“He’s smarter than you’re giving him credit for. He’s not going to buy an accidental fentanyl overdose. Not after Jessica dropped off the face of the Earth. He was just getting ready to get her when she disappeared. Did you know that?” He waited a moment.
Valerie must have taken it as a rhetorical question, as she didn’t answer.
“He was going to go and drag her back to the compound in Minnesota and lock her up there like a disobedient child,” Brandon said.
Burke couldn’t tell if he was appalled by it or if he agreed with his father. “And certainly, you know that he would have been very wrong to do that. She had the right to leave him and go wherever she wanted to,” Burke said.
“Well, yeah,” Brandon agreed. “What I’m saying is that he knew where she was. She couldn’t hide from him.”
“She got out with our help,” Wilson said.
“You can too,” Burke added.
Brandon shook his head. “He has people everywhere. There is no way you got me out without someone knowing and reporting it back to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was already on his way here.”
Burke judged that the kid was scared.
“Valerie, has Mark Ellison contacted you yet to tell you your son is dead?”
“No, and I doubt he will anytime soon. If Brandon’s gone, Mark knows he will lose most of the leverage over me, over us,” Valerie said.
“Brandon, how involved are you in this militia?” Wilson asked.
He nervously glanced at the four men and then back at Valerie. “Involved enough to know what my father’s capable of. He’s on his way here. I guarantee it.”
“We clear out, now!” Wilson ordered. He threw the car keys to Burke. “Bring it up to the garage door. Moe, you’re with him. Powder, get him into the white SUV.” He pointed to Ellison. Then he turned to the woman who’d been in the front office. “How did you get here?” There was no other vehicle in the warehouse parking lot, and they knew she hadn’t come with the Butlers.
“I walked. I live two blocks from here.”
“Get in the back seat of the SUV.” He pointed to the vehicle.
“Can I get my purse first? It’s in the office.”
“Make it fast,” Wilson said.
Echo
Burke and Tessman cautiously opened the outer door of the warehouse office and glanced around the area. It was quiet. The only vehicle in sight was their SUV, still parked across the street. From this vantage point, they noted how private the front of the building was. The buildings on either side of this one were not set back quite as far, and their parking lots were on the far sides of each building, thus making it impossible to see what was in either of their parking lots. And since they both sat closer to the road, from their location at this door, they couldn’t see further down the road beyond the neighboring buildings either. They were going out blind.
The hairs on the back of Burke’s neck stood up. It wasn’t that he saw anything suspicious, but something just felt off. When Tessman unholstered his weapon, Burke knew that he felt it too.
“I’m going to take a look around that corner before crossing to the vehicle,” he said, pointing to the side of the building he and Tessman had gone around to get to the back when they arrived.
“I’ll check the other side,” Tessman said. “As a matter of fact, I’d like to circle the neighboring buildings before we expose ourselves by crossing the street.”
“Makes you wonder why the back door was unlocked when we got here,” Burke said. “Was that office lady expecting someone else to come in the back?”
“That won’t be happening now without a lot of noise. It’s locked, dead bolted, and I have a stop propped against the door,” Tessman said.
“What do you have up front?” Wilson’s voice came through comms.
“Just a feeling,” Burke replied. “Find out why that back door was unlocked.”
“Roger that,” Wilson replied.
Burke nodded to Tessman, and then they both slid out of the door, going in opposite directions to the two corners of the building. Burke gripped his weapon, holding it down at his side as he quickly strode across the driveway, his boots crunching the loose gravel.
He plastered his back against the metal wall and then peeked around the corner. No one was there. He hastened the length of the building and repeated the same. Poking his head around the corner, he saw three men at the back door trying to open it. He pulled his head back before anyone had seen him, as their focus was on the door.
