Chapter 17 #2
“There’s no love lost between the two of us, in case you didn’t get that message,” Tim’s brother shared calmly.
“The two of us aren’t exactly bosom buddies.
He was adopted by a family who apparently treated him quite well, whereas I had much less of that good childhood he enjoyed.
I was also not adopted until I was fourteen.
At that point in time, it was all about money and not even money for me because the foster couple got more money if I stayed as a foster child.
It had something to do with family responsibility and the grandfather wanting to make sure they did right by me in the will.
Anyway, once I was adopted, the grandfather died a little bit later.
The foster couple got what they considered their due inheritance. ”
“And you?” Sammy asked.
“I was basically kicked out,” he told them, with a shrug. “So, don’t go talking to me about family loyalty or any of that bullshit.”
“Of course not,” Burton agreed, with a nod. “But my concern isn’t you, and it certainly isn’t Tim. It’s all about these children and Talia.”
“And what’s her relationship to you?”
“My best friend’s sister. What’s your name?”
“I’m not going to tell you just like that.” Then his eyebrows shot up suddenly, and he did a double-take. “Does that mean … Anderson’s here?”
Burton asked, “Do you know him?”
“No, but I know of him. Timothy doesn’t like him one bit. He’s more or less afraid of him.”
“Good, he should be. And, yes, he’s here too. He’s currently at the hospital with Talia, I believe. Or he could be talking to your brother because he’s been checking in with the sheriff’s office here too.”
“Tim told me that he hadn’t seen Anderson.” He stared at Burton, his gaze hard. “Now I don’t know who to believe.”
“Well, if you don’t know who to believe, then there’s no point in you even being here,” Sammy snapped. “Because you have absolutely no interest in what we have to say. If you can believe that piece of shit Timothy over us, then I don’t have anything to say to you anyway.”
She walked over to the babies, stared down at them, and, with a smile, gently rearranged the blankets, then turned to him. “You can leave anytime now,” she snapped.
He stared at her and asked, “And if I don’t want to?”
“Then you’ll have a big problem,” she declared, her tone calm but her anger simmered underneath.
“You’re after something we don’t have. These children need a good night’s sleep or none of us will get any sleep.
And you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you’ve got an argument with your brother, go deal with him.
We don’t know anything about these people. ”
“What about Roger Colbert?” he asked. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Only that it’s come up in terms of investigating what’s going on,” Burton replied. “Do you know him?”
“Yeah, and he’s a mean son of a bitch. Yet everybody loves him. He’s like some cult leader. But he’s bad news from start to finish. When he gets his claws into you, you can bet it’ll be ugly.”
“That’s what we figured happened with Tim.”
“Yeah, well, Tim always likes to say that he’s a victim, but he’s not. He probably hooked up with Colbert on his own,” he suggested. “So, keep that in mind. I came to search the house, but it doesn’t appear to be much chance of that happening, is there?”
Burton immediately shook his head. “Not unless you’re planning on killing six people.”
The gunman winced. “I really wasn’t hoping to up my kill count like that. Although I always could be tempted.”
“No, you couldn’t,” she stated. “You’re lying.
You already would have killed all of us if you didn’t give a shit, yet you haven’t.
You’re after something. So, I don’t know that I can trust a word that comes out of your mouth.
For all I know, you’re after the information Tim has, just so you can use it yourself. ”
“Oh, please,” he replied sarcastically. He stared at her for a long moment. “What would you do with it?”
She shrugged. “Give it to the sheriff.”
“Yeah, well, the sheriff and the mayor here are in Colbert’s pockets. So, before you go handing out evidence to anyone on the job around here, keep that in mind.”
“Right,” she muttered. “That’s always fun, isn’t it?”
“They’re not all bad, but, for the most part, money talks. Plus, Colbert has stuff on a lot of people in town here. Not just the sheriff’s office but most of the lawyers and anybody with power,” he clarified. “That’s just how he rolls. It’s the only system he knows that works.”
“Of course,” she muttered. “Yet it doesn’t always work for everybody all the time.”
He turned to her and snarled. “Don’t be na?ve. It absolutely works for everybody all the time. That’s why it works.”
She glared at him and shook her head. “No. Colbert’s system doesn’t always work for everybody all the time,” Sammy argued. “Otherwise these thugs wouldn’t have beat up Talia.”
“They are thugs,” he repeated, throwing her own words back at her. “Beating up people is what they do. And Tim lying is what he does. First, it was Talia with the info. Now it’s me with the material, but I don’t have it,” he snapped.
Just enough fear filled his tone that she believed him. “If you don’t have it, and Talia doesn’t have it, I don’t know who does.”
“I do,” Burton replied quietly. They turned to him, and he shrugged. “There’s only one logical answer. It’s Tim. He’s got it. For all we know, he’s got it hidden somewhere. Or it’s sitting in his brain. And he won’t tell us where because he’s buying time, pointing the finger at everyone else.”
Just then one of the babies started fussing. Burton instinctively turned, as did Sammy. Then hearing a noise, they turned to see the gunman bolting down the stairs and out the front door. It happened just that fast. Burton raced out behind Tim’s brother.
Sammy called at him, “Don’t go after him!”
“I’m not,” he muttered, as he came back in. “He’s gone anyway.”
“No vehicle?”
“Not here. So, he probably walked down here and then left on foot.”
“Did we really go upstairs and leave the front door unlocked?”
“No, I suspect he got the key off his brother. Now, whether his brother knows about it or not, I don’t know.”
“So, what we really have here is brother against brother?”
“What we really have is one asshole trying to save his own ass and throwing everybody else under the bus in the process. Now everybody is just trying to stay alive,” he said calmly. “This definitely ups the ante.”
“Ups the ante and makes it even more complicated.”
“Not really. He mentioned that Tim has a photographic memory, but I’m not so sure that he does. I think that maybe he’s got people believing he does.”
“In that case he should have been able to give out whatever information he needed to. Maybe these guys don’t even know he has that. He could have given them whatever information was needed and wanted quite easily.”
“Yeah, he sure could have,” Burton agreed. “That he didn’t means he doesn’t want that information to be released.”
“Just means he’s an asshole,” she muttered, as she rubbed a Lisa’s back. When the second one started to whimper, Burton immediately joined her and imitated her gestures.
After a few minutes, both babies settled. She took a breath and stepped back. “Now what?”
He smiled at her. “I’ve already sent out an alert to Leland, Anderson, and Levi,” he told her. “What’s next is we stay close. I’ll go check to ensure everything is locked down tight.”
“It won’t matter if he’s got keys.”
“No, it won’t. And I don’t know for sure that he won’t come back and search for whatever he thinks is here.”
“So now there could be more USBs?” She frowned at him.
Burton sighed. “In that case, we need to find them.”
Sammy asked him, “If it were you, where would you hide them?”
He looked at her and said, “Just like at your house, I think it could be in the damn attic here. I don’t remember if anybody’s checked it. I’m not sure where the attic is here in Talia’s house. If they did search her attic, they didn’t find anything. I heard nothing about it.”
Sammy nodded. “I suggest we go look ourselves.”
With that decided, he grabbed a few tools, finding a ladder in Talia’s shed. Then they headed upstairs to locate the attic entrance.
After breaking through the paint sealing the attic entrance, Burton then had to chisel it open from there.
Her attic was also found in the master bedroom of Talia’s home, just like in Sammy’s apartment, but glued as well as painted over.
Burton stuck his head through the opening, then turned and looked around. Behind him, a small box just sat there.
As he stretched forward, trying to grab it, he felt the ladder under him shift.
Regaining his balance, he pulled himself up partway and snagged the box.
With the box in his hand, he made his way down and held it up, smiling.
“Eureka,” he said. “Something was really up there. I wasn’t exactly thinking somebody would go to this level. ”
She pointed out, “When you’ve tried everything, then you have to look at what is still left.”
He stepped off the ladder, walked over to the bed, and opened the box. Then he whistled.
“What is it?”
“This is what they’re looking for,” he exclaimed, as he held up multiple USB keys and multiple little notebooks.
“Good God. People will kill for this,” she muttered.
“You’re right,” said a man from the doorway. “I knew, if you had enough motivation, you would find it.”
She stared at the gunman who had just been in the house. “And he’s back again,” she grumbled, with a headshake.
“Oh, I’m back again all right,” Tim’s brother said, with a snicker. “Pass that over.”
Sammy shook her head. “Not if we can’t get any guarantees of our survival,” she told him. “You can have it all, but that won’t help us.”
“No, it won’t help you. However, if I shoot you right now,” he threatened, waving the gun, “it won’t help those babies either.”