Waiting

knoteach

 

Josiah was relaxing in his favorite recliner after a day of repairs and yard work when contemplation of what he had accomplished brought with it thoughts of what the next day might bring and the events of the last few months that had led up to it.  The last few months had definitely been unique in the experience of Josiah Sanchez.

 

The call that had started it all had come on a lazy afternoon when Josiah had been about to go crazy from boredom.  He had plenty of repairs to do and renovations to make, but he could only work as quickly as his pension could pay for materials.  A the time, he had been contemplating a trip to the hardware store, even if it meant living off of canned pasta for the rest of the month.

 

Josiah had known Nathan for several years and trusted his judgment when he said he thought that this might be a job that he would enjoy.  If he though Chris Larabee would give him a chance, then he would be willing to give Chris Larabee a chance.

 

Chris had overcome a lot after the deaths of his wife and son.  Josiah could almost understand the man’s subsequent descent into alcohol and knew that the trip back up out of the bottle was even harder.  He had watched his own father lose that battle as a child and had had to live through the abuse that always accompanied the man’s binges.

 

Buck Wilmington, the team’s demolition man, had stayed with his good friend all through the catastrophe and his recovery afterward.  The two men had been friends for many years, thought that had been strained for a while, but Josiah hoped that they could smooth it out now.  Even so Buck seemed to have enough problems of his own.

 

Buck was a well known ladies’ man, and seemed to love being the center of attention, but Josiah had noticed that the former SEAL and Lieutenant of the Denver Bomb Squad seemed more comfortable when he had the stability of a strong leader and set routine, rather than when he was the leader and setting the routine and making all of the decisions.  Quite frankly, he was more at home with taking orders than with giving them.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Nathan, unlike the others, Josiah knew well.  He was an overly pious loudmouth, but he was trustworthy and loyal to a fault.  He too had his personal problems some obvious, some not so obvious.  Few knew that his mother had committed suicide after being raped, but most could guess that it wasn’t easy being one of only fifteen black men on the Denver Police Department roster. 

 

But Nathan was nothing if not determined.  He had worked hard all through high school to keep his grades at the absolute top, earning academic scholarships for college.  After that, when his dreams of medical school fell through he had scraped up all the money he had saved toward it and enrolled in a professional EMT course, then gone on to enter the world of law enforcement.  He had chosen a difficult life, but he had excelled admirably.

 

Vin Tanner, the first man to join the team after he had, was an interesting young man, but definitely a keeper.  Orphaned at an early age in Texas, young Vin had been sent to Denver to live with his maternal Grandfather.  When the grandfather died two years later, he had been bounced from foster home to foster home, until he was thirteen.  At that point he had had enough of families services and had run away to live on the streets.  He had barely managed to graduate high school and then immediately enlisted in the army.  After boot camp the Army had invited him to join the Rangers as a sniper, a position he held with distinction, having some of the highest range scores in Rangers history.

 

Vin eventually left the Rangers and the Army when corruption in the higher level lead to the deaths of several of his friends.  Vin then dropped out of sight for a couple years, only to reappear leading two highly wanted criminals into a state police station in California. 

 

From then on, Vin Tanner had worked as one of the most successful, and surprisingly respected, bounty hunters west of the Mississippi.  Vin had even brought in three men off the FBI’s most wanted list in the last five years, a feat that was unheard of!  Law men all over the nation respected Vin, not only for his ability to track his prey, but also the way he never stepped over the line and used more force than was necessary.  It was a rare thing for a bounty hunter to even care, since most were in it for the money, but Vin was truly in the line of work to get criminals off the street.

 

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

 

JD Dunne was another interesting one.  Their new computer expert might look young and certainly had quite an enthusiasm for life, but he was not as naïve as the others seemed to think.  He had a good head on his shoulders and wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed, just like the rest of them.  He had shown quite a bit of initiative in applying for a position that was half a continent away.  One could tell that his mother’s recent death had him a little off balance, but he was dealing with it well and was determined to make her proud of him. 

 

As a member of the Boston Police Department, JD had been making quite a name for himself as a computer tracker and technological forensics man.  When the perp seemed to disappear, he could trace down the seemingly most minute evidence of where the quarry had gone and get them back on track.  Looking at his record it wasn’t hard to figure out what Chris had been thinking when he hired him.

 

Which brought Josiah up to date and to the anticipated events tomorrow. 

 

When Chris had announced his intentions to hire Ezra Standish and gave them each copies of his folder, Josiah had been greatly surprised.  At the time Josiah could vaguely remember having worked with the man once years ago, but reading the file had brought it all back.

 

Standish had been brash, mouthy, and irreverent, but he had been open-minded about Josiah’s style of profiling, which was more than could be said for most of the FBI.  He had even publicly backed Josiah, which had gotten a few more people to listen. 

 

At the time, Josiah had had a hard time pinning the man down; there had been things about him that just didn’t add up right.  That had trouble Josiah, but he had believed him to be a good agent.

 

When Josiah had found out a few months ago that Standish had stepped off the line, he had gotten in contact with a friend in the Atlanta office and talked him into letting him look at the case file.  Everything had been in order, and it was painfully clear that Standish had thrown the case, even if there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, or even fire him.  Since then Standish had continued to work undercover, but his cases were kept low profile and relatively unimportant.

 

Josiah shook his head as he stood and headed for bed.  Josiah couldn’t figure out what Chris was doing, but it didn’t look very good at the moment.  Josiah hoped everything would be alright and he wasn’t above admitting he had made a mistake.  He’d just have to wait and see what came up.

 

 

 

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