My team deserves my thanks. Harddaysknight is my mentor and gives me critical review. SBrooks103x also gives me a pre-post read. Girlinthemoon, Norafares, Hale1 and Pixel the Cat are my editors. I thank you all.
***
We didn't get started on the Knights for three weeks. I had business to attend to and Fallon had to get some motions filed. We continued to meet for dinner twice a week, and she went to church with me every Sunday. I felt like the king of the world when she was on my arm. James finally asked her out, and she accepted. She genuinely seemed to like him and he was lightning struck by her. His normally taciturn demeanor vanished when he talked about her. I was happy for him and hoped she felt something for him, too. I didn't want his judgment clouded about her.
I told him he still worked for me and he had a job to do. He assured me that he could do his job just as well as before and I believed him. He was strictly professional on the job. Nothing changed about that. She was still Miss Blake during the day or whenever he was on the job. If she invited him in after hours, she was Fallon.
I flew her to Idaho and we took up residence in Boise. I started working from my end. The FBI was a tough nut to crack. I did deals with other alphabet agencies sometimes, and they respected me as someone who could get things done. Several of their competitor agents were willing to do me favors because of that, and some of them because I knew where the skeletons were buried. I had contingency plans in case they tried to throw me under the bus, and they knew it. I was able to get the information they had turned over to the FBI. It was mostly cell phone interceptions. The Knights were smart enough to use proxies and encryption on their e-mail traffic, but the NSA is in the business of breaking things like that. The only way to keep them from doing it is for them not to notice you.
I gave it to Fallon and she started trying to pry the Knights out of jail. She met with the leaders that weren't in prison, and I think she came away shaken. We had adjoining rooms at the hotel and she knocked.
"You busy?" she asked.
"Yes, but not too busy for you," I told her.
She stood behind my chair, putting her arms around my neck and resting her cheek against mine with her chin digging into my shoulder. "You say the sweetest things, Canton. I love you," she whispered in my ear.
"Yes, you tell me all the time," I ran my fingers through that dark mane of hair. "I love you, too."
"The Knights are scary people," she told me. "All they can talk about is conspiracies against them and race traitors."
"I know. I told you this, Fallon."
"Yes, you did. I believed you, but I didn't really understand. They threatened me, Canton."
"What did they threaten you with?" I asked.
"If I blow this case, they'll visit unspecified retribution on me."
"Well, I guess you better not blow it," I told her.
She laughed. "I don't intend to, but they make my skin crawl. I don't like the way they look at me. It's like they're undressing me."
"You should only meet with them in public," I told her.
"That would be nice, but they're paranoid about being spied on."
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you," I laughed. "They have some justification."
She giggled. "I know. That's why we're here."
She had picked up multiple tails. I knew the FBI was keeping track of her, and I had her room swept every day. Bugs showed up the third day we were there. There were even two cameras. We left them alone, but she started showering in my room and getting dressed in the bathroom. She thought they were sick perverts, but I told her they would do the same thing if she was a man.
The Knights had a tail on her, too. James went everywhere with her. After a week of filing motions, nothing had happened. The Knights were being held under the Patriot Act, and when she knocked the props out from under that, they changed the charges to child endangerment. There was no evidence, and they changed it to making terroristic threats. I knew they could play the shell game indefinitely.
The Knights were becoming impatient. After three weeks, the game changed. James disappeared. He had a tracking chip in his neck and we discovered he was on a property up in the hills. I thought this was probably a precursor to a move against Fallon. I had to do something. I didn't know who was holding him, the Knights or the Feds. I flew in an extraction team. Fallon insisted on going along, and things got dicey.
We didn't want to kill Federal Agents. That's always a mistake. We went in quiet at three in the morning. They weren't the Feds. That put different cards on the table, and we went to get James. I made Fallon dress for the occasion with a helmet and a flack jacket. She had on black like the rest of us and I made her hang back with Maria. Maria was the woman who had picked Fallon up after prom, and Fallon recognized her. They giggled in the back seat on the way and I had given Maria strict instructions to keep her out of any fighting.
Fallon didn't like the idea of having a babysitter, but I told her if she didn't stay with Maria I was going to handcuff her to my bed and leave her. I was serious and she recognized it.
"I'll be good; I promise, Canton."
I didn't like anything about this. There were six people around the house, and we went in silenced and wet. A silenced gun still makes a hell of a racket, and one of them got a shot off. It was the one inside the house and he shot James. I guess he didn't feel like he had anything to lose. There was a slutty terrified woman in the house and two bedraggled kids. We took them out to the cars and found James. He was a mess. I could tell he wasn't going to make it. He held my hand. When Fallon came in, she screamed when she saw him and ran across the room. She kissed his forehead and held his head in her lap. He pulled her down and I saw him whisper in her ear for several minutes. I didn't know what he was saying, but I didn't want to intrude. If he wanted to talk to Fallon, I understood. A man should spend his last moments in the arms of a beautiful girl.
She sobbed brokenly after he died in her arms. I pulled her away after a few minutes and she clung to me. "What are we going to do?" she wept.
"We're going to clean this place up and get out of here," I told her. "We'll take James with us. He told me what he wanted if something happened to him. I'll take care of him, baby."
Maria took her away, and I followed in a few minutes. I spoke to the woman from the house for a while. She was plainly a battered woman. They had enforced her compliance by threatening to rape her girls. They had used her badly. I made arrangements to have her seen to medically and taken to my headquarters in Costa Rica. I'd take care of her and her girls until they could get a fresh start wherever they wanted. She was pathetic, and I felt very bad for her. She had been treated like an animal.
When we got back to the hotel, Fallon took a long shower. She wouldn't stop crying, and when she came out she lay down beside me on the bed and I petted her. Her frame shook and I tried to console her.
"It's okay, baby," I told her. "James always knew this could happen and he was prepared for it."
"I know," she snubbed. "I really liked him, Canton. I'm going to miss him dreadfully. That's not what I'm crying about. I mean, I'm crying about that, but not like you think."
"What is it, baby? If it's not that, what's wrong?"
"It's what he told me," she sobbed. "He told me to take care of you." She put her cheek on my chest and looked up at me. "He told me that you're dying, Canton. Is that true?"
"Damn the man," I said. "I can't believe he told you that."
