Chapter Nine #2
It was more than a few minutes, but we saw the sheriff roll up the street past us and to the second black FBI cruiser. The deputy climbed out and handed the stack of papers to Biddle and nodded. After a short discussion, he nodded and walked around the back of the car, unholstering his pistol.
“Here we go,” Tara said, sinking into the seat a bit.
I followed. I didn’t think that there was going to be a lot of violence, but then I was sitting waiting for them to free a kidnapped financial genius.
The agents walked around the house, ducking behind trees and ducking under the windows. The place was only just a step up from a shack and probably leaked like hell in the rain.
The young agent that Biddle had glanced at walked up to the door and banged on it, very hard. The words were garbled at the distance we were sitting, but I knew what he was yelling.
“FBI! We have a warrant! Open the door!”
He did it three times and then motioned someone forward. Two men with a massive steel ram walked forward, braced themselves and slammed the thing into the door by the doorknob.
The door caved instantly. The way it gave in, I guess that even I could have kicked it in.
There was shouting all over the house, the sound of breaking glass and—
The whole building collapsed.
“No!” Tara screamed.
I was out the door and running down the street before the cloud of dust even reached its pinnacle. The focus of the raid changed instantly, and they clearly didn’t see the man I saw running back down the road toward me, glancing back over his shoulder.
He didn’t see me.
I set my feet, pulled back my arm, and let my fist fly as soon as he got in range.
The fist landed right in between his jaw and his neck. It stopped his head dead while his feet kept going and he flew up and then slammed on to the ground, back first.
I heard all of his air rush out of his lungs, as his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Oh my god, Kyle!” someone else yelled coming up from the alley behind me. “What did you do!?”
I turned in time to see Tara grab a woman’s ponytail and yank her back, hard. She threw the woman to the ground and sat on her.
“You’re a bitch, Lia.”
“He punched my brother!”
“Get off her,” came a terrifying calm voice.
From the dust and rubble in front of us another figure walked up, holding a gun pointed at Tara.
“I said, get off her Tara.”
Yet another voice answered. “Nope.”
A single shot rang out and the guy with the gun pointing at Tara crumbled to the floor with a scream. His gun clattered away, and I ran over and kicked it out of his reach. Biddle appeared with his freshly fired weapon, lowering it and nodding at me.
Jarrett was screaming. “You shot me!”
“You’re lucky I opted for the kneecap, Merz.”
“Fuck you, James.”
“No thanks.” Biddle grinned. “Tried it, didn’t like it.”
“ What ?” Lia screamed from where Tara still had her pinned.
The deputy from earlier trotted over and handcuffed Lia, allowing Tara to get up. He nodded at her. “Your brother is safe. Don’t go over there. Go to the field office and we’ll bring him along in a little while.”
“But he’s okay?” Tara asked.
“Perfectly fine. You’ll see him at the office.”
***
The whole shack had creaked and groaned from the instant Kyle had slammed the door and shut me in this hell hole. I wasn’t an architect, but you didn’t have to be to see that this place was going to collapse.
And that was exactly what happened when they broke the door. Because the door was holding the whole damn thing together.
I heard the beams giving out, so I grabbed the computer they had me working on, smashed the window next to me and jumped out with it under my arm. A few agents were there, and they pulled me away from the collapsing building, toward a black cruiser and shoved me—and the computer—into the back seat.
Watching the mess, I could see them pulling some of the other agents digging out the few men who had made it into the house.
I glanced down the road and—
My sister was sitting on Lia’s back, Andrej was standing over an unconscious Kyle and an agent next to a squirming, screaming Jarrett.
What the hell was going on?
I kept an eye on everything, and a moment later, the agent that had shoved me into the car reappeared and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“What—?”
“Everyone is fine,” he said. “We’re going to the office. We’ll debrief you there, and you can go home with your sister and boyfriend.”
“I don’t—” I stopped. “Did he call me that?”
He tossed a look back at me. “Who?”
“The other guy?”
“The one that knocked out Durant? Yeah, he did. You are, aren’t you?”
I leaned back. “I guess I am.”
The field office was a good twenty-five minutes away through some crappy traffic, and I was happy to sit in the back of the car and pick some of the dust out of my hair. I needed a shower, and to be disinfected.
The shack had been absolutely disgusting, and I’d hoped that someone had gotten one of the messages I’d tucked into emails and servers. I’d find out soon enough what had done it.
But those were three days I’d probably need a few months or years to get over. Jarrett and Kyle had basically had a gun on me the whole time. Lia took a shift once in a while, too. And all they had me doing was looking for more and more ways to make money, grow the money they’d stolen from me.
I didn’t think that I would ever find out where that all went. But here, they handed me a road map to find all of it. It hadn’t taken me very long to start moving and marking it in case I made it out of this in one piece.
With the guns on me, and a reputation that I was entirely too familiar with, I was pretty sure that after I had everything set up to keep the three of them rolling in the money, they were going to just erase me.
Maybe dump me in the Sound and sacrifice me to the newly returned J Pod killer whales. That would be about right.
But when I heard that agent pounding on the door, I just had to hope they didn’t want to kill me at that point.
Kyle had booked it, diving out a window on the other side of the shack. I didn’t know where Jarrett and Lia had gone earlier. But when that shack gave out, I just wound up laughing as I broke the window and left with all of the evidence.
The agent in charge of the operation walked in and smiled at me holding the desktop computer in the room where I had been waiting for an hour.
“Mister Seward. Well done. So very well done. I appreciate a man who can hide his tracks and give us the case.” He stuck his hand out. “Agent Biddle.”
“Quinn Seward,” I answered, shaking his hand.
“Is that the computer?”
“With all the evidence on it, yes sir.”
“Excellent.”
“Did all of your agents make it out of that collapse?”
“Yes, but there were a few injuries. I’ll make this fast, in fact, because I need to get to the hospital. One of my fresh agents got caught up in it and may have a broken leg.”
“Understood.” I put the computer on the desk. “That’s got everything. I have the username and password taped to the bottom, and I set all the software to password underscore software name.”
“Oh, our tech guys are going to love you.” He picked up a very thick folder.
“This is the file we have on Jarrett Merz, Lia Novak and Kyle Durant. This contains all the money they have ever defrauded anyone out of—including yours. It will be tied up for a year or two in litigation and trials, but it will all be returned to you at the end of that.”
I froze. “All of it.”
“Yessir, all of it. I’ll give you the paperwork for that claim when we get through all of the evidence on this.” He patted it fondly. “Let’s just get down the basics of what happened, when and where.”
“Who found me?”
“Taryn Hunt did. She found your message in her system, after your boyfriend called her to ask if she knew anything. She called us and set off the whole chain of events.” He sat down and pulled out a recorder.
“Please give me a run down of what happened to you to get you into the shack and into the hands of three of the most notorious fraudsters we’ve been tracking. ”
I walked him through everything that happened, from the date to the restaurant to the forced march to his car.
“He genuinely blindfolded me and forced me into the trunk. I couldn’t stop laughing.
He was so cartoonish about the whole thing.
Even though I know this was actually dangerous, all he needed was to twirl his moustache. ”
It wasn’t an exciting story, but it was important that I got him all the details I could. I was a prisoner, but they kept me fed and I could use the bathroom and watch television. There was a bed and a couch and shower. It was hostile without being in hospitable. So strange.
Once we got to the part where his agents were opening the door, he nodded and shut off the recorder.
“I need a lot more details from you about the fraud, but we also have to cover twelve years of history with you. For now, we have enough to hold all three of them, and we can build the case at a leisurely pace.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You have a sister and boyfriend out there waiting to see you.”
I sat back in the chair. “They’re still here?”
“Yup. They’re down in the cafeteria, drinking the coffee.”
I shook my head. “Neither of them will be able to sleep.”
“Are you going to be able to?”
“Nope.”
He handed me his business card. “I will call you, but if you think of anything that’s of vital importance, call me. Don’t wait, don’t want you to forget it.”
We said our goodbyes, and I headed to the elevator. The cafeteria was nearly empty when I walked out. There were two stations still open: coffee station and the hot grill. And sitting way too close to the coffee were Tara and Andrej.
Tara saw me first and launched out of her chair and ran for me. She crashed into me and wrapped her arms around me. “You’re okay!”
“I’m okay, sis. I’m okay. You knew that though.” I wrapped my arms around her too.
“But there’s nothing like actually seeing you and knowing you’re in one piece.”
“I’m okay. I’m in one piece.” She hugged me tight and then backed up. “I’m going to be working on this with the FBI for a long time, but the worst of it is over.”
Andrej walked up and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Hi.”
I moved so I was pressed against him. “Hi? That’s all you have for your boyfriend?”
“You’re not mad?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I was the one acting like a jerk.”
“But I was the one who wasn’t smart enough to realize that we needed to drop the agency link.”
“Let’s call it even?”
“You sure?”
“About what?”
“The boyfriend thing?”
Tara threw her hands up. “Just kiss!!”
“Your sister is wise,” Andrej said. “You should listen to her.”
I took her advice and kissed my boyfriend.