Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17


“When I graduated from Apollo high school in Phoenix, I had the whole world ahead of me. I had a music scholarship to ASU, home of the Wildcats. I was secretary of my graduating class. I had a good job as Assistant Manager of a clothing store in the mall. I was happy. I had had a few boyfriends in high school, but it was just for fun. The last month, I started dating this guy who was perfect. He was tall, dark, and handsome, he came from a wealthy family, and he said that he knew we were meant to be together. For three months, I believed him and fell under his charms.
The night of July 22, 1983 changed all of that. I was in downtown Phoenix on a date with Roger, my boyfriend. We had gone to a very expensive restaurant and all signs were leaning towards the engagement that night. When he picked me up, he seemed really nervous, and several times he said he needed to talk about something important, but he kept just pushing it off until later. I was ready to accept his proposal and drop everything.
When it finally came down to our serious talk as we finished dinner, he told me that he had been dating another girl that we graduated with and she had become pregnant and he wanted to do the right thing. I threw my drink in his face and walked out before he could dump me.
My parents had gone out with friends that evening and all of my other friends were out on their own respective dates. I tried calling several numbers, but I had no luck. I was wearing a very expensive dress since I had been expecting a special night, so the bus didn’t seem right, so I decided to call a cab, but I had no money on me. I walked to the nearest bank and went to the ATM.
After I had punched in my PIN number, I could feel someone hovering over me. I turned, expecting to see an impatient customer and instead saw a knife. I was told to take out as much as I could and hand over the money slowly. I did as I was told. I took my bankcard out and also handed it to the robber. He grabbed my arm and twisted it around my back and led me into some bushes.
He threw me on the ground and leaned over me. I closed my eyes and could smell his nasty breath as he leaned down and licked my cheek. Then, all of a sudden, he stopped. It was almost like he had been struck dead as he raised up to undo his pants. As I opened my eyes, I saw a man with a gun pointed directly at my assailant’s head. He instructed the robber to get up slowly and back away from me. He did. Not thirty seconds later, a police car pulls up and arrests the robber. The man with the gun holstered it, and came over and knelt down beside me. I started crying then and didn’t stop until an hour later. Patrick stayed kneeling next to me the whole time.
Patrick took me to the hospital himself and waited while I was tested for any damage. When all the tests turned up negative, he took me home and told my parents what had happened, so that I wouldn’t have to relive it so quickly.
The next morning, Patrick picked me up from my house and went with me to work, so that I could get the morning off and go down to the police station. We picked up some Subway sandwiches on the way there and had our first date eating a cold sandwich and filling out a police report.“ Kate looked up at Jon. “Romantic, huh?”
Jon smiled and let Kate continue.
“He joked around with me a bit as he was taking my deposition, and it relaxed me enough to be able to recall the man’s face and we even did a line up. It was almost seven o’clock at night when we finished. He asked if I wanted to go to dinner and I accepted.
“We went to a little hole in the wall Mexican place and we talked for three hours. It was at that time that he told me that he was not a cop for Phoenix, but instead a Federal Agent. Turns out that my assailant was the little brother of a known Mafia Kingpin. Little brother had been driven out of the family business and was now terrorizing women across the country. He would attack several women in one night in one city and be gone before the police even issued a statement. They just happened to catch up to him when he attacked me.
As the night wore on, we just talked, and talked, and talked. It seemed like we were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. He was witty, and charming, and seemed to care about me more than the fact that he had just caught a man they had been chasing for two months.
I was attending ASU, but let some of my classes slide. I wanted to be with him more than I wanted to be in school. To make a long story a little shorter, we were married on Christmas Day that year. We bought a house in Tucson, and we were doing well. I knew he had to go out of town a lot, for weeks at a time sometimes, but I was okay knowing that he would be back.
Once, there was a man who was setting off bombs and robbing banks, and then throwing bombs at local abortion clinics when the police were already busy with the bank robbery. He was working on that case for several months. One night, he fell asleep in his office while looking at pictures of the crime scenes. I happened to take a look at the files and ended up studying them for four hours. When Patrick woke up, he was horrified that I had read these confidential documents. I apologized and then told him that the criminals
were probably brothers since one always left before the bomb was lit signifying a protection of one of the robbers, and they were probably next going to hit Madison, Wisconsin since they were hitting cities in the order of Presidents of our country.
Patrick flew off the next day for Madison, and three days later, he caught the group. The day after that, he was back home. The day after that, we went to dinner, and one of his bosses met us there. The boss was Walter Bender. At dinner that night, I got basically the same recruitment speech that you got, only for me, there was the added bit about married couples working well together and being able to go undercover together, giving each Agent someone else to watch their back.
I joined the Agency almost exactly six years ago, on October 10, 1984. Patrick and I never really got a honeymoon, so we took small ones while we were out on jobs. We had assignments in Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, and 35 of the other states. We got into a few tough scrapes, but we kept each other alive and sane. Because of the nature of our jobs, we couldn’t contact our families. I even missed my parents’ funerals who died three months apart, my dad from a car accident and my mom from complications of leukemia.
It was April 19, when I found out I was pregnant. We were busy going undercover here in Salt Lake trying to bust a bunch of Meth lab operators. I kept throwing up and could barely leave our apartment, so Patrick kept at it. The director of the Salt Lake Office retired and Bender requested a transfer to be near Patrick and I.
Finally, at the beginning of September 1985, there was a break in the case. It turns out the lab was on the move the entire time! They kept renting different U-Haul trucks and moving the lab, and drove it around all day!
Patrick received a call from Walter about nine o’clock one night that one of the U-Haul rental agents had noticed a funny smell from their van when it was brought back in. He called the cops and the drug guys got nervous. They took the entire staff of the store hostage one night, and Patrick was called in on it. He wrote down the address and kissed me goodbye.
I knew something was wrong. I was able to read the address of the site because Patrick had pressed the pen so hard into the pad. Five minutes after he left; I somehow made it out the door and into the car.
The hostages were being kept in a large warehouse that was used to store the trucks in. Patrick had already entered the building and was pretending that he knew nothing about the hostage situation, just that he was told where the guys were so he could score some Meth.”
Kate’s hands were folded very lady-like in her lap, but the rest of her body was shaking as if she was standing in a waist high snowbank. She had paused and was reliving the events of that horrible night. Jon moved closer and took her hands in his. He still didn’t say a word.
“I arrived and parked several blocks away. I wound through the alleyways and the back streets to get to the warehouse. I could hear a lot of shouting and yelling along with some muffled cries. There was a fire escape on one side of the warehouse and I walked up very slowly, trying to decipher what was being said. There was a door at the top, and I quietly went inside.
I found myself on a metal walkway about 2 floors up from the floor of the warehouse. I had a bird’s eye view of the whole thing. The thing that shocked me most was that lying almost in the center of the warehouse floor was a five-year-old girl, dead from a gunshot right between her eyes. A man was cradling a woman in his arms who was obviously dead from the slit in her neck. He was crying, rocking, and stroking her hair. There were about ten others cowering in a corner of the warehouse.
Patrick was by the man who must have been the leader of the gang. Patrick had money in his hand and was flipping through a wad of cash to try to negotiate the sale of drugs. The leader raised a double barreled shotgun to the head of the man cradling the woman.”
It was getting very hard for Kate to speak now. Her words were coming in bursts as opposed to a flowing narrative. Her sniffing had become much more frequent. Jon kept her hands tightly gripped in his own.
“ I had barely had time to see what the situation was when Patrick brought out his badge and his gun. His gun had not even cleared the holster when the gang started firing on him. I watched as Patrick’s body got shredded by all of the high powered rounds that were pumped into him. I watched as his body fell limp and bleeding on the floor. I screamed which only brought attention to me.
“Luckily, the gang had no time to find me with their bullets because, at the same time, the side of the warehouse rocked with an explosion and burst into flame. Several cars barreled through the flames and entered the warehouse. It was Earl Stanley’s suicide squad. They just started firing and taking out everyone and everything inside. Hostages, criminals, even me. I remember watching one of them turn around, spot me and I even saw the muzzle flash.
The pain was horrible. I remember feeling several bullets hit me. One went through my shoulder, one my leg, and I felt a sharp pain in my gut. Flashes of bullets hitting the metal walkway flashed through my mind as I fell face down on the walkway. The last thing I remember was feeling the warmth of the blood as it started seeping out of my body.
I woke up a week and a half later in the hospital. Walter was by my bedside. He informed me that my husband had been shot and killed during the assignment. He told me that I had lost a lot of blood before the medics got to me and found I was an innocent. I was rushed to the hospital and went immediately into the OR. The bullet had torn up my insides and taken my child, too. While they were trying to stop the internal bleeding, I had flatlined and was resuscitated. They couldn’t save my baby and I went into a coma. Patrick’s funeral was held without me and he was given a 21 gun salute.” Finally, one lone tear ran down Kate’s cheek and she suddenly stopped shaking. Now, it became an automated telling of facts.
“For the next two months, Walter became my babysitter. He encouraged me as I started walking again and learning to handle the pain from my abdomen. An apartment opened up just down the hall from his place, so he rented it, had a moving company bring all my stuff from the Tucson house and moved me in. When I was sent home, he would bring take out every night and stay with me until Midnight. We would just talk or watch movies and sometimes just sit and never say a word to the other all night. He would also bring magazines, movies, groceries, anything I needed. He took care of the rent for a year and sent a cleaning woman twice a week.
I got pretty damn bored after a while, so I asked Bender if I could start again. It took some pressure, but he finally relented. The one condition he had was that I would stay stationed here and be under Bender at all times. I agreed and I was accepted back.”
Kate smiled for the first time in a long time. She pulled her hands out of Jon’s and parted the blankets that were still wrapped around her. She lifted her sweatshirt and bared her midsection. Her index finger traced the path of a long, red, heavily keyloided scar that ran from the left side to the right side of her abdomen.
“But I will always have this as a reminder of the worst day of my life.”
Jon took her by the shoulders and slowly brought her towards him. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. Silent tears flowed out of her eyes and dripped on Jon’s shoulder.
Jon buried his face in her hair. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he kept repeating.
Kate’s shoulders heaved as she started sobbing uncontrollably in Jon’s arms. Jon hugged her even tighter, trying to give her the safe space she desperately needed.
He started rocking slowly back and forth. “It’s okay, Kate. Let it out.”
Kate continued crying and Jon continued holding her. Kate pulled away from Jon just far enough so she could look at him. Her eyes were red and puffy, but her deep blue eyes still shimmered. Her arms wrapped around Jon’s lower back as she lightly fell back toward him. She leaned into Jon and kissed him tenderly.
Then, the emotion took over. With an ever growing intensity, she kissed Jon harder and harder. Jon didn’t resist. He kissed her back. Kate’s breathing started growing more and more shallow as she kept kissing Jon. She stopped once and grabbed Jon’s bottom lip with her teeth gently and chewed on it lightly before she found his mouth again.
Kate’s hands wandered and untucked Jon’s shirt. Her cold trembling fingers caressed Jon’s back as she started to softly moan.
The feeling of Kate’s fingernails on his bare back caused Jon to snap back to the reality of the situation. He pulled his head away from Kate’s kisses and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“No, Kate, no.”
“Yes,” she moaned as she leaned back into him and kissed him again.
“No. No, Kate, this isn’t right. This isn’t us.” He finally separated her body from his. Jon looked at her eyes again. Tears were coming easily now, and she whimpered like a lost puppy. “Don’t get me wrong, Kate. You are an amazing woman, and any guy would be crazy to not like you. I am probably going to be kicking myself several days from now, but this isn’t right. There is something very special between us, that’s true, but it’s not this. Not now. Not tonight.”
Jon paused to collect his thoughts and to try to not hurt the amazingly vulnerable woman next to him. “Maybe someday, but not tonight. The emotions are running high, I had a roller coaster of a day, we’re trainer and trainee, and you have just relived a very bad day of your life. If it’s meant to happen, it will happen. In another place, another time, maybe.” Jon hugged her tightly again. “You’re safe, Kate. I’m sorry for everything that has happened to you, but you’re okay now. You’re safe.”
As Jon hugged her tightly, he could hear the crying start to subside. He kept rocking, and slowly, her breathing turned into deep breathing, and then gave way into snores about fifteen minutes later. Jon smiled as he slowly pulled his arms away from her. She grunted a time or two as he eased her back onto the couch, but she never woke up.
He carefully removed her shoes and slipped a cushion under her head. He took the blanket she had been in and tucked it around her sleeping body. He knelt beside her and smoothed her forehead with his palm.
“Sleep well, Kate.” He kissed her on the forehead and stood up.
Jon stretched and cracked his back. As he turned out the lights, he whispered to the sleeping figure on the couch, “Goodnight.”


The bright sunlight awakened Kate. She sat up and stretched. As she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, she started looking around the room.
“What happened last night?” she thought. “Where am I?”
Her eyes landed on the side table with a picture of Jon and his parents.
“That’s where I am!”
She closed her eyes tightly and tried to recollect the previous night’s escapades. She was sitting in her car, Jon scared her, he invited her in, they drank hot chocolate, she told him about Patrick, and then she kissed him, and…..
“Oh, my God.”
She remembered all the crying and the kissing, but she couldn’t remember anything else.
“Oh, my God! What the hell was I thinking?” she finally gave voice to her thoughts.
Kate sat up on the couch and swung her feet over the side. She was surprised to feel a small, warm draft on her bare feet. Her gaze went to the floor where she saw Jon Mills lying on a makeshift bed of several blankets stacked on top of one another.
A grin broke onto Kate’s face.
“Jonathan Mills, you gallant little devil, you.”