sky.
The agent pulls an agreeing face. “I’m aware of that, but if we want Agent Fedora to spend the remainder of her life in jail, we need to ensure the defense can’t come back with anything.”
“What could they possibly come back with?” I’m shouting, and it’s unacceptable, but I’m not as good at reeling in my anger as I was once. It takes practice, and I’ve had no one to practice on for a very long time.
My attitude takes a step back when the agent replies, “They could say his death was a result of a heart attack, not the stab wound to his throat. That he bled out quicker because of the blood-thinning medication he was on. Or they could even go as far as saying he died because the tumors in his lungs grew unmanageable, and his death just happened to correlate with the events of last night.”
“He had lung cancer?” I sound shocked. Justly so. Despite being double the age of every man in his team, Tobias was the fittest. “Did his daughter know?”
The agent hangs a clipboard onto the end of Tobias’s gurney before moving to wash his hands in a stainless steel sink on our right. “His daughter?”
“Izzy…” I pause before correcting, “Isabelle.”
He yanks two towelettes out of the dispenser next to the sink, dries his hands, then dumps the napkins into the bin. “There’s no mention of a daughter in any of his files. Tobias was never married.” He checks the clipboard again to ensure he’s not missing anything before disclosing, “He moved his father into his property not long after he joined the Bureau. He passed away the beginning of last year.”
“Then who’s cited as his next of kin?”
He flips over two pages on the clipboard before lifting his eyes to me. “A detective in Ravenshoe. Regina W—”
“Wamba?” I interrupt. That was the only name other than Isabelle that Tobias mentioned on repeat. “He must not have updated his information because he has a daughter…” I stop when I realize I could be spilling secrets that aren’t mine to share. If Tobias kept Isabelle’s identity on the down-low, he did it for a reason, much like Mr. Gregg kept Melody’s hidden. “Unless I was mistaken. Perhaps she was his girlfriend?” I pull on the collar of my shirt, acting as if I just dumped myself in a sticky situation. “Awkward.”
“Indeed,” the agent agrees, laughing.
When he commences pushing the gurney toward the exit at the back of the holding room, a Ziplock bag full of Tobias’s personal belongings slides down the sheet. They’re items that were found on Tobias and in the drawer he kept locked at headquarters. The information inside could be invaluable to someone seeking his true identity.
“Do you want me to hold them for you?” I offer, my voice friendly.
Once again, my smaller build and boyish features work in my favor. “That will be great. Thank you.”
For the two-hour flight from New Mexico to a small airstrip in Tiburon, I search for clues about Tobias’s daughter in his belongings. Not a single shred of evidence about his private life is found. Not one. There are no pictures. No birthdates registered in his cell phone. Nothing. All I have is the sequence of numbers he handed me.
I’ve worked the numbers around multiple times to see if they’re an anagram for a date of birth, an address, or case file number. Nothing has popped up. I’m truly stuck as to why Tobias used the last of his strength to hand me this sheet of paper, and I lose the chance to deliberate further when the cargo-like plane lands in Tiburon.
After slipping Tobias’s piece of paper into the pocket of my trousers, I return his belongings to the foot of his gurney. The solemnness of his death hits me full force when I follow his gurney out of the back of the plane. There’s no twelve-gun salute, no line of agents honoring his years of service. There’s no one—not even his daughter.
My voice cracks when I ask the agent wheeling him out to stop. “Can you give us a minute?”
He looks a little surprised by my request, but he grants it, nonetheless.
Once it is just Tobias and me on a tarmac as empty as my life has been the past six years, I find his hand through the sheet, press my lips near his ear, then whisper, “I’ll make sure Isabelle gets your message. I won’t let you down.” I calm the rattle of