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  After taking a quick duck bath, washing her “coots and oots” as her mother used to say, Deidre slipped on a pink terrycloth BCBG sweat suit. Wetting her brush, she smoothed her soft, jet-black hair into a slick ponytail. “I’m not getting dressed up. This is my fucking vacation,” she grumbled, as she slid her leather shoulder holster on, securing her weapon in place.

  The crisp winter air bit at Deidre’s face, causing her caramel colored cheeks to turn a blushed rose. Gritting her teeth against the cold and letting small puffs of frosty breath escape her nose, she bent down and carefully examined the damage Mrs. Blum had inflicted on her car. With every key mark, dent, and piece of broken glass, Deidre felt awful.

  Guilt crept into her conscience. She’d been sleeping with Ricky since she was assigned to the Washington, D.C. field office three years ago. Although they were from two different ends of the racial divide, for some reason, he’d always made her feel safe. Deidre often wondered if she was drawn to Ricky because he had been a close friend of her father’s since she was ten years old. During Deidre’s times of struggle, Ricky stood right by her side. He attended all of her dance recitals, graduations, and even stood in for her father at Deidre’s high school Father/Daughter Dance.

  After taking a full inventory of the damage done to her vehicle, Deidre decided that it would be too embarrassing to drive her Mercedes to work. She had no choice but to drive her old Hyundai Excel. The hunk of junk Hyundai stalled, making a horrible screeching noise as Deidre pumped the gas and turned the key trying to get the ignition started. She hadn’t driven the hooptie since she graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia five years earlier. After a few minutes of pumping and praying, the car finally emitted a sickening gurgle and came to life. “Finally!” she sighed. She hoped she didn’t see any of her neighbors milling around outside as she switched the cars around, taking the Hyundai out of the garage and putting her battered Benz inside. Luck, however, was not on her side. “I knew she’d be outside!” she whispered as she spotted the nosey old lady across the street staring in her direction.

  “Hey, Mrs. Zuberman!” Deidre sang out, waving and flashing a fake smile.

  The old lady gave a short “Humph!” before she turned her humped shoulders in disgust.

  “Wonderful! Just wonderful! Who the fuck is going to keep the kids off my grass now? Thanks a lot, Lorna!” Deidre said bitterly.

  Interstate 66 was jam-packed as usual. “Damn, the traffic gets worse and worse every year!” Deidre griped, slamming her fist against the steering wheel. She needed to find a way to distract herself before she lost it. She reached toward the old car radio and manually turned the tuner dial. All she got was static. “Shit, no music and traffic. Oh, hell no!” she said, lifting the cover to the small compartment between the seats and frantically rummaging through old junk. “Aww yeah!” she exclaimed when she spotted a Mary J. Blige cassette tape. Mary had a way of curing any ill that Deidre felt. Throughout college and during the FBI training academy, she played Mary over and over again. Mary was the chicken soup for her soul. Deidre slid the tape into the cassette slot and the music started immediately:

  “I’m goin’ down . . . I’m goin’ down . . . And you ain’t around . . .

  Baby, my whole world’s upside down . . . Sleep don’t come easy . . .”

  The lyrics played as her car gradually inched forward. Deidre sang along loudly.

  “Be-e-e-e-ep! Be-e-e-e-ep!” The sound of a horn blaring startled her. Traffic had begun to pick up. She immediately stepped on the gas.

  VOLUME 2: THE BRIEFING

  The streets of Washington, D.C. always amazed Deidre. All of the buildings were wide and short. She read somewhere once that no building in D.C. was built taller than the top of the Capitol.

  Deidre pulled into her place of employment located at the junction of Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th Street, NW. The J. Edgar Hoover Building was located on the corner, with its brown and copper façade. She knew that some of the most talented agents in the United States—agents that tracked criminals, including Osama Bin Laden—worked right alongside her every day. She was proud to be an FBI agent.

  Stepping off of the elevator on the fifth floor, Deidre took a deep breath before she placed her right hand on the computerized identification system connected to the glass doors. A small red laser light scanned the fingerprints on her right hand. “Good afternoon Agent Aponte,” the computerized female voice chimed as the small red light on the door lock turned green, allowing Deidre access to the corridor leading to the offices.

  Fellow agents bustled up and down the busy hallways, greeting her with, “Hey, Aponte!” Some of them gave each other the eye and snickered when they saw her. “Damn, they know already!” Deidre mumbled to herself.

  “Aponte, aren’t you on vacation?” a few of the agents inquired.

  Deidre rolled her eyes. She hoped they would have overlooked the fact that she and Ricky took the same vacation time.

  Rounding the corner at the end of a long hallway, Ricky’s office came into her direct line of sight. The blinds were pulled on the large glass window, and the door was shut. Deidre knew that meant something serious was up. Since becoming the Special Agentin-Charge (SAC) of the Washington field office, Ricky Blum practiced an open door policy. His door being closed meant bad news.

  As slivers of sunlight escaped through the slots, Deidre watched shadows moving behind the blinds. “What the hell is going on?” she whispered to herself just as she looked up at the gold and black nameplate on the door—Special AgentIn-Charge Ricky Blum, Capital Division. Balling her fist, she knocked lightly on the door, hoping that Ricky wouldn’t hear it.

  “Come in, Aponte!” Ricky yelled from the other side of the door.

  “Damn!” Deidre cursed under her breath, surprised that he knew it was her. She nervously stepped inside. She was met by Ricky and her direct supervisor, the Resident Agentin-Charge (RAC), Bernard Baker. Baker sat on the long burgundy leather sofa. Ricky stood like a king behind his tall mahogany desk. Both were silent.

  “Close the door,” Ricky demanded dryly. Deidre complied.

  “Have a seat, Aponte,” Baker said, patting an empty spot on the sofa next to him.

  Deidre had worked with both of them long enough to know when things were not good. She refused to make eye contact with either of the men. Sweat began to pour down her back. She knew she had walked into a trap. Is Ricky getting me transferred because of the affair? Did Baker find out about us?

  “Well, I guess I’ll begin,” Ricky started.

  Deidre continued to avoid eye contact as her emotions ran wild. As a welcomed distraction, she focused on the many awards and commendation plaques displayed on the walls. Ricky’s office resembled a Bureau museum. She looked at a picture of Ricky and former President Clinton. Next, her gaze came to rest on the family portrait hanging on the wall of Ricky, Lorna, and their two daughters, Amanda and Heather, one of which was Deidre’s god-sister. Ughh! The feeling in the pit of her stomach made her want to throw up, and she found it hard to stop staring at the picture.

  “We called you in today because we want to talk about your work performance,” Ricky said, taking in a deep breath.

  Work performance! What the fuck is he talking about? Deidre’s mind screamed, but she remained silent, staring at the family photo.

  “Aponte, let me just give it to you straight,” Ricky continued, calling her by the name he used when they were at work. Deidre finally looked over at his pale white face, which was slightly wind chapped from the cold weather, but she still couldn’t look into those piercing blue eyes. Her nostrils flared and she became short of breath as she listened to him.

  “You are one of the best agents we have here at WFO, and Baker and I think you are ready for a new assignment.” He paused to gauge Deidre’s reaction.

  Her entire facial expression changed as a look of ease replaced her previously worried, furrowed brows. Relieved at the news, she finally took a good look at Ricky
and couldn’t believe her eyes. His right cheek was marked with deep red scratches. Being a bi-racial kid who was teased and picked on often, Deidre had enough experience with cat fights to tell that the scratches on Ricky’s face had come from human nails—probably his wife’s. She continued to scan his face as he spoke, surveying the damage. She noticed a huge purplish-red hickey on his neck peeking out from the collar of his dress shirt. Her heart jerked painfully in her chest. For the first time since she and Ricky had become lovers, she felt hurt. Deidre hadn’t put the hickey on Ricky’s neck. She knew her place as the other woman, so she never bit him or sucked on his neck. That passion mark must have come from Lorna, she reasoned. After he left from fucking her, he’d gone home to comfort his wife. He had probably said sorry to Lorna a million times and comforted her with soft kisses, not the rough, wild sex he always wanted to have with Deidre. Deidre balled her fist tight, so tight that her knuckles turned white.

  Ricky continued with his speech, but Deidre couldn’t hear his words; her ears were ringing. She watched Ricky’s thin lips move, but she refused to listen to his words. Everything he said sounded like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon; “Wha-wha-wha . . .”

  Suddenly, she felt something land on her lap with a thud. Startled, she slowed her rapid breathing and fought against the tears burning at the back of her eye sockets. Looking down, she realized Ricky had dropped a Washington Post newspaper on her lap.

  “Do you understand what’s going on, Aponte?” Baker asked, noticing her vacant expression.

  She glanced at the front page of the newspaper. In bold letters she read:

  DAUGHTETR OF NEW YORK SENATOR REEVES MISSING AND FEARED DEAD

  “That’s your new assignment. The media is all over it, but this one is going to require an undercover. We need the inside, Aponte. Apparently, this girl was involved in an illegal drug ring,” Baker said to Deidre, rubbing his long chin as he usually did when he was uncomfortable with a topic.

  Deidre stared at Bernard Baker’s charcoal colored face, perplexed. She could see fear and anxiety mirrored in his beady onyx eyes. Baker was a notorious people pleaser. All high profile cases made him nervous. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils, which produced a sickening wheezing noise, and caused a feeling of disgust to come over Deidre. Weak men made her sick.

  “So this is going to be a group II operation?” Deidre asked, confirming that she would be going undercover, maybe for longer than six months.

  “Yes, we anticipate . . .” Baker began with his voice cracking before he was cut off by Ricky.

  “Aponte, all we need is for you to go in and find out what happened to the girl. It’s really not that big of a deal,” Ricky said candidly.

  “How could the possible murder of a senator’s daughter not be a big deal?” Deidre asked, looking for clarification. She wanted to jump up and kick Ricky in his balls. She hated herself for loving and trusting him so much. She balled up her toes tightly inside her shoes and bit down into her jaw trying to hold on to her composure.

  “Well, from what I understand, she was a drug addicted runaway to begin with,” Ricky blurted out. At that, Baker shifted uncomfortably on the couch, causing the leather to crackle.

  “If the shit is not important, why should I waste my time? For God’s sake, Ricky, it says here she is only 22. Her life matters, regardless of whose daughter she is,” Deidre commented as she stood to leave. She had never seen Ricky act like this over a case. He was always dedicated and concerned with the outcomes of their investigations. Just like Deidre, in her opinion, Ricky was not himself. She couldn’t wait to get out of the office.

  “Wait, Aponte!” Baker blurted out, uncrossing his legs and nervously fiddling with his tie as he stood. The tension in the room was thick. “Here are the alleged major players in this,” he continued, handing Deidre three brown criminal profile folders.

  Deidre silently read the names on each folder: Chastity Smith, Tori Banks, and Leticia Ruiz. “In this? These girls had something to do with Reeves’ missing daughter?” she asked, confused.

  Ricky interjected as Baker started to stumble over his words. “We don’t know. That’s your job,” Ricky said flatly.

  Deidre rolled her eyes at his sarcasm.

  “There is a CI that will get you inside,” Baker informed, diverting Deidre’s attention away from Ricky. “We suspect that Amber Reeves may have been working with these three. What we don’t know is why someone would kidnap or possibly harm her,” Baker explained.

  Deidre watched sweat drip from his shiny bald head and stain the underarms of his shirt. She knew he was usually a nervous wreck on high profile assignments, but this had to be the worse she’d ever seen him. Baker seemed completely unraveled. They all did, for that matter. Nothing about the meeting was usual.

  “What about the DEA? Those are the dope boys. If she was involved with drugs, wouldn’t they have jurisdiction?” Deidre asked, looking at Bernard like he should’ve known this.

  “Agent Ferguson is going to be your case agent, and Denald and Buckwalter are going to run your surveillance detail,” Baker continued, ignoring Deidre’s question.

  “Your meeting with the CI is tomorrow. From what I understand, these bitches are notorious. They’ve got New York City in fear,” Ricky said, covertly scanning Deidre’s slim waist and shapely ass and thighs with his lustful eyes. He couldn’t hide the fact that she awoke something deep inside of him. His marriage had technically been over years ago, but with his salary, the house, the kids and Lorna not working, Ricky figured it was cheaper to keep her. He admitted to himself that his initial reason for sleeping with Deidre was to collect on an old debt, but the attention she’d shown him, Lorna could never match. He’d once heard a colleague talk about how exciting sleeping with a younger woman could be, but he never anticipated the sexual feelings Deidre awoke in him. If his father ever knew he’d slept with a Black woman, he’d be cut off for life.

  Ricky was born and raised in confederate West Virginia. He grew up in a poverty stricken area of the state that resembled a third world country. No running water, a one-room shack, five siblings and a father who drank and abused the family. The son of an alcoholic coal miner and a submissive housewife, Ricky had a typical poor white trash upbringing infused with learned hatred for anyone who was not like him, especially, Blacks, Jews and gays. His father beat into him that “coons, Jews and faggots” were the reason he didn’t have a television or toys, and had to work so hard chopping wood, shooting deer, and fishing for food to survive.

  Ricky overcame the poverty. The death of his father from liver disease and a football scholarship gave him the chance he needed to get out of West Virginia. But the secret hatred for other races and religions lived on inside of him. Throughout his years of hard work, Ricky became a master at disguising his feelings, and he decided that he would use the very people he hated in his quest to be on top. He befriended “stupid niggers”, as he referred to them, in order to get what he wanted, including Deidre’s father and Bernard Baker. It was not so much the money that motivated Ricky, it was the power.

  “Aponte, you have to bring your A-game to play with these females. To answer your questions, we have jurisdiction over everything, and we want this case. Undercover Operations has already begun setting up your living space, vehicle, and surveillance equipment. You will be Deandra ‘DeeDee’ Barnes from now on,” Baker chimed in, breaking the awkward silence.

  “New York, huh,” Deidre said, her voice trailing off. New York City held many memories for her, both good and bad. She gathered the file folders, the newspaper, and her thoughts before she walked out of Ricky’s office.

  When Bernard Baker was certain she was gone, he looked over at Ricky nervously. “Aponte is more capable than you think,” he said, his voice wavering. Of all of the things he’d been involved in during his career at the Bureau, this seemed the most risky.

  Bernard Baker had grown up poor in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects, Cabrini Green.
His father was never around, and his mother worked two jobs to feed her six children. Bernard never spoke up for himself as a child, and his older brothers often got the best of him at fights when his mother was not around. He spent most of his childhood reading books; he would read anything he could find. His love for the written word helped him escape the violence and poverty that was his reality.

  Bernard won a full ride scholarship to Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and he never looked back. After experiencing racism firsthand and being turned down for journalist jobs by all of the major newspapers, he became an FBI agent as a part of the Bureau’s efforts to diversify. One of his sisters once asked him if it bothered him to be a “token”. His reply to her was, “Not as long as I get paid like everybody else. Somebody gotta force them to let us in.”

  Bernard was not driven by power like most of the agents he worked with. Instead, he just wanted to be able to provide for himself without working like a slave. He would take assignments no other agents wanted, he would work long hours, and he never complained. His dedication won him a spot on an elite team of undercover agents—the best and worst day of his life, he would often say.

  Deidre left Ricky’s office with a lot on her mind. She’d been briefed on her new assignment, but did not feel the usual fervor to go get the job done. Something didn’t seem right about Baker’s behavior and Ricky’s apparent indifference towards the case. A senator’s daughter was linked to drug dealers? Very strange. Deidre almost never ignored her instincts, but this time she was too upset about how things were going with Ricky to question the details of the case. She’d worked on small-scale undercover cases for a year now. She’d been successful at bringing down a few kiddie porn perverts and some low-level government computer hackers. She couldn’t help but wonder why she was assigned to such a high profile case. Why wouldn’t the New York field office be handling this case? Deidre decided that a high profile case with lots of kudos afterwards might be the thing she needed, so she stopped questioning Bernard and Ricky’s intentions.