Shackle the Storm

It's 1230 hours and Special Agent-in-Charge Jade Bane, of the BAU, Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, is counting down the hours until her tenth wedding anniversary dinner with her husband, world renown motivational author, Damon Bane, when the newest case file is placed on her desk.

Agent Bane read the report thoroughly several times, then picked the pictures up to gaze through them and see the scene through the view of the camera lens. The first picture showed the entrance door to have clearly been pried open. The next several pictures covered the span of each room in the large house. The house had been trashed. It seemed like things that should have been taken if it was burglarized were still present, like the jewelry that's in plain sight. In the master bedroom the husband’s wallet was on the nightstand and the wife’s purse hung from a hook on the wall. It looked like the only thing taken was the entire family.

The more Agent Bane learned about the case, the more intrigued she became. She thought to herself, “This case is very peculiar.” Jade is the best at what she does. She is the best behavioral analyst the Bureau has encountered. Not only was she the top of her class at Quantico but she has the highest number of solved cases, including some cold cases, in the shortest amount of time. Her associates tease her constantly saying that, “she is so in tune with the behaviors of people she is capable of telling a pregnant woman what her unborn baby will do in the future.” These are the types of cases that make her blood race. It is not often an entire family go missing, especially not one from Palmetto Bay.

As she ran millions of potential scenarios through her head, she continued to look through the pictures, familiarizing herself with the crime scene. Every room looked to be poorly staged intended to direct the investigation into a burglary. This told Jade that whoever had done this did not fully think through the logistics of their plan. The part of the whole ordeal that Jade is having an issue with wrapping her mind around is how does an entire family exist in Miami, Florida, living a full life in 2021, and have absolutely no paper trail beyond school records for the kids, a deed on the house and registration on cars? She began to flip through the rest of the file, looking at the Mena’s pictures. One by one she flipped through them, etching every detail of this family into her mind.

Jade flipped to the very last photo in the case file and her heart fell, and she began to shake. This could not be right, it had to be a mishap. This man in this photo is not the missing Mr. Boden Mena. This man in the photograph, with the woman she had never seen before a day in her life, is her adoring husband Mr. Damon Bane. Jade immediately dropped the entire case file leaving only the single picture in her hand. She picked up her phone and dialed her husband’s number. Jade could not stop the fleeting thoughts that were quickly racing through her brain. Damon is adopted, maybe he has an identical twin, one that just happens to be an author as well. Maybe this is a practical joke, everyone knows its our tenth anniversary this is something that her coworkers would find to be hilarious. Damon’s phone just kept ringing, and then it went to voicemail.

Jade never loses her composure, and for the first time in her life her head was spinning, and she felt completely lost, out of control. She needed Damon. She needed him to answer his phone and tell her that this photograph was not of him and another woman. She needed him to tell her that he is not missing and being held for ransom and that those kids are not his kids. Never has she ever “needed” anyone but herself, but right at this very moment, more than anything she needed Damon. The Director walked in and said, “Wheels out team”, and then he saw Jade. He didn’t recognize the woman standing before him. She looked so frail and desperate, nothing like the Agent he has supervised and been astonished by for the last ten years. He walked over to her, “Special Agent Bane, is everything okay?”, he asked. Jane pulled herself together, the best she could and answered the director, “Sir, I’m afraid there has been some sort of mistake in the current case file, the man that is listed as the head of the household of the abducted family, Mr. Boden Mena, is not Mr. Boden Mena at all.” The director looked puzzled and replied, “Damn, Jade, I know you work fast but in under an hours-time, before our wheels have even left the fort you have already uncovered the reason the locals could not trace this family?” Jade looked at the director and said, “Sir, it really wasn’t work, I looked at the pictures of the family going through the case file and recognized the man listed as Mr. Boden Mena.” “Sir, his name is not Boden Mena, and I know this for certain, no investigation on that matter needed.” She reached in her wallet and handed him the picture she has been carrying with her for the last ten years, her wedding picture, and told the director, “His name is Damon Bane, Sir, he is my husband.”

In thirty-two years with the Bureau the Director had never been this stunned by a case. “Now Jane, you know protocol dealing with personal situations, you are going to have to take a step out of this one if the abducted man is in fact your husband,” the director said to Agent Jade Bane. She replied, “Sir, I do know protocol, I also know exceptions can be made, and Director Sir, I am capable of doing my job and setting aside my involvement with the abducted.” “Well, at least until we get these people out of harms way, then I cannot promise you I will keep my cool with him.” Understood Agent, one chance is all that I am giving you, the first sign of your personal relationship interfering, and I will personally put you on indefinite desk duty, understood? Jane nodded her head and replied, “understood sir, now it is wheels out sir.”

Jade gathered her team and went over the dreadful details of the case, giving each member their assignments. “Two Minutes team and wheels out.” The team gathered their things and got on the chopper to head to Miami. On the way Special Agent Jade Bane openly discussed the case details along with her personal involvement with the abducted with her team. With a game plan determined the team was ready to put their feet to the pavement and find this missing family before any of them are harmed. Jane was ready to get some answers from the man she thought she knew every detail about, the man that she would have given her very last breath for, the man that she apparently did not know at all. First stop off the chopper is Miami Police department.

They arrive at MPD and collaborate with the chief. The chief extends offers to accommodate any of the needs of the team and thanked them for responding so rapidly. Special Agent Jade Bane took the offer for assistance from the locals and asked for the team to be escorted to the family home. The first place to start is always where the crime committed was discovered. Arriving at the crime scene Jade could feel her stomach tying itself in knots. She consciously took control of her emotions and reminded herself that if she wanted any sort of answers or an explanation at all, she first had to solve this case and bring the “Mena”, family home safely. At this point she couldn’t even make herself any promises as to how long after recovering Damon, that he would remain safe. She just had to choose to suck it up buttercup and do what she is so good at doing, get inside the minds of those involved and solve this case. The rest of the personal craziness she would address once her job was done. Even though Jade felt like the last eleven years of her life had been a lie, she knows that she can do what she always does when analyzing situations, she was going to put together all the information her and the team gather and get into the minds of everyone involved, the alleged abductor(s) and assumed abducted. She was going to find the truth if it took her last breath, and not just the truth of where the “Mena” family is, but exactly who has she been married to for the last decade.

Jade began to put her thoughts together. She had been with this man for eleven years and yeah now she knows that for some reason he married her and has been with her for the last decade while living a double life, but even pathological liars tie bits and pieces of the truth in the lies they tell. The team has gone through every inch of the house with a fine-toothed comb, and it is now time to brainstorm ideas with the information they have. They gathered at the dining room table. Agent Bane sat at the head of the table and waited on her team to have a seat. She then looked to her left, at Special Agent Angie Morelli and said, “Special Agent Angie Morelli we are going to start with you going over the discoveries you have made, followed by you Special Agent Odin Martin, then Special Agent Cal Greene, to Special Agent Dion Gist and I will wrap it up with the things I can add to the case, understood?” Everyone nodded and Agent Angie Morelli began explaining that the family seems to be off the grid with anyone other than the immediate family, there is no sign of extended family or even anyone that has been a long-time fixture in the family’s life. Photographs all seem a little bit too much like the “perfect family poses”, with no sign of any real relationship among them. There is a pattern of releasing for a full changeover of house staff every 4 months, so no one that works for the ‘Menas’ now can provide any information about the family prior to three months ago.

Special Agent Odin Martin, picking up where Special Agent Morelli left off begins to tell the team his discoveries. Going through the house I was looking at how the family lives, what their day-to-day life is like. From everything I see their life is and has been very routine and scheduled for the last twenty years. I did find a filing cabinet full of what looked like coded journals of weekly logs. I sent them to forensics hoping they can decipher the journals. From what was not in code I put together that Mr. “Mena” is gone relatively often on “book tours and such”, aligned with information provided by Special Agent Bane, it looks like Mr. Mena/Bane alternates with his separate lives by using his authorship as a reason for his time spent away. As for Mrs. Mena, there is a ton of receipts for a little bit of everything. She most definitely enjoys the finer things in life. She spends more money in a week than I will probably see in a lifetime. She doesn’t have a steady social circle she is more like the fluttering social butterfly. As for the children, they are all honor roll students, each has a trust set up for college and have a regular schedule of attending school and one extracurricular activity per child, per season.

Agent Cal Greene lays out the finances as best he could. Special Agent Martin is accurate about Mrs. Mena’s spending habits. At first glance into the Mena finances, it looked like the family only had one bank account, and trust set up for each of the kids, all supplied with funds from the royalties of Mr. Mena/Bane’s first book sale, that seventeen years later brings in approximately four billion dollars annually. “Upon a deeper look, and straining my brain, I found a backdoor on Mr. Mena/Bane’s office computer and uncovered numerous bank accounts all secretly linked to his originating family bank account. I think he has an account in every part of the world, all full of billions of dollars. There is no way this guy is banking on the books he writes as much money as he has access too.” The files were all sent to forensics, and we are now waiting to see if they can pull any answers from what was sent.

Special Agent Gist, the tech specialist of the team began to list all he had learned through the “Mena’s” technology equipment. On the outside all the technology checks out, it looks like usage of websites, television and such that would be normal for a family. Well, it looks that way to the average person anyway, says Special Agent Gist. However, for someone trained to see what is being hidden, everything used by this family has been encrypted with a hidden program to disguise everything about them. I was able to determine that there is a camera system in this house but am still working on retrieving access to it.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, Agent Bane, seen something a little to familiar, it was Damon’s grandmothers, one of a kind hutch and if it’s purpose in this home is the same one as served at her own, then the piece of furniture is strategically placed to draw in the eye of people, drawing them away from the faux wall in which the trap drawer on the hutch opens. Jade jumped up, with her team in shock they quickly followed her. She threw the drawer open and as suspected the lever was right there. I bet Damon never counted on this happening. She pulled the lever and her teams jaws dropped as the hutch moved over and a passageway began to light up. All Jade could do is think to herself that Damon better be praying that his abductor kills him, because she is passed confused. Now she is just pissed-off. How could the love of her life so easily have pulled the wool so thickly over her eyes? I mean having a duplicate of the “one of a kind” family heirloom. What the hell was he thinking? As the team walked down the passage corridor, all of Jade’s muscles began to tense up and she started feeling a bit nauseous. Her nerves were raw. Jade couldn’t decide if she was hurt, enraged, or just numb.

When they got to the end of the passage, as Jade expected, there was a secured door, that was protected by code. Jade walked straight to the panel and took a wild guess at the code. She pinned in her anniversary date….click, click, and the latch opened. Well, that was thoughtful of Damon, I’m sure his other wife never would have figured that out. The space in Jade’s home was Damon’s personal writing cave, she had never even set foot in it, and until today that had never bothered her. She imagined it was just a quaint space where he could concentrate without disturbances. As they entered the room Jade’s head began to swim. What the hell is this place? It looked liked a national security main frame room. There were too many monitors to count, and each monitor was in blocks of sixteen separate camera frames. Each link had a coded label. As Jades eyes scanned the monitors, a quarter of the way through them she was looking at her very own bedroom. Now she was beyond pissed-off. Who the hell does he think he is having our home under surveillance with lookout point of it being here? Jade couldn’t wait to find him and wrap her arms so tightly around his throat, looking like a worried wife to an observer, but feeling like a boa constrictor to Damon, as she demands answers for every single bit of the last eleven years.

Special Agent Morelli clears her throat, hmmhmm, forcing Jade back in, then says, I think our mystery abductor has just been discovered, look at monitor fourteen, section five, everyone. Looking to the monitor Jade suddenly snapped back into her analyzer mindset, as she recognized not only the people in the frame, but she knew where they were. Lillian has taken “their” husband and her kids’ hostage, keeping them at Damon’s family beach house that had sold years ago, then called for ransom. Special Agent Martin located the volume button, enabled it, and turned it up so they could clearly hear what was going on. Just as the volume boosts, Lillian, looks directly in Damon’s eyes and told him that there was no use lying, she already knows everything, and it’s too late now. Lillian was far beyond sane right now. She had her children restrained alongside their father. Lillian’s face held a blind stare. This is when the team heard Lillian say to “Damon”, “I have been there for you through some of the worst times of your life and this is my repayment? I have birthed you five kids, took care of you and our home. I was patient and humble showing you full support from our shoebox of a first apartment, pulling you out of writers’ block, helping you to finish your first and every best-selling book you have wrote since and you repay me with my entire life with you has been a lie. I need to start over so you and the kids must die, I don’t care about a ransom, I want to watch you suffer as I torture those creatures you wanted me to birth for you, one by one, slowly until they are all dead. Then I will take my time with you, ensuring you have time to think about everything you have caused as I am slowly removing the skin from your body and dousing you with salt, until you finally succumb to the pain and just die.” Damon began to beg her for his life. Lillian reared her arm back and slapped him dead across his face and demanded him to shut up. She told him she had heard enough of his lip service over the years and the only words she wants to hear from him is the access codes to every account he had, after all, she wanted to be long gone before the FBI figured anything out. Waiting on a ransom to begin her new life was not an option. Lillian began shouting at Damon, “damn it, Boden did you think I was so stupid or naïve that I would never figure out what you were up to? Memo to you, I have known about your precious Jade for the last three years, I have just been biding my time waiting on the right moment and mark my words when I am done with you, I will kill her. Not because I am jealous but because I need every bit of our life gone.”

Special Agent Bane was on her feet and barking orders. “Fort Lauderdale, is a thirty -minute drive and I want to be there in fifteen, I will be damned if that lunatic of a woman, will get the pleasure of relinquishing this mess and moving on as if this life never existed; leaving me with an even larger mess to tidy up.” Agent Bane called the locals to assist upon their arrival as the team loaded up. Lights and sirens down the highway. Entering the neighborhood, the team went into stealth mode attempting to take Lillian Mena by surprise. Parking about one-hundred yards from the beach house BAU and Fort Lauderdale Police and SWAT, collaborated to determine the best plan for entry, with the most promising outcome of safety for everyone. Special Agent Bane had concentrated her focus on Lillian Mena. Though she just discovered the other woman, they share some common emotions. Jade understood the rage but is trying to analyze the follow through that Lillian is displaying. Lillian is a socialite by appearance, the perfect mother, the perfect wife, and she is very scheduled. She fears others being disappointed in her or seeing her in any negative way. The best approach will be to knock on the front door pretending to be looking for a missing child. Some calls were placed, and a fake amber alert was sent out to the area, along with a false news report showing officers scouring the neighborhood searching door to door for the fake missing kid.

SWAT surrounded the property, out of view, while the BAU team and locals approached the front door to knock. Just as expected Lillian answered the door without a hair out of place and her youngest child on her hip. As planned Agent Bane led the conversation with Lillian, asking about the missing kid and requesting to have a look around the property. Jade knew Lillian would be both intimidated by the interaction with her as well as trying to impress her with her narcissistic attitude. Lillian, thinking that there was no way they could have discovered what she was really doing already, agreed to allowing the officers look around the property, even inviting them in. Once they were in the house Lillian asked if they would like some tea. Jade seen her opening and told Lillian that tea would be great. She signed to her team to follow her lead. They walked with Lillian to the kitchen and as soon as she set the child down Special Agent Morelli rushed Lillian pinning her to the wall and cuffed her. As Agent Morelli held Lillian, Agent Bane began to question the whereabouts of the rest of the family. Lillian just smirked with the evilest smirk Jade had ever seen, then let out a shrieking cackle that sounded something like a cross between laughter and madness.

The team searched the house and found the family alive, but bruised and traumatized. Agent Bane placed the call to child services for them to tend to the Mena children. Next, she called the Director and briefed him on the situation. As soon as the child services social worker arrived Jade took her to the children and excused herself. It was now time for Jade to face Damon face to face. As she walked to the kitchen where her team had taken Damon to question him, she did the best she could to gather her composure and her thoughts. She walked in the room and asked her team to give her a moment with Damon, everyone walked out of the room leaving Jade and Damon. She stood blankly staring at him as if she had never truly seen him before. A tear slowly slid down her cheek, she looked up and said to Damon, “why? I only want to know why.” Damon replied, “for no other reason than the very first time I laid eyes on you I knew I would never be able to let you go.” Agent Bane wiped the tear away and said, ‘now you have no choice”, as she walked away. As she passed her team, she said, “cuff him.” She walked out of the house and toward a new life.