Author's note.
Once again, I can't thank all of you enough for sticking with me through this journey. Life has a way of sticking it's nose into things, and that has been happening, making devoting time to writing a much more precious commodity.
As always my thanks go to Dr Mark for his editing skills and to TheSwiss for managing the server.
Stay happy.
PM
Chapter 63 - Trouble
Melanie was already awake, being the lightest sleeper of all the girls, as I slid gently out of bed. The beep of the gun safe opening woke the rest of the girls.
"What's going on?" asked Melanie.
"Someone is messing with the cars again," I said. "Someone, go wake Gracie please."
"Why are you taking a gun?" asked Amanda.
"Cover," I said, as I loaded the weapon.
It took a matter of moments to pull on a pair of shorts, and then I moved through the house, meeting Gracie coming out of her room, her service weapon in hand. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
"Call 911," she said to Mary, who'd been the one to wake her. "Tell them what is happening and that there is an armed federal agent on scene."
We moved swiftly to the door.
I'd been keeping an eye on the feed while I prepared. The perpetrator had seemingly finished with what they were doing on one of the vehicles and had moved to the other side. This time, it seemed, they weren't content with simply damaging tires; they seemed to be scratching something onto the side of the car.
I opened the door silently, Gracie indicated that she would go one way, and I was to go in the opposite direction. "Watch for other perps," she said. "He might not be alone."
We slid out, ducked down, and quickly circled around the cars. I'd scanned for other minds in the vicinity and found that there was someone sitting in a vehicle about fifty yards up the street. That surprised me since I'd assumed that it was Pricktard doing the damage. Why would he need either a vehicle or an accomplice?
I reached out and froze the person sitting in the car before emerging behind the person who was currently carving something into the door of Gracie's vehicle.
"FBI, don't move," Gracie yelled stepping between the vehicles and pointing her weapon at the guy kneeling there.
I guess instinct made him react, although he wasn't exactly quick. He turned as if to bolt, only then seeing me standing, weapon in hand, blocking his exit.
"Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head," Gracie ordered him as he stood. The implement he was holding clattered to the floor.
It was only then that I heard the distant wail of a siren. It appeared that the cavalry were coming.
Gracie moved to the perp who was starting to look familiar. She pulled one, then the other, hand behind his back, cuffing him. I wasn't sure where she'd secreted her cuffs.
Then she pulled off his hood and we got our first look at the vandal.
"Trevor?" I said surprised. "What the fuck?"
Trevor stood there, shaking slightly, his face pale with a look of fear on his face. Given his attitude the other night, I would have expected him to have been aggressive or belligerent, but he merely stood there trembling, his hands behind his back.
A police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the house. Both Gracie and I had lowered our weapons by now. I placed my weapon on the roof of Gracie's car and stepped away a little way from it, keeping my hands visible. Gracie had her credentials held up and open.
The officers approached with their weapons drawn since they could see our weapons in view.
"Agent Gracie Jordan, FBI," Gracie announced as they approached. One officer approached her and the other came towards me. He spotted the weapon on the roof of the car. I had my hands out to my sides, visibly empty.
"Whose is that weapon?" the officer approaching me asked.
"Mine." I said.
"You have a permit?" he asked, and I nodded.
"In the house," I said.
"Mind if I secure it for now?" he asked, and I shook my head.
"Go ahead," I said. He picked up my Glock.
"It has a magazine in, but nothing in the chamber," I said. He slid the slide back a little to confirm what I'd said.
"What happened?" he asked.
I explained that our cars had been vandalized a couple of nights before, and how I'd set the security system to alert me if someone came onto the driveway in the night. I told him how I'd been woken by the security system, woken Gracie, and then seeing that there was someone on the drive apparently doing something to the cars, we'd come out to confront them.
I also told him that I'd noticed a car down the block, which I didn't think should be there.
His partner, meanwhile, had placed Trevor in the back of the patrol car. The officer I'd been speaking to walked down the block to where Trevor's 'friend' was sitting in his car. I released him just as the officer reached his car.
He too was arrested.
"Do you know the perp?" asked the officer.
I nodded. "His name is Trevor," I said. "My half-sister's ex-boyfriend. He was here on Wednesday for dinner, he helped himself to our beer, without permission, and then left in a bad mood when I said that Sarah wasn't getting into a car with him after he'd been drinking. He failed to stop for a patrol car on his way home, totalled his car, and got arrested for DUI too.
"His father is some kind of financial big shot who appears to have got him out of jail pretty quick. He must have a good lawyer I guess. My sister dumped him after that. I guess he didn't like that."
Gracie was standing looking at her car, which had been the one Trevor had been vandalizing. He'd flattened all her tires and scratched something on the door. He'd also started on Ness' car, flattening two of her tires, but we'd interrupted him before he could do anything else.
It took nearly an hour for the police to take our statements, meanwhile Gracie had called the damage to her car in and was told that there would be a replacement car delivered the later that morning. Once again, they would collect her car and fix the damage.
Trevor and his 'accomplice' were taken away by the police, and we were given yet another report number should we decide to go through the insurance company. I decided to simply pay for the tires to be replaced. The deductible would be more than the cost anyway and it would probably increase Ness' premium which, given her age, was already astronomical.
We all went back to bed for a couple of hours. I started my day, as usual, at four.
The tire guy came to replace Ness' tires. He joked that his truck knew the way to our road by heart now and he hardly had to steer on the way. He must have made quite a lot of money from our neighbourhood in the time we'd been around although he didn't know that a good portion of that money was thanks to me. I saw Pricktard watching out of his window as the tire guy worked on Ness' car. He looked conflicted.
After the tires were fixed, I delivered Ness' car to her again at her school, dropping her keys to her at lunchtime, before jogging home to shower and get ready for my afternoon hypnotherapy appointment at the range.
My client that afternoon was the singer with the coke habit.