It was too much to accept, too much to rationalize my way through.
I was going to have a baby. Not just any child, but Emil Dubinin’s.
When Hufford asked me to talk, the day after that test, all I could do was numbly nod and try to look like I wasn’t internally freaking out. I couldn’t let anyone see how secretly excited I wanted to be, either. Hiding this chaos inside, I walked into Hufford’s office and snapped out of my mental and emotional lag to realize something was up.
Furrowing my brow as I waited at this small table, I tugged the edge of my hood lower, as if that would keep me warmer in this breezy fall weather carrying fallen leaves outside the window.
The most vivid thing I remembered from that fateful day was the pure confusion. Like I was waking from a dream after Hufford laid out his decision about my employment.
“I don’t understand,” I’d said that morning in his office, rubbing my forehead. Headaches were already plaguing me one day after finding out I was pregnant. I had no experience with what a pregnancy entailed, but my Google search provided mixed reviews about whether coffee was good or bad for a baby. Going cold turkey on caffeine—just in case it could be bad for a developing baby—I was in the immediate throes of withdrawal.
“You’re fired,” he stated bluntly. “We don’t need traitors in this agency.”
I narrowed my eyes, snapping to attention and shaking off this fogginess in my head. “Traitor?” I shot back. Crossing my arms, I dared him to insult me like that again.
“You heard me.”
I shook my head, glancing at the representatives of the bureau’s legal team, one of the legal teams. The law-and-order parts of our work often overlapped and coincided with attorneys and prosecutors too. Their presence wasn’t unusual around here, but seeing them at a meeting that discussed my employment was a huge red flag.
As if I’d fight the decision. Or if they’d go one step further and charge me with crimes.
“I heard a line of bullshit,” I replied, letting my fury escalate.
Ever since I’d flown home from the Cayman Islands after Emil tied me to the bed there, I’d faced countless scrutiny. The third-degree applied to me when I reported to Hufford and otheragents in charge about where I was those two weeks when I failed to capture Emil.
He’d kidnapped me, instead. But I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.
It wasn’t only a matter of pride. Telling my superiors that I’d screwed up at that airport and put myself in the position to be captured was embarrassing in a professional manner. As a woman, as a short, curvy woman, I didn’t want to endure the sexism and harassment about being caught like that. As an agent who busted her ass to always do what was right, I didn’t welcome the idea of anyone accusing me of being weak for a sexy man, too easy, stupid enough to be compromised in the heat of the moment.
The main reason I hedged answering anything and avoided any mention of all those days and nights with Emil was because I wanted to spare him.
Even though it felt like I was sacrificing my mission to cover for him and not tell Hufford or anyone else that Emil kidnapped me, I debated it until I believed that I was merely excusing him for now.
He’d taken off, besting me at that cat-and-mouse game in the end, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t go after him again.
He’d left with full control of the situation, such that I gotnointel from him, but that didn’t suggest I’d fail the next time I saw him.
The hunt, as far as I was concerned, was still on. In those first couple of months since I’d returned, I fought back the criticism of being taken for two weeks. Of being a failure at going after Emil Dubinin. My story was that the Mexican Cartel in the areahad taken me, and that lie was manageable to give them. No jurisdiction in that area could accept or refute my story.
Emil had won this round and gotten away from me.
But I would get him next time.
That was what I’d told myself those first couple of months I was back. And when I saw him…
I sighed, letting go of the hurt and disappointment that lingered in my chest at the thought of seeing him again. It stung for him to walk away from me after the torrid weeks we’d shared in the jungle, on the run. It pissed me off that we could come together, like partners who wanted to survive, then step apart with that distance between us. Missing him was a cruelty that distracted me those first couple of months. The audacity of his just abandoning me sharpened my resolve to find him again, even though he seemed to hide even better now.
But with the episode of my being fired due to very vague accusations of selling intel to a crime lord—one they wouldn’t even identify, that was how vague and weak Hufford’s words were!—I had to shelve my search for Emil and figure out how to survive in the short-term.
I walked out of that meeting, telling Hufford to fuck off and to think twice about trying to fire me. That prompted more interrogations and meetings with other superiors, who still couldn’t tell me what their grounds were to fire me. Then when I contacted HR and lawyers, determined not to lose the job I’d wanted all my life, it was only a matter of prolonging my stay until they escorted me out of the building.
Coworkers laughed and judged. During my discussions with HR, one woman stared at my stomach and accused me of beingpregnant. That added to the sexism and judgment, providing another avenue for them to build a case against me. Other agents further smeared my reputation for getting knocked up, getting close to that actual truth when they said I was carrying a mobster’s baby. Some taunted me for being a liability now, not an asset on the workforce anyone would trust again.
The meanest remark I heard was when I hid in a bathroom stall, throwing up from the stress and belated morning sickness, when I overheard another woman say that I would never be a strong careerwoman who took down criminals ever again.
That, more than anything else, broke my heart.
All I’d ever wanted to do was make the world a safer place.
