30

Angel tried to get Mark to go home, but he'd been ordered not to leave her alone, and he wasn't going to. She was mad at her boss for effectively suspending her, disappointed with herself for breaking down, and she needed to let her emotions out. She changed out of her work clothes and went down to the gym instead.

Mark came down to watch as she finished her weight routine and started her cardio. She did twenty minutes on the treadmill, working up a good sweat as she sprinted her finish. Mark tossed her a towel from the stack by the stairs as she did her cooldown walk. "I'm glad I'm still in my suit because I don't think I could keep up with you."

"Think you can hold the bag for me?" Angel walked over to the shelf and started putting on a pair of gloves. When she had them on, she pulled the heavy bag along a rail to the mat's center from its storage position along the wall.

"Sure." He slipped his shoes off and walked onto the mat, holding the bag steady as she warmed up with jabs and combinations. "Why didn't you tell me about your past?"

"It was a long time ago, Mark."

"So much makes sense now. Why you do this, and why you work so hard at it."

Angel started mixing in knees and kicks, making him hug the bag to keep it from swinging around. "Don't try to analyze me, Mark. Better people have tried and given up." She finished with a spinning back kick, almost knocking the bag from his arms.

"You missed the brief Ken gave on the case. Do you want to know?"

"Is he going to be added to the list of Monster Hunter victims?" She started moving faster, pounding the bag with combinations of strikes and kicks.

"Based on what I heard, yes."

Angel finished with a flurry of an attack on the helpless bag as Mark worked to hold it in place. She finished with a spinning back-kick that almost knocked him down. She was breathing hard as she stepped back and removed her gloves. "I'm going to take a quick shower and hit the hot tub before bed. You can tell me there. Do you want to borrow some trunks to join me?"

"I'll sit at the table. Gwen would understand me staying with you as part of my job, but being in a hot tub with a beautiful woman would make her insane with jealousy. She wouldn't believe nothing happened."

Angel shook her head; he knew her well enough to know she wasn't gay, just not interested in workplace romances. "If Gwen can't trust you, what future does that relationship have?" Angel left him with that as she went up the stairs to take a shower. When she came back down in her bikini, Mark walked in the front door and locked it. He took out his suit from the garment bag and hung it on the wall. Like all agents, he carried a change of clothes and a bag of essentials in his car for unscheduled overnights.

Mark didn't say anything as he came into the kitchen where she was pouring herself a glass of white wine. "Beer, wine, and juice are in the fridge."

He grabbed a beer and pretzels, then followed her out to the deck where the hot tub sat behind the privacy fence. Mark watched as she pulled off the long T-shirt and settled into the water. She had the best body of any agent in the office, and he'd seen how hard she worked to keep it. "From your reaction today, you knew William Clay Burroughs."

Angel took a drink of her wine and nodded. He already knew the truth, and she trusted him enough to talk about it. "Bill was one of the repeat customers of my owner. He had an appointment with me every other Saturday, starting when I was four years old. He wanted me to call him Daddy and greet him with a kiss. He would bathe me and get me ready for bed before he would abuse me."

"You knew he was dead?"

"No. I didn't even know Bill's real name until today."

"It's not surprising. Burroughs never got caught, so he was never registered as a sex offender. The local police assumed most of the photos in his stash were traded with other perverts, as they had seen some before. They couldn't identify you from the ones they had with him in them, so the state closed the case to the accidental death. The saving grace was that they tagged the file with child pornography and child molestation tags. Ken's search criteria found it."

"And I wasn't searching for dead perps," Angel said as she leaned her head back. "How did he die?"

"He was injected with a paralytic drug that left him unable to move. The cigarette set the bed on fire, and he died of smoke inhalation."

"Did he suffer?"

"Ken said he would feel the pain and know he was burning, but wouldn't be able to move away from the flames. It wasn't an easy death."

"Good." She tossed back the rest of her wine and leaned back in the bubbles.

"How do you feel about him now?"

"Cheated," Angel replied. "I wanted to bust him myself. I wanted to see the look in his eyes when he realized his little fuck doll had grown up, and now HE would be the one caged and abused. I wanted his family and friends to find out what a piece of shit he was and what he did."

Mark took a long pull on his beer before he asked the next question. "Did you arrest any of your abusers?"

"One, and I watched another get his guilty verdict," she said. "I couldn't get any of them for what they did to me, but they went down for what they did to other girls. Guys who do that kind of stuff don't stop; they find other girls. I don't believe rehabilitation is possible for them, and castration isn't allowed."

"Angel, did you know any of the Monster Hunter's victims from that time?"

Her face got angry as she thought of him. "Corey Underwood, number three."

"Jesus." He finished his beer and tossed it into the bin. "The boss is going to flip out when I tell him, and I have to tell him."

"I know. Don't worry about me; if the Bureau lets me back on the job, it won't be with the task force or anything related to sex trafficking or child abuse. I'll be lucky if I'm doing background checks out of the office in North Dakota."

"Why do you say that? You're a good agent and an asset to our team."

"I'm sympathetic to the Monster Hunter because of my history, so the task force is a no go. I'm also a mental case who might break down at the sight of an abuser, so I'm unreliable. Plus, as soon as the psychologists find out, they'll be modifying their profile of the Monster Hunter to include victims of abuse and women."

His jaw dropped. "Why would you say that?"

"I fit all the other parts of their profile, almost too perfectly. Once they realize that abuse victims grow up, they'll adapt their theory. I have all the motive in the world, opportunity, law enforcement training, and access to databases."

"That's not enough to make you a suspect," he said.

"They don't have anyone else, so it's more than enough. I'm sorry I'm putting you in this position, Mark. I expect the Monster Hunter Task Force will make me the prime suspect by the end of the week. They'll be crawling up my ass to look for evidence and going back over all the cases to see if I hid anything." She looked up at the cloudy sky. "I need your help to prove I'm not the one who did it."

"How?"

"The same way we are screening out other suspects," I said. "Put me on the spreadsheet, and prove that I couldn't be the one." Angel got out of the hot tub and dried off with a towel. "There are pillows, sheets, and a blanket in the hall closet. Is your babysitting job over in the morning?"

"Boss said to watch you until your brother arrives."

Angel laughed. "He won't be back until tomorrow afternoon, and I don't need someone to hold my hand as I walk to the store. You bring me with you to work in the morning, clean out my desk for me, and I'll drive my car back home. I can't go back to work this week anyway."

"What do I tell everyone when they see me cleaning out your desk?"

"Tell them the truth. I'm on medical leave, and I asked you to get my stuff. You're not at liberty to talk about what the medical leave is for."

Mark let out a sigh. "That isn't good enough. They are your friends, Angel. You'll have a parade of them at your door if they think you are leaving without saying goodbye."

"Tell them I'm going home for a while." Angel let Mark walk inside ahead of her and locked the door. "You have to leave at six-thirty to make it to work on time. I'll be up at five-forty." She left him in the living room and went up the stairs to bed.

Ch. 22

Michael didn't turn on his phone and get the messages until his training finished just before dinnertime. It had been a fun afternoon as they practiced the tactics needed to keep their principals safe in urban areas. The SecuriTech training facility in the woods outside Sumter, South Carolina, was a marvel. Built on a former industrial site, it included mockups of cities, villages, and open road stretches. The company was training them on using their armored Suburbans as offensive and defensive weapons as they practiced evading and resisting kidnappers. Michael and his partner were in the lead vehicle, the simulated VIP in the center, and more contractors in the tail vehicle.

As soon as he saw what had happened, he told his boss he had to leave. Len wasn't happy about this. Michael was the leader of a five-man team preparing for deployment to Kazakstan in three weeks to protect a group of scientists evaluating a potential oil deposit. "How long will you be gone?"

"A week, maybe more," Michael had replied.

Len shook his head. "I'll have to replace you with someone who can finish the training. Backing out of a mission won't look good for you."

"My sister needs me, and she's the only reason I do this stuff. I'm sorry, Len, but I have to go." Len convinced him to get some sleep before the long ride. After talking briefly with Angel and hearing her partner was staying the night with her, he agreed.

He got about six hours of sleep in, waking at 0400. The trip would take six and a half hours, not including stops to eat and gas up. He picked the time to arrive in Washington in the late morning when the rush hour traffic wouldn't slow things to a crawl. Dressing quickly, he stopped by the mess hall for breakfast. It was already open, and contractors and active military training at the facility filled several o the tables. He got a stack of pancakes, a rash of bacon, and four eggs and sat down next to a group of Force Recon Marines. "What are you ugly fuckers up to," he asked.

The Marines glared at him until they noticed the globe and anchor tattoo on his forearm. "The third round in your Mom's ass," one of the guys said with a laugh. He held out his hand. "Matt Scanlon. These assholes are Dirk, Blacksnake, and Rico. Are you one of SecuriTech's overpaid babysitters now?"

"Michael Johnson. Yeah, I've been with them for a few years now. Before that, I was with DSS, and in the Corps, I did embassy security. I've been babysitting since I was twelve," he said to laughs.

"My enlistment is up in eight months. What's it like working for them," Rico asked.

"Pay and benefits are better, top-flight equipment, better food, and you have more control over where you go and how long you're gone. I don't need the money like some other guys, so I only work a hundred days or so a year, and I avoid war zones. I was due to ship out to Kazakstan, but I have to head back to Washington instead."

"Change in your assignment?"

Michael shook his head. "My sister is having some health problems, and she needs me. I backed out of the deployment, and I'm heading up there right after this."

Matt was the first to respond. "Fuck, sorry to hear that. I hope she gets better soon. Backing out of a deployment? That will be the fucking day."

There's always one in the crowd, and Dirk was that guy. "Is your sister hot?"

Michael pulled out his phone and showed him a photo of her from their ride to the Eastern Shore, showing Angel in her bikini. The guys whistled, and Dirk asked for her number. "She's an FBI agent and a trained martial artist, and the other agents won't fight her anymore. If you're interested in a spar, she could beat the crap out of you as a warmup before her workout. I'll take you to the hospital while she's out with her biker boyfriend."

"Shit." We talked for a while more while I ate, then I wished them luck and headed out to my Harley. I drove to the entrance, checking out with the gate, and headed for Interstate 95 north.

While he was riding into North Carolina, Angel was in the passenger seat of Mark's car. They didn't talk much on the drive to work. Instead of her normal pantsuit with the jacket hiding her shoulder holster, Angel was in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeve Navy shirt she'd swiped from Daniel's suitcase over the weekend. It hit her as they drove in that she didn't have her FBI credentials, either. "Ask the boss if I can have my badge and gun back," she told Mark as he pulled into an open space in the underground garage next to Angel's car. "I'm on medical leave, not on suspension. If they hadn't given me a drug in the hospital, I would have returned to the office yesterday. I should have all my things, including my laptop, returned to me."

"I'll check," Mark said. "Stay put; I'll be back as fast as I can."

Angel sat in her car and waited. Twenty minutes later, the elevator opened, and a man with a cardboard box walked out and turned towards the car. It wasn't Mark; it was her boss, Supervisory Special Agent Dan Robinson. "Good to see you're looking better, Special Agent Johnson," he said as she got out of her car.

"Thanks for bringing my stuff down, boss," she replied as she opened the back door. She took the box, and it was light. A quick check showed no laptop, no gun, and no badge. "What about my gun and badge?"

"I'm holding onto your gun and badge until some questions get resolved, Angel. The IT group has your computer. When Legal and Medical agree you can return to duty, I'll give you a call."

Angel wasn't happy with this answer. "What is my official status?"

"Agent Johnson, I'm calling it medical leave, but that's a convenience for now. You weren't forthcoming about your background or medical history when you got hired into the Bureau. If you lied on your application, there's nothing I can do to save you. If you didn't tell the full truth, it's almost the same. Events in your past that you hid from me affected your work performance, and you've got a conflict of interest with our investigation. When you come back, IF you come back, it won't be on my Task Force."

Her worst fear was coming true. "Nothing has affected my performance on the JOB, boss! I'd put my record up against anyone."

"The Task Force believes Burroughs is now the first victim of the Monster Hunter. I have the team investigating YOU now since you have direct ties to victims one and four. That conflict of interest will keep you from coming back, hence me cleaning out your desk. If the press got ahold of this, it would be a shitstorm."

"No one will know anything as long as you keep my past quiet."

"That's why you need to keep this low key. I'm doing everything I can to save your badge, but if you fight this or take it public, the Bureau will cut you loose." He handed her a stapled set of papers from his jacket pocket. "This is a copy of your application. If you lied to get the job, resign TODAY, and I'll get Legal to stop looking into it. If you get fired for cause from the Bureau, you're done in Law Enforcement. You won't be able to get a job as an assistant dogcatcher in West Bumfuck, Maine. Do you understand me?"

Angel took the papers and tossed them into the box. "I'll look at them, but I'm not resigning."

Dan nodded. "Do us both a favor; keep your mouth shut and rest up at home this week. Let the doctors and the lawyers earn their pay, and let me save your career. Meanwhile, I'll make sure the Task Force clears you of any involvement in the murders. I pray to God you're not the one we're looking for."

Angel closed the door and turned back to her boss. "I want justice, but I'm not a killer. We both know that." She held her hand out. "Thanks for everything, boss."

"I'm going to miss you in the office and the gym. Get well soon." He turned and walked back to the elevator as Angel got back into her car.

She drove out of the parking area and headed back home, stopping for groceries on the way. When she got home, it was almost ten. Michael had texted and said he would arrive around eleven, so she had a little time. She took the box into her office, leaning back in the chair as she looked through her FBI application paperwork. She'd never been arrested or convicted of a crime, never had a civil commitment, and there were no questions about being the victim of crimes. She'd answered 'no' to having an alias, but she'd not used her birth name since she was four. The adoption records got sealed for a reason, and she didn't see the relevance. She wasn't under psychiatric care at the time of the application, nor was she taking any drugs she hadn't listed.

The Bureau could complain that she could have been more forthcoming, but she could fight a dismissal if she chose. The laws about medical privacy were strong, and she had years of work performance to show it didn't matter. Maybe they'd suspend her for not revealing her connection to the Monster Hunter's victim, but that was about it. What would hurt her was her removal from the Task Force, and perhaps from any duties involving child sex trafficking and child abuse. She'd made her career in those areas, and that was what she joined up to do. Would it still be worth it if she was working bank robberies or other jobs?

Angel heard the garage door going up and the low rumble of the Harley. Michael was home! She ran out and jumped into his arms as he was unlocking his saddlebags. "Hey, Sis," he said as he held her tight. "It's going to be all right."

"We have to talk," she told him. "Hungry?"

"Yes, but I want to shower first. Can you order pizza?"

Angel didn't know how far along the suspicions had gotten. "We better go out to talk," she whispered into his ear. "We're now suspects for the Task Force, Michael. They could have surveillance on us already."

"You know what? I'm going to take you out," he said in a normal voice. "Riding is the best therapy."

Michael went up to his room and took down the framed print over his desk. He erased the notes with an eraser, then used a rag and a cleaning chemical to return the board to pristine condition. Michael left his laptop plugged in on the desk and stashed the encrypted flash drive with his search information in his jacket.

If they searched Angel's condo, they'd find nothing.

Ch. 23

An hour after he arrived home, the pair was on Michael's Harley and headed across town to Baronessa Italian Restaurant. Angel loved the wood-fired oven and the Neapolitan-style pizzas. They ordered pizza and a plate of Calamari along with their Cokes and then found a table with some privacy. "What happened, Angel?"

"The Task Force was questioning whether our first Monster Hunter victim was his first one. His tortures have gotten more elaborate as he went, and he didn't repeat any of them, so Ken was assigned with a couple of agents to check. They found three potentials in the three years prior and went back and talked with the original investigators. Ken found one." She told him about William Clay Burroughs and how her stomach reacted to seeing his photograph. "I missed some of the information while I was throwing up, so Ken stayed behind with Dan. Burroughs had a photo showing him abusing me, and when I saw it, my mind just shut down. I had a breakdown right there in the conference room; I could hardly breathe, and I ended up in the emergency room. I'm fine now."

"What happened after you got out of the ER?"

"They gave me Xanax so that I couldn't drive. Mark drove to the office then took me home, but my boss kept my gun and badge and told me I was on medical leave." She explained the problems she had with work, both the night before and this morning.