“I know you have a lot of questions, and I hope I can explain everything to you, but it’s not an easy story to tell.”
“It wasn’t an easy life to live either,” Byte snapped.
“Right. I’m sure it wasn’t. Do you want me to start at the beginning or do you want to ask me questions?”
“Do you know what I do and where I work?”
“I didn’t until the MI6 guy told me. He said you worked at ALIAS and he called you Bite.”
“I changed my name when I was sixteen to GigaByte. I’m a hacker. I break the law on a daily basis. Is that a problem for you?” Byte figured it was best just to get it out there.
“Well… I’m a federal agent, as you know.”
“I didn’t know anything about you until a couple of days ago. Trust me, I was surprised my mother was a Fed. Are you the one who arrested my father?”
“No. I didn’t even know he’d been picked up until I got back home. I’d gone to Carrollton for some additional training. The flight to Dallas was only an hour. I fully expected to be back in time to fix dinner. Your father was supposed to pick you up from school.”
“So you got home that night, found out that my father was in jail, and what? Did you think, thank goodness I’m free of that kid?”
“No, Danielle. It was nothing like that.”
“Then why am I seeing you twelve years later? Why didn’t you take me out of foster care? Why did you leave me to deal with horrible and abusive foster parents?”
Rosemary burst into tears. She knew the conversation was going to be hard, but hearing the anger and knowing she hadn’t been able to save the daughter of her heart—even if not by blood—was beyond her preparedness.
Byte sat there demanding herself to not comfort the woman. Instead, she sat there, biting her bottom lip, refusing to let tears gather in her eyes.She vowed to not reach out and touch the hand she’d not held for more than a decade.
“I think you need to hear the whole story,” Rosemary said as she wiped away her tears.
“Fine.”
“As you now know, I’m with the ATF, at least as of right now.”
“I have information about that, but you go first.”
“Okay. So I was working on a lead we had about narcotics being trafficked from Harlingen to Houston. The Harlingen office had their hands full tracking all the contraband that was being smuggled from Mexico, so my partner and I were asked to investigate it. At the time, I lived in Clear Lake, which is just a few miles north of Galveston.”
“I know where it is. Go on.”
“Right. So we gathered the intel after several weeks, but we needed to know more about the players on the Houston side. This led to us needing to go undercover. I had more experience in that area and was given the assignment. I was to get close to the local dealer and see where the trafficking was taking place.”
“My father was the local dealer?”
“No, he was the dealer to the dealer. When the goods arrived in Houston, he was the point guy. He worked on the docks, so he could get things inside. He was my target.”
“So you slept with him?”
“Umm.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard this song and dance. You were a honey pot. It’s something the Feds are happy to have their agents do.”
“That wasn’t what it was. I mean, yes, he was my target, but he was more than a drug dealer. He was a single father of this beautiful little girl with the largest eyes. She stole my heart.”
“Who was she? I don’t remember any other kids at the house, but I’ve blocked out a lot.”
“You were the little girl.”
“Wait? You’re my stepmother?”