The day the last of my bruises disappeared was the day that we took the GED. It was also the day that Agent Sterling moved back into the
house.
When the five of us arrived back from taking the exam, she was directing movers, her own arms loaded down with a large box. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck, stray hairs plastered to her forehead with sweat. She was wearing jeans.
I took in the changes in her appearance and the fact that Briggs’s possessions were being carted out of his study. Something had shifted. Whatever soul-searching she’d been doing, whatever memories our captivity had stirred up, she’d reached some kind of resolution. Something she could live with.
Beside me, Dean stared after Sterling as she disappeared into her room. I wondered if he was thinking about the woman he’d known five years ago. I wondered what relationship she bore to the woman in front of us now.
“Think it’s therapeutic to have all her ex-husband’s stuff hauled out of this house?” Michael asked as a pair of movers walked by with Briggs’s desk.
“One way to find out.” Lia strolled in the direction Sterling had gone. A split second later, the rest of us followed.
Almost all traces of Briggs had been removed from the room, which now boasted an actual bed in place of the fold-out couch. Sterling’s back was to us as she placed the box on the bed and began opening it. “How did the test go?” she asked without turning around.
“Splendidly,” Lia replied. She twirled a strand of dark hair around her index finger. “How was federally mandated psychological evaluation?”
“So-so.” Sterling turned to face us. “How are you doing, Cassie?” she asked. Something in her tone told me that she knew the answer.
Some people said that broken bones grew back stronger. On the good days, I told myself that was true, that each time the world tried to break me, I became a little less breakable. On the bad days, I suspected that I would always be broken, that parts of me would never be quite right—and that those were the parts that made me good at the job.
Those were the parts that made this house and the people in it home. “I’m okay,” I said. Lia refrained from commenting on my answer to Agent Sterling’s question. Beside us, Sloane tilted her head to one side,
staring at Sterling with a perplexed look on her face.
“You came back,” Sloane told the agent, her forehead crinkling. “The probability of your return was quite low.”
Agent Sterling turned back to the boxes on her bed. “When the odds are bad,” she said, removing something from one of them, “you change the rules.”
The look on Sloane’s face left very little doubt that she found that statement to be somewhat dubious. I was too busy wondering what Sterling meant when she referenced changing the rules to spare a moment’s thought to probabilities or odds.
You’ve been buried alive in a glass coffin with a sleeping cobra on your chest. I thought of the game Sterling had played with Scarlett Hawkins.
Impossible situations required impossible solutions. Veronica Sterling had
come here largely intending to disband this program, and now she was moving in.
What was I missing?
“This mean you’re done running?”
I turned to see Judd standing in the doorway behind us. I wondered how long he’d been there and turned the question over in my mind. He’d watched Agent Sterling grow up. When she’d left the FBI and turned her back on this program, she’d put distance between them, too.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sterling told him. She walked over to her nightstand and unwrapped the object in her hand, discarding the tissue paper.
A picture frame.
I knew, before attempting to get a closer look, what I would see in the frame.
Two little girls, one dark-haired, one light. Both of them beamed at the camera. The smaller one—Scarlett—was missing her two front teeth.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sterling said a second time.
I glanced at Dean, knowing instinctively, even before our eyes met, that his thoughts would be operating in tandem with mine. Sterling had spent a long time keeping her emotions on lockdown. She’d spent a long time trying not to care, trying to keep the person she used to be in check.
“Not to interrupt a touching moment,” Michael said, his voice lined with enough bite to make me think he wasn’t talking just about the moment between Sterling and Judd—he was referring to the synchrony between Dean and me. “But I detect a hint of tension in your jaw, Agent.” Michael’s eyes flitted left and right, up and down, cataloging everything about Sterling’s posture and expression. “Not stress so much as…anticipation.”
The doorbell rang then, and Sterling straightened, looking slightly more formidable than she had a moment before. “Visitors,” she told Judd briefly. “Plural.”
Briggs arrived first, followed by Director Sterling. I’d assumed that was it, but it quickly became clear that they were waiting for someone else.
Someone important.
Minutes later, a dark-colored sedan pulled up. A man exited the car. He was wearing an expensive suit and a red tie. He walked with purpose, like each step was an integral part of a greater plan.
Once we were all settled in the living room, Agent Sterling introduced him as the director of National Intelligence.
“Principle advisor of the National Security Council,” Sloane rattled off. “Reports directly to the president. Head of the Intelligence Community, which encompasses seventeen elements, including the CIA, the NSA, the DEA—”
“And the FBI?” Lia suggested dryly before Sloane could list off all seventeen agencies the man in front of us oversaw.
“Until last week,” the man in the red tie said, “I had no idea this program existed.”
The purpose of this meeting soon became clear. When the odds are bad, you change the rules. Agent Sterling had blown the whistle on the Naturals program.
“I’ve given a great deal of thought to your report,” the director of National Intelligence told Agent Sterling. “The pros and cons of this program. Its strengths. Its weaknesses.”
He lingered on the word weaknesses. Director Sterling’s face was still.
This man was his boss. He could disband the program. From the FBI director’s perspective, the director of National Intelligence could probably do worse. How many laws had Agent Sterling’s father broken, keeping this program off the books?
Agent Sterling is moving in. I clung to that fact. Surely that meant that her father’s boss wasn’t here to pull the plug. Surely.
Sensing that Director Sterling wasn’t the only one discomfited by his words, the man at the head of National Intelligence addressed the rest of us. “Agent Sterling seems to believe that this program saves lives—and that if you were allowed to participate in active investigations, you could save many more.” The intelligence director paused. “She also believes that you can’t be trusted to watch out for yourselves, and that no agent involved in an active case, no matter how well-intentioned, can be counted on to put your physical and psychological well-being first.”
I glanced at Agent Sterling. That wasn’t just an indictment of the program—it was an indictment of what she’d allowed us to do.
What if they’re letting us stay, but won’t let us near real cases? Before I’d come here, training to profile people might have been enough, but it wasn’t, not now. I needed what I had been through to mean something, I needed a purpose. I needed to help.
“Based on Agent Sterling’s assessment of the risks inherent in this program,” the director of National Intelligence continued, “it is her recommendation that this program be restructured, that one Judd Hawkins be appointed as an advocate in your stead, and that any and all deviations from protocol be approved by said advocate, irrespective of the potential benefit to the case.”
Restructured. I processed that word. Across from me, Director Sterling’s jaw clenched slightly, but the rest of his face remained impassive. If his daughter’s recommendation was accepted, that would make Judd the final authority on what we could and could not do.
Judd, not Director Sterling.
“You’ll all turn eighteen within the year?” the man who’d come here to decide our future asked. Coming from someone who reported directly to the president, it sounded more like an order than a question.
“Two hundred and forty-three days to go,” Sloane confirmed. The rest of us settled for nods.
“They stay behind the scenes.” He fixed his casually weighty stare on the director. “Those are the rules.”
“Agreed.”
“Agents Sterling and Briggs will supervise their participation on all cases, subject to the approval of Major Hawkins. When it comes to what does and does not fall within the purview of this program, his word is final
—even for you.”
The director stiffened, but didn’t hesitate in his reply. “Agreed.” “And the next time you decide to fund an innovative program off the
books—don’t.”
The director of National Intelligence didn’t give Director Sterling the chance to respond. He just nodded once at us and left.
“I believe I speak for everyone,” Michael said, “when I ask what just happened here?”
The rules just changed, I thought.
“The Naturals program just got some oversight,” Agent Sterling replied. “There are going to be some new regulations. New protocols. And they’ll mean something. No more special exceptions—not even from me.” Her expression was stern, but Michael must have seen something I didn’t, because he broke into a grin. Agent Sterling smiled, too—directly at me.
“We’re going to need those regulations,” she added, “because as of tomorrow, the five of you are cleared to consult on active cases.”
They weren’t shutting us out. They were letting us in. Instead of taking away my purpose, they’d given it new life.
This was a whole new world.
