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18

THE PROTECTOR

T his morning, I had coffee with my boss. Later on, he was zipped into a body bag and wheeled out like a problem someone else would clean up.

I stood there, still as stone, watching the paramedics load him into the back of the ambulance. I didn’t ask questions nor flinch. When they said they’d see me at the hospital, I knew that I had to get the fuck out of there. I turned and walked away.

Then, I went home, and got the stash that Noah prepped for me years ago—just in case. A burner, unregistered plates, fake ID, clean cash, and the name of a man who doesn’t exist on paper, but works for the FBI. I didn’t expect to need it today. But then again, I should’ve known better. Nothing about this day felt random.

I knew that it was going to be a shit storm from the moment I woke up. I could feel it in my fucking gut, yet I never acted on it.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I used to act on instincts which made me figure out cases in days, whereas former agents had been working on them for months and they still couldn’t solve them.

Is my time in the agency really done?

I grabbed what I needed into a bag, then I tossed it in my trunk, and drove. I had to make a stopover, to dump my beloved car and hire a rental in my new name, Turner. I turned off my phone, not willing to get rid of it entirely, because I should have dumped it.

I won’t turn it on, not yet, not until I see Noah and we can come up with a plan B. For now, I need lay low, so after saying goodbye to my car and getting a rental, I sit in it with the windows down, engine low, radio off. The grief hasn’t caught up yet. It’s there, sure, but in the background like a shadow that hasn’t stepped fully into the light. I know it'll come. Just not yet.

So I drive.

Driving means control. It gives me time to think and right now I need to think about too much that it’s hurting my head.

As I stop for gas, fill up, and then drive again, I don’t even keep track of time before I hit Ohio, then Maplewood. It’s as if my attention is only focusing on my destination and nothing else. This is the only way I can keep moving forward.

H unter said that he should meet me at a diner. I’m not too far from there when I see some commotion on the street. Police. Lights. Ambulance. My first instinct is to see what’s going on. I didn’t expect to see my brother zipped into a body bag. I want to gag as I see my brother being zipped up in a body bag. I ask where they’re taking him as I flash my fake badge, and the cop on site gives me the information I need.

Fuck.

When he picked up the phone this morning—after nearly six years of silence—and said he needed to talk, I thought it was just old ghosts knocking. I figured he wanted to clear the air, maybe finally put our past to rest and say the things we avoided for too long. But now, hours later, with his body lying cold on a steel table, I’m starting to realize that call could've been something else entirely. Maybe he wasn’t trying to reconnect. Maybe he was reaching out because he knew something was coming, because the walls were already closing in around him, and I—his brother, the one person who was supposed to see through him—completely missed it.

Not just missed it.

Ignored it.

And now he’s gone.

Two people, taken out in the same day—my brother and my boss. That’s not a coincidence. That’s precision. A message. A hit designed to hurt, to hollow me out from the inside and leave me with just enough breath to suffer.

How the hell did I not see it? How did I miss every warning, every shift in tone, every pause in his voice that hinted at something deeper? I’ve built a career on spotting threats before they explode, reading people like open files, pulling truths out of silence and shadows—and still, I let this happen. I let him down.

I can feel it building now, that old familiar pressure in my chest, the heat crawling under my skin, that rage I’ve spent years keeping locked behind discipline and restraint. But restraint doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore, not when the people who matter are being picked off one by one. Not when the only family I had left bled out with my name still on his lips.

And I keep playing the call over in my head, his voice low and flat, like he was trying not to let something slip. I should’ve asked him where he was, I should’ve pressed harder. Instead, I hung up thinking about my boss and what had happened earlier, ignoring the signs that something was wrong with my brother.

A s the coroner pulls Ruslan from the morgue drawer, as he uncovers his body, I can’t help but stare at him. My brother looks like me, the same jaw, build and eyes if his eyes weren’t shut. But he has so many tattoos now, that I don’t even know what they all mean.

He used to keep his tattoos hidden—back when he stepped into my role, back when he still gave a damn about protocol. But now? He had symbols inked along his neck, coiled snakes curling around his fingers, Chinese characters running down his knuckles like they meant something more than words.

I’m trying to decode him, and understand what the hell happened between then and now. What he became while we weren’t talking.

“Is he a relative of yours? He could easily be your brother. The resemblance is uncanny,” the coroner asked, disrupting my thoughts, anger and frustration. It was as if I’m feeling everything and nothing at the same time.

I put on my sunglasses, feeling the weight of the coroner’s gaze on me. His sharp, calculating eyes, hidden behind round glasse. His pale skin, high cheekbones, a furrowed brow, and lips pressed into a thin line. I feel exposed as if he’s trying to read me, so I shift to the other side of my brother’s lifeless body away from the coroner.

“Yes, he’s my cousin. From my mom’s side. Everyone said we looked alike,” I lie.

“Good,” the coroner says.

I snap my head in his direction. Wondering what he meant by that.

“I meant sorry for your loss. But good that he’s not a John Doe and his family can be informed,” he explains.

I am his family.

“Agent Turner. Should I leave you alone with him? And I can inform your family if you prefer it that way.”

“No!” I snap. Wishing he would leave the subject alone.

I’m his everything after Mom died, she was the only one who knew about our existence. We never knew our family back in Russia. Mom told us that our dad died shortly after we arrived here. Both Ruslan and I decided to do a little investigation to see if it was true, and it was. Dad died a couple of years later after our arrival here, he drank a little too much and had a car accident.

The only family we had in America was our stepdad’s family so when Mom died, so did our connection with them. We were always the step kids and Mom was always the one who couldn’t give him anymore kids, even if it was a lie. Mom never corrected him, as she probably worried about his reputation. All she did was care about him, but she masked it with lies, about how she feared about my brother and I being brought up in poverty if she didn’t please our stepfather. If not, then he could take everything away from us. She didn’t want us to have the life that she had led, anything would have been better than for my brother to not exist and for me not to take on the role of being successful for both of us.

Wouldn’t it?

Shit.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

What did I do?

Ruslan had no name. No prints. No identity, nothing. I should have pretended that I didn’t know him, but if I’d done that, then even in death I would have been a shit brother. I’m still not clear if I’d done the right thing by him when he was alive.

Changing identities.

Being the invisible man was something I’d enjoyed more than him, in a way it was cruel and selfish of me. I had enough time and resources to at least sort him out a birth certificate, but I did nothing.

“When I become an agent, then I’ll sort out your identity.”

He shakes his head, laughing as I say it.

“If you do that then they will figure out we’re brothers. Or something will just fuck it all up. Me being invisible means I get to do good, in ways that you can’t. It is a win-win situation.”

I reflect on the conversation that we had about the subject, well one of the little conversations where we didn’t talk about illegal activities or when we would switch places. Before I stopped talking to him, before we went our separate ways, I hated him in some ways.

He had no responsibility.

He didn’t need a reputation.

He could disappear into thin air like a ghost.

Or like a John Doe like the coroner had said. I stand frozen as the only sound I can hear is the analogue clock on the wall and my heart beat. Someone stole the time I could have had with my brother and one thing for sure as I remove my glasses and stare down at his lifeless body. They’re going to pay for it.

I’ve never believed in prayer.

Or believed that there is a higher power, but the loss I’m feeling right now makes this hollow heart slowly start to fill with pain.

“We have good news. There’s a witness,” a cop enters the room. No doubt the coroner probably filled him in with who I am, and Ruslan.

“Where?” I ask as my eyes shift to him.

His boots are worn out probably from the countless shifts on the streets of Mapletown. His uniform is a shade of dark blue, neatly pressed with a badge on his chest under the harsh fluorescent lights. No doubt his duty belt holds the usual: radio, cuffs, flashlight, and his sidearm.

It’s not the first body I’ve seen, but it’s different when it’s someone you know. The officer didn't introduce himself, and I flashed my badge at the coroner, who didn’t ask too many questions. I doubt that there are many murders in town, so he’s probably disappointed about an agent being on site before he has had a chance to do his own investigation. I was thankful that Noah gave me a false ID as an agent from NY. But I shouldn’t flash my badge too much, because, number one, I’m not good at acting and I can only pull off a Bronx accent for so long, and number two, if the sheriff or anyone else does any digging, then I need to leave and I won’t find out who killed my brother.

“This is out of your jurisdiction. I shouldn’t even be telling you about the case.”

I look him dead in the eye as I approach him and repeat the word which just left my mouth.

“Where?”

“Okay. Okay,” the cop says while lifting his hands up, as if to surrender. “The coroner said that he was your cousin, so I’ll fill you in. I know what it’s like to lose a loved one. Her name is Hazel Stevenson and she ran into her apartment to avoid the attacker.”

I hold on to my breath after he said her name. Fuck you Ruslan! You killed her aunt, why couldn’t you leave her alone. She’s the reason for my brother and I growing apart, and the reason he’s in a fucking body bag.

Penelope.