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"So, everything we need to know is locked in her head?" Alex's eyes betrayed the caution and disbelief in the fact that all the hard work she and Jake had put in had been for nothing.
"Don't think for a moment that you and Jake did it all for nothing. On the contrary - everything you'd succeeded in getting is only icing on the cake. Agent Cage is the key to the case. Unknowingly we've been working on her last undercover assignment. This changes things dramatically for us all."
Monica nodded and took over where Frank left off. "We've been under the false conclusion that the ring was centered here in Chicago. It's actually based out of New York City. This is just a roll-over branch of the operation that handles the prostitution."
"The drugs come out of New York." Aja quirked a half-smile as everyone turned to face her. "It's the last thing I discovered before I was found out. I've been going over every last thing in my mind, what I can remember anyways." A lopsided grin formed on her face and she nodded at Frank.
Frank nodded back. He knew that electric shock torture had a tendency to short-circuit the brain. In some victims it led to mental challenges, madness. In Aja, it had manifested its side effects in patches of memory loss.
Aja sat down and crossed her arms, leaning over the table slightly. "Vadim, the second in command. He runs the Chicago operation and answers to Herrera. Everything that comes in comes through the harbor. It was a smooth operation, nothing but imported pods. He had a lab somewhere in the city that I hadn't found yet. Chances are since he found out he had a cop in his operation, he's moved it outside of the city into a compound, or even done away with it to import the finished products by themselves."
"How do you know all of this?" Jake blinked. "None of this was in the filed reports.
"It's amazing what electro-shock therapy will erase… and how powerful a memory drug revenge and desire can be."
Alex and Jake looked at each other, then to Monica and Frank before looking back at Aja.
"Yes. Part of the reason I've been so hellish to deal with is my relationship to Vadim." She held up the photo of the man in front of her. "While I swung from an iron chain, naked and wet, he proceeded to torture me with electric shock for what felt like hours. This came after his men beat the fucking hell out of me. When he couldn't get what he wanted, I'd passed out by this time mind you, he threw me into a van and dropped me by the side of the road. I remembered seeing two paramedics leaning over me… the homeless man who found me… and a police officer sitting next to me as I was being rushed to the hospital."
Alex and Jake's jaws dropped. Monica managed to keep her composure while Frank didn't appear to be affected by it all. Aja just kept smiling softly, her mouth shut as everyone else struggled to wrap his or her minds around what had happened to her so many years ago.
"Are you…" Jake started to ask.
"Am I all right?" Aja chuckled softly, setting down the photo. She absently picked up a paperclip and fiddled with it between her fingers. "No. I doubt I'll ever be 'all right.' I am, however, getting over it. After last night and confiding in Donovan," she sighed and paused, debating how to say it. "Bad things happen. And how we deal with it defines who we are. Frank's been trying to beat that into my head since Day One. Last night he simply listened to me for a change. He promised me that he'd help me if I wanted it, if I wanted to get past this and move on. Seeing Vadim like this, realizing the case you all were working on was just the same case I'd worked on three years ago, it brought back a lot of memories I'd tried to forget."
Monica and Alex watched as she toyed with the paperclip, then moved on to the photo. As she talked, she kept dragging the rough tip of the twisted and straightened out clip over the photograph. Her hand covered it and held the glossy paper in place, but she was doing something to the picture.
"You can't forget it." she continued. "You have to accept that it happened. For the longest time I denied what had happened, the fact that I'd been discovered. It happens. But I was arrogant enough to believe that it couldn't happen to me. What I was most ashamed of was my inability to fight it, to fight back against him. For the last three years I'd been fighting my own personal shame and guilt." She fell silent, her head dropping just a little bit as the silence loomed over the conference table.
Finally Frank sat forward and cleared his throat. "Very good. Now that the air is cleared, Aja, are you capable of joining the team?" His dark eyes took in the photograph for a moment, then looked back up to her as she lifted her head.
"You sure you want me to go in? Vadim will know me in a moment."
"That won' be a problem." Jake interrupted. All eyes turned to him and waited. "There's a big business meeting in New York in two days. Everyone that's high up in the organization is moving to New York for the next week. Everything operation wise has ceased on this end of it."
Alex chimed in. "That's right. I heard some discussion of the black tie formal celebration at Hererra's penthouse in New York. It's supposed to be a big blowout party. Jake and I were invited to speak to Hererra there and to pitch the business to him. He's looking to branch out with the girls into other cities beyond Chicago."
"We've got him hooked with the prospect of an anonymous backer." Jake concluded. "I think it's time that Aja slipped into a formal dress."
Frank looked at Aja, who returned his look. He was silently asking her if she felt up to the task of going back undercover into a pit of snakes that knew who she was.
"My appearance has changed a lot. Hair's longer, I'm not quite so gaunt as I was back then. Working over a punching back will tend to fill one out quite a bit in the muscle department," she joked. "Yes. I think it's time we visited New York again. There's just one codicil to the whole deal."
Frank's eyebrows raised. "Oh?"
"Yeah. I have a contact in the NYPD that needs to know."
"Why?" Frank always notified the local branches of the FBI, but not always the police department. That fell under the heading of the local branch's responsibility. His eyes fell to the photo that she held covered on the table. Something bothered him about what she was doing to it.
"She worked with me on the case. She knew my cover and my identity." She heard Alex's intake of breath and scowled. "Before you assume she was the one who leaked my cover, I can assure you on a stack of bibles that she didn't - Neither her nor her partner. Someone else blew me in to Vadim. That's one thing I want to find out while in New York."
Frank nodded then stood up. "All right everyone. Pack for New York. I have a call to make. And so do you Aja. Once we get to New York, make the call, get the officer on your side again and have her inform her Sergeant."
Monica leaned across the table as Aja got up. She'd left the photo behind, the bent and twisted paperclip lying on top of the glossy. "Oh… good god…" She cautiously showed the photo to Frank. The eyes had been scratched out, harshly enough that there were pinpoints of sunlight shining through the thick paper.
is she really telling lies again
doesn't she realize she's in danger ?
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Excerpt from the lyrics to "The Game" by Disturbed. CD titled "The Sickness" all rights reserved.
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