Chapter 1 - Introduction

   Hi. Might as well introduce myself, huh? My life's complicated. What name do you want me to use. I have a name my parents gave me, just like any normal human being. I can't use it, though. Only around my immediate family, and even then only when I'm at the family home and there's no mixed company. When I played sports in college, my name's hard to spell and hard to pronounce and remember, so you end up earning a team nickname. Once again though? I don't ever use that name, either. Why? Like I said, my life's complicated.

   So. Call me Merry. Everyone does. Even says it on my driver's license, and anything from a library card to court papers. That's because of my job. I'm an FBI agent. Normally, that in and of itself wouldn't require another name. There's regular FBI agents, and the nickname there is office agents. They work rather regular days and hours, and lead mostly normal lives despite working for the FBI.

   Then, you have what I guess most people think of when you say FBI agent. We call that a field agent. They may or may not spend a lot of time in the offices, but… they regularly go out and do things most people associate with being an FBI agent. Investigate, interview, arrest, etc. While those kinds of agents might sometimes use another name from time to time? Its not a regular thing. My life's more complicated than that.

   There's also a breed of FBI agent that routinely works undercover. They enjoy way less office time, and way more time out in the field performing their job. While that's complicated? That's not me. I'm what they call a "pool agent". As in, the undercover pool. Undercover is the only kind of work I can perform, I actually went to an entirely different academy and training time and types of training. I'm not technically even certified to be a "regular" agent. If my undercover status ended? So too, would my FBI career.

   Then, out of all the pool agents? You could divide them all up into types of undercover agents. Once again, my life has to be the most complicated thing possible under the sun. Most of the pool agents, do different assignments over time. I don't. My career is really to be Merry, and in every way possible. Most false identities stand up to more or less scrutiny. Mine? Stands up to it all. You could go so far as to start to look into my "grandfather" and "grandmother". Even their ancestors. You won't notice a thing out of place. Most false identities, you go back a certain period of time? They sort of spring out of the earth and start having paperwork. Not me.

   An ATF or a DEA undercover agent could run across me, and look into my background? I'm Merry, and they won't think a thing is up. FBI agents have other divisions. A Junior Agent is a newly minted one fresh out of the academy. They have a probationary period, before they make "agent" or full agent. Then, special agent. Its a logical progression. Newbie, member, then you actually get a job as a special agent. Junior agents and fresh agents? Are gophers that might do anything to help out.

   Senior agents are the ones with time in and are more in charge. You can spend 20 years and retire at the bureau, never getting above Special Agent, and its not a mark against you or your capabilities. After the senior agents, you're basically talking about management itself. There's a hierarchy there as well. Going backwards or down from the top? You start with the director himself. He has a hierarchy of assistant directors under him. Not all assistant directors are equal. Then the assistant directors all have assistants under them.

   Me? This is perhaps the only place in my life, where things are less complicated for me. One senior agent runs me, and one only. That's the only person at the bureau that really knows that Merry is actually… this other female agent. I'm known to exist? But not as a name. I'm an "asset". If my senior agent that runs me, has to? He would only loosely reference a particular situation with some other investigation, and that he has "an asset in play" somewhere in that setup. The very few times this has happened? The other person assumes that he has a very male asset in play, due to the nature of what the operation is.

   Its an added level of security for me.

   My life naturally didn't start out this complicated. I sure didn't intend for it to go this way, but… wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which hand fills up quicker. I grew up in the mid-west, in the middle of farm country. I'm real certain "college" was supposed to be a degree in agricultural science, and I was supposed to slowly take over the farm. I'm my parent's only daughter. I grew up playing sports, working on the farm, then I preferred hanging out with the farm boys instead of the farm girls.

   I'm not a little girl. I'm a credit card thickness under six foot tall, and I take after my dad's side of the family. The men on that side? All look like pro football players. My mom's what I'm sure most people conjure up an image of when someone says "big girl". She's 5'10", and not the daintiest little thing ever to come down the pike. Me? I got the big legs and the shoulders and arms to run "big girls" like that over, like a freight train.

   So, sports. I ended up with a scholarship to a big top ten university, to play soccer. Since I could go to school for whatever I felt like because I was paying for it myself? I picked psychology. Associates, bachelors, masters, and even a year in on my doctorate. Then? I got recruited to what I do in the FBI.

   It wasn't supposed to be that way, trust me. I originally figured I was going to be a therapist, and then to take classes gearing up to be a rape therapist. This was in undergraduate school. I intended to get my masters if I could, then my doctorate, again… if I could. My sports prowess was supposed to help that along. And? It did.

   Big girls like me have certain problems dating. Guys six foot tall and up don't exactly grow on trees. And of those that do? Most of them vastly prefer littler girls. I was happy with a guy in pre med, then he went away for med school on the other side of the country, and he was gone. Also? One of my team mates sport-fucked him.

   I finally found another great guy. Basically a former MP. He was four years older than me, going to my university on the GI bill. We were planning on getting married after college, and we both had a doctor in front of our names. Which was where life threw me a curve ball. Taking classes to become a rape therapist? Made me realize my team mate, room mate, best friend and little sister? Had been raped. I finally got her to open up about it, took me a whole year to get it started.

   It eventually led to… a huge ball of wax. It wasn't just a garden variety rape. It entailed a dirty small town. Guy and his son running the little town, dirty cops on the take, gambling and racketeering and drugs and everything else.

   My boyfriend, the former MP? Well… he called in the whole Roman army on this situation. All his MP buddies from the service, had gone on to become members of law enforcement all over the country. The investigation was successful, in that it brought the whole dirty small town in on itself. The LEOs that worked it in their spare time and brought it to a close? All got promotions.

   Hell, it was a feather in my cap as well. As the student rape therapist? I had practical experience in my field, and trust me here, it was one of those worst case scenario rapes to handle.

   That's when life got really weird. At the very end of the case, when honestly it was time to celebrate and enjoy seeing all that work come to fruition? One of the dirty cops decided to take a rifle and pop one of the law enforcement officers. He was one of the stragglers that hadn't been picked up yet. He recognized my boyfriend as the "undercover cop" and shot him.

   Oh, one of the other former MP's there got his ass, trust me. But not before he blew my fiance's blood into my face and eyes, and his guts into my mouth. The same round that took his life, went through my shoulder. He died in my arms on the ambulance ride to the hospital.

   I haven't been the same since.

   I have PTSD from it. If I think of him for even half a second? A realistic little video clip plays in front of my face. Its extremely life like. You can actually see right through it, and still see the whole thing clear as a bell. Unlike most people with PTSD, I get the movie clip. Most people, get the poster image. Didn't take too long to figure out after waking up in the hospital from the shoulder surgery? To realize it. I'm basically a sociopath from the experience. I don't really experience emotions since that day.

   I mean, I have emotions, I can just barely feel them. The highest joy? Barely registers. The lowest low? Again, barely registers. Its like a movie you turn the volume down really low. You only hear the explosions, and even then only a little bit.

   Before he died, we got involved with another girl in our relationship. It was supposed to be a fun thing where I shared him. It ended up being serious. The girl? My room mate, team mate, best friend. The rape survivor. We never intended it to get to that point, but that's where it ended up. When he got shot? I wasn't the only person devastated. She was, too.

   She was already damaged goods. So screwed up from the rapes when younger, it wasn't even funny. She couldn't have a normal relationship. She was devastated all over again, and me? Well, I got to become damaged goods as well. Originally, I was the therapist putting her life together again. After this went down? She recovered better than I did. I ended up the one damaged beyond belief.

   I thought I was doing the best thing, and it ended up being the worst thing ever. He didn't originally want a three way relationship, to get shared. I made him. It led to her opening up about her own trauma. Which got the case going. Which led? Directly to his death in the end.

   As he was dying, he told me this all happened for a reason. I was to let the universe make me into what it needed me to be, and let it put me where it wanted me to be. So that I could fulfill my life's purpose. So I really mattered. He smiled as he was dying, he was sure he had already fulfilled his life's purpose. He believed wholeheartedly in karma.

   This was all enough, but my life got stranger still. He said on his deathbed and in his will letters to me, both. If I did what I was supposed to. If I did what the universe wanted? He would come back. Then, we'd do something even bigger and better than what we had already done.

   This all changed my life. The one FBI agent that coordinated the end, in taking it quietly from everyone's own personal time case, into a legitimate closing case? He recruited me to the undercover pool. He runs me, he's my handler. I'm his asset.

   I know I'm crazy, but… I honestly believe my boyfriend came back to me. It was years later, and… it was like it was him. He did things I thought he would have done, he acted like I knew he would, he said things I could just close my eyes and hear him saying.

   He didn't come back to me as a former MP this time around. He had been a military contractor for the original infamous Redwater group. If I had originally thought the former MP's were something else? All I can say is… wow. I know how crazy I sound, trust me I do, but… I can close my eyes, and its like him talking. I taste his skin? Its him. The karma, the sense of justice… everything. Its… well? Its just him.

   I guess he wanted revenge. My life and my job doing what I did? I didn't know it at the time I met him, but… it was creeping up on me. Dirty FBI agent, in bed with a dirty city police force. One big witness. One steakhouse waitress. I mean, its not like they were going to kill an undercover FBI agent. Its just one waitress, I mean why not, right?

   When they sent someone to sneak into my efficiency motel apartment in the middle of the night, they ran into him. I was in shock, dirty cops were coming to kill me and my boyfriend all over again, it was being awake for a bad dream. I didn't have a gun, a badge, nothing. Undercover.

   He took one in the shoulder, and put 14 rounds into the son of a bitch. Like I said. It was like my dead MP boyfriend was watching over me, saw all this about to happen, and said oh hell no. Before that whole ball of wax was done, he lured the rest of the dirty city cops out where we were laying low, and… well, like I said. Its like he didn't just come back to me, he was pissed and wanted his revenge.

   I had once thought that having former MP's in law enforcement to help out was a useful thing? Well, having a couple friends that were former military contractors help out… its a whole another level to it. He took it personally, that some dirty cop came to kill him and his girlfriend in bed in the middle of the night. They didn't know what hit them. They sent 16 dirty city cops out into the sticks where we were, to snuff the steakhouse waitress witness. After all, she had somehow just gotten lucky and got the one they sent that night in the city, right?

   I watched him take 13 of them out like he was breathing. I got a few of them, I had to get my hands dirty helping out. Him and one of his buddies, went and disabled two stragglers, and a third thought he got away, too. He didn't get far.

   I got "credit" for taking out those 13. In the course of my undercover career, my steakhouse waitress life went from just helping find and help take out dirty FBI agents? The operation shifted. Merry needed protection, and dated an outlaw biker. So, that became my new case.

   Its an intelligence case. I don't wear a wire. No one gets arrested. I just… live undercover, and I gather intelligence on the gang. Five, ten years? It feeds the intelligence files. Then, when its over? Only then… does the whole operation end, and we get everybody. Before, my cover was unimpeachable and solid. After I "killed" 13 dirty cops in a wild shootout in the sticks, you can imagine what this did for my reputation with the bikers.

   Like I started out saying. My life is very strange. I came out to him. Its not recommended, but its allowed. An undercover pool agent? Is allowed to have a spouse and whatever home life their undercover job allows for. My senior agent that runs me as his main asset? Took one look at a former military contractor, and decided he had to have him. After everything he did in the pursuit of protecting me? He's basically a "security asset", my handler calls him.

   My real life boyfriend is also my built in security asset while I finish this long undercover case. Then I plan on retiring from all this, for good.

   When my boyfriend got shot and died in my arms, and the bullet went through my shoulder? Like I said, I was damaged goods. Not only did my emotions disappear, my face went blank as well. I scared people. I had to learn to make "masks". Faces. Faces that would show "emotion". So I could pretend I was still human, not some kind of monster. It took a couple years, to get it down right.

   When my boyfriend came back to me? I found out he had a similar thing, too. His life had been strange and dangerous before we met. He wears masks, too. He's not like me. He was born like that. Eventually, he learned he had to make facial expressions to hide it. You would think he got that way from being a military contractor? You'd be wrong. He has the whole range of human emotions. They simply don't show on his face, or on his body language.

   So when I met him and found this out over time? I was amazed. I finally had a real life partner. Someone that understood wearing masks, to hide in plain sight. I became the functional equivalent of a healthy sociopath through trauma. He? Was just born with emotions that don't normally show on his face or body language.

   We're perfect together. Not only am I convinced that he's my boyfriend sent back to me? We share this. We drop our faces when we're alone, and its the greatest thing ever. How would I ever replace this, I never could. I guess when he looked down and saw what was about to happen to me, he came back. It was time for him to take his revenge, and settle the score. And he didn't want me to be self conscious about my face any more. He had his own.

   When you have to wear masks, to hide like that? If you don't wear a "mask", it frightens people. When they see the blank face and eyes, when they see the lack of emotions on your face and body language? It really unnerves them. It makes you feel like you're not human. It makes you feel like you're a monster.

   Finally having a partner in life, that I can drop my face around when we're alone, is the greatest thing in the world. I can truly be myself.

   My former life. I was going to have… associates, bachelors, masters, doctorate. All in psychology. I was going to work and try to get published in my field. I planned on while not necessarily being wildly successful, I figured it would be a decent life and I wouldn't starve. I also planned on maybe becoming a girls soccer coach, because of my sports career at my big ten mid-west university. Which one was the main dream, and which one was the back-up dream? Anyone's guess, I suppose.

   They both got flushed down the toilet when my boyfriend's blood and guts got blown into my mouth and eyes.

   With all that education I had, I ended up living for years in a little motel apartment in the city. Living as a steakhouse waitress. Undercover pool agents get paid almost triple what a normal agent makes. Because you're working 24 7 365. Because it can be dangerous. All that money? Goes into its own little financial world, and I can't touch it. When I finally retire from this? I can figure out what to do with it all one day.

   I honestly don't care about money or possessions. I was never really into all that, and my MP boyfriend in college finished me off on that. I guess I did what the universe wanted me to do, because I'm finally starting to get rewarded that way. My cover life? Is all the money I have access to, until I retire. Its slowly gotten better that way, even though I don't really care.

   My boyfriend was ironically just like me that way. As a military contractor for years, he got paid very well and couldn't spend it on anything so he just made it into a nest egg until he figured out what to do with it all to retire early. We both thought the other was working poor, and we both had secret nest eggs built up. We both wear masks, to hide in plain sight as monsters in public. We've both done really horrible things, for the best reasons.

   He was definitely sent back to me. We were made for each other, we deserve each other.

   If you think my life is strange? There's more. I'll never be able to conceive and bear a child. My boyfriend thinks that's okay. He grew up traumatized in childhood having a blank face, devoid of emotions showing what he felt and couldn't express through facial expressions and body language. He's admitted on more than one occasion to me, that he was always worried about that.

   What if his own kid, had what he had. He said it would be torture to watch his own kid grow up, learning to deal with what he had to. So, the fact that I couldn't give him a kid even if I wanted to… was fine. Its just another reason we're perfect for one another.

   Then, the last bit of strangeness. I couldn't even get married to him if I wanted to. What a mess that would be. He would be married to Merry. The former steakhouse waitress. When I one day retire from all this, would I even be legally married? Most undercover pool agents that are married, were already married before they went undercover.

   It continues, this strangeness. I honestly love my life now, with him. His friends, everyone around us? They know Merry. When I finally retire one day, it was always just going to be me going back to suddenly using my real name. Reclaiming my old life. Now? I like this life just fine. I don't want to give all this up when that day comes.

   Instead of the lifelong witness protection program, for the undercover operative? My version would be simply disappearing and quietly resuming my real name. Now? I might just stay and live the rest of my life out as "Merry".

   So, if you ever think that your life is strange? Think again. Its probably pretty damn normal, as compared to my own.

   Just as strange icing on the already strange cake, there's breaking the law. I'm required to break the law, in the pursuit of my cover life. A biker girl, that's killed thirteen dirty cops? Well, its what's expected. My boyfriend is expected to skirt the law for financial gain as well. Its the cover. I always was supposed to buy and sell pot. We branched out, though. Cocaine. By the kilo.

   Once a year, I make my big run for the year's supply to sell pot all year long. Why not fill the floorboards of the travel trailer up, with kilos of cocaine. The "run" is already protected. We can't get pulled over and searched. It looks to any cops that a little fish is getting let go to catch bigger fish. And that's if it would ever come to that, and it never has. My connections with the outlaw motorcycle gang make it too easy. To both score it down south where its cheap, and again to get rid of it for double and more, when we get back.

   It makes sense. It enhances my cover. My gang likes getting the street tax. We both get another separate nest egg for retirement out of it.

   My boyfriend is now an unpaid consultant for the FBI. He's friends with all former military and police of all kinds. They like to reload and shoot and hunt. He brought his own case he thought he found to a state police friend, and it turned into his own big case. When you're working close with something big alongside the FBI, an unpaid consultancy is the normal thing. Him and the state police partner both got consultancy and a federal carry permit.

   The fact that he gets paid under the table as my security asset? My handler saw to him keeping his unpaid consultancy and his federal carry permit. It makes it easier for him to see to my safety. He ended up with his own dream out of it all. He wanted a gun shop, and my handler saw to him getting it in we'll call a streamlined fashion.

   He spent time and money and aggravation and in the end at no small risk to his own life, to see that big case through. He inadvertently kicked my own case into high gear. He wouldn't even take any kind of legal settlement when legal at the bureau tried to settle with him. So, my handler rewarded him the best way he could.

   He's expected to skirt the gray shades of the law, as my boyfriend. He buys and sells gold under the table. Not illegal, but not highly reputable, either. He sells computer chips for civilian versions of cop cars. He got the original chips off of FBI vehicles. He knows how to make them work in the "wrong" car. If you ever bought a "cop car" at an auction? It has the civilian performance chip in it. After he does his thing? It doesn't fall flat on its face at 105 MPH. It takes off to reach the full power and performance of a federal interceptor. Car club guys? Just love this little performance enhancement, trust me.

   Buying and selling gold privately, makes a profit. The chipping the cop cars? Again, turns a profit. It all also makes him look good to the outlaw motorcycle gang. He's a polite quiet guy, and he's really sweet and nice, but… its not like the boys don't know he drilled a dirty FBI agent 14 times that night in my room in DC, and took one in the shoulder doing it. One of the members was actually a military contractor back when he did that, so… once again, he has a certain reputation.

   The boys don't exactly treat him like the run of the mill "citizen". I used to at one time, date a national enforcer of the gang. When there's a problem that needs solved, and no one local can handle it for any one of a number of reasons? The gang has its ways. There's two kinds of national enforcer. One, tends to work with guns and explosives. The other kind? A hands on enforcer. This is the guy that rides into town, walks right into a bar in public, and creams a guy for whatever it is he's doing.

   That was my boyfriend. Me? I rode with him on more than one of these little trips. I had my own reputation. When girls need taught a lesson? You can't always send a guy to do it. Bad PR, bad for business. Pound suggested… me. My gang, has no female members. Guys only. The best any girl can be? Is "property". But, I was property of a national enforcer. Also? I had my own reputation. A couple times, he rode me in, to handle a couple of girls that needed taken care of. He handled the guy.

   His name was "Pound", and eventually the same dirty cops dropped cocaine in his saddle bags and he was sent off under a new street name, out west with warrants on him. I stayed in DC. I continued… buying and selling my own pot. And, if I was asked to perform my occasional service when asked? I did. So, while the gang has no female members, I was left as being "national property" even with Pound gone.

   My official street name is "Christmas". I have my own reputation, just like one of the guys would have. My membership business card, my property T shirt? Its marked national, and there's special little marks that signify that I handled official club business, the way they prefer it to be handled.

   Its an outlaw motorcycle gang. Violence, and the respect that brings? Is the gold standard in that world. Women in the biker world, the property girls. There's a skank and there's a tank. A skank? Fucks bikers. Tanks… have their own reputation fighting. When I played big ten college soccer, I was called The Hurricane. I was known for being physical, running girls over, and even brawling when it was time.

   I even have my own AKA. "Bloody Mary". I once put three FBI wives into the emergency room, at once. This by the way, led to strangeness, as if my life needed more. It led to my "problems" with dirty city cops. It also led to me dating Pound, the national enforcer. It led to me becoming Christmas and Bloody Mary. It led to the huge case I'm now on until I retire.

   The fact that my boyfriend handed me credit for killing 13 dirty city cops? Well. Not like that didn't enhance my reputation any. It kicked me and my handler's case into high gear.

   If all this strangeness sounds exciting? You're crazier than I am. And coming from me, that should really say something. I got the wear and tear to show for all this, trust me.

   My boyfriend was killed right in front of my eyes. It left me basically a healthy sociopath when it was all over. I survived one assassination attempt, through nothing but blind luck. A wild shootout with sixteen dirty city cops in the sticks? Well, lets just say I was glad I didn't really have emotions for that night and leave it at that. I've been shot in the shoulder with a hunting rifle. I have a scar on my throat, because two skanks poisoned me, and my boyfriend cut my throat open with a razor and shoved a tube in so I could breathe. That left me with not only the scar, but a really deep rusty voice that's permanent. I jumped off of about a hundred foot bridge into winter flood stage river water. That left me stuck like a carrot in the mud and I barely got up out of that. Then? I nearly died from the hypothermia before I got out.

   I need my head examined, and by someone with more psychology degrees than I have.

   So. If I have a nest egg, and I'm getting to finally enjoy decent living and a few decent things in life finally? Trust me, I feel like I paid my dues and deserve it. Thank god all the craziness finally subsided, and my life… such as it is, mind you… finally went back down to something resembling a dull roar.

   I'm pushing 40 in a couple years. I don't have kids and never will. Couldn't even get married if I wanted to. I'm an emotional shell. I basically work around felons. I have a bullet hole in me, I look like I've been shot in the throat. I sound like a female bullfrog. I can't spend time with friends and family from my youth. I don't have my own name and life, and might never again.

   So. Don't be jealous if here and there I seem like I enjoy the occasional good thing. I earned it. Don't ever complain about being "bored". I treasure bored. I've had enough excitement in my life.

   I'm reminded of my first boyfriend. The MP I tasted his blood and guts before he died in front of me. He had a way with words and phrases.

   Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. No good deed goes unpunished. And the Chinese? Have a cute curse, that sounds like a blessing in disguise…

   May you live in interesting times.