The Most Dangerous Game (Harry Styles AU)

59

"So tell me." I sit back in my chair. "From the beginning."

"I'm guessing Everly has never mentioned her mother." He starts, mimicking my action and sitting back in his seat.

"No, she's not one to talk about her personal life."

"It's probably more due to the fact that she doesn't remember her. She was gone before Everly was even two."

"Gone?" I question.

"She went out to get groceries on a Thursday evening. It was raining, I'd just gotten in from work. I was just a young cop back then. Fresh out of the academy, working ten hour shifts. Proud of myself for what I'd acomplished. I was keeping people safe..." His voice fades off as he frowns. "She never came home that night. Or the next. Or any of the ones after that. My own wife, and I couldn't keep her safe."

I keep quiet as he pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it, taking a few puffs. "Seven months later I was on a typical case. We were following up a tip someone had called in. There was container ship that had lost some cargo just outside the harbor. Person claimed it was stolen goods, told us where we would find it. And we did, two large shipping containers at the bottom Newark Bay, right where she said they'd be. I'd worked a few cases like this before. Usually we'd find electronics or vehicles. If Port Authority decided to randomly search a ship, they would unhaul the stolen merchandise before they were caught with it. Drop it into the water like it was never even there. So that's what we expected when we pulled the containers onto the dock and opened them. Figured it was an open shut case."

He pauses, narrowing his eyes in thought. "It didn't occur to me, not at first anyway, that my wife would be among the bodies we found in those containers. There was at least twenty people in each one, all young women. The smell made me sick, I remember throwing up right there on the dock. I'd never seen anything like it. The autopsy report verified they all died from drowning. They were still alive when the captian ordered the containers be dropped into the bay. Some of the bodies were to deteriated to identify. At most we could estimate their age, which went as low at 11. All of them had traces of drugs in their system, those we identified had all went missing from the New York area. Including Everly's mother."

"I'm so sorry." I say quietly. "Everly never.."

"Everly doesn't know. She believes her mother died in her sleep from a brain hemmorage." He explains. "I was told it was a painless way to die. I couldn't give Everly her mother back, but I could save her the knowledge of the horrible way she'd died."

I nod, urging him on.

"The case was immediately turned over to the CIA. I was denied any access to it. But I couldn't leave it at that, I wanted to find who was responsible. I needed to find out who was responsible. So the following month I enrolled at The Farm. A year later I was a trained CIA agent working in New York. Eight years later I'd proven my worth and asked for the case. I've been working on it for the past ten."

"How does Aiden Carter fit in to all this?"

"Aiden Carter is just a small piece in a very large puzzle. By the time I took the case over, the trail had run cold. There was nothing that led back to one specific person or corporation. Only three years in and I was ready to give up. Every lead had led to a dead end, I had nothing to go on. But I kept going, determined to crack the case, to find the justice every single one of the victim's families deserved. I went over everything, every single piece of evidence again and again. And still I was left with nothing. Until one day, almost three years ago, that I caught a break."

He reaches across the table, picking up a small recorder and pressing play. Soon a woman's shakey voice sounds through the small speaker.

'I... I'm looking for Arthur Abbott. I have some information I think you'll be interested in. It has to do with two shipping containers from 1996 marked KKN184 and KKN185. Meet me tomorrow at Central Park in the Shakespeare Garden at 2 p.m.'