Agent With a Shotgun

Three

The second Amelia agreed to hear him out, Colton immediately took off the bag he had on his back and placed it in one of the chairs sat at the kitchen table. Amelia failed to notice the bag when he first knocked on her door.  He began pulling out multiple folders and papers from the bag, spreading them all out on the table. He pulled out his laptop next and opened it, typing on a few keys before he stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest.

Amelia eyes grazed over all the files he had scattered around her table and her eyes widened. These were her old files.

"Why do you have these?" She asked, her head snapping up to meet Coltons eyes, "I thought they put all of files into storage when I left."

"They did," Colton spoke, his biceps bulging from underneath his dark blue shirt. He had taken off his jacket he had on when he first arrived as well, "I dug them out from storage when I knew what was going on." Amelias' eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"What are these files, Mel?" Celia asked, taking a step forward to look at the files with Amelia.

"The case that cost me my job." Amelia told her without looking up. When she did, Celias' face showed confusion. Amelia had told her that the reason she left the FBI and moved on was because it became too much for her.

Amelia took a deep breath, "The last case I worked on for the FBI was a serial killer. A man named James Wilkins had killed 12 women over the course of 2 years. All prostitutes, who were beaten and raped before he killed them. They were beaten beyond the point of recognition, we relied on fingerprints to identify the victims. The local police called the FBI for help after the fourth victim was found. We worked on this case for the next year and a half. Yet he still managed to evade every one of our attempts to arrest him. He moved up and down the coast and continued killing across four states."

"He changed his victimology with every state he went through, the only common factor between each of the women he killed was that they were all prostitutes." Colton spoke up when Amelia paused. Amelia looked at him before continuing, "We tried tracking him to find where he was hiding or where he would go next, but that seemed to be the hardest part of the entire thing. For months, we worked day in and day out to find him. To get ahead of him."

"Amelia was the one who figured out where he was hiding out." Colton nodded his head slightly in Amelias direction while looking at Celia, who was listening intently, a hint of a frown playing at her lips.

"I managed to track him back to an abandoned warehouse in the countryside of North Carolina," Amelia said, fighting to keep her voice steady as she began remembering everything, "he had been laying low in the warehouse for weeks before I managed to find him, and from what we could tell, he had no idea we had managed to find him. When we got the location, we.." Amelia trailed off. She couldn't bring herself to say the next part, her throat stinging as tears built up in her eyes.

Colton spoke up, "When we got the location, we gathered a team together of agents and law enforcement alike and made our way to the warehouse. We had the element of surprise on him this time, he didn't know we were coming. Or at least that's what we thought," He paused as he looked at Amelia, who couldn't bring herself to look at anyone, "Amelia was ahead of me and my part of the team by a few miles so they got there before the rest of us did."

"The building looked empty," Amelia spoke up in a quiet voice, "no lights on, no movement, no sound. There was nothing. We got out of our cars and made our way to the building. The team walked ahead of me because they were dressed in the tactical gear. Everything was going according to plan, until.." she trailed off again.

"Until the building blew up." Amelias' teary eyes locked with Coltons before she took a deep breath and looked down.

"Six of our own were killed in the explosion," Colton continued, "they never even made it into the building before the building blew up. The entire building was up in flames and on the ground in a matter of minutes. There was nothing we could've done."