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Rod looked down at her with a puzzled look on his deep ochre face but she gave only a shrug in return. He was the best friend she had in the Bureau but even he didn’t know the full story of her suspension. No one knew it but her. And she couldn’t afford to lose the best deskmate she had.
Bzzt. Bzzt. “Will you please answer that? It’s giving me anxiety and it’s not even mine.” He said as he stepped into their favorite coffee shop. It was their routine. Jiu-jitsu, coffee, breakfast and then they’d go their separate ways before finding each other again at work. Only now Rod would go to work and she would go back to her empty apartment.
“You go ahead, I’m going to head home.” The thought of completing only part of their morning ritual left a bitter taste on her tongue. They’d been doing it on auto-pilot since the suspension but today somehow it felt sharper, more permanent.
Rod looked down at her, seeming to weigh the risk of arguing. Something on her face must have suggested what a bad idea it was because he nodded and pushed the cafe door open. “Alright, just text me later. You’re still bringing flan for Sunday dinner, right? Aurora has been begging me to make sure you are.” Vera caved and made it for his wife once before and it was all she wanted her to bring to their weekly dinner since.
She nodded, feigning annoyance at the demand. “Of course, I’ll be there, flan in hand.” Turning away quickly, she didn’t watch him text Aurora like she knew he would. It felt too routine, too normal.
The slow-creeping itchiness of discomfort she felt at the gym came back in full force as she walked the half mile to her apartment. While a suspension wasn’t unheard of, it did paint a target on her back that suggested an untrustworthiness she never faced before. Special Agent Vera Aguilar was dependable. Efficient. Well-trained. A damn good undercover agent who worked hard to close cases. Sure, she’d found herself slipping up here and there but a suspension was something else entirely. A mark on her record that would follow her wherever she went. She planned on going places, making a difference, getting promotion after promotion until she retired. Her plans had been in place since she was a teen. She just needed to get through these few months and it would all smooth over, just like Rod said.
Passing through the large main door of her red brick building, she hiked the two floors of stairs to her front door. All of her neighbors were at work by now leaving the four-story structure hollowed out. She was the singular ghost wandering its halls. A lost soul who shouldn’t know what the light looked like cutting through the large windows above the white stairwell this time of the morning.
Bzzt. Bzzt. She ignored the vibrations against her knuckles as she dug her keys out of the duffle. Finally getting inside she dropped the bag underneath the slim entryway table by the door. The place was a cave, echoing the sound back to her. Passing the shattered mirror above the table, she headed to the kitchen. The hardwood floor was cold against her bare feet as she slipped her sneakers off by the trash can. It was still full of the stack of broken plates, jagged pieces sticking up like knives pointing at her.
Getting a drink of water from one of the only surviving glasses she had, she leaned against the U-shaped counter as she tried to wash down what she saw. The down pillows she’d sliced into with a pocket knife were lying on the living room floor. Now gutted, their grey silk looked like lifeless skins. Feathers like snow were still decorating every inch of her space including the couch and her TV stand filled with alphabetized movies. Her bookshelf by the large bay window. The guts of them were everywhere, even making a path back to her bedroom off to the right.
Tearing the place apart last night felt good. Like a vice she knew she wasn't supposed to love but a bit of glee followed the viciousness like a stray dog. The tequila had helped. Her blurred vision as she sliced and smashed and screamed could be blamed on alcohol instead of something more meaningful.
Deeper now, she could hear her phone vibrating against the wood floor in the front hallway. Vera sighed heavily. She couldn’t avoid it any longer, she either had to shut it off or answer it.
Taking a long, steadying breath through her nose, she headed back towards the sound. If it was her boss, that could only mean two things. The suspension had somehow magically been lifted and she could return to work immediately. An unlikely miracle. Or, the internal investigation team had further questions and she would be required to report to the office to spend hours answering them again. Lifting her chin, she clenched her jaw and forced herself to dig it out and turn it over.
A list of text messages filled the screen. Each one was from her sister.
A single word had her eyes scanning the messages twice before it sank in. Alex. Finally, he was home.
Before she could send a reply, the phone rang again and her sister’s name filled the screen. She hit the green button.
“¿Qué pasó? Where was he?” Looking up, her reflection was sliced in half by the shattered mirror. Her normally tawny skin held a sickly pallor reminiscent of the mutilated pillows. One eye was cut into three sinister shapes. Vera looked away from the disturbing image. “Hello?” Her sister was silent. “Ximena?” Pulling the phone away, she checked to see if the call was still connected.
“Ver.” A ragged, tortured voice whispered her name. Her stomach turned to lead.
“Mimi, is that you? What’s wrong?”
A sob split down the line. “I think… there might…” Her little sister cried, a sound ruffling as if she’d put her hand over the phone to mute herself.
“Take a deep breath. Otra vez, Mimi. Tranquila.” Her voice was soothing as she waited.
A rough breath was the only sign that she was trying to follow the instructions. “You need to come home right now.”
Vera's brows pulled low. “Come home? Why? What’s—”
“Alex.” Her sister cut her off. “It’s Alex. He might… there’s a body. He might be dead.”
Shock stripped the blood from Vera’s face. From her entire body.
Dead. Dead. Dead. Not off on some road trip or on a visit to his mother in Guadalajara. Not taking a break from school or melting his brain on drugs somewhere no one could find. Dead.
She yanked on her seven years of training and forced herself to pick a single question as a mound of them filled her mind, each one fighting to be answered.
“Where?”
“A town called Sylen. I have to go there tomorrow to see if I can identify him.”
Vera shook her head against the idea even though her sister couldn’t see. Fuzziness frayed the edges of her vision. Alex wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. He was twenty-one years old. Just a kid. A college student. Their cousin.
“Is the DNA you sent to the Fort Collins police a match?” She asked, desperate to find a way out of the possibility her sister dropped in her lap.
