Page 6 of His Reluctant Savior

I don’t want to go home. I hate it there. But I have to.

I’m going to leave soon, counting the days until I graduate. Then my suffering will finally be over.

Getting my first kiss from Dalton had been the first milestone in my life that changed everything. The second happened after I got home from the party. If I’d known it was the last time I would ever see Dalton, I would have done the past several years in school differently.

Two days earlier.

I stared at the message on my phone, blinking a few times as my brain tried to process what I saw. My heart rate and breathing kicked up as my primitive brain went into fight-or-flight mode. Only my training and experience kept me relatively rational.

Unknown: They know. Run. Getout.

Me: Who is this?

Unknown: The friend who sent you that gift.

Get out.

For months, I’d been compiling evidence against the Speaker of the House, Jonathan Rush, after anonymously receiving a tip and a video, which must have come from the person who just texted me.

The absolute horror of what I’d witnessed on that video would forever live in my nightmares. I’d seen some shit in my twenty years as an analyst for the FBI, specializing in political corruption. Someone had to keep our public servants in check. Usually, I only had to deal with ethics issues and illegal trading or bribes. But this? I’d never witnessed such a thing.

I wasn’t naïve. There was a lot of cruelty in this world. Humans are the worst of all animals on the planet because we hurt, kill, and commit crimes even knowing it’s wrong. But seeing this from a politician, someone meant to protect this country… Jesus. It angered me, and I wanted to do all it took to bring him to justice.

At first, I had to make sure the video was authentic before I dove into my investigation. It took all my will to watch it over and over to catch any details I’d missed the first time, taking copious notes only on paper. My trained and experienced brain told me to keep this to myself until I had irrefutable data to build a solid case against Speaker Rush.

The hours were long, working this case, among others. I’d barely seen my son because this job was too important to ignore. Our country hung in the balance with someone who stood third in line to the Presidency.

The deeper I dug into the dark web, the deeper I sank. I found a long list of anonymous people who were supporting and protecting Speaker Rush with a lot of money exchanging hands. I needed to find out who these people were, and also bring them to justice, but I wasn’t sure how. I needed to dig even deeper, but I was running out of time.

But something like this? There were too many witnesses. You couldn’t hide it forever. You couldn’t pay everyone off. Receiving the video in secret proved that. There were always opportunists. If this got into the wrong hands, there could be a massive power play that tipped the balance of power, which wasn’t always a good thing. The problem is politicians have way too much power these days as ethics become muddled or altogether dismissed.

I recently gathered all my evidence, confident we could nail the Speaker to the wall, along with a few others involved I had discovered. So, I wrapped all of it in a pretty red bow and gave it to Wesley Mardsen, the Deputy Chief and Director of the Election Crimes Branch at the Department of Justice.

He’d been the only one I told, so if the text I just received was to run, then he’d betrayed me and was a person involved with Rush. I guess my bow wasn’t as neat as I’d thought. Someone could have caught me snooping around, which was a possibility. Most likely, Mardsen was involved. Regardless, whoever it was that betrayed me came from the inside. Now, I couldn’t trust anyone within my own organization or the DOJ.

Maybe it was a false alarm or someone playing tricks on me, but I wouldn’t take any chances. It was too big to risk my life and that of my son. My instincts told me this was the real deal and to run.

I quickly packed up my office, grabbing the essentials and all the evidence I’d gathered. Once I got home, I would wipe out the hard drive on my laptop.

Next, I had to figure out where to go and who to trust.

“Are you going outof town again, Daddy?” Owen asked when he walked into my bedroom as I packed our suitcase.

My five-year-old son was the epitome of my deceased husband, with his strawberry-blond hair, hazel-brown eyes, and freckles across his nose. Owen didn’t remember his father, being only two years old when Matt died in that pileup on the Beltway, which involved nine cars and a semi-truck, leaving three dead.

I turned to face my son, holding his favoriteSpider-Manaction figure, and lifted him into my arms. “Nope, we are going on a trip together.”

His hazel eyes lit up, and he smiled. “Are we going to the beach?”

Instead of answering him, I kissed his head and set him back on his feet. “Why don’t you go to your room and pick out five of your favorite toys, okay?”

I watched in sadness as he ran off. I had no answers for him since I didn’t know where we planned to go yet. First, we had to get out of the house. I also needed to stash the evidence somewhere safe. Then, I had to find a place for Owen to stay so no one would find him, hurt him, or use him against me.

The hardest part was finding someone I trusted and a way to release the evidence without putting others at risk. For now, Icouldn’t trust the FBI, the very people who’d been my family for two decades.

“I’m going to bringCaptain America, myLEGOguys, Danny the Dino, and some books.”

Owen dumped everything on my bed, and I shoved them into his backpack. “You’ll have to carry Danny since he’s a little big.” The dinoPlushiewas Owen’s favorite, and he couldn’t sleep without it.

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