“You fucking hypocritical piece of shit,” Mike muttered, his green eyes blazing with anger. “What about your family? Don’t you think they might not have already—”
Frank pulled the car over. They’d just crossed Adams Avenue and even though he pulled the car into a No Parking zone, he didn’t care. He put the car in park and turned to Mike, his own panic and anger rising. “I’ve put in a lot of time and I’ve risked my own life to get to the bottom of this shit. I don’t need you to jeopardize it by—”
“Oh, so now I’m the weak-link, huh?” Mike sputtered, his face red, leaning toward Frank. “You just want us to forget about our families, forget our loved ones and keep going so we can find out what happened over twenty and thirty years ago—”
“It’s not just about that!” Frank thundered, his voice so loud that it even surprised him. Mike stopped, eyes widening. Calm down, Frank told himself. Don’t blow up now, you need him, you need each other if you’re going to get through this, so just calm. The fuck. Down. “We knew what we were getting into when we started this,” he said, his voice straining with anger. “We knew the risks involved in not only our own lives, but our families. We went into this together knowing those risks. It was your choice to keep your wife and kids in the dark.”
“Bullshit!” Mike started again, looking like he wanted to leap out of his seat and throttle him.
“I’ve already sacrificed my own life,” Frank said, ignoring him. He tried not to think about this as he continued. “I know I’m never gonna see my wife or kids again. I took measures to protect them. Brandy knows something is going on, but she doesn’t know the specifics. Oh, she suspects, I’m sure she does. But I went out of my way to prepare for the worst. It kills me knowing I’ll never see them. I know that if I go back to my family I’ll be followed and they’ll be at risk and it doesn’t matter how many times I change my name to throw them off my trail. They’ll find me no matter what. They found Vince and his mother and they’ve found others. I don’t want to live like that the rest of my life, knowing they could strike anytime, anywhere, anyplace. That’s why I made the decision myself. That’s why I’m not going back to my family. As much as I want to see my kids again, to hold my wife in my arms…” Frank stopped, trying to control his emotions. He wanted to break down and cry. He wanted to smash something. He felt like he was going to explode. “I can’t go to the police,” he said, reigning his emotions in. “I don’t trust the cops more than I can throw them. If there’s even the slightest chance that even one cop is an insider—”
“Oh, and what are the chances of that?” Mike exclaimed.
“You know as well as I that they’ve infiltrated law enforcement,” Frank said. He heard his voice rising and he fought to control it. “Okay, maybe they’re not everywhere, but we can’t take that chance. Even if you get lucky and get cops that aren’t aware of the Children, they’re not gonna believe you. I mean, what are you gonna tell them?”
“What do you think I’m gonna tell them? I’m gonna tell them somebody broke into my house and kidnapped my wife!”
“Sure,” Frank said, on a roll now. “And you won’t say anything about us, right?”
“I’m not going to say anything about us.”
“And what’s going to happen if they get a detective that’s got half a brain, they’re eventually going to connect you with me and that’s going to lead them to what happened in Pennsylvania. And then what are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll figure that out if it happens,” Mike said. He slumped back in his seat, wearing a mask of defeat.
“Bullshit,” Frank said, leaning forward. “You’re gonna think about this now. You’re gonna come up with something more solid than that, because you are not gonna implicate me in this at all.”
Mike turned to him, the spark of anger still in his eyes. “Changing your mind then?”
“No. I don’t want you to go to the cops, but I can’t stop you, either.” Truth was, the more Frank talked and bluffed, the more he was putting himself in Mike’s shoes. If it were Brandy and his kids that had come up missing, he would want to call the police too. “If you go to the cops you don’t know me, and we’ve never met each other. You go to the cops and I am fucking out of here, you got me? I’ve not only never seen you, I’m not only over-the-hills-and-far-away, I don’t even fucking exist.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be too hard to fake,” Mike said. “They’ve got everything. There’s nothing at the house that’s going to lead to you, and even phone records aren’t going to turn anything up. I was careful of that.”
Frank regarded Mike for a moment, his demeanor cracking. The more he thought about it, the better calling the police was starting to sound. Worst-case scenario: even if they were caught for the fiasco in Lititz, maybe they could plead self-defense and expose these bastards. In the meantime, while Mike was contacting the police, Frank could contact Billy Grecko and turn what was left of their investigation over to him. Hopefully it would be enough for Billy to go to his FBI contact with.
That wouldn’t be enough, though. In fact, their best plan of action was to avoid the police. And Frank had to convince Mike that avoiding the police was the best course of action.
“You’re still going to need some kind of alibi,” Frank said, thinking out loud. “The police are going to want to know why you waited until today to call them.”
Mike glanced at him, looking wary. “Yeah, I suppose they are.”
“Let’s think about this a minute,” Frank said, forcing himself to stay calm and focused on the matter at hand. “If you’re going to contact the police, we still need each other. We also need to move the investigation into Billy’s hands. You got me?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah.”
“Here’s why going to the police would be a bad idea,” Frank said. “If you had booked our tickets under your name we could have come up with an excuse for you being out there pretty easily. Because we can’t do that, every other excuse you give them, like deciding you wanted to go camping or you took a drive out into the desert, are going to be suspect. How often do your kids drop in to see you or call?”
“Sometimes we can go a whole week without hearing from my son Jimmy,” Mike said. “My other son, Brad, lives up in Lake Tahoe. He calls about once a week. He usually calls on weekends.”
“When is the last time you saw Jimmy?” Frank asked.
Mike shrugged. “Four, maybe five days ago.”
“If Jimmy had decided to call or drop by between then and now, the cops would already be trying to get a hold of you. In fact, it’s very likely they would consider you a suspect in your wife’s disappearance should your kids get the police involved. Had the police shown up at your house before you got home, you’d probably be in an interrogation room now being grilled as a suspect in your wife’s disappearance and probable murder.”
Mike gasped at this obvious realization. Frank pressed on. “But your kids haven’t been in touch recently. Therefore, it’s possible we have anywhere from a few hours to a few more days before they do decide to call or drop by. We need to make the most of it.”
“But how?” Mike moaned. He buried his face in his hands, the frustration painfully obvious to Frank.
“That depends on where we want to go with this,” Frank said. “They’ve made their move, but they don’t hold all the cards. At least not yet. We have documents on my hard drive. My suggestion is we deliver my laptop to your friend Billy pronto and have him turn it over to his FBI contact.”