Kin of the Child, chapter 5 (Patreon)

“How dare he!” The lawyer practically sputtered the words. If Tony hadn’t been gripped with fear, he would have been amused.

“Man, you have no idea what he will dare. That was you getting off lucky,” Agent Sandburg said. The bastard had the audacity to grin while saying it. Either he had an abundance of balls or a lack of brains. “And considering the bullshit you’re trying to pull, seriously, fucking lucky.” Sandburg looked over toward Tony. “I should not have said that word in front of you, honey. That’s not a good word to say. We only say it when we want to eviscerate someone, but the law says you can’t.” He said that in such a normal tone that it took a half second for Tony to realize that Sandburg was talking to Tali. Most people baby-talked at her. And they avoided the topic of evisceration.

Sandburg shifted his focus to Tony. “Come on, I’ll show you the break room.”

The lawyer took a quick step forward. “Agent Sandburg, I insist you arrest the suspect and put him in a holding cell.”

Tony stiffened, and Tali’s quivering lip returned. Up to this point, Tony had thought of Sandburg as the perpetual good-guy, the soft touch relegated to dealing with witnesses and special victims. But now Sandburg drew himself up and his mouth turned hard.

“You do not have the right to order me to do jack shit, buddy. If you want, I can give you Colonel Finn’s number since he’s my superior at CID, and he will then tell you that you can’t order me to do jack shit. And if you push it farther, I will call the governor and complain about you trying to order me to do jack shit. I fucking hate people who abuse political connections, but do not think that will keep me from using them when I see someone getting railroaded.” Sandburg’s cold tone made a shiver go up Tony’s spine. Sandburg knew how to play bad cop, that was for damn sure.

“I’ll get someone else to arrest him.”

“You can try,” Sandburg said in a strangely jovial tone as he turned his back on the lawyer, “but that was a minor tremor in the potential explosion of Mount St. Ellison. I think you’re going to find that most officers in this building have just found urgent business anywhere away from you.” Sandburg caught Tony by the elbow and hurried him down the hallway away from the interrogation rooms.

Tali blinked, her head swiveling as she looked from Sandburg to the lawyer. Tony understood her confusion, but since Sandburg seemed to vote in favor of keeping Tony out of a jail cell, he allowed Sandburg to usher him down the hall.

Like Sandburg predicted, the placed had emptied out. Two detectives sat typing reports in one room they passed and a couple of uniformed officers took one look at them and fled. Other than that, Cascade Police Department appeared virtually abandoned. The security issues around that made Tony wonder if all these cops were taking advantage of Washington’s recreational marijuana law.

“Can I get Tali a water or an s-o-d-a?” Sandburg asked in an oddly cheerful voice.

“I don't want to get you in trouble,” Tony said. Sooner or later, the lawyer would find someone else, and Tony wanted to minimize the chance of any violence. “If Detective Ellison is telling the truth about a lawyer coming, maybe Tali and I can wait somewhere quiet and out of the way until he shows.” Tony would far rather hang out in one of the interrogation rooms than he would get relegated to a cell, especially since that would put Tali into emergency foster care. Tony had very few illusions about what happened to children in the system.

“Don't worry about it,” Sandburg said as he plunked coins into a vending machine. He pulled out a flavored vitamin water and handed it to Tali. “Anderson is an asshole, and Jim has been looking for an excuse to trim his wings.”

“Refusing out right to arrest someone is going to get you in hot water,” Tony said. He stopped. Trying to convince someone to arrest him seemed like a dumb move. What the hell was he thinking?

Sandburg just shrugged. “No worries. I'm CID, so technically I don't have the authority to arrest a civilian. So Anderson is pretty much showing off his ignorance. Hell, if the Commissioner thought I tried arresting a civilian, he'd be on the phone with Colonel Finn to complain. He gets enough heartburn just thinking about the fact that he has a CID agent working in his oh-so civilian agency.” Sandburg snorted. “Most of the time police officers are pro-military, but our new commissioner really has a thing against the Army. Either that, or he has a thing against me. That's entirely possible because I have pointed out one or two of his flaws in vivid detail.” Sandburg leaned close as if sharing a dark secret. “It's amazing how many people don't like that.”

Insane. The whole department was stark raving mad, and after working at NCIS, Tony did know what crazy looked like. 

“How did a CID agent come to liaison with Cascade police,” Tony asked since the conversation seemed to give him an opening. 

Blair shrugged, “Oh, you know how it is.”

Tony had a few suspicions about how it was. After all, he'd worked with a rather improbable liaison officer, and he was still fairly sure that daddy David and the good Director Shepard were in some sort of collusion. For all of her abilities, and Ziva was an exceptionally impressive individual, she was not particularly talented with investigations. So there was some other reason for putting her on that team.

Tony tried to find a politically safe way of asking if Agent Sandburg was up to his neck in politics when Sandburg clapped his hands together. “So, we need a safe place for you guys to stay for a few days.”

“I have a hotel,” Tony said.

“Yeah, but you gave the patrol officer the name of that hotel,” Sandburg said, which was Tony’s first clue that Sandburg intended to hide them. This was exceeding even NCIS levels of insane.

He shook his head. “I would rather deal with trouble head on.”

Sandburg rolled his eyes. “Why am I not surprised?” He sounded amused. “I’m just suggesting that you stay out of sight for a while. If Jim calls the lawyer I think he’s going to, it’s going to take a couple of days for him to get here. As soon as he shows up, you can come and be as confrontational as you like.”

“I don’t like confrontation at all.”

“Oh man, tell that to someone who doesn’t know that you took on a bank robber, ordered around a patrol officer, and called me out for not following my superior’s orders. You’re nicer than most of the people around here when it comes to confrontation, but you are not exactly avoiding it.”

Tony stared at Sandburg in horror.

After a second, Sandburg shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. It’s rude to rearrange mental furniture, I get it. Trust me everyone down here is given me that particular speech.” Sandburg shook his head as if amused by the whole human race, “but you are not having a clear vision of yourself right now. So, I have a friend you can stay with. He’s got a nice big place with lots of spare room, and a paranoia issue so extreme that no one is going to bother you there. Even if the police suspect you’re there, they’re going to know that they can’t get a warrant and Jack won’t let them in his door. It’s the perfect firewall for you and Tali.” Sandburg winked at Tali and then circled around Tony to get to the exit.

Tony found himself following before he could make up his mind about whether to go along with Sandburg’s plan. “I don’t know.”

“Totally fine,” Sandburg said. “I mean, you wouldn’t know because you just landed in the middle of all this.” Sandburg spread his hands out to take in the large lobby they’d just reach with its official seal on the floor. The damn building still looked like a ghost town with a few officers doing paperwork and others who fled at the sight of Sandburg. This guy was definitely not the good-cop type, at least not with people who knew him. “But I know, and trust me, you are going to be fine and Anderson is going to seriously regret his life choices.”

“I…” Tony closed his mouth. He had no words, which was unusual for him.  He watched an older black detective chatting with a woman. His lean was too forced and his body language stiff. He definitely considered the woman a suspect, but she was chatting away like she didn’t have a care in the world. It was an odd vignette. 

“So, what’s your family like?” Sandburg asked as he led them through a door marked “Staff Only.” Tali was oddly relaxed in Tony’s arms.

“Typically dysfunctional,” Tony said. 

“I hear that.” Sandburg huffed. “Man, my father was a real asshole. He makes Anderson look like a fluffy puppy, and after he knocked my mom up, he walked out. Totally ghosted her. So there she was with unsupportive parents of her own and a baby. Some people, ya know?”

The confession made Tony deeply uncomfortable. He understood the psychology of it. If a person revealed something personal, the listener felt obligated to reciprocate. But Tony did not know Sandburg well enough to get into his issues with Senior.

“Luckily some of his family was a little more understanding of the whole mixed heritage.”

“Mixed heritage?” The phrase came out before Tony could edit himself.  Sure, he knew there were hate groups that might object to an Aryan having a child with a Jew—at least that’s the mixing Tony assumed was going on based on Sandburg’s name—but that was an odd phrase.

Sandburg didn’t answer. They reached a big, old white truck with a double cab. It wasn’t the sort of vehicle Tony expected Sandburg to drive, but then he was starting to think he couldn’t predict the man. Sandburg went to the driver’s side and turned toward Tony. “Hey, prejudice is everywhere. Hell, I know people who have trouble accepting their own heritage.”

Tony just nodded. He wasn’t sure what he could say about that logic.

After a second, Agent Sandburg nodded. “Okay, so let’s get you to Jack Kelso’s place. He actually loves annoying the police, so he will be thrilled to take you guys in for a few days. I’ll head over to your hotel and grab your stuff.” He frowned. “Unless you’d rather I not. I can leave it all there, but I can’t guarantee that Anderson won’t find someone who will search the place.”

“It’s fine for you to grab our stuff,” Tony said. He didn’t want Tali going without her pajamas or her toys. She didn’t have many, but she was very attached to the ones she had. He pulled out his wallet and offered Sandburg his hotel key card. Then he went to put Tali in the backseat behind Sandburg. That way Tony could see her from the passenger side. She went in without protest. Hell, this was the most accommodating she’d been since they’d started travelling. Usually every new car, new hotel and new city caused a significant amount of fussing and exceptionally quiet fit throwing. Now she was going into a strange truck without even a lip quiver.

Tony was starting to worry about her. He walked around the truck and was getting in when the name Sandburg had used registered. “Wait. Jack Kelso, the ex-CIA agent who wrote those books?”

Sandburg’s face lit up with a huge smile. “That’s him.”

Just when Tony thought it couldn’t get any stranger.