Page 14 of Special Agent Jennie

Chapter Eleven

Jennie’s disturbed sleep that night left her morose and touchy the next morning. Cornering Lisa, she again made her promise not to do anything about her visit to Kane until they had a chance to talk.

“I told you I wouldn’t, Mom. First, I need to talk to Dad… ahh, I mean Kane.”

“Don’t use that word for him. He doesn’t deserve you even thinking of him like that. The man’s a loser, and I want you to stay away from him. And don’t say anything to Baba. It’ll only upset her.”

“Fine. Geez, what’s got you so riled up this morning?”

Not sure if she should admit to reading the notebook, Jennie decided to keep that tidbit of info to herself for now. She needed to get to work, and her priority would be to research her old boyfriend and the people he seemed to be running with now.

When Baba appeared, Jennie forced a genuine smile as that woman’s keen radar could sense a coming storm in clear weather. “Morning, Baba. How did you sleep?”

“Not good. Too much anxious in house. Need to go to church and talk to ‘You Know Who’.”

Understanding her baba’s joke, Jennie smiled and hugged the old lady. Her teasing was about when Lisa had been a small girl and had gotten into trouble being caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She’d pointed upward and in her solemn little girl’s voice said that “You Know Who” thought she should have a cookie.

When Baba had later told Jennie the story, they’d laughed, and it had become a family jest they all appreciated. This morning, it was Baba’s way of lightening the atmosphere and all three left together with smiles to face the day.

It wasn’t long before Jennie’s smile faded, and anxiety took over. She’d spent hours searching through their database for information on Kane and had come up with zilch. The others had been easy to find and what she’d seen made her stomach roil. Those play-pals of his were a rotten bunch of misfits… layabouts who’d drifted from one misdemeanor or jail sentence to another. Some were ex-military who’d either gotten ousted from the service or had quit after a single deployment.

Now mercenaries, they seemed to belong to the latest and possibly worst white supremacist group in the Washington D.C. area called “Order of the Entitled”. The little she found on that group was totally disturbing. They had formed recently but had grown exponentially. There seemed to be a lot of folks, mostly men, with no clear future who had either searched out or been recruited into this bunch, and now they were a force to be reckoned with.

All kinds of mischief had been attributed to their individual members from drug running to the robbing of several facilities, various other misdemeanors with a lot of assault cases, and most unsettling… many unprovoked attacks. And… these incidences were increasing.

Since she’d begun working with a special unit, Jennie had seen enough of these types of hate crimes. She’d been allocated with three others to look into the numbers of Oriental terror attacks which had also recently risen in D.C. Twice in a matter of days, old men had been pushed to their deaths for the sole reason that they were different.

Sickened by this type of malevolent behavior, Jennie had worked hard to bring the worst of the perpetrators into custody, yet more were popping up every day. Crazies who were determined to blame the Asian community for the past pandemic the world had suffered which had originated in a province in China.

And this could not be allowed. Before Jennie could check further into Kane’s background, a call came through from one of the squad cars. There’d been another incident in the city.

Collecting her weapon from her drawer, Jennie motioned to her partner Reed Jones, and they were off at a run. “You get the call too?”

“Uh-huh. Been too quiet. Knew it would come,” he answered, his voice unexpectedly low and very masculine, whereas his body was like his name – thin as a reed. Fast with his feet and fists, he was a good backup for a woman who hated to fight. She’d always preferred to talk her way out of situations or pull out a taser rather than get into it with her body – that is, unless forced to.

Reed teased her that she worried about her pretty face getting bruised. And her reply had always been, “That’s true, especially when they could be pounding away on your ugly mug.”

“Not funny, boss.”

“It’s kinda funny.”

“Only to someone with a warped sense of humor.”

“At least I have a sense of humor.”

“Yeah, and it’s warped.” Reed loved to tease but she wouldn’t trade him for anyone. They’d been together for years and were like some long married, bickering couple.

Besides, they both knew Jennie would never hesitate to get physical, but time and again she’d suffer Baba’s wrath when she showed up wearing bruises and cuts under her heavily applied makeup.

Arriving on the scene within ten minutes, they found a younger Asian woman fussing over an old man with a blood-soaked shirt, a misshapen cheekbone that looked to be broken, and his swollen eyes and face already turning black and blue. The ambulance attendant took care applying a shoulder bandage to keep what looked to be a broken arm held close to his body.

Jennie hurried to the victim while Reed began questioning the witnesses close by.

“What happened?” She watched the man’s gaze tiredly turn away and saw by the closed expression his determination to say nothing. Understanding he wouldn’t speak, she turned to the woman helping him. “I’m Agent Sarnowski and that’s my partner Agent Jones. What’s your name, please?”

Once his daughter gave her identity as Bela Vari and that of the victim, her father, Dominic Vari, Jennie questioned her further. “Can you tell me exactly what happened here?”

The old man began talking in his Filipino language, not understood by Jennie and she had to wait until Bela could translate.

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