I stood in the parking lot, frozen in place until my coworker sang out my name at the side entrance door to the restaurant.
After the lunch rush, I complained of not feeling well. My boss, Zack, let me off early, and I rushed home, my brain still swimming with questions.
As I pulled into the driveway, two men in green scrubs were escorting my mother to a white van. She fought them as they held onto her arms.
My stepfather stood on the front porch with his arms crossed. His black suit and domineering appearance made him seem undisturbed by the situation before him. Or maybe he just truly didn’t care. It was probably the latter.
“Anthony, please don’t let them take me! I promise I will be better,” my mother cried, trying to fight the men holding onto her.
I hurried over to her. “What the fuck is going on here?” I screamed, making the two men in scrubs stop moving. They let her go, and she ran to me, engulfing me in a hug.
“Why are you home early?” a deep, menacing voice asked.
I looked over my mother’s shoulder to see Anthony shooting daggers at me with his dark eyes. “I asked a question first!” I retorted.
My mother trembled in my arms. She was so frail that I worried she might blow away in the wind.
Anthony walked down the steps and toward us. “Your mother is sick and needs to be taken to a facility where she can receive help.”
My mother cried harder as he said the words. “I’m not crazy,” she whispered in my ear. “Don’t let him take you down too. Don’t let him see you.”
Her warning was clear. Stay in the shadows as I take him down.
“She’s not going anywhere!” I bellowed out, squeezing my mother tighter. Her tears soaked my Zack’s Crab Shack t-shirt.
“That’s where you are wrong, Evelyn,” Anthony said, peeling my mother out of my embrace.
She cried more, pleading with him to not let this happen. Strong arms wrapped around my torso as one of Anthony’s security team restrained me. No matter how hard I fought, my mother was gone, and now I was more at the mercy of Anthony Ricci.
A couple of hours passed as I paced in my room where I had locked myself after my mother was taken and played with the business card given to me earlier. Biting my lip, I stopped pacing and dialed the number.
The call was picked up on the second ring. “Agent Fleming, how can I help you?”
“I’m in,” I responded without saying hello.
ONE
EVELYN
My fingers danced across my keyboard. Six computer screens took up my line of vision on one side of the undercover van. As I accessed the security cameras in the warehouse we were raiding, I led my team to our target.
This bust would bring us one step closer to completely infiltrating and destroying Ricci Enterprises and their extracurricular business arrangements, specifically in sex-trafficking.
“Shit, it smells in here,” Badger complained through her headset.
“Damn Buddha, what did we tell you about eating cheese before a raid?” Arrow added.
“Guys, focus!” Chief interjected.
I giggled to myself at my team, they knew how to keep things amusing even in a dire situation.
“Phantom, how far out are we?” Chief asked as they turned down another abandoned hallway.
They called me Phantom because of my ability to infiltrate the cyber world while staying unseen on the dark web. My hacking skills were known worldwide; however, myidentity remained confidential.No one knew who Phantom was outside of my team, I made sure of it. My mother's words from two years before always stayed in the forefront of my mind.Don’t let him see you.
All of us went by code names to ensure the highest level of security.
“You're almost there. Next door on your right,” I directed.
