Finding Fate: An Intense, Fast-Paced Romantic Suspense Novel Page 4

  Her last weeks in life were filled with pain, loneliness, and fear.

  That's what fills every thought, that and the fact that I couldn't stop it. By the time we found her it was too late. The fuckstick who’d lured her with images and promises of a happy love life hid his tracks just well enough that we were too late.

  But that was then.

  Shoving off the door, I swipe the traitorous tear with my oversized black sweatshirt.

  This is now.

  Now I have the upper hand, and they will pay.

  Everyone involved will soon regret taking my sister from me. They had no idea who they were messing with. Soon they will.

  With a shaky hand, I punch the passcode into the keypad next to the doorframe. The lock clangs and I shove the door open only to be greeted by even colder air. But it calms me. As I don my winter coat, gloves, and hat, the stress and anxiety from the earlier meeting slip away. In here I get to be me. No small talk to avoid, no stares. It's where I've always been comfortable, but in the last year it’s turned into my crutch. Where I come to shut everything else out in the world. Not that I have much out there to avoid.

  Hate is a crazy thing. It consumes you. Suffocates you until it's all you see, all you focus on. It seeps the joy out of other aspects of your life until there’s nothing left.

  This is where I am now. Nothing left but the hate in me, which grows brighter and stronger each day I'm closer to getting these bastards. Finally getting justice for Destiny.

  Still standing, I tap the keyboard, making the dark room glow from the seven monitors now up and ready for me. When I started this whole vengeance mission, having the latest and greatest equipment was the first thing I needed, considering the person I was stalking was slightly better than me technically speaking. Plus, with all these screens, I can monitor my secret mission while working.

  I plop into the chair and roll it close to the desk. First things first, I check my secure email to see if there’s anything new from the FBI.

  Nothing. Good.

  Didn't really want to work right now anyway.

  With a sigh, I pull up the inboxes for the fifteen fake women I'd initially created months ago to attract the general’s cyber lackey, just to see if I've gotten any new hits. Each woman had a full backstory, social media pages, pictures. It's been a lot of work with the hours and hours I spent creating this catfish scheme.

  Especially since it’d fucking worked.

  An unread message in one of the fake profile’s inboxes catches my eye. One-handed, I pull up the Gmail account for the fictional fifteen-year-old and open the message.

  Grace,

  I've been following you online and saw your post last week. I'm sorry you’re lonely. I am too. All I want is someone I can love and who will love me back. Is that too much to ask? Sigh. Your profile says you’re fifteen, which is just a year younger than me. Can we set up a chat? I want to get to know you, and maybe we can help each other.

  Max

  With an eye roll, my fingers fly across the keyboard as I set up searches and various algorithms to find this Max kid. I hit Enter, sending the machines whirring to life, finding all the information I need based off the parameters I gave it.

  Less than ten seconds later, what I suspected is confirmed. Max is not sixteen but a forty-two-year-old married man in Kansas, and from a few other hits the search pulled, my fake Grace isn't the only underage girl he's reached out to.

  In here, I don't conceal the disgust written on my scrunched face as I press a few more keys. All of Max's information, the details of what and who he’s been contacting, is packaged in an email and on its way to a coworker in the FBI. I'm just a contractor, not much I can do with the 'freelance' predators I find, but they can. This Max character might come back to me at some point to track down further, but right now it's in the FBI's hands to determine if a crime has been committed or not.

  Scrolling through the other fake women, I add a few messages here and there to their social media accounts just to keep up pretenses. If someone’s monitoring these profiles, it would be obvious if all the women stopped posting the same day.

  Shifting my attention to the fake woman who the general expects in two weeks, I stare at the profile I created. It looks enough like me that they won't question it once I'm over there, but still different enough, especially with my dark makeup. Faith’s a twenty-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed, thin-framed girl who’s been secluded on a farm most of her life. No family. No friends. Looking for a place in this world. Oh, and the stupid virgin part.

  It won't be hard to morph into this woman. A few tweaks here and there. The no friends or family part is something I won't have to fake.

  So there you have it. I'm now virgin Faith, and in two weeks I'm set to fly to Africa to meet my new husband.

  The thought sends a sinister smile across my face.

  The bastard has no idea how ready I am to finally meet him.

  Chapter 5

  Fate

  Before

  "Coming," I shout down the hall as I race to the pounding on the front door. Before opening it, I shoot a glare at the dog who’s fast asleep on the floor, not caring that someone is trying to enter our home. "Sorry," I say as I pull open the door. "Was in the cave and couldn't hear. Thanks for shooting a text."

  Matt, my new supervisor at the FBI, squeezes through the doorway with an unreadable expression on his face. He's good-looking and young for someone in this role. Most of the other guys running around the cyber unit are ghastly pale like me and could stand a few hundred laps around Quantico’s running trail.

  In the few months I've been working for him, we've talked and joked around the office, but this random stopping by my home is new.

  "Why didn't you tell me about your sister? About this side project you've been working on? What you've found? Hell, any of it."

  Okay so we’re going there.

  Right.

  Kind of expected this since I have kept him in the dark on it all. Hopefully he finds comfort in the fact I've kept everyone in the dark about the plan and data I've gathered, not just him.

  "I didn't trust you," I mutter as I shut the door behind him. "I'm sorry."

  His eyes shift to my lips and narrow with scrutiny. "What happened to your lip ring? Wait, and the nose ring?" Gripping my chin, he angles my face to the left, then the right. "Don't tell me you're going basic on me, Fate."

  Pulling my chin from his firm grip, I scrunch my pert nose. "Not by choice. I'm preparing for the trip in two weeks by taking it all out now. It feels strange." My tongue runs across the empty space along my lower lip where the hoop used to reside.

  "It's not a trip, Fate, it's a suicide mission. One I’m going to talk you out of."

  I step back and eye him.

  "You're not the right person to do something like this."

  Dropping to the floor beside Dobby, I rest my head on his ribs, finding comfort in the rise and fall of his chest. "I'm sorry I didn't loop you in. I guess I should’ve, but I've been working on this solo for so long I just... I’m sorry. Am I fired?"

  "No, I’m not firing you. I'm fucking mad is what I am. You've done all this research—hell, even data breaches—without my approval. I get that you were working on it before you moved here, but for fuck’s sake, Fate, you needed to fill me in. Give me the information—"

  "I can't—won’t do that. I have him, Matt. Both of them. I want to see it through. This is my chance for justice. Don't tell me to give up because you're worried about what could happen to me."

  "Could? You mean will." Instead of sitting on the couch, he leans against the closed door and crosses his arms over his chest. His muscles flex beneath his thin jacket offering a quick distraction from the topic at hand. "I wish you would’ve told me sooner. Mac and I would've stopped the meeting yesterday by talking some damn sense into your hard head. Not let it get this far. Hell, now they know what you have...." He looks away, shaking his head. "What was it you told them about t
he recruiter or whatever you found? What all do you actually have?"

  "Enough to identify him and make sure he's locked up with zero chance of seeing the light of day, or a computer for that matter, ever again."

  He levels a hard stare my way. I turn to look out the bay window to avoid the disappointment and anger swirling behind his narrowed eyes. "You shouldn't mess with this, Fate. Hell, you're already in too deep. If these people find out what you know....” He steps into my line of sight to make sure I’m listening. “They make the monsters we put away on a daily basis look like amateurs. How about this? You give me what you have on the recruiter guy and let me handle him, and the CIA will handle the general." With a smirk he says, "I'm tougher than you. I can handle it if they come after me, but I don't want to risk you."

  Looking past him, I quickly debate the offer before shaking my head. His shoulders tense, hands tightening into fists at his side. "I want to be the one to put him away. Once I'm back, I’ll lead you to him. I want to be there when he realizes I beat him."

  "Then do it now. Let's—"

  "No," I protest. "First the general, then him. I can't risk everything I've done to get me to Africa. But I have the information safeguarded, if that's what you're worried about. If I don't come back, then the encrypted file and key will automatically be sent to the director. That way if... something bad happens, the bastard will still receive the justice he deserves, and future innocent victims will be saved from his lies."

  Again his intense gaze has me looking away. There's something different about him; this focus and intensity is new. It’s odd that he's this concerned about my safety, but then again, his frustration could be stemming from the fact his employee went to the CIA with a mission he had no idea she was even working on.

  Okay, when I think about it like that, then yeah, he's just pissed.

  "Fine. Africa and then the recruiter. Looks like I'm forced to do it your way."

  My body protests as I roll on the hard floor to face him. "They said yes, didn't they?"

  "They said yes but with conditions."

  I sigh in overwhelming relief at his statement. For once, things are falling into place in my favor. Without their help, I had no clue how to get out of Africa, with the general in custody no less, and back to the States.

  Dobby breathes a deep sigh of his own when I shift against him. Apparently I'm interrupting one of his ten daily naps. "If you have the details, let’s walk and talk. Dobby needs some exercise."

  An eager Dobby shoots off the floor at the word and bounds to the front door. As I slip on my tennis shoes, Matt finds the leash and clips it onto Dobby’s collar.

  "What are you going to do about the age thing?" he asks as we walk down the concrete steps leading from my brownstone. "I don't know exactly how old you are, but there’s no way you’re twenty."

  Once we reach the bottom, I take the leash from Matt's hand so he doesn't get dragged down the street by my eighty-pound puppy. "I was twenty, eight years ago." I smirk and watch Dobby smell some flowers before peeing on them. "And a lot of thought went into each fake profile I put out there. A fourteen-year-old was the youngest age I used.”

  "Fourteen?" he asks skeptically. The casual brush of his arm and hand against mine as we walk causes me to tense and take a small step away. Wow. I’m pathetic. Has it really been so long since anyone’s touched me that the unintentional brush of hands freaks me out? I shake my head, dispersing the sadness that realization conjures.

  "I already look younger because of my thin build, and when I wash all this off"—with my free hand, I gesture to my dark brown lips and smoky eyes—"I look a lot younger."

  "And the hair?" he asks as we round the corner toward the dog park. A long, lean finger wraps around a pale pink lock which has fallen from the confines of the bun. Again, the closeness sends my heart racing, but this time in a good way. "I'm sure the general isn’t into pink hair."

  A small frown pulls at my lips. "I think losing that part of me will be the most difficult. The nose and lip ring, whatever, but my hair... I'll have to go back to my original color."

  "Which is?"

  "Blonde. Dirty blonde, I think?" With a shrug, I shift to the right, making his hand drop back to his side. "I've made an appointment at some fancy salon down the block to bleach my color back to basic blonde and get some work done on my face while I'm there."

  With a hand on my elbow, he pulls me to an abrupt halt. "Work done? You of all people don't need work done."

  Dobby yanks on the leash so hard I stumble a few steps to the side to not fall on my ass. "The past year—okay, never have I kept up with the skin trends and stuff like that. I figure if I get some of the facial things done and peels, it’ll help me look younger. Not that it’ll matter."

  A single light brown brow does this crazy arch thing I've never been able to manage. "Okay, now you’ve confused me. You said you were going, so wouldn’t the way you look matter?"

  With a shrug, I rub a hand up and down my arm to ward off the somewhat chilly afternoon weather. Dobby stops to smell something on the sidewalk, making me turn away from Matt. A hand caressing my shoulder draws a startled yelp. Ignoring my alarm, he drapes the thin North Face jacket he was wearing over my shoulders.

  "Thanks," I murmur as I shove my skinny arms through the sleeves. "What were we talking about? Oh right, my plan. I added into my correspondence that I wanted to be 'pure' when I meet my future 'husband.' Which means no leering eyes from the time I leave the States until he sees me himself."

  I give him time to process my explanation as we cross the gravel parking lot of the dog park.

  "A covering of some sort," Matt muses. "A burka?"

  "Yep." I smile down to the sidewalk, thinking it was quite brilliant. “I want everything from the top of my head down to my toes covered.”

  "Clever and beautiful."

  Pretending I didn't hear his compliment, I swing open the gate to the dog park and release Dobby to the wild. He scours the park, looking for his friends until he finds the sweet German shepherd we see here often. Across the park, Matt and I find a bench in a deserted area so no one can overhear our conversation and take a seat.

  "So." I lean forward and clasp my hands together to keep them from fidgeting. "What are their conditions?"

  "They want a way to communicate with you." I open my mouth to debate, but Matt's raised hand stops me. "Even if it's as simple as a tracker.”

  "Like what?" I'm not an agent and have zero idea what varieties of bugs and things the agencies have at their disposal. "I don't want anything in my skin."

  "Wow, okay, you're not Jason Bourne. Let's take it down a notch. Think of something small, like a locket, and since you'll be wearing a burka, it’ll be easy to conceal. Or they have biodegradable ones that are applied directly to your skin, but I'm not sure one would last as long as we'd need it to."

  "I like the locket idea. Okay, what else?"

  Before he can respond, I push off the bench and jog toward the doggie orgy to pull Dobby from the bottom of the pile. When I'm back, Matt's still staring at the pile of dogs going at it.

  "What are you doing to do about the virgin thing? It's not true, right? I mean, you're young but...."

  "Not answering that one."

  "Why not?"

  "You're my boss, and... I don't know, we've never really talked about anything other than work until now, so talking about my sex life isn't something I want to share with you." The comfortable warmth of the jacket kicks up a thousand notches. No doubt my cheeks are ten shades of red. "And I hope it doesn't come to the general discovering the truth, but I've taken care of it for the initial verification."

  He turns on the bench to face me, urging me to continue with a pointed look and raised brows.

  "After the initial emails, once they knew 'Faith' had bought into their lie of a better life, they asked for proof of age and lack of sexual activity. So I got one."

  "How did you—"

  "I just changed up
a few things on the information I found on my sister’s online history. It helped that I knew they would be asking for it, so I was able to get a head start on finding a doctor who would vouch for me. And by vouch, I mean lie after I blackmailed him." Pursing my lips to suppress the smile that wants to grow, I turn away from Matt.

  Am I proud of the blackmailing? Well yeah. He deserved it.

  "Blackmail sounds very illegal, Fate."

  I shrug and tuck my legs to my chest, wrapping Matt’s large jacket around them. "It was warranted, promise. Knowing I needed the form verified, I scoured a few of the sites we’ve recently found predators using and found this one doctor who’s into younger than legal age boys. I used that information to make sure he was willing to sign whatever I asked him to."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Matt staring, processing.

  "Wait. We just arrested an orthopedic doctor in Fairfax who...." I nod and rest my chin on my knees. "You gave us the information anyway?"

  "He's a predator, so yeah. And technically I didn't send the information to our unit. The mom of one of the boys he targeted sent it. She just doesn't realize it yet." I need to get this conversation back on topic before he starts wondering what other predators I've found on my own and sent their way. "Besides the tracker, what else do they want?"

  "Time frame. How long do you need before they send their people in to extract you and the general?"

  I turn to face him, confusion clearly written on my features. "Their people?"

  "Yeah, it won't be anyone directly tied to the CIA. That's too messy and visible for those bastards. I'm sure some outsourced gun-for-hire firm will be the ones to make the extraction."

  "Oh." Not sure why, but it bothers me that the CIA says they’re willing to help but yet they don't seem to be doing anything except ordering people around. "Four weeks." Matt's eyes widen. "I know it sounds like a long time, and I'm sure it’ll seem longer once I'm over there, but we have to be sure the general is there before anyone comes to get me. Get us. His pattern is the first couple of weeks he lets them sit, waiting for him like he's some kind of prize. Then he holds them for their 'training' for four to six weeks before killing them. I'm betting the general will be there somewhere between the two- and four-week mark."