Sydney Moya

© 2015

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The hit man stealthily made his way into the suburban home. Both targets were in the house at the moment and there was no one else in there which was a boon as he had been told they had kids and he didn’t like to kill kids.

He walked into the room.

“What the…?” Robert Rosen was in the process of shouting when a bullet went into his temple.

He died instantly.

Shelly screamed as she watched her husband die.

She didn’t have time to miss him because the silenced gun went off again and she died. The shooter made the sign of the cross before he turned and fled the scene.

However he had been wrong, there was a witness to the double homicide. Larry Rosen had been upstairs when he’d seen a man walk into the house and seconds later shoot his parents. Paralysed by fear he’d stayed upstairs until minutes after the shooter was gone. He’d then rushed down only to find the remains of his parents.

Nothing can ever describe the horror and anguish he felt at the sight of them lying in their blood. It was the most painful thing he’d ever felt and he was someone experienced in suffering.

Sobbing he’d managed to call 911.

The light went on in Laurie’s room. Startled by the bright light Laurie woke up and saw the little girl standing by the door. She padded up to the bed, clutching her favourite teddy and joined Laurie in bed.

“I can’t sleep, I’m scared,” Rachel pronounced, “can I sleep in your bed?”

“Okay,” said Laurie softly.

“Thanks,” said the seven year old as she curled up in her sister’s sheets.

Within minutes Rachel was fast asleep and Laurie slipped out of bed to go and check around the house. She started with her brother’s room which was across the hall from hers. Ray was sleeping.

She looked at the adolescent for some minutes wondering why he seemed so peaceful when asleep yet was so troubled the rest of the time. She sighed softly and closed his door before going downstairs to check that everything was okay. It was a routine she had been doing ever since her parents murder six months before.

Her life had changed irrevocably since then definitely in the worst way possible. She was now the legal guardian of her 16 and 7 year old siblings giving her parental responsibility at 23 something she wasn’t ready for but had to do if she didn’t want her family destroyed. That was the least of it though. The FBI had placed them in the Witness Protection Programme because she had described the killer and the description matched the profile of an assassin popular with a drug cartel her father had unwittingly been involved with.

Apparently her father Robert who worked in investment banking had discovered that some clients were using him to launder drug money. He’d gone to the feds and he had been killed for it.

Having checked the security systems and found everything running she headed back to bed and after a while fell asleep.

Ray was up at the crack of dawn. He headed to the shower and took a refreshing shower. When he went downstairs Laurie was already in the kitchen making breakfast.

“Good morning,” said Laurie.

He ignored her.

Who did he think he was any way trying to be mom? Ray thought

He made some cereal and headed to the lounge to watch some TV before the school bus came.

Laurie sighed again before going upstairs to get her little sister ready. Rachel awoke with some difficulty, unlike her siblings she wasn’t a morning person. Laurie shepherded her to the bath where she opened the faucet and ran a bath for her. She added the bubbles that her little sister needed.

“Ok sis, wash up so you can get to school,” she told her sister.

“Okay,” Rachel chirped.

Laurie went to her sister’s room to find a selection of clothes for her to choose from that morning. She heard the front door slam a short while later meaning Ray was gone. She sighed; she didn't know what had got into him. All she knew was something had changed in him since their parents had died, he was so angry and he seemed to be taking it out on her. The sweet kid he’d been had been buried with their parents it appeared. He’d lost his brother in the aftermath as well and couldn’t forgive Laurie it seemed.

She looked at her phone, time wasn’t on her side and Rachel was taking ages to get done as was her wont. She went back to the bathroom to help her finish the bath so they could get her to school on time. Getting dressed took another age and Laurie wondered how her mother had done it 3 times over. She hustled the little girl as gently as possible.

When that was done she took a quick shower and then did her make-up before getting dressed smiling at the end, happy with her good looks. She’d been insecure as a kid in fact she still was but that was getting better as she grew into herself.

If only Mom and Dad could see me now she thought sadly. She missed them terribly.

Nothing would ever make the pain of losing them go away. She dabbed at her eyes to stop the tears before they could damage her makeup.

Special Agent Peter Walsh watched as the Rosen girls pulled away from their house before he set off slowly. His job was to watch them as their lives were in danger. Laurie had identified her parents murderer and he’d been taken in. Laurie had agreed to testify and the Justice department had used this to try and extract a deal from the hit man. In return for a lighter sentence, i.e. life in prison instead of the death penalty he would plead guilty and agree to tell them as much as he knew. He hadn’t agreed yet as this might put his life in danger. He was the cartels top hit man, which made it certain the cartel wouldn’t want anything linking him to them and that left Laurie a target too.

Thankfully there was a twist in the story they were not aware of. The cartel was searching for a family of three, a young man in his twenties, with a brother and sister aged 16 and 7. Laurie was anything but a young man though. At birth she’d had what outwardly seemed to be male genitals and naturally had been named Lawrence and had been raised as a boy. As a child though Laurie had wondered to herself why she didn’t feel like a boy but more like a girl. She’d kept this to herself feeling it was something shameful to be a boy who wanted to be a girl. Puberty seemed to pass her by, sure she’d grown but secondary male characteristics like a broken voice and beard growth didn’t happen to her.

She wondered why but didn’t bring it up with her parents as she didn’t want to be a guy any way. She’d grown into a quiet lonely teen with no friends. The only thing which saved her from more scrutiny was the outstanding marks she had. She was bullied a lot though just for being different.

College had been more of the same except she’d fallen into a depression. One day she’d taken some barbiturates and OD’d on them. Luckily her roommate found her in time and she rushed to hospital where her stomach was pumped. She awoke to see her worried parents. It was then the truth had come out.

Her overwhelming feelings of being female, the shame they wrought as well as the depression that hiding them led her to. Shelly and Robert were stunned and hurt by what had happened but they decided to help their oldest child.

A psychologist had been their first port of call, she had suggested that Laurie experiment with dressing in women’s clothes to see what was going on with her as in if she was a cross dresser or really a girl. So Shelly had taken Laurie shopping and purchased a girls wardrobe for her. Laurie had spent a week at home while her siblings were away on school trips. The Rosen’s had been surprised to discover how different their child was en femme. Laurie seemed more alive, she smiled more and was an altogether different person.

The Rosen’s weren’t prepared for the young woman they found but they coped and let their child know they loved her. Laurie continued at college as a man but dressed up in her spare time and whenever she could go home and her siblings weren’t around. By the end of that year it was clear to all involved that Laurie was transgendered. When she went to the doctor to see what could be done, she was found to be inter-sexed. She had a bit both genders inside her but it seemed unlikely that she could produce viable sperm. Laurie had viable ovaries and no uterus but she could get a surrogate. As she had decided that she was a woman this discovery was a gift which confirmed her identity. Her parents had been killed the following weekend just as they were planning how to change Laurie’s name and to inform her siblings.

Ramon Gutierrez was getting more annoyed. He was under a lot of pressure to find the Rosen kids but they seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. His bosses didn’t like failure and were very harsh in dealing with it.

Their disappearance had all the hallmarks of the Witness Protection Programme. He was loath to risk his contacts in the Bureau for such an issue as it might waste his metaphorical get out of jail card. The Feds were less scary than the men he worked for though. He picked up the phone and made the call.

To be continued