Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
PHOENIX
A knock at our door woke me up from my sleep. Kendrix tightened his arm against me and groaned when I tried to pull away.
“Baby, stop moving…” He whined in my neck; Kendrix preferred that I slept in his arms.
Another knock at the door got his attention. “I know you guys are up. Can one of you come get the door someone has been knocking on?” Kendrix hopped right up and threw on some basketball shorts.
I quickly freshened up and met him downstairs. Levi, Marc, and Johnathan were there. They all wore grave expressions; something was wrong.
“Hi Nix, We are sorry to be here so early. Have you checked your phone?” Me? I shook my head and looked around, but it wasn’t there.
“I can’t find it, Lee; what is going on?”
“I think you left it in the car from last night. Let me get it hold on, baby.” Kendrix kissed my forehead and was back in seconds. He handed my phone to me; I saw multiple missed phone calls from Madison.
I pressed play on a voicemail from her.
“Get away from me, please. I thought you really loved me. I will never tell you where she is. I’m calling the police. You better get out of here.” Madison sobbed.
Hearing her voice tremble made my eyes immediately fill with tears. The terror in her voice fell over me like a blanket.
There was a male voice; it sounded muffled, as if he had held something over his mouth to conceal his voice.
“It was never about you, Madison. You are a beautiful woman. You were supposed to invite her over, but you failed. You had simple instructions, and you couldn’t even follow through with them. I don’t need you anymore.” The voice said darkly, and the tone was final and lethal. My heart rate picked up, and the dread in my spirit told me to turn it off, but I had to keep listening.
“Baby, give me the phone.” Kendrix’s hand tried to take it from me, but I moved away from him, standing, next to Levi. His eyes bored into mine, begging me not to continue with what we all knew we would hear on the other end of the phone.
Madison’s tortured wails poured from her lips; I didn’t have to see what was happening to her to know that she was being murdered.
The only sound in the room was the television, and then heavy breathing on the line made me jump out of my skin.
“This is all your fault, Phoenix. Had you not been indecent with him where everyone could see, I wouldn’t have lost control like that. I am trying to be patient with you but you are doing things to piss me off. I told you to stay away from him; maybe Madison can be a reminder of what happens when you disobey my rules. See you soon, beautiful.” The voicemail cut off after that, and I stared at the phone in disbelief.
“Baby, come here.” I shook my head no and fell to my knees, breaking into tears. Kendrix lifted me and cuddled me in his arms. I buried my face crying harder than I ever had in my whole life.
What did I do to deserve this?
Who is this person?
Did Madison plan to set me up?
Kendrix rubbed my back and rocked me in his arms; I cried myself back to sleep, wishing that this nightmare would end .
KENDRIX
I laid Phoenix on the bed and walked out of the room, “Phoenix is very sad right now. Do you think you could hang out in there with her in case she wakes up and needs a friendly face?” Travis was worried about her. He kept looking over my shoulder at the door.
“Are you sure everything is ok?” They have grown close since he’d been with us for over a month.
“Everything will be ok; hang out in there with her for me. I am going to be downstairs for a bit.” I opened my arms for a hug to see if he needed that extra piece of comfort. He did.
When I got back downstairs, the guys were still there, minus Marc. My temper spiked when I heard the voicemail playing over and over again.
“What the fuck is going on? Who is this person, and why is he fucking with us? With her? I know you two saw the look on her face. She was terrified.” The expression on her face broke my heart, and even in my strength, I felt like I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Levi paced the floors and kept playing it over and over again. I need something for us to catch this son of a bitch with, just a bit of information.
“We will catch him; I know we will. Marc went to the house with the forensics team to see if he left anything behind. Listen, we were talking, and we believe that it would be best if you stay here for the time being so that we can try to get ahead of this.” Johnathan said, matching my rage.
“Shh, I think I heard something that we may have missed. Come here and listen to the background noise.” Levi said; he turned the volume up, and we strained our ears to hear it.
“Come on, we need to go.” A more feminine voice said in the distance. Several noises were happening: the television, the perpetrator, and the second unknown voice.
“Now we know two suspects, a male and a female.” Levi hummed, replaying the voicemail.
“That voice doesn’t sound familiar, so I can’t place it, but she didn’t cover her mouth to distort it like him, so maybe he wasn’t expecting her to come in the house.” I tried to imagine every woman I have ever come across, but there wasn’t one that matched the voice on the voicemail.
Levi looked at me while I tried to rack my brain to see if anything would click for me, but I was coming up empty.
“We can track Madison’s phone to see who has been in her life lately,” Johnathan added; that was a great idea.
“You know we can put this voice through the data system to chop it down, and we can play it for Phoenix or the both of you to see if it is recognizable. We will take this to the lab right now, and I’ll call you if we get anything.” Levi gathered their things and Phoenix’s phone for evidence.
“Thank you, guys; he could have gotten to Phoenix through Madison. We don’t know who can be trusted at this point. You should see if Travis can spend a few nights with Brian and Makayla in case you two were followed home.” Johnathan said before giving me a handshake and walking out the door with Levi.
I paced the room, thinking back on that female voice. My phone pinged with a notification, and I checked it to see if I had an email from a spam address, but something told me to look at it anyway.
A dimly lit video was on the screen. All I could see was the front of Just Expresso before the view changed to the parking lot. The melody of familiar moans ricocheted in the background; this was from last night. The person was far enough that we were blurry, but you could hear Phoenix’s cries and my grunts clearly. It deeply disturbed me to know that a private moment between us was taken and tainted.
I forwarded the email to Levi and told him to watch it on mute, this fucker messed up in a rage of jealousy. While burner phones were more challenging to track, emails were different we we could track the IP address and get the general area of where it was sent from. Finally, something to go off; it would take a few days, but we will be shutting this shit down soon.
Phoenix will be hungry when she got up, so I made us all a quick meal. Travis needed to sign into his online class, so I would take over for him. When I got upstairs, he was asleep on the chair with his head angled towards her.
“Travis, bud, wake up. I made some food for you; it’s downstairs along with your laptop to sign into your classes.” He wiped the sleep out of his eye and thanked me before kissing Phoenix on the forehead.
I climbed back in the bed with her and snuggled her close.
“Dear God,
I need this woman right here in my arms, more than I need anything or anyone else on this earth. I ask that you cover her and protect her at all times. Lord, please keep the light in her eyes bright; don’t let this change her beautiful heart. Give us something to catch everyone involved and reveal all the players on the board. I am begging you, Lord.” I continued to recite verses of protection over my jewel.
“Ken baby, I need to go pee. Can you loosen the grip?”
I must have fallen back asleep because her angelic face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.
The bonnet that covered her beautiful curls was lopsided and provided the first real laugh of the day. I brought her lips to mine and kissed her sweetly, but she had other plans when she planted herself right on top of me .
“I have something to tell you…” something else to pile on top of the bullshit we have already been experiencing.
She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t take anymore right now, Kendrix. Can it wait for another day?” I nodded and kissed her forehead.
“Your birthday is coming up in a few weeks; what are we going to do to celebrate?” My birthday was never really a big deal growing up.
“Nothing. We need to lay low until we find out what is going on. Hold on, you know what I thought about? We haven’t been on a proper first date.”
My hand rubbed circles on her back to alleviate the stress she carried in her body.
She sighed in contentment, “Yeah, you are a bad boyfriend; you’ve never even taken me on a date; I don’t know; I might have to rethink this whole relationship thing.” I spanked her ass for that comment because why did she think she had a choice? There was no way in hell she could be with anyone other than me.
“Nah, it’s too late for you to rethink anything, Jewel. You know what we need?” She perked up with that question.
“What?”
“A tropical vacation; I think I want to spend my birthday on a tropical island. Let’s get the gang all together.”