We eat in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the sensory layers of the evening around us. The touch of the cold air in contrast to the heat radiating from the fire. The smell of the wood-burning and the spices in the food. The night sounds of birds and insects who still haven't given up but will soon quiet down for winter.
When Sam speaks, his voice sounds almost impossibly loud against the crackling of the flames.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say.
“I haven't wanted to mention it because I don't want to upset you. But I've heard you talk about the Dragon a couple of times. I know he has to do with an undercover assignment you did early in your career with the Bureau, but you’ve never really given me all the details.”
“They aren't the most pleasant details,” I tell him.
“Will you tell me anyway?” he asks. “I want to know who this guy is and what's going on with him.”
I stare into the dancing fire, finding the shades of color in the flames and against the dark wood turning to pale ash in front of me.
“The Dragon is a man named Darren Blackwell. He was already under investigation by the Bureau for quite a while before I got involved. They had a lot on him, but not quite enough to be absolutely sure of a conviction. He was linked to major drug running and a seemingly never-ending stream of violent crime. There were indications he led organized crime syndicates and instigated street wars to boost his own income. As you can imagine, the Bureau was very interested in not only stopping him but also finding out who was working with him," I explain.
"It could lead to stopping a major vein of drugs and crime," Sam says.
"Exactly. But in order to do that, they needed to get to him in a way that would be unexpected. Just a normal sting wouldn't work. They couldn't send in a fake buyer or somebody pretending to want to work for him. He would figure that out too fast. This guy was smart and influential. Smooth, respected, and feared. They needed something he wouldn't be suspicious about, something he would have to work for. So, they sent me.”
“Why you?” Sam asks.
“I was new. I had only been working in the Bureau for a short time, and my face wasn't known in criminal circles yet. That's an unfortunate side effect for some agents who frequently go undercover. Of course, most stay undetected and can do multiple assignments without ever being noticed. But there's always a possibility of criminals from one investigation crossing over into another. They wanted to make sure the person they sent in was a fresh, unrecognizable face.”
“And a woman,” Sam notes.
“Yes,” I say. “That was the point. He already had an army of men ready to do anything he wanted of them. He didn't need anybody else. And he wasn't interested in new customers unless they were highly recommended and came with mind-boggling amounts of money to throw at him. So they came up with a different approach. Dangle something in front of him he couldn't have. He wasn't used to that. He was used to always getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. The only way to get the information the Bureau needed and get close enough to him to bring him down was to earn his trust and loyalty.”
“That doesn't sound easy,” he says.
“Not at all. And not guaranteed. There was always a possibility he wouldn't be interested. Or he wouldn't be willing to go along with it. Sending me in was a risk, and everybody involved knew it wasn't going to be fast. This wasn't something that I could just do in a few days or a couple of weeks, and it would be over with. That became my life. And I had to live every minute of it,” I say.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“I got a different apartment. A whole new wardrobe. They gave me an acting coach to change my voice and the way I walked. Different makeup. A different car. A fake job. I constructed an entirely separate life, so if he looked into me or had his men follow me and try to find out something about me, there wouldn't be anything unusual for him to notice. That meant I did a lot of the case alone. I didn't have the rest of the team around me all the time. That would have stood out too much.”
“You said it was the first case you worked on with Greg,” he says.
“It was. They moved him into the building I was living in. A couple of floors down. That way, he was at least in close proximity. We could communicate without its being detected by any of Darren's people. The information I gathered was transferred to Greg, who took it back to the team.”
“How long did it take you?” he asks.
“Months. At first, it was all about catching his interest. I made it clear that I wasn't interested in him. I didn't fall for his charm or his lines. I had to make him want me. That was the only way I was going to gain his trust or get into his inner circle. It was far too easy for him to get the attention of pretty much any woman he even looked at sideways. They were disposable to him. But if I could make myself desirable and make him interested enough to work to get me, then I was in.”
“And you did,” Sam notes.
I nodded, turning back to look into the flames. “It took me a long time. There were days when I thought I'd lost his interest. When he didn't pursue me and was with other women. But he always came back. And then he tested me.”
“What do you mean, he tested you?” Sam asks.
“He brought me out with him one night. He never told me who he was or what he did. That was part of his game. I was supposed to be impressed by him just because I was impressed by him. Not because I knew he had power or because of his crimes. But he had to make sure I could be trusted. That I wasn't going to panic and run away at the first sign of something shady.”
“What did he do?”
“He brought me along on a drug deal,” I say, my throat tightening as I get deeper into the recollections of that night. “He showed me his product and let me test it so I would know how pure and high-quality it was. Then I watched him murder a man.”
The words tumble out of my mouth without emotion or filter. I can't try to stop them or pretty them up, or they won't come out. It's a cold reality, a dark spot I carry with me in the inner recesses of my being. It will never go away. Nothing I ever do will change it or absolve it. It is done.
“You couldn't do anything?” Sam asks, reaching a hand to squeeze my thigh comfortingly.
“No,” I shake my head. “I had no idea what was coming. I didn't know he was going to try to push me over the edge like that. I was expecting the drug deal. That was a given. One day he was going to show me his business and see how I reacted to it. It would be perfectly easy to just dispose of me if I showed any signs of discomfort or seemed to be a risk. I didn't think he would go as far as murder. It was one of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn.”
“What did you do?” Sam asks.
“I went along with it,” I say. “What else was I supposed to do? I acted as if it didn't bother me, as if it excited me. If I hadn't, I would have been in that alleyway beside the victim. The next morning, the newspaper probably would have had an article about a prostitute and her john getting mowed down because of a drug deal gone bad. I did what I had to do to survive, and to bring back the information the Bureau needed to take him down.”