Hey, writer's block is gone. For now. And so the story shall continue...
----
With a soft knock on the door, Megan stirred from her place in her chair, quickly checking that Charlee was sound asleep- to which she was- before going to answer the door. "One bottle of Children's Tylenol and some Sprite." He held up a brown plastic bag and had a package of sprite in his other hand.
"Thank you. I wouldn't have asked, but with Charlee asleep."
"Speak no further, my darling." He smirked, and she smiled back, kissing him on the lips.
"You seem to have your hands full. Can I take anything?" She held out her hand after closing the door and locking it.
"You can." He bowed his head slightly, going over the two objects in hand, then proceeded to hand her the light brown plastic bag. "Now I have use of both of my hands." The occurring thought came a few seconds later. "Well almost." He adjusted the sprite in his hands.
Megan laughed quietly, "Come on." She latched his arm around his and they made their way into the kitchen, closing the sliding door behind them.
---
"Ever get the feeling when you're not wanted?" With sunglasses on, the two stuck out like soar thumbs, even wearing normal clothes to fit in.
David smiled, gazing at him with a humorous look as they walked to another house on the block. "All the time." They both smiled, walking up an old crumbling porch. "Man, this place looks like a dump." He kicked at some of the junk that happened to be blocking their way to the door.
Colby shrugged and knocked hard on the door, just above where the white paint on the door was peeling off. They waited a moment, and at first it seemed like no one was at home, but a rattling was heard from the inside. Colby looked up to the porch ceiling, drawing his gun. "He's going out the back."
"Well that was quick." David drew his own gun and they both got off the porch. David started leaning towards the left.
Colby peered toward the right side of the house. "Looks like there's another latch on this side." And with that were both off in the other direction, in hopes of cutting the person off before they escaped.
A bullet whizzed past David's right ear, bouncing into the nearby fence that he had just come through. In turn, David shot one into the fence between the guy's tattooed arm, but that didn't stop him from just about hopping the back fence.
"Next time, I guarantee that I'm not going to miss." David called out warning as the guy struggled to get over the fence, but Colby aimed his gun with a surprise tactic so the cold steel could be felt on the back of the suspect's head, and the guy climbed down and froze.
"And I guarantee that this one is going into your head." Colby promised him "If you don't drop that gun." It was true that he wasn't going to give this guy a second thought. If he thought about turning around and firing the gun in his hand, one more time, before he knew it, he would be dead and bleeding on the ground with at least two bullets in his head.
---
"Eppes." Don greeted, listening carefully to the person on the other line, grabbing his keys off his desk, and heading towards the elevator. "Thanks, I'll be right there." He pushed his phone closed, pushing it into his pocket as he entered the elevator.
It had been the phone call that the team had been waiting for. Suisan Carlos was awake enough to be questioned. Maybe she would be able to give some insight to her husband's whereabouts, or even if she could give a time frame or a new insight to the case. Not only that but Danny Carlos was there was there with her, and had been since last night.
The more they knew, the faster they could get this case solved and get a little girl back to her mother. At first it had seemed right, but any case that involved a child, was always hard. Especially this one. They had all gotten attached, no matter how hard they had tried not to.
Charlee was something different. She was smart, loveable, innocent, and funny. She would fit in just perfectly. But if only she knew completely that she had a real mother, a father, and siblings that never got to know her. No, that bond had been taken away from them.
And he would be one that would try to get it back for her. It wouldn't be easy, but he knew that he had to try.
---
Putting the sprite on the counter, Larry inquired. "I take things haven't been going so well on the case."
Megan took out the Tylenol out of the plastic bag. "Yes and no. There are so many twists and turns in this case as well…"
"Ah, Charlie told me about what happened with Charlee. Have you told her that her mother is out there somewhere?"
"" You know, I've thought about it numerous times, in various situations, but it always ends up that I can't bear to disappoint her if her mother ends up having some involvement in this case…" Opening up the cupboard, she stopped. "Water?"
"Please." Grabbing three glasses, she brought out a pitcher of water from the fridge and filled the glasses while continuing in a hushed whisper, as not to disturb the young girl from resting.
"…The mother that she thought she knew ended up being killed and abused, and could have abused her for all we know in the past. Her so called father, killed. Her grandpa sold her for greed, and then shot her grandmother."
"It seems that I've heard that sometimes we don't ask for some things in life, but we still get it." Larry mused, taking the glass from her as she brought it over. "Thank you."
Megan smiled, knowing that should had comforted her—but it didn't. "Yeah, well you try telling that to a little girl so innocent that it breaks her heart." Taking a short sip, she took a look at the direction on the Tylenol bottle. In a way she wished that she could take some Tylenol for her pounding head.
She had been feeling increasingly more and more fatigued; falling asleep either on the couch or the chair the last few days, since Charlee felt more comfortable on the couch for some reason or another; especially when she was close by.
---
"You going to start talking, or do we have to do it for you?" David asked, dangerously irritated. "Do you or do you not know anything about Anthony or Andrea Lucas?"
"I use to see them driving down the streets some time, or out walking with their daughter, but that's about it."
""Anything about them seem unusual when you saw them last?" A pen ready in his hand, David kept normal eye contact with the suspect and Colby, while scoping out the house as well.
"Not really. Other than the fact that their walks were getting less and less frequent, to the point that they stopped coming around."
"When was that?" Colby asked point blank as he looked around the house, stopping at the fridge. He held up a picture of the guy, Charlee, and Andrea."
He stuttered momentarily. "That was at a fair. We all went."
"Who do you mean by we? You, Andrea, Charlee?" David pressed, eyes focused on the subject and the picture at hand.
"Yeah, and her husband Anthony. I thought at first that they acted like the perfect family, but Andrea used to come around more and more often and confided in me once that her husband was abusing her, and she was afraid that he was going to do that to Charlee if they didn't get out of there."
""So what exactly your involvement with her?" David questioned again.
"We were just friends." He offered looking more at the picture hesitantly, shaking his head like he had changed his mind. "And I helped her get out of there. Well first I told her that if he had been doing those things that she said he was doing, that both she and Charlee needed to go to the police and report what he had done, but she was too afraid to go."
"Did Andrea ever mention that he was threatening her?"
"No. She didn't say any more than she had too, but after awhile it was obvious how bad he was getting. After I got them out, he threatened to send somebody after me, or come after me by himself."
"So that's why you ran when we came." Colby offered a point of understanding, putting the other picture back on the fridge, and picked up another one.
"Not exactly. I heard that both he and Andrea had been murdered, but I still thought that he would do well on his word and send somebody else after me. I've been on edge ever since I heard of their deaths. Where's Charlee going to go now that her parents are dead?"
""With her family, Mr…"
"Oh…Peterson. But you can call me George."
Okay, George. David agreed, pausing. "She's going back to be with her family, where she belongs."
"Oh." His expression fell a little, and then lifted with a half smile. "I will never forget the look on her expression every time she came walking down that sidewalk. "She use to laugh and light up, but I saw that it got increasingly harder for her to, from the beginning to the end when I saw them last."
David nodded to Colby that they had gotten everything that they needed, and that they should get back to the office. "We appreciate your cooperation." Colby told him, peeling off his gloves."But one more question. Have you ever seen a white van driving around here?"
George squinted, thinking. "Yeah. Yeah, I have. I was coming home from work and saw two men at my door. I didn't pull in because I didn't really recognize them. I ended up driving down the block."
"And they didn't see you at any time that you were driving past?" David asked frankly, scribbling something down on the notepad, flipping the page and continued to write.
"They looked back, but I hoped that they thought that I was just another part of the neighborhood, just driving by."
Colby stepped forward."Do you think you got a good enough look at them that you might be able to recognize them in a line up?"
"I…I think so. What did they do?"
"We're not sure yet." Colby presented, and David stepped forward also.
"But we're starting to get a pretty good picture."
---
Room 104.
Suisan Carlos lay in her bed, looking like she was fast asleep. She was pale and slightly beaten from her surgery earlier. Her son Danny was sitting beside her with his head in his hands, leaning slightly as he sat in a chair beside her bed.
Don knocked softly on the door and Danny stirred from his seat and sat up. "I'm Agent Eppes. Mind if I ask you a few questions."
"Sure."
"Has your father ever done anything like this before?" Don asked, stepping into the room and pulling out his notebook.
"No. He's never done anything like this. But after Nadia disappeared, I don't think he ever acted the same. He was just acting so strange. Became increasingly irritated, and spent more and more time away from home. Thought that he was just reacting to Nadia's disappearance, but after I found out that he had shot my mom like a ruthless criminal, I started to put the pieces together. And apparently, so had she."
TBC...