Authors: Cynthia Dixon
THE END
The Cost Of Living In Shadows
Chapter 1:
Angela, Omaha, Nebraska
Angela Miller never thought her life would be like this.
When she was a little girl, she thought that one day she would be in charge of a major company (most preferably, a toy company—I mean, come on, she was only 8 when she started imagining her future), be married to the man of her dreams, have three children (two girls and a boy, of course), and live on a horse ranch in some far away place like Texas or Arizona (even these two barren states seemed exotic compared to her hometown of Bakersfield, California, which was nothing but flat yellow land and abandoned oil derricks) with six or seven dogs as her constant companions. At eight years old, this was her version of heaven. And for a time, she thought these dreams were attainable. She thought that she was on track to living her dream life. But then she started going a little off track. And then her life and her plans went completely off the rails.
And then her life became about nothing but running.
It all started in L.A. (isn’t that where most bad things start? There or New York) when she was working for Carmichael Investments. She was Lead Accountant back then, and over $500 million a year was passing through Carmichael’s halls. She was in love with her boss, Jonathan, and he said he loved her, too. But, of course, he never left his wife for her, so his love for Angela was much like the rest of their lives together: a secret, dirty thing.
But the fact was that she didn’t mind. Jonathan’s wife may have had the 5000-square-foot house and the vacations to Hawaii three times a year, but she didn’t have the man’s heart or his body—Angela had those. Plus, he was teaching her to survive and prosper on her own. He was teaching her how to cook books and shake the right hands. With his guidance, in another two years, she wouldn’t need him in order to live out her dreams. Jonathan would be nothing but a footnote in her personal history; a pleasant one, but all the same, nothing but a memory.
For the most part, Carmichael Investments was a legitimate business. It dealt with nothing but law-abiding individuals and companies. But, like most corporations that deal in excessive amounts of cash, there was a certain amount that came in dirty. Money that was made on the street, that was passed from the hands of desperate human beings to those who preyed on their weaknesses. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, all of the ugly vices of the world, and the millions upon millions of dollars they generated every year, had to end up someplace where those soiled and wrinkled bills could be washed clean, and that place was Carmichael Investments. But these investors were never spoken about. Only the upper echelon of the company knew where this money came from, and Jonathan just so happened to be one of those privileged few. So that meant his lover and protégé also knew about it, and readily assisted him in cleaning the filth.
But Jonathan didn’t just do it for the company; he did it for individuals as well. Dangerous men and women who, to the outside world, appeared to be nothing more than prosperous investors and business people, but actually made their fortunes selling drugs, weapons, and other human beings.
He introduced Angela to them all. Most of them were charming and intelligent—cultured. But there were others who caused her nightmares. She would see their vicious faces in her dreams, looming over her, a knife or a gun clutched in their hands, slashing her throat, putting a bullet between her eyes. She would come awake with a start, pouring sweat, her sheets sodden. She knew that if she or Jonathan ever made a mistake, ever overstepped their bounds, they’d pay for it with their lives. Which was why it seemed like such a relief when the FBI approached her.
Agent Kelly was waiting for her in her condo after she’d spent a long weekend with Jonathan on the coast of Mexico at an ultra-exclusive resort. The trip was supposed to be entirely about pleasure, a well-deserved break from the day-to-day grind of their lives. But, as with most things with Jonathan, there was an ulterior motive for the trip, involving meeting a pair of Russian clients (the clients who most often disrupted her sleep as luck would have it) and the delivery of two million dollars in untraceable bills. When they had met with the unassuming middle-aged couple for dinner on their second night at the resort, Angela felt betrayed. This was not how this much-deserved weekend had been supposed to work out. It was supposed to be just her and Jonathan. But instead there were the Koloffs; a husband and wife who specialized in providing wealthy American men with Russian brides and even wealthier men with underage girls from countries such as Thailand and South Korea. She was enraged when she saw the two of them and she had refused to speak or let Jonathan touch her for the rest of the weekend.
She couldn’t say that she was surprised to see Agent Kelly sitting on her couch, thumbing through messages on his Blackberry. Jonathan had been growing sloppy, becoming far too confident; he was bound to attract the attention of the authorities.
When she sat down with Agent Kelly, he began reeling off a laundry list of crimes she’d committed and how long they could put her in jail for committing them. But she merely sat across from him, unconcerned about being caught, lit a cigarette, and said:
“What do you need to know and how can you protect me?”
The fact was, Angela was done with her life with Jonathan. She was tired of Jonathan, tired of being scared all the time, and she realized at that moment that all she wanted now was a fresh start. A life reboot on an epic scale, and she knew the only way she could do that was to cooperate with the FBI and give them whatever they asked for.
“We want you to wear a wire, gather intel, and possibly testify at the Koloffs’ trial,” Agent Kelly said without an inch of expression.
“And I’ll get what for doing all of these things?” she asked as she snuffed out her cigarette, her face unintentionally mimicking Agent Kelly’s.
“You’ll be given full immunity from your crimes, and then we’ll set you up with a new life under the Federal Witness Protection Program.”
She agreed without a moment's hesitation.
Gathering intel wasn’t an effort. Once again, Jonathan had become sloppy and braggartly about his little side business within Carmichael Investments. Basically, the entire office knew what he was doing, and it was easy for her to get him on tape talking about the Koloffs and a dozen other clients.
Angela only had to live her life of subterfuge for a month and then she was in the wind, set up with a new name and identity in Kansas City, Missouri. She became Janet Macklin, the youngest of three children and hailing originally from Seattle, Washington. She lived in Kansas City for nearly a year and a half, and then her car blew up. Agent Kelly had her under protection within an hour of the explosion and then relocated within a day, this time to South Carolina.
That lasted less than six months and she was moved to Omaha, where she’d been living for the past eight months. During the brief periods she spent with Agent Kelly during her relocations, she came to find out that the FBI had also turned Jonathan, but that the Koloffs’ organization had caught up with him and his wife in Niagara Falls, New York only two months after they went into hiding. The Feds’ case was slowly but surely dissolving, but they weren’t taking any more chances. Even though nothing had happened in Omaha—a town she actually liked very much—they were moving her again as a precaution.
***
On the day of the move, the dense armor-plated van pulled up behind her in her latest car, and she slipped out of the front seat with nothing except her purse. She didn’t bother to accumulate possessions anymore; they were nothing but baggage. It was the same with personal relationships. She kept her distance from people because she never knew how long she would be around, or if the person she was talking to was an assassin sent by the Koloffs. She wasn’t going to end up like Jonathan, no way, no how.
As she buckled in, Agent Kelly handed over her latest set of IDs and a plane ticket. She read the destination: Phoenix, AZ.
“You’re moving me to Phoenix?” she said, and edge of panic in her voice. “Isn’t that a little too close to L.A.?”
“We’re not moving you to Phoenix. We’re moving you to a small town just outside of Tucson called Mount Lemon. Besides, we’re going to trial in the next three months, so it’s better we have you close.”
A chill passed through her at the prospect of exposing herself by taking the stand, but she pushed it out of her mind and instead thought about what Arizona might be like. Maybe she would finally meet the handsome rancher that she dreamed about as a little girl.
Chapter 2:
Sam, Mount Lemon, Arizona
Sam Collins had been waking up at 4 a.m. for as long as he could remember. Most days—particularly on winter mornings when the sun doesn't come up from behind Mount Lemon until after eight—he wished he could just turn over and go back to sleep. When he first joined up with the Border Patrol and he wasn't tied to the ranch for the first time in his life, he had tried his damnedest to sleep in, but after a lifetime of having to deal with cows and horses and their early morning routines (along with his father's hard-nosed, zero-give lifestyle), his body simply wouldn't allow him to just roll over and bury his head under his pillows. It demanded he get up and do something, anything, other than simply lie in bed wishing for sleep to come back.
In the bad-old good-old days of his first years of independence, he would climb out of bed, start the coffee, and take a shot of Jim Beam and a snort of coke while waiting for it to brew. He kept up with this routine for nearly ten years, and then one morning it felt like his chest was about to crack in two. The pain dropped him to the kitchen floor and kept him there for two hours, writhing in agony until he finally passed out.
A couple of days after the spell (Sam wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box in the good-old bad-old days), he went to the doctor thinking that he'd had a massive heart attack and was at death's door. But what it actually was was his gallbladder going to pot thanks to a lifetime of fried foods and his breakfast ritual. But along with the rotten organ, the doc also discovered that his liver was fat, spongy, and just a few years away from killing him if he didn't knock off the shit.
So for the first time since he'd joined the U.S Border Patrol fifteen years earlier, he decided to knock off the shit, and the morning after he scheduled to have his gallbladder removed, instead of downing a shot and snorting a line, he held his nose, gulped down a glass of grapefruit juice, and went for a mile-long walk. The juice churned in his stomach with each long, painful step, and he ended up throwing it up on his front stoop as he gasped for breath. Fifteen years of sitting in his government-issued F-150 and near-constant partying had turned his once-steely body into a bloated meat sack. He could just imagine the look on his father's face if he’d seen him during that period. The old man had always been thin and wiry, his muscles seemingly carved out of granite, and all of his sons had taken after him, including Sam, at least until he joined up with the Border Patrol.
Like his old man, who'd been the Sheriff of Apache Junction, Arizona, Sam needed action. But Sam didn't cotton to traditional law enforcement. He could never see himself pulling over speeders or dealing with squabbling neighbors. None of it seemed to have any importance or weight to it. The Border Patrol, however, that was something else entirely. With the Border Patrol, he knew he would be saving lives on a daily basis. The Arizona desert was harsh and unforgiving, particularly near the border where temperatures could reach the 120's.
Unlike so many Arizonians (at least the completely batshit crazy ones, which were actually a slim minority in his native state), Sam held no animosity for Mexican people. In fact, it was the exact opposite. He fully understood what drove a person to risk their life to make sure that their family was taken care of. Hell, if he were Mexican, he'd probably cross the border illegally too. Those Mexicans knew that all that mattered was blood, and they'd risk everything and anything for it. But because of this overwhelming desire to provide for their loved ones, they didn't always make the wisest of decisions. More often than not, they'd find themselves stuck in the middle of the desert without any food or water, and in Sam’s opinion
this
was actually where the Border Patrol mattered the most. The fact was, they'd never be able to stem the tide of illegals streaming across the border. But they could, at the very least, make sure that some of those people didn't have to die for their poor choices.
But you also had the potential for making equally poor decisions when you were part of the Border Patrol, because people weren't the only things that came across the border illegally. The people who transported these things had a lot of money and influence to spread around if you turned a blind eye to what they were doing.