Fighting My Demons

She Won't Talk

Chapter 4

She Won't Talk

I cried until my eyes burned.

Hot tears ran down my face and I did nothing to stop them. I sat on the edge of my mother's bed, surrounded by the scattered photographs, and I let myself feel the full weight of what I had just discovered.

I had a brother. His name was Darlington Michael Adios. And somebody had murdered him before I was old enough to know he existed.

When the tears finally slowed, something else settled in their place. Something harder and quieter and far more determined.

I was going to get to the bottom of this. Every secret, every lie, everything my parents had buried and locked away and refused to speak about. I was going to find all of it.

"No wonder they have guns," I said to the empty room. "No wonder the licences are real."

FBI agents do not stop being FBI agents just because they leave the bureau. That much I knew from every detective novel I had ever read.

I wiped my face, took a slow breath and got to work.

I carefully jotted down the key details I had found, addresses, names, dates, anything that might mean something later. Then I took photographs of the pictures on my phone, hands steady even though my heart was not. I worked quickly and methodically, the way I had always imagined I would in a situation like this, though I had never imagined a situation quite like this.

I glanced at the clock on the wall.

4:28 PM.

My mother would be home any minute.

I moved fast. Everything went back exactly as I had found it. Documents refolded, badges replaced, safe locked. I picked up the family photo album last, holding it for just a moment before returning it to its shelf. Looking at it now with fresh eyes, I understood what it was. Not just a photo album. A memorial. The only place my mother allowed herself to remember the son she had lost.

I left her room, pulling the door shut quietly behind me.

Back in my own room, I changed quickly into my house clothes, black joggers and an orange t-shirt, then went straight to the bathroom and ran cold water over my face. I scrubbed at my cheeks until the redness faded. My mother could not know I had been crying. She could not know I had been in her room at all.

By the time I heard her key in the front door, I was downstairs in the kitchen, eating.

My stomach had been growling for the past hour and I had barely noticed until now.

The next morning I woke up early, buzzing with a restless energy I could not contain.

Saturday. No school. No interruptions. Just time, and I intended to use every minute of it.

I flew through my chores with the kind of focus that comes from having something much more important waiting on the other side. My mother had a doctor's appointment and I helped her get ready, laying out her things, making sure she had everything she needed, being the good uncomplicated daughter she believed me to be.

By 9:00 AM we were both ready to leave.

"Mum, talk to me. Jack is your only help right now. You need to talk things out," I said softly, watching her from across the room.

She was doing it again. Holding everything inside, wearing that calm face like a mask, pretending the world was not falling apart around us. I knew that face. I had been watching it my whole life.

"Okay," she muttered, more to herself than to me.

I took a breath and said what I needed to say.

"I won't be around when you get back. I have something to do, an assignment. I might come home a little late. Take care of yourself, okay?"

She looked at me for a moment, then crossed the room and pulled me into a hug.

"Thank you, Boma. Take care of yourself too, dear."

I hugged her back tighter than I intended to, pressing my face into her shoulder. I was dangerously close to crying again and I could not afford that. Not now. I swallowed it down, held on for one more second and let go.

I escorted her to the door and stood there watching until she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Then I pressed my index finger to the corner of my eye and caught the tear before it could fall.

I went back inside, tidied the house quickly and went upstairs to get dressed.

Not in my school uniform. Not in my house clothes.

I put on my snooping suit.

A sharp black denim outfit that made me feel like one of the investigators from the old detective shows I had grown up watching, purposeful and ready for anything. I pulled on my black boots, slung my mini backpack over one shoulder, wheeled my brand new motorbike out from the side of the house, snapped on my helmet and rode off.

My destination had been clear since the night before.

The FBI bureau headquarters.

My parents had worked there. The badges in the safe had the address stamped on them. Whatever answers existed about Darlington, about the photographs, about why two people who were once federal agents had ended up living quietly in a duplex with rosebushes and a locked safe, that was where I would find them.

I pulled into the parking lot and removed my helmet, shaking my hair loose behind my shoulders.

I had barely taken three steps when a man appeared at my side, walking briskly and smiling like he had just seen a ghost.

"Hey, Stella! You're back! In that denim suit you look exactly like your nineteen year old self. What's going on with—"

I raised one eyebrow at him.

He stopped mid-sentence, catching himself as he got a proper look at my face. Something shifted in his expression, amusement replacing the shock.

"You are not Stella." He let out a short laugh, shaking his head. "But you look exactly like her. Wait. You must be her daughter. Boma, right? Seventeen years old now? Goodness, you have grown."

He was still talking. Still going. I needed him to stop.

"Hello, sir. Yes, I am Boma, Stella's daughter." I touched my chest briefly. "I am here on an assignment. And my mother does not know I am here." I paused, letting that land. "And she does not need to know."

His expression shifted. He opened his mouth.

"I need to see your boss," I said, cutting him off before he could find his footing. I knew it was abrupt. I did not have time for anything else.

"Listen," he said carefully, "I understand. But the boss does not see people without a scheduled appointment. That is just how it works here."

"Tell him Stella's daughter is here. Tell him it is a family crisis."

Something moved across his face then, quick and unguarded, an emotion I could not name before it disappeared just as fast. He studied me for a moment, then straightened up.

"I am Kelvin, by the way." He gestured toward the entrance. "Alright. But slow down first, catch your breath." He shook his head with something between admiration and exasperation. "You are just as difficult as your mother."

The building was stunning. White inside and out, four storeys of clean lines and polished marble floors so smooth you could almost see your reflection in them. The whole place hummed with quiet, controlled energy.

Kelvin led me to a door at the end of a long corridor. A heavy, imposing door that seemed to announce itself before you even knocked. I felt a chill move through me the moment we stopped in front of it.

Kelvin glanced at me. I straightened my back and lifted my chin.

He knocked.

"Who is it?" The voice on the other side was deep and unhurried and filled the corridor without effort.

"It is Kelvin, sir. And someone I believe you will very much want to speak with."

A pause.

"Come in."