"Jarret, are you there?!" She pressed her radio as she watched them walking away.
"Yes."
"Call the police right now!"
"Police?" Jarret asked back. "You have the right to arrest the—"
"It's Joseph Cassian!" She said as she tried to control her voice, to not cause panic. "He is in the park, call the cops right now!"
The radio was silent for some seconds, and of course, it was because what the fuck she just said…
"And what?" Jarret said in a calm way as he was clearly eating something and not really panicking about the whole situation.
"What?!"
"He is pardoned and not a criminal on the run… and they said he is not dangerous." Jarret said back, now slurping something… and well it was true, Joseph wasn't someone on the run or to be hunted down, at least not right now. "Don't do anything stupid, Linda, and let him explore the—"
Static noise, because Linda turned off her radio, and what she did next was not her best decision in life.
She ran back to her car and… picked up her vest and handgun, and started following them.
Why she did it, when a second ago she was shitting herself in front of him, was a great question. Maybe it was because of the gun she just picked up, maybe because they looked like they had no weapon on them.
Yeah well, she fucked up the moment she thought she had the upper hand with a pistol and a badge, because even though they looked like they had no weapon, some of the guys had jackets for a reason… to hide something that they can blast shit up if this treasure hunt goes wrong.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Pablo asked as he was pumped up, but Joseph wasn't that good, he was sweating like shit, his legs were hurting even though they didn't come even 400 meters. "I mean the smell, the bird chirping."
"Yeah it is, Pablo, beautiful…" He said with stuffing his voice. "Where is that waterfall?"
"Actually pretty close." Pablo said and yeah, they already started hearing the sound of the water splashing down and walking another hundred meters there was it…the waterfall…
"Waterfall huh…?"
"Yeah… it looks man made."
Indeed it was a man made waterfall, with one look at it everybody could see that all the rocks were put there with a machine as well as the whole area was excavated and was decorated with flowers that do not even grow in a forest.
"They made it to help the environment I think and the animals." Pablo said as he looked at Joseph who was starting to look like a zombie. "I think you should freshen yourself up with water."
"Yeah I think so too." Joseph said as he knelt down and freshened his face up with the water and it was cold like ice and pretty clear so he even made a sip of it, and it just became clearer that it's not coming from nature but some pipe or something pushing it out, covered by big rocks.
Scamming with a national park… He thought because it just became more clear that this park was just another money dump, maybe they covered up something with it, or it was another thing they funneled and stole money with.
"So we need to go there." Pablo pointed off the trails into the dense forest. "She said 200 meters and we reach the old forestry and then another 800 and we are at the creek." As he finished it he pulled out from the machete as well as the others, which was again a very strange experience for those real visitors and tourists who were around them.
Dozens of guys with machetes started walking off the trails and chopping off everything that was in their way… moreover it became clear for their stalker ranger who started to realize that they truly came here looking for something and as she started to think about what they could search for she remembered what Joseph asked for, creek in the old forestry area…
Yeah the old forestry that they are going for was famous for wrong reasons which even Joseph or Pablo himself didn't know about.
First, nobody knew who was the owner of the forestry, there was no company or names assigned to it, it was just there without any names, workers, that's why exactly it came under investigation when the new government took over it.
It was just strange that there is forestry and not even a single tree was cut… a shell company laundering money?
The question was asked many times but investigators found nothing… at least about that it was a shell company but they found far worse things.
Bodies. Not one, not two or three but dozens of bodies were found. Some of it was buried, some of it was just thrown into the forest and slowly rotted away, some bodies were burned, chopped up. It was one of the dump sites of the underworld, the dump site of the Cassian family and the alliance.
It just became a fact when they started to identify the bodies by DNS and the people who were found were policemen, accountants, dealers, smugglers, all of them life ended in a forest in the silence.
And they had no idea about it, which meant now Joseph didn't just have one reason to worry that the money is not here but actually two.
What if the investigators found the money?
Well, they were now close to the creek, already in the old forestry where they could move more freely. It was still like how Joseph remembered it, trees in lines, and not far away is the willow trees with the creek… with the money.… and if there is no money, then one thing is for sure.
Joseph might be going to crash out… and if that happens then Linda who was now in their ass even more was going to have a very bad day…