Isolated

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

I stared at the drunk man who, only a few moments ago, fell asleep after a thorough questioning. His head was tilted back against the chair, body completely relaxed. His mouth was slack too, allowing for his loud snoring to fill the room. He didn't wake or even budge when Jackson wrapped the cables back around him for the night. I couldn't help but smirk at the thought of him waking in the morning. He won't look this relaxed when he learns that he betrayed his boss.  I honestly hope I somehow get to see that reaction when he wakes up.

Besides the satisfaction I got out of that, my head was still trying to process everything. Not just everything he told us, but how we managed to get him talking to begin with. That was almost more mind blowing! He didn't cave or talk when we threatened to get his family involved, but he didn't think twice about drinking.  If that didn't say a lot about a person, I didn't know what did.

Glancing to Luke from where I was still sitting next to him on the edge of the bed, I could see how tired he was with his droopy eyes. Taking a deep breath, he looked up to me and pursed his lips. "Well... that was something different."

I scoffed. "Did you know they had that planned?" 

He chuckled under his breath, setting his beer can on the sidetable along with mine when he offered to take it. "This morning when I came in here, Jackson took me in the hall to show me 'where the ice machine was.' He told me their idea of getting him drunk. I thought it was stupid."

Wow.  He did know they were going to pull this out of their ass tonight. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He smiled and shrugged. "I wanted your honest reaction. It made it more believable since you did question what we were doing when we started drinking."

Jackson returned from the bathroom where he was dumping out the opened bottles of liquor. Looking up to him with low eyebrows, he set the empty bottles next to the unopened ones. "How did you know this drinking thing would work?" I asked, my words aimed to him.

Turning towards where we were sitting on the bed, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Then, he nodded towards the other bed.  It was occupied by Carter, who was sprawled out sleeping. "He knew more about Vic than we thought. He told me about his love and obsession of whisky. That he always drank it, especially when stressed. I didn't think it would work but it did."

From beside me, Luke's voice filled with skepticism. Glancing back to him, I saw the suspicion and caution in his eyes as he stared up at Jackson. "Someone thought it might also work if we brought up his family first and where they lived. I didn't know about that. How did you or Carter?"  I was more than a little curious too about that.

Jackson didn't like the look Luke was giving him and stared hard back at him. "Carter knew his last name, knew he had a family, and the general area they lived in.  Carter used my phone, looked up that last name, and found two people with the same last name who lived in that area. They were in their 60s and could have been his parents, making it more likely. We didn't know for sure but tried."

His hard gaze stayed on Luke, almost daring him to question what he said. He understood Luke had suspicions about him. Jackson though didn't know the full extent.  Luke wanted me to start talking to Jackson more, try to get more information about him. Though I planned to and agreed that Jackson was hiding some things, what he just said now sounded believable to me.

Luke understood that Jackson's explanation made sense too and didn't say anything else. He nodded and glanced down, taking a deep breath. "What matters is that we got everything we needed," Luke said, glancing behind us to where the stationery was on the bed. Luke discreetly wrote down everything Vic was saying while he was saying it.  I was proud to say there was a lot on there.