Chapter 14 He’s Ours
FOURTEEN
HE’S OURS
I was sitting on the red-with-black-piping sofa at AAHQ, staring at the picture of Amy Small we had projected on the back wall.
I’d already texted Gabe to let him know we were good, and after a debrief at HQ, I’d be home.
Yep.
Not thinking, I used the word “home” to describe his loft, where I’d been only once.
Thus, I had a minor freakout about that wee snafu, until Gabe texted back a casual, CU soon.
I was a full word texter, but since he texted right back, ended his with the double-heart-with-swoops-around-it emoji, and didn’t act weirded out I called his place “home,” I decided I was okay with Gabe being a minimalist texter.
Raye and Shanti were at the back desk, clacking on the computer, looking at the stuff we’d requested from Arthur, and he’d delivered.
Gem was sitting beside me on the couch, also staring at the picture of Amy.
It was hard to look at.
She’d seriously been roughed up.
But something seemed…off about it.
I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
The door slid up, but no one was surprised, since we’d gotten a text from Harlow they’d completed their search and were on their way.
I looked over the back of the couch to see Tex amble in first.
They’d pulled him in because Amy’s apartment was on the second floor, the stairs going right to her front door. Therefore, no access to jimmy windows and no back door, so they needed someone who could pick a lock.
And, as suspected, Tex could do that.
While the others pulled down the door after they entered, he looked around then homed in on the beverage fridge.
He went there, pulled out a bottle of San Pelligrino, and we all watched as he cracked it open, put it to his lips and guzzled it whole like he was shotgunning a beer.
When he was done, he crunched it in a mighty fist, pounded his other hand on his chest, let out a loud belch that lasted a good five seconds, and then proclaimed, “Haven’t had a good B and E in a long time.
The shit we did with that Trev turkey was no fun.
He was already dead. No one was gonna show.
No one was gonna catch us. No challenge with that. So tonight was fuckin’ phenomenal.”
I loved Tex, truly.
I mean, only he could put the spin on a B&E that it was more fun if you were in danger of getting caught.
But still.
I was thinking of calling a vote to make AAHQ a no-belching zone.
Gross.
“Bonus,” Tex went on, “this time, there were no dead bodies.”
Yikes!
I knew that wasn’t about any Angels shenanigans, so I mentally circled the Never Read the Rock Chicks item on my mental list in imaginary bold, red marker. Then I added a few stars.
“Is this the picture?” Luna asked.
We’d texted them about the photo in order to warn them so they wouldn’t be shocked when they came in and saw it blown up wall-size.
She’d moved to stand at the side of the desk, her gaze aimed at the picture.
Jessie and Harlow joined her, also examining the snap.
Joey sat on the couch beside Gemma, but her gaze was aimed at Amy.
“Yeah,” I answered Luna unnecessarily, as we could all see it was.
“Good Lord,” Harlow breathed as she stared at Amy Small.
“What the fuck?” Tex asked.
We looked to see he was now bent over the opened beverage fridge.
“No beer?” he went on.
“None of us drink beer,” Jessie replied. “At least not during girl time, and time spent at HQ is usually girl time. Until now.”
He grunted.
I turned back to Team Bravo of the Angels.
“Did you guys find anything?” I asked as the whole couch shook when Tex threw his weight on it.
I again looked to him to see he had a small can of rosé wine in his beefy hand, and he was studying the photo.
Luna turned to me. “Nothing.”
“Bummer,” I muttered.
“No, you don’t understand,” Jess said. “We found nothing. Place was neat as a pin.”
“No earrings left on the dresser,” Harlow chimed in. “No moisturizer left out by the bathroom sink. Not even a coffee cup in the dish drainer, you know, like Louise left when she and Thelma took their ill-fated girls’ weekend.”
What?
That didn’t sound right.
I mean, maybe she wasn’t abducted there, so there wouldn’t be overturned furniture and such.
But still.
Neat as a pin?
I thought I was neat as a pin, but there was probably always something that would indicate I’d recently been there.
“Bed made. Carpets vacuumed. No food spoiling in the fridge,” Harlow kept going. “Like you leave your house before you go on vacation.”
That was off too.
So off, it was hinky, and I could tell all the Angels thought the same.
My attention went back to the photo, and I hyper-focused on it.
“Outside this picture, you?” Luna inquired.
I tore my attention away from Amy to look back at Luna. “We had visitors while we were in there.”
Luna’s eyes got big. So did Harlow’s. Jessie’s narrowed. Tex grunted again.
“What?” Luna demanded.
“Shanti saw them coming, but they were moving too fast, Raye and Willow couldn’t get out in time,” Gemma reported. “Shanti went in to warn them. They hid, and whoever showed left the photo while they were there.”
“The guys that came in didn’t even search the house,” I added. “Saw the back door busted, and although one of them thought that was weird, the other one thought he was stupid for thinking it was.”
“Not smart,” Jessie muttered.
“Didn’t get the impression they were,” I agreed. “But as we listened to them talk, we did get two names. TJ and Dex.”
“TJ and Dex,” Luna muttered as she turned back to the image on the wall.
“What are those two doing?” Joey jerked her chin toward Raye and Shanti, who were engrossed with something on the computer.
“Arthur sent the Food City CCTV footage and other stuff,” Gemma told her. “They’re looking through it.”
At a glance, I noticed they were more than looking through it. They seemed mesmerized by it.
But I turned back to the photo, studying, particularly, Amy’s face.
“She looks like she’s sobbing,” I blurted. “But it also kinda looks like she’s laughing.”
Everyone focused on the pic.
“And why isn’t she tied to the chair?” I queried.
After a few beats, Harlow suggested, “I don’t know, but if I was beat up that bad, if told, I’d probably sit docilely in a chair and hold up a proof-of-life newspaper.”
“And I’m not sure we can tell what her facial expression is, because of that gag,” Gemma said. “But you’re kinda right. I don’t see any tears.”
That was it!
There were no tears!
Joey got up, rounded the desk to the other side of where Luna, Jessie and Harlow were standing, and then bent close to peer at the photo.
She jerked back, announcing, “That’s a fresh mani.”
My breath stuttered.
“It is?” Gemma asked.
“No more than a couple of days old,” Joey declared, and since she was a nail tech, she would know.
“Also, the makeup job is off,” Tex offered.
We turned to him.
He tipped the bottom edge of his rosé can to the picture.
“I’ve taken my fair share of beatings,” he announced.
“Given them too. You get swelling and discoloration. She’s got the discoloration of a woman who recently took a beatdown, but no swelling.
Beatdown like that, she’d be swelled up for days.
By the time the swelling went down, the bruising would not look like that. It’d be a lot more faded.”
Joey scrutinized closer before she decreed, “Holy shit, it’s a makeup job.”
“Yeah, it is,” Raye piped in from the back.
We turned that way.
Raye was sitting at the desk, still staring at the screens, her expression hard.
Shanti was standing straight as an arrow beside it, appearing like she wanted to kill someone.
This did not bode well at all.
“Amy Small doesn’t miss visitation days with her son at prison,” Raye stated. “Including last weekend.”
“Oh my God,” Harlow breathed the words I was sure we were all thinking.
“Prison records show, he also frequently calls her, and that has not dropped off at all in the last two weeks,” Raye added. “The only difference is, he’s calling her on a different number. She has two phones.”
“Son’s name is Dillon Small,” Shanti put in. “On his list of known associates is a Thomas Jefferson “TJ” Boda. And Dillon and TJ run with a loose gang headed by a man named William Dexter.”
I gasped.
TJ and Dex!
“Dexter also pays for Dillon’s phone calls from prison to his momma,” Raye put in.
I stood, my blood heating in my veins, my attention turning back to the photo, what was happening maybe not fully forming in my brain, but I was getting the gist. “She’s playing him. She found her mark at Food City, and I don’t know what they want him to do, but she’s playing him.”
The photo on the screen changed to the mugshot of a white guy whose looks were so average, I might not even remember what he looked like after I turned away from the pic.
“William Dexter,” Shanti said.
That image disappeared and some grainy footage of a parking lot came up, and sure as shit, there was Amy Small, standing beside a car, talking to the man in the earlier mugshot.
It was not remotely an attack, and even grainy, it was clear they were just talking and doing it like they knew each other.
Amy gave him a quick kiss before she turned and walked away, and I couldn’t see clearly, but it looked like the man smiled at her while she did, then she looked over her shoulder and waved.
I was no expert, but I felt it was safe to say that was definitely not abductor and abductee behavior.
“And William Dexter with Amy Small about two days before she ‘disappeared,’” Shanti punctuated what we just saw.
“She’s playing him,” Luna spat.
“That is some serious fucked up,” Jessie snapped.
It so was.
Raye and Shanti came from the back, Raye saying, “We left a note for Duane that we’d been there, and we were in to help. We told him we’d be back tomorrow night.”