Chapter 17 #3
“Which is exactly how Talia got into trouble in the first place,” Sammy exclaimed. “You are just the same, … just like your brother.”
“I don’t really give a shit,” he snapped, his anger flaring. “My brother threw me to the wolves, and I have to make sure I get out of this alive.”
“Right, that you get out of this alive,” Burton added. “And to hell with anybody else.”
Tim’s brother snarled. “This is much bigger than just Colbert, and these people are not someone to play with.”
“We all know they’re not someone to play with,” she spat. “I’ve been nursing Talia at the hospital, while these guys guard her from the monsters who did this to her.”
“I get that, and I feel for her, but I am not so stupid as to not save myself. She was just a warning. My brother didn’t give a shit.
At least not really, though I don’t think he thought they would actually go that far.
But seeing the damage that they did to her, Tim wasn’t about to fess up and to give them anything. ”
“Not if it was his ticket out of here. But he wouldn’t take you with him either? Is that the problem?” she asked, staring at him.
When Sammy caught a sliver of the front door opening ever-so-slightly wider behind their gunman, she struggled to keep her gaze on the gunman as he was busy spouting off about his brother.
“No, he wasn’t taking me with him,” he snapped. “He was just getting himself out of here. He wants to start fresh, to get over all this, and to find another way to make a living.”
“What about that business of his?”
“That business was entirely connected to Colbert. And the rest of that nightmare Tim got involved in had nothing to do with moving goods, except for the goods that they wanted him to move.”
“So, he’s as guilty as anybody?” she asked.
“He’s been running drugs for a long time. And Talia, as far as I know, she’s got nothing to do with it and never did. Yet, when it came down to him versus his wife, he threw her to the wolves very, very quickly.”
“You were there?” she cried out. “You saw it?”
He turned to her and nodded. “I was there,” he confirmed. “Believe me that it’s not something I ever want to remember.”
“Well, she’s alive, no thanks to you,” she declared, staring at him in fury.
“No thanks to me,” he agreed. “But also no thanks to her damn husband. He could have easily given up everything and let her be, to give her peace. But, no, he wouldn’t do that,” he told her bitterly.
“He also wouldn’t do anything that saved my sorry ass.
So, now I have everything I need to save my life by getting out of here before they find me. ”
“And what about her life?” Sammy asked.
“They won’t come back after her,” he muttered, with a careless wave of the gun. “They’ve already done the damage.”
“But she’s alive, and she’ll make it home again,” Sammy argued, her tone sharp. “So, what’s to stop them from coming back here and looking for this?”
“They’ve already been through the house, after they beat her,” he announced. “Once again, you just don’t know, do you? Even Tim’s been through the house multiple times.”
“That’s not true. Are you saying Tim didn’t hide this?”
“That’s the problem, sweetheart. You still don’t get it, do you?”
“What don’t I get?” Sammy snapped.
“We’re pretty sure Talia hid all this,” Tim’s brother replied.
“Not that she would have known necessarily what was on it. But Tim and Talia had quite the fight. Something to do with him having an affair. I think it broke her heart, and she just wasn’t up for giving him the box.
He told her it was important, and he needed it.
She was just like, whatever, and I don’t know for sure what happened next, but you can guess how that went.
You’re getting only part of what my lovely brother was letting us have. ”
“I don’t think I can trust anything you’ve said either,” Burton interjected.
“What do you mean? She probably had this box, and she probably put it up there. She did a hell of a job,” he noted, frowning.
Burton shook his head. “Which means she’s not the one who put it up there because she would not have been so focused on saving her sorry husband’s ass that she would have hid this from those very men beating her to death.”
“I, but—” he stammered, disbelief in his expression. “What are you getting at?”
Burton snapped, “The attic access was glued shut. That door up there wasn’t just painted over, it was glued. Glued shut.”
The gunman stared at him.
Burton slowly nodded.
“So, what are you saying?” Tim’s brother asked.
“What I’m saying is your asshole brother hid this in the attic,” Burton snapped. “So, any protestations he made otherwise were just BS.”
The fury started to build in Tim’s brother, and he nodded. “That slimy little motherfu—piece of—”
“Yep, absolutely, every name you want to call him, that’s who he is,” Burton agreed. “But, as far as I know, he’s in jail right now. So, I’m not sure what you’re planning on doing, but, if you’re trying to get back at him, it’s not a good time to run away with this box.”
“I’ll just leave him to rot in the prison that he’s made on his own,” he snapped, “because the bosses will never let Tim live once they find out I have this material.”
“I don’t give a crap what you do with your life,” Sammy declared, stepping forward, “but I do care what happens to Talia, those babies, and the babies’ caretakers. So, if you take that material, we have nothing.”
He looked at her and shrugged. “You never did have anything, and, if you think I’m giving this up, you’re wrong,” he snapped.
At that, another voice entered the fray, as Anderson walked in through the master bedroom door. “You’re not taking that material anywhere,” he snapped.
The gunman turned, firing at the enemy. Only Anderson was no longer there. Suddenly she was tugged backward by Burton, while Anderson was on top of the gunman, who was fighting now, desperately screaming that they couldn’t take it away from him. He needed it. He needed his life back.
When he finally calmed down, and it was safe for her to raise her head, Anderson had him pinned, and even now was restraining him with zip straps.
The gunman was almost in tears. “Stop. You need to stop. Don’t you understand? They’ll kill me.”
Anderson snapped, “I hear you. I also heard you say that you were in the same damn room as my sister when she was getting beaten.”
“I couldn’t help her,” he swore. “My brother set up the scenario for them to do it to her. So, what was I supposed to do? … As far as I knew, she had the stuff they wanted. I didn’t know it was Tim the whole time.”
“But you wondered, didn’t you?” Anderson asked, glaring at him. “You wondered if it was safe to trust him.”
“Yeah, I wondered,” he snapped. “That’s the thing about Tim. He always has everybody on his good side, so nobody ever suspects him. Yet, at the end of the day, it’s almost always him.”
“So, you do know him rather well then, … perhaps too well?”
“Yeah, I know him a little too well,” he muttered. “He won’t tell the truth no matter what. He’s biding his time and hoping that everybody else gets caught. Then it’ll have nothing to do with him.”
“That’s why we need this information,” Anderson stated.
“You can have these,” Burton stated, holding up the USBs they had just found. “First, we have to check out the gunman’s story to confirm that you are who you say you are and that you don’t have anything to do with this mess. Plus, we’ll copy each and every one of these.”
Tim’s brother eyed the USBs and nodded. “Probably a good idea. I don’t know if I’ll get out of this alive, but, if I don’t, that asshole brother of mine doesn’t either.”
Burton, standing beside Sammy, made a few phone calls.
The gunman stared at him. “I don’t understand. What are we doing?”
“I’m calling Leland and then Levi.”
“Friends of yours?” the gunman asked.
“Yeah, good friends. We’ll be taking a different route than maybe these other guys would like.”
“What does that mean?” Sammy asked in surprise. “We’ll give this information to Levi? And do nothing else?”
“I wouldn’t call that nothing. We’re making a copy for ourselves,” he added. “So, let’s head down to the office so I can do that.”
“Men are already on the way to pick up our gun-toting intruder,” Anderson stated.
“This is now a federal case. If this guy decides to cooperate, he will probably get out of this alive. Maybe if he were to just run, he might also get out of this on his own,” he pointed out, glancing back at their prisoner.
“Yet, for the moment, this is way-too-much information for only him to have.”
She stared at him. “Is it even safe to let this guy go? I’m still very concerned about the babies.”
“I know,” Anderson replied. “And I really appreciate that. But this case is so much bigger now.”
She groaned. “How can it get much bigger?”
“Because it’s not just Colbert. A pretty decent market is out there—drugs, trafficking, gangs, mules, users, whatever you want to call it,” he explained, with a wave of his hand. “And we don’t take that lightly.”
“I understand that we can’t let this case go,” she replied, shaking her head. “As a nurse, I deal with the aftereffects of drugs all the time, yet there’s got to be more to this than I am seeing.”
“Exactly,” Anderson said, with a nod. “So, if we have a chance to actually stop a trafficking ring, we need to. I believe some national or international players are involved here as well. So, if we can do more in the process of our investigation …”
She frowned, her gaze going from Burton to Anderson and then back. “And we’re thinking it’s got something to do with Roger Colbert and his bosses?”
“And a character known as Dingo, who has all kinds of hands in gang business. But Colbert does take the cake, especially here locally.” Burton eyed Anderson.
“I suspect Tim’s supposed brother is just, once again, small fry,” Anderson added. “Yet he’s not our problem.”