Page 16 of License to Kill

“If it helps, think about it this way. You might not be doing the FBI thing now, but you just did them a huge favor.”

“That won’t bring the kids back from the dead, though.”

“No, but you did something better. Those men were there because they were given a job to kill more kids.”

My fury burned hot, and I glared at Amelia’s phone. “I want to press the button again.”

“There you go. Get angry. Anger’s good right now. Our work isn’t over yet, so let’s get to it.”

Five

I would never blame him for that.

With the black market feeding us information, we learned that our next step was to eliminate a no-name mercenary company responsible for handling a lot of the work for those behind the bounty for my life. That same group had ties to the Greenwich case and the murders of several other children.

The parents of the victims had ties to the weapon security software the mastermind wanted to infiltrate.

For a rare change, something had gone right in the government, as the software remained safe from their activities thus far. It amused me that even with moles in the FBI, the bastards had failed in their goals. From my understanding of the situation, a lot of the blame for that fell on my shoulders.

If the Greenwich case had gone as they had wanted, they might have gotten what they’d wanted.

Annabelle’s father had been primed to crack, and given another day or two, important secrets would have been exposed to save his little girl’s life.

I would never blame him for that.

It made me wonder, however. The Johnson case had been closed and the baby’s body found, but I wondered. I’d never believed my ma or pa to be capable of killing anyone, but reality told a far different tale. Beneath my ma’s perfect exterior, she’d harbored enough hatred to kill.

I’d done nothing other than be born differently from her.

Instead of trying to put together all of the pieces about the mercenary company, I delved into the past. The black market ops had given me a login, and as part of my access, they had granted me limited FBI access. All I needed to do was plug in the case number to pull up the files.

The case had been closed, but I questioned everything about it now that I viewed the world in a different light.

“What’s on your mind, Karma?”

“Ma.” I leaned back in my seat and stared at the laptop and the taunting box. A few numbers, and I could review the case myself, the one that had resulted in me becoming a Johnson. I wondered what had happened to the locket with my name on it—and if the truth of my name would ever unburden my shoulders.

“What about the bitch has you tied in knots this time?”

“They had a kid. CARD found the body, closed the case. They didn’t have any leads on who’d killed him or why. But now I wonder.”

“Ah. Just do a name record check in the black market systems and see what other pings come up. You have access to the old records for now. If there was a hit for their kid, it’ll be in there.”

I swallowed. “I’m scared of what I’ll find.”

“Now that takes some guts to admit.” Amelia snagged my laptop. “Spell the last name.”

I did. “That’s why I went into the FBI in the first place. I wanted to be like those agents who’d found my brother. They’d given my pa closure.”

“And now you’re wondering if your ma was the one behind your brother’s death.”

“Yeah. I’m wondering now. The killer was never found. Postpartum psychosis is real, and she wouldn’t be the first mother to kill her child as a result of it. CARD gets a lot of those cases. A lot of them could have been prevented with the right care. It’s one of the first things we investigate now when there’s an infant involved. Did the mother show signs of postpartum? Was she being treated for it? We try to clear the mother first, but we have to cover all the bases. Postpartum psychosis or depression can result in infanticide. And it’s CARD’s job to find out if this is a factor when an infant disappears. And postpartum can last well over a year without treatments. And getting treatments for it isn’t as easy as one might think.” I sighed, staring at the tabletop and wondering if everything I’d built my life on had been a lie. “Some of the worst cases in CARD are like that, where one of the parents snapped and got rid of their own child. Having children is stressful, and mothers are often forced to play down their problems, so they go into a state of psychosis due to suffering from other delivery-related problems. Nobody believes her until it’s too late.”

“Then they believe her, but only while crucifying her for her psychosis.” Amelia sighed and tapped a button. “While there are some kill orders for Johnsons before you, there is nothing in the system that looks like a match, unless the baby was white and old.”

“No, the baby wasn’t white or old. He was theirs, unlike me.”

“And that leaves the unfortunate possibility that he was killed by his mother. What did they determine about the cause of death?”