Wire-Pulling Pt. 01

While I appreciated him worrying for me, I somehow didn't like the implication that I wouldn't be able to take care of myself. Though, objectively speaking, he was right, and I knew it.

"Boss, I'm not gonna run in and try to arrest them! I understand that this is to give me a head start if they come for me."

He looked at me as if to assess my honesty, which, at first, kinda pissed me off. Though, as I watched his expression, I noticed something else. He didn't doubt me. He was genuinely worried about me! That, I appreciated.

"Fine," he conceded. "Let's get you moved downstairs then."

And with that, he got up from the table and beckoned us to get to work.

It didn't take too long, though. I packed up my laptop and a few clothes, but when I went into the bathroom to pack up my toiletries, Tim stopped me.

"Don't bother with those. I have pre-packaged convenience kits in the bathrooms downstairs."

I wanted to pack up my stuff regardless, but then I saw Bill walking past while pointing at Tim and vigorously nodding his head as if to tell me that I should listen to him. So, instead, I asked the next thing that was on my mind.

"Why do you have pre-packed convenience kits in your abandoned apartment? Why do you have them at all!?"

Hearing that, he shuffled his feed in an obvious display of embarrassment, before he simply said "Don't ask stupid questions" and moved away as Bill reentered the room and spoke up.

"If those guys show up and go through your stuff, it shouldn't look like you moved out. Only take what you absolutely need, like some clothes. Everything else we can get new. Even food. If someone comes looking for you and finds your fridge has been relieved of all perishables, it'll send a clear signal that you no longer live here. Then they'll realize they've been played and leave before we can do shit about it."

With that said, I grabbed my clothes and accompanied Tim into his old apartment. Looking around, I found myself confronted with Tim's peculiar taste. Everything was white or black, with glossy surfaces, giving it that sterile and cold feeling. Then, however, I realized with surprise that it was still fully furnished despite nobody living here, so I asked him about it.

"Well, this apartment is a lot bigger than my old room in the house," he explained while shrugging his shoulders. "And we didn't need any more cooking- and tableware in the house. So, we basically left most of the furniture behind. Fridge is basically empty right now, though."

As he said that, he opened the fridge, showing nothing but a six-pack of Heineken beer, which I couldn't help but laugh about, causing Tim to shrug his shoulders once more.

"What can I say? I figured, if things with the family went south again and I'd move back, I could use those to lure you down here and listen to me vent."

After he showed me that his abandoned apartment held everything I would need to live in it, apart from fresh food, Tim hid the cameras in my own apartment while Bill and I set up the portable surveillance station Tim must have dropped off before walking through my door. When everything was done, Bill spoke up.

"All right. Now comes the hard part." He took a deep breath and fixed me with a stern look. "Call that lawyer and tell him what you found out. Then... you'll have to set up a date to accompany him when he visits your mother in jail."

"Yeah. We kinda gathered that this would be necessary," I nodded, though Bill shook his head.

"No," he sighed before continuing with a grave voice. "You need to make plans to bail her out."

I noticed Tim's eyes widened just as much as my own.

"Why!?"

"Because she's not safe in there anymore," Bill explained with patience. "We can't be certain why they killed Carver. If they just concluded that it's time to get rid of all the potential threats and loose ends, your mother will be next. And if they succeed, this case, along with your chance for payback, will simply go away."

"Wait!" Tim called out. "She's in for selling insider data, right? She's going to a white-collar prison. Minimum security. There shouldn't be any gangs they could hire to shank her."

"Exactly," Bill nodded while pointing a finger at Tim. "She's going into Club Fed. After she's been convicted. But, right now, she's still in Travis County, awaiting trial, since she pleaded Not Guilty. And if those guys decide that they don't want to risk her lawyer presenting any potential evidence during said trial you two may have discovered, it's easy to contact some asshole who's just transitioning in there to take care of her."

Hearing that caused a weird sensation to travel through my body. Like I just swallowed a brick, while simultaneously the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Yes, I hated the bitch for what she did to our lives. But I didn't want her dead!

I quickly went for the files Breston left me and looked through the documents. But when I found what I was looking for, my heart sank.

"Her bail had been set to TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!?" I shouted, not believing what kind of outrageous number I just read and looked at Bill and Tim with big eyes. "For selling some data!?"

"I guess the senator called in a favor," Bill mused, causing me to remember Breston saying something similar. "And I guess, going by the kind of lawyer she hired, that's a little beyond her capabilities."

I could only shake my head.

"Yeah. It's above my capabilities as well!"

Curiously, that did elicit a peculiar reaction from the two other men in the room as they first shared a weird look between themselves, before Tim made a face as if contemplating something.

"You know," Tim finally spoke up, still some kind of far-away look on his face. "I may be able to help you with that."

"What!?" I laughed. "You mean to tell me you got a quarter of a million lying around?"

"Well... not in a way that could be used to post bail," he mused, increasing my confusion even more but refusing to elaborate on what that meant. Instead, he proposed a different idea. "We happen to work for a security firm, Paul. A security firm that could act as a bail agent. And THAT I could help out with."

"How?" I asked, though it was Bill who explained it.

"The firm would post the bail for you in cash, because I trust that you'll make sure she'll show up for all of her court appointments, so we'll get it back when this is all over. To keep up appearances, we'll 'require' a ten percent fee. That's what Tim will help out with. Though we won't actually keep that money. So, don't worry about that."

I considered the offer for a moment, however, it became clear to me that, while I really had no other options, I just couldn't do it.

"I can't ask you for that kind of money. Even if it's 'just' twenty grand!" I shook my head in defeat. "Thank you for offering, but..."

"Oh, shut up, Paul!" Bill suddenly called out in a remarkably annoyed tone, stunning both Tim and me. "You won't let us talk you out of this case, fine! But then you'll have to accept our help. Because, in case you haven't realized it yet, if they come for your mother to kill her case and stop you from presenting evidence, chances are they're coming for you next to stop you from investigating her death!"

Now I was doubly stunned. I hadn't considered that possibility yet. Though, in my defense, the last twenty hours were a little overwhelming. As I stared into nothingness while registering the gravity of this situation, I heard Bill let out another one of his signature sighs before he continued.

"Now, I'll need to make some calls. There are some things I have to check on. You do what you have to do. Don't bother coming into the office for the time being. Concentrate on the case, and if you need any help, you ask for it!"

He delivered that last part of his speech while jamming his finger into my chest and fixing me with a look as if daring me to challenge him. Instead, I just nodded while suppressing the feeling of slight guilt over dragging him into this.

After he left the apartment, Tim walked over to the fridge, took out the six-pack of beer to place it on his coffee table, and beckoned me to sit next to him on the couch.

"Cheers!" he said after handing me a bottle.

Yeah," I responded with decidedly less enthusiasm than Tim had used, as I still felt uncomfortable about this whole mess.

"What?" he asked while giving me a look.

"I didn't think of having to bail her out." I shook my head. "I don't even know where she could stay."

"Well..." he drew that word out, and it gave me the weird feeling of him treading a thin line between something he wanted to tell me and what he was allowed to tell me. "We DO have options. I kinda have a condo we don't use."

"You... what!?" I laughed. "First money, now real estate? How do you 'kinda have' a condo?"

"My uncle John bought it for my sister and his daughter to live in when they started college. Turns out, though, neither of those pampered bitches was particularly eager to do house chores. I know, massive surprise to everyone. So, it's empty for now but, like this apartment, fully furnished and ready."

I thought about his proposal for a moment, however, I didn't feel comfortable with him getting involved in this case, given how he still lived with his mother and sister. It would put the two of them in danger by association.

"No. I don't want you connected with this. If something went sideways, especially in the way Bill is afraid of, I want you as far removed from this whole mess as possible."

Surprisingly, this caused him to grin at me before he spoke up again.

"Well, worst case scenario, we'll put her up in the Shelter," he snickered. 'The Shelter' was our codeword for a kind of halfway house the company used for... let's just call them layovers. "After all, I don't think having her use the second bedroom here will be an option."

"Aw, hell no! You bet your ass that's not an option!" I immediately protested heatedly.

This, again, caused him to keep quiet for a while as I tried to keep my thoughts away from what that kind of living arrangement would look like.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" he suddenly ripped me out of my funk.

"I think we're past the point where you have to ask for permission, Dude."

"You know..." He stopped to take a sip of his beer, and I felt like he was weighing his words. "...I never saw the boss angry. I mean, he's famous for being that grumpy old man, with the always present annoyance on his face, but I never saw him really angry. Until that explosion upstairs happened."

"Yeah. That surprised me too," I responded before taking a sip of the beer as well, wondering what he was playing at.

"How did you get to work for him?"

"Oh..."

So, that was the personal question he threatened me with. I contemplated how much I wanted to share for a moment. However, at the end of the day, I knew almost everything about his shitty life. I didn't see what I had to lose if I shared my story with him. At least the less gruesome parts that happened after I arrived in this town.

"Well..." I started while scratching the label off the cold beer bottle. Somehow, it was easier to talk about all this without having to look at the person I was speaking with. "It was two years before you joined the firm. I had just arrived in town with little to nothing, apart from a few clothes and four grand in cash."

"That... what?" His confusion was VERY audible. I groaned.

"The day before I turned eighteen, my mother showed up in my room, handed me an envelope with four grand in it, and told me to leave their house. She also informed me that the bastard she was married to had already canceled my cell phone contract and wouldn't allow me to take anything with me that he paid for. Which, honestly, didn't leave much, since they married when I was ten years old. I was lucky she allowed me to pack a few clothes into my sports bag."

"Damn," I heard Tim whisper. "So... how did you get here?"

"Walked three hours to the bus depot and got a ticket for Houston. I... didn't want to move too far away. Don't ask why. I don't know myself, to be honest. I had no intention to come back. And I thought it would be easier to start a life in a big city. More opportunities, you know?"

"Wait! What'd you do about high school? Did you, like, graduate early?"

"Nope. Didn't have enough credit to check out early. Which was a problem. Without even a high school diploma, I couldn't get a proper job to get a proper apartment. So, my first abode was in the South Houston Trailer Park which, back then, didn't look nearly as nice as it does today. Didn't even have proper plumbing. But I got around that by signing up in a gym. I wanted to buff up anyway, and I could simply use their showers after training."

"Ah. I'm starting to see a pattern here," he mused, but then simply grinned instead of explaining what he meant. Though, it dawned on me shortly after. Tim, too, only really blossomed in our firm after he had started to participate in our training sessions. A similarity between us that I had never thought about before.

"Yeah. I met Bill and the others when they were training there as well. Back then, we didn't have a company gym yet. Anyway, I was just done with my warm-up when I noticed them going through their self-defense training. That was also something I was craving to learn. After living with that bastard for so long, I absolutely needed to learn how to beat his ass for once. So, I walked right over to the receptionist and asked her to sign me up, though she just told me to ask those people directly, since they weren't employees. Bill wasn't particularly eager at first. He straight up told me to sign up at the boxing gym across the street."

That made us both snicker as he could probably imagine Bill's annoyed tone he used to get rid of people.

"How'd you convince him?"

"I didn't. Two days later, when I was once again just done with my warm-up, he walked right up to me, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me into the dojo without saying a word. Then he simply started instructing me on the beginner techniques. During the training, I got to talking with the others, though I tried not to tell them too much. Didn't want to advertise who my stepfather was, you know? But they learned that I never got my diploma and lived off working some day labor jobs. Next thing I knew, Bill offers me a job in his firm, provided I get my GED first."

What followed was a minute of silence as Tim seemed to go over what I had told him, while I moved on to scratch at the paper on the beer's bottleneck. Those weren't fond memories, and I was kinda curious how Tim would react to my story, though not curious enough to watch his reaction. Then his voice cut through the tension in the room.

"So, you went from being the son of a broke single mother, to being the stepson of a wealthy senator, to... basically being the trailer trash I know you as."

I blinked at him for a moment as all the little paper scraps I had pulled off the bottle fell to the floor.

"Well fuck you too, Dude!" I called out, though with a wide grin on my face.

"Nah, I'm not into bestiality," Tim chuckled back. The mood in the room had instantly improved. "But... Do you think the Boss..."

He left that sentence unfinished, though I understood.

"Yes. I was one hundred percent sure he checked up on me, learned about my stepfather, and wanted to take me in to... I don't know... gain a bargaining chip, maybe? Or maybe he hoped to somehow use the connection in his favor? But he never did. Took me a while to realize, but he really simply took me under his wing. So, with time, I completely forgot about those suspicions, but the way he instantly knew about my mother's case when he showed up this morning... I guess he not only knew who my stepfather was but also why I left that house to move here alone."

There was another minute of silence when I had expected him to ask for details about the way I left my former home, given how I just mentioned it. This time, I watched Tim intently as he seemed to seriously contemplate something with a weird expression on his face.

"Paul?" he suddenly said without looking at me. "You know that my life wasn't exactly nice before I met the Boss either, right?"

"Yeah. I remember asking myself why that bruised-up human dumpling was running around the office."

"Oy!" he called out in fake offense.

"What!? That's what you get for calling me trailer trash, asshole. Also, it's true! You lost at least forty pounds since you started training with us and learned how to deal with your pissant siblings."

"Yeah, but you don't have to remind me," he said while shaking his head. "Anyway, my point is... Are we, like... human reclamation projects?"

That question made me choke on the sip of beer I had just taken.

However, as I wondered what the hell he was talking about and was just about to tell him off, it suddenly didn't sound like an outlandish claim. Tim and I both came from abusive families when we met Bill. And he DID help us without ever asking for anything in return. And this morning in my kitchen WAS the first time either of us had seen the man actually angry, and it was only because my recklessness was about to kick me in the butt.

"Huh," was all I could answer instead of the rude retort I had planned on.

Then I noticed Tim's beer being almost empty, which caused me to check the time. That, in turn, made me remember that I had to call Breston. So, I pulled out my phone and hit redial in the call log.

"James Breston, Attorney at Law, how can I help you?" I heard his disgustingly chipper voice over the line.

"This is Paul White." I swallowed the comment I wanted to make on him greeting me like a call center agent and what kind of impression it gave me of him as a lawyer. "We spoke yesterday about my mother's case?"

"Paul! Yes! Can I assume this call means that you will help her?"

"Yes. Though, you need to know, some of my friends assigned themselves to the case as well. I hope you can live with that."

"I'll be honest with you, Paul. I'm not... as well connected as I'd like to be." That made me look at Tim with a raised eyebrow, who, in turn, developed a small smirk while wondering what that look meant. "I only opened my own law firm about half a year ago because I got tired of cutting deals and negotiating settlements. So, any help you can offer, I'd gladly take it."

Holy. Shit. What did I get myself into!? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a young, ambiguous, and motivated lawyer who just started out. But Breston wasn't exactly young. And, while he may be ambiguous, he didn't sound motivated at all. He actually sounded like he was desperate to win this case. Though, thinking about it, how the hell was my mother supposed to retain a better lawyer, given how those came with a significantly higher price tag? I was suddenly even more thankful for having Tim and Bill supporting me. At least, when it came to them, I could trust their expertise.

"Yes. Well. Speaking of help. We found something in the photos you left me," I informed the lawyer, after which I could hear him release an excited breath. "My friend tells me that there's no way to tell whether they're forged, but the timeline of what they show doesn't add up. Someone did indeed manipulate them."

"Are you sure?" I could hear him try to maintain his excitement.

"Pretty sure, yeah. You have the pictures handy?" I asked and heard his confirming answer after what sounded like him rummaging through papers. "Look at the picture showing her first tryst with Carver. See that light brown jacket on the floor next to the bed frame? According to the series, they bought that jacket a few months later on a shopping trip they took together."