Anti-Hero | Tim Bradford

Chapter Four - Discovering

Tim could feel the blood pounding through his veins, the sound reverberated through him. Each pump seemed to get louder and louder. Each thud was felt in his chest. He looked down only to find his hands were shaking beyond his control. If he hadn't drawn his attention away from his heartbeat, he wouldn't have noticed the tremors, or the people rushing around him as he stayed frozen to his spot.

Harper and West were getting equipment. Nolan and Chen were to one side, discussing something that Tim couldn't hear. Grey and the Captain whose name Bradford hadn't bothered to learn were to the other side of the room, silently watching the rest of the station prepare to go into the unknown.

The files that had been given out in the briefing yesterday had instructed each team on what their assignment was. Harper would be going with Nolan to check out the safehouse that was assigned to Morgan's operation to see if there was anything that could hint to her current location. Lopez was to head back to interrogation to attempt to get Williamson to give up any more information. Chen was staying behind with him to review everything from the beginning.

"Hey," Chen said, bringing Tim's mind back to him, "Grey is waiting for us in the conference room. Are you ready?"

"Yeah, lead the way."

-----

"So, from the beginning, Detective Bradford started her undercover operation two years ago on the 5th of May. She last checked in with us on the 17th of May, and was declared legally M.I.A on the 23rd of May." Sargent Grey said, sticking a post-it note to the left side of the board at the top of the room. He continued sticking post-its as he spoke. "The initial investigation turned up little but her gun was found in the assigned safehouse alongside a bottle of her medication."

"According to Williamson, he saw her for the last time shortly after that. He turned on her a few days after they went M.I.A. But she didn't know, or she wanted to play it cool because she kept in contact via burner phone semi-regularly." Chen said, looking down at the notes in front of her.

Tim's head snapped to face his rookie "Was that when you spoke to him privately, or was this in interrogation?"

"When we were alone."

"Text Lopez, get him to confess to it on record. If not, it's not solid enough to go from."

"Tim's right, Chen, but it's helpful nonetheless." Grey sighed, "From then on it's pretty rocky. We have a few civilian sightings but nothing concrete. She stayed away from CCTV and any heavily policed areas. She knew to stay hidden. Which doesn't help us, but we now know that it was intentional. WIlliamson said he spoke to her less than two weeks ago, she was near the Mexican border in Arizona."

"Does the border patrol know to look out for her?"

"The Captain is alerting them now, as well as local police departments. The FBI has also been told of this development due to the crossing of state lines. They have agreed to give manpower as needed but let's hope we can keep this in house."

"So what now? We have barely anything to go from?" Chen tentatively said, trying not to provoke any reaction from her T.O with her words.

"We wait for Lopez to finish her interview with Williamson and then we will make a plan."

-----

"He seemed to realise he was in a lot of trouble and asked for a lawyer pretty quickly." Lopez said as she walked into the room, "I did, however, manage to get him to reveal the names of his employers in a trade for a letter from the Watch Commander stating his cooperation to whatever judge he gets assigned."

Grey nodded his head before prompting Angela to continue.

"I had another Detective look up the names he gave. As expected they are tied to all sorts of crimes; drug distribution, embezzlement, fraud, unlawful use of a lethal weapon. And those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. However, there is also good news, none of them seem to have a history with kidnapping or anything more extreme, or at least anything that has been reported."

"And we want to keep it that way, so we will have to be extremely careful with what we do next." Grey said, moving towards the door to go brief the Captain about their discovery and to start to make a plan of action

"Yeah, but there is one more thing he said before lawyering up."

"What is it?"

"That we shouldn't waste the manpower on finding Morgan. He said that she wasn't the one they wanted to hurt but she was used to punish other people. Her vanishing was only a means to an end."

Tim could hear his heart begin to pound in his ears once again. He breathed in, then out, then in again. If she wasn't their target, then who was? And if she was only a pawn in their game to hurt somebody else, then what else would they do to ensure their target would suffer. How many more lives had been ruined by these monsters, and how many more would suffer a similar fate to the ones that had gone before them?

"Who were they trying to hurt?" Tim ran his hands through his hair as the question unintentionally tumbled out from him. "Did he give a name?"

"Yeah, that's the thing..." Angela let the words trail off as she tried to compose herself. Tim watched as she took a deep breath. "Williamson claimed that the cartel they were hunting threatened Morgan into silence with photos of her loved ones to make you vulnerable."

"I dont... I dont understand."

"She wasn't the one they wanted. Not entirely that is. We have reason to believe that they also wanted you."