5

"Hey, Aunt Cate…" CJ Barnes entered the Hennessey house in Detroit. A blonde, smart-mouthed former Army private, the skinny thirty-something was the son of Cate's sister, Maggie. He had come to stay with his Uncle Paul as support after Paul's heart surgery in 2003, and he had stayed on while Cate was in therapy after Bridget's disappearance. Nowadays, he worked as a history teacher at his cousins' old high school and lived in Rory's old room while the boy was in college. Dressed in a blue shirt and tan pants, the acerbic former problem child wandered in carrying the mail from the mailbox at the curb. Cate paused for a breath and set the laundry basket down on the sofa.

"Mom sent a letter…" He paused looking annoyed. "…to you." He pulled the letter from Cate. "I didn't get one. I mean… my god… the woman's my mother."

"She still loves you." Cate told him and took the letter.

"Why can't she write me once in a while?" CJ looked to Cate and around the room.

"Your mother isn't much of a letter writer, CJ." Cate sat down started sorting the laundry out on the sofa and coffee table. "As it is, she barely writes me as it is." She paused pulling apart her father's underwear from Paul's. "What else is in the mail?"

"Junk mail…" CJ sorted through the letters and tossed them down by his aunt, but he held one up to the light to try and see through it. "Well, what do you know? A letter from Bridget."

Cate jumped up hurriedly and jerked the letter from him.

"For Bridget!" CJ corrected himself. "For Bridget!" It was just a college application from people who were unaware she was no longer living at home and had just assumed she had finished high school.

"That's not funny, CJ!" Cate swatted him and left the laundry for the moment for a drink in the kitchen.

"I'm sorry…" He sounded legitimately sorry. "I know how much it bothers you." He paused and stood at the counter top playing it as if it were the keys of a piano. "You know, I've been meaning to tell you. One of my Army buddies works in the FBI; I could ask him to look into her case."

"What?" Cate had pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator and had lowered it after a sip to consider the opportunity. She so wanted her daughter home, but if there were a chance she could lose her again by the FBI finding out who she was, she would rather share her secretly with the world than risk the secret. "Uh, no…" She returned to work with the laundry.

"Why not?" CJ sensed something else in her apprehension. "You're always talking about how much you miss her, last Thanksgiving you place a spot for her – just in case… Come on, the guys good. He worked once with Jason Gideon…"

Cate had no idea who that was.

"Gideon's a criminal profiler. He's really good in tracking down serial killers."

"You think Bridget is a serial killer?" Cate looked up to CJ a bit offended by that thought.

"Well, not a very good one…." CJ chuckled. "But they're very good in finding people."

"I don't think so, CJ."

"Aunt Cate…" CJ slid around and sidled up against the arm of the sofa to press her for details. "Why not? What are you not telling me?" He looked at her and tried reading her. Cate looked at him in disbelief and folded a towel. CJ put his hands to his head like a radar unit trying to read her mind then gasped suddenly and placed his fingertips to his mouth in stunned surprise as if he was shocked. He grinned slyly.

"You got a secret…. You got a secret…"

"CJ…" Cate warned him. "Stop it."

"Let's see if I can guess what it is…" CJ stood and tried applying his deductive reasoning to the case. "What do I know here? The last time anyone saw Bridget was September 2003…" He stood and paced around in full view of Cate. "It was the party for the Detroit Tribune at the Lion's Club Banquet Hall near Sterling Heights… It was the night Uncle Paul keeled over from the rip in his heart…" He looked at Cate again. "Did Bridget have anything to do with Uncle Paul's heart attack?"

"No…." Cate folded Kerry's blouse.

"Of course, she wasn't…." CJ continued thinking back. "Because I recall Kerry distinctly saying Bridget wasn't at the hospital that night. The reason she wasn't there was because she had left the banquet early." He paused thinking about that. "The food must have been incredible that night. Why would she have left early?"

"Because Bridget and Kerry were fighting that night, and Paul and I didn't want her embarrassing us in front of Miss Kent." Cate mentioned that in safe assurance that CJ could not get anything from it.

"Why were they fighting?"

"They're sisters. They were ALWAYS fighting!" Cate folded more towels. If there was anything she had learned from her daughters, it was to simplify the answer and leave out the details. Back then, Bridget was doing everything she could to confuse her sister from the truth and she was VERY good at it.

"Hmmmm…." CJ was trying to think of what had happened next that night. Did Paul kill Bridget then have the heart attack? No, there were over a hundred people that night. They would have noticed that. Could his Aunt Cate have killed Bridget then faked the disappearance? Could anyone have killed Bridget? It was entirely possible. When Bridget left the banquet, she never made it home. She had just dropped off the planet.

"I got nothing." He confessed. His head turned to Cate and he sat looking at her for several seconds.

"Puh-leeze, let me in on the secret!" He begged.

"CJ !" Cate scoffed and picked up the dishtowels to take to their drawer in the kitchen. "There's no secret!"

"Catey…." Coming through the front door, Jim Eagan came strolling into the house with his cane. "Is there anything to eat? I'm starving."

"I'll make you a sandwich." Cate looked to him and turned to make it.

"Can you add a bowl of soup and some crackers?" Jim eased his tired bones into the chair and set aside his cane for the newspaper on the coffee table. Above the front page, he noticed CJ looking at him matter-of-factly. He was going to say something. He just knew it.

"Grandpappy…" CJ tried to act like a kid again. "What's the family secret?"

Cate looked up from spreading mayonnaise on some bread.

"You want a secret…" Jim lowered the front page and looked at his eldest grandson. "I hate your guts. Is that big enough a secret for you?"

"I know that one." CJ sounded defeated as if he knew that one. "Come on, I mean the one about Bridget."

"About Bridget?" That struck a nerve in the old man. "Cate…" He turned round to his daughter. "Is there something about that girl you have yet to tell me?"

Cate groaned loudly from the interrogation. Where was Kerry when she needed her? At that moment, the girl was in the law offices of MacNichol, Bellows and Flockhart at the Ritter Building down town. Between law classes at the University of Detroit and her internship, she was kept very busy doing the foot work and paper research of the firm's lawyers, but the best thing about her job was that Elaine Flockhart, her mentor, took her on business lunches to all the most expensive bistros and restaurants in town. At times, she was allowed privileges such as pedicures and health club discounts. If she stayed at it long enough, she could eventually pass the bar and begin making the serious money for her own apartment away from home, but with the job was the access to state and legal records she could use in tracking down her sister wherever she could be in the world. She just had to be careful on how she did it.

"Kerry…" Elaine was a beautiful blonde and shapely lawyer. In her youth, she was a cheerleader and prom queen, but today, she resembled actress Michelle Pfeiffer in a matching skirt jacket combo. "Did you check those dispositions for the Kyle case tomorrow?"

"Yes, ma'am…" The younger lady responded. "I finished them this morning before lunch. I've got them ready for your signature."

"Good girl…" The Nordic beauty took the file from her youngling and perused it through her glasses held at length. A few seconds of that, she held both her spectacles and the file down to turn to the young lady. "You're doing well here. Have you thought about where you'll practice when you pass the bar?"

"I thought I'd work here."

"Kerry, honey…" Elaine crossed past the desks of two interns for the open coffee area and took a cup to pour her afternoon caffeine fix. "One rarely gets to practice where they do their internship." She broke open her packet of cream and poured it to her cup. "I'm sure there will be several firms clamoring to have you when you're ready." She sipped her coffee. "Can you pull the Hastings file for me?"

"Yes, ma'am." Kerry looked up reflectively and accepted that thought. Crossing the law office for the rows of filing cabinets along the wall, she perused the few labeled by year and read the alphabet after that until she got to "H." The firm could do much with a computerized system, but they were still in that awkward interim of converting to paperless. As she looked down and across the filing cabinet, her eyes just happened to pan up to the Benjamin Franklin engraving on the wall above her. The light coming through the big windows behind her illuminated them and made the glass reflect everything through the room. When Kerry looked into the reflection, she usually caught sight of the McNamara Federal Building's reflection in the distance, but today, someone was blocking the view. Less than twenty feet off the structure floating outside the fifth floor, Bridget was floating in the air outside the building dressed in the comic book colors of red, blue and yellow with that big "S" across her chest. She was checking up on her. Their eyes locked on each other in the glass, but by time Kerry spun around, Bridget had vanished!

"Kerry…" Elaine watched the attractive redhead tearing through the firm and out into the main hall. "Where are you going?" Kerry hit the stairs hard and raced against them as hard as she could. Charging past Human Services on the Sixth Floor, she turned for the back of the building and pushed against the doors for the open back veranda connecting the building to the Hampton, the sixth floor restaurant in the Roosevelt Hotel next door. Once outside, Kerry was hit by the winds off the roof and the faraway scent of dishes prepared by the high-rated eatery. She spun round scanning the skies then hurriedly took to the ledge to look round for her sister. There was no sign of her.

"Bridget…" Kerry felt the tears coming. "Why are you avoiding me?" She looked over and around panning the skies for her lost sister.