Page 96 of Code Name: Michelangelo

We’d agreed to formulate our own plan in the time it would take for the other objectives to be met.

The next time I heard from him, I was floored by what he’d sent. It was a message that had gone out to everyone involved in any capacity with K19 Security Solutions, asking for help in identifying a missing MI5 agent. Her name? DeDe Starkweather, the woman Pen and I had helped and who I now knew was staying at Butterfly Cottage on Fire Island.

29

BUTTERFLY

“Oh my God,” I gasped when I received a message from Brand saying DeDe was a missing MI5 agent believed to be on the run from a human trafficking ring taken down in the last few days by the coalition.

Coincidentally, I was a few minutes away from Patchogue. My plan had been to check on DeDe’s car to make sure it was still where I’d left it in the parking structure, then to see if she wanted a visitor.

What can I do? I responded.

Make contact. Tell her Sven wants to know if she’s wearing her boater, he responded. If that makes sense to her, send her this photo. The man, Sven, who I think is Linnea’s father, is in Patchogue, waiting to hear from you. He forwarded the picture and the man’s cell number.

I called the cottage’s landline, letting it ring twice, then again thirty seconds later. It was the code DeDe and I had come up with so we could communicate outside of the secure app, particularly if I needed to reach her quickly.

“Hello?” she answered.

“I have a message for you.”

“Go on.”

“Someone named Sven wants to know if you’re wearing your boater. Does that mean anything to you?”

“It does,” she cried.

I immediately sent a text to Sven, who responded and confirmed he was in Patchogue, waiting to hear from me.

“He’s here in town, DeDe. As it turns out, he works with the same group Brand is working for now. He’s asked to see you and has sent me a photo to prove it’s him,” I told her.

When she said it was okay, I sent it to her cell.

“It’s him!”

“I’ll bring him over now if that’s okay.”

“It’s more than okay. Just…hurry.”

I quickly discovered it wasn’t just Sven who was in Patchogue. Several of the people I’d met in Shere were with him.

“We’ll wait here in Patchogue with Gustav, Puck’s father, until we hear from him,” Nemesis informed me. “I’m sure Puck and Seshat would like some time on their own.”

I assumed she was talking about Sven and DeDe, but was having a hard time processing that the woman I’d befriended and her mother had been on the run from the leader of a human trafficking ring who wanted them killed. I was just happy it wasn’t the baby’s father DeDe was hiding from.

“I’ll take the ferry over with Sven and point him in the direction of the cottage, then come right back,” I told her.

“How’s she been?” Sven asked when the island came into view.

“It hasn’t been easy. But, look!” I pointed to where DeDe waited near the landing with the baby.

“It’s them!” he exclaimed.

My eyes filled with tears when his did, so grateful I got to witness their reunion. “Once the ferry docks, you go on ahead.”

He hugged me. “Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary.” I put my arm through his when he ended our embrace. “Seeing the three of you together, knowing that DeDe and Linnea are safe, is all that matters.”

---