Chapter 18
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Anderson watched as the somewhat familiar stranger approached. He recognized the look, the walk, the posture of another military man. And then he recognized the man. Leland Grossneck.
“Damn,” he said staring at the ghost. Leland’s grin was huge. “Wasn’t expecting me, were you.”
“Hell no. You left the team, what, four years ago. Levi told me he was sending someone named Leland, and it’s unusual enough that I should have connected it to you right off, but I sure didn’t.”
“After leaving, I started working for Levi privately.” Then he laughed. “And I still received your SOS text. That was brilliant, by the way. It was an easy answer once you contacted Levi.”
“Damn, it’s good to see you. And yeah, I could really use your help.” He quickly gave a brief overview of the mess he found himself in. “If you can take over watch of my sister”—he pointed to her—“I need to help search Talia’s house for a drug haul,” Anderson shared.
“You sure it’s there, at the house?” Leland asked.
“No, but I finally got my hands on Timothy Magnus earlier today, who unfortunately is my sorry-ass brother-in-law. It seems he’s done something incredibly stupid and has some big players mad at him.”
Leland shook his head. “Go. I’ll be happy to stay here for a bit.
I have contacts to some people in the drug world who may have some local intel about what’s going on here.
If you’ve already got your sister’s husband in for questioning, that’s huge,” he noted, “but we still need to figure out what he’s hiding and from whom.
It won’t be over until these people are caught. ”
“I know,” Anderson muttered, wincing, “because they’re the ones who put Talia in here. Tim could have stopped it, but he didn’t,” he snapped, his fury bubbling up again at the thought.
“Of course he didn’t. That would imply that he gave a crap, and we can already see that he doesn’t. Sorry to say it that way, but it is what it is.”
“No worries. We’ve got to call a spade a spade. And you’re right. Tim doesn’t give a flying fuck, and that’s something I’ll have a hard time forgiving him for.”
“You don’t have to forgive him now—or ever for that matter.
With this situation, forgiveness will be hard to come by,” Leland stated.
“You go back to the house. As soon as I can get clearance for someone else to come in and give us a hand in overseeing Talia’s safety here at the hospital, I’ll come to your place.
” Anderson hesitated, but Leland shook his head. “Go on. Go do what you need to do.”
“Fine,” Anderson muttered, still shaking his head.
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to your sister.”
Anderson nodded. “I’m going crazy over all this crap.”
“That’s what happens when we find out our family is in trouble,” Leland stated.
“Most important right now is finding whatever these other guys are after. That’s the way to put a stop to some of this.
Once they know that their stash has been found and turned over to the authorities, they won’t come looking for us at least. However, until that point in time, they’ll do whatever to get it back, and that’s bad news for all of you. ”
Anderson nodded, gave a backward glance at Talia, and raced to her house, to Pamela and the triplets. He pulled in sooner than expected because traffic had been nonexistent. Plus, he’d also been flying. The traffic lights weren’t priorities.
He quickly ran into the house and called out but got no answer.
The house was eerily quiet. He raced through the first floor, checking on the triplets first. They were fine and sound asleep in the giant playpen.
He still wondered how Pamela managed to get that to happen so consistently, but thank heavens she did.
Hearing voices, he found Pamela in the upstairs hallway, with the attic access ajar above her.
Anderson stepped forward and asked, “Any progress?”
She smiled at him, then shrugged. “Burton climbed up there to search for whatever,” Pamela replied. “Just anything really.”
“Right, and no luck?”
“No, not yet.”
Burton poked his head out from the attic and asked, “Who’s at the hospital with Talia?”
“Leland,” Anderson confirmed, then he laughed. “You may remember Leland Grossneck, although he might have left before you joined the team. Yet I do know him well. He’s good, and he came to join the hunt.”
“You know that nobody is safe until—”
“I know. Those were Leland’s exact words too, so he’s staying at the hospital, checking in with his drug contacts, while we’re hoping to find whatever Tim may have stashed here.”
“I haven’t found anything,” Burton announced, as he jumped down from the attic, a look of disgust on his face.
“I’m pretty-damn good at hiding shit, so finding his hidey-hole is one thing,” he admitted, trying to shake off the cobwebs and dust. “Trouble is, we don’t even know what Tim hid or if it’s here or elsewhere. He didn’t share any details, did he?”
“No, he sure didn’t, but he’s rather desperately trying to cover his ass, thinking, if he can get the stuff himself, he can run away, free and clear, leave behind this life and start a new one.”
Burton snorted. “You know that he can’t. Does he not know the meaning of the word international?”
“Yeah, Tim is a dunce,” Anderson declared. “So, let’s get as much of a head start on this as we can.”
Hours later they gave up the search, disgusted all over again.
Anderson asked the group, “Any ideas?”
Pamela spoke up first. “It’s weird that he was trying to get into both the house and her hospital room,” Pamela noted, turning to Anderson. “Whatever he had stored here, … what are the chances that your sister found it, and that’s why he’s trying to get in to see her?”
He turned to her and swore. “I would say that chances are pretty good.”
“If that’s the case, we better give Leland a heads-up,” Burton suggested.
“Will do.” Anderson pulled out his phone and called him.
Almost immediately Leland answered, and, as soon as they discussed this newest theory, he replied, “Yeah, that would make sense. I’ll keep an eye out here and keep checking in with my sources,” he replied and ended the call.
Burton suggested to Anderson, “I feel pretty rested, so I can go relieve him if you want.”
“Let’s give him some time before we pull him away from the hospital,” Anderson replied. “One of us needs to be rested all the time too. So we need to switch out and not exhaust ourselves.”
Burton just nodded in agreement.
Pamela turned to them, adding, “I wanted to go home and get a change of clothes or two.”
“You can go with Anderson,” Burton pointed out, “and I’ll stay here with the babies.” But he glanced nervously toward the room where the girls were sleeping, “Please hurry back. If you’re gone long, and they wake up …”
She snorted. “Right, I got it. I’m free to go as long as the cute little time bombs are … off?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
Just then, as if on cue, one of them started to cry.
She looked at him and noted, “So, I guess not right now then?”
“Nope, not right now,” Burton stated, with a grin. “Next time they go down for a nap though.”
“That will be bedtime.”
“That’s perfect then, and they should sleep longer, right?” Burton asked hopefully.
“That’s the hope at least,” Anderson said, eyeing her. “You seem to get them to sleep way more than we ever could.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, with a smile. “Not exactly a hard thing to do but it’s a matter of following through on a few things to make naptime or bedtime a little easier.”
“So, how come you know so much about babies? You got any?” Burton asked, turning to her with a frown.
“No,” she replied. “I don’t have any, at least not of my own, but my mother chose to have a baby late in life and didn’t accept the responsibility well, so she dumped most of it on me. Meaning, I pretty much raised my sister. And what you’re going through right now is pretty darn common.”
“I don’t know about common, but it’s pretty darn rough,” Burton clarified, with a headshake. “I get it though. For some of us, it’s probably all peachy keen, but, man, for the rest of us? It’s not.”
She smiled. “It is what it is, and you guys are doing great. So I fully expect you will pass this stage of fatherhood with flying colors.”
He snorted at her. “You say that as if it’s some easy thing.”
“It’s not that easy,” she acknowledged, “but it’s not that hard either.”
“Right,” he muttered, giving her a disbelieving look. “I’m not necessarily one to sit here and call you a liar, but—”
She burst out laughing and left to check up on the crying baby.
He quickly looked over at Anderson. “You know you should grab the opportunity, right?”
“Grab what?” he asked, turning to his buddy in confusion.
Burton snorted. “Her. It’s obvious she’s got a thing for you.”
“I don’t know about that, but she’s really good people.”
“She sure is. Plus, she’s into you.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, groaning.
Burton raised both hands in frustration. “You’re all tied up with your sister. Otherwise you would see what is right under your nose.”
He glared at his friend and stated, “Oh, I see it. I just can’t deal with it now. When this is over, maybe I’ll do something about it, but this is just not the time.”
Burton rolled his eyes. “That’s not true,” he protested.
Anderson sighed. “I can’t afford to be distracted right now. I need to stay focused on my sister.”
“Oh, I’m not arguing that,” Burton confirmed, “but I do think you need to follow up on this.” He pointed toward the other room.
“I’m not against it,” Anderson admitted. “It’s funny because, back then, I always thought she was really cute. However, she had a partner in high school, and so did I. It wasn’t something either one of us were in a position to act on.”
“But you could have, right?”
“It doesn’t matter either way because right now just isn’t the time.”
“Yeah, I hear you, but I’m also telling you that sometimes you’ve just got to jump in because you never know what’ll happen.
Look at Talia. She’s got a hell of a fight in front of her, best case, then three babies to somehow raise and support.
A person can’t afford to waste a minute if they have the opportunity to find that someone special.
Even then sometimes that can turn to shit before your eyes,” he explained.
“We just have to do everything we can to get Talia out of that hospital and to keep her and the triplets safe.”
Anderson nodded. “I know. Trust me how all of that weighs heavy on me, so let me focus on that first. … Then we’ll see what comes of this,” he added, with a nod toward the triplets’ room.
Burton considered that for a long moment and then nodded. “Okay, but don’t be an idiot. Life is giving you another chance with Pamela, and it may not come back around again.”