“Come on, Ash. Take the night off from being a nerd and have a little fun for a change.”
They exited the school and descended the stairs that led to the walk that would lead them to the main gates. The initial post-final bell crush of students had abated, and the area out front was relatively clear. On the street just outside the gate, she saw the car waiting for Nicole. Anxious to bring this conversation to an end, she led her friend to the car and opened the back door for her.
“Your ride’s here,” Ashley said.
“Please, Ash? Please come to the party with me?”
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
“I won’t even say anything if you want to bring Tyler with you.”
“I’m not going to bring Tyler. We’re not even talking much anymore.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Then you heard wrong,” Ashley replied testily.
“Fine. I heard wrong,” Nicole said. “Just say you’ll come to the party with me.”
“I said I’ll think about it.”
“Are you going out with Archie?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, I’m not going out with Archie,” Ashley answered, her voice terse and annoyed. “Look, I told you I’d think about it. Okay?”
Nicole pulled a face. “Fine. Think about it. But you should know I’m going to keep bugging you until you say yes. I will wear you down until you say yes just to get me to shut up.”
“Go home,” Ashley said.
Nicole tossed her bag into the back seat of the car, then climbed in after it. “I’ll text you later.”
“Love you,” Ashley said.
“Love you too.”
Ashley closed the car door and shook her head as she watched it speed off down the street. She knew Nicole was going to try to wear her down and convince her to go to a party she had no interest in and held absolutely no appeal for her. She was realistic enough to know, though, she was rarely ever able to say no and hold firm to it when Nicole was pressuring her. Knowing how dogged Nicole could be, Ashley knew she was going to have to come up with a good excuse. Maybe she could get her dad to send her out of the country for the weekend.
Ashley turned and headed down the street. Ordinarily, her dad sent a car to pick her up from school as well. But on Mondays and Wednesdays, she had piano lessons with Aurelio Simon, a famous pianist who had spent almost twenty years with the New York Philharmonic. His studio was just a couple of blocks from her school, so she walked there after classes ended for the day, then her driver picked her up when she was done with her lessons. That brief walk from school to the studio was about the only taste of freedom she ever got.
Because of who her father was, there wasn’t any shortage of people who wanted to do him harm—including people who would try to get at him by doing something to her. That was why he always had somebody shadowing her. Most kids would resent it, and it did sometimes bother Ashley, but she understood it was just part of her life and had learned to accept it. Instead of trying to slip her bodyguard like most kids would, she just rolled with it. But the constant presence that was always around was sometimes smothering. It was why she enjoyed this short time off her leash. More than that, she loved her time in the studio.
Aurelio was tough. Strict. Demanding. Ashley knew she was lucky to be getting lessons from a pianist of such renown, and he expected perfection from her. It didn’t help that she herself was a perfectionist, sometimes heaping such pressure on herself to get it right that tears of frustration still stung her eyes when she got home.
Aurelio had helped improve her craft, and the satisfaction when she nailed a piece and earned one of his smiles of approval outweighed the frustration she often felt. All her frustrations aside, Ashley loved her piano lessons. Music was one of her biggest passions in life; when she played, she could sometimes forget the gilded cage she lived in. Performing made her feel free. Playing music helped her forget her troubles and escape that bubble she lived in, if only for a little while. It was time she cherished.
Ashley turned down a narrow side street and passed by the shops she loved to browse in, but unfortunately didn’t have time for today. She was running later than usual thanks to Nicole taking up so much of her time trying to badger her into going to the party. She contented herself with gazing through the shop windows as she passed. It was a warm, beautiful day out. There wasn’t much foot traffic on the street, nor many cars passing by, and all her irritation with her friend aside, Ashley felt good. Happy.
But when she passed by the entrance to an alley set between two shops, her heart stopped dead in her chest as a hand shot out and grabbed hold of her. His grip was like iron as his fingers pressed deep into her arm. Fear crackling like electricity pumped through her veins as she struggled to break free. She screamed and twisted her body, using all the strength she could muster to throw herself to the side. She broke his hold on her but stumbled and hit the concrete sidewalk hip first, the impact so hard, her jaws clacked together, making her bite her tongue.
She scrambled away from the grasping hand that reached for her as the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Ashley winced in pain but knew she had to move—had to get away. She quickly clambered back to her feet, knowing if she didn’t, she was going to die. A tall and lean man wearing black jeans, black boots, and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head stepped out of the alley and advanced toward her. But it was his face that captivated Ashley. There was something not right about it, but she was too panicked to focus on it.
A hard popping sound rang in her ears, and two fangs bit painfully into her stomach. A split-second later, Ashley’s body locked up, and she was gripped by a searing pain. She began to shake wildly, her skin burning as if on fire. She jerked and spasmed like she was holding on to a live wire with ten thousand volts being pumped into her. She tried to scream but couldn’t, her voice bursting from her throat in sputtering gasps instead. A sharp crackling noise filled her ears, then stopped, plunging her into a sudden silence so profound it was as if she’d been dropped into a vacuum.
The pain lingered, though, making her body twitch and convulse. Ashley trembled and felt weak. Her legs buckled, and it felt as if every muscle in her body, rigid and tense just a moment before, went slack without warning. A wave of nausea churned in Ashley’s belly, and she tasted hot, acidic bile in the back of her throat. Her vision began to waver, and the shapes of the buildings around her blurred, turning into little more than ambiguously fuzzy shapes.
As her field of vision narrowed to a single point of light in the darkness, Ashley felt weightless, as if she were falling from a great height. She knew she’d hit the ground again only because she felt the back of her head bounce off the concrete. Ashley lay still, staring up at the blue sky overhead. But then the man with the strange face filled her narrow field of vision, and she struggled to comprehend why it looked so odd.
“Wh—who are you?” she asked, her voice weak and raspy.
The last thing Ashley saw was a pair of hands reaching for her.
Office of Professional Responsibility, US Department of Justice; Washington, DC
“Chief Wilder, how can you sit there and, with a straight face, say your team was successful in Atlanta?” the woman asks. “Your suspect is dead—killed in a firefight with your team.”
As expected, a few days after closing the case in Atlanta, I was summoned to DC for a hearing with OPR. SAC Ayad had warned me to walk lightly and avoid ruffling any feathers, but the nature of the case didn’t lend itself to me being able to do that. The fact that high-powered, politically connected people were involved in a massacre made it impossible for me to tread lightly and handle things with a velvet glove. Powerful people with powerful friends went down because of our investigation, and now I’m reaping the whirlwind of doing my job well.
“That’s factually incorrect, Deputy Inspector. My team did not engage in a firefight. You can check the forensics reports I included with my written report, and you can see for yourself that my team, though present at the scene, did not discharge our weapons,” I state forcefully.
With dark blue carpeting, dark wood-paneled walls polished to a glossy sheen, and a gallery of two dozen chairs set behind the waist-high wall behind me, the OPR hearing room looks a lot like a formal courtroom. That’s not an accident. It’s intended to subconsciously lend the room a certain gravitas and give the proceedings that take place within its walls a psychological weight that can’t be had in a regular conference room. It’s an intimidation tactic that I find as pathetic as it is transparent.
Seated at a table in an uncomfortable chair, I’m facing a long desk that matches the walls and sits perched upon a raised dais. It’s a reminder to those of us who are unlucky enough to find ourselves sitting at this table that we’re in a subordinate position to the three people sitting behind the desk—the OPR review board. That they’re our judge, jury, and executioners. The FBI crest, etched out of burnished steel, hangs on the wall behind them—a not-so-subtle reminder to the people who find themselves in my current position of the sanctity of our oaths—and is flanked by an American flag and the flag of DC.
The two men and one woman at the raised desk before me are the ones who have been tasked with questioning my every thought and action. They’re here to judge me and then recommend an appropriate punishment, if warranted, to the Inspector General. The woman sitting in the center of the table—Deputy Inspector Lydia Graves—is staring at me the way a hungry owl eyes a plump field mouse, which makes me reasonably sure no matter what I say here today, she’s going to find punishment warranted. And she seems the type who’d say the more draconian and medieval the punishment levied, the better. The rack? The wheel? The Judas Cradle? I’m sure in her mind they’re all in play.
