“Okay,” she agreed.
“I’ll call you back when I have a plan and some reservations made. Until then, keep your door locked.”
“I always do,” she said, trying to make her voice sound anything but scared.
When Burke disconnected the call, he went back inside the hangar where the team was in the process of transferring their gear to the agency Lear. He’d stepped out to call her. He and Charlie Team had been in a video briefing with Shepherd while sitting on board the plane when she called. It was late the previous evening that they returned to the hotel after turning Mark Ellison and the others over to the FBI. They’d gotten a text from Shepherd with the arrival time of the plane and the invitation to the debrief.
They expected to be told they would be heading back to the Chicago area and were stunned to hear the plane was taking them to their next destination as Shepherd wanted to cram one more case in before Christmas. It was related to the prepper/militia case. They were flying into Gerald R. Ford International Airport, Grand Rapids, Michigan, to locate and snatch the niece of a senator who had gotten involved in a cult with suspected ties to the Michigan prepper group. The girl’s family reported that she had cut all ties with them and they had no way to contact her.
“Is everything okay?” Wilson asked Burke as he re-entered the hangar.
He didn’t specifically answer. “Tessman, is Becca’s sister’s house currently vacant? Not being used to house any of Woods’ DVR clients, is it?”
Tessman shrugged. “I could check with her. Why?”
“That cop out in Virginia is still hassling Donna. I’d like to bring her, her kids, and her mom out for Christmas and need someplace for them to stay.”
“You want to put them in the murder house?” Rogers asked.
“You really need to stop calling it the murder house,” Tessman said.
“A family of four was murdered there,” Rogers said. “What should I call it?”
“Well, if Donna and her family are able to stay there, please don’t call it that to her face. I’m sure it would freak her the fuck out,” Burke said. “I’m not sure where else I can put the five of them up at for a week. A hotel over Christmas is so impersonal and will cost me a fortune.”
“Becca and Woods did put the Christmas tree up and decorate the place over Thanksgiving weekend,” Tessman said. “If they have to put someone there, they wanted to make it homey, they said.”
“I think that was a very nice gesture,” Burke agreed.
Tessman’s girlfriend, Becca, was a total doll, and also a very intelligent lawyer who had come to work for the agency after her sister’s entire family was murdered in their home. Becca spent a lot of her work time focusing on Briana Woods’ DVR cases, representing many of the women in their divorce cases and in filing for orders of protection. Her sister’s vacant home was being used as a safehouse to stash women on the run from domestic abuse.
Burke gazed at Tessman with expectation. “Well, are you going to check with Becca?”
“What? You want me to do it right now?”
“Yeah, I want you to do it right now. And I’m going to step back outside and call Saxton and ask her to help coordinate it, if that’s okay?” His gaze went to Wilson when he spoke the last sentence. His mind was already three steps ahead. As soon as he could get it sorted out, he could fly them in to Chicago and if neither he nor Saxton were back in town yet, he could have Saxton’s boyfriend and Ops analyst Brad Dupont pick them up at the airport and get them settled at Becca’s sister’s place.
Wilson nodded, knowing that getting it set up was a priority for Burke and that more than likely, until he had a plan in place, he wouldn’t focus on their mission. That pretty much answered the question of exactly what this relationship was to Burke, that he’d refused to answer for over a year.
Back outside, Burke dialed Laura Lee Saxton. He knew that she was away working a PGP project in Pennsylvania.
“Hey, is everything okay?” she answered.
“When’s the last time you talked to your sister?” Burke asked.
“Over the weekend, when she was at my mom’s house.”
“Did she tell you about that cop and what she saw?”
“Yeah, and she told me he asked her out too. Gross. The guy’s in his mid-forties.”
“Well, he was just at her place again, asking for help to identify his lost suspect, and when she stayed on script, insisting she saw nothing, he hit on her again,” Burke said. “I’d told her to tell him about me if he showed up again, and when she did, she said he threatened her to reconsider it. She wouldn’t tell me how much it rattled her, but I could tell it did.”
“She can’t stay at my mom’s indefinitely,” Saxton said. “What are we going to do?”
“I want to fly her, the kids, and your mom to Chicago. Christmas is only six days away. They could come as soon as I get the flight booked. And then you and I are both on leave the week after Christmas and I say we go back with them deal with this asshole.”
“Brad is off too. I’m sure he’ll come help with whatever needs to be done,” Saxton said. “I’m in. What do you need me to do?”
