Virginia Safehouse

Stephanie

Gabriela and I were sparring in the basement of the Merry Men's house, which has a ring as well as all the weights and work-out machines a girl could ask for. I have been working on strength training and hand to hand combat skills with the Merry Men since Carlos was shot. At first it was because I couldn't sleep and the activity exhausted me. Later it was to ensure Carlos's safety when he was too weak to protect himself. Early on, Hector came down for a week to show me knife fighting techniques and since then Les had been my main sparring partner. Manny Ramos was coming down in the next few days to teach "Wifey" some of his special skills. Ram was coming at the end of the month to give me some training on the shooting range. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I know it's necessary. The shooting range was across the street in the basement below the conference room in the other building. RangeMan had it sound proofed so as not to alarm the neighbors.

Gabriela was showing me how to merge all the skills I've learned so far to become a deadly weapon, from the perspective of a smaller frame female, as opposed to my very large Merry Men. Today's exercise is getting my mind off of the case- I need to relax my mind before I meet with Connie. I need to really sweat out my frustration here in the ring.

I CANNOT believe she never told me about being in school with Carlos. Or about Ana and Carlos. That she called HIM Babe! Since I found out, the love of my life has called me Steph instead… And I have taken to calling him Carlos. When all this is settled, we are going to have a serious conversation about nicknames. But first we need to find his child. A son. Older than Julie, we estimate he's almost 20 now, the age Carlos was when the child was conceived.

And how the hell was Carlos already taking grad courses at 19 for God's sake- the bloody show-off?! When he was supposed to be a delinquent. Another thing to table till later.

And we think he is living with his "grandmother" … It will be like finding a needle in a haystack. We don't even know what country they are in, never mind the names they are using.

I tried to sweep Gabriela's feet but she was so fast. I wonder who she trains with regularly.

Most troubling of all... Why now? What started the trouble now if it was about the boy? Why wait all this time? Was the blood drive and Sal and Lester's blood samples what put Trenton in the sights of these mad men?

How could they find Carlos by DNA if he never gave up samples…

And what is the end game… Where does all this chaos end?

I had been through all the documents. Evan getting approved for a top-secret clearance and reviewing State and Federal documents didn't get me any closer to an answer. Melvin and Charlotte have worked with the Feds alongside Hector and Silvio and while we have some of the details, we don't have enough.

Gabriela has tapped all her contacts and found some of the men on the ground in Trenton and New York City, but they were all low rung criminals that only knew what they were paid to do- Find Connie and have her lead them to Carlos. But Connie was locked up tight.

Julie has asked a couple of times why her father has been asking to spend more time with her. She said he seemed almost clingy, which is so NOT her dad. I told her that being so badly injured was behind the change. We haven't mentioned Carlos's son to her… We need to have more information.

I ducked a right cross and swept the sweat from my brow. We had a ton of information. We needed to synthesize it and figure out how it all went together

Carlos and Rachel have talked about the boy and the right time to tell Julie and I think that helped Carlos. Rachel really is a great mom, and I love to see her and Carlos co-parenting. And while the lock-down has been difficult, it would have been so much worse to not have them all here with us. It really was like a big extended family with the them and the Manoso extended family. The Merry Men love having the kids around and we have a lot of family style cook-outs over the summer and I think it is really good for the morale of everyone here.

The pool parties and hide and seek games were legend, and when everyone divided into Team Stephanie vs. Team Carlos in July it was a blast. Okay, lets be honest Carlos was the only one on team Carlos- even his mother wouldn't wear the blue shirt with a circle-backslash symbol over a ring. She opted for neutral purple.

And just yesterday, Charlotte and Melvin announced they were expecting. She has suspected for a while but wanted to wait until the second trimester to announce it. The NSA has been really pushing to have them both move to permanent positions, but they want to remain contract employees, because the private sector will secure their financial future.

Finances were important. It determined where you lived and how you lived. I thought about my crappy apartment and how I barely made the rent some months.

I took on extra projects to make money- finding coffins, searches at RangeMan- I always had options. And I could always eat at my mom's…

On the run, I would not have those options.

This old lady and young kid have been running and hiding for years. Jimmy was dead. Sal had some but not enough. Jimmy was dead. Where did their money come from?

So who the fuck was footing the bill?

I stopped in the middle of the sparring session and Gabriela caught me off-guard and I landed on my ass. That was gonna hurt tomorrow.

Gabriela offered me a hand up.

"What is it? What have you thought of."

"Nothing concrete, just a line of inquire."

"Go on." She encouraged.

"Even if Jimmy had the money to do it all, he's been dead for a while, and according to his will, he had nothing left at the end. Sal made a salary, but not enough to cover the costs of a second family. So who exactly has been paying for the grandmother and the boy to stay hidden after all this time. We are missing somebody."

But who?