Chapter 24
I can’t explain my music type. It’s just every song but the ones I don’t like.
— Dima to Keely
DIMA
I woke up to an empty bed.
I groaned and rolled over, burying my face into the pillow that her head had been resting on for the majority of the night.
The scent of passionfruit and apples filled my nostrils, and I inhaled and exhaled a few times before pushing myself out of bed.
I shook my head when there were several meows of anger.
Three of the four fell off my body when I got up from the bed, the fourth one only looking up from her slumber from my pillow.
I gave them a disgusted look and said, “ Y’all aren’t sleeping in here ever again.”
The cats curled their little tiny bodies into the bed and went back to sleep.
I got ready for the day, dressing in jeans, a black t-shirt, and my boots.
I headed into the kitchen for coffee and found Keely’s note just as my phone rang.
D
Went to CE .
LY .
3 K
I answered it without looking at the caller ID .
“ Hello ?”
“ Dima ,” one of Keely’s brothers said. “ It’s Copper .”
“ Hey , what’s up?” I asked.
“ I’ve been waiting at my place for over an hour for Keely to get here, and she’s nowhere in sight. Is she still asleep or something?” he asked.
I froze.
“ She’s been gone for a while,” I said.
I pulled up the security app on my phone and looked at the time stamp for when the alarm was turned off.
“ Over an hour ago,” I said. “ She should’ve easily been there by now.”
I looked at her location next and saw that she was somewhere near downtown.
“ It looks like she’s downtown, near her old work,” I said. “ Like four or five blocks away.”
“ She’s not answering her phone,” he said, sounding worried now. “ Why would she go there?”
Why indeed.
“ Let me call you back,” I said.
I called Keely and got her voicemail.
I called her again and the same thing happened.
On the fourth try, with her non-answer, I called my brother. “ I need your help. You’re at your office, right?”
He was the closest, at just under ten minutes away.
“ Yeah , what’s up?”
I sent him there, then started gathering my things.
I’d need my wallet, keys, and computer.
Only when I got the call from my brother to say that her phone was there, and nothing else, did I call Lev and Apollo .
Something was very, very wrong.
And the feeling in my stomach told me I didn’t have much time.
“ I followed the movements from here.” He pointed at our house where the cameras had caught her getting into the car. “ To here,” he said. “ She gets out of the car, and there’s a man with her. The man pulls her with him to the driver’s side window, he hands the woman a stack of cash and the woman takes off.”
“ I’m already looking that up,” Apollo said as he started typing away at his computer.
Lev was doing the same thing from the other end of the table, but he was focused on watching the movement of the car through traffic.
The two of them had gone from the Uber to the black SUV with paper plates, and then Chester had taken off heading toward Irving .
“ Got her,” Apollo said. “ Look .”
He pointed to the screen at the head of the table and we all watched as the Uber driver had picked up Chester earlier. They’d talked for a long time in front of his house, and then they’d taken off.
“ Chester ,” I said.
“ That’s the FBI agent, right?” Chevy asked.
There were a ton of us in the conference room of Castanon Enterprises .
Chevy , Copper , Cutter , Shasha , Apollo , and several other Truth Tellers , along with a few of Shasha’s guys.
“ Fast forward to now,” Apollo said as he switched to another screen.
“ Is she going to a police station?” I asked.
“ Sure is,” Apollo grumbled.
Shasha pulled his phone out and placed it to his ear.
He said a few words in it, and then Haze was outside as he met the terrified Uber driver.
They spoke for long moments, and all the while, Shasha listened on, his brows furrowed.
Haze brought the Uber driver inside, and then Shasha hung up his phone. “ He’s taking her to his office.”
Meaning we could do what we needed to do without the cops getting in our way.
“ Got them!” Lev cried out in excitement. “ They’re here.”
He shot the feed to the screen that Apollo had just taken over, and side by side we watched the Fort Worth police department parking lot, and the quick shift of street cameras as we followed the SUV that Chester had led Keely to.
Keely who looked out the window and took every single thing in that she could about her location.
“ Let’s go,” I said to no one and everyone.
“ We’ll stay and feed you information,” Apollo said, indicating Lev and himself.
“ Sounds good,” I said. “ Thanks .”
The rest of us poured out of the building, heading to our vehicles that were all parked right out front.
I took off first, heading toward where I guessed they might be.
I received text updates on my watch, telling me which roads to take and when to wait.
It appeared that Chester was trying to make sure he didn’t have a tail.
I spotted the SUV in my peripheral vision and pulled off to a side building to keep him from seeing me.
The next update came moments later.
Lev :
Just pulled into a parking lot off Commerce . Big white building. Looks empty.
I parked my bike in the closest parking garage then set off on foot.
The rest of the misfit crew went to their own locations, and all of us converged on the building from different locations.
Shasha met up with me first, followed by Cutter , Copper and Chevy .
The rest stayed back, ready to lend a hand, but staying at their bikes and vehicles just in case they needed to move.
The five of us spread around the building and checked it out.
Lev called moments after we’d arrived.
“ I killed the feed and looped it,” Lev said. “ I also unlocked the back door.”
I headed for the back door.
“ The fire department has the blueprints on the building at city hall. I sent the schematics to your phone. Copper and Cutter are coming in behind you. I sent Shasha and Chevy in through a service entrance.”
Copper and Cutter arrived, and I was waiting for them with the blueprints open on my phone.
“ There’s a hallway that leads off of this one. One goes to the security hub in the front of the building, and the other goes to the service entrance,” I said.
“ There’s no one besides Chester and Keely in the building,” Lev said. “ But there is a woman coming in hot through the front door.”
“ Natasha Leo ,” Apollo said. “ The FBI agent.”
Curious where this was headed, but so anxious that I needed Keely in my arms now, I headed into the huge, empty building.
We didn’t have to go far.
The security entrance led straight to the main room, and that’s where Chester and Keely were. Along with the woman FBI agent.
I listened to her tirade go on and on and on, more and more puzzle pieces fitting into place.
I watched as Cutter and Copper’s face mottled with anger as they listened to all the things this woman and man did to fuck their lives up—fuck Keely’s life up in particular—and knew they felt the same rage that I was feeling.
Keely looked calm, though.
“ So let me get this straight,” Keely said. “ You weren’t recognized by your father, and instead of funneling your anger at the man in constructive ways, you took your anger out on an innocent child? Do I have that correct?”
Natasha Leo narrowed her eyes. “ This is some joke to you, isn’t it?”
“ What’s a joke is thinking that I have this perfect life, while you don’t!” Keely raged, standing up. “ I was tortured for a year, you dumb, fucking bitch! I was beaten and berated. I was touched in a way that no woman, let alone child, should be touched! I was assaulted by two adult men, one of which should’ve been protecting me with everything he has. My own brother went to jail for fifteen years because of y’all’s selfishness. When the motherfuckers that hurt me are finally all dead and gone, now y’all are going to kidnap me and take my inheritance that, might I add, I don’t have? Are you seriously kidding me right now?”
Chester rolled his eyes. “ Don’t be dramatic.”
“ All feed is killed to the building,” Lev said, sensing my rage. “ Building is registered to a corporation out of China . It’s been empty for over a year, and there’s no lease in sight. Feel free to take care of business. I’ll keep everything else off of you.”
I stepped out of the side entrance and raised my gun.
Chester saw the movement and tried to follow suit, but I was too good. Too fast.
I shot him in the hand, and the gun fell from his fingertips.
Natasha gasped and stood, but Keely reared back and punched her directly in the throat.
She turned to me and smiled her sweet little smile. “ Hey , baby. I knew you’d come. What took you so long?”
“ Traffic ,” I teased.
She moved toward me and wrapped her arms around my gut.
Chevy and Shasha came from the other side of the large room and removed the weapons from the two ‘ FBI ’ agents.
“ No sister that I’ll ever acknowledge, either,” Chevy said as he stood back up with Natasha Leo’s gun in his hand.
“ Neither one of them have phones,” Lev said. “ Both pinging from outside the building in their cars.”
“ Precautionary , I’d assume,” I muttered.
“ Who is that?” Keely asked curiously.
“ Lev and Apollo ,” I answered.
“ Hi , Keely ,” Apollo called out.
“ Hi , Apollo . How’s Tavi ?” she asked.
“ He’s great,” Apollo answered. “ So you have a sister?”