Thank you to my beta for helping me make this better.
As promised, here's your second chapter this week.
Chapter 18
"…drizzle is expected through the dinner hour, followed by freezing rain, finally turning to snow and two to three inches of accumulation by midnight. So folks, take extra care on your commute home tonight."
Shit, Charlie thought turning down the police scanner so he could hear the forecast.
This was the last thing he wanted to hear before is first sip of coffee. The all too bright and cheery for six am, weatherman touted his prediction with an annoyingly happy grin. The forecast wouldn't bode well for tonight's surveillance of the Cross building that housed Alistair Drake's law office.
Charlie had been staking out Drake's office for more than a month with little success until last night when his investment in surveillance equipment hit the proverbial jackpot.
"Alistair, it's Michael."
"Couldn't this have waited for the next meeting? We shouldn't be in direct contact."
"It's not something I want to wait to learn from our esteemed leader," the man named Michael remarked with an edge of sarcasm. "I want to know if the pressure is still on to go now."
"No, we stay as planned."
Charlie heard a sigh and an echo of papers being pushed around.
"It's more dangerous this way."
"I agree, but we've been overruled."
"I can keep up the rhetoric on my end."
"I wouldn't advise that," Alistair warned. "It will just put you on the outs. You don't want that with the role you plan to take in the near future. Keep your current role and do what you can to speed up the progress. That seems to be one of the few things that will move up the timeline."
"Are you suggesting there's a different option?"
"Not a favorable one. Uncontrolled and unscripted exposure would not be the best thing."
"But you said—"
"I know what I said," Alistair shouted, raising his voice for the first time. It was a brief peek beneath the carefully laid veneer of composure, making Charlie wonder what amount of pressure it might take to get Alistair to snap. "I don't do anything without multiple backup plans," Alistair continued, his voice more under control, "but that doesn't mean I want to use them."
Buoyed by new information to exploit and the possibilities of things yet to come, Charlie had started his car and eased out of his parking spot. His eyes returned to the Cross building once more as he slithered softly into the night.
"I'll be back tomorrow, you son of a bitch. That's a promise."
xxxXXXxxx
Charlie shook his head, tonight's forecast was about as welcome as a dip in the Ohio River in February. Unlike his previous visits, a few inches of snow overtop ice would make it impossible for him to pull away from the curb without scraping his windows first. That would put him in plain view of anyone on the street.
Avoiding the choice of either leaving in plenty of time to avoid Drake's departure and possibly missing another call from his conspirator or staying until after Drake left the building, and risk being caught, Charlie turned to the recent entries in his notebook. The man—Michael, had called only twice in the five weeks Charlie had been monitoring Alistair Drake. Both times the conversation had been clipped and guarded. Alistair let nothing of consequence slip, but it was obvious the two were working together.
Both men wanted to speed up a timeline but had been overruled by the leader of their group, citing concerns about exposure. Charlie had no idea what the timeline was but, given the secrecy and private lines, it was easy to conclude it had to do with Dwyer's murder.
Murder.
That's what Charlie was now calling it. Everything he'd found so far, suggested foul play. The hasty destruction of the bio-material, the disbanding of her team, the strange link between her cremation and that of the donated cells at Crowley Funeral home. What cinched it was Dwyer's fatal accident itself. Charlie had been able to track down both the police report and a copy of the insurance claim for Dwyer's silver Mustang.
The officer on scene reported no tire marks on the road, no attempt to break, decelerate or swerve. The woman had simply wrapped her car around a tree. That would have been consistent with a stroke, but Dwyer's granddaughter was in the car. If she'd seen her grandmother suffer some sort of an attack why wouldn't she have tried to grab the wheel? The notes from the officer's interview with Dr. Dwyer's granddaughter were of little help.
Accident victim reported no memory of the crash or any events prior to the night before. Victim suffered severe head trauma and speech was slurred and difficult.
Obviously the girl's condition had improved since the interview, as Charlie hadn't noticed any difficulty with speech the day they met. Now that he had the accident report, he wondered if she'd regained her memory, or was faking the memory loss out of a fear of retaliation. Unfortunately for Charlie, he hadn't had another opportunity to talk to Bella. Her room had been changed and his attempts to find her, through either direct or subversive means, proved unsuccessful thus far.
Bella Dwyer was an enigma. With her sharp wit and decisive retorts, the girl demonstrated every bit of her grandmother's backbone, yet barely seemed able to hold up her own head. Evidence of a long and debilitating illness showed in her skeletal like frame and pale white skin.
From the conversation in her hospital room, it was obvious the girl knew something about her grandmother's research, but what? Was Bella informed enough to put her at risk of being murdered like her grandmother, or was she simply a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Images flew past his mind's eye like the pages of a flipbook. The stills zoomed until they rested on the image of Bella's terrified face. It was the moment her physician walked into the room then announced he'd discuss her latest set of test results with her later.
The girl was plainly ill. A sudden realization felt like lead in the pit of Charlie's stomach. Was it was possible that Bella was the reason behind Isabella's research? Maybe Bella had hopes of becoming a test subject, if she lived long enough to get to a clinical trial. If that was the case, then Isabella Dwyer's efforts were far from being as altruistic as she made them appear.
If Charlie had been working on something that could save Chelsea's life, he'd run through hell to make it happen. Thinking of it in that light, Charlie would bet his life that Dwyer would do the same. Unfortunately, this hypothesis blew a hole in his theory that CGI wanted to get rid of Dwyer to speed up the project. Dwyer would want the project to progress as quickly as possible in order to have a chance at saving her granddaughter's life.
The maze of this case whirled around and around, but each time it brought him back to the girl.
She had to have seen something that would point him in the direction of the person who'd want to do her grandmother harm. Charlie was confidant he'd eventually get the number of her hospital room, but there was still the problem of her therapist/guard dog. Until he found a way to get Bella alone, or get to Varner or even the donor's attorney, Drake remained his best lead.
Charlie groaned in frustration, slamming his empty coffee cup down on the table. There was little doubt this case was becoming an obsession. The lengths he was going to for information weren't far from those he'd taken in his role as a field agent, and even he had to admit they were extreme for an employee of the FDA. He had no aspirations of climbing up the "druggie" ranks. There was but one goal in his mind, one thing that drove him. Taking back his job, his real job, and solving Dwyer's case was his ticket.
Shoving his empty cup in the sink, Charlie concluded the risk was worth the intel. Come hell or high water, he'd be in front of the Cross building tonight.
The snow wasn't coming down as hard as the weatherman had predicted, but it was enough to cover the windshield. Charlie sighed as he sipped his lukewarm coffee. His equipment had been at the ready for hours and his hand was starting to cramp.
The MP229 Parabolic Mic resting between Charlie's legs was powerful enough to transfer phone conversations so long as Drake remained comfortably seated at his desk and away from the steel that would break the signal. Although Charlie had no difficulty using his out-of-date credentials to purchase the unit, he longed for the sophisticated wiretaps or bugs he'd had access to in his former life. Unfortunately, neither were at his disposal, nor within his power to obtain at present.
Charlie set down the receiving dish and flexed his fingers, trying to let the movement ease some of the stiffness. After popping a few knuckles, he leaned to his left and plucked his leather notebook from the floor beside him. The aged leather winked under the glare from the streetlight, reminding him of the shine on the first book he'd ever owned. Renee had surprised him with it the morning of his first day at the federal building in Cincinnati. At the time they hadn't had much money, so he knew how she must have scrimped and saved from the grocery money to buy it.
That book had her handwriting on the front inside page. She told him she loved him and was proud of him. Charlie opened the book in his hand hearing the leather creek against the cold. The front page was blank save for the mark he put there, S-N-D. It was the same three letters he'd engraved on every notebook he'd owned since then. The letters signified a Latin phrase, Sit Nomine Digna.
"May I be worthy," he breathed.
He'd asked to be made worthy of her and that everything he said or did to be worthy of her love. In the year since Renee had filed for divorce, he thought many times about scratching out those three letters.
The itch to wipe them from his mind rankled him like a hundred centipedes crawling up his arm. They didn't sting or bite, but the tiny tickles of their imagined steps raised the hair on his arm, reviving memories of the life they once shared. In their wake, Charlie bore the charred, hollow feeling of being the one she'd left behind.
A flicker in the light from Alistair's window had Charlie tossing the book aside and scrambling to get the receiver pointed in the direction of the window.
Shit.
A crackling buzz hit Charlie's ears as feedback echoed blasting away any prayer of recording the words being spoken. His frantic fingers danced along the buttons, until he finally depressed the correct one to begin the recording.
"Any improvement?"
"Minimal. Fortunately, there've been no further setbacks, either."
It was him, the man Alistair called Michael. Charlie's pulse rate skyrocketed as the voice echoed in his hears.
"I've got you, you son of a bitch," Charlie murmured.
There was a silence for a moment, then Alistair's voice replied.
"Better than the alternative, which wouldn't do anyone any good."
"I had hoped to release her, but it seems too risky at the moment,"
Release her?
At the sound of those words, Charlie could feel his heart shudder to a halt. The excitement gripping him a moment earlier turned the coffee in his stomach into shards of glass.
Had these bastards taken a girl and held her against her will?
Before Charlie could brace himself against the onslaught, a painful wrenching of his gut had him pressing his forehead against the ice-cold window. His breaths came loud and fast as he panted, grasping for something, anything that would help him get control. He needed air; he needed to breathe.
Suddenly the interior of his vehicle felt like it was closing in on him…closing and inescapable. Just like that bag. That damn bag. The image of Bree's face streamed unbidden through his memory and it was all Charlie could do to throw open the door and stagger a few steps before crashing to his knees. The wet snow seeped through his pants quickly soaking them as he purged his stomach but not his mind—never his mind. His arms were shaking against the burden of his weight, barely able to keep him from falling head first into the misery of the last year of his life.
Charlie spit, forcing the remnants of his stomach from his mouth. He scooped up a handful of snow, trying to purge the taste. His nose stung and his head throbbed, while horrific images burned his eyes like flashbulbs. How long had he been out here? The numbness in his hands made it certain he'd been kneeling in the snow for some time.
"You need a cab?"
Charlie could feel the eyes of the man behind him boring into him with reproach. The muffled voice behind a scarf-wrapped face didn't do much to hide the disgust in the man's tone. Charlie knew he had to get up before the man summoned the cops.
He forced himself to turn and look up from his misery toward his accuser and would-be savior. The man stood in a dark wool coat, briefcase in one hand, cell phone in the other. To anyone on the street he held the appearance of a well-to-do businessman, to Charlie, it was he devil incarnate: Alistair Drake.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.
-FirstBlush