Thursday, October 5th, 2018
9:07 a.m. Fen-Rock Facility
Meredith Gray
Adam didn’t say a word, still glaring at the photo. She could see his eyes darting over the man’s face, anxiously taking in the news. Meredith was shocked, but Adam seemed to be extremely horrified.
“Adam listen.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face with a loud, persistent click. “We need to get to Nome.”
Ignoring her, his finger tapped the computer screen over the photo. “This guy sat next to you. He sat right beside you.”
Meredith slapped his hand away, the hard hit ringing loudly throughout the small library. When heads turned and peeped over shelves to look, Meredith hunched her shoulders and slouched in her chair in a poor attempt to hide. God, she hated negative attention.
“Yes, I’m fucking aware of that Adam. Focus,” she frantically whispered.
He turned to her. “Fuck, do you think they brought him here?”
“Lee? No way. He was supposed to be brought to Florence ADX after my investigation. And if he was here don’t you think that there would be some sort of documentation? Eddie said he couldn’t find anything.”
Adam thought about it for a second and Meredith swore she could see the gears working in his brain. “Yeah… but nobody knew about Fen-Rock until Monday; I doubt Eddie even knows now.”
Adam hastily ran his hands through his hair, pulling on the ends as he tried to wrap his hands around Lee’s disappearance. “I mean Director Tate said they sent the worst criminals here. What Lee’s convicted of is some pretty heavy stuff--he pissed off a lot of people in D.C.”
Meredith grabbed Adam’s hand, squeezing it firmly. “Adam, people die here.”
The tension flurried between them, and Meredith felt a wave of heat and anxiety fall over her.
“People die everywhere, Ms. Gray. I’d hoped that Fen-Rock’s activities wouldn’t come as a surprise to you.” Jasper Keenly stood over the back of the computer, staring down at her.
Freezing in her seat as if paralyzed, Meredith was completely unsure what to do next. “I-I, sir, please forgive me, that was said out of context.”
Jasper waved her off with a simple smile. “It happens. I’m sorry, I must have interrupted something big then. I was only curious. I could see your angst from over by the coffee machine.” He took a long sip as if to prove his alibi was indeed true.
“Guilty, sir.” Adam said. “My wife had a scare, thought the baby was coming. False alarm, but you must know what a first-time pregnancy is like.”
Jasper laughed openly, “Oh yes, back when my wife and I were expecting our first, technological advancements were not as they are now. I was afraid that when my son William was actually being born that our parents weren’t going to show up. I mean after three false alarms I almost wouldn’t blame them.”
“Almost like the boy who cried wolf,” Adam added.
“Yes! Exactly.”
While Jasper and Adam were busy talking, Meredith quickly opened a new page, clicking on one of the first news captions that popped up.
“Wow, well I hope that’s not the same case for us.” Adam leaned back in his chair.
“How old is William now?” Meredith asked.
Guilt filled Meredith instantly when she saw the happy glimmer in Jasper’s eyes grow dim, leaving him with an unfocused gaze. “He’d be thirty-two. He died from complications after an accident in Afghanistan in 2008.”
Meredith nodded her head in sympathy. She understood what death in war was like: brutal, messy, unjustified, and sometimes unnecessary.
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”
Jasper’s veteran eyes slid over to meet hers, the dulling blue of his iris’ shone past his sorrow. “I’m sure you understand the pain. Everyone there are brothers and sisters.” His eyes hardened after a moment. “But pain is just that. Just pain and we mustn’t let it consume us.”
Meredith and Adam both nodded their heads, absentmindedly, a cloud of gloom hung overhead when Jasper finished. Pain was pain; Meredith had been in pain before and she pulled through just fine, she will get over the pain that surrounds her now.
“Words of a poet.”
Jasper looked down at Adam, a quirky smile slid across his weathered face, reaching his pale blue eyes. “Everyone who is my age is a poet of wisdom and experience. Just wait son, you will one day be as elegantly phrased as me.”
Adam shook his head, playing along. “Nah, I’ll always be a child at heart.”
Jasper laughed outright, his voice glissading to the edges of the small room. Heads popped up and heads turned to look once more, deep scowls on every face. Jasper raised a comical eyebrow in their direction, daring them to speak up, but no one dared to speak a word.
Jasper turned back to them and joked, “You gotta love the power of authority.”
Meredith’s lip curled up noticeably with her displeasure. She was most decidedly not impressed with Jasper’s comment. She was never a fan of the abuse of power or authority--unless of course, it was her own.
Adam, however, wasn’t bothered by Jasper’s rather lame attempt at a joke. In fact, he found it amusing, and Meredith internally scoffed at the sly smirk that crept its way onto his lips.
Clapping his hands together, Jasper rocked back and forth on his heels as he spoke, “Well I better let you get back to--” Jasper leaned in to look at the screen “--Kendall Jenner’s side boob.”
It was silent for an uncomfortably long pause, the only thing to pay attention to was Jasper’s ridiculously raised eyebrows, and they seemed to be gaining everyone’s attention.
“Anyways, farewell. I’ll be seeing you at dinner, yes?” he said as he backed away.
Adam quirked his eyebrows. “Dinner?”
Jasper merely looked at them, a certain thickness in the air when he didn’t respond right away. Meredith was quickly growing tired of the conversation, or the lack thereof. “Sir?”
“Yes, dinner. Has nobody told you?”
Meredith and Adam shook their heads simultaneously.
“No one here is ever reliable. You would think that for how much we pay them people could actually do the simple parts of their jobs,” he huffed. “I feel as though I’m constantly doing the work I pay others to do.”
Both agents sat still as Jasper continued his monologue. “I mean we live on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, what could possibly distract them from their duties?”
Meredith raised a single eyebrow, which seemed to encourage Jasper. “Today has been particularly trying, too little coffee, too much work.”
Adam had an urge to raise his hand, and the upward twitch didn’t go unnoticed by Meredith, but he seemed to decide to clear his throat instead. “Dinner, Sir?”
“Yes.” Nodding, he cleared his throat. “Dinner is served at seven. Typically we arrive early and chatter amongst ourselves, which you are most welcome to participate in of course.”
Smiling politely, Meredith said, “That sounds like an interesting time, we’ll be sure not to miss it.”
Jasper nodded his head as if their confirmation was all he truly desired. “Excellent, I’m looking forward to seeing you there.” He moved to leave but turned back quickly. “Oh and the attire is semi-formal. Redd’s idea as one can guess.”
And he was gone, his graying hair and unconventional personality disappearing around the corner as he exited the library in hurried strides.
Turning to look at one another, Meredith and Adam shared a bewildered look.
“He’s a strange fellow.”
“He certainly is,” she agreed.
Adam looked up at the screen, staring at the picture of the Jenner girl longer than necessary before returning to Meredith’s Gmail.
“How do you propose we get back to Nome without too many questions?”
Meredith’s eyes were tired and dull. She had no true idea of how they would get to Nome, and the less than enthusiastic shrug of her shoulders illustrated her lack of a plan plainly.
“You know Humphrey won’t like it if we just take a little joy ride back to Nome to find someone who doesn’t even matter to our assignment. Especially if he finds out that this man has a relation to Lee’s investigation.”
“Yes, Adam, I’m not daft.” She looked up at the man on the screen, taking in his deceivingly handsome features. “We should get back to our actual assignment.”
Meredith stood up, pushing in her chair, snatched her bag from the ground and slung it over her one shoulder.
“And what? Just forget about Lee?” Adam stood up too, his chair skidding back unattended. His finger jabbed at the screen, creating a blurred distortion over the man’s forehead. “What about this guy?”
Ignoring him, Meredith logged off the computer and watched as the monitor went dark. Feeling the heat of Adam’s glare, she finally turned to face him.
“I have a job to do. I can’t abandon that.”
Adam stared at her in disbelief, and she didn’t blame him. But she needed to pick a lane and stick to that lane before she tries to maneuver between them because she had no idea how to. So she picked the right lane, the easy choice, the slower, safer choice. The right choice. Well, at least that's what she told herself.
“So you’ll just abandon Lee instead?”
There was obvious disappointment in Adam’s voice. She was disappointed too: with her life, her choices, her relationships, and her duties, which always seemed to conflict with her morals, her desires.
“I wish it was that simple.”
Her voice came out in a soft whisper that left as quickly as it arrived, like her brown hair whipping around the corner in a hurried retreat.
Author's Note:
Short and sweet here. Shout out to that_girl_jane for the awesome cover. Thank you so much!! And thank for everyone who's reading, voting, and commenting you are all fabulously awesome!
As always a big shoutout to my editor, solitarypathways , thanks so much!!
-Anna