Chapter Fourteen. Malachi #4
The dark, grainy image fills the phone’s screen, and everything in me freezes. Sweat breaks out over my suddenly hot skin, and I lock my knees to remain upright. Inside my head, a loud howl joins the screams from the phone.
Eshe.
Bound to a chair.
Face bruised.
Blood pooling on the floor.
Her screams echoing in the room.
A half circle of people, faces hooded, surrounding her. One kneeling in the blood, a stained knife raised in front of them.
Bile blazes an acidic path from my stomach to my throat, and I swallow convulsively, battling back the vomit.
It’s her worst nightmare. Abena has thrown Eshe back into the torture she suffered as a child.
Rage and smothering fear and an incomprehensible grief dogpile on top of me, and I slap my hand onto the car, steadying myself.
No. No. Fucking no.
Whimpers punctuate the air, and dimly I realize it’s me. Those wounded animal sounds originate from me.
“H.” Jamari’s voice penetrates the spiral I’m tumbling down, and fuck, I forgot he was on the phone. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I rasp, sounding anything but okay. “Is this real, Jamari? Not photoshopped or computer generated?”
“No.” A beat of silence. “From what I can tell, it’s authentic. It’s her. There’s more.”
“Another video?”
“Yes, but not of Eshe. It’s from Abena Diallo. It came in a separate email.”
I quickly back out of the current message and find the one Jamari mentioned. The fury swirling inside me is fucking biblical. And as I tap on the email and then the video, I delicately inhale and quiet the roar in my head so I can hear the audio.
Abena’s smiling face appears on the cell’s screen, and my fingers squeeze the phone so tight, the casing gives a warning crack. Dragging in another breath, I carefully loosen my grip and press Play.
“Hello again, Huntsman. It’s rare I can greet someone who resurrects from the dead, but here we are.” She smirks into the camera, but her brown eyes glitter with malice.
Bruising mottles her left cheekbone, and stitches hold her skin together. Eshe really fucked her up.
Good.
“By now, you’ve seen the video of your little…
” She huffs out a humorless chuckle. “I don’t know exactly what she is to you.
Partner in crime? Friendly pussy? Although I think we can both agree there’s nothing friendly about my niece.
” This time her laughter is more genuine and a hell of a lot crueler.
“Whatever she is to you, Eshe is fucked. When she dared to come for me in my own house, she signed her death warrant. No one, and I mean no one, does that and gets to walk away. Including you, Huntsman.”
That eerie smile on her face fades, and she blankly stares into the camera. Which is somehow more unsettling than the smile.
“You should’ve stayed dead. You had an out, and you should’ve taken it.
But since you want to play Captain Save a Ho, Huntsman, here’s your chance to do it again.
Eshe forfeited her life when she tried to kill her queen.
But the choice of how she dies is now in your hands.
I can send her to you piece by piece. Not a problem since I’ve already started.
” The corner of her mouth quirked. “Or you can show up at the address I’ve emailed you and trade yourself for her.
And she can take her chances as osu and be shunned and hunted by the family she betrayed.
Your decision, Huntsman. Ticktock. The clock is ticking, and I’m not a patient woman.
You have until five to get here before I take the decision from you.
And just to remind you, my choice includes parts of your girlfriend being mailed out in gift boxes. ”
The video ends, and I stare at the thumbnail of Abena’s face for a long moment until Jamari breaks the silence.
“What’re you going to do, H?” he asks, that tremble still in his voice.
I tap the phone screen, glancing at the time—3:34 P.M. That doesn’t leave me much time. The address in the email is the compound.
“Jamari, call the burner I have ending in thirty-five forty-three.”
“Bet. Hold on.”
The seconds I wait pass like hours before he returns on the line. I’m damn near climbing the walls of the fucking garage by then.
“No answer. Try it again?”
“Yeah.”
He tries it three times, and all three produce the same result. Eshe doesn’t answer. Fuck.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Thanks, Jamari. I need to go.”
“What’re you going to do? What do you need me to do?” He shoots the questions at me with rapid-fire quickness.
“I don’t need you to do anything,” I say, replying only to his last query.
The first one … What’s understood doesn’t need to be explained.
There’s only one thing I can do. With Eshe not answering the phone, I have to assume she’s still trapped.
I don’t have time or room to play the faith game.
Not when her life is possibly on the line.
That’s a risk I’m just not willing to take.
Christ. What are they doing to her right now? Those screams play in my ears like a ghost’s rattling chains and haunting shrieks.
A world without Eshe in it …
The bile sloshes in my gut again.
I can’t …
My chest seizes, and my mouth goes desert dry. Pressing a fist to my sternum, I rub the aching spot.
No. The choices Abena gave me are shitty and shittier. But Eshe stands a better chance of survival as an osu, an outcast, on the run with at least her Seven at her back than tied to that chair and slowly carved to pieces. And this world needs Eshe Diallo in it more than it does the Huntsman.
When it comes down to it, the choice isn’t one at all.
“I have to go, Jamari. But I lied. There’s one thing you can do for me. Earlier, Eshe took the Camaro. Track the car to its last location and find it. Then see if you can get in touch with one of her Seven. Eshe’s going to need them when she’s released.”
“Fuck, H. You’re going to—”
“Jamari, get that done for me. I’ll hit you up later.”
I won’t. The most obvious outcome includes me not walking away from this. But with Jamari sounding like he’s barely holding it together, I can’t voice that truth.
Ironic.
Just hours ago, I drove Eshe out of my house because I refused to risk getting attached to another person only for them to eventually leave me. Again.
And now here I am, doing the same thing to Jamari, someone who, against all my best efforts, I’ve come to care for.
Yeah, irony is a bald-headed bitch.
“Are you—” He coughs. “Are you coming back?”
This time, he sounds younger, so much more vulnerable than his sixteen years. I pull the driver’s door open and slide into the seat. I close myself inside, and his low, muffled sniffles that it seems like he’s trying to hide are amplified in the quiet.
“Probably not. You know what to do if that’s the case, right?”
“I don’t want—”
“Jamari.” I catch his shuddering breath, and I close my eyes, his pain echoing inside me. This is why I don’t let anyone get close. Why I shouldn’t have allowed him close. “You know what to do, right?” I press.
“Yeah. Yeah, I gotchu.”
“Good. I have to go.” I lower the cell, but the frantic sound of my name stops me, and I return it to my ear. “You need something?”
“No,” he says. “I mean, yeah.” Then a pause. “I—I love you.”
And the call ends.
Staring out my windshield at the garage wall, I slowly lower the phone.
His low, hurried declaration reverberates in my head over and over, and part of me wants to dig it out at the roots and salt it.
But another part—the part that grieves not just dying but dying alone—embraces those words from the boy who stubbornly became my friend.
Embraces and holds on to those words so I won’t pass onto whatever exists beyond this world by myself.
I glance down at the phone, note the time.
And with the image from the video of Eshe flickering across my mind, I start the car and pull out of the garage, steering my car toward Needham.
Toward death.
Toward Eshe.
Thirty-five minutes later, I turn onto an access road and pull up to a structure that looks like a large shed. If not for the armed guards who had to open the gate and allow me in about a half mile back, I’d mistake the small building for being abandoned.
As soon as I shift the gear into park and step out of the car, the entrance to the building opens, and four men and three women, heavily armed, file out. I keep walking toward them until someone yells, “Stop, dammit. Don’t move.”
The thing inside me snaps and roars at the order, at the need to rip that gun from his hands and beat him with it until he can’t speak or move. That hunger surges so strong, my body tenses, and I stare at his throat, visualizing my first blow.
But then the image of Eshe inside that shed flickers in my head. A phantom echo of her scream assaults my ears.
I stop.
“Search him.” Abena emerges from the shed, and despite the early-evening shadows, huge dark shades cover her eyes.
They’re not large enough to conceal the bruises on her skin or all the stitching along her cheek.
Nice try though. Two of her soldiers approach me and pat me down.
I don’t miss the slight tremble of their hands and their apparent aversion to touching me.
When they finish and step back, I lift my pant leg, and ignoring the yells and shouts to “stop” and “hold,” I remove the trench knife and hold it out to the guy who searched that leg.
“Here. You missed this.”
Rage and real fear gleams in his dark eyes as he takes the knife, and yeah, he should be afraid.
Abena will most likely slit his throat with that weapon for the oversight.
And usually, I’m above the petty shit, but that muthafucka is assisting in holding Eshe hostage, so it’s fuck him for the short amount of time he has left on this earth.
Which isn’t that long.