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  “You would think. But nothing about this task has been made clear.”

  DiCarlo sat back in her chair and stared off. She finally regrouped and said, “Be that as it may, it doesn’t really impact you and me and why we’re here.”

  Robie nodded. “We can agree on that, for the time being. So that gets us back to the question: why is she doing this?”

  “I think it might be beneficial for you to hear some of her history, Robie. Using the skills that I know you possess, one or more of these facts might aid you down the road.”

  Robie mulled over this for a few moments. “Okay. Let’s take a trip down Jessica Reel’s life.”

  She began, “Reel came to the agency under what I would say are unique circumstances, that is, not through traditional routes.”

  “So she wasn’t former military? Most of the people who do what we do are.”

  “No. Nor was she in the intelligence field.”

  “She never talked about herself to me.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t. Jessica Reel was born in Alabama. Her father was a white supremacist who led an antigovernment group for years. He was also a drugs and explosives trafficker. He didn’t like the color black, but he apparently loved the color green. He was arrested in a shootout with the DEA and ATF and is now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.”

  “And her mother?”

  “Killed by her father when Jessica was seven. After he was arrested, her remains were found in the basement of their home. They’d been down there for quite some time.”

  “So you’re sure he killed his wife?”

  “Jessica witnessed the execution, for that’s what it was. Mrs. Reel did not share her husband’s views and was thus a liability to him. By the way, all of the facts I’m telling you we have independently verified. We didn’t simply take the word of a little girl for it. And the authorities had plenty of other evidence tying the husband to the crime. It was just a matter of finding the body. Not that it mattered, really, since he was in prison for life on the other charges, but it was a semblance of justice for Jessica and her poor mother.”

  “Okay. And what happened to little Jessica after that?”

  “Shuttled to relatives in other states who either didn’t want her or couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. She ended up in the foster care system in Georgia. Some really bad people got hold of her. Forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. She escaped from them and started living on the streets.”

  “She doesn’t sound like the sort of person the agency would ever consider recruiting. How was the connection made?”

  “I’m getting to that, Mr. Robie,” DiCarlo said, frowning.

  “Sorry, ma’am, go ahead.”

  Robie sat back, his full attention on the woman.

  “When she was sixteen, Reel did something that would later lead her to be put in the Witness Protection Program.”

  “What?” said Robie in surprise.

  “She became an inside informant against a neo-Nazi group that was planning a mass attack against the government.”

  “How did a sixteen-year-old girl manage that?”

  “One of the foster parents she was taken in by had a brother who was in the Nazi group. He and some of his friends would use their house as a base when they were in town recruiting in Georgia. Reel went to the FBI and offered to wear a wire and take other steps to help build a case against them.”

  “And the Bureau let her?”

  “I know it sounds extraordinary. But I read the special agent in charge’s report on the initial meeting with Reel. He couldn’t believe she was sixteen. Not just in looks. His notes said he thought he was interviewing a hardened combat veteran. The girl was unshakable. She had an explanation for everything. Whatever the Bureau threw at her she flicked it off. She really wanted to nail those guys.”

  “Because of her old man? And her mother?”

  “I thought that too. But you’re never sure where you stand with Reel. She does things for purposes that seem clear only to her.”

  “So she helped nail the neo-Nazis?”

  “Not only that, she killed one of them. This was after she had taken his weapon from him.”

  “At sixteen?”

  “Well, she was seventeen by then. She spent a year infiltrating the organization. She gained their trust, cooked their meals, wrote their disgusting hate pamphlets, washed their filthy uniforms. By the end she was helping them plot out their master attack. And of course feeding the Bureau all the details.”

  “I can think of only a handful of undercover agents at the FBI who could have pulled that off. And none of them were teenagers.”

  “When they mounted their attack, the Bureau was waiting, with force. But there was still a battle. The man Reel killed was in the process of ambushing several FBI agents. She saved their lives.”

  “And was put in Witness Protection?”

  “The neo-Nazi organization is a labyrinth in this country. Their reach is far. With Reel’s help they wiped out part of it, but the monster still lived.”

  “And how did she go from Witness Protection to the agency?”

  “Through the Bureau we learned what Reel had done. It occurred to us that she had a skill set that was going to waste. And we could protect her as well as the U.S. Marshals could. And with her new job she would be invisible. New identity, traveling all the time, and she would gain personal protection skills that would make it very hard for anyone, even the skinheads, to get to her and kill her. We approached Reel about coming to work for us. She accepted on the spot. No second-guessing. We spent years educating and training her. As we did you.”

  “That qualifies as a unique way into the agency, I’ll give you that.”

  DiCarlo didn’t say anything for a few moments. “Not so different from how you came to us, Mr. Robie.”

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about her. And from what you’ve just told me I could go in either direction on Reel.”

  DiCarlo looked puzzled. “Explain that.”

  “I’m assuming that because of her traumatic childhood you gave her a series of psychological tests to see if she was mentally up to the demands of the job?”

  “Yes, and she passed all of them with flying colors.”

  “Either because she was okay mentally or she’s a great liar.”

  “She is a great liar. She fooled the skinheads for over a year.”

  “And it sounds like she’s patriotic, which gets us back to the question of why she’s turned on us. So either something happened and she’s doing this for reasons we don’t as yet understand, or she’s been turned in the traditional way, which means she fooled all of you and wasn’t as patriotic as you believed.”

  “I follow your reasoning.”

  “And while I appreciate better understanding her history, what I need to know more about is her missions from the last two years.”

  “Why two years?”

  “That to me is the outer reaches of how long she would carry something around inside her and then lay the plans necessary to execute her response. That’s only in the case of her not being turned in the traditional sense, which could be simply about money.”

  “I would never believe that about Jessica.”

  Robie cocked his head and stared at her. “Would you believe it about me?”

  “I don’t know you the way I do her.”

  “The fact is, ma’am, you don’t really know either one of us. That’s why people like Reel and me are so good at what we do. It’s why you approached us in the first place. You don’t get to be like us if your childhood was normal. We’re not Beaver Cleavers with a stay-at-home mom in pearls making us pies and pouring us milk after school.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Until I’m proved wrong I will assume that Jessica Reel is doing this for some reason unrelated to being bought off. To better understand that I need to know what she was involved with in the last two years.”

  “I would ha
ve assumed that you were given her fles.”

  “I require all of her files. Not just the redacted ones.”

  DiCarlo looked startled. “What are you talking about?”

  “The electronic files I was given were censored. Some information was deleted. There were time gaps. I need the whole picture if I’m going to be able to do my job.” Robie paused and then decided to say it. “And the crime scenes were tampered with. Things were removed. Not by the police. By our people. I need to know what was taken, and why.”

  DiCarlo glanced away. But before she did so Robie saw in the woman’s eyes an apprehensive look.

  When she looked back she had composed herself. “I will look into that matter immediately and get back to you.”

  Robie nodded, not trying all that hard to disguise his look of skepticism.

  He stood. “So do you want me to kill Jessica Reel?” he asked.

  DiCarlo stared up at him. “I want you to find the truth, Mr. Robie.”

  “Then I better get to it.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  ROBIE DROVE BACK INTO D.C., but he didn’t return to his apartment. Instead, he drove to a school.

  He parked at the curb and looked around. This was a nice section of D.C. The school Julie Getty attended was one of the best. But it was not one where uniforms were issued and all the students were the progeny of the upper crust. Kids got in here solely on their merits, not based on their parents’ ability to pay the tuition or donate to the school. Once you got in the tuition was taken care of. The place was based on individuality. There were rules, of course, but the students at the school were expected to march to the beat of a different drummer.

  Robie assumed that Julie Getty was thriving in such an environment. He had discovered that her beat and her drummer were as individual as was humanly possible.

  He thought about how he would handle this first encounter with her. And then he stopped thinking about it. There was no good way to approach this.

  I’m going to take my lumps and maybe that’s best.

  The rain seemed to want to linger, and Robie turned on his windshield wipers and watched them shove the water off the glass. He looked at his watch. Anytime now. There was a line of cars waiting to pick up students. There was no bus service at the school, although there was a stop across the street for a public bus.

  A few seconds later the doors to the school opened and the students started to stream out. Robie got out of the car when he saw her, turned up his collar against the light rain, and jogged across the street.

  Julie was walking near the back of a group of girls. She had her earbuds in and was pecking away on her smartphone. She had come a long way in a short time, thought Robie. When he first met her she couldn’t afford a phone of any kind.

  He let the group of girls pass and then stepped forward.

  Julie stopped, looked up, and Robie could see first happiness and then anger on her features.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “Fulfilling my promise to come and see you.”

  “Little late for that.”

  “Is it?”

  The rain started to fall harder.

  “You need a ride home?” he asked as he saw her shiver.

  “I take the bus across the street.”

  Robie turned to see a bus gliding to a stop at the far curb. “I thought after last time you’d never get on another bus.”

  Robie could see a glimmer of a smile on her face and sought to press this advantage. “I can drive you. We can talk. I can check up on Jerome. Make sure he’s being a good guardian.”

  “He’s fine. I told you.”

  “Nothing like seeing it for myself.”

  “I don’t want you to be here just because you feel shitty about how you’ve treated me.”

  “I do feel shitty, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Can we get out of the rain?”

  “Afraid of melting?”

  He pointed to her earbuds and phone. “Don’t want you to be electrocuted.”

  “Right,” she said sarcastically.

  But she followed him over to his car. They slid in and Robie started the engine and drove off.

  Julie pulled on her seat belt. “So why are you really here?” she asked again.

  “Unfinished business.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “You’re not making this easy.”

  “Why should I? You dissed me, but I bet you’ve seen super agent Vance plenty of times.”

  “I have, but only once and it was for professional reasons. She was trying to pick my brain on something.”

  “More murders?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What else could it be? You and Vance deal in dead bodies. Lots of them.”

  “I guess I can see that.”

  “But you still got together with her.”

  “It’s different.”

  “Not to me.”

  Robie frowned. “Is this a competition?”

  “It’s about being a man of your word, Robie. I don’t like people lying to me. If you didn’t want to see me again all you had to do was say so. No sweat.”

  “You think it’s that simple?”

  “It should be.”

  “I’m here because I was wrong.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “I wanted to protect you. I should have known better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In my line of work you make enemies. I wanted to keep those people away from you. I wanted you to have a fresh start. All old ties gone. I wanted you to have a shot at happiness.”

  “Are you bullshitting me?” she said.

  “Happiness is elusive. I wanted a clean break for you. You almost died with me. I didn’t want that to happen again.”

  “So why not tell me that up front?”

  “Because I was an idiot.”

  “I don’t think so, Will,” she said in a softer tone.

  “You know you call me Robie when you’re pissed at me and Will when you’re not?”

  “Then try not to make me go back to calling you Robie.”

  He slowed for a red light and glanced over at her. “Maybe I wanted to do exactly what I told you I would. Maybe I wanted to keep in touch. Maybe...”

  “Maybe you just wanted to be normal.”

  The light turned green and Robie started off again. He didn’t speak for a few seconds.

  “Maybe I did.”

  The rain started to come down more heavily.

  “I think that was the most honest thing you’ve said to me.”

  “You’re way too mature for fourteen.”

  “I’m fourteen in years. Not in experience. I wish I wasn’t.”

  Robie nodded. “I understand that.” He looked at her. “We cool now?”