Chapter 13
?
Pamela stared at him, opened her mouth a couple times, and then closed it.
When she finally masked her nervousness, she replied, “I want to help. Yet obviously do I need to be here? No. Should I be doing something else? Not necessarily, but I could be doing something else. And the fact that I’m not—”
“The fact that you’re not is definitely why I’m asking.”
She snorted. “You’re asking for a lot more than that,” she said, her tone sharp. “You’re just … I’m an anomaly for you right now.”
“I just don’t know what is going on,” he admitted, hanging his head. “So, any anomaly is definitely a concern. Not that I mind.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” she said, her tone still sharp.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not accusing you of anything, God, no,” he muttered. “But, with this latest development, I don’t know if it’s even safe to have you here.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she slowly nodded, as she finally realized he was worried about her. Even though this day was like one whole week long, what with everything deciding to happen in this particular twenty-four-hour period, still he was worried about her. Wow.
“I did consider that,” she shared, keeping an eye on him.
“I’m not sure it’s safe for me either, but you need somebody in place to look after these children,” she pointed out.
“So, until that is settled, I’m not going anywhere.
” He smiled, and it was so gentle that it almost brought tears to her eyes.
She gave herself a shake. This man was not here for her.
But the fact that he was doing absolutely everything in his power to keep his sister and his nieces safe certainly endeared him to Pamela.
At the same time, he was not here as the love of her life, looking after her.
“If Talia’s husband was involved in this—”
“He was,” he declared. “Absolutely. Tim is definitely involved one way or another, although I haven’t heard one word from Detective Colt on it.
He’s not concerned with sharing his investigation with me.
” She frowned at his tone and the way he was so sure of it.
“I know. It sounds like I’m just making it up to fit the crime,” he began, “but no detective worth his salt—especially when an MIA husband goes to a hospital to see their wife—wouldn’t recognize that event as something to be dealt with,” he explained.
“Nobody acts the way Tim’s acting if they don’t have something to hide.
Also security video at the time of the assault was compromised by pointing the living room cam to the ceiling.
However, I sent that to Colt too. It’s all one-sided with him. ”
“That is definitely a concern, one of too many,” she noted, bewildered. “Why would Tim come here? What could he want?”
Anderson stared off in the distance. “That’s the part I’m not really sure about.”
“Is somebody pressuring him? Maybe somebody did this to Talia because of him?”
“It’s definitely a consideration,” he noted, turning to her.
“Yeah, and it sucks if it is,” she declared. “That’s not something anybody wants to consider.”
“It might not be, but—”
“I know. I know. I know,” she muttered. “You’ll tell me that we don’t live in a fantasy world and that the reality is that somebody did this to her.”
He nodded. “Absolutely. Somebody did this to her, and Tim came today to get into this house. That’s an entirely different story from heading to the hospital. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t move you and the babies, but that’s an even bigger imposition on you.”
She stared at him. “Move us?” she asked, with a squeak.
He winced. “Yeah, because”—he took a deep breath—“I don’t know whether you’ve considered it or not, but you’ve also been seen.
” He added, “It wouldn’t be such an issue, but he’s made these two bold moves that could put his own existence in jeopardy.
So, whether he’s after something or somebody is after him, he’s desperate.
Desperate people do desperate things, and desperate things in this instance could very easily mean coming after you. ”
“Possibly. But having already been here and gone again, he’s lost the opportunity to silence me.”
He looked at her steadily and asked, “But what if other people are involved? What if other people were in a vehicle close by, watching him, maybe saw you, maybe are afraid that you saw them?”
She couldn’t stop the trembling. “Now you’re scaring me,” she cried out.
“Good. I mean to scare you.” She looked at him, horrified, and he shook his head.
“Look. I don’t want you petrified, but I want you alert.
I want you to be conscious of the danger.
I want you thinking clearly because I don’t know what’s going on, so we don’t have all the info to make an informed decision right now. ”
He continued. “Yet my assumptions at this point seem to be that Tim was here for no good reason, which means it’s an ugly reason, and that is bad news for all of us,” he shared.
“Not just you, not just the babies, but all of us because now he’s seen Burton too.
Burton won’t give a damn, but I do. Burton’s here because of me. ”
“It’s not because of you but because of Talia’s attacker.”
“At the end of the day, it is because of me. And I don’t want anybody else getting hurt.”
“Why the hell would Tim even have come here? He must know that the police are after him,” she noted. “It all makes no sense.”
“That’s one of the biggest questions I have. Why would he take that chance? And, if he wasn’t behind taking that chance, he was being forced to. Thus somebody somewhere is pulling his chain, wanting something from him. I can’t tell you what that is yet, but it’s got to be something major.”
“So, do you think—” She shrugged.
“We can toss around all kinds of scenarios,” he pointed out, “and any could be right, but they could also all be wrong. So we’re just guessing blindly at this moment.”
“Sure, but it helps to have some idea of what a blind guess would look like.”
He hesitated, sighed, and then suggested, “As you know from your background check on Tim, his international employer is iffy, raising all kinds of questions. So my first blind guess would be that Tim’s employer moves goods, such as drugs, involving Tim, either knowingly or unknowingly.
Now something has gone wrong in that supply chain. ”
“Oh God,” she muttered. “You mean illegal drugs, killer drugs, addictive drugs?”
“Yes, or some other contraband, even marijuana or something that’s not allowed in various countries. And, if Tim’s been moving things into other countries, particularly for other people, then who knows what’s going on.”
She scrubbed her face and let out a sigh.
Anderson admitted, “I know that’s not what you thought you were letting yourself in for.”
She snorted at that. “No, I definitely didn’t think about that,” she replied. “Foster care and social services are not pleasant on most days. Yet, whatever has led to this scenario, … what am I supposed to say?”
“It’s our life right now,” Anderson stated. “Let’s just get through it, and we will do our best to figure it out from here.”
She didn’t say anything.
He stared at her and asked, “Would you want to take that week or two of holiday you’ve got and go somewhere else, as in a long-way-away somewhere else?”
She studied him, a part of her absolutely wanting to jump up and say, Hell yes. Then she heard a baby cry on the monitor, the voice already carrying through the room, and she knew that she could never do that. “No,” she stated. “I can’t leave them.”
He eyed her steadily and noted, “They’re not yours and not your responsibility.”
“No, they’re not, other than in my social worker supervisory capacity right now,” she snapped, “and I may never have any of my own, but I have already forged a bond with these triplets just in the two days I had them in my custody. So, for both personal and work reasons, I should be here to help them when they need it. Right now, those are the most vulnerable members of our society—and your sister. You’ve got your sister covered for now,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think Burton will let anybody get in there, but what I don’t understand is how anybody could hurt these little girls. ”
“I just know that life isn’t always quite so nice and pretty, and things rarely get tied up with a nice little bow.
So, anybody who wants to use my nieces or my sister as leverage to make Timothy do something, that’s a good way to do it.
And that could be what is happening here.
He could be forced to do something he doesn’t want to do,” Anderson shared.
“We can’t judge him yet, not without fully knowing and understanding. ”
“Oh but I can,” Pamela argued, glaring at Anderson, “because Talia was left alone. And with all the possible issues involved in the almost deadly attack on her, where the hell was Tim? He still isn’t here protecting her or seeing to these babies.
I find that very hard to forgive. If he did this to her himself, it’s even worse.
And, if he let somebody do this to her and didn’t step up to get help, that’s not forgivable either. ”