Chapter 3
Nahla scribbled another sentence in her notebook before focusing on Mr. and Mrs. Howard again.
“So, before your land was seized, deputies were sent to inspect it?” she asked.
Mrs. Howard nodded and said, “They came by three times, talkin’ ’bout they received complaints about criminal activity.” She scoffed.
“I am sixty-four years old, and my husband is sixty-seven. We spent our whole lives makin’ an honest livin’. You think we gon’ wait till now to be criminals? Chile, please.”
Nahla’s heart broke at the woman’s words. The people with power in this city were really out here ruining lives.
“I’m so sorry,” was all Nahla could think to say. It was how she truly felt about all of this—sorry.
Mr. Howard, who hadn’t said much in the thirty minutes the three of them had been together, cleared his throat. He grasped his wife’s hand and lifted it to his lip. Nahla couldn’t help but smile softly as he kissed the back of it.
“We’ve lived in Lyle all our lives, Miss Avery. We’ve owned that land for thirty-two years. We worked hard and paid off that land fair and square, and what has happened to us just ain’t right.”
Nahla nodded. “It isn’t. Not at all. Do you all remember the names of the officers who initially came to check out your land?”
He shook his head. “When all this started, we didn’t even think it was that big of a deal to be writin’ down badge numbers and names. When the police first came sniffin’ around our property, they made it seem like the whole thing must have been a mistake and that we’d get the land back, no problem.
“But . . . they never returned it.”
Mr. Howard scowled. “Hell no. They bulldozed it and sent some young ass officer to explain to us what happened. They made it seem like they uncovered some major contraband on the property and were doin’ us a favor by not lockin’ us up.”
Mrs. Hill chimed in. “And we told them to show it to us, because we ain’t have nothin illegal. They never did, though. They just stonewalled us and wiped our property clean like we never existed.”
The room fell silent as their words permeated the air.
If Nahla hadn’t already heard a similar story from the Green family, she would have probably been more shocked at their admissions.
Knowing that there wasn’t much she could say to make things better, she sighed and repeated her words from earlier.
“I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Howard shook her head.
“Don’t be sorry, child, just tell the truth. That’s all we need. Folks who can really do somethin’ about it . . . They listen to people like you.”
Schooling her face, Nahla asked softly, “People like me?”
“People with education and credentials. They won’t be able to get away with labeling you a liar. Not easily anyway. We ain’t the only ones they done this to. Plenty folks got stories that ended worse than ours, but they got shut down as soon as they started tryin’ to speak up about it.”
Nahla raised a brow. “Do you think they would be interested in talking to me?”
Both the Howards shook their heads. “Many of them—the ones who this happened to years before us—have passed away. Because of their ages, most people assumed they died of natural causes. The coroner told the public that anyway, but he’s in it with them too.”
Nahla made a note to research the coroner.
“There is a man—a good man—rotting in a jail cell as we speak because he tried to push back on all this. I know another guy who’s livin’ on the streets now,” Mr. Howard said, then shook his head.
“Nah, people are too scared to talk to you, Miss Avery. The police force, the politicians, the zoning board . . . they’re all crooked. A lotta people around here think your little stories are gonna do more harm than good.
“We have faith that they’ll make a change, though. That’s why we’re here, talkin’ to ya.”
“I appreciate that,” Nahla said.
Mrs. Howard shook her head fiercely. “Do more than appreciate it. Do right by us and all the other people who have lost everything behind this. Promise us, Miss Avery.”
Nahla began nodding, but Mrs. Howard continued. “Promise us that you won’t give up on this. Promise us that you won’t stop till you take ’em down.”
Nahla watched as Mrs. Howard searched her eyes. She could only hope they would convey the sincerity behind her next words.
“I promise you both that I’ll bring the truth to the light. No matter how long it takes, I won’t stop until the right people are behind bars and your land is returned to you.”
The couple nodded, and Nahla closed her notebook. Determining that she had enough information from them, she decided to just sit with them a while longer and get to know them as people. The longer she spoke with them, the more determined she became.
When it was time for her to head back to her hotel, she left out of the door, silently vowing to make this right for them. For all of them.
Nahla sipped from her coffee cup as she stared at her laptop screen with satisfaction.
The last day of her weekend trip to Lyle had been a success.
Her tablet was filled with timelines that connected several of her unanswered questions, interview notes, and other discoveries she’d made in the last two days.
She had been working nonstop, but her hard work had paid off in a major way.
In addition to getting the Howards’ story, she also confirmed three more instances where people of color had been threatened into signing temporary forfeiture documents.
She had even gotten one other witness to go on the record with his testimony.
His story was just like the others: Law enforcement showed up, forcing papers he barely understood in his face, and taking the land he had worked his entire life to earn and own.
Also, like the other stories, once everything was said and done, each individual experienced a burglary that resulted in the disappearance of their copies of the documents. This one fact made Nahla’s story sound like a bunch of well-crafted rumors, so she needed something to make it all stick.
And she got it.
It occurred to her that the company responsible for ruining lives was probably a shady LLC.
She had an inkling that someone in the police force was behind this but that they’d do their best to keep it away from themselves.
Still, Nahla didn’t have much faith in the intelligence of these small-town criminals, so she went digging for evidence on the Secretary of State’s online database.
She found several registered LLCs based in Lyle, Chaney, but only three weren’t connected to a long-standing brick-and-mortar business in the city.
Of the three, one—Blue Stone Holdings, LLC—was registered to Wanda Miller, the wife of Deputy Allen Miller.
By all accounts, Deputy Allen was the sheriff’s right-hand man.
Putting her money on that one, she put all her effort into uncovering information on Wanda’s so-called business.
Every single property that had been taken traced back to Blue Stone Holdings.
It wasn’t actually difficult to uncover.
They had been going after senior citizens who probably weren’t aware of all the research that could be done to end this.
Their victims were also longtime Lyle residents who had been indoctrinated in the systemic racism of the city.
They had lived their lives believing that no one could beat the system they lived in, so instead of hiring lawyers who could have uncovered this criminal enterprise themselves, they gave in and tried to move on.
The whole thing pissed Nahla off, and she was determined to get each family their property back. This piece of evidence was her golden ticket. She now had proof attached to her notion that all of this was nothing more than systemic theft disguised as justice.
So, this was why she had just spent the last four hours drinking coffee and typing up all her findings. She was running on caffeine and adrenaline and couldn’t sit on the information until she got home the next day. But . . .
Now that she was done, she still felt restless. She checked the time on her laptop.
Ten forty-five p.m.
It was late, but she knew she wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. She had already planned to take the morning off from work the next day, so wouldn’t it be better to drive an hour and a half tonight and get even more rest in her own bed?
She decided it would be. Closing her laptop, she began packing up her small travel bag, and within twenty minutes, she was giving the hotel room a brief once-over.
Once she was satisfied that she wasn’t leaving anything, she left the room, excited to be returning to her own home earlier than scheduled.
She had a short, creaky ride on the outdated elevator, and when the doors opened, she pulled her keys from her purse while stepping off. She walked toward the glass entry doors and prepared to step out into the crisp night air, but what she saw as she looked up stopped her in her tracks.
Under the dim lights that lit the streets at this hour, Nahla could just make out two figures dressed in all-black, approaching her car.
Both individuals were wearing hoods, but their statures told her they were male.
She could also see the hand of the one carrying a tire iron, and he looked to be Caucasian.
“What the fuck?” she mumbled. It didn’t take a genius to predict what was about to happen next, and Nahla knew it would be dumb of her to run out into the night at this hour—in this city—with no one to have her back.
Not taking her eyes off the door, she reached into her purse again, fumbling for her phone.
She had just retrieved it when the man with the tire iron swung it above his head.
Knowing what was coming next, she winced, forcing her eyes closed, but the crash she should have heard from her windshield glass shattering never came.
She opened her eyes again, to find that the two men were no longer alone.
There was now a third individual, also dressed in all black, but with his hands exposed, and she could clearly tell he was a Black man.
The visual in front of her prompted her to drop her phone and her bottom lip.
The third man towered over the other two, who couldn’t have been more than five feet eight.
The taller man had managed to catch the tire iron mid swing and twist it out of the guy’s hand, and throw it to the side, right before grabbing both his wrists and hemming him up against Nahla’s car.
He did all of that with one hand though, because as the other guy lunged toward him, he used his free hand to wrap it around the man’s throat.
Nahla was in a state of shock and confusion.
Who were they? Who was he, and how did he manage to appear just in time to save her vehicle?
The entire scene looked like something straight out of a movie.
The man clearly had a firm grip on them, but it wasn’t so tight that they couldn’t communicate, because she saw both of them nodding their heads frantically.
There was a pause in their nodding, and Nahla assumed the guy was saying something else to them.
Whatever he said worked, because a second later, he released his hold on them, and they scurried to the black pick-up truck parked beside Nahla’s car, got in, and drove away without so much as a glance behind them.
Nahla watched as the third man pulled out his phone and aimed it at the retreating vehicle.
The stranger glanced at the ground, bent down, picked up the tire iron, and stared at it for a minute before turning, ever so slowly.
He stopped when his body faced the hotel entrance, but because his hoodie was shielding his face, she couldn’t be sure he was looking at her.
This was confirmed seconds later, however, because as he lifted his head, he pulled the hood of his jacket back a little. Their eyes met, and for just a moment, everything went still.
Nahla didn’t know what to do or say, so she stood in place.
The stranger didn’t say anything either; he just stared at her with a penetrating gaze.
His expression was unreadable, but even in the dim light, she could clearly see that he was handsome.
She couldn’t have looked away even if she wanted to.
He gave her a subtle nod, causing her breath to hitch. But, just as quietly as he had appeared, he left, turning to walk away in the dark.
Nahla, on the other hand, stood planted in that spot long after the man was out of sight. She felt her body trembling slightly as her brain tried to make sense of the last five minutes.
What the hell just happened?
Clearly, she had gotten close to the truth, and someone in the city wanted to scare her into silence by vandalizing her car. They didn’t know her very well. This incident only confirmed that she needed to continue in the same direction, and she would, . . . as soon as she got out of this city.
Confident that her knight in the black hoodie had successfully scared off her would-be attackers, Nahla quickly walked to her car, got in, and started it. By the time she was pulling away from the parking lot, her biggest concern was the fact that she didn’t get any of that on film.
What kind of journalist am I?
Shaking her head, she allowed her mind to drift to the tall, dark, handsome stranger. His calm demeanor and effortless control over the situation remained with her as she drove in silence. How was he in the right place, at just the right time? Her mind wrestled with this thought for a while.
Whoever he was, she owed him big, but she didn’t think she’d ever get the chance to thank him.