can get more chapters to you, otherwise we’ll literally be on this one story for the rest of the year. haha If you see any mistakes, or subpar areas, please let me know. I think I’ve caught most things in this last run through, but there’s always going to be something that slips through in a final manuscript.

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4

Patterns

Detective Reid

“You can’t be serious!” Several heads turned in their direction at Reid’s yell.

“What do you mean, I ‘can’t be serious?’ How are you serious?” James fired back. “We can’t ask for increased funding and manpower with nothing but vague coincidences and your gut, Reid.”

“Coincidences? Come on, man, you know better than that. You’re seeing the same patterns that I’m seeing, you just don’t want to admit it.”

Earlier

Detectives Reid and Jamison stared down with furrowed brows at the body laying on the floor in front of them. They were in the master bedroom of a modest house, the body of a man sprawled out on the cream-colored carpet at the foot of the bed. A dried reddish-yellow substance lined the man’s pale blue lips. Aside from the body on the carpet, the room was pristine, as was the rest of the house. No signs of a struggle, and not a thing out of place. Reid wasn’t surprised. He had been waiting for this since the murder of the Atticus man, whose wife they still had yet to locate. Again, no surprise.

“Clothes? Luggage?” he asked without taking his eyes off of the body. James let out a sigh beside him. Reid already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from his partner, the skeptic.

“No,” James answered in a clipped tone, as if reluctant to share the information. “They’re gone. Passport too.”

Of course they were.

***

He couldn’t believe that James was still fighting him on whether or not these last few murders were connected. The pattern was obvious. How could his partner not be on the same page?

“Until we have proof of some vast conspiracy, the connection is circumstantial, at best! You know how I know you know that? Because you’re a good detective, despite this,” James waved his hand in the air as he searched for the words, “temporary insanity that seems to have taken hold of your brain.” He poked the side of his head with his index finger. “Captain is never going to approve anything until we find real—substantial—evidence. You need more, Reid.”

“Come on, James,” Reid started, but the other man held up his hand.

“I’m not trying to argue with you, I’m not, and I’m not trying to stonewall you here. I’m your partner,” James said as he leaned toward Reid. He paused and turned to look around the bull pen, the central room that housed the detectives of their precinct. Several curious onlookers suddenly went back to minding their own business. James shook his head and lowered his voice before he continued. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Or, we can think of it this way,” Reid said, trying a new tactic. “If we solve this thing, that’ll be a big bonus for the two of us. Imagine what that money could do for Daisy.”

Daisy was a car, an eighty-eight Chevy Chevelle. The body was straight, with the original beige paintjob, and unfortunately it looked all of its 71 years. James’s eyebrows were practically at his hairline as he stared at nothing, no doubt imagining Daisy with a full restoration. He had been fixing her up for the last several years after inheriting her from his Grandpa.

He shook himself out of his trance, red locks whipping his face. “Ok. First of all, how dare you try to manipulate me like that? You know how I feel about Daisy.” He ticked off his points on his fingers. “And second of all,” he frowned as he tilted his head from side to side—eyes to the ceiling—devolving into several sharp nods. “Mm, tempting,” he admitted.

Reid chuckled. “It was worth a shot.” His anger vanished in an instant, like the pop of a balloon, and he collapsed into the chair behind his desk. He rubbed his hands down his face, a wave of exhaustion rushing in to fill the space left by his receding irritation. James was right, as much as he hated to admit it. There was nothing more frustrating to him than being so certain of something huge happening right in front of their faces, and being unable to prove it. He was looking for someone to blame for his inability to get a solid lead on the case, and James so happened to be the perfect target. “Look, I’m sorry, ok? I’m just frustrated. If we’re right about the connection, then this may be the biggest case this precinct has ever seen, and we found it.” Reid waved a hand between James and himself. “We discovered the pattern. It’s ours. I want to catch whoever’s behind this before they slip out of our hands, or worse, the case is taken from us.”

“By who?” James smiled his crooked smile and clapped a hand down on Reid’s shoulder a bit too hard.

“The FBI?”

James guffawed, leaning back against Reid’s desk, knocking over a formerly neat stack of reports. The papers slid across the otherwise empty surface like playing cards. Reid made a face at the mess, but chose not to comment. “I don’t think Wilkins will be reforming the FBI anytime soon,” James said. “We’ll take it to the Captain as soon as we have the evidence to prove that you’re not seeing things, yeah?” He ran a hand through his copper hair. “But until then, let’s go. Get up! We’re going to miss the lunch specials at Marnie’s.” He gave Reid’s chair a spin as he walked toward the exit.

“I hate you,” Reid called after him as he grabbed the edge of his desk to put a stop to his dizzying spin.

“I know,” James called back with a lazy wave over his shoulder as he walked out the door. He didn’t even look back.

“Bloody noir bastard.”

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Thank you for reading chapter 4 of The Iris Collective! It’s a short one, so this week I’ve uploaded two chapters again. Chapter 5, where we visit the Collective’s headquarters for the first time, is up now. Go read it and let me know what you think! <3

Also, let me know what you think of this short chapter. I’m thinking of adding it to the next Reid chapter, but then we’d have 4 Vanessa chapters before we get another Reid one. Would that be good, bad, neutral? Curious of your thoughts.

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3

The Senator

Vanessa

“Vanessa!” Senator Ross’s voice called from beyond an ornate wooden door, which separated his personal office from the staff office. Vanessa glanced at the Senator’s chief of staff, Grant Cooper, who was busy reading through a memo.

“Don’t look at me,” he said without taking his eyes off of the paper he held. “It was your job to teach him how to use the intercom.”

She sighed and stood, grumbling under her breath, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he just prefers to yell.”

Grant smiled as he continued his work.

She had given up trying to get the Senator to use the intercom weeks ago. It was a main focus in her first two weeks as his assistant, but he had refused to bother. She was fairly certain that he knew exactly how it worked, but as far as he was concerned, the phones should have no other function than to make and receive calls. No need for an intercom button when you were near enough to yell through a door, apparently. She entered his office, the door being situated on the wall behind her desk.

“Yes, Senator?”

He was leaning back in his chair, feet on his desk, as he read from a stack of papers in his lap. The aforementioned feet were covered in gray wool socks, while his shiny dress shoes were lying next to his door. She had learned that they would always be there if he planned to spend more than five minutes in the suite. Something about him not needing the oppressive protection of his shoes while in the safety of his office. He didn’t look up from his papers when she entered, but his lips thinned into a line at her words.

“Close the door,” he said.

Her chest tightened uncomfortably, like a student that had been called to the dean’s office. As she did what he ordered, her mind raced to try to figure out what she could have done to attract his ire. In the seconds it took for the door to click shut, and for her to turn back to face him again, she had come up with nothing.

“Vanessa,” he drew her name out like a parent lecturing their child, “what have I said about how you should address me in the past?”

The tension left her muscles. “You said I should call you Gav, as your middle name is Gavin. That I may call you by your first name, Dixon. Or that I may call you Sir Pippington III, but only on Tuesdays.” This time he did look up, his brows drawn together.

“I’m not so sure about the third one.”

“No?” She smiled. “I quite like it, actually.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, returning his eyes to the documents in his lap as he shuffled through them. He pulled one from the center of the stack and scrutinized it. “But imagine the scandal on the floor.”

“Oh, I’m sure they could handle it.”

His shoulders moved with his single grunt of laughter.

Vanessa had been working for Dixon Ross for the last six weeks. She had been terrified of him at first, not knowing what to expect from the man, but she had the right qualifications and needed the job. He was a member of the Fundamentalist Party, and therefore a danger to many as far as she was concerned. The man was tall, with features that made his presence intimidating to anyone who didn’t spend any significant amount of time with him—something he knew how to use to his advantage when in dealings with his fellow public servants. They called him the devil of congress. No one could hope to win against him once he joined a fight. His face was striking; a strong jawline, some of the sharpest cheekbones Vanessa had ever seen, and skin that showed his age in the lines that had been etched onto his face over time. When at rest, that face would appear cold and harsh to anyone who saw it, but it could transform into a visage of warmth and invitation just as well. She got along with him easily, much to her surprise in the beginning of her employment, but trust was harder to come by. He had never done anything to her personally, but she wasn’t sure she could ever trust anyone in the party. She was a woman, after all, and so they were her enemy.

“Did you call me in here just to lecture me on your name preferences, or was there something else I could help you with?” she asked.

He slid his feet off the corner of his desk and sat up, placing the stack of papers in front of himself. “I wanted to see how you’re faring,” he said. “We’re coming up on two months since you’ve joined the team, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything going well?” he asked. “Grant is treating you alright?”

“Yes, Grant has been great with showing me the ropes. I have no complaints.”

“Would you tell me if he wasn’t?” Senator Ross’s eyes narrowed.

Vanessa smiled. “Probably not.”

“Good girl,” he responded. “It’s best to keep personal feelings out of it in a place like this, not that there are any yet.” He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

“No.” She shook her head.

“Good. That’s all.” He lifted the heavy stack and leaned back again, his feet returning to their place on the desk. Before Vanessa could reach the door, she stopped and turned back.

“You remember that I have that appointment today, right?” she asked. “So you’ll be on your own until after lunch.”

“Appointment?” he asked, looking at her for more information.

The fabric of her pencil skirt felt stiff between her fingers as she fidgeted with it. “Um, the one I told you about?” He shook his head, and heat began to burn her face. “My quarterly fertility…”

“Oh.” His eyes widened incrementally, and he looked away as his own cheeks flushed pink. “Right, sorry. Of course.” The Senator shifted in his chair, looking anywhere but in her direction. “No need to rush back here. I’m sure we can survive without you for one afternoon.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”

“Yes, yes,” he waved off her concerns. “It’s not a problem.” His eyes finally met hers again, and he smiled a thin smile. “Somehow we managed before you joined the team, so I’m certain we can again. For a few hours,” he clarified. “Go, get an early start on your weekend.”

“Ok, thank you, sir. Dixon,” she corrected at his look. Turning to leave, she collided with something solid. Strong hands grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “Oh! I’m sorry!” She quickly stepped back, the hands falling away.

“Sorry, Vanessa,” a jovial voice said. “Didn’t realize you were in here. Grant told me to head on in.” Chance Barron was looking down at her with a bemused expression. He was new to the Senate, having been elected the previous year by his compatriots to replace a retiring Senator from Iowa. A strapping young man compared to most of the Senators on the floor, at only thirty-five. Barron had been the favored candidate to fill the empty seat, as the party had been looking to bring in some fresh blood. Tall and broad, he was built like a refrigerator. Vanessa always imagined that he had won his way into college on a football scholarship, given the size of him, not that he would have needed a degree to get elected. Barron had the classic all-American look about him that the party coveted. Senator Ross was tall at six foot two, but Barron stood a few inches taller. He had pale skin that was clean and free of blemishes, blonde hair that was combed back neatly from his face, blinding white teeth, and icy blue eyes. Practically an engineered poster boy for the Fundamentalist Party, they made sure to shove him in front of cameras at every opportunity. Their perfect little aryan success story, hand-picked from among the most prestigious families of the elite. She wondered if it really counted as a success story when there was no work involved on his part. You too, can achieve the American Dream, and all you had to do was be born into the right family, with the right genetic qualities.

She smiled back at him, lest he think her impolite.

“You see why I needed an assistant,” Ross said from his desk, interrupting their brief interaction. “Grant will let just about anyone in here.” Barron placed a hand on his chest, feigning hurt at the older Senator’s words, and Vanessa laughed.

“Of course, sir,” she said. “I’ll let you get to it.” Barron stepped to the side to let her pass, catching her eye with a mirthful look and a nod as she left the office. The door closed, and she started packing her laptop bag at her desk. She was slinging the strap over her shoulder when the two Senators emerged from Ross’s office.

“Grant,” Senator Ross said from the doorway separating the two suites. He was holding onto the door jamb as he used a long bamboo shoe horn to slip his shoes back on. “Vanessa is leaving early, so we’ll have to make due without her for the rest of the day.” He turned to her. “Leave the itinerary, will you?”

“Sure,” she said.

He nodded and walked through a door to the left of her desk, which led to the hallway.

“Leaving early?” Barron asked, leaning against her desk with a cocky air that only a disgustingly rich childhood could have produced. “Big plans, or—”

“Barron!” Ross called from the hall, putting a swift end to the awkward encounter the younger man was about to pull her into.

“Right,” he said, giving her one last smile before he hurried to follow Senator Ross. Grant shook his head at Barron’s retreating figure.

She let out a breath once they were gone, and closed the door to the hall, cutting off the sounds of the bustling building. Senator Ross had a system for his staff to follow: door open when he was in office and available to the other government workers, and door closed when he was away. Vanessa thoroughly enjoyed this system, as it afforded the staff privacy, and less interruptions as they worked. No one bothered to knock when they knew Dixon wasn’t in. It also meant that she only had to endure awkward encounters with Barron when there were others here to bear witness.

Fishing in her bag for the itinerary, she handed it over to Grant on her way out. He accepted it with a flat look.

“Sorry,” she said with a grimace.

“Hmph,” he said, placing the thin book on the corner of his desk.

He didn’t wish her a good weekend when she left.

The unexpected appearance of Senator Barron had caused her to leave later than she had planned to for her appointment, and she had to run the last few blocks from the subway station. A nurse in crisp white scrubs was calling her name as she burst through the glass double doors into the clinic lobby. Right on time. She followed the woman to a private room in the back.

“You know the drill,” the nurse said with a smile, leaving Vanessa alone in the room.

She raced to undress, knowing the doctor would be walking in within a minute or two. She donned the paper gown that was folded on the counter, careful not to rip it in her haste, and hopped onto the end of the examination table. On a stainless steel tray next to her, there sat a metal speculum, two long swabs—one with a fat cotton tip and the other with bristles in the shape of a tree—and a large glob of clear jelly lubricant. As she expected, the doctor opened the door less than a minute after she had gotten settled.

“Afternoon,” the old doctor said, his voice gruff, as he walked to the small sink to wash his hands.

“Hello,” she responded, her voice barely above a whisper.

The doctor pulled on a pair of off-white gloves after he dried his hands, and sat on a small rolling stool next to her knees. “Well, lay back,” he ordered.

Her heart hammered against her ribcage. She did her best to ignore it. Laying back, the table beneath her shook, and loud metallic clunks filled the room as the doctor pulled the stirrups out of the exam table. He grabbed each of her legs in turn—the feeling of latex under her knees and the soles of her feet—to guide her heels into the metal supports. She tried to keep her knees together, even though she knew her attempts at modesty were pointless. The stirrups had her feet spread so wide that it made hiding herself from view impossible.

“I haven’t got all day, dear.”

She grit her teeth and forced herself to open her knees for the doctor. A squeak from the chair, and wheels rolling on the floor, signaled that he was situating himself between her open legs. Small tremors caused her body to shake, and she stared at the ceiling until she could no longer see it above her. She tried to think of anything but the man that was sitting between her legs. The quarterly fertility exams had been a requirement for all women of childbearing age since the Population Resurgence Act had gone into effect. The government had correctly predicted that women would find ways around the clause that demanded they produce children. Every four months she was required by law to come to this clinic for a physical exam, and a battery of blood tests. They wanted to make sure that her reproductive system was healthy, and that she wasn’t using any form of birth control—which had also been made illegal in the articles of the nine-hundred page bill.

Vanessa was brought out of her dissociation by the sharp pain of the metal speculum causing her flinch. Her mind quickly drifted again, only to flinch a second time when the doctor removed it. He replaced the metal instrument with a gloved finger, standing and palpating her lower abdomen with his other hand. When he finished his work between her legs he replaced his gloves with a fresh pair. Vanessa clenched her jaw to try to prevent her chin from quivering as he returned to her side. He didn’t remove her legs from the stirrups.

“Arms,” he said. She lifted her arms above her head, and he pushed the paper gown open, leaving her entire body exposed as he began to poke and prod her breasts with his latex fingers.

There always came a point in these examinations where she forgot what it was like to feel human, and instead began to feel like cattle. Like an inanimate object that was designed for a single purpose, to produce the children of the next generation. Just as she felt her eyes begin to burn, the doctor spoke.

“Done,” he said, removing his gloves once again. She immediately pulled the thin paper gown closed to cover herself and sat up, pulling her heels from the grip of the metal stirrups. “Stop at the blood draw on your way out,” the man added, and then he was gone. She cleaned the lubricant from her body and pulled her clothes back on with trembling hands.

The rest of the appointment was a blur, and she didn’t remember her journey home, but eventually she found herself entering her small apartment. It wasn’t much, a loft-like space containing a living room that blended into a kitchen, the kitchen island acting as a barrier between the two areas. One door off of the living room led to a cramped bathroom, and another to her bedroom. All she wanted was to take a scalding hot shower to remove the feeling of the Doctor’s hands from her body and collapse into bed, but she had one more thing that she needed to do first. She went into her bedroom, where her desk was against the wall closest to the foot of her bed. Noting the time on her phone, she retrieved her laptop from her bag. There was a small purple icon on the computer’s desktop. She clicked it as she pulled a headset from a pocket in her bag. Adjusting the headphones over her ears with one hand, she scrolled in the program to a number and highlighted it before hitting the call button. It rang once before a panicked voice answered.

“Sophie!” Nicole’s frantic voice yelled in her ear. “I don’t think I can do this!”

“You can, Nicole. Remember how you got here.”

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2

The Wife, In The Kitchen, With The Poison

The Detective

“What do you think?” the young evidence tech asked. He was kneeling on the shining kitchen tile next to a man’s well-dressed body, a swab in his gloved hand. He lacked the experience to hold back his eager tone until he was in a more appropriate venue. The tech leaned over the stiff corpse and used the clean swab to absorb some of the reddish-yellow substance that lined the mouth.

Detective Reid watched the blood and bile soak into the white cotton and sighed. He pulled a notepad from his pocket. “I think it’s another one for my book,” he said, flipping it open to a fresh page.

Name: Joseph Atticus (deceased)

Job: Marketing (Andover Marketing Corporation)

Spouse: Carol Atticus (location unknown)

Death: Waiting on confirmation (suspected poisoning)

This was the third suspicious death that had crossed his desk in the last month. He didn’t find it terribly unusual, given what some of these women had to go through. In the three years since the Population Resurgence Act took effect, he had arrested no less than twelve women for the murder of their husbands. Reid was only one of several hundred detectives in the D.C. area alone. He couldn’t imagine how many more cases there were in the rest of the city.

The Resurgence Act wouldn’t have been necessary, but the many changes the government had made since coming into power led to a severe reduction in the census. President Wilkins’s administration decided to pass on the responsibilities of rebuilding their numbers to those that were left, whether they wanted it or not. The men carried most of the power in these unions, the women not even being allowed to choose the man they would marry. Instead their government approved guardians—their father, or another man of authority in their family—would choose for them. The younger the bride, the more proposals would be given, and the more money would exchange hands to try to win a guardian’s favor. At times a family would refuse to choose, not wanting to sell their daughters off to random men, at which point the newly created Family Planning Department would pick a name at random. He had heard rumor that the agents at the department had dart boards to resolve these situations, though he expected the truth was more to do with bribery. It was always money with these things.

Some women would get lucky with who their guardians picked for them, and would end up in non-violent marriages. At least then they had the slim hope of happiness, friendship, or even love. Most didn’t get so lucky. Too many women had already expired at the hands of their overzealous husbands for any number of reasons. She complained too much, she refused to have sex, she forgot to wash a bowl in the sink, she wasn’t attractive, she was too attractive, he wasn’t trying to kill her, he just didn’t realize that strangling her for two minutes straight would result in her death. Reid would have them all in jail if he could, but only the women were ever prosecuted. No matter how many men he arrested and charged, the DA would always drop the charges and set them free. Eventually, he gave up trying. He imagined that he would kill his spouse as well, were he in their shoes. He would never voice this thought aloud, not when he was responsible for more than just his own life.

He had been lucky to avoid the mess that was this ridiculous law, having already been married and his wife pregnant, by the time it came into force. Provided that children were being produced—one child by the second year, a second by the fifth—then there was currently no legal precedent for the administration to force he and his wife apart. He fully intended to keep it that way.

“Another one, eh Charlie?”

Reid’s partner, John Jamison, walked up behind him and looked down at the body in distaste. His copper hair, well past his chin, curtained his face. “You’d think they would have accepted it by now,” he said, leaning his head to the side to get a better angle of the dead man. “You think it hurts?” he asked. “Poison?”

“It’s Charles, Jamison, or Reid if you prefer.”

It was only the second time today he had corrected him. A new record. Perhaps they should celebrate.

“Yeah, yeah,” James said. “And I told you to call me James. I hate it when you get all formal. Reminds me of my dad.” He gave a dramatic shudder after mentioning his father, as if shaking an unpleasant memory from his thoughts. “So, what do you think? Mark it ‘matricide’ and have an early lunch?”

Reid didn’t respond to James’s suggestion, his fingers tapping in a steady rhythm on the underside of his notepad. The man’s laziness would never cease to amaze him.

“No,” Reid answered, staring at the body as he thought. “Something bothers me about this.”

“Ah shit, Reid, not this again. Can’t you ever just relax and see something for what it clearly is? The guy probably beat the crap out of her, so she killed him. Same as the last however-many cases we’ve seen.” James waved his hand in a circular motion as he talked, as if flipping through an invisible book. “Let’s look on the bright side, at least this one still has his dick.” He paused with a contemplative look, and then leaned down and clapped the evidence tech on the shoulder. “He still has a dick, right?”

The tech reached over the body and lifted the waistband of the man’s trousers, leaning forward to peer underneath, before sitting back up and giving James a thumbs up.

“Phew,” James said, “imagine going to the afterlife without that.” He laughed and stood to face Reid again. “So, case closed? Matricide?”

“No,” Reid responded firmly, turning away from the men. “There’s something different about this one, and the last two, for that matter.”

His partner sighed. “And what’s that?”

Reid gestured to the rest of the empty house. “No wife.”

“Yes, because it’s so unusual for a suspect to flee the scene after murdering their husband,” James said. “Stop grasping at straws, man, and let’s go grab a half-smoke and a beer before the lunch specials are over.”

“It’s only eleven-thirty,” he reminded his partner, but the other man just shrugged his shoulders in response. Reid scoffed. “It’s the clothes.”.

“What clothes?”

“Exactly. They’re gone.”

“So what?” James asked, irritation coloring his words. “This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a woman pack a bag on her way out the door. In fact, I’d even go so far as to call that a common occurrence when looking back at our previous cases.”

“Sure,” Reid said, nodding in agreement, “but how many have we seen that were so neat about it?”

James narrowed his eyes for a few seconds, clearly debating with himself on whether he wanted to give Reid the satisfaction. “Alright, fine. What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, we’ve had how many murders, all of them frenzied? The women in a rush. Messy. Several rooms of the houses in disarray from not only the struggle with their victim, but also their hurry to grab what they could before fleeing the scene,” Reid explained. “Every single one, until the last three. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, remember them?”

“Sure I do,” James said. “Little older than our usual fare, forties. Wife missing. Husband found in the bathtub. We’re still waiting on toxicology to confirm cause of death. What about ‘em?”

Reid suspected that James was being purposely obtuse.

“Do you remember how clean that scene was? Except for some of the wife’s clothes, her passport, and a single piece of luggage, there was nothing else missing or out of place. No signs of a struggle at all in the house. Unlike the previous cases, but not unlike the case after it, or this case. Do you see it?” he asked, willing his partner to get on the same page as him.

“No…” James let the word drag.

“They packed beforehand!” Reid waved his arms wide as he fed the answer to him. “They were prepared, like they knew exactly what to expect. There was no struggle, so we know the husbands didn’t fight back or see it coming. These weren’t murders committed in an impulsive act of self defense. These three women, much unlike the women we saw before them, were ready for what they were going to do to these men. They were organized, as if it wasn’t their first time killing another person. What are the odds that three women in a row, in the same city—with absolutely no hint of a prior record—would commit such identical and meticulously detailed murders? Not a great bet, I’d imagine,” he finished, answering his own question. “Now, come on,” he said to his partner, “what do you make of it?”

“What I think,” James said, pausing for a moment before he continued, “is that we’re going to miss the end of the breakfast specials if we don’t hurry the fuck up.”

Reid’s shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes. “You know I hate you, right?”

“Yep,” James answered with a cheery tone. “Let’s go.”

Reid took a long drag from his cigarette as he walked down the sidewalk on his way home from work. He needed James on his side to request the resources to investigate his theory further, and it was unlikely that James would agree to take on the extra work. The man’s need to avoid meaningful work was only topped by his need to fill his protruding stomach with greasy foods and alcohol. Even so, Reid couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. He knew in his gut that these cases were connected. He just had to find a way to argue it so convincingly that even James wouldn’t be able to deny it.

The sidewalk was cast in shadow as Reid walked along the wall that encircled one of the city’s ghettos. The sound of children playing could be heard drifting over the top of the structure. One could almost look at the bland grey bricks and forget what they symbolized.

The ghettos were constructed several years ago to house those that the government wasn’t fond of, or anyone who wasn’t white. Minorities from all over the country were sent to designated areas of the cities. They were then segregated further into neighborhoods within the ghetto walls for each of the different races, or as far as the Wilkins’s administration bothered to differentiate between them. They didn’t care if someone of Chinese descent and someone of Korean descent were put on the same block. They only cared that they were both Asian. Descendants of other worldly regions were similarly lumped together. There were no more Lebanese and Iranians, but ‘Middle Easterns.’ No more Jamaicans and Haitians, but ‘Blacks.’ No more Native Americans, who ended up being lumped in with the Indians and Tibetans, despite the lack of any regional or cultural relations between them. There were no more races, but designations.

Along with being removed from their homes and walled into the shabbiest old neighborhoods of each city, the people of the ghettos were also regulated to the lower-level jobs in society. They had lawyers and doctors bagging groceries at the corner markets. Engineers and scientists working on assembly lines in the manufacturing plants. It was disgraceful, he thought. A waste of talent and resources. Though he couldn’t really complain, could he? After all, he benefited from some of these horrible policies that their government forced upon them. He wasn’t any better than anyone who was housed beyond these walls. If anything, at least in his own eyes, he was worse than their oppressors. And if not worse, then only different, and certainly not better.

The poor job prospects led to the rise of illegal establishments to bring in the income the people desperately needed to survive. Prostitution and gambling thrived by design, and bred a fierce competitive atmosphere between the different neighborhoods within the ghettos. The police force worked hard to antagonize and disrupt each time they felt that the neighborhoods were becoming too friendly with one another. Reid had been sent into the ghettos on several occasions to break up gambling establishments that were found to be working together with any establishments from other neighborhoods. Break up the illegal businesses in one or two neighborhoods, and leave the others alone. Rinse and repeat as necessary. Breed suspicion, sow division. That was the policy. If the people of the neighborhoods were too busy being suspicious and angry with each other, they would never be able to organize any meaningful resistance. Reid hadn’t been sent into the ghettos in over a year now. The people of the neighborhoods currently spent more time sabotaging each other than the police did. He and his colleagues did their jobs well, and all the gods forgive him, but he was happy to not have to go back.

A manageable selection of individuals, who would otherwise be deemed unworthy, were given jobs of a higher standing. In government, law enforcement, a CEO or two. It was all a farce. An illusion to trick the masses into believing that they still had some sort of representation in this poor excuse for a nation, and some hope that they too could one day surpass life in the ghettos. Hard work, and all that.

Each person chosen for the higher positions were chosen because of their propensity to avoid causing problems. As long as they didn’t rock the boat, they could stay aboard. Their prize was to be afforded a better life for their families than they would be able to secure in the ghettos. Those in the highest positions were made obscenely rich for their efforts, being too useful of tools for the government to consider letting go. Those people never had to dance on the edge of their destruction the way the rest did. The only other fortunate minorities had already been basking in generational wealth so vast for so long, that even President Wilkins looked destitute by comparison.

He stopped when he reached his building, staring at the brown skin of his hand that grasped the handle of the front door. He was lucky to have already been a detective when all of these changes were taking place. He was given the option to stay aboard, thanks to the recommendation of his commanding officer. He still didn’t know if the Captain saw him as someone who would willingly step over his brothers and sisters to attain a better life for himself, or as a charity case for the man to assuage his own guilt. Reid knew he could never ask him and expect an honest answer. Not in the world they currently lived in.

“Hello, my love.”

Amina looked up from a pot she was stirring in the kitchen to greet him as he walked into their apartment.

“Did you just get home?” he asked.

A crease appeared between her brows. “How do you know?”

He walked over and pulled her away from the old coil stovetop so he could put his arms around her waist. “I solve crimes for a living,” he said with a smile.

“Really?” she asked, smiling back at him. “And what crime have I committed, my husband?” Her hazel eyes were bright with mirth, and were accented by her green floral hijab.

His smile widened as he gazed at her. “Well,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her cheek, pausing with his lips against her soft skin. “What fun would it be if I told you?” he whispered as he slid the smooth fabric from her head. He walked around the counter, waving it like a flag and giving her a pointed look as he disappeared into the hallway. Her laughter followed him back to the bedrooms, where he tossed the garment on their bed before going across the hall to their son’s room.

He leaned against the open doorway with crossed arms. Rayan was facing away, playing out an imaginary tale on the floor with what appeared to be every toy the 3-year-old possessed. A variety of action figures, toy cars, and stuffed animals were stationed at various points around him. The round rug that covered much of the small room was hosting a scene of chaos. One fluffy bear was singled out, lying on its face in the middle, with several plastic policemen surrounding it. Rayan’s head was fully covered by an old cap from Reid’s patrol days. The hat was slanted, the back brim resting against the back of the boy’s neck. He pushed off the door jamb and put his hands in his pockets as he strolled to the other side of the room, kneeling down in front of the scene.

“What’s he in for?” he asked Rayan, pointing at the unfortunate bear.

The boy didn’t look up from an action figure he had in his hands. He appeared to be trying to reattach a leg that had popped off of the toy. “He broke the bus,” he mumbled.

Looking around the room, he spotted a red plastic bus that was upended against the wall to his right. “Ah, I see,” he said, turning back and holding out his hand. Rayan handed him the broken toy. Reid popped the missing leg back onto the body before handing it back to him. “Well, his court date will have to be delayed until after dinner.”

Rayan let his arms fall to the floor with a thud, and his head fell back on his shoulders, the cap tumbling onto the rug. “No!” he whined.

“Yes!” Reid said, imitating his tone.

He grabbed Rayan under the arms, lifting him into a standing position, only for Rayan to refuse to use his legs.

“Uh oh! I was going to let you wash your hands like a big boy, but I guess you’ll need a bath instead.”

“No!”

Reid threw Rayan over his shoulder, avoiding a tiny fist to his face as the boy swung out with all of his limbs at once to try to escape his captor. “Yes!” he said, moving into the hall.

“No! No! No!” His screams became progressively higher-pitched as they approached the door to the bathroom. Reid set him down on his feet—which magically began working again—in front of the door, pushing it open and turning on the light.

“Ok,” he said, crouching down in front of the little objector. “I’ll make you a deal.” Rayan looked at him with rapt attention. “If you wash your hands really well, front and back, and between all these little appendages…” He grabbed Rayan’s fingers in his hands and shook them up and down as if he was airing out a sheet, sending shockwaves up his arms and through his tiny body.

Rayan’s silver bell laughter filled the hall while his head rocked up and down from the waves for a moment before Reid thought his little brain had been scrambled enough. He suppressed his own laughter as Rayan kept moving his head up and down in a wide nod well after the handshakes had ceased. Reid placed a palm on either side of Rayan’s face to stop the movement, smushing his round cheeks in the process to make him look like a fish.

“If you can wash your hands that well all by yourself while I help Mom set the table, then we can skip the bath tonight.”

The boy stared at him with his fish face and his eyes wide.

Reid scrutinized him carefully before asking, “Deal?”

Rayan’s head moved up and down between his hands.

“Ok!” He let go and patted the boy’s butt as he pushed him into the bathroom. “Front and back, I meant it.” He stayed in the doorway until he witnessed Rayan turn on the faucet and squirt some soap into his hand. Most of the soap missed and went into the sink, and his son turned his head and smiled up at him. Reid sighed, but figured the small amount that managed not to be wasted was plenty enough to properly wash his hands. He left the boy to his business and returned to the kitchen to help Amina with dinner.

“Did he wash his hands?” she asked as soon as he reappeared.

“Mmhmm.” He opened a cupboard, grabbing plates and cups, and brought them to the table.

“Did you make sure?”

He paused. “Some of the soap definitely made it onto his hands.”

She laughed, and he went back to setting the table. By the time Rayan joined them, the table was loaded with dishes of rice, a fragrant stewed lamb, and a bowl of crispy fried onions. As Reid loaded a plate for Rayan, there was a noise from outside. He and Amina’s head swiveled to look at the window behind her chair.

“Fireworks!” Rayan was sliding his bottom off of his chair.

“No, Rayan,” Reid said, putting a hand on the child’s chest to stop him from leaving the table. “Eat your food.”

“But I wanna see!”

“Rayan, listen to your father.” Amina picked up her own fork, spearing a chunk of lamb and giving Rayan a pointed look. The boy slumped down with a moan, but picked up his own fork and began to eat.

Reid walked behind Amina and looked out of the curtain that they always kept closed. Across the street, below their seventh floor apartment, was the Middle Eastern neighborhood of the ghetto. The streetlights lit up the scene. Two men stood over a third, no, teenagers. Four beat cops appeared from around the corner. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he suspected it was something along the lines of, ‘drop your weapon.’ The kids were holding their hands in the air, but it didn’t stop the hail of bullets that ripped through them a moment later. One of the cops kicked one of the boys, who was not dead yet, and Reid closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool glass.

“What is it, Daddy?”

His head snapped up and he pulled the curtain shut again. “Fireworks.”

“Can I see?”

“No,” he said as he rounded the table to take his seat, filling his plate with lamb and rice. “They’re already done.”

“Awww!”

He wondered again what the Captain thought of his choice to stay in his position with the force. It was no coincidence that he had been assigned an apartment that looked down on the Middle Eastern neighborhood of the ghetto. Never would a day pass without the reminder of what waited for them should he ever stop doing the government’s bidding. Amina sat across from him, eating in her own dainty way. Rayan danced in his seat, humming a tune as he chewed his food. They were hardly better off than the kids outside the window, but Reid knew he would betray his brothers and sisters over and over again if it meant keeping his family safe.

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1

Breakfast

The Operator

“I can’t do this, Em!”

Carol was hiding in the small guest bathroom at the bottom of the stairs.

“You can,” Emily’s voice was calm on the other end of the line.

“No! I’ve changed my mind.” She tightened her grip on her phone as it nearly slipped from her shaking hands.

“Remember how you got here, Carol,” Emily said in her ear, “remember what he did to you.”

“It wasn’t his fault—”

“It was.”

“I should have been more caref—”

“Carol. It was his fault,” Emily interrupted. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” There was a pause. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes…” Carol responded. “I know.” She did know. Of course she did. She wasn’t sure why she was having second thoughts about everything now.

“It’s ok. It’s normal to be afraid,” Emily assured her, “but you won’t have to be afraid much longer. You got the package I sent?”

“Yes.”

“And you followed the instructions exactly?”

“I—I think so.”

“Then there’s nothing left,” Emily said.

She knew Emily was right. They had weeks to plan, and now the moment was here, staring her in the face. This was it. A chill ran down her spine and into her fingertips.

“Will you stay with me?” She whispered, and Emily responded without hesitation.

“Of course.”

Carol held the door handle for a long moment, taking a deep breath to steel her nerves before exiting the bathroom. She made her way back into the kitchen, where her husband was sitting at the breakfast table, setting her phone facedown on the kitchen island as she walked over to join him.

“Who was that?” He asked, looking up from his newspaper with a raised eyebrow as she sat down. His voice held a curious warning. His eyes held nothing.

“Just my sister,” she responded. She looked down at her eggs to avoid his searching gaze.

“What does Emily want now, more money?” He asked with annoyance. “She needs to stop this childish protest. Better to choose a husband than to be assigned one by the state,” he stated matter-of-factly as he continued to read the morning paper.

“Yeah.” She found that statement ironic.

The man in front of her was cruel. He relished in the freedom he had to do whatever he wished with her, provided she was still able to produce a child in the end. She suspected she would have been better off had she let the state choose her husband for her. Instead she had chosen him, more out of a fear of the unknown than anything. Now here she was, his personal punching bag. His cook and his maid. His therapist and his sex doll. She played many roles for his needs and amusement, in addition to her role as an incubator. It wouldn’t be long now before she would be forced to carry a child for him, such were the laws that every married couple must abide.

She watched as her contemptible husband finished off his coffee while he read the latest news. The paper was quivering in his hands. He cleared his throat, giving the paper a purposeful jerk to try to dispel the shaking. He knew. She was sure he knew. Her heart was beating such a powerful rhythm in her chest that she was sure he would be able to hear it from where he sat on the other side of the table.

He glanced at the watch on his wrist, the corner of the paper falling to reveal his face as he turned his arm. Carol clenched her jaw shut to stop the gasp that wanted to escape her at the sight of him. His normally pale skin was splotched an angry pink, as if he had been in the sun for too long on a hot day. He cleared his throat again.

“Ok, I’m off,” he said, tossing down the paper as he stood from his seat. He moved from the kitchen, grabbing his wallet and keys from the skinny table in the front hall. She watched in silence as he went about his normal morning routine, the shaking in his hands growing worse as he struggled with putting his wallet into his pocket. Once was safely tucked inside of his suit jacket, he glared down at his hand. “Make sure to finish your chores before I get home. I would hate to have to…” He clenched and unclenched his hand, but the shaking wouldn’t leave. “…punish you.”

Her body ached where his words impressed upon her the memory of the last punishment he had given her. The sense of resolve the memory brought her did nothing to ease the fear that glued her to her seat. He turned his head toward her when she offered no response.

“What’s wrong with you?” His eyes were bloodshot as he looked at her. “Did you hear what I just s—”

His words stopped suddenly, his eyes wide as the pace of his breath increased. His shoulders heaved as his chest rose and fell with jerky movements. It was as if he had forgotten how to breathe. He looked to Carol in confusion—and then a dawning realization—before he doubled over with his arms wrapped around his middle, moaning like some wretched wounded animal.

His shoes dragged along on the floor as he stumbled towards her with an angry look on his face, a rattling sound filling the air with each breath he took. Carol shot up from her seat and raced to grab her phone from the countertop. His fingers closed around her wrist before she could raise it to her ear. She screamed, the sound of it bouncing off of the walls, pain shooting through her wrist as she tried to pull out of his grip.

“What did you—” His pinched voice was cut off as a strangled gurgle erupted from his throat. His fingers loosened over her bruised skin, and she screamed again as he crashed to the floor.

“Are you still there?” She shouted as she put the phone to her ear.

“I’m here, Carol.” Emily replied.

“He’s alive! He’s still alive!”

Her husband was convulsing on their white kitchen tile, a red-swirled yellow was forming at the corners of his lips. Wet choking sounds gargled up through the foam that was filling his open mouth.

“It’s ok.” Emily’s voice was quiet and even in her ear. “It’s almost over.”

As soon as she had said it, the man’s convulsions slowed to twitches, and then to an unnatural stillness as his chest collapsed, his final breath leaving him in one pathetic huff. Carol stared at him with wide eyes as she tried to slow her heavy breathing. Her grip on her emotions floundered as she rotated between relief that he was gone, and horror at what she had just done.

“Carol? Are you there?”

Emily’s voice made her jump.

“I—Yes. I’m here.”

“Ok. I know this is a shock for you, but you did well,” Emily assured her in the same calm tone, and Carol wondered how the other woman could still think straight. “Do you remember what to do next?”

“I…” She searched her mind for the right answer. “My bag?”

“Exactly,” Emily said. “Go grab it.”

Carol spared one last glance for the man on the floor before leaving the kitchen and rushing up the stairs.

“My team will be there soon to get you. I’m so proud of you, Carol.”

“Wait, Emily!” Carol said before the other woman could disconnect the call. She knew to ask was pointless, but she said the words anyway. “What’s your real name?”

The woman on the other end of the line smiled to herself. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?” She asked in a friendly and formal tone.

“No, I guess not,” Carol’s voice responded in the woman’s headset after a moment of silence. “Thank you.”

The woman reached up and pressed a button on the side of her headset, and the call was disconnected. She typed up a quick note into the file she had open on her laptop.

::Carol Atticus: Step one: Complete. Request extraction.::

She forwarded the file to the next department as a light on her screen started flashing, indicating a new incoming call. Pressing the button on her headset, a click sounded in her ear as the line was opened again.

“Thank you for calling The Iris Collective,” she said. “What is the name of your closest living confidant?”

“What?” A confused and panicked voice responded on the other end of the line.

“What is the name of your closest living confidant?” The woman repeated.

“Um, Sophie.”

“Ok. From this point forward you will only refer to me as Sophie when we talk. Do you understand?”

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This story started as a short in January of 2023, and at the urging of friends was quickly developed into a full novel. The story is finished, several drafts, and well into the final edit. I will be uploading 1-2 chapters per week, and will make a few alternate posts in between to fill the waiting periods. Feel free to comment your thoughts or ask any questions you’d like as you read, and please share this story so that others may read it as well. Thank you for your support! <3