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“You said he’s tried to kill you. Why?”
“Why did I say that, or why did he attempt it?”
“Both,” Ghost answered.
“First, because it’s true, and second, I haven’t a clue.”
“Maxi... sorry, Gwen,” Ivy started to say.
“Maxi. Gwen is no longer alive. I’ve been Maxi going on six years; besides, I’m not Gwen anymore. She was a weak and scared girl. That’s not who I am now.”
“Right, of course,” Ivy replied.
“Tell us about the attempts on your life. You said there were several.”
“Three that I know of, but I guess there could’ve been more and I just chalked it up to bad luck or whatever. Carter and I had a whirlwind romance. We met when I had to give a presentation to a group of CIA field operatives. I have—no Gwen—has a PhD in pharmaceutical forensics. Once I was presumed dead and it was safe, I’ve lived under the radar. No one, except my sister, knows the full story. I couldn’t contact my parents. They believed I was going to Southeast Asia to work on a job for the CIA when the plane crashed, which was what I wanted them to think. I had no doubt Carter would pressure them for more details. After I disappeared, it was easier to keep them in the dark.”
“You’re so afraid of Carter that you’ve cut ties with your family?” Ghost asked.
“Yes. If he believed I was still alive, he could’ve used my parents to draw me back in. Besides, it worked out for the best. They were huge Carter fans, especially my mother. Carter is a smooth talker, and I’m not sure they’d believe the truth.”
“There is so much to take in,” Ghost said.
“First, tell us about the assassination attempts,” Ivy instructed.
“The first one, I had initially believed was an accident. I was in Mexico. The agency had contracted me to do forensics for two high-ranking drug lords from competing gangs. It was assumed they’d been poisoned with the same toxins, but their reactions were vastly different. My job was to try to isolate the poison. My specialty was looking for what wasn’t there. A lot of poisons are untraceable with a standard run-of-the-mill drug test. Even a coroner could miss the toxins. The assignment was taking longer than I’d expected, so Carter flew to Mexico City for a mini-vacation. It was supposed to be a stress reliever for me. Having the CIA and the Mexican police demanding answers that I couldn’t give was nerve-racking. Carter wanted us to spend the weekend together and unwind. He was always doing that. If I was gone longer than a week, he’d figure out a way of meeting me on location.”
“I thought you’d left the CIA,” Ivy stated.
“I had, but I’d agreed to work on unique cases on a contractual basis, provided the CIA had already exhausted their internal resources.”
“I’m still confused. When we met, you introduced yourself as Maxi.”
“I know. I hadn’t been off the grid for very long. When you contacted me, I was suspicious that you were scouting me out for Carter.”
“No, I was looking for someone rumored to be an expert on toxins. One of your fellow classmates spoke of a woman who’d joined the CIA and was known only as Voodoo. Byte is the one who found you, only your name was Maxi Wynn already.”
“And they hadn’t given you my legal name?”
“No, just the moniker. That was all Byte needed to find you.”
“It takes me a long time to trust someone, but I think because of your disgust and distrust of the CIA, we had something in common. So I trusted you.”
“But now we have more questions than answers,” Ghost reminded her.
“Right. Okay while we were in Mexico, he got a call from his partner, Vanessa Fulbright, and had to return home.”
“Okay, nothing sounds suspicious thus far,” Ghost stated.
“Carter wouldn’t let me see him off at the airport. I assumed he was giving me time to acclimate to the workload. I honestly thought Carter had returned to the States when the attempt happened. Later, I discovered he had never left Mexico City.”
“Tell me about the attack,” Ivy instructed.
“The cartel men died… that we knew. Only the people sent in to figure out why also died. None of them had the same symptoms. Some bled through their orifices, others had aneurysms, and a few didn’t have any early warning signs. None of it made sense. Although the toxins had killed the cartel leaders, it wasn’t airborne. None of their men died, so their deaths were suspicious. Mexico refused the CIA’s offer to assist with the research, which only pushed the CIA to demand they be involved. My supervisor believed the authorities were very much aware of the toxin but didn’t want the US to discover it. I was sent as an independent researcher with no ties to the US government. Anyway, I was so close to figuring it out. I had a couple of theories, but needed a little more time to name the poison. That’s when Carter called and said he was coming for a visit. The day he supposedly left, I received an edible fruit bouquet, with a note from Carter. I wasn’t suspicious; this was something he did from time to time.”
“But later, you did become suspicious,” Ivy stated.
“Not at the beginning. I honestly thought it was a mistake, and later assumed the attempt to kill me was from either the cartel or the government.”
