A Grain of Sand

Chapter 1- The sheriffs back in town

Zoe

I swear today must be at least 100° out. I stop in front of the DEA building adjusting my suit again and praying that the sweat stains weren't going to be visible. While I would love to blame the sweat on the heat wave in D.C. I can't, I'm nervous. I'm not going to leave until this guy hears me out. I've spent 10 years becoming the best in my field. Essentially, I became the legal version of a hacker as an expert in cyber security and used that combined with my family's influence to dig into not only my brothers death but countless others dropping what I find anonymously to the detectives investigating them. My job as a consultant telling companies the weak points in their cyber infrastructure and how to fix them allows me plenty of free time. During much of that free time I dug into everyone I could possibly think of that could have been involved in my brother's death. After Will's death I guess you could say I spiraled a little bit. Something about it just never sat right with me. Yeah, my brother was a party boy but there was still something off about it. I knew my brother, deep down Will was never supposed to die from drugs. He was just a dumb 20 year old kid who had a misguided way of begging for his parents' attention. He was supposed to grow out of his rebellious phase. So many things about that night felt wrong to me. I've spent years sifting through every inch of case file that I could. Unfortunately, because my parents just wanting to brush it under the rug and not be embarrassed by the whole scandal there wasn't much. It was ruled death by overdose and the case was quickly closed. Luckily, this was not before the detectives made a list of every single person who was at the party and pulled security footage from the front of the building and from the hallway outside of the Hursts penthouse suite. I've gone through every single person on that guest list looking for any connection to Will. Luckily most of the list was ruled out almost immediately; they were just young, rich and looking for a party.

One eventually stood out though. Kane Forbes. He has something to do with my brother's death, though I can't 100% place it yet as to how. Between the look that Roman was giving him from across the dance floor and the messages I found in his phone when I hacked it there was something shady about him. Best I can tell, he at minimum deals drugs but last week when I did a deeper dive, I discovered something. While hacking a person's personal phone and tracking not only every message but every move they make is super illegal and to far even for me I was feeling a little desperate. What I found may not relate directly to Will but if I'm lucky it could at least get someone to help me get some kind of justice. Today I was about to give this agent everything they would need to lock me up in prison for the next 20 years, but it could also be a career making case for them. Through my research I was sure Kane was a nasty piece of work. He was loaded, of course, like pretty much everyone in the circle of families that Will and I were involved in, but it wasn't just the usual shady dealings of the uber rich. When I was in college I took multiple cyber forensics classes, one was taught by a former FBI agent who primarily worked in a unit hunting down human traffickers. Kane Forbes had content on his phone and made calls that were practically screaming that he had gone from bored rich boy who deals drugs for fun to multi-level trafficker.

Walked into the D.C. office for the DEA the young man at the front desk had to be no older than 25. He immediately looked up smiling at me.

"Can I help you ma'am?"

"Yes, I have an appointment with a Special Agent Clay Jameson."

The young man let out a small laugh and mumbled

"Yeah, the sheriff's back in town"

Ignoring his comment, I handed him my I.D. so he could make my guest pass. When he was done he walked me up to special agent Jamesons office. Immediately when I walked in the office it felt cold and almost sterile, as if no one had ever actually inhabited the room before. If my research hadn't shown that special agent Jameson had worked out of the D.C office for the past 5 years I would have sworn it was a brand new office. The young man pointed to a chair in front of the desk and informed me to make myself comfortable. I sit down and look around, still not noticing any sort of personal touch or any sign of life in the room when I hear the door behind me shut and the person I recognize as special agent Clay Jameson comes to sit down. He looks older than he does in his formal I.D photo. His blonde hair is longer and he has the beginnings of a beard.