A Twist of Fate SERIES (Pentatonix)

(42) Goodbye From Lonely

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( MITCH )

I wasn't expecting to be back here so soon. Texas is weird now without having a childhood home to go back to. Since I've been gone for the last ten months, I don't know where Jessa is anymore, but I checked Zillow and our house was sold to new owners last June; I drove past it earlier today, noticing the exterior has been repainted, the gardens refurbished. I remember when we used to play outside on the front lawn, as a family of four, when Jessa and I would fight over who would get the mail, when she accidentally broke the basketball hoop and blamed it on me. It's bittersweet.

What tugs at my heart the most is the fact that, when I pull up to the funeral home, large security guards with earpieces and hands folded in front of them stand at attention beside the front entrances. In my time away, I had occasionally googled the crew and stalked their social media pages in a public database with my fake ID,—and I've learned about everything—but I guess I hadn't expected it to be this intense.

I know about the speculation over my death. The low profiles everyone was sporting. The month-and-a-half long tour the quartet continued without me, per my request. The verdicts of the trial. Even the tribute song, which I uncontrollably sobbed while listening to. Because I knew Scott didn't agree to it, even though he didn't explicitly say that. He didn't say much of anything, in all honesty. Sometimes I wonder if that was because he was beating himself up over what happened to me, or if it was because he was afraid of accidentally saying too much.

I wasn't expecting to get a call from the FBI,—the ones who have been protecting me, who helped me fake my death—just two days ago. They had only called me once before, and that was just to make sure I was doing okay. Before I left, they gave me a throwaway phone with encryption beyond encryption, and only two agents know the seventeen-digit phone number and the correct sequences to punch in afterwards to eventually reach me.

I also wasn't expecting to hear the words, "Eagle, how are we flying?" from Agent Reading, the person I went to first—even before Scott—to ask for help in disappearing. The plan was that I'd be gone for forever, and, when I actually died, nobody would really know. At this point, all of my personal information would read Dylan Bradforth, or something, and I'd have a neon yellow mohawk and twelve fake piercings. Nobody would even know it was Mitch Grassi, the one who supposedly died in a car accident back in 2025.

"Okay, I guess," I answered, fingering the stack of unread magazines sitting on the table in front of me. "Is this another one of those check-ins you're allegedly supposed to do every couple of months?"

Reading sighed regretfully, and I could already tell that this wasn't, in fact, some other check-in. He didn't say anything for a long moment, and I suddenly had the suspicion that the reason he called was to tell me something. Something important. Something I likely wasn't ready to hear.

"Eagle, Agent Kinsella just got off the phone with somebody who, um, who found out what happened," Reading told me quietly, and my stomach dropped. My chest constricted, and I had to force myself to shallow breathe for a few seconds. "And they want us to tell you something."

I breathed slowly for another couple of moments, grasping onto the Formica table for support. "Okay?" I said, my voice sounding small. "Who... who is it? How do they know?"

Reading inhaled quietly. "Eagle, please know that we wouldn't be calling you right now if it weren't of utmost importance. The person said Sparrow told her everything. Her name is Kirstie Maldonado."