Dark Secrets

Chapter 7

The ground beneath Amy's feet felt like walking on clouds to her, and while she was turning around the last corner, she could already see the big, impressive LAPD building with its many windows ahead of her. A lot of them were still illuminated, and she imagined Detective Mendoza and everyone her brother had worked with sitting over their desks with desperate faces over notes, trying to figure out the truth about Jason's resignation and disappearance...and his death.

A death that was nothing but a unpredictable mix-up.

Amy smiled, then she quickened her pace. She couldn't wait to tell everybody what Bill Harrison had told her, couldn't wait to see the looks on their shocked faces when they realized their partner, their friend was still alive. She had never met any of his colleagues except for Mendoza when he had still been at the force, but Jason had been telling her about them at different occasions, and she just knew that it would mean at least as much to them that he was actually alive than it meant to her.

Just as she passed the last red light, looked to the left and the right and quickly crossed the street just in front of the LAPD building, she heard a noise behind her. When she turned around, for a moment she felt like she was caught in a bad dream. The man standing a few feet across her looked so familiar, and she thought of the picture in the back pocket of her jeans. All this blood...

Then she remembered Bill Harrison, the story he had told her, and her heart jumped while the confused expression on her face shifted back into a huge smile. She slowly walked towards the dark figure with her arms spread wide open.

"Jason! Oh my god, Jason! It's you! It's really you! You're alive!"

She started running towards the man she knew so well, took in everything about him: the blond hair that always looked like he just got out of bed, the strong muscles showing underneath his black shirt, his blue, intense eyes...

All of a sudden, she was puzzled and almost stumbled. Something wasn't right about his eyes. They were blue and intense, just as they had always been. A stare that melted every woman's heart. But there was something else inside of them, something that suddenly scared her. A cold glance. Like the person behind them was already dead.

Is this a bad dream?, she asked herself while her feet somehow kept pulling her towards the man whose silhouette got bigger and bigger the closer she got, and when the he drew back the hood over his head and when the moonlight shone its light onto his face, she knew what was wrong.

A mole.

The man had a mole just under his right nasal wing.

Just as she realized the truth - that the picture Detective Mendoza had shown her hadn't been a mistake, that her beloved brother was dead after all, and that the man standing in front of her was her long-lost brother, - Rory Gardner twisted his mouth into a wicked grin and raised his right arm that held a Smith & Wesson 9mm gun.

"Hello, little sister."