Fiery Passions

Chapter 22 - The Clues start to speak

“I just don’t want to drag her into this, the stakes are too high”

“Yes _ I know, God Damn it! We both promised, and I ain’t backing out now and I expect you won’t either.”

Do I still have it?  What kind of question is that, you knucklehead? Of course I’ve got it and it’s been in safe keeping all this time.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  But something tells me it’s time to use it.”

“Ok, I agree but we should meet to discuss this further.”

“Good, meet you there, bye.”

Quinn hung up the phone, his face now dressed in thoughtfulness, his lips in a straight line.  He turned his back to the office door, standing in front of the window overlooking the training area in the back of the station.  He took a deep breath and swept his face with his hand, his stress levels increasing by the minute. He looked at the sky, now overcast with grayish clouds that forebode of heavy rains in the future.  Quinn feared it was just an omen of the danger ahead, a danger that now certainly included Sam.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Shit Rick! Could you hurry up, I have other things to do!” yelled Scott leaning against the door leading to the MPD File Repository in the building’s basement.  He had been waiting for fifteen minutes now for Rick to exit the bathroom across the hall from where he stood.

His thoughts drifted to Sam.  His nights had turned restless since he had left her apartment.  He had tried in vain to get some sleep, only to see her emerald eyes look back at him, full of yearning and dread at the same time.  Their time together kept played in his mind torturing him in his cold bed.   God!  He longed to hear her laugh, her easy banter but more than anything to hold her in his arms one last time.  There had to be a reason for her silence he just had to find out.

After a few more minutes Rick left the bathroom, fixing his shirt into his pants.  He placed back his gun on his shoulder holster.  He looked up at Scott, threading his fingers through his dirty blonde hair. 

“Of all days, Michael chooses today to finish some task dad, sorry _ I mean Capt. Taylor assigned him a week ago.  He has been running all day around the office and it’s a miracle I haven’t seen him eat a doughnut or any other junk he can get his hand on.”

Scott chuckles at his friend’s remark.

“I sure could have dragged his sorry ass to carry all the file boxes I need to retrieve from this basement.” Rick said with a smirk on his face.

He looked around the hallway, making sure no one was around.  He opened the File Repository with a set of keys from his pants pocket allowing Scott to get in.  He closed the door behind him and turned on the lights.

They strode in to the nearby desk where Rick logged his name in the Repository Logbook as policy required.  And soon they were immersed in the various files, searching for more clues to the case at hand within one of the many hallways of the repository. 

Mid-morning passed by them, as minutes turned into hours.  Their search somehow not getting to dead ends in some cases, in others just opening another whole myriad of questions. 

Scott found a file that caught his attention, labeled Andreozzi on the outside and decided to take a look at it.  He kept on reading page after page of the file, his mid absorbing the facts in front of him. 

“What you have there Scott?” Rick asked breaking Scott’s attention on the document.

“This is interesting; it says here that there’s this guy named Massimo Belloti, a very notorious mob lord around Miami Beach.  During his reign, Miami Beach saw the biggest wave of drug distribution in the past fifteen years.  The rap sheet associated with the family not only includes drugs but also money laundering, murders, arsons, and robbery.  There are also several cases involving kidnapping and rape to a lesser extent.”