“Because if you didn’t see,” Agent North continues, hushed now. “Maybe you haven’t realized . . .” And then she holds out her phone, showing her.
I won’t lie, it flashes through me, the worry. Is this it? Will she turn away now?
But it fades as fast as it comes, because my sister laughs instead of reacting like I think and the agent wants. “Are you seriously trying to make me feel bad she smashed his face in?”
“And the rest?”
Amelia doesn’t miss a beat. “How the hell else was she supposed to get you your precious hard drives? Did you expect a twelve-year-old to drag an unconscious man up the beach to the house and then all the way upstairs to his safe?”
“If she’d waited for the extraction, she would’ve had a kit.”
“But she couldn’t and she didn’t, yet she still got you what you needed. So the deal holds.”
There’s the kind of pause that has so much tension, I’m gritting my teeth against it.
“She’s not normal,” Agent North says slowly. “What she did . . . how she left . . . Can’t you see that? She could’ve called you before . . .”
“If she had called me before, Raymond Keane wouldn’t be alive right now,” Amelia says. “He’d be gator food. All of him.”
“Stop saying shit like that!” North’s distress bleeds into her voice and her pretty green eyes.
“Stop implying my sister is dangerous.”
“Isn’t she?”
“My sister,” Amelia says, just as slow, but twice as dangerous, “is a victim of domestic violence and sexual abuse at the hands of the men our mother brought around her. And she has been psychologically abused by the only parent she’s ever known. It is my job to give her the safety and space and whatever else she needs to become a survivor. So if you continue with your victim-blaming bullshit when she let that fucker live after he spent the better part of two years terrorizing and beating her, I swear to God, you’re gonna go back to your higher-ups with nothing. I’ll take the files to the DEA and ATF instead, and you’ll be left on the sidelines. Or maybe I’ll just cut all you Feds out completely. Put it on the dark web for the highest bidder.”
Agent North takes a deep breath. She’s steeling herself to fight more, to accuse me of liking it next, probably, or that it wasn’t the first time. She’d be right about the last thing and wrong about the first.
But instead of arguing, Agent North deflates. “God, Amy,” she says, the nickname falling off her lips with an ease that comes only from familiarity. “I—”
“No,” Amelia interrupts, chin up, arms crossed, so damn defensive. Every shield is up, and the way she’s telegraphing it tells me she isn’t aware she’s doing it, that this woman tripped her up once before, and she can’t let it happen again. “Just give me what we agreed on.”
“The original deal holds,” North says after a long moment when they stare at each other, hungry in a way that makes me want to look away, because it’s not faked. There’s no artifice . . . no calculation or prettiness. Neither of them wants to show it, but they do, because it’s all raw and a pulpy mess.
“Yvonne, you can come back in here,” Amelia calls.
“It’s all like we agreed,” Yvonne tells her.
“Let me have it, then.”
Silence as she reads through it. The minutes tick by. “Does anyone have a pen?” Then: “The code to the safe is 0192.”
I bite the inside of my cheek as I hear the agent punch in the code and swing the door open. “This is all of them?”
“Yes,” Amelia says, because as far as she’s concerned, that’s true. I think about the thumb drive tucked behind the toilet paper. I’ll need to move it soon.
“Let me just verify.” More silence. I can barely breathe around it. Is she going to squash the deal? Will she somehow figure out what I held back? But then there’s a snapping sound. “That’s all, then.”
“Do not come looking for me,” Amelia says, and it’s not just a warning; it’s a plea for mercy. And North is deep enough in it still to give it to her.
“Goodbye, Amy.”
My sister does not say goodbye in return. I wonder if she’s not able to. If she’ll break.
The door clicks shut, and North’s footsteps fade.
“That’s it,” Yvonne says. “Are you all right?”