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“What do you mean?” he said.
I took out an envelope from my bag and handed it to him. He opened it and pulled out a pregnancy stick test with two pink lines.
“You buried the lede!” he shouted, jumping up from his chair.
He pulled me into a hug, beaming, happier than I’d ever seen him, and kissed me deeply. Every hope and dream we had for ourselves and our future was in that kiss. I imagined all the holes left inside me after losing Mom and Dad, now filling up with our growing family.
After a minute, Jay pulled away. “Do you hear that?” he asked me.
“What?” I asked.
He pointed to the outdoor speakers. “The song that’s playing …” he said.
It was “Angie” by the Rolling Stones.
“If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Angie,” he told me.
CHAPTER47
SPECIALAGENTJASONunties my hands and lets me out of the car as the gas station attendant runs out of the store after hearing shots fired.
Jason shows him his FBI badge, explains the situation, and tells him his backup got delayed due to the protest in the Capitol.
The attendant returns to the store, and Jason asks me, “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“They didn’t,” I say. “How did you find me?”
He takes my purse and pulls out a small black dot that looks like a tiny beetle.
“This little guy helped,” he says.
I remember when he “accidentally” bumped into me on the train. He must’ve dumped the bug into my bag then.
“Even though you said you didn’t know where Cristina Cadell was, I wasn’t convinced. I thought you might still be able to lead us to her. We need her help in our case against her father. The Cadells are worried about what she might’ve told you. That’s why they hired those guys to go after you,” he says.
I shake my head. He still doesn’t know anything about Mom and the real reason they’ve been following me. Why would he? She’s just a random woman who died decades ago,and Cristina is the shiny object, a fugitive and heir to the billion-dollar Cadell fortune who can help them bring down the family.
“Am I being recorded right now?” I ask Jason.
“No,” he says.
“After what you did here today, the Cadells will know you’re not on their side,” I tell him.
“You don’t think they already know that?” he asks.
“It’s not just them,” I say. “They’ve infiltrated people at the highest levels of government. I saw the woman who just drove away in the BMW talking to a senator—Senator Lyon of West Virginia. I’m sure there are people you work with at the FBI, high-level people, maybe even your bosses, who the Cadells own. Once they find out what you’ve done here, you’ll be persona non grata—or worse.”
“I swore an oath to defend and protect the constitution. That doesn’t waver, no matter how dangerous the criminals are that I come up against, even if they’re on the inside. Detective Thompson and I aren’t going to stop until we find Maria Cadell’s real killers,” he says.
“If you have a family, they’ll go after them too, same with Detective Thompson,” I say.
He shrugs, unmoved. “Growing up, I never had a family. I was bumped around from foster home to foster home until I was nine, when a teacher at school reported to child services that my fourth foster father was abusing me. A detective assigned to my case didn’t stop doing his job, despite my foster father’s threats against him and his family. That detective saved me, adopted me, brought me into his family, and treated me as if I were one of his own children. He was the best father anyone could’ve asked for, the best man I’ve ever known, and the one who taught me about the gravity of the oath I swore.”
I’m not going to be able to get Jason to walk away from this.
“The most important thing now is to secure your protection,” he says. “The Cadells operate like the mob and will keep going after you as long as they think Cristina divulged information to you about her mother’s murder.”
“What do you mean by protection?” I ask.
