My Undercover Life

Episode 44

Annemarie is in band with Megan. Best friends with Asher, and Megan. Was the first person Lily befriended at school. Her dad is a forensic scientist whose name is Jim.

Asher has dyed, silver hair with green eyes. Gay. And is Annemarie and Megan’s friend. Crushing on Ian.

Al is another FBI agent. On the same team as Demitri and Skylar. Only mentioned once before when he was suppose to watch out for Bradlee and Lily when they went to the park together. He also chased the ‘killer’ and saw that the blonde hair was a wig.

Chapter 43 recap: Lily and Al went to Annemarie’s house, met Jim, her dad and then found out she’s working with the killer.

Looking at Annemarie’s dad in the corner of my eye, I made sure he wasn’t paying attention to me before grabbing the device, and shoving it in my pocket. Snatching a pad of sticky notes, and a pen from her desk, I walked back to Al and Jim chatting happily about the recipe he was going to write down for him.

“Here you go,” I said, giving Al the sticky notes.
His eyes made contact with my pocket, before he grinned up at me. “Thanks, Av.” He patted my shoulder, before taking the pen from me. He faced Jim. “Did you know the secret to baking amazing oatmeal cookies is—”

Tuning the rest of the sentence out, my mind wandered off to the message Annemarie got.
This b—h keeps whining about his lost sister. I think we should . . .

My hands clenched together. There’s no doubt the killer is referring to Ian. But who exactly is he? And is he actually a he? For all I know, the mastermind behind all of these killings could be a girl who hired some guy to rape the victims. I mean, what guy uses the term, ‘b—h’ for another guy . . .? Unless he’s—My eyes widened. No way . . . could it be? Could it really be Asher? But-but-that can’t be right, can it? He’s f—–g in love with Ian. There’s no way he would do that to Ian . . . right? He wouldn’t kidnap his sister—the only flesh and blood he has left. Maybe, I’m just overthinking things . . . but who else would be close enough to actually hear him whine about—

“—Avery?” Al’s voice snapped me out of my train of thought. “Avery, it’s time to go.”
I blinked, looking up at him. “Um . . . sorry.” I dipped my head, feeling the heat rushing towards my neck. “I sort of spaced out back there.”

“That’s okay,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I just finished writing down the recipe for Mr. Rice.”

“I already told you, please call me Jim. Mr. Rice makes me sound so old, and I’m already old enough as it is.”

“Oh please, you hardly look a day over forty,” Al complimented.

Jim chuckled. “You’re just saying that.”
“Nonsense. I’ll have you know—”
“Um, Dad we still have to go to the grocery store,” I interrupted, pulling on his sleeve. “Remember that’s why we came here in the first place? To ask for directions.” I asked, raising my eyebrows. The corner of Al’s eyes lowered down.

“Oh yeah!” Jim walked forward, oblivious to our exchange. “You were lost right?”
I nodded. “We couldn’t find our way to the nearest grocery store.”

“We can’t have that now, can we?” he asked, before ripping the top sticky note off. Putting the recipe in his pocket, he took the pen from Al’s hand and started explaining. “If you go down the street.”—He demonstrated by drawing a line—”and turn left on the nearest intersection, you should see Market Place on your right. Just keep going straight after you turn left, and you should be there in about ten minutes.” He finished labeling everything before he handed Al the map he drew.

“Thanks so much.” I smiled widely at him. “You really saved us!” Even though, we barely knew him, I knew Al was a good guy. He gave us the exact directions to Market Place.
“No, thank you.” He shook his head. “Annemarie will love the recipe you gave me.”

I clicked my tongue. “I’m sure she will.”
“Come on Avery, let’s go and buy the ingredients your mom wanted us to get for tonight.” Al la!d his hand on my shoulder, gently pushing me forward. “Otherwise, I’ll get the yelling of a lifetime.”

Jim chuckled. “Sounds like my late wife.”
“They’re something right?”
I shook my head, rolling my eyes at them. “Mom won’t appreciate that, you know?”

Al’s eyes rounded. “I’ll buy you ice cream if you keep this between us,” he bargained.
I tapped my chin, before the corners of my lips rose up in a smirk. “Deal.” He opened up his mouth to speak, before I cut him off. “But only if you buy me birthday cake ice cream.”

“Whatever my little girl wants.” He pinched my cheeks, before I swatted his hand away. He’s really taking this acting thing to a whole new level.

“Dad,” I grumbled out loud. “Stop it.”
He only laughed. “Daughters, right?” Al asked, turning to Jim.

Jim continued smiling at our exchange, eventually nodding at Al.

Hitting Al across the chest, I felt the soft cushion of something underneath his shirt. “Let’s go, Dad. I really want that ice cream now.”

“Whatever you say, Avery.” He chuckled under his breath, before turning his body to Annemarie’s dad. “It was nice meeting you, Jim.”

“You too.” He took one of his hand off his cane, and shook Al’s hand. “You’re welcome to visit anytime.”
“Same to you.”

We said our final goodbyes, before Al and I walked down the stairs, and headed out the front door. Once, I knew we were far away from Annemarie’s house, I gave the hand signal to Demitri and Skylar.

“Do you think Jim’s involved with his daughter’s crimes?” I asked Al. His lips were stretched back into a thin line, his eyes locked ahead.

“It’s hard to say. He sounds like a normal Dad.”

“Maybe a little too normal,” I thought out loud.
“Maybe,” he agreed.

A quiet silence surrounded us. It wasn’t long until I saw the familiar van driving towards us. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

The van pulled to a stop. As the door slid open, Al hopped in first. Getting into the backseat myself, I closed the door shut. Demitri switched ignitions, racing out of the street, pulling back towards the direction of my house.

“Lily, give Skylar the device,” Demitri instructed. “We need to track its signal.”
“Um, sure.” Taking the pager out of my pocket, I threw the object at Skylar, who was sitting up front. He caught it, going to work.

“Can you read the rest of the message to me?” I asked, sliding forward. Leaning close to Skylar, he showed me it.

This b—h keeps whining about his lost sister. I think we should we should kill him too. He’s getting on my last nerves.

“The f–k?”
“Let me guess,” Demitri said. “He wants Ian gone too?”

I nodded, unable to speak. I clenched my hands into tight fists, slamming my hand against the back of Skylar’s seat. That-that f—–g a—–e! Who the f–k does he think he is? Just because Ian’s worried about his little sister, he wants him gone? When I get my hands on this f—–g killer, I’m gonna rip him to shreds—

“Lily, calm down,” Skylar spoke softly. “As much as we would love to do that, we can’t fall to his level.” I gasped. Did he just f—–g read my mind? Skylar laughed. “You’re not that hard to read, Lily.”

I grumbled, crossing my arms. “We’re going to protect Ian, right? We can’t just leave him alone now that we—”

“Don’t worry, we’re already one step ahead of you. We knew something like this was going to happen since we saw the message. We have our guys trailing Ian now.”

I let out a breath I’d been holding. “Thank God.”

“Guys,” Skylar spoke up. His voice sounded hesitant. “This message was sent at eleven last night.”

I tilted my head. “And?”
“And, it wasn’t read.”
“Maybe, Annemarie forgot to check it.”
“Impossible.” He showed the device to me. “Look at all these past messages. Annemarie always responded within five minutes. There’s no way she wouldn’t have checked it this morning.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s a trap,” Al pipped in.

Skylar nodded. “They wanted us to find it. And they wanted us to track the signal.”

“But-but why? Do they want to be caught or something?”

“We’re not sure yet . . . but we can’t not follow it.”

“Where exactly is it leading us to . . .?”
Skylar flipped the device over, and inserted the chip he’d taken apart earlier into his high-tech briefcase. Connecting two wires together, he turned on a different device. As it loaded, a blank screen popped up. Typing in a secret language of codes of some-sort, Skylar pressed enter. The device came to life—the codes Skylar had typed in before quickly maneuvered across the screen. Within a few seconds, an address popped up.

“Is that the address where the other signal is coming from?”

“That would be correct.” Skylar repeated the address to Demitri out loud. Demitri tightened his hold on the wheel before switching lanes. Going in the other direction, Demitri drove past the speed limit by at least thirty miles per hour, ignoring every rule on the road. If it wasn’t a FBI on a mission, we probably would’ve been pulled over a long time ago.

As we pulled up to a house—that looked relatively normal—with its Christmas lights and ‘welcome home’ mat. I squinted my eyes at it, trying to find something that was out of place, but there wasn’t any. Again, it looked like any other house in the neighborhood. There was nothing special about, besides the fact that it was the biggest in the posh neighborhood.

“Do you know whose house this is?” I asked, glancing at it from afar.

“Nope, but we’ll find out soon,” Demitri answered me. “But be careful everyone. This might be a trap.”

“Should I go in alone this time?” Al questioned.
“No. I have a plan.”

We all looked at Demitri. “Skylar and I will go out first. We’ll inspect the house, and when I give you the signal—” He lifted his hand up, forming a thumbs up sign, “go to the front door.”
“And?”
“Make up some excuse to get into the house.”
I raised a brow at him. “That’s your brilliant plan?”

“What?” He rolled his shoulders. “It worked before.”

“Yeah! That’s because I knew it was Annemarie’s dad.”