Ghosts…
I didn’t disbelieve in ghosts like I disbelieved in vampires. I had never experienced them before. The otherworldly? Sure. The psychic realm? Yup, I spent a lot of time training and working in the ether.
Ghosts…
Somehow that wasn’t something I’d really thought about before. If what I was sensing of my parents was ghost-like—ha! I was thinking about Harry Potter and the way his parents had died protecting him. I felt an affinity for that sentiment. My parents died, not specifically protecting me from evil, but I had always felt that they had died in service to me. Though, now that I lay down those thoughts for scrutiny, it wasn’t quite right.
Certainly, when I felt my parents close, I never saw them as apparitions. They had no visible form. And yet, there they were.
The bus came to a stop, and I stood, gripping the pole, waiting my turn to exit.
I wasn’t in the mood for this. There, I’d just admit it. I was in the mood to go by the florists and get my mom some of her favorite sunflowers, take them to the graveyard, and hang out with my folks.
Talk things out.
Let the wind carry my words and sprinkle them in the distance like the seeds of a dandelion afloat on the breeze.
The weather was reflecting my gray drippy mood.
It would be nice to rest against my parents’ headstone with a sketch pad and draw just like I did as a child while Mom napped.
What I didn’t want to do was climb off this bus and go look Modesty in the eye. Read her like a book. Bring my findings to today’s meeting.
Meetings.
Two of them after this.
It wasn’t a good day for that. My concentration was blown, and my body still hadn’t recovered from the hours of somnambulant rowing.
I nodded at the bus driver as I sidled past.
She shot me a look of sheer boredom.
Or maybe she was exhausted and despondent, too.
Spyder wants me here, I reminded myself as I stood on the sidewalk, looking around as the bus continued its circuit.
I gave myself a good shake, forcing myself away from Memory Lane. I needed to be focused and strategic as I laid the groundwork for this new mission.
This was the point where mistakes had the greatest impact on outcomes.
Whoever this woman Modesty was, she had a role to play in something big and bad. I just needed to figure out why she was under the lens of an FBI terror specialist.
Chapter Five
Okay. Deep breath.
According to my phone app, the diner was just down this street and around the corner to the right.
I decided to cut across the parking lot and come up behind the restaurant. It would give me a chance to peek and see if a car parked out back with an out-of-state license plate.
It was still pretty early, six-forty. Usually, I’d have another twenty minutes before my alarm sounded, or one of my dogs, Beetle and Bella, woke me with their tongue laps.
This week they were staying with their trainers, the Millers; they were learning how to do cadaver scents on waterways. It was good that they’d be having fun learning new things and enjoying the outdoors this week. Their training was pre-planned, freeing me up for whatever Christen and Gator needed from me to make their wedding beautiful and memorable.
Lousy timing for Spyder to put this new mission on my radar.
Ah well, it was hard to schedule the bad guys.
The parking lot over here was empty, but around the diner, it was much more congested.
The website had said that the diner was open all night. I assumed that this was the on-the-way-to-work breakfast rush in full swing.
I hoped so.
I wanted to be able to slide in and hang out, getting lost amongst the comings and goings of workaday folks.
As I got closer, I heard a commotion on the other side of the fencing that enclosed the dumpsters.
A young woman’s words were hard to decipher as they warbled with fear.
Men’s voices—one angry and taunting, the other finding whatever was going on to be funny as all get out.
Could this be Modesty in trouble? Should I intervene?
The first rule on a mission was typically “Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.” Spyder had shown me enough videos and talked me through enough scenarios during his mentorship that I realized stepping in and thinking I understood the dynamics of a situation just wasn’t a thing.
It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t carry concealed. Imagine seeing a man shoot someone; I pull my gun on him and shoot, later to find out that he was an undercover cop, and he was taking down a terrorist. Or equally awful, I pull my gun and hesitate, trying to grasp what was going on. The undercover cop sees me with a gun pointing at him and pulls the trigger a second time.
I was not a superhero. It wasn’t my role to play one. If something terrible was happening, I should call the police. Possibly make a distraction.
Still, I was trained that unless I knew the backstory, stay away.
Easier said than done when I heard a woman in distress.
I melted into the background to get a read on the situation. This technique was what my martial arts teacher, Master Wang, called shadow walking. It was the technique taught to Ninjas so they could move through a space without being detected.
In this technique, the shadow walker must observe the colors around them, not just that a tree trunk was brown, but it was light and shadow, crease and crevice, flecks of gray and white, green and tan. If I used a solid color when I shadow
