Just the Truth

Chapter 25

"Are we just going to keep pretending that's a bomb or something?" Blaire asked in a bored tone causing Tiffany and I to stare at her with wide eyes. 

"What??" she asked, genuinely bewildered. 

"You're not supposed to say that in public. It could send people into panic," Tiffany told her, shaking her head.

"Oh yes, the fly on our window is terrified," Blaire rolled her eyes, referring to the only other passenger on the train with us. The annoying little thing kept buzzing around, smacking into the glass window as it tried to escape.

I opened my window down a crack and let him out. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably and stared out as the buildings whizzed by. Blaire was right, we were treating the file like a bomb. We had made it out of the Vatican and onto the train back to Florence but no one had made a move to read the files we had all just risked our lives for. 

"Are you seriously telling me you aren't even a bit curious as to what is in the file?" Blaire prodded. She, of course, was. I'm sure Tiffany was too but I think she was letting me make the choice. 

"Are you asking if I'm curious about the file that might have caused my parents' death? Because I really just want to get rid of the damn thing," I mumbled with my arms crossed over my chest, the file hidden protectively between them. 

"I get why the files upset you but we need every piece of information we can get. We just can't afford to be left in the dark against an enemy who seems to have night vision. We need to know what's in the file," Tiffany gently placed her hand on my shoulder. 

My grip on the file loosened and I allowed it to fall on my lap. I was curious. Of course I was. But I was also very scared. What if my parents did something awful. What if this was why my aunt's file was missing too? 

"Charlee?" Tiffany prompted me and I nodded my head, handing the file over to her. We were still the only ones in the train compartment, but even then we double checked for bugs and cameras before opening the file.

"Gabriela Maldonado was one of the youngest to have been recruited by R.I.P. She was only seven when she was rescued from an orphanage in Brazil and taken in because of her potential. By the time she was eleven she was already going out on missions with much older agents. She had a very impressive file," Tiffany remarked, skimming over the pages. 

"What does that have to do with my parents, though?" I asked. 

"Well, the reason they were investigating her death is because they were also in charge of the last mission. The one where she died. So as part of their post operation report, they had to investigate what went wrong with Gabriela. But the case went cold because her body disappeared shortly after the investigation began. They were only able to determine that she had been drowned," Tiffany explained. 

"What were her test scores?" I asked referring to the test that members of R.I.P. had to take to get in. 

"Ummm they were very good. Nearly perfect in all her categories. She was placed in the twelfth cohort with kids who were like, five years older," Tiffany read off her scores.

"Wasn't your aunt in the twelfth cohort?" Blaire asked referring to the class number everyone was placed in when getting into R.I.P. We were cohort 32. My parents had probably been cohort 10. The cohorts was a relatively new system when my parents trained at R.I.P. 

"Isn't it weird that your aunt lied about how new R.I.P was when we joined?" Tiffany asked. 

"Yeah she had said it was a brand new agency but it's been around for hundreds of years. Your whole family was trained by R.I.P but no one told you," Blaire remarked and I felt my stomach turn in knots thinking about the missing file. Everything was becoming more and more suspicious.