Chapter 5

Cierra

"Cierra Stone, paging Cierra Stone."

"Shit Gracie! What can that be about now?" I put the brush down and turned to my roommate.

"You won't know until you go see."

"I hope there isn't anything more for me to study, this guy is like a freaking shadow as it is, I don't know why they think I'll be any help since they haven't been able to nail him in the last ten years or so and I'm not sure why they need a profiler on this one, hasn't he been profiled to death?"

"Girl kill that noise, you know you have mad skills beyond profiling otherwise they'd never have tapped you for the job, besides that piece of eye candy is the best subject they've got going in the bureau these days yum." She twitched her eyebrows at me in her comical way.

"How can you tell? Every picture's a profile shot, it's almost as if he knows where the cameras are and keeps his face in the shadows."

"Well I heard from this girl that was in one of my classes that he's fuck hot and rumor has it that he's hung like a gorilla." She was all but drooling now.

"I think gorillas are supposed to have small dicks." I think I saw that on the discovery channel but I couldn't be sure.

"You know what I mean."

"Gracie you do know I'm supposed to be gathering info to put this guy away for a long, long time right? Not trying to jump him."

"Nothing wrong with enjoying the scenery while you're at it now is there?"

Gracie was the least likely candidate for the Academy, a brash, loud talking always ready to throw down as she terms it African American beauty with chocolate brown skin and the most piercing black eyes with the purest whites. She looked about fifteen except for her height of five ten which towered over my five three stature. From our first day together at the Academy we'd just hit it off, our backgrounds weren't much different; Gracie grew up about an hour or so away in D.C.'s inner city. Tough streets for anyone but even more so for a young girl who's father had been gunned down for his part in a neighborhood watch. She'd had to stay in that environment her whole life until her quick brain and aptitude for science got her out. Now she was thought to be someone to watch in the field of forensic science. Though we'd mentioned our families and what had happened to them, we'd never actually come out and said that it was because of these incidents that we had fought so hard to get where we are. I sometimes wondered if we had the same agenda; though her father's murderer had been caught and tried there'd always been speculation that there was more involved and that all the players had not been brought to justice.

"I've got to go, Durant isn't known for his patience."

"Lucky duck, I bet they're calling to send you on your way, oh New York and the great Hank Mancini."

"I can only hope, I've been studying this guy so long now it's like I know his every move."

"Don't get too cocky I bet everyone who's gone after him felt the same way in the beginning."

"I've learned from their mistakes, I won't be making the same." I left the dorm like room that I'd been sharing with the other woman for the past six months; I'd fast tracked it through Quantico ever since they'd snatched me up my senior year at Vassar. It was a dream job for me, something I'd worked towards my whole life, ever since a mad man had killed my parents and my younger brother when I was eight. My dream of becoming a ballerina had died a fiery death on a little hill in Maryland. On that day something had been born in me, a thirst for vengeance. The need to bring criminals to justice; it had become my passion, I'd spent everyday since then with a few exceptions focused on achieving that goal and nothing was going to stand in the way.

In school I'd flung my way through my classes; always at the top, scholarships had helped a poor orphan from the worst part of Baltimore's inner city make it into one of the nation's leading schools from where I'd caught the notice of the Bureau; just where I wanted to be. The animal that had slaughtered my family had never been caught and I will never rest until that day came, if I had to babysit a master criminal like Hank Mancini in the meantime, then whatever it takes; there's nothing stopping me from working on both things at the same time.