Chapter 9: 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.

"You wanted to see me director?"

"Come in, sit down."

Well hello to you too; my superior was to say the least...abrasive. He's a gruff no nonsense type who never smiles and rarely laughs, at least not that I've noticed; and although he'd offered praise when I did well in my exercises, like the Connell case a few days ago, this was his usual way. He could praise you with one breath and tear you apart with the next. His nickname around the bureau is chuckles, which no one would ever dare call him to his face. Whatever the case, he's been director for almost twenty-five years, one of the longest terms in the history of the bureau.

I took my seat in one of the visitor's chairs across from his desk, folded my arms and crossed my legs. His office was very much like his personality, Spartan; neat and everything in its place, there wasn't so much as a paper clip out of place. Pictures of his wife, kids and grandkids graced the top of his huge high glossed mahogany desk. The wall behind him was covered with varying certificates of his achievements, as well as awards for his service to his country.

"You leave tomorrow morning at seven, that'll put you in New York at about roughly ten o'clock. An agent Peter Sarkozy will be there to meet you and debrief you on the subject's latest movements. You've been given his portfolio and should've already studied him and become very well acquainted with the way he works.

Hank Mancini is an enigma; no one knows the real man and we barely understand his public persona. He comes from one of the wealthiest families in the country, went to the best schools and had the opportunity to be anything he wanted to be in this life; he chose instead to be a criminal. In almost ten years we've not been able to pin any one thing on him, but where there's smoke there's usually fire and he's surrounded by a lot of smoke."

Or the smoke could just be vapor. Of course I didn't say that out loud, I didn't want to commit professional suicide after all, but the truth is, I've studied all the info I'd been given and something just didn't ring true. Hank Mancini had been an exceptional student his whole scholastic career, until his nineteenth year.

He'd been an upstanding citizen for all intents and purposes, then for some unfathomable reason, he'd simply dropped off the face of the earth not to be heard from again, until six years later at the age of twenty-five. Now almost nine years later he was still evading law enforcement and on the rare occasion that he was actually brought in, he just slipped through somehow without so much as a blemish on his record.

He's been on the FBI's most wanted list in the top billing for eight years running, and now the job has fallen to me since so many others before me have failed, to find out the truth about the man and bring him down, bring him to justice if need be.

No one seemed in doubt of his guilt, his movements were just too suspect according to law enforcement, it was not very well known in the bureau how he first came to be on our radar, that hadn't been in any of the research I'd done, which in itself was a mystery, but my job was not to question my superiors no matter how much I might want to know.

The problem is, I'm not so sure of what I was looking for, it had all been done already as far as I could tell. Each time we got a whiff of something to do with the great Mancini, we sent someone out, and each time they came back with their tales between their legs, or their ass handed to them.