by J. L. Drake
“Are you gonna do it then?” Sonya asked. “Are you gonna help us?”
Roger sighed and swallowed the bite he had in his mouth. “Yeah, I guess I will. I mean, if you can do it after what happened to your brother, I’m sure I can handle being haunted by the maybes of my own child that I’ve never even seen.”
Sonya dropped her crust on her plate and smiled. “Okay. I’m glad. It would feel weird working without you.” She yawned. “I need to get some sleep but I don’t want to have that dream again.”
“If it will make you feel better I can sleep on the couch and wake you if I hear you screaming or anything,” Roger said, standing and clearing their plates from the table.
“You don’t have to do that,” Sonya said. “I’m sure you’d rather be at home in your own bed.”
Roger smiled, throwing the plates and box away. “I don’t mind. I don’t think either of us should be alone tonight.”
“Well, if it will help you too…” Sonya said, and yawned again. “I won’t argue.” She stood. “I’ll get you a pillow and some blankets.”
Roger nodded and Sonya headed out of the kitchen and down the hall to get him what he would need.
Less than a half hour later, they were both lying awake in their sleeping places thinking about their pasts and how they would affect their future until they fell asleep.
Chapter 11
Agent McCoy’s boss had been impressed with what he’d found; they now had possible cases from the last nine months. This meant the case wasn’t dead. Whoever was kidnapping people was still active and they could be anywhere. The last known case from Cleveland was a few months old. There was a possibility they were still in Ohio, but it was also possible they’d moved on.
Agent Harmon, while pleased with the progress on the case, needed more convincing before he’d give David the go ahead to travel and investigate…he point-blank told David as much.
So, to get what his boss required, and to be thorough and make sure he knew he was in the right area of the country, David started to do his refined searches on cases for all major cities on the east coast. There were many and he knew he couldn’t get them done in one day, but he tried anyway. It was after midnight before he finally called it quits and headed home.
As always, when he was awake late at night, he had the urge to go to a bar to see if whoever had taken his brother would try to take him too. He’d been going to all kinds of bars in a one hundred mile radius at various times hoping for this scenario. But now he knew the kidnappers were on the other side of the country—he had proof.
He was filled with nervous excitement and had picked up his cell phone to call his mother multiple times, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He had the hope that he would find out what had happened to Daniel, but he didn’t want to tell her too soon in case he was wrong.
The more he read the case files, the more he was sure there was a team of kidnappers and not just one person. Everything moved too fast; too many people were taken in a short span of time. Even with the amassment of new cases, there were still no bodies. No single person could take care of that many bodies in the timespans. The lack of bodies puzzled him…there was no way that many people were going missing and no parts of the victims were turning up. He wondered if they were involved in human trafficking—he couldn’t think of anything else that might make sense. If that was the case, then there was a possibility his brother might still be alive. But if Daniel was still alive, he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to make contact with him or their mother. It could be possible that Daniel was in a different country and had no way to contact anyone, but considering the ages of the victims, it wasn’t logical to think that no one would have gotten in contact in some way with their family at some point. Usually human traffickers targeted young, immature victims that would be easy to control through fear. He couldn’t see Daniel being in that kind of situation without putting up a fight. The more he thought about the possibilities and factors of such a situation the more things didn’t make sense, but until he thought up a different theory that’s what he was stuck with.
At this point in the investigation he was completely sure a woman picked up the victims from bars. No questions there, since that was what had happened to his brother. He also knew she took multiple people in a couple weeks…according to the files he’d had and the new ones he’d found. This made him at least eighty percent sure she wasn’t working alone—he didn’t see how she could be.
If what he knew to be true and what he suspected to be true were correct, he was looking for a team of highly trained professionals who moved a lot to keep their illegal activities from being noticed. He hoped this would make them easier to find once he’d done a complete search on all the cities on the east coast.
Just to make his life easier, he’d put an active alert in the system for any cases that matched the cases he’d been looking for. This would let him know if a missing person was reported with the same profile. He’d done so right after he’d talked to Agent Harmon about the files he’d found in Cleveland. It was made clear to him that he needed to track down the team he thought existed before he would be allowed to pursue the case full time like he wanted.
Everything was riding on his research being correct, on his theories being correct. He knew he was a good agent and he knew the passion behind his search for his brother could cause him to make mistakes. He had to be careful. He had to weave all the threads into a nice little package for his boss so he wouldn’t let Daniel down…so he wouldn’t let their mother down once again. So he wouldn’t let himself down. He owed it to everyone, including himself, to get this one right and to heal the wounds in his family that had been left open to bleed for far too long.
Chapter 12
The following morning Jack and Roger sat comfortably in the team’s van, parked by the curb on the opposite side of the street, three houses down from Bill’s former home. They watched the house, waiting for the dead man’s family to come out. The predawn hour didn’t provide much light, but they’d wanted to arrive before anyone was awake so they could chart the family’s routine.
“Are ya gonna tell me why I had to pick ya up at Sonya’s?” Jack asked, glancing sideways at Roger. “Ya fuckin’ her?”
Roger clenched his jaw and said nothing—Jack’s coarse, assuming rudeness was getting on his nerves.
Jack sighed. “Fine, don’t tell me.”
“Light’s on,” Roger said, nodding toward the house and writing in a notebook.
“The time is exactly 5:03 AM,” Jack said, looking at his watch. “That’s probably the mom, considering it’s too early for the kids to be getting ready for school.” He turned his head slightly and looked at Roger, who was again watching the house. “So, is she good in bed?”
Roger’s head spun in Jack’s direction and he stared at him for a long moment.
“As if it’s any of your business,” he snarled. “I’ve never had sex with Sonya, and I don’t ever plan to. I slept on her couch.”
“Whatever ya say, man,” Jack retorted.
Roger opened his mouth to set Jack straight once and for all, when the door of the house opened and a woman in a robe stepped out to retrieve the newspaper from the stone steps leading to the front door.
He quickly turned his attention back to the task at hand, jotting down the action in his notebook.
“Time?” he snapped.
“Uh, 5:09 AM,” Jack said, glancing at his watch again. “Couch, huh? She shut ya down…maybe threaten to stab ya in the balls or somethin’?”
“For fuck’s sake!” Roger screamed. “I’m not interested in Sonya. Besides, she and…” He stopped short and shook his head.
Jack looked at him and raised an eyebrow in question. “She and…what?”
“Nothing,” Roger barked. “Just leave it alone.”
“Fine,” Jack mumbled, and wiggled around in the driver’s seat of the van, trying to get more comfortable. “What do ya want to talk about the
n?”
“Nothing,” Roger said.
“Fine,” Jack mumbled again.
They sat quietly for a few minutes before Jack broke the silence.
“So, are ya gonna help with this one or sit it out?” he asked.
“I’m going to help,” Roger said, watching the neighborhood come to life.
“What changed your mind?” Jack asked. “Ya seemed pretty against it yesterday.”
Roger shrugged.
“Did Sonya convince ya to do it?” Jack asked. “She had ya chained up in her basement all night, didn’t she? Threatenin’ to torture ya ‘til ya agreed?”
Roger laughed, nearly doubling over in the passenger’s seat with mirth. “No. Damn, you need get your mind on another subject.”
Jack shook his head. “Why did ya change your mind then?”
“Let’s just say that I’m seeing things beyond my own concerns,” Roger said, and sighed. “The reasons to do it are greater than the reasons not to.”
Jack turned and stared at Roger’s profile for a few moments, wondering what was really going on. The group of people he was working with were a tight-knit, confusing group of people; it didn’t help that they’d been working together for years and were as close to each other as family members. He felt like an interloper at times, unsure of what was going on, because the surface actions didn’t always show what was truly going on between them. The secrets around Sonya disturbed him the most; it seemed like Roger and Jennings did nothing but indulge her every whim, and he didn’t understand why they catered to the sadistic bitch. After all, neither man seemed the slightest bit scared of her.
Sighing heavily and shaking his head, he turned his attention back to the house they were watching, and to the comings and goings of the people all around them.
They watched the residence with persistent concentration, making note of when each light turned on, and when the family left the house for school. They all piled into a sedan and the mother drove the three children to school and returned home; the two girls—who seemed to be fraternal twins—went to a middle school, and the boy an elementary school.
Roger kept track of everything, writing down the names of the schools, the exact times the children were dropped off, and the street names along the route they took to each. He didn’t know what the plan was going to be, so he wanted to make sure he had all the information Jennings might want.
“How long do we have to do this?” Jack asked, wiggling in his seat again. “I’m gettin’ tired of sittin’.”
“Not sure,” Roger said. “We usually don’t do stake outs. I’ll call Jennings and see if he wants us to get a full twenty-four hours.”
“What the hell?” Jack exclaimed as Roger extracted his cell phone from his pocket. He paused before dialing, looking at Jack quizzically. “I gotta take a dump, and I’m hungry.”
Roger laughed. “If you need some down time, I can do this alone for a while, and then you can come back and give me a break. But let’s find out if we need to stay a full twenty-four hours first.”
Jack grunted and nodded while Roger dialed Jennings’ number.
“No answer,” Roger said a few moments later as he ended the call. “Look, if you want a break, I think it’s safe for us to leave for a few minutes. You can take me to Sonya’s and drop me off so I can get my truck, or we’ll go to your place and I’ll take the van and come back.”
“We’ll go to my place and ya can have the van,” Jack said, shifting in his seat again—leaning forward and turning the key in the ignition; the van motor came to life.
Just as he was ready to pull out into the street, the woman—the late Bill’s wife—came out of the house and climbed into her car.
“Shit!” he exclaimed. “How am I supposed to take a dump with that damn woman interruptin’?”
Roger chuckled and shook his head. “I guess you’ll have to hold it a little longer…unless, of course, she goes somewhere close to your house.”
“I can hope,” Jack muttered, pulling out of the curbside parking space they’d been using for hours.
Jack’s hopes of returning home were smashed when the woman headed in the opposite direction than where he lived.
“Bitch!” he barked, and continued to follow her car.
“It’s not her fault…she doesn’t know we’re watching her,” Roger said, amused by the whole situation.
“Don’t ya have to go to the bathroom?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Roger said, “but apparently not as badly as you. Let’s hope she stops somewhere we can both use the restroom.”
Luckily for them both, the woman stopped at a grocery store.
“Oh, thank God!” Jack exclaimed, practically jumping out of the van and rushing into the store—Roger followed close behind. “Food and a bathroom.”
Roger laughed.
Upon entering the store, Roger was pleased to see that the woman had gotten a cart and was heading off down an aisle with a long list; her shopping would give them the time they needed.
The men quickly found the bathroom and relieved themselves. When they came out, they separated and browsed through various aisles, keeping an eye on the woman, but making sure to steer clear of her. They also made sure to check out before she was done, so she wouldn’t take more than a passing notice of them. They were waiting in the van when she came out twenty minutes later.
“Still want to go home?” Roger asked as they followed the sedan out of the parking lot.
“Nope,” Jack mumbled around a bite of candy bar. “I’m good now.”
Roger laughed. “Okay, I’ll try calling Jennings again anyway.”
Jack nodded, concentrating on traffic as he shoved the rest of his snack into his mouth and threw the empty wrapper behind his seat.
Roger glared at Jack, but said nothing as he pulled out his phone to call Jennings—he answered on the second ring.
“Hey, did you want us to watch the house for a full twenty-four hours?” Roger asked, getting right to the point.
“Just until eight,” Jennings said. “We’ll meet at eight-thirty to go over the info you collect.”
“All right—we’ll see you then.” He hung up.
“We don’t need to watch for a full twenty-four hours, just until eight PM.”
“Why eight?” Jack asked, checking his blind spot and changing lanes to keep up with the woman in the traffic.
“Because we’re having a meeting at eight-thirty.”
“That makes sense.”
“I’ll text Sonya and let her know—I think she’s still at work,” Roger said, focusing his attention on his phone. They were very careful when they sent texts about meetings and business, keeping them as brief and vague as possible.
They followed the woman while she ran a few more errands, and back to her house.
“She doesn’t seem to be grievin’ all that much,” Jack said. “Ya’d think she’d be more upset that her husband is gone.”
Roger laughed. “Maybe she doesn’t know yet. I mean, if he traveled for work on a regular basis, she might not know there’s anything wrong yet. You just think she should be upset because you know her husband’s dead.”
“True,” Jack said thoughtfully. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I wonder if we can get this done without them ever knowing,” Roger said. “That would save the family some trauma.”
“I don’t really care as long as I’m makin’ money,” Jack said.
“I’m well aware of that fact,” Roger said, and yawned. “I’m going to try to take a nap—wake me if you get tired or if something else happens.”
“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” Jack teased.
Roger paused as he reached for the handle to recline his seat and looked at Jack.
“Don’t even start that bullshit again,” he snarled.
Jack put his hands up in supplication. “Sorry. Have a nice nap. Geez.”
Roger laid back, closed his eyes, and soon drifted off to
sleep.
Jack watched the house for hours, waking Roger when the woman left to pick the kids up from school. After they returned home, nothing eventful happened, and soon it was time to head to the building for the meeting.
***
Agent McCoy was back at work bright and early the next morning. He’d barely slept; his mind had been too busy trying to process everything he’d learned and the possibilities of what he didn’t know. Despite his lack of rest, he was energized. He handled his current caseload at the bureau while he continued to do research.
Toward the afternoon, he found more case files that matched his search specs in Nashville, Tennessee. And they were more recent. The most recent one was a month old.
In a mad fit of excitement, he rushed to Agent Harmon’s office to give him the news and nearly collided with him as he came out the door on his way home for the day.
“Sorry,” Agent McCoy said, “I just found case files that match the other missing person cases I have.”
Agent Harmon sighed and asked, “Where?”
“Nashville, Tennessee and they’re only a month old!”
Harmon’s annoyance at being held up when he wanted to leave evaporated. “Really? That’s recent. How are your other cases going?”
McCoy frowned. “My other cases?”
“Yes, your other cases,” Agent Harmon said, folding his arms and waiting for an answer. “How are your other cases going?”
“You said if I found more compelling evidence you would let me investigate it full time, so why are you asking me about my other cases? Are you going back on your word?”
Agent Harmon stared at McCoy for a couple moments before his lips curled into a smile and he unfolded his arms.
“I’m not going back on my word,” he said, putting a hand on McCoy’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I need to know how your other cases are going so I know how to reassign them while you go to Tennessee and check out this fresh lead.”
“Oh,” Agent McCoy said, and the muscles of his body relaxed as a half-smile spread across his face.