King's Sword

Dogs

VANCE

"It should be one of these." Collin says as he looks down at the GPS.

Tommy came to his senses this morning, sending me the doctor's address and a vow to look into where Callahan is keeping Adelaide.

I squint at the town houses numbers as I drive when Collin points at one with front yard full of children's toys and a Mercedes Benz.

"Oh look, he's a family man." I say with false enthusiasm as I park behind the white car and shut off my trucks engine. Collin stares at the toys doubtfully, but follows me out towards the front door.

"What if his kids are home?" Collin asks me as I ring the doorbell, making me glance at him incredulously.

"What the hell do you think we're going to do to this guy?" I ask him curiously and he shrugs uncomfortably. "Points for loyalty." I pat his arm when the door opens and an older middle eastern man stares at us in confusion.

"Are you Dr. Akeem?" Collin asks the man innocently and I realize we're playing good cop, bad cop. The man nods once suspiciously. "We're looking for my cousin, Adelaide, she went missing a few days ago and—" the man slams the door and I glance over at Collin who glares at the door. "Alright, he put his own kids in danger." I nod and grab the handle to slam myself against the door that snaps at the lock. I grab the gun tucked by my boot and nod for Collin to follow me. I see his car keys on the table and point at them for Collin to grab them as I sweep the living room and lower levels before going up the stairs carefully.

"Dr. Akeem, we know it's Saturday and there are children home, please don't make this difficult." I say with an irritated tone. If there are children home, would like to keep this as clean as possible, but I'm getting my answers. I reach the top of the stairs and see that there are three closed doors. "Last chance!" I call out before kicking the middle door open to reveal a new empty bathroom, and turning around to reach for the next door. "Fuck." I whisper to myself. "Alright!"

"Wait! Wait!" I hear him say behind the door as Collin comes up the stairs with his gun pointed at the door. "I'm all my children have, please don't kill me, I was only trying to help her—"

"Open the fucking door." I groan and he obeys, he raises his hands above his head and moves slowly in between us with his eyes on the ground. I keep my gun pointed at the old man as I glance inside the kids room and see the two small boys peaking through a crack in the closet. "Pat him down." I tell Collin as I lower my gun to the ground and relax my posture a bit. Akeem looks back to his crying kids and shushes them as Collin searches from weapons on him, and when he gives me a thumbs up, I nod for him to put his gun down. "Kids, I'm not going to hurt him." I say uncomfortably as I turn to Akeem and shake my head.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you—" Akeem sighs repeatedly and I raise a tired hand.

"My wife, where is she?" I ask him plainly as he stares back at me nervously.

"I only saw her once to treat her wounds, he kept her in a house South of Seattle, in the mountains, I have the address around here somewhere." He says quickly and turns to go down the stairs, but Collin glares down at him and he flinches. I nod for him to get out of the way and follow the man down to the kitchen. "He can't know I gave you this, please. I don't have papers, Ms. Ashby has been gracious enough to let me work for my boys." He searches through loose pieces of paper on the kitchen counter as he speaks fast and quiet.

"Did you do those surgical marks on the dead girl?" I ask him, making his wide eyes shoot up to me fearfully.

"No, no! I would never do that, I was only trying to help the girl." He says with an adamant shake of his head. "The dead girl, I didn't even see her, but I did see they took the body of one of the female prisoners who had been diagnosed with stage four cancer out of the prison morgue." He continues searching for the sheet of paper as I frown over at Collin, who lets out a sigh of relief. There was a part of him that still feared it was Adelaide on that table. "Here, this the address she gave me." He hands me the piece of paper with the chicken scratch handwriting.