Corey's POV

Just who exactly is this tiny, unassuming woman that has come into our lives? She refused our help until we knew everything there is to know about her. She knew that someone had accessed all of her information and now knows everything about her, but instead of begging for help working it all out and making sure she is safe, she wanted us to know her entire background before we decided to help her.

From the limited interaction I had had with her, I wouldn't have guessed that she knew how to make the kinds of modifications to the hardware and how to rewrite the software the way she has to turn this EFTPOS machine into a secure external storage device. Looking at her, I wouldn't have guessed that she could take on Raven the way she did either! I hope Marc kept that footage! He called it when he said we should make sure the cameras were recording in case Raven came home drunk last night.

I had wanted to go after her when she walked out the door to head down to the gym. Knowing that we had cameras on her and that she was the only one in the gym didn't help any. I had a strong desire to keep her safe, I wanted to protect her from whoever was after her.

We needed to get her to open up to us, not just hand us the details of her past and walk away, but to actually trust us enough to talk to us about it herself. Given the situation, I understood her reasons for not talking to us about it and to be completely honest, I didn't blame her for not wanting to be here while we go through the files. I know I wouldn't want to be in the same room as someone I hardly knew while they learnt my entire life story – or in her case, five someone's. I still didn't like that we were leaving her alone at the moment when we didn't even know what she was facing.

Marc and Raven were still itching to go after her and Axel had stepped out into the hallway to make a call. He and Raven were supposed to be doing a security job tomorrow for some high profile event. He was arranging for another team to cover the job so we could focus on working out the threat against Andy and how we were going to keep her safe. It was clear she was used to dealing with things on her own and would never ask for help, but we were going to help her anyway.

I connected my laptop to the TV wirelessly, silently thanking Raven for putting his fist through the old one in a drunken rage about six months ago. Our new TV was a smart TV and I was able to share content to it as I went. It meant I could scan over the information before sharing it with my brothers. I could eliminate any useless information so we wouldn't have to leave her alone longer than absolutely necessary.

I plugged the EFTPOS machine into my computer and waited for it to load, following the instructions Andy gave me to access the drive. I can't say I would have ever thought an EFTPOS machine could be a hard drive. She was a genius! Hiding valuable intel in plain sight like that. I would say this bird really is Academy material, but then again, she already is Academy!

Once I had the drive open I noticed she has everything sorted neatly into separate folders and there were folders for just about everything! Basic Information, Pre-academy, Identities, Time with Phil and Rose, New York, Missions, Skills, Attributes, Certifications and Qualifications but there was one that really caught my eye; a folder labelled things that will come back to bite me on the ass. The girl is straight forward, that's for sure!

I started with Basic Information. It was all of the standard stuff that is on every academy application – name, date of birth, physical description, allergies; turns out she is allergic to pain killers and pineapple. There were a couple of things that caught my attention - Name and date of birth were both listed as unknown, though she had a number of alias listed. The biggest shock though, was seeing her Academy status; she was a ghost bird.

Satisfied I had learnt all I was going to from this file, I sent it across to the TV screen for the rest of my family to view.

"Allergic to pineapple" Raven mused. "Will have to make sure there is none in the fruit cup when I give it to her", he added quietly.

Brandon snorted. "As if she would accept a fruit cup from you anyway, you freaking caveman! You threw her over your shoulder and she dropped you!"

"I can't believe that she doesn't know own name or date of birth" Marc commented.

"She told Raven last night that the woman that gave birth to her was a junkie and ended up trading her for drugs. The guy that had been her mothers dealer had a range of not so pleasant nicknames for her" Axel replied.

Raven furrowed his brow trying to remember the conversation. After a moment he added, "I told her Andy was a boys name. She said it was short for Alexandria – the name given to her when Dr Roberts and Mrs Rose found her. She had been living in Alexandria prior to the Academy finding her."

I turned my focus back to the next file, her list of identities. There were at least a dozen fully created and backstopped personas in this file. The information was laid out in a way to allow it to be added easily into any online databases. She really was ready for anything. I flicked the files over for the others to look at and opened skills, attributes, qualifications and certifications. She is up to date on her first aid and driver pursuit and evasion course and at least tow of her aliases have passed the Bar.

That wasn't where her qualifications ended though. While completing her law degree she also completed a psychology degree and an accounting degree. All of her courses were completed online through distance education, only having to attend campuses for exams. She had also recently completed a computer-engineering course. No wonder she had been able to modify that EFTPOS machine.

I flicked over the first few documents for the others to read when I found a list of languages she spoke – sign language, Greek, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, German, the list went on. I moved to the next file without sharing this one; I had a feeling it could be used to have some fun with Raven. This new document was interesting – it explained a lot.

I had heard the others arguing about how she could have actually completed so many degrees at such a young age but wasn't paying much attention to them. Hearing someone call her a cheat brought my attention back to their conversation.

"Guys! Quit it! You know hardly anything about Andy and here you are accusing her of being a cheat!" I shouted as I moved the file across to the TV for them to see. "She has an eidetic memory."

"What's that mean?" Raven asked.

"It means she has a photographic memory" Marc replied. "Anything she sees, she remembers. Her mind captures the information the way a camera lens captures a photograph." He continued when Raven shot him a confused look.

"This hurts my head. I need aspirin." Raven commented while staking away to the bathroom.

I took advantage of Raven's trip to the medicine cabinet to move the languages document across to the TV. Normally I wouldn't dare mess with the professional Russian, but after his not so professional behaviour last night he deserved it.

"I think we should not tell Raven that she knows Russian. We all know it's his go to when trying to impress women and I get the feeling he is going to try it with her. "

They all agreed with me quickly and we decided that the first one of us to get her alone would get her in on our plan.

Next up was Pre-Academy, which covered birth to 9 years old. There wasn't a lot of information in that folder but it covers what she remembers as well as what the Academy was able to discover. Her mother was a drug addict and by the time Andy was three, her mother had traded her for what would be the last high she would ever have. The man that had been her mothers dealer used Andy, as well as other kids, to sell drugs and pickpocket unsuspecting people. If she refused, she would cop a beating. When she stopped reacting to the beatings he started hurting the younger kids to make her comply.

It looked like that went on for a while. There were x-rays in the file that were taken when the Academy found her showing multiple fractures and breaks that were never properly set. I have no idea how anyone could ever do that to a child. Watching my brothers take in this information, I knew that if the man that had done that to Andy wasn't already dead, he soon would be. I made a mental note to look further into him.

We'd been going through the information for a while now and had been keeping an eye on Andy in the Gym. That girl sure wasn't joking when she said she had excess energy to burn! She was still running on her treadmill.

After brief look through time with Phil and Rose, where I found out she refused to talk for the first year, I decided to go in for the kill. I opened the folder labelled things that will come back to bite me on the ass. It looked like the majority of the files in there were Academy related. There were forced retirements, people that were approved to join, and people that were declined, as well as teams that had attempted an Anderson style relationship that didn't work. I was still sharing information across to the others when I started looking through the declined applications. One name in particular stood out – Blake Coaltar. The family wasn't going to take it well when they found out she had declined his application. It was his rejection from the Academy that ultimately lead to Kayli leaving us.

I made sure to read the entire file before I even thought about sharing it. By the end of the report I understood why his application wasn't successful, but I still wasn't happy about the situation.

"I just found the reason she wanted us to read her file before we decided if we would help her." I said, I guess with a little less enthusiasm than usual because I suddenly had all eyes on me, waiting for me to continue.

"Well, spit it out!" Brandon demanded.

"I will move it over, but read the whole thing and remember there's always a reason. I guess she saw what we missed. I sounded dejected and I knew it. I also knew they weren't going to take it well. It nearly destroyed us when Kayli left.

As expected, the moment they saw the rejected application and the name Blake Coaltar on the screen, all hell broke loose. Raven was yelling in Russian – I really should have taken the time to learn more than the basic swear words, Marc looked murderous and Axel had started pacing the room. The only person that seemed calm at this point was Brandon - the one person I expected to react worse than Raven, who at this stage was trying to get past Marc and Axel to his guns. I just wasn't sure what he wanted to shoot.

I could see my twin working through the information on the screen and coming to a conclusion before engaging the others. I already knew that I would help Andy, regardless of her past, even if the others chose not to. She needed someone to help her for once, instead of always trying to do it herself. She appeared to always put others before herself and I was worried it would cause her more problems with someone after her. I knew she had been working on her own most of the time because none of her files indicated any team attachment within the Academy. Her ghost status was very valuable and meant she could come in to help in more ways than the rest of us were able to.

After another couple of minutes, Brandon snapped. "Oy, assholes!" He had only said two words, but since no one had heard him yell in months, it was enough to stun the room into silence. "Clearly there was reason to refuse him membership! Did you read that report? Besides, she refused Coatlar, not Kayli. She chose to leave on her own! She wanted him more than she wanted us! You need to wake up to yourselves and accept the fact that in the end she really was only after the money! We need to help this bird! She clearly does more for the Academy than we would have ever realised and she is in trouble! What kind of people would we be if we didn't help her! It has been a long time since this family had something to work towards together and to be honest I was beginning to think we were falling apart. It is about time we had something to work toward together and got back to being the team we once were! We used to be considered the best! Now we are a stones throw away from being in that retired folder!"

Raven was still fuming. Anyone could see he had heard what Brandon said, but needed to work through it. I shared the rest of the rejections, as well as the Anderson situations gone wrong, before starting on the approvals she had been worried about. There were two that really stood out. The first was Sang, the Blackbourne team's ghost bird – she was worried about backlash from the boys, given how attached they were to her. If anything were to have happened to Sang, I would have no doubt shots would be fired. The second was Kayli and while there appeared to be no ill will when she applied there was a question over loyalty. Looks like she called it.

As expected, Raven was off again when he saw that. Axel let him go for a couple of minutes before finally pulling rank on him.

"Walk it off Raven! It's your turn to do the groceries – since we now have another person here, make sure you get enough to feed her too! Now go!" It had been a long time since Axel had gone all boss-mode on someone like that. Perhaps Andy really was the jump-start this family needed to avoid retirement.

Raven skulked out the door and left as directed while we continued going through the files. Brandon watched Andy through the cameras in case Raven had the not so smart idea to pay her a visit before heading out. Thankfully he didn't. She had finally stopped running and was working through a weights routine that looked like a toned down version of the one that Nathan Griffin uses – I would have to ask her about it later.

Andy had run away to the circus by 13, but there was no information on why she did that. I made note to talk to her about that when she came back up. She had left a note for Phil and Mrs Rose, saying that she was going and she had made sure they wouldn't be able to track her. She also told them she would be in contact when she could. She had periodically sent letters and postcards letting them know she was ok, but they never were able to work out where she was because they always came from different areas. There was also very little information on her time with the circus. The only thing I knew for sure was that was where she had picked up most of her foreign language skills.

The missions folder had a lot of information in it, but the gist of what I was seeing was that she acted as a consultant more than anything else. She was very rarely actively involved in a case and I couldn't see anything that would link back to her current situation. I would go back over the files later to double check though.

Raven was due back any minute and Andy was still in the gym. She had been down there working out for over two hours – the girl had stamina! Axel decided to take a big risk, one that the rest of us wouldn't have. He asked Raven to get Andy to come back up when he made it back to the building. I really hoped Raven had calmed down enough to not do anything stupid!

The others all had to take a break. They weren't used to going through this quantity of information in such a short period of time. Normally I would look it all over and break it down for them. I stopped sharing files to the TV and kept working through them on my laptop while the others moved around the house, using the bathroom, grabbing something to drink or just plain moving – we had been sitting for a while. They knew I would let them know if I found anything they needed to know about.

I moved on to the New York file. Turned out, New York was when she came back to the Academy. She left the circus to pursue law and help the Academy to help people. Her first case was representing some kids that were accused of killing a drug dealer using them to peddle drugs to other kids on the streets. Andy managed to have the case dismissed and the Academy looked after the kids so no one was left without a home. The more I went through that particular case file, the more I wondered if it was possible that was the same man that had abused her as a child. I would talk more with Axel about it later.

I moved on to the police reports and found that after the first six months of reports that had been filed, there were additional tags on the reports. Each report had been tagged with another file name. I eventually found the files with the corresponding names to the reports and opened the first one. I was shocked when a video started playing – that wasn't what I had expected at all! It was like a train wreck; as much as I didn't want to see what was happening on the screen, I couldn't force myself to look away either. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing.

Axel, Brandon and Marc had been talking in the kitchen when I watched the first video so hadn't seen my reaction, but Raven had chosen that moment to walk back into the apartment – no Andy in sight.

"Why does Corey look like Casper?" Raven asked, dumping the grocery bags on the bench.

"Where is Andy?" Marc questioned.

"What do you mean Corey looks like Casper?" Brandon demanded.

"She said she will be up in about half hour. She was taking some anger out on the punching bags and I didn't want to get in her way. And as for Corey, well he looks as white as a sheep" Raven stated.

"It's a sheet Raven, not a sheep!" I called. "You all need to come back in here and see this! I now know why she looked determined to fight for her like when Raven threw her over his shoulder last night!"

In the time it took for them to migrate from the kitchen back to the lounge room I had the first police report with additional documentation on the screen. "You know how we always said the injuries she had didn't match the reports filed?" I asked.

"What exactly are we looking at Corey?" Axel asked. "We have already looked at those police reports, they don't tell us anything new." He sounded a bit frustrated at this point.

"Notice anything different on these ones to the originals we looked at?"

They all stared at the report on the screen for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 5 minutes before Marc saw it.

"There is an additional name here" he stated, pointing to the same thing I had found. "But what is it?"

Instead of answering the question, I opened the video I had been watching and pressed play for them. Whoever had installed the cameras had used high quality ones with sound recording as well. Instead of watching the video, I watched the reactions of my brothers at what they were seeing. I knew what each strike was from the sound it made. We heard the bastard verbally abusing her while he was beating her. He was accusing her of having someone else in the apartment while he had been out and was trying to beat a confession out of her. From the description of what he had smelt in the apartment, I knew Luke and Victor had installed the cameras. I sure hoped they had seen this and did something about it. The bastard beat her until she was unconscious and then left her there while he went out.

Marc visibly paled. "That report was made three days before the yoga course I did with her. How did she endure that and still make it through that seminar without showing any sign of pain or discomfort?" We all knew his question was rhetorical, but it was something that had us all wondering how much more we didn't know.

"It seems there is a lot left to learn about her" Axel mused. "Corey, are there more videos there?"

We worked our way through at least a dozen more videos, each one worse than the last and were part way through a particularly nasty one when Andy's voice startled us all. I had to know how she managed to get in without making a sound.

"I was hoping you would be done with those by the time I got back up here" She said.

I wasn't sure how long she had been standing there, but she looked terrified, like she had been reliving these encounters. Brandon had been the only one of us still standing and started toward her, like he wanted to give her a hug, or offer some kind of comfort. As quickly as Brandon moved forward though, Andy was retreating. She had edged her way back into a corner and we could all see she was looking for a way out. The sound of a door slamming had all attention back on the video as a limp looking Andy was peeled off a shoulder and thrown down several flights of stairs.