Anti-Hero | Tim Bradford

Chapter One - Missing

Tim Bradford was known to be many things. Hardass, stickler for rules, vengeful, angry. Words like these had been tossed around tirelessly to describe him. They would say how unfortunate it was for his rookie to be stuck with a Training Officer like him. If anyone met him today, they would think he was born stuck in his ways, a man destined to be encompassed by the negatives in life.

But, contrary to popular belief, he wasn't always like he is now. In what seemed like many lifetimes ago, Tim used to be full of joy and light. He used to joke around with his coworkers and enjoy the things life had to offer. That life was long gone, all of it a forgotten memory; all of it except the golden wedding band that hung on a chain around his neck.

Despite it going against the uniform policy, Tim never took the chain off. He tucked it under his uniform, keeping it out of sight. Sargent Grey had caught him with it once and tried to reprimand him but stopped himself when he saw the ring hanging there. He knew what it meant, and what it meant that Tim was still wearing it. It meant that he hadn't given up.

Morgan Bradford had disappeared on the job nearly two years ago. Despite the presumption not being legally binding, everyone said she had probably been taken out by the cartel she had been hunting. She had made quite a name for herself within the LAPD for her ability to disband gangs and negotiate for them to stop their business, or at least reduce it.

Nobody was surprised when she disappeared, nor her partner when they vanished at the same time. They had tried with all of their might to track them down, SWAT teams busted multiple suspected locations but to no avail. It was as if they had disappeared off of the face of the Earth. Tim had tried to lead as many searches as he could but Grey had intervened, saying that he was too close to the matter to think rationally. He was right, Tim was on a rampage, he would not stop until he found her, no matter what, or who, got in his way.

He never gave up, even when every intuition and gut feeling he had told him to stop, he only pushed harder. He dedicated every free moment he had to following up leads. The detectives on her case were useless, he couldn't trust them, he couldn't trust anyone bar himself.

But life went on, he woke up every day, he went to work, he went home. Little changed, he got a new rookie, Lucy Chen, and he continued on the way he always had: one day at a time. Lucy pried the information of Morgan's case out of him on the second anniversary of her disappearance. Tim had finally snapped, hopelessness coursed through his veins as he knew he was no way closer to finding her than he was two years ago. What he hadn't realised though, was that having a rookie meant that he had a fresh pair of eyes on a case, eyes that could see details that he had missed.

Lucy had taken what Tim had told her about Morgan to heart. She knew how hard it could be to be without the one you loved, she knew how much this must have hurt him. She had requested to see the case files, it took an exorbitant amount of favours and promises but she managed to get copies of the records.

She could see why Tim seemed resigned to the fact that he would never get his wife back. All of the leads took her nowhere. She would have to explain to him why she had taken the files out, why she had gone behind his back, and it would all be for naught. Gathering up the files, Lucy began to head back to the records room when a post-it note slipped out of the file. She crouched, huddling the rest of the paperwork to her side in hopes that it wouldn't fly everywhere, and picked up the paper. Lucy hadn't noticed it the first time around. On it was an address on the outskirts of LA, she had seen the area a few times when BOLOs had gone out.

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"Just hear me out, please!" Chen begged, rushing along behind Tim as she tried to keep up with rapidly increasing pace as they headed towards their shop.

"About what?" Tim stopped and turned around to face his boot. "How you went behind my back to go through that file? About how you went to that address? Alone might I add. About how you endanger your life, and potentially hers too? Is that it, or am I forgetting something?"

Tim was right, he had every right to be mad; she had done all of that stuff. But she couldn't give up, not now, not now that she knew that-

"Well?" He snapped.

Lucy stood her ground. "Her partner was there."

A beat passed as she watched Tim pale.

"What?"

"Her partner was there."

"What about- was she...?"

Lucy took a step forward, reaching her hand to her Training Officer's arm, trying to bring some form of comfort but he recoiled. "No, but he said that they had spoken. The last he heard, she was near the Mexico/Arizona border. He said that he would try to speak to her."

Tim felt like the world had come to a stop. All this time, all this time and she was so close by. He could have been there for her, he could have stopped all of this hardship and hurt. He could have brought her home, back to LA, where she belonged. He could have brought her back to him. Questions spun through his mind. Was she okay? Was she safe? Did she know that she was declared missing? Had she had any contact with anyone else? Did she know that he had waited all this time for her? Did she wait for him? Tim tried to ground himself. She was alive, and that would be enough for now. She was alive and he could live that.