Chapter Two
"Hello …..Lucas"
The man had said those two simple words and his world as he knew it tumbled down. Everything he had pushed away and given up to keep him safe now came screaming back and threatened his entire existence.
Tim felt his heart pound and he blinked back the sweat that was already trickling down his skin. He shouldn't have blinked. But after all these years he had. It was a test, he knew that. And he had passed. They knew he was Lucas Bartlett. The man had walked away with a smirk but Tim knew it was too late. They knew who he was and they would be coming for him.
It had always been there in the back of his mind. The worry that someday, someone would find him. But as the years turned into decades he had hoped that he had a chance.
Gibbs returned from a bathroom and gave him a look.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah fine. Let's go"
Tim wanted to get out of the diner, away from the table where the man had leaned over him, his jacket falling open to reveal the gun strapped to his hip. Away from where the man had smiled at Gibbs plate and then gathered up the dirty knife and fork and handed it to the waitress who came up to them.
"Let's get this out of your way shall I? Wouldn't want any HARM to come to it"
Tim pushed open the door quickly and stepped into the sun. Everything seemed different as if the bright sun had gone behind a cloud. Everything had changed.
He had to run and now. His mind started making plans. Money. He always carried some cash on him for emergencies but would it be enough? Washington. He needed to get back to Washington. He had his safe deposit box in case anything went wrong but he was in Los Angeles.
Why couldn't they have just left him alone? His family had done the right thing and they had paid for it with their lives. He didn't know anything about the original case. He had been too young. All he remembered was the sound of his mother crying as she stood in front of him and Troy. There was desperation in it he had never heard before and he knew she was terrified. She was clutching them and pushing them behind her at the same time.
"Please! Please no!" she had begged. "Please let them go. They don't know anything. They are just little boys"
His brother's frightened breathing was loud by his ear and he was holding onto his arm so tight it was hurting. He leaned around his mother and caught snatches of his father being held back and painfully beaten by three men as he tried to reach them from the other side of the cabin. He had tears streaming down his face and he was screaming his mothers name through a mouth filled with blood.
"Sandra!! Sandra I'm sorry!"
He had put his hands over his ears as the tallest man with the granite colored eyes turned and smiled at him, pulling his gun out of his holster…..
"McGee? You coming? The cars over here"
Gibbs was giving him one of his looks and all he wanted to do was run. Run far away from the screaming inside his head. The screaming that still woke him from his sleep at night bathed in sweat.
Gibbs shook his head slightly and walked around the corner leaving Tim standing alone on the LA sidewalk.
Suddenly he knew what he had to do. It shocked him but it was the only way. They were going to keep coming and coming and leaving him no rest until he was dead and they would take down anyone around him who stood in there way.
His own life was worth risking. He was a dead man walking anyway now. But he wouldn't sacrifice someone else for a decision made decades ago.
The look of terror and anguish on his fathers face when the man yanked Troy out from behind his mother's skirts and held the gun to his head. The man had grinned at his father.
"I warned you Terrance."
"Momma?" Troy asked frightened sounding the way he did when he had just woken from a nightmare. It was the last thing he said before his head was violently pushed to the side from the impact of the bullet and his body collapsed to the ground with a sickening thud.
Then the grief filled screaming started and his father broke free of his guards with rage and desperation in his eyes. The man smiled and pointed a gun at his Mother.
"No!"
Then the world had gone black.
Tim blinked back tears. That was over now. He wasn't that little boy anymore and if they were going to come and get him then fine. He would fight them all the way down into the hell he had been living since that day they killed his family in cold blood and left him to die slowly.
But first he needed to make sure he cut all ties with those who cared about him.
He walked around the corner and unholstered his side arm.
Gibbs turned and his smile faded at the look on Tim's face
"McGee?"
Tim took careful aim and was grateful his arm didn't shake and he had recently spent that extra time down at the range getting re qualified. He needed this shot to be perfect.
Gibbs pain filled eyes would haunt him the way his brothers did as Gibbs clutched painfully at the car door and slid slowly to the ground, the blood already gushing out of his chest and across his shirt.
Tim turned, blinking back tears and quickly hurried away pulling out his phone.
"I'm sorry Gibbs" he whispered hoping against hope that one day he would forgive him.
"Yes? I would like to report an officer down at the corner of Bradbury and Soames. Single gunshot wound…….