Doubts
Eva tried to scream, to free herself from the hold her attacker had on her, but he was pressing his hand against her mouth and way too strong for her. Nothing helped, and more thoughts intruded her mind. Was it the man who went after Fleur ? What would he do to her after being done here ? Out of options and scared for her child, she opened her mouth wide behind the man’s hand and bit him as hard as she could.
“Ow !” he shouted, letting her go.
Instead of running away or calling for help, Eva turned towards the familiar voice and froze. “Ed ? What the- Edward !”
“You bit me !” he yelled back at her, startled, holding his hand in front of him. There wasn’t any blood, but he was still surprised that she bit him that hard.
She walked the few steps between them and slapped him across the face. “I thought I was being kidnapped,” she yelled at him, still trying to catch her breath. “I thought… What the hell is wrong with you ?” She took a deep breath, holding herself against the wall, before pointing back at the street. “Have you seen her ? Have you seen the face of our daughter ?”
“I have,” he sighed. “And believe me, I’m just as angry as you are. But she’s… she’s fine.”
“So you haven’t looked,” she argued. “That’s not what ‘fine’ looks like. She’s been assaulted.”
Edward wiped his hand clean and looked back at his ex-wife. “She asked for it,” he calmly replied.
That didn’t help Eva to calm down. She was past being shocked, or even angry. “How can you- Edward, how can you say that ? She’s our daughter, and she’s a victim of- How dare you ?”
“Eva,” he firmly interrupted her before she’d either think of hitting him or crying for help, “she literally asked for it to happen. Do you need me to put you on the phone with the man who did this to her ? He’s a very nice and competent young man, and he’ll tell you that it was her idea.”
She stared at him, her mouth wide open. “What did you do to her ?” He arched brow at her, confused as to why she’d think he had anything to do with it, knowing that he’d just told her about William and how angry he also was about the situation. “Ed, you turned our child into a woman who asked for a beating.”
Eva had hoped to have been wrong. On her way to the shop, she’d hoped that Fleur’s apparent disappearance was for her safety. She’d thought that she’d raised her daughter long enough for her to be able to make the right decisions by herself. She’d been wrong. That woman with a deformed face was what her daughter had become now.
Edward took a step forward, willing to let go of this accusation and blame it on the way he’d made himself known. He pressed a hand on her shoulder and pursed his lips. “Come on,” he softly said. “I’m getting you coffee. I think it’s about time we talk about this.”
Eva looked back at the street she’d been taken from. She had been so close, she didn’t want to give up just now. She knew however that the shop wasn’t going to disappear and nodded at him. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I think we both do.”
They walked away from the street where Bees’ Paradise was and entered the nearest coffee shop. Edward ordered two cups of coffee. Black for himself, a dash of milk and no sugar for Eva. He joined her at the table she’d chosen by the window, unaware of the man who was watching her from the other side of that street, and who had been more than intrigued by their conversation so far.
Edward placed the cup in front of Eva and sighed. “I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t think you’d find her.”
“I didn’t- Oh, God,” she said, holding her head in her hands. “Jessica. What did you do to her ?”
“Nothing,” he scoffed. “I don’t know what you think you know from the little I’ve told you, but given the way you reacted 16 years ago it can’t be good.”
“Is she okay ?” she asked. “She only wanted to help me, Ed. She’s a good person, don’t hurt her.”
“Why would I ever hurt that woman ?” he asked with a smile. “I’m not entirely familiar with her file, but I’m pretty sure she’s a good one.”
“You’re tracking them,” she whispered.
“Only when they’re hiding,” he whispered back. “Which is why you can’t see Fleur at the moment. She’s not Fleur Penquist, she can’t be seen with you for both of your sakes.”
Eva tried to hold back her tears. She had no idea what her daughter had gotten herself into, and she didn’t understand anything Edward was telling her. “Is it someone dangerous she’s after ?” she asked, her voice getting dangerously high pitched. “And what’s with that attack you said she asked for ?”
“He’s not dangerous,” he replied. “As for last night, like I told you earlier, one of ours did this. Fleur wanted to lure her target out to try and get some information, but he’s not a bad one. Never killed anyone, and he seems to have a code. It’s safer when they do. The worst that could happen would be a pretty bad beating, but there’s no reason for her to engage him in a fight,” he explained, trying to be reassuring but failing miserably.
“Has she ever… I don’t know,” she said, struggling to find her words now that she was faced with the possibility of learning the truth about their lives. “Has she worked on… a bad one ?” He nodded. “Have you ?”
“Not while we were married,” he replied. “Not until Fleur left the house to be on her own.” He took a sip from his coffee and laughed. “I’ve been supervising one for years now, and I still don’t know if he’s a good one or not.”
She wasn’t laughing at all. This was more than he’d ever told her about his job, and now their daughter’s, but also more than she’d ever wanted to know. This life, she wasn’t sure she would’ve agreed to it before getting married. That was the main reason why she’d left her child behind. The child that was an integral part of the lies, that would’ve never been born had Eva known the truth.
“Is she safe ?” she asked, already dreading what the answer would be.
“She was supposed to be,” Edward said. “Things happened, and now she may not be.”
She ran her hands through her hair and let out a heavy sigh. “How could you let this happen ? Don’t you care about her at all ? Don’t you want anything more for her ?”
Edward, who had been calm and collected ever since he’d scared her to death in that alley, gently pushed his coffee cup to the side and leaned forward, crossing his arms over the table. “I hear you, blaming me for everything, Eva. I hear that, and I’m starting to be a little bothered here. You abandoned your child. You left her behind, asked to have your parental rights terminated, and forgot about her for 16 years. I was there when she cried herself to sleep for months, I was there when she stopped and pretended that everything was fine instead. I drove her to every therapy session, to every graduation, to every party, and to more dates than I would’ve liked. I was there to tell her every single day that I’d still be there when she’d come back because of her panic attacks. Not you, me.” Eva made a move to talk, but Edward raised a finger, shutting her off instantly. “I’m not done,” he calmly said. “You don’t get to blame the parent who stayed. You don’t like the life she’s leading ? Me neither. But it’s her choice, and you better respect it the same way she respects your choice to have left after learning the truth.”
Eva wasn’t able to contain her tears any longer. She knew how right he was, and the shame she’d felt for so long had only been asking for validation. There she was, just as responsible as he was in what their child had become. It didn’t matter if Edward had tried to dissuade Fleur from all this, because that was her life now.
She began playing with her cup, turning it in her fingers. “So is she happy ? Her shop isn’t real, I guess.”
“It is, for as long as her cover stands,” he replied. “She did it all herself, apart from finding the money. But she worked hard on it.”
“Why is she doing this ?” Eva asked, leaning over. “Couldn’t you get her a desk job ?”
He leaned back on his seat and scoffed. “Does it shock you if I tell you that she’s one of our best liars to date ?”
Eva laughed and shook her head. “That didn’t get better ?”
“Oh, but she did.” He finished his coffee and smiled. “We have yearly tests. She’d been in the archives for 7 months, only working with paperwork, and she fooled the lie detector without any training. She’s been with us for 8 years now, she can trick it into thinking that she’s lying when she’s not. That’s better than any acting, which she also excels at.” He let out a long breath. “She’s good, Eva. She’s good because she believes in what she does. You’ll see her soon, but she needs to be done with this first.”
“What now, then ?” she asked. “Are you expecting me to go back ? To forget about her until you call me to tell me it’s okay ?”
“Now,” he calmly said, “you’re going to finish your coffee before it gets cold, and we’re going back to my car. I brought you everything I’ve kept from Fleur since you left. It’ll have to keep you busy until it’s safe for you to meet her.”
Eva immediately finished her drink. This was better than what she’d expected. She’d get to see what her daughter had been up to all these years, outside of her job. She didn’t want to put her in any more danger. She’d comply with Edward's demands. After all, and it was already hard for her to admit it, he knew the woman their daughter had become more than she did. She’d have to trust him for now, even if it didn’t end well the first time she did.
On their way back to the car, Eva took one last look at Fleur’s shop. Edward however, had been looking over his shoulder ever since they’d left the coffee shop. He told Eva to get in the car as fast as she could, promised to come back to get hers later, and drove off as fast as he could.
***
Vanessa was starting to miss her time before Dex came back into her life. Now, it seemed to be the only thing they all wanted to talk to her about. She’d thought that giving him access to all of her resources would be enough, but no one around her understood that she had better things to worry about.
That morning, as she was trying to follow her midwife’s advice and work on her breathing exercises as the contractions were getting more frequent, Wilson’s lawyer showed up. Obviously to talk to her about Dex.
“Mrs Fisk,” he said, sitting in front of her. “Mr Poindexter has requested access to one of our properties close to the docks.”
“My,” she corrected, calmly eating her second snack of the day. “My property, Mr Donovan. And I made it clear already that I didn’t want to know about all of his whereabouts. Let me know if there’s anything worthy of my attention. In the meantime, I talked to him last night and I’d like it to be the only interaction I have regarding him for a while.”
“I think-”
“I don’t want to know about how Benjamin Poindexter gets rid of his bodies,” she coldly stopped him.
Another contraction made itself known. Vanessa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another, until the tension in her abdomen receded.
“Madam,” Donovan said, “do you need me to ask for your nurse ? These have been happening a lot more recently.”
“My life is very stressful, and you’re not allowing me to rest,” she replied.
He put down the reports from the police she’d asked for, along with everything they had on the attack on Dex, and excused himself. She waited for him to be gone before taking a look at any of the files, wondering if Dex was really making her life easier after all.
She’d considered asking him to leave. She’d considered letting go of her revenge against Matt Murdock. But the more she was trying to let go, the more the memory of losing the love of her life because of these two men was pulling her back.
Maybe it was the hormones’ fault, and maybe it was the resentment from what her life had become, but she wanted Murdock to pay. She needed Dex for that, but his turn would also come. She was positively sure that it would only be after doing so that the pain in her chest would go away and she’d be able to breathe properly, not knowing that this weight on her lungs was simply a side effect of her pregnancy. Children had always known how to turn their mothers’ insides around, whether they were still getting ready to meet the world, or they were putting themselves in harm’s way for the greater good.
Leaving aside Dex’s attack, Vanessa decided to focus on the flower girl’s deposition to the police about the previous night. She read through it rather quickly, unable to find anything interesting. She decidedly seemed to have nothing to hide, Vanessa thought. She looked through her wallet and pulled out the card she’d kept from that cute flower shop that had opened in Hell’s Kitchen.
***
Rose had rarely had a day that felt that long, and it was only lunch time. She couldn’t wait to go back to bed, knowing everything she still had to do. She’d only been attacked the previous night, and it felt like a week had passed already.
As soon as her last client of the morning had paid and left, reminding her of how unsafe the streets of New York were and how lucky she was to have been rescued by Daredevil, she closed and locked the door. She hurried to put up the sign, went back to the counter, grabbed her car keys and-
“Shit,” she breathed out when she heard a knock on the door. “What now.”
She turned around, her usual smile back on her face, and waved at Karen. She was a good friend, but Rose was beginning to think that she may have gone a little too far on her own act of being lonely and in dire need of protection and friends. But it was too late to take a step back now, and still went to open the door.
“You were leaving ?” Karen asked, looking at Rose’s keys.
“Yeah. The print shop got my latest order ready, and they don’t make deliveries.”
Karen frowned. “Are you sure you should be driving ? Look, a client gave us enough food for a week, do you want to come and…” she stopped herself and looked at Rose’s tired eyes. “You want to be alone.”
Rose huffed. “That obvious ?” Karen nodded at her with a smile. “It’s just that… you know, people have been pitying me all morning. I need a breather before I start crying again.”
“I get it. But if you want to cry…”
“I’ll do it, when I’m alone and no one can see, hear, or try to hug me,” Rose replied with a light chuckle. “Maybe you were right and I shouldn’t have opened today.”
“No one will mind if you don’t reopen after your break.”
Rose nodded. “I wish I could take a break, yeah,” she sighed.
She apologized not to join for lunch again, pretending that she’d be of very bad company, and let Karen walk her to her car. She vaguely waved at her, making sure to plaster her most unbelievable smile on her face, and drove off, wondering if that day would ever end.
***
As soon as she came back to the office, Karen started pacing around the room. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something was off with Rose. She’d been thinking about it all morning, and she was now beginning to have doubts about the attack. She considered that maybe, it was never meant to hurt Matt at all, but Rose herself.
“You’re alone,” Foggy noticed as he was walking into the conference room with their plates. He put them down and stared at his friend. “What is it ?”
“Rose,” she muttered. “Something isn’t right.”
“Not you, too.”
Matt joined them and crossed his arms. “She’s been pissed each time someone mentioned that New York wasn’t a safe place to her all morning.”
“We agreed,” Foggy sighed. “And now Karen.”
She stopped and looked at her friends. “I think she’s ashamed,” she said. “Everything she’s told me so far…”
“That she could’ve prevented it,” Matt said, not even trying that he’d been listening to the shop all morning.
“She didn’t like being rescued,” she added. “The gun that she owns, acting as if nothing happened. She told me that it was ‘just’ bruises, but have you seen her face ? I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t been in her shop.”
“Because it happened before,” he finished.
“You guys are going too far,” Foggy warned them. “You two know better than anyone that everybody has secrets. She doesn’t owe us anything. What if she’s already been through this before ? She has no obligation to tell anyone about it.”
Karen glanced at Matt before looking down at her shoes. Foggy was right, of course, but what if Rose’s secrets were putting her in danger now ?
“What if we drop it,” Matt insisted, “and she gets attacked again ?”
Foggy came back into the room with water and scoffed. “You’ve been looking for a reason not to trust her for weeks,” he argued. “The second we tell you to stay away from her, you want to protect the woman. Really ?”
“Could we get access to her statement to the police ?” Karen asked, resting her hands on the back of a chair.
“Brett-”
“No,” Foggy firmly said, stopping them on the spot. “She’s our friend, not some criminal we’re investigating. Say we do that, and we find something. She might not forgive us for invading her privacy like that. And she’ll be right not to,” he finished, sitting around the table.
They started eating, in complete silence, forced not to bring up the topic anymore. Neither Matt or Karen had anything to oppose their friend’s logic.
Karen didn’t like having to wait for something else to happen to Rose again, or for Rose to finally trust them enough to tell them what was really going on in her life. Matt and Foggy hadn’t judged her when she told them about her brother, and Karen only regretted not telling them sooner. She thought about telling Rose about this, hoping that it would help her open up to them, for her own safety. But they’d have to wait simply because, or so Karen thought, Rose had nothing illegal to hide. She’d told Rose herself, she wasn’t to blame for any of it and Foggy was right. No one would like having their friends dig into their life like that.
After a minute of only being able to hear people chewing in the room, Matt cleared his throat. “What if we didn’t do it ourselves ?” Foggy closed his eyes and let out a long and heavy breath. Karen didn’t need super senses to know that Matt was now on very thin ice, but she was hoping for some genius idea to have sprouted in his mind. “We could ask Jessica,” Matt carefully added. “Ask her to look into Rose’s past, but only tell us if there’s something we should be concerned about. She’ll keep the rest to herself.”
Foggy remained quiet for what seemed like an eternity to Karen. That was a great plan, but she didn’t want to open her mouth before Foggy was done thinking. They had a deal, they were doing things together, and he was more often than not the most reasonable of them. He swallowed a bite, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Fine,” he said, much to Matt and Karen’s relief. “Only so I can tell you I was right. I’ll remind you of it a lot, by the way. All the time, even at night. I love being right.”
***
While her friends were looking for a safe way to learn about her, Rose was hoping that William’s injuries wouldn’t be as serious as she was thinking. She’d seen his car parked in front of the print shop, so at least he didn’t have to take a day off. That would’ve been a good thing if she hadn't already seen him work with a dislocated hip, walking around their old office as if nothing happened.
She finally found the strength to get out of her car. She swallowed a pill to help the constant pounding of her brain against her skull, and walked to the front doors.
They opened, and Rose stopped. She tried really hard not to show anything, but her eyes met William’s. Or rather what was left of his eyes. She slowly walked to the front desk and smiled at him. “What did you tell the mister ?” she asked.
“That he should’ve seen the other guy.” He looked at her through his lashes. “I was talking about you.”
“Beating a woman, Will. That’s low,” she scoffed.
“Doesn’t count when you’re gay.” She arched a brow at him, repressing a laugh. “Tell me you got something from it.”
She nodded. “Worst headache of my life, yeah.”
“Shit,” he sighed, moving away from his keyboard. “You tell me I got my arm broken for nothing ? I feel disabled, F.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, right.” She smiled. He was more bothered by his arm being out of use at the moment than the pain. She had no idea why he was still working behind a desk, but that was probably the reason why he was so rude to her all the time. He threw a file on top of the high counter. “Don’t even bother reading that. I couldn’t get anything out of it. Whatever the suit’s made of, there are at least three layers of protection on that thing. Could be a kid, an old man, a girl, a fucking turtle.”
Rose grabbed a chair and sat next to him. “You tried crossing it with the first suit ? You know, when he wasn’t fancy and shit ?”
“Oh, no, thanks for reminding me how to do my job, F,” he replied, rolling his eyes at her. “You stay up. Customers don’t sit.”
Rose laughed, thinking about what real customers would think if they entered the print shop and saw them, in the state they were in. She'd probably say something about not being entirely satisfied with the customer service.
“So,” she said, taking her spot back on the other side of the counter, “anything from that ?”
“Not a turtle.” He rolled his chair back and frowned. “Do you think you could’ve met the guy already ?”
“Why ?”
“Asked me what I wanted from you. Sounded pretty pissed.”
She shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone here that could do this to you,” she replied, looking at his wounds. “Maybe Poindexter, but that’s not him anymore.”
“Sure ?”
“We’d both be dead if it was him, Will.” He winced and pointed at her nose, which had started bleeding again. She wiped the blood off and sighed. “He’s talked to Karen Page before she saw me, though.”
“Why ?” Rose shook her head. They really had nothing other than looking very bad at the moment. “If it were me, I’d tie her up to a chair until she talked,” William laughed.
“And then we’d have her on our backs for the rest of our lives. She’s relentless,” Rose scoffed. “And I don’t think my father would enjoy supervising the guy who killed his daughter in retaliation.”
For once, William laughed at one of Rose’s jokes. She was able to count these on one hand. Somehow, mocking her father always seemed to do the trick.
Edward Penquist had been the one to train William when he was still new to the job, and they’d formed some kind of bond along the way. The kind of bond where Edward knew the name of William’s boyfriend when everyone else was just making bets about it. Rose had tried to get it from her father, but he wouldn’t break William’s trust. Now that she was thinking about it, a promise to ask for extraction could work.
“Hey,” she said, tapping on the counter. “Could you do something for me ?”
“Depends.”
“Everything you can find about Franklin Nelson and Matthew Murdock. Everything, from start to now, and maybe their parents. The whole thing.”
“No.”
Rose’s eyes widened. “Why ?”
“You think you’re the only one working out there ?” he asked. “It’s gonna take me weeks, days before I even start.”
She sighed. “I can wait, but I need these. I think they bugged my place.” Rose’s phone rang. She took it out from her pocket, looked at the screen and checked the line that the number was calling. She checked one more time before looking back at William. “That’s weird.” He arched a brow at her. “Vanessa Fisk is calling Rose Parsons.”
“Shit,” he breathed out. “You talked to her before ?”
Rose shook her head. She’d talked to Wilson Fisk’s lawyer, and everyone at the prison knew that she was his case worker, but she’d never had any contact with her. She picked up the call, under William’s suspicious look. “Rose Parsons, how may I help you ?” She put her speaker on and placed the phone on the counter, just as William was locking the automatic doors.
“Ms Parsons, hello,” Vanessa replied. “Are you the owner of Bees’ Paradise ?”
“I am, yes. Who am I talking to ?”
“My name is Vanessa Marianna, and I’ve driven past your shop a few times now,” she said. “I was wondering if you were also working in people’s homes ? Your floral compositions are a delight to the eye, but unfortunately I can’t spend too much time standing up.”
“Oh,” Rose quickly replied, “I’m sorry to hear about that. Of course I’m always looking for ways to expand my business and get some publicity. Maybe we could meet and discuss it ?”
Vanessa agreed, they both exchanged their best wishes, and Rose hung up, feeling quite confused. William was slowly shaking his head. “I don’t like that,” he said.
“Yeah. That’s…”
“Not good.”
“Weird,” she added.
Once in a while, in their line of work, people like Rose were able to find people to surprise them. Vanessa Fisk asking for flower advice was that ‘once in a while’.
Meeting with her would be pretty safe for Rose, as long as she didn’t have to talk to that lawyer. That being said, a new player had entered the game. A player that was helping Rose connect the dots in her mind. She’d been made aware of a guard’s disappearance from the prison Fisk was being imprisoned in. She’d read the report of the incident involving the man. She’d noticed the inconsistencies in Yuri Hansen’s handwriting. She’d thought, and was right to, that Poindexter had been involved.
And now, only a few days later, Rose was getting a call from the prisoner’s wife. She hadn’t used her married name, the one she’d been signing all of her requests to see her husband with. The ones Fleur Penquist had personally overseen and asked for a ‘Denied’ stamp to be applied to.
“Who’s been assigned to Poindexter’s case now ?” she asked.
“I’ll tell them to keep an eye on her,” William said with a small nod. “Orders have changed about him, by the way. We want him alive.”
“What ? Why ? He killed an entire squad, and he’s killing civilians.”
“He’s killed Santos, F,” he insisted. “They want to know how.”
Rose sighed and nodded. Orders were orders. She grabbed the file about her planned attack, her phone, and the box full of her new cards and flyers. She walked back to the doors, waiting for him to unlock them, her hands gripping tight on the cardboard.
“Fleur,” William called her back. “I don’t mind beating the shit out of you but don’t make me put my funeral suit on.”
She turned to look at him and nodded. He let her go, watching Rose until she got in her car.
Rose hadn’t asked to talk to Marianne. There was no point. The woman wasn’t there, and wouldn’t be for another few days. She was on funeral duty. Rose wouldn’t be able to attend her friend’s, but she’d read the file. Two of the people on Santos’ squad had children. Charles Santos himself had an unnamed wife that he hid to the rest of them for her protection.
Santos’ wife, the others’ kids, they probably would never know what really happened to their parents. Now, Rose’s bosses were taking justice from them, too. Keeping Poindexter alive was useless. He’d kill whoever stood in his way, just like he did with them. Rose had thought, when she’d been reading these files, that it would be a good thing to implement a new rule to their contracts. No marriage, no kids. They were the ones suffering when they never asked for this life. Days like these, Rose perfectly understood the reason why her mother had left, and wished that she’d taken her, too.
***
Jessica was also praying for this day to be over. It was dark, many hours after Rose had come back and decided to still open her shop for the afternoon, ignoring the pain in her eyes and head that wouldn’t leave her alone. Matt found the exact moment Jessica didn’t either consider too early to work or too late that she’d already started to drink. She’d just come back from the liquor store when her phone rang.
She kneeled on the floor of her apartment, from which she hadn’t bothered to pick anything up after One and Two’s visit on the same morning. “This is Jessica Jones,” she said with a monotonous voice, “are you aware of business hours and just don’t care ?”
“I don’t think it’s our fault if you’re losing clients,” Matt said from the other end of the line.
She sat down and put the brown bag from the liquor store down. “If I treat them like shit and still take their case, they know I’m for real,” she replied. “And if they don’t like how I talk and decide to go somewhere else, I call that a win, too. I thought that’s why you never sent that text. Or you moved on to another girl already ?”
“I did send it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did,” he insisted. “You never replied.”
Jessica frowned and looked at the mess around her before feeling her phone in the back of her jeans. “Right, must’ve been the old phone.”
“What happened to it ?” Matt asked.
“I broke it.”
“Why ?”
“Didn’t like what it was saying,” she replied. “So, that name ? I’m free now.”
“Great,” he said, ignoring her weird relationship with inanimate objects. “First you have to know, we only want-”
“Who’s ‘we’ ?”
“The three of us. We only want to know if there’s anyone from her past who would want to hurt her now,” he calmly explained. “Anything else, you keep it to yourself.”
She frowned and looked around her, waiting for the camera crew to appear and tell her that it was all a very lame prank. But the crew didn’t show up. She slowly took the bottle from the bag and opened it. “You know you’re weird, right ?”
“I know it’s a little unconventional,” Matt replied. “But we’d like to respect her privacy.”
“By hiring me to dig up shit on her past. Yeah, that’s not weird at all.”
She took a sip from her bottle, and waited. Matt didn’t say anything for a few seconds, making this phone call very uncomfortable for the both of them. At least Jessica had a bottle to keep her company. She looked at the one Two had shot in the morning, sighing at the waste that was.
“Jessica ?” he finally asked. “You still here ?”
“Yeah, just waiting for that name.”
He sighed. “Rose Parsons. She’s got a flower-”
“Shop, yeah. I remember,” she finished for him. “I’ve been surrounded by flowers lately. Weird trend.”
Matt laughed. “And would you say that it made you happier and more caring ?”
“Pissed and tired, yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes at the phone. “Look, I love talking to you, counselor, but you’re being too weird and I’ve had a long day. Go take your meds, I’ll call you back.”
Matt wanted to thank her for her help, but Jessica had already hung up. She’d started her day with the two government weirdos, and she didn’t have the energy to listen to her friend’s really strange rambling about flowers and how they made her feel.
Wanting nothing more than to think about something other than their visit, which she’d been thinking about all day, Jessica rested her back against the wall and pulled her laptop towards her. The girl was just a flower shop owner, a simple Google search would be enough, she thought.
Without any surprise, the first result of the first page was the shop’s website. Too colorful for Jessica’s taste, but probably the norm when it came to flower shops. She scrolled down to find the usual ‘About us’ page, and quickly found it.
“You gotta be shitting me,” she breathed out, looking at the girl’s picture.
Jessica immediately closed her laptop and put it away. She took a deep breath, then another, and then a long sip from her bottle. She glanced at it, thinking that it likely wouldn’t be enough. That single Google search might’ve just cost her her deal with One and Two. Her visit to Trish. Jessica didn’t care about the government and their secrets anymore, she cared about seeing her sister.
On a brighter note, and she should’ve maybe focused on that, she wasn’t left with an unsolved case anymore. She had, at last, found Fleur Penquist.