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She closed her eyes and opened them again. The hallucination was gone, but Valerie realized through the haze of exhaustion just what Heinlein would need to shut them down for good. It would be easy. He'd only have to see evidence of Valerie's mental health issues.
If Heinlein knew that she was hallucinating, that occasionally she saw and heard things that weren't there, then he could have her moth balled and then split everything apart.
We've got to survive this, she thought.I have to keep us all together.
As she took off her shoes and prepared to fall flat onto the bed with her clothes on, Valerie realized why the unit was so important. It wasn't just the good work that they did: Charlie, Will, and Jackson were the only family she had. At least that she could rely on. Without them, she felt that she would be swallowed up by an abyss of anxiety and increasing delusions.
She lay in bed and closed her eyes.
Valerie nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a loud knock at her apartment door. She glanced at the alarm clock, the red neon letters glowing back at her. It was 5:30 in the morning.
No one comes to your door at that time unless they're bringing trouble.
She was so tired that Valerie half considered collapsing further into the bed and ignoring the intrusion, but that little part of her that always made her do the right thing whispered in her ear:What if someone needs you?
Standing up and moving out of the room, Valerie felt the floor beneath her shoe-less feet. She headed down the hallway in the gray dimness of it all and shouted.
"Who is it?"
"It's your father," the voice said.
For a moment, Valerie's mind jumped to an old story she loved as a kid. The Monkey's Paw. In it, a family is visited by the walking corpse of one of their own, standing behind a closed door, waiting to be let in.
The images of her biological father's crime scene flashed before her eyes. She imagined his dead corpse standing behind the door, knocking, waiting to embrace his daughter.
Then sanity interrupted the spiral. She knew the voice.
Opening the door, there under the hall lighting stood the man she had always thought was her father. The man who had part raised her before running out on her mother.
"What the hell is going on!?" he said furiously.
"Going on?" Valerie said. "Dad, I'm tired."
"I don't care!" he said. "I have a good life, Valerie. I'm sorry I ran out on you. But revenge isn't the answer."
"Revenge?" Valerie had no idea what he was talking about.
"Your colleagues were at my house at 2 AM this morning." He shifted around, red in the face.
"Agents?" Valerie asked.
"FBI, swarming my house, looking for something. All because, apparently, they're looking into the death of your biological father, and they gave me the definite feeling that I am a suspect."
Valerie's blood ran cold. She had been investigating the death of Jake Wilson, her biological dad, unofficially. It was a cold case. The fact that the FBI had suddenly sprung into action over it was suspicious as all hell.
"How many agents were there?" Valerie asked.
"I lost count!" he said. "My wife was terrified, the kids too. Just what the hell are you playing at?"
"Dad, I promise you," she said. "This isn't my doing."
"Then whose doing is it?" He stood there, waiting for an answer.
Valerie couldn't find the words. But one thing she knew was now true: This was a war. There was only one person petty enough to suddenly jump into her personal affairs, and all because they had recently been out maneuvered
"Arthur Heinlein," she said out loud unintentionally.
"Who the hell is that?"
"Someone at the Bureau. Someone who wants to ruin me."
Valerie and her father looked at each other.
"Val, just from now on, stay the hell out of my life, okay?" He turned and stormed off down the hall.
Valerie closed the door as tears began to well up inside of her. She had never felt so abandoned. Tom wasn't talking to her, the man who raised her was trying to cut her out of his life for the second time, and the FBI was now turning against her.
She stepped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she looked up at the mirror. She looked exhausted. She felt weary in a way she never had before, but she couldn't go to sleep now. Not yet.
She had to get to the bottom of it all. Was the FBI at her father's house because Heinlein was trying to put pressure on her? That seemed likely, but a horrid dread ran through her body as she considered an alternative possibility: That the FBI agents were following a new lead, and that the man who raised herhadkilled her biological dad.
