Page 26 of Burke (The Haven #2)

He sighed. “We’re not trying to be mean, but we’re trying to be reasonable, and being reasonable is not easy. But I also get that right now she’s got you completely bamboozled into believing that she’s hurting, and, because it could be possible, you can’t take the chance.”

Timber added, “I agree with Toby. If your sister is being held captive by somebody who could hurt her, that isn’t something any of us would ignore.

… However, we already know that she’s a con artist and that her word can’t be trusted.

Not only her words but her actions, her deeds, her voice, and certainly not her partner. ”

“I know. God help me.” She looked at Burke. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should call her and turn the Speaker on so all of us can hear. Then we’ll judge the sincerity in her tone and will make a decision on whether we believe her or not,” he suggested.

“But you also need to be prepared that she’ll want to meet right away or she’ll want you to send her money. ”

“I’m not sending her money,” Shirley stated. “She has money.”

“What do you mean, she has money?” Burke asked.

“Well,… as far as I know, she has money, yours . I don’t know if she has burned through it all or not, but there was money at one point in time.” She sighed. “And maybe she has none. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why she’s calling me. Who knows with her.”

“All I know for sure is that I don’t trust her.” Burke stared her down.

“No, of course not. That’s something else I have to keep in mind. You are biased against her. While I know and appreciate that you’re looking out for me, you’re also coming from a position where your trust has been smashed.”

He smiled at her. “That’s very true,” he agreed calmly. “Yet I would very much like to think myself capable of being objective.”

“Whereas I’m not?” she challenged.

He looked at her and shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re here because of her, after all.”

“Oh God.” She gasped, as she looked around and realized the truth of what they were saying.

“You lost your job, and you’re sitting here because you needed a place to hide for a few days,” Timber added. “Let’s not forget what—or who—drove you to that.”

Tears came to her eyes, and she scrubbed them away. “I don’t know what to do,” she muttered, her tone calmer as she realized the truth of what they were saying.

“Nothing brings us around the bend more than family,” Toby declared, as he filled up her coffee cup. “I’m making breakfast, so you get yourself in a position to start eating, do you hear me?”

She looked over at him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can eat right now.”

“You better, because your stomach won’t handle all this added chaos without food,” he stated, scrunching up his nose. “Your body needs fuel, like it or not. The stress alone will make you sick.”

She groaned. “And that’s not what I need right now.”

Timber pointed out, “You also haven’t called her.” When she stared down at the phone, he continued. “And you know why.”

“I do know why,… because I don’t trust her. And I feel like such a horrible person for saying so,” she whispered.

“And I’ll repeat what Toby just told you.

Family can chew us up into a million pieces and then spit us out,” Timber stated.

“There is nothing like the pull of needing to help somebody who’s hurting and in need.

The trouble is, in this instance, we don’t know if it’s a real call for help, or if it’s just an attempt to flush you out. ”

“Flush me out?”

“You’ve been hiding, haven’t you?”

“He’s right,” Dwight agreed from the sidelines.

“That he is,” Burke declared.

Timber nodded. “You are here in hiding, and she knows you must have gone to ground somewhere. She doesn’t know where, and we don’t want her finding that out either,” Timber declared.

“Under no circumstances do I want the animals disturbed or put under any added pressure or nastiness from Silvia and Frankie,” he stated calmly.

“Oh God, no.” She stared at Timber. “That would devastate me.” She turned to look out at the animals grazing calmly in the pastures. “I haven’t mucked out the stalls yet,” she noted, staring out into the yard.

“And that’s fine,” Burke replied, patting her hand. “I’ll do it today, just like I planned to do it any day that I don’t have help. What is important right now is that you sort out this thing with your sister.”

She gave a broken laugh. “How the hell am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know what the truth of this is?”

“And that’s where the problem is,” Toby pointed out, as he placed a plate of hash browns, bacon, and eggs in front of her. “Telling the truth from the fiction, that’s the challenge.”

“And maybe your sister is in trouble,” Timber suggested. “You know we’re here for you, and, if she’s not in trouble, and this is who she is—someone who preys on her own sister—then we’ll help you put her behind bars. Let’s rope Richard into this. He’s a local detective we’ve had to call on before.”

She looked over at him and sighed. “I don’t know how I got so lucky as to find you guys, but I’ve got to tell you that my sister, if she’s angry and upset,… Silvia can be pretty ugly.”

“And when you say, pretty ugly ?” Timber asked her.

“Vindictive, mean, like… burning down the barn is not something I would put past her,” she explained, hesitantly looking over at Timber.

“And that’s one of the reasons we want to confirm she doesn’t come here,” he said, “because that attitude is not what we need here. There’s a reason we call it the Haven .”

“Of course,” she muttered. “I should leave anyway. I’ll pack up my bags right after I finish eating,” she offered, and then she pushed back the plate. “I’m not even hungry so I’ll just go pack up now.”

“And where do you think you’re going, after you pack up?” Timber asked.

“I,… I don’t know.” She hung her head. “But I don’t want to bring them here.”

He smiled the gentlest of smiles at her. “I don’t want to keep them away and then put you in danger,” he clarified. “However, I will protect my place and my animals, and the end result could potentially look nothing like what your sister is hoping for.”

“No, it won’t,” Shirley agreed, “because she’s not used to people who fight back. She’s…” She turned to Burke and shook her head. “Silvia’s a user.”

Burke nodded. “That she is,” he confirmed, rolling his eyes. “Nevertheless, if she’s in trouble, then we need to help her.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. “Thank you. Thanks for saying that, but we want to keep her away from here,” she added.

Timber nodded. “That would be the best, so you’ll go meet her in town.” He frowned. “I’ll send you in with somebody from the group here.”

At that, two of the men immediately volunteered, and she looked at them in surprise, turning to Burke instead.

“It’s better to not be Burke,” Timber noted, “because Burke will set off Silvia and might give her suspicions as to why she’s in trouble right now in terms of the police.”

“Oh God,” Shirley muttered. “I didn’t even think of them.”

Timber noted, “She should be out there getting picked up by the locals. I’m not sure why she hasn’t been, and that may just be dumb luck so far.

However, I’ll be asking Richard that question myself.

” Timber shook his head. “We know that can absolutely happen. Sometimes it seems the criminals get a free pass from the universe, when really it’s just a matter of time. ”

Burke nodded at that. “I would say so too. And I’m not against going in with Shirley, that’s for sure, but I want to know where you will meet her because there’s absolutely no reason for the cops not to pick her up.”

She looked at him, with a quizzical gaze. “And that would imply that I’m setting her up,” she said, with a wince.

He nodded. “It would.”

Timber sat down beside her and reminded her, “You’ve already gone to the police.”

“I know. I know, and it’s the right thing to do,” she admitted, with a groan. “But it’s also… I,… I…” She sighed.

And Timber finished her sentence for her. “You don’t want to be involved anymore.”

“I would hate to have her get picked up because of me, and yet I should be happy that she’s getting picked up because of me,” she cried out in confusion and frustration. “There’s absolutely no reason for her to get away with what she’s doing.”

“And maybe what she’s doing isn’t good for anybody, but, if she’s in trouble, and you have the cops as a backup,” Burke pointed out, “then at least you’ll have some backup yourself, in case the boyfriend is there.”

“Oh, he’ll be there,” she stated.

At that, Timber looked at her and asked, “In that case, why would you go?”

She stared at him. “I have to,” she replied simply.

“Then we’ll send a couple men with you,” Timber said, “and we’ll contact the police and let them know where Silvia and Frankie will be.”

“And you also know,” Shirley added in frustration, “that, if the police show up, and I’m there, she’ll think it was me.”

“Maybe she needs to. Maybe she needs to understand that enough is enough,” Timber pointed out.

“I get it,” Burke interjected. “You don’t want to face her, and you don’t want to face the consequences of having turned her in, but the consequences are hers, not yours, for her actions.

She’s the one who put herself in this spot to begin with, and, if she asks for money to run, and you give it to her, after you’ve already contacted the police, that won’t look great for you either. ”

She frowned at him. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“No, that’s because you’re just reacting. And that’s not what we need right now. We need your brain turned on.”

She closed her eyes, settled back, and, without even being aware of it, she opened her mouth when Burke put a fork of food in front of her, and she chewed, not even seeing it as he did it a few more times.

Then he put the fork in her hand and said, “I’ll come too, but I’ll stay behind you, and you’ll go in with one of the men Timber has suggested. ”

She looked at him and nodded. “That could work.”

“We’ll just be a backup in case there’s a problem,” the burly veteran added from her side.

She wasn’t sure of his name but thought it was Jaxon.

“I am, however,” Timber declared, “contacting Detective Richard Martin and asking him if there’s any progress on Silvia. If not, why not?”

“We gave him all kinds of leads to go pick them up,” Burke stated, “and the fact that they haven’t picked them up is where the challenge is at.”

She winced. “It goes along with my sister always having luck on her side. It’s always been a frustration, but that is her and always has been.”

“Yes, but that luck doesn’t stay around forever, and at some point they’ll get run to ground, and what we don’t want is for there to be a standoff at the end of the day anywhere, but especially not here at the Haven for sure.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide, realizing what he was saying. She closed her eyes and whispered, “No, that wouldn’t be good.”

“Would your father help or would he warn her? Would he say anything to her, or tell you anything about her?”

“He would probably tell me to fuck off,” she replied, with a sudden sense of understanding. When they all stared, she shrugged. “He’s really not a fan of mine.”

“Of course not,” Timber said, with a smile, “because, if you’re not for him, you’re against him, and that would be his motto.”

“Yes, and Silvia has always been for him, so whatever she wanted, he would go out and steal from someone to get.”

“And what about you?”

“No,” she replied. “When I realized how he was getting the stuff for Silvia and that other people were literally losing it because of him, I refused to condone that. As soon as I told him how I thought about it, he got really angry,” she shared.

“That was one of the few times he beat me. After that?… Well, you just learn to keep your mouth shut.”

“Of course you do, and yet that’s also not the way to live.”

“No, it’s not the way to live,” she agreed, “but, when you’re a kid, you don’t have a choice, so you do whatever you can do to survive.”

“And that’s what you have to look at right now, as well. Your sister is doing whatever she can do to survive, but, in her mind, doing what she can do to survive has a whole different meaning than it does for you.”

She stared at him and winced. “That is quite true. She has actively pointed out things that other people had that she wanted, and my father arranged to take it from them. He was so eager to get it for her that it just made me sick.”

The other men stared at her in shock, then shook their heads. “That must be rough,” Jaxon said, his voice grating.

She nodded. “High school was rough, and I left as soon as I could.”

“And even then,” Burke noted, “it probably wasn’t fast enough.”

“No, it wasn’t nearly fast enough,” she agreed. “How could it be? That upbringing?… All I’ve got to say is it’s deadly.”

“It is deadly, and it’s harsh, and it’s a lot of things, but you learned, and you moved on. None of that is your responsibility at this point. So just try to relax and let us help.”