29. “Invincible”
TWENTY-NINE
“INVINCIBLE”
(KELLY CLARKSON)
Four Months Later…
I t was a Saturday.
We were at Angels Headquarters, all lazed in our curved couch.
And Raye’s burner phone was on the desk in front of us, the speaker enabled, and Raye was talking.
“So, I can’t tell you who I am, or how I know,” she was saying. “What I can tell you is that video has been deleted. It doesn’t exist. It’s gone. I can assure you of that.” Raye paused and then said, “You’re free.”
There was a moment of silence, then a hiccoughing sob.
This was the last woman who Brody found. Between him and Arthur, they’d been at it for months, but they didn’t give up. Not until the very last woman had been found.
It took longer for this last one because they had to widen the search. She’d apparently run into Trev during a vacation to Phoenix from her home in Toronto.
We’d heard a lot of hiccoughing sobs (and other verbal responses) over the months.
Precisely fifty-six of them.
I was glad this was the last one.
Allow me to sum up:
Let’s hark back to the Sunday after I got to work on my first paid organization gig (and yes, the organization of Shirleen and Moses’s condo was a massive mountain I had to climb, one could say Shirleen really liked shoes…
and handbags…and fingernail polish…and fancy Tupperware, I could go on—but I was there for it ).
Javi and I drove up to Flagstaff.
We did this to visit his mom.
I was nervous for the first hour of the drive, until Javi took my hand, squeezed it and said, “Babe, she’s so doped up, she isn’t even going to remember me. You don’t have to be worried about making a good impression.”
This gutted me.
Though, it made me less nervous.
It turned out, he was right.
When we got to the facility, and were shown to a social room, Javi led me to a beautiful woman who was vaguely shifting pieces of a puzzle around on the table. When we arrived at her side, she looked up at him like she didn’t know who he was.
It was absolutely heartbreaking.
Since she looked like she also didn’t know where she was or that anything was happening around her so it stood to reason she wouldn’t recognize her own son, that made it a little less heartbreaking.
But only a very little.
I marveled at how easily Javi took a seat close to her, held her hand, introduced me as his girlfriend, said, “It’s very serious, Ma,” (gah! he was the best !) and generally filled her in on his life, our lives together and other chitchat like she could comprehend what he was saying.
I mean, honestly.
If I didn’t completely and totally love him before (who was I kidding about “falling,” I was head over heels for the guy), that did it.
She smiled at him benignly, like she was humoring him, all while he talked.
He obviously had practice with this and acted just like a son would when catching his mom up on his life.
I was me (and it was actually a shock it took as long as it did to happen, but I managed to hold it together), and it wasn’t until Javi closed his door after helping me in, then angling into the truck himself, before I lost it and burst into tears.
Javi pulled me across the console and into his lap to hold me while I did it.
“I-I’m s-sorry!” I blubbered. “This isn’t about m-me.”
“It’s rough, baby,” he murmured. “Especially at first. But you get used to it.”
I didn’t want to get used to it.
I wanted a miracle to happen and for Javi’s mom to be a mom to Javi and a woman in her own right, living her life to its fullest.
But that was a miracle that would never happen.
I nodded, sniffled and pulled myself together.
Once I accomplished this, I said, “She’s really beautiful.”
His smile was soft. “Yeah, she is.”
“And she seems peaceful,” I noted.
“That’s how you learn to get used to it,” he explained.
With all he’d said about their lives on the street, I knew that was all he wanted for her.
Therefore, I could rest in the knowledge he finally had that, and so did she, and maybe I wouldn’t be such a crybaby the next time we came to see her (by the by, Javi drove up pretty often, and I vowed right then and there, sitting in his lap, he’d never do it alone again—and he didn’t).
“Wait for me here,” he said. “Just gotta do something real quick.”
I nodded again.
He put me back in my seat, got out and jogged back into the hospital.
He wasn’t gone for long.
He set us on our way, saying, “We’ll hit a drive-thru on the way home for dinner.”
Flagstaff wasn’t a million miles away, only a two-and-a-half-hour drive. But going there and back in one day was a lot.
Even with that, I could see why he wouldn’t want to hang around Flag for a sit-down dinner just to experience the cool vibe of the town, and instead, get out of there and head home. And I was oh-so-totally leaning into that play.
I suggested Freddy’s, which was neck and neck with Culver’s for me—they both had frozen custard, but Freddy’s had better fries (shoestring!), and Culver’s had cheese curds (you could see why it was a tossup).
Then I asked, “What did you go back in for? Did you forget something?”
Javi didn’t immediately answer.
I took this for the sign it was and turned to him, concerned.
“Javi?”
“I asked if Ma had more visitors.”
Oh dear.
“Does she?” I whispered.
“Atherton comes up every two weeks.”
Oh God.
“Let me guess, it’s not to be absolutely certain the bill is paid,” I said hesitantly.
“No,” Javi grunted.
Eek.
“They told me he sits with her, sometimes for hours,” Javi said.
Oh God!
“That isn’t about me,” he stated.
“It isn’t,” I carefully agreed.
It seemed the man did love her, or at the very least cared for her deeply.
Whether it was because she was his son’s mother, or just because she was Ximena, we might never know.
Whatever it was, it was sweet.
I wondered if Julia and Cath knew about this. Though, I wondered, unless they shared they did, we wouldn’t know, since that was definitely Atherton’s to give them if he wished to.
“Fuck me,” Javi muttered.
“Your decision. Your peace of mind,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, baby,” he agreed.
I pushed across the cab to kiss his jaw.
When I sat back, he was looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Proudest day of my life, introducing my ma to you.”
Oh em gee !
He was the greatest !
I pushed forward that time to kiss his jaw a lot harder, I added a touch of my tongue and my hand squeezing really high up on his hard thigh.
This commenced Javi pulling over so we could make out.
Sadly, that had to end.
Not sadly, when it did, Javi guided us to Freddy’s.
Javi reported the NI&S boys cut Kev loose a few days after Trev’s case was solved.
He also shared that they’d had a few more words with him in those few days, and I was correct with where my deductive powers led me.
Kevin not only knew what was on that laptop, Kevin knew where Trevor hid the laptop.
Kevin had then hid it. However, he hadn’t expected anyone to find where he did. This was because he intended to go back and get it.
Kevin had lied about saying he thought Trev deleted the videos, he knew he did not.
And Kevin had guarded this intel carefully, even under interrogation by the Hottie Squad, because he was such a lamebrain, his bestest bestie gets dead in all that crazy, he didn’t take this as the cautionary note it was.
Instead, he saw his opening for an easy life filled with new Mazdas and his rent paid without actually having to hold down a job or exerting any effort in conning chicks on dating apps so he could filch their wallets or designer bags.
Yeah.
He was going to pick up the blackmailing scheme where Trevor left off.
Thank God my bestest besties were a whole heckuva lot better than Kevin Johanssen was to Trevor Clampitt.
Seriously.
Kevin also was, as Javi told me, on Congressman Mahoney’s radar, considering Mace had made his own deal with Mahoney.
Therefore, once Kevin was released by the Hottie Squad, he disappeared.
He wasn’t missed.
Sometimes I wondered what became of him.
But, although it might make me a bad person, at the end of the day, I didn’t really care.
Willow did.
Not that she wanted him back or even wanted to see him or anything.
She was just pretty messed up about the whole Kev/Trev thing.
I totally got that.
That was what every shyster counted on. That you’d feel like a fool because he duped you.
That you would somehow think it was your fault.
That you would question again and again how you could be so stupid, when you weren’t.
You were just a person who believed another person, not having any idea that other person was hiding the asshole within (again, totally worth the curse word).
And man, she felt like a fool.
The Angels were all over trying to help her move on from that.
Who was not, was Gabe.
This pissed me off, since it was clear he was totally into her.
But I was already pissed off because Knox was dating someone.
And that someone was not Luna.
Luna tried to hide it, but she wasn’t handling Knox’s new girlfriend very well.
After I ranted about both Gabe and Knox being two big doo-doo heads one morning during our smoothie/coffee dance at my place, Javi grabbed hold of me and held me close.
“First, ‘doo-doo heads’?” he asked, sounding like he was trying really hard not to lose it laughing.
“Big jerks isn’t enough,” I snapped. “Neither is colossal cretins, outlandish oafs or insane idiots.”
“How about moronic motherfuckers?” Javi suggested, still sounding like he was about to bust a gut laughing.
“Javi,” I warned.
He gave me a gentle shake and reminded me, “Neither of those women were giving them an in.”
This was disappointingly true.
Gah!
“And I don’t think they’re like you, lil’ mama,” he continued. “They’re not hanging around waiting for the guy to make the first move.”
They weren’t.
Well, maybe Willow a little, but she could lay down a good come-hither stare. I’d seen her.
That did not happen with Gabe.