The Girls I've Been(52)

“Amelia, I strongly advise—” Yvonne starts to say, but she’s cut off with a firm smile.

“Can you just give us a minute?” she asks her. “You can finish reading the agreement in the back room.”

Yvonne gets up, and her heels click out of the room.

I watch the two of them through the crack in the door. Amelia’s head is bent, her mouth tense. She’s rubbing the pad of her thumb against her pointer and middle finger, back and forth, back and forth. It’s what she does when she’s nervous. This tic we share somehow roots me to her in a way I never could have imagined.

“I can’t believe you,” Agent North hisses, all professionalism melting off her. “You extracted her yourself? The plan—”

“Went to shit,” Amelia finishes. “I’m sorry the murderous psychopath parenting my sister didn’t adhere to your schedule.”

“I can’t believe you’re getting snippy with me now. Now. Of all times. This is such a fuck-up,” she mutters. “I sold them on an open-and-shut case. It’s not anymore.”

“Not my problem,” Amelia says.

“The trial’s going to be harder now. If we had her participation—”

“No,” Amelia says.

“The marshals are excellent at their jobs—”

Amelia lunges to her feet, crossing the room fast, out of my sight, and I hear the soft rustle that can’t be a punch but has to be some sort of touch, because the agent lets out a breath that is not quiet.

My eyes flick down. I feel like I’m invading all of a sudden. My cheeks heat up when I realize I must be. But I still tilt my head to see the two of them.

They’re standing close, and the agent’s rubbing her wrist like she’s wrenched it from Amelia’s grip.

“The marshals can be bought off or conned. I can’t be. You know what I’ve done to get to this point. Do you really want to fuck with me when I have what I’ve spent six years trying to get? I finally got her away, and she’s not leaving my side ever again. She is my sister, and she’s had to . . .” She stops. She shudders, like she can’t even say it. I understand, because I can barely think about it.

“No witness protection,” Amelia continues. “No marshals, no safe houses, no trials or names. We had a deal. No testifying, no mention of her part in this, no participation—in exchange for the hard drives. You’re going to stick with it. Or you won’t get them.”

“I can just take them,” she says softly, like she’s breaking it to her.

Amelia smiles, and I see the cruelty in her for the first time. “You know me, Marjorie. Do you really think I’m above pinning you to the ground while my sister smashes the drives into so many pieces there’s no hope of fixing them?”

Agent North gazes up at my sister like she’s the moon and North is seeing her for the first time.

No. Wait. I lean forward, trying to catch her expression, to read the secrets in her fully. She’s not looking at Amelia like she’s seeing her for the first time.

She’s drinking her in like it’s the last time.

“She almost got killed getting you what you wanted.” Amelia says it like a condemnation, and the agent bristles at it.

“She did not have to—”

“Fuck you,” Amelia interrupts, so fiercely that it makes North jerk back. “Fuck you and your federal bullshit that allowed a little girl to be driven to this, because your people were so bad at infiltrating Keane’s organization they got four agents killed in two years of undercover ops. You needed us. I made a deal that risked her because my kid sister was more competent than your agents. You’ll walk away with his hard drives and a big chunk of his operation gutted and whatever promotion they throw at you, but she’ll be in danger until he dies.”

“Whose fault is that?” North asks. “Hers. She took insane risks. I had a clean extraction plan for her. If she’d just—”

“Stop. She’s not an asset. She’s not some criminal informant you turned over the course of years and a cleaned-up coke habit. She’s twelve. She’s a fucking kid.”

There’s a long silence where North stares at her as if she’s trying to weigh the worth of saying something. I slip back into the shadows; it’s like I know the words that come next will slice me raw.

The truth usually does.

“Did you see what she did to him?” Agent North asks. “No tricks,” she says, as Amelia just frowns. “I just . . . Did you see how she left things?”

She still says nothing. My sister trusts no one. Even this woman, who looks at my sister like there’s torn-out chapters in Amelia’s life story that are all about her.

“Because if you didn’t see,” Agent North continues, hushed now. “Maybe you haven’t realized . . .” And then she holds out her phone, showing her.

I won’t lie, it flashes through me, the worry. Is this it? Will she turn away now?

But it fades as fast as it comes, because my sister laughs instead of reacting like I think and the agent wants. “Are you seriously trying to make me feel bad she smashed his face in?”

“And the rest?”

Amelia doesn’t miss a beat. “How the hell else was she supposed to get you your precious hard drives? Did you expect a twelve-year-old to drag an unconscious man up the beach to the house and then all the way upstairs to his safe?”