Page 8 of Morrison (Terk’s Guardians #13)

S adie woke up the next morning with a sense of wrongness filling her.

Frowning, she slowly sat up, looked around her bedroom, then remembered the events of the night before.

Not only had Morrison cooked dinner for her but the conversation had remained suspiciously free of any mentions of her twin brother, until a phone call came later that night.

He’d looked at her pointedly and announced, “I need to take this in private.”

She’d gone into her room and to bed. Now it was a new morning, a new dawn, and she had to face whether she asked him about the call or not.

She got up, had a quick shower, and dressed in leggings and a T-shirt, then headed out to the kitchen, not surprised to find him there, already at work on his laptop.

He looked up and gave her a lazy smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she replied. “Did the phone call last night do any good?”

“No,” he stated in a causal tone. “We were hoping that an address we had sourced would bear fruit, but it did not.”

She didn’t know if she should be happy or sad. “So, my twin’s still at large then.”

“He is, indeed. However, the address did lead us to another address, and we have a team there, watching to see if anybody shows up.”

“Of course, and that’ll be the thing now, right? We’ll just hunt down my twin brother?”

He stared at her for a long moment before responding.

“That’s not quite the way I would put it, but, yes, given the fact that your twin brother is quite possibly involved in recent crimes.

We’re not pinning all our hopes on that of course,” he added.

“We’re still looking to identify the rest of the crew members, therefore, trying to find more of his friends, his inner circle. ”

“Right, because he’s not doing this alone.”

“It looks to be four crew members.”

Surprised, she frowned and stared at him. “Yes, I guess it takes that many, doesn’t it?”

“Yep, so stand strong, and we’ll get there.”

“Maybe,” she muttered. She walked to the kitchen and started pulling things out of the cupboard. Looking at him, she said, “I want pancakes. You want some?”

He beamed. “I would love pancakes.”

With that, she got to work, as he took several calls behind her. Hearing some frustration in his tone, she shared, “You know you can go off and do your own thing, right?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” he noted, with a smirk, “but I’m the one who made your safety an issue. So nobody wants to let me do anything else.”

“We could always drive around.”

He looked up at her and asked, “What would that tell us?”

She stared at him and then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“And yet that was the suggestion you just made,” he pointed out, studying her intently. “Why?”

She frowned, turning back to the stove, pondering that herself. “Maybe I would recognize his energy signature.”

“Here’s a question for you. If you were to recognize his energy, would you want to go see if he was there?”

“Remember that other energies were in the mix that I didn’t recognize. However, it’s often crossed my mind that maybe they must be local, right?”

“Sure, but this is also a large city.”

“Yet all the jewelry heists were done in a fairly small geographic area.”

“I know, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been keeping an eye on another nearby jewelry store, thinking that it would likely be targeted, maybe as their last and final job because it’s a big store.”

“Maybe,” she muttered. “I mean, what’s to stop them from doing this forever?”

“Nothing,” he replied, “unless we stop them. Particularly if your twin has some way to knock out things, like the alarms and security cams.”

“ Right .” She groaned. “I just… I can’t bear thinking about it. That gives them a huge edge, which is a terrifying thought.”

“If you had been in the bank, I don’t think you would be terribly happy to find yourself in the middle of a robbery. Other innocent people were around, including your adoptive brother.”

“Not a bank, a jewelry store,” she corrected.

“Sure, for the moment.”

At that she spun around and stared at him. “Oh no,” she murmured. “So, this could just be some practice run for them?”

“That’s possible. Think about it. I mean, what’s to stop them from going after banks, which is where the real money is?

Both jewelry stores and banks have guards.

So there is that extra element to consider when robbing one or the other.

Right now, they either have a source for fencing the jewels or somebody in the private world is paying them to pull this off.

But what happens when they decide they don’t need to work for anybody else, and they just go out and get what they want?

Granted, we don’t know that this crew is funded by some collector or whatever.

I’m just considering other avenues here. ”

“I understand. And the bank angle could be exactly what the crew hits next, or eventually. Particularly when banks offer a much bigger payday. And they get cash. No need for a fence or a pawn shop or whatever. God,” she muttered, “I hadn’t even considered that.”

Morrison didn’t say anything as he wanted her to gradually get there on her own. She quickly finished up the pancakes and brought them to the table, and, while they were eating, she contemplated her options.

“I have several days off now,” she shared, “so why don’t we drive around to some of the areas I was searching before? I found a couple places where I wondered if I was feeling Don’s energy.”

He looked at her in surprise.

She shrugged. “I was just trying to connect with him in some way, but maybe that connection brought in something else.”

“You probably were connected with him,” Morrison said, “but that doesn’t mean he knows what you’re doing, or that, if he finds out what you’re doing, he’ll be happy about it.”

She stared at him, grimacing. “I did sense his energy somewhere else.”

“In that case, as soon as we’re done eating, we’ll go for a drive,” he stated. “Hopefully we’ll turn up something before they hit another jewelry store and kill another person.”

She winced at that. “It never even occurred to me that I could do something to actively help.”

“You weren’t quite ready to do anything before, so don’t punish yourself for it.”

“What if somebody dies in the meantime because I didn’t?” she whispered.

“Realize that the gunmen are the ones responsible for killing people, not you. You can only do what you can do, but these gunmen are calling the shots. They are the ones making these decisions. We don’t want anybody else hurt or killed, and we must stop this crew before they decide to start harvesting money willy-nilly wherever they want,” he explained.

“They do appear to have some energy-work techniques in play, something that’s allowing them to get in and out much faster and cleaner than normal.

That’s not making any of us happy obviously, and putting a stop to that would give us an advantage. ”

“That makes sense.”

“So, I don’t know what all you can do with your particular gifts, but, if you can sense his energy in another location, maybe we can get a bead on it and can then have somebody else come help us with locating Don. Maybe Terkel has a team member who can help find Don.”

*

Sadie deliberately slowed her actions to try and delay the inevitable, but Morrison finally got her into his vehicle. Slightly annoyed that he was in such a hurry, she asked why they were taking his vehicle.

Looking at her point-blank, he replied, “So you can’t be traced back home.”

She didn’t say anything, but her face paled slightly, as she buckled in. He pulled out into traffic and headed down the street. Almost immediately she spoke up. “Turn left up here.”

The instructions were as clear and crisp as day, and, when he soon pulled up near a pool hall, he stared at it, took out his phone, and snapped several photos of it. “Why this place?”

“It’s where I recognized his energy. It’s one of the things that got me started on this,” she admitted.

“I was down here, not at the pool hall itself, but at a fabric shop at the end of the block.” She pointed, and, sure enough, he could see it.

“Whenever I’m stressed, I tend to come here a lot,” she murmured.

“It’s just a hobby of mine, and I wanted to look for supplies.

I couldn’t find parking, so I ended up walking past here, and I got hit with that same energy. ”

“Interesting,” he noted. “It’s definitely the kind of a place I could see Don hanging around.”

“I didn’t even realize what I was recognizing at the time,” she murmured. “Of course now I don’t know what I’m recognizing at all.”

He squeezed her hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

She got out of the vehicle and instinctively headed toward the clothing shop.

He followed her inside, and she picked up a couple spools of thread that she apparently needed, which she quickly paid for.

With a smile and a wave to the cashier, she headed back out, then looked at him and shared, “I didn’t feel anything when we went by the first time, but a little coffee shop is just past it”—she pointed that way—“so we should head in that direction.”

“Sure,” he agreed, and they walked past the pool hall a second time. She shrugged and didn’t say anything.

“Nothing, huh ?”

She shook her head. “No, not right now.”

And that would be the problem. However, if her twin had any affiliation with that pool hall, it needed to be staked out. He quickly texted his request for someone to be on the lookout there. “We’ll keep an eye on this place. Now, where else?”

“How did you know there is another place?” she asked, frowning at him.

“Because you’ve been too quiet, as if you’re contemplating whether you should tell me or not.”

She winced. “The trouble is, it makes no sense.”

“In what way?”

“It’s a park,” she replied, “like a playground for children. That’s why I’m hesitant. It doesn’t make any sense.”