She snaked her way through traffic and was soon rolling past Marathon—the unofficial half-way point in the Florida Keys.
Sin slowed to a crawl as she rode past the building that used to be the Church of the New Son. She flashed back to the mission that’d brought her home, and couldn’t help but smile as she witnessed the construction crews hard at work.
What was once an evil location was now being turned into something good.
Dad would be happy, she thought.
Wiping the memories from her thoughts, she twisted the throttle and thundered toward her destination. The Johnson place was the name given to the abandoned mansion that blanketed the shoreline five miles north of Key West. Once owned by the Johnson family, and built by Henry Flagler, this was the largest home in the Keys. Sin had recently learned that Charlie, her long-time friend and mentor, was the last descendant of the Johnson line and the owner of the home.
She pulled off the Overseas Highway onto a shell rock road which led to the house. The road was buffered in mangroves and wound back toward the Atlantic Ocean. But soon the path opened up and the sheer majesty of the property rose up to greet her.
The grounds were overgrown with sand dunes and sea grass as well as scrub pines and mangroves. Charlie refused to trim or cut back any of it. He thought the disheveled appearance helped to keep people away.
Sin rode up to the mansion, used her key, and opened the garage. She was soon inside the kitchen brewing a pot of Cuban coffee. Most of the house was kept exactly the way it was originally built back in 1914, but Charlie had renovated the kitchen, bathrooms, and the library. That was where Sin was headed as soon as she filled her mug.
In the library, Sin found a laptop on the desk with a note.
“Sinclair,” she read, “I figured you might stop by at some point during my travels. I placed all of my pertinent software on this laptop. Sort of a traveling library since you always seem to be on assignment. Happy Birthday. Love, Charlie.”
Sin lovingly slid her hand over the cold metal, and smiled. “Thank you, Charlie,” she breathed.
She sat at Charlie’s mahogany desk, slid open the top drawer, and depressed a hidden button mounted on the underside of the desktop. The bookshelves in the front of the expansive room rotated revealing a wall of monitors. She then hit the other button and the green leather writing blotter on top of the desk flipped revealing a keyboard. A tap of the space bar brought the monitors to life.
Sin leaned over and grabbed her backpack, which lay by her feet. She took out her wallet and removed her license—not her real driver’s license but the one Charlie had made for her.
When he told her he was leaving on his trip, he had also sent her this license with a note. To anyone else, everything Charlie did might seem like the actions of a crazy person, but to Sin it was pure magic.
Sin ran her fingers over the top of the card and thought back to the first time she met Charlie.
She was fourteen years old, a freshman in high school, and constantly harassed by the boys. Sin was so angry after one of the altercations that she stormed out of the school, jumped on her Honda SL 100 dirt bike, and rode to the nearby airport. She released her emotions by digging up the infield with donuts. As her aggression subsided, she’d sat down and started to cry. That’s when Charlie had walked up, sat down beside her, and started what would become a life-long friendship.
Sin tapped in Charlie’s password and a blank space appeared on the monitor. She typed in the license number on her fake ID and the monitor went black. Sin’s breath caught in her throat as she stared wide-eyed at the blank screen, but soon the monitor blinked back to life and, Welcome Sinclair, was written across the screen. Letting out a sigh of relief, Sin grinned at Charlie’s thoroughness—or his conspiracy-filled mind, depending on how you looked at it.
The message disappeared and a new one popped up. All it said was Crime and Punishment. Sin immediately knew what it meant. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was Charlie’s favorite book; he owned a first-edition.
Sin walked over to the glass-enclosed bookcase at the far end of the room. All of the Johnson family’s first editions and antiquarian books were kept in an enclosed, climate-controlled case. She unlocked the doors and found the book she was looking for. Peeking out of the spine was a sliver of paper. Sin gently slid the page out of the tome, opened it, and found Charlie’s encryption codes. Locking up behind her, she walked back to the desk.
With the help of the codes, Sin was able to scroll through the folders until she located the one she was looking for.
Sin entered Miranda Stokler’s name and a long list of sites came up concerning her work, but not much in the way of a biography. She tried a few other searches but nothing went back any further than 1978, when Miranda started teaching at the newly-opened Water’s Edge Academy.
Sin refilled her mug with thick, black coffee, sat back, and pulled her legs up under her body. This doesn’t make any sense, she thought. Why doesn’t Miranda’s life go back any further? Hell, Ashley was born in 1979.
Sin punched in a long alphanumerical code and opened a list of links to secure and top-secret government sites, as well as a few international clandestine ones. The list seemed endless. She clicked on the Social Security Department and searched Miranda Stokler. Again, she was baffled. There
