"I don't believe this!" Tony slammed his cup on the concrete floor and his cellmate startled. "Fifteen years! She's been alive for fucking fifteen years? How the hell did she survive" he screamed.
"Keep it down in there, Caputo!" yelled the guard on duty.
Tony rolled his eyes toward the voice and continued undeterred. "April was right. Alby was always sweet on Mandy. Maybe he went easy on her" he reasoned. "Or maybe he warned her -"
"What are you yammerin' about?"
"Don't worry about it, Old Man" Tony growled toward his cellmate but continued his pacing and mumbling. "Maybe –"
"Maybe 'the man' put her into their witness protection and she became somebody else," came the surprisingly coherent rasp of his typically-spaced out cellmate. "Poof! She's gone!"
Tony stopped his pacing and stared at the older man before calling out, "Guard! I need to make a call!"
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"Hey, Buddy," he sang disingenuously into the phone after his friend accepted the collect call. "I need one of your special packages delivered to an old friend."
"Tony, I don't do that gig anymore," Alby's voice was tight.
"Well, maybe if you'd have done your job fifteen years ago, I wouldn't be calling you now, Alby."
"What are you talking about?"
"My old lady. Remember her?"
"Woah! You know they record your calls!"
"Cut the crap, Alby! The package never arrived!"
"What are you talking about? You need to shut your mouth now, Tony!"
"It never arrived!" He yelled more loudly.
"I hand-delivered it myself and saw her open it!" came the quiet voice from the other end of the call.
"I put a lot on the line for you, Alby. You know life would have turned out a lot differently if I was different type of person. You owe m—"
"I swear to you, Tony! I delivered the package myself."
There was silence and then he responded, "Then why is April telling me that my old lady never received my gift?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen or heard from April in years. I didn't even know you were still together. But I swear to you, I saw the fireworks with my own eyes. She got your gift."
"Well, somehow it didn't have the effect I wanted or else we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now would we?" he snarled.
Alby sighed into the phone. "No," he whispered.
"Well, I suggest you redeliver the package and this time, make sure she receives the full intent of my gift. April will give you the address." He was about to hang up, but added, "And Alby, unless you want me to reconsider what I told them, I suggest you give it your full attention. Got it?"
"Yeah, I got it, Tony."
"Thanks, Buddy," he replied a bit too happily.
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5:17 p.m. Monday, August 25, 1986
"Amanda," Dotty West called out from upstairs.
"Yes, Mother," she replied as she lifted the groceries she carried onto the counter.
"Are you home, Dear?"
"Yes, Mother," she chuckled to herself. Amanda could hear her mother coming down the stairs as she continued to pull groceries from the paper bags.
"Darling, don't forget the boys are at practice until –"
"Fellas! No running in the house," Amanda yelled to the pre-teens chasing one another. "Now bring those bags over here, please. Carefully," she reminded them.
"Oh good! You remembered," Dotty mumbled to herself. "Did you pick up my face cream, Dear?"
"Yes, Mother," she pulled the small jar out of the last bag and placed it on the counter for her.
"Why do you need face cream, Grandma?" Jamie asked innocently.
"To moisturize my skin, Jamie. So, I can hold off Mother Nature," she clucked the small boy under the chin.
"Being a girl sure takes a lot of work. I'm so glad I'm a boy," he shook his head excitedly.
"Me too," Phillip added dramatically.
Amanda and Dotty shook their heads at the two boys and laughed at their naivete.
"They still have a few years before they realize that being a girl is pretty great," Dotty whispered conspiratorially.
"That's fine with me," Amanda replied laughing. "The longer the better!" She swatted her sons out of the kitchen. "Okay, Fellas. Go wash up and be sure to put away your cleats. I'll start dinner."
"So . . ."
Amanda groaned inwardly. She knew what was coming, but continued with her task. Sometimes, it was best to stay focused and eventually her mother would tucker out.
"Are you going to tell me where you were last Friday and why you've been depressed ever since," she eyed her daughter suspiciously.
And sometimes . . . she was like a dog with a bone. "Mo-th-er! I haven't been depressed," she kept herself busy preparing dinner, hoping her mother would lose interest.
"Darling, I know you. You left here for your 'work dinner' on Friday evening in a simply wonderful mood, you stayed out all night, and then came home Saturday afternoon with your tail between your legs."
Amanda scoffed but kept her focus on their dinner preparations.
"Well, if you aren't going to tell me why you've been so sad, are you going to tell me where you spent the nig—"
Before her mother could finish, Amanda let out a yelp and sucked her finger into her mouth. She rushed to the sink and stuck her finger under the cold running water.
"Oh, no! How bad did you cut it?" Dotty asked as she reached for the paper towel.
"I just nicked it, I think," she shook her head at her klutziness. Her mother pulled her hand from the water to get a better look and carefully wrapped it in the paper towel.
"Yes, just enough to get out of answering my question," Dotty mumbled.
Amanda glanced up and found the other woman watching her with a raised brow. "Mother, I just wasn't focused on what I was doing, that's all. I'll go grab a Band-Aid and get back to cutting the vegetables."
"You do that, Dear. I'll wash the knife and counter while you're gone." Dotty watched her daughter slip up the stairs. Was that relief she saw on her face?
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Feeling pretty lucky to have escaped her mother's interrogation with only a small cut, Amanda had returned to the kitchen and finished preparing dinner. She now sat with her family around the table. "So, how'd you Fellas do at baseball practice today?"
"It was okay. I hit a single, and double," Phillip shrugged.
"Yeah, I caught this awesome flyball. It was almost to the fence, but I got it," Jamie added excitedly.
"That's great, Guys!" Amanda smiled proudly at her boys.
"That new mitt I got you for your birthday must be pretty great," his grandmother joked.
"Yeah, it is, Grandma!" Jamie's eyes widened and then he dropped his fork onto the plate making a loud crash.
"Sweetheart? What's wrong?"
"I forgot my glove at practice," he rushed.
"Oh, smooth move, Dork Breath," Phillip rolled his eyes.
"Shut up, Phillip," the younger boy whined.
"Phillip, do not call your brother names," Amanda admonished. "Are you sure you didn't grab it, Jamie?"
"Yeah, I left it in the dugout. I'm sorry. I'll ride my bike up to the ballfield and get it." He jumped up from the table.
"It's too late for you to be riding your bike, Jamie. Besides, you still have to study your spelling words and take your bath before bed." Amanda swallowed the last of her milk and stood from the table. "You Fellas clear the table, and then finish up your homework. I'll run up to the ballfield and grab Jamie's glove." She tossed her napkin on the table. "I'll do the dishes when I get home, Mother."
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8:23 p.m. Monday, August 25, 1986
"I tell 'ya, Billy, it's the best kept secret right now. You'd think it was the God damn Manhattan Project or something," Lee ran his hand through his hair in frustration and stretched his legs out in front of his boss' desk.
"So why the secrecy? It's been over fifteen years already," Billy replied with a shrug. "It just doesn't make sense."
"The 'Fledgling' program appeared to have been shut down in the mid-seventies –"
"Appeared to be shut down," the older man asked as he came to sit on the edge of his desk across from Lee.
"Yeah, at first it looked as though the program was shut down due to a case that went bad, several student agents were killed. But when I did a little more digging, I found the program just went deeper underground," Lee flipped through his small notebook, scanning for any details he may have left out.
"What does this have to do with Amanda?"
"Only that she was in the inaugural class, as far as I can tell," he shrugged. "Hughes only confirmed what we already knew. I'm telling you, no one's talking, Billy," Lee's nervous energy propelled him to his feet and he proceeded to pace the room.
"Lee, there's got to be someone who can tell us . . ." Billy trailed off and stood from his perch on his desk before returning to his chair.
Lee stopped pacing when Billy hesitated and returned to stand in front of the desk. "What is it?"
Billy hen-pecked at the keyboard on his desk and waited for the terminal to wake up before typing again. "I seem to recall Markiwicz worked at the FBI around that time."
"Who?" Lee was unsure who this Markiwicz even was but had a spark of hope that the man could fill in some holes for them.
"Ah ha! Yes, he was," Billy exclaimed triumphantly.
"Great, but who the hell is he?"
Looking up from the screen in front of him, Billy gave Lee a perplexing look. "Tate Markiwicz," he encouraged the younger man. "You remember, the analyst on level 4?"
"I'm sure I'd remember someone named 'Tate,' Billy."
Billy harrumphed, "Of course you wouldn't remember him, he's not of significance in your world."
"Hey!"
Billy chuckled when Lee scowled back at him at the obvious dig.
A knock at the door interrupted the two men.
"Sir," a young agent tentatively asked.
"Yes, Agent Miller?"
"Galilee Hospital is on the phone for you, Sir. Line 1."
Billy nodded and Agent Miller closed the door behind him before returning to the bullpen.
"That's never good news," he mumbled as he picked up the handset. "William Melrose here."
Lee watched his supervisor's demeanor change instantly. Something in the older man's body language made Lee's chest clench. He listened intently. "Are you sure? Uh huh. What's her condition now?" Billy glanced up at Lee and added, "We're on our way," before replacing the handset on its cradle.
"Billy?" Lee followed his supervisor toward the door. "What's wrong?"
Billy stopped, his hand and eyes on the doorknob. "There was an explosion. One of our agent's . . . car bomb." He looked over his shoulder miserably, clearly not wanting to say who the victim was.
"Oh God!" he swallowed. "Is she alive?"
His supervisor nodded. "They couldn't tell me much. They had just brought her in. One of the nurses recognized her as one of ours from the last time you two were there."
"Let's go. I'll drive. We'll get there a hell of lot faster in my car," he called over his shoulder as the pair made their way out of the bullpen in a rush.