He agrees and we remain silent until they drop me home.
My head is still reeling, both from our conversation and with concern that the Malin op is fast approaching and I’m not sure whether Enzo, Eva, and I are providing any real value to the mission yet. Enzo’s insistence on helping them has been confusing, and whether they need our help or not is still unclear.
One thingisclear, though. I have a growing need to keep Pippa and Luna safe. Whether they need us or not… I’m not going anywhere.
FOURTEEN
vortex
Pippa
Friday Evening, Day 16
Ijuggle a bakery box filled with extra cookies from my office as I key the code into the warehouse door. I’m hoping the extra sugar can help Jules, Luna, and me finalize this Malin op after an exhausting week. Working with a team has its benefits, but coordinating every moving piece has been more work than normal.
“Pippa, what’s in the box?” Luna asks eagerly. Excitement floods her expression at the promise of sugar. I hand her the box and head to our kitchen for plates and napkins. I ask my sisters what they want to drink before joining them at the table.
“Ironically, Senator Cramden received all kinds of condolences in the form of baked goods and flowers today for the loss of his dear friend, Senator Max McCarter.”
That makes us chuckle. It took longer than a week for McCarter’s heart to fail. Yesterday I was freaking out that maybe my concoction wasn’t going to work, but we finally got word hehad a heart attack. What should have taken one to two weeks, took closer to three. But it is done.
His wife looked relieved as she made the rounds to the news outlets, clearly preferring to play the role of grieving widow rather than disgraced wife of a pedophile. I wonder how she’s going to feel when she learns this weekend her husband’s estate is worth a fraction of what she expects. Not only was her husband purchasing and abusing young girls, but it will also look like he was being blackmailed and had to squander his fortune to stay out of jail.
In reality, Luna funneled his assets to our estate—that’s what we always do when we take these assholes down. We’re female modern-day Robin Hoods—stealing predatory men’s money and using it to destroy the legacy of them and their buddies. It’s poetic, really.
“FBI got the autopsy report today,” Luna reports between bites. “Coroner signed off on heart failure as the cause of death. No one is looking any deeper.”
“We got word that they will hold the service Monday afternoon. I almost feel bad they will wake up that day to learn Victor Malin is also dead,” I say sarcastically.
“On that note,” Jules starts, “Enzo and Eva got the bug on Jonathan Vale’s home office during their meeting with him earlier today. All went according to plan, and we should all have access to the data feeds by now.”
Luna confirms. “I’ll sort through the data tonight.”
“Good.” Jules flips open her notebook. “Enzo’s crew conducted two days of surveillance on Victor Malin’s property and set up cameras. Security runs a six-hour rotation. One guard at the gate, two roaming inside the property line. Eva’s tapped into the city cams on the street, too, so we have full perimeter coverage.”
“I took a look at the standard security protocol for secretservice directors and Malin definitely has more than the average number of guards at the house,” I add, “which may support our theory that he’ll have the intel we are looking for inside the house.”
“Let’s hope so,” Jules says. “We haven’t been able to find any paper trail on the women from Maribel. If anyone kept records, it would have been Victor.”
We all nod. The weight of the mission—and hope for its success—settles in.
The three of us haven’t spoken about our longer-term goal in a long time. We know we have to take these predators out, since no one in power seems inclined to hold them accountable, or to,god forbid, stop the trafficking of children. And we must find Sophie and end her miserable existence. But that doesn’t mean vengeance is our only motivation.
We hope one day we can track down one or more of our mothers. Our understanding is that Jared got some of his victims pregnant in the ‘90s when he first moved to the island. For whatever reason, he didn’t have the girls terminate their pregnancies, which was the standard by the time we grew up.
Knowing dear old Dad, his ego couldn’t fathom the idea that anything carrying his blood could be unworthy. Sophie hated everything about his decisions to let the girls have their babies. She despised us and our existence, but Dad kept her around. I’m confident she made sure any future victims were on birth control or she made them get abortions behind his back.
We don’t know what happened to our mothers. Young women and girls came and went through the island all the time. Did the girls who birthed us do the same? Are they somewhere in the world wondering what the hell happened to us after Jared was killed? Or did Sophie have them killed?
The latter is my hunch. I’ve always assumed Konstantin didher bidding. Jules and I asked Jared once where our moms were and he got so angry it terrified us. Jared wasn’t winning a Father of the Year award by any means, but he was very rarely cruel to us.
That was Sophie’s job. She’d strike when Dad couldn’t see or wasn’t around.
Jared didn’t hate us, but he did not love us. He loved no one but himself.
He must have thought we could be valuable one day, because he made sure we knew the importance of finding all the skeletons buried in someone’s closet. He taught us the most powerful person in the room isn’t the one with the most money, rather the one who could bury their opponents in blackmail and secrets. From a very young age, he taught us the art of taking down those in power.
We learned a great deal from him, and even more on our own these past ten years in DC. But we have never been able to find a way to track down the girls who gave us life. Deep down, I know we each need that closure before we can put Maribel Island behind us.
