Stolen - The Devereaux Case Files Book 4

Chapter 11

Reed took his time before returning home, to where his boys had set up a base camp. He had driven around all night, wondering about Ayah, worried about her and his poor baby daughter who didn't understand why she couldn't be with her parents. It was cruel and beneath even Blake. But he would get them back soon. So when he returned to his home in the early hours of the morning, he caught up on some sleep on the sofa, unable to sleep in his bed without Ayah next to him. What he found the next morning was more than he could take. The boys were sitting around the kitchen, at ten o'clock in the morning, doing nothing.

"What's going on?" Reed asked, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice but it was difficult. Especially when Larris looked up at him so innocently.

"Nothing, boss. Why?" He wondered with a faint smile. As if Reed expected them to be doing something and they didn't understand why.

"You should be doing something! Am I the only one who cares that my wife and daughter have been kidnapped?" He questioned turned into a strained shout as he spun round to take in the lazy layabouts that were taking up space in his house and proving useless. They should have been doing something, from making phone calls, staking out the B&B to calling up old contacts in search of information. Anything to get Ayah back.

"No boss. We all care. But there's nothing we can do. We're still waiting on the New York team getting back to us. We're not supposed to do anything without Barry's say so. We are on his turf." Larris shrugged, not sure what they could do when Barry was the one calling the shots. He was keeping tight lipped about his plans for the rest of the investigation. If he was honest, he thought he was dragging his heels now that he had an arrest under his belt. Not that Frank and his lackey were the greatest criminal catch to collar, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.

"Turf? This is my turf...my house...and my family. Now I may not be a paid member of this team any more but I deserve some damned respect." Reed argued back, unwilling to listen to it. He was mad enough at the length of time the 'investigation' was taking when he could have just gone in solo. He could have extracted Ayah the best way the situation allowed, and leave Blake for someone else to deal with. But hearing that his own team were being hampered was just too much.

Since no-one else was thinking straight, he pulled out his mobile phone and dialed out to Murray, who he had deliberately kept in his phone book so that he could avoid answering his calls. "Murray. It's Reed. Yeah, great to speak to you too." He grumbled in the same sarcastic manner that Murray greeted him. Nothing had changed between them, even with their distance but at least he sounded more willing to help than his own team did at that moment.

"I want full control of Ayah's case. No I don't care about the bloody New York team. I don't give a hoot how they take it. This is my wife...my daughter...my family. Now you give me full control or I go rogue and do it without you. I'm sure you'd rather take the credit when I'm done that admit that a lone ex-agent can do the same job better." Reed didn't bother being nice or civil. There was no point.

Murray knew better than to believe that it was personal. He'd had a family before, he knew what it was like to lose them. And whether or not Reed was the only person to know of his tragedy, didn't make a bit of difference to his request. Murray had lost his own wife and four year old son early on in his career when a serial killer his team had been tracking had taken the investigation, and Murray's involvement, personally. A bomb had been planted underneath his car one weekend, with the culprit unaware that it was a family car. Murray had only been test driving a new brake system for his wife. Their trip to the mall that afternoon had destroyed his life and he had been transferred to a supervisory position ever since. But that did give him an insight into how Reed was feeling, so he barely took any time at all to consider his request.