Chapter 5: What Melissa Was
Agent Reeves arrived forty minutes later with a younger woman he introduced as Agent Cho.
They sat across from me at the kitchen table.
Ethan was upstairs with the television on, volume low.
I'd checked on him twice already.
Reeves set a folder on the table but didn't open it.
"How much do you know about your husband's business?" he asked.
I felt the air change.
"My husband passed away two years ago."
"I know," he said.
"I'm sorry.
I mean his former business.
The logistics company he ran before he passed."
"He ran a freight company.
Regional.
Nothing unusual."
Reeves and Cho exchanged a look I wasn't supposed to catch.
"Ms.
Calloway, your husband's company was used — without his knowledge, we believe — as a transit point for a trafficking network operating across four states.
The network has been active for eleven years.
We've been building the case for three."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Without his knowledge," I said.
"We have no evidence your husband was aware.
He appears to have been exploited by a man named Raymond Holt, who worked as his logistics coordinator for six years.
Raymond Holt is R."
R.
The name on the phone.
The name in the messages.
"Melissa," I said slowly.
"She was undercover."
"She was placed in your home eight months ago after we identified your address in Holt's communications.
He had reason to believe your husband may have left documentation — records, files, something — that could expose the full network.
He sent people to find it.
We sent Melissa to intercept."
"He sent people to my home."
"Two prior incidents that were made to look like routine break-ins.
You may remember them."
I did remember.
Fourteen months ago.
Then again eight months later.
Both times the police found nothing taken, nothing disturbed enough to explain.
I had assumed it was kids.
"And Ethan?" I said.
Cho leaned forward slightly.
"Holt believed Ethan might have been given something by your husband before he passed.
A document.
A drive.
Something your husband may have hidden without fully understanding what it was."
"Ethan was seven when his father died.
He was five."
"We know."
"He's a child."
"We know that too," Cho said quietly.
"That's why Melissa was there.
Not to use him.
To make sure no one else got close enough to."
I sat with that for a moment.
All those mornings.
Melissa packing the lunch.
Melissa at the school gate.
Melissa reading to him on the sofa while I worked late.
I had thought she loved him.
Maybe she had.
I didn't know anymore what was real and what was cover and whether those two things had to be different.
"Where is Raymond Holt now?" I asked.
Reeves opened the folder for the first time.
He turned a photograph to face me.
The man in it was ordinary-looking.
Fifty, maybe.
Gray at the temples.
The kind of face you'd forget in a crowd.
"As of this morning, we don't know," he said.
"He made contact with Melissa yesterday.
That's what accelerated the timeline.
He told her Thursday was the last window."
"Last window for what?"
Reeves looked at me steadily.
"To get inside this house one more time before he disappeared."
I thought about Melissa parked across the street.
Not fleeing.
Waiting.
She hadn't been waiting to run.
She had been waiting to make sure he didn't come through the front door while I was in the backyard.
"She was protecting us," I said.
Neither agent answered right away.
"She was doing her job," Reeves said carefully.
May you like
"And yes.
By the end, I think it was more than that."
