Page 27 of Cade

“We called the number on the card, and he told us to come to this farm outside of Tacoma. He likes to do things in nature, he said. Not in a building. We all went out there, and each of us went into his office and spoke to him for about an hour. He said that he was going to give us all an injection that would help us sleep by calming our motor neurons.”

“Motor neurons?” whispered Ashley. “But those are connected to our brain and spinal cord. They help us to breathe and speak. I don’t understand.”

“Neither did we,” scoffed Franco. “Almost right away, Tim started acting weird. Before the shot, he was dark, depressed I guess, but then after, he would talk to himself and constantly spoke about killing himself.

“AC, he was worse than that. He was violent all the time. The brother always had a short fuse, but he tried punching me in the face several times, just because.”

“And you?” asked Ashley.

“I quit going after three times. I saw what it was doing to them. I’ve been locked up in here for a week now. When I saw you pull up, I thought it was one of Greco’s men. They come to the door every day, and I don’t know what they’re doing, but I’m telling you, my head feels like it’s going to fucking explode when they do.”

“Walk us through it,” said Doc.

“Like I said, they come to the door, knock a few times, and call my name. The pain is so intense, I want to blow my head off.” He looked down at the gun, and Trevor nearly dove for it until the man held it up. “It’s empty. I took the bullets out a few days ago and put them in my car. It was a risk, but I knew I wouldn’t go back out to the car. I just didn’t want to take the chance.”

“It was smart of you,” said Bree. “We were only able to get preliminary toxicology reports on Tim, but it showed that he had a metal in his system.”

“Metal? I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Could that make him want to kill himself?”

“I’m not sure,” said Bree, “but we want to find out.”

“AC. The base called and said they’d retrieved his body. He doesn’t have any family, and they wanted me to identify the body. He’s probably still there.”

“Call them,” said Cade. He looked down at his phone. Trevor and Doc doing the same. There were no bugs in the apartment, but that didn’t mean his phone wasn’t tapped. “Wait. Call them from my phone and see if he’s still there.” Miretti nodded, making the call.

“He’s there,” he said, handing the phone back to Cade.

“I’m going to ask you to trust us,” said Trevor. “We’ll go with you, but we need to find out what the fuck is inside you guys.” Miretti stared at the big man, then at the other two. The one named Doc was big, tall, and wiry. The other one was built like a redwood, yet not one of them had been aggressive with him.

“Why do you care about this? Who are you?” he asked.

“We care because we never fucking leave a brother behind. Never,” said Cade. “And we’re with a security firm and just happened to stumble on this.”

“A security firm?” he asked.

“REAPER-Patriots,” said Doc.

“Holy fucking motherlode,” he whispered. “Shit, I’m really sorry about pointing the gun at you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” smiled Bree. “Sometimes, I want to point a gun at him too.” Cade laughed at the woman, taking Cassidy’s hand.

“Let’s go, brother. We got some shit to figure out.”

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