Chapter 14
“Damn,” Cannon said as he rolled over.
The sun was bright and hurting his eyes before he even opened them. He slowly peered at the clock on his nightstand.
Ten thirty-two a.m.
Cannon sat up in confusion. The sun never got up before he did.
He couldn’t remember the last time he slept past six.
As the events of just a few hours ago started to come back to him, Cannon realized two things: He had had the best sleep of his life last night, and the reason for that was Nahla Avery.
He lay back again and stared at the ceiling, replaying her stories, her touch, and her soothing voice in his mind.
The way she held him—the way she loved him—last night was apparently exactly what he needed.
Nahla had cracked the code. She had figured him out in a way that he was never able to.
As selfish as it might have sounded, Cannon wanted that treatment always.
He wanted her to write all those stories she was telling him last night, in a book, so that he could choose which one he wanted to hear on a nightly basis.
He exhaled slowly and finally got out of bed. He headed straight to the restroom.
As he got ready for the day, a thought hit him. He thoroughly enjoyed listening to her tell him the stories of her life last night, not because he was nosy, but because he loved her. He loved discovering new things about her.
She loved him, too, but Cannon denied her access to his past at every turn.
He actually did worse than deny her. He accused her of using him for a story.
He didn’t think that even when he said it, so he never should have allowed it to come out of his mouth.
She didn’t want to hear his apology the night before, but he definitely owed her one, and he was going to make good on it ASAP.
Once he was dressed for the day, Cannon went to the front of the house in search of his lady.
His first stop was the kitchen. She wasn’t in there, but the smell prompted him to continue into the kitchen toward the microwave.
As he expected, there was a full plate of breakfast waiting for him.
He heated the plate, grabbed a fork, and went to the living room. That was where he found her.
She was curled up on the sofa, sipping from her coffee mug, with her computer in her lap. Before he was even in her line of sight, he could tell she sensed his presence. Lowering her mug, she turned slightly with a smile.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Nahla said as Cannon joined her on the sofa.
Leaning over, Cannon kissed her temple before sitting back.
“Good morning. Thank you for this,” he said as he dove into his breakfast. There weren’t many mornings since they’d been cooped up in the safe house together that she didn’t make him breakfast, but he appreciated it every time.
“You’re welcome.”
Cannon dug into his breakfast, while Nahla continued sipping her coffee and scrolling on her computer. Cannon glanced at her screen and saw that she was reading one of the case files. That put his mind on his run-in with Ox, which brought him back to his argument with Nahla about his past.
“Baby,” Cannon said, pulling her attention away from her screen.
“Yes?”
“You were right.”
She frowned. “You’re talking about something with the case?”
He shook his head. “Nah . . . Well, you were right about a lot of that too. But I’m not talkin’ about that. You were right about me.”
Nahla leaned forward and set her coffee on the table in front of them. She turned inward and gave him her full attention.
“What do you mean?” she asked softly.
“I’ve been shuttin’ you down and pushin’ you out whenever you ask about my past. You’ve been askin’ for me to let you in.
To give you the pieces that shape the man I am.
I treated you like you were digging for gossip or shit, when all you wanted was me.
I knew better, and I was wrong. If I’m bein’ honest, you’re the only person I trust in this world to give all the pieces to. ”
A few tears fell from her eyes as he spoke.
“I wanna let you in, La. I’ma tell you all of it.”
“Cannon, you don’t have to—”
He cut her off. “I’m going to.”
And he did. He told her all about how Maddox was a dude from Jasona who was about six years older than him.
He was kind of like their big brother growing up, and both Mace and Cannon admired him.
He went to Lyle to play basketball but left school early to join the Marines.
When it was time for them to decide their futures, Mace and Cannon followed Ox straight into the Marines.
After she had the back story, he fast-forwarded to the worst night of his Marine career.
About five years after joining the Marines, both Mace and Ox had been assigned to different overseas missions.
Cannon happened to be part of a unit that Ox and another guy, Lieutenant Rourke, had recently been placed over.
One night, while they were at their perimeter post, a civilian truck approached.
Rourke felt that something was shady about the car because the driver seemed nervous.
Cannon, on the other hand, was able to make out a few words in the civilian’s native language and realized he was only nervous because they all had guns, and he had a woman and his children in the vehicle with him.
Rourke ordered Cannon to fire a warning shot to intimidate the truck into turning down, but he refused. Another trigger-happy member of their unit, named Jennings, fired twice instead. He grazed Cannon and hit the car.
“After that, it was fuckin’ chaos. The rest of my unit rushed the truck and opened the back door. That’s when we realized a small boy had been hit. I was pissed. Rourke and Ox were nervous and screaming to create a cover-up in real time.
“None of them were concerned with the child who was bleeding out; they only gave a damn about fixing the fuck up. Rourke said something about just taking care of the entire family and covering the shit up that way. Ox agreed. Both of them raised their guns, and that’s when I lost it.
I was not about to watch them murder an innocent family because Rourke made a bad call.
“Without really thinking, I punched Rourke in the face. Not because I was trying to start somethin’ with my superior, but because I was trying to stop him from shooting. Ox was shocked that I had done that and lowered his gun, so my goal was accomplished.
“In the moment, I was able to reason with Ox, and he called medical to help the boy. He lived.”
Cannon could feel a headache breaking through, and he gripped the side of his head. Nahla reached out and caressed Cannon’s arm, and some of the pain immediately subsided. He continued.
“I thought everything was going to blow over. We were all interviewed about the incident. Imagine my surprise when the investigators told me that everyone’s story matched except mine.
Everyone else—including my brother Ox—said that Jenings shot in self-defense and that I went rogue in an attempt to compromise the mission.
Apparently, I acted with aggression when I punched Rourke, and Jennings grazed me to get me off of our unit leader. ”
“That’s horrible,” Nahla said, rubbing his arm.
“It got worse. All branches of the military have their own judicial system. They sat me in jail for weeks, trying to break me down. They eventually had Ox come and offer me a deal. If I were to take a dishonorable discharge, I wouldn’t have to stand trial.
“I took it because I knew they were going to find me guilty no matter what. I wasn’t tryna put my grandma and sister through that.
I was messed up for a minute after that.
I stayed away from Jasona because I didn’t want to run into Mace or Ox’s families.
I was done with Ox because he was a snake, but I had no real reason to cut Mace off.
I didn’t want to be reminded of what I lost, so I shut down.
“It took a while for me to get back to a version of myself, for the sake of my family, but I was never quite the same after that. But I feel more and more like the man I was before that happened every day, and that’s thanks to you.
Ox’s last name is Barrett, so, yeah, I did lie when the name of his company came up in those files. I apologize for hidin’ from you, La.”
She leaned in and gave him a tender kiss. Once they broke away, they gazed into each other’s eyes silently until she smiled softly. What she said made him love her more—if that were even possible.
“Fuck Ox.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the fact that she didn’t cuss often or that she just knew he didn’t desire a pity party from her, but Nahla’s response was perfect, just like her.
“Y’all missed me?” Capri said, walking into the safe house.
“I damn shole did,” Mace said, prompting Cannon to mug him.
Shaking her head at Cannon, Nahla stood and walked over to hug Capri.
“I did too.”
“’Bout time you showed up. We’re over here workin’, and you tryna be fashionably late and shit,” Cannon said without looking up from his laptop.
He, Nahla, and Mace had been sitting at the kitchen island for the last fifteen minutes, waiting for Capri to get there. They were about to finalize the details of Nahla’s story and put the plan he and Mace had been cooking up over the phone into action.
As Capri walked past her brother, she mushed the side of his head before taking her seat.
“Aight,” Cannon said. “It’s time to end this.”
“Where are we starting?” Capri asked, opening her laptop.
“Let’s walk through what we have from the beginning,” Cannon replied.
For about an hour, they pulled every hidden piece of the conspiracy into the light.
Capri was recording the timeline, Mace verified law enforcement procedures, and Nahla primarily provided the information.
Cannon was working to stitch the operational logic together, using what they already knew and what Ox told him to finalize things.
After a while, they seemed to have it all together:
Deputy Allen forged the seizure paperwork.
Sheriff Redding issued the orders for the illegal raids under the guise of public safety.
Blue Stone Holdings—which Deputy Allen’s wife runs—transferred ownership on paper.
Darius Laston, who worked as Blue Sone Holdings’ accountant, funneled the money, and Ox’s company bulldozed the sites—literally destroying evidence by prepping the land for sale.
It was a large web of threats, assault, forgery, and payoffs, but they had finally tied it all together.
They all sat back in their chairs once they were done.
“Dang,” Capri said after a while. “It’s kind of unbelievable that little ole Lyle PD is capable of all this. This is so much bigger than dirty cops. It’s a full-blown RICO.”
“One they would have gotten away with if they had succeeded in intimidating my sources,” Nahla said.
“One they would have gotten away with it if you weren’t the one digging into it. Nahla, you did that,” Capri said, smiling at her friend.
“Thank you, sis.”
“So, now that you have all the pieces, it’s a matter of playin’ your cards right. Just publishing the story might not be enough to change what’s happenin’. We’ve gotta go bigger,” Cannon said.
Nahla frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mace spoke up then. “Cane and I were talkin’ earlier about who from the law we should involve. You could take your evidence to Jasona’s Police Department, but it’s a gamble. If we get someone connected to anyone in Lyle, it could all blow up in our faces. We need to go above local law enforcement.
“I was tellin’ Cane that I have a few contacts in the CBI. That’s who we need to give this to.”
Cannon nodded. The Chaney Bureau of Investigation was precisely the type of power they needed involved in this.
Mace continued. “My associates are real ones, and I know they’ll do right by your hard work, Nahla.”
Nahla perked up. “State-level oversight sounds like our safest bet.”
“I agree. And Nahla, you used to write for one of the biggest papers in the country,” Capri said. “Do you think they would also publish your story? I mean, people around this region of Chaney read The Citizen’s Eye, but people all over the country read the AJC.”
Nahla nodded slowly. Cannon chuckled because he could see her wheels turning.
“Yeah, I still have a great relationship with the editor-in-chief there. I’m sure they’d run the story for me.
And Jai City’s paper probably would too, when they hear that it’s a state-level case.
I have some people I can reach out to down there too. ”
“Aight then,” Cannon said. “Sounds like we’re ready to make some noise. Let’s get to it.”
Nahla squealed excitedly and then clapped. “Yay! Noise is my love language.”
The rest of them burst into laughter, and Cannon said, “Corny ass.”
The moment lightened the tense mood in the room, but they all knew this would be the calm before the storm. Hopefully, they’d be prepared to handle the fallout.