18. Dead Woman Walking #2
Later that night, after we finally pulled ourselves back together, Kenya disappeared upstairs and came back carrying the picture Chanel had taken from Alan’s house.
The photo showed a smiling family standing on a beach pretending they weren’t monsters.
I sat at the kitchen island while Kenya spread the picture between us. My wife slid onto the stool beside me.
“Look.”
I leaned closer and noticed Alan stood in the middle.
Beside him was the woman we’d already identified as Cameron, and Charles stood on one side.
There was a woman whose identity was a mystery to us until Alex helped us learn her name was Carmen.
The picture made my skin crawl. Because, unlike the rest of her siblings, Cameron wasn’t smiling.
She looked like she was studying the camera as if she were studying whoever would eventually look at the image.
She had predator eyes, the same exact eyes I’d seen on people before they ordered hits.
“She looks crazy.”
Kenya laughed softly. “Thank you.”
“I’m not just saying that shit, YaYa, I’m serious.” I pointed directly at Cameron.
“This one right here.” My finger tapped the image of Carmen. “She’s the brains.”
Kenya nodded. “That’s what Alex thinks, too.”
After we found out Miles was a fuckin’ rat, we had no choice but to hire a new private investigator.
Alex came highly recommended because she was flawless at her job.
She made us realize how undercut Miles really was.
She would find things in minutes that took Miles hours.
Now we knew that Nigga was stalling. Alex helped find Alan, and now she had helped identify Carmen.
Kenya pulled out her phone. “Alex sent another report.”
My attention sharpened immediately. “What she got?”
Her eyes scanned the screen. Then narrowed. Whenever Kenya got that look, somebody was about to have a bad day.
“What?”
She looked up slowly.
“Carmen isn’t using the name Carmen Price anymore.”
I blinked. “No shit.”
She shook her head. “I mean legally.”
That got my attention. Because people changed aliases all the time and hid their identities. But legally reconstructing yourself took a good amount of resources. It took copious amounts of money and federal protection.
Kenya handed me the phone. I scanned the report quickly. Well damn.
“Crestwood Department of Corrections?”
Kenya nodded. “Keep reading.”
I did, then I started laughing. There were really no limits to these fuckin’ Price bastards. Carmen Price is now Juliet Anderson. “She’s the fuckin’ warden of Crestwood Correctional Facility?”
“Yep.”
The smile that spread across my face wasn’t pleasant, but a nervous tic.
Because suddenly a lot of shit made sense.
The warden was connected to Cameron, the FBI agent digging into the files.
But what didn’t make sense is how they knew about shit that predated them.
I had never met these Niggas or seen them a day in my life in Crestwood.
They blended in the suburban shadows of Hellertown fuckin’ with Channy, but how did they get information about the alleyway?
Kenya snapped me out of my thoughts. “Carmen has been hiding in plain sight.”
I grabbed my phone immediately.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Xavier.”
Kenya’s expression didn’t change. Because she already knew. This wasn’t information we sat on. This was information we acted on. The phone rang three times before he picked up.
“Talk.”
X always answered the phone like somebody had interrupted a murder.
“We found the sister, Carmen.”
“Where,” he asked.
I smiled coldly and menacingly.
“Running the same place you gave eighteen years of your life to.”
The next hour went by fast. X arrived with Chanel.
They came in all black, weapons loaded. Nobody smiled or even attempted to make small talk.
We were past the pleasantries, and we headed straight to the war room in our home.
The war room lit up with photographs, maps, schedules, and surveillance reports that Alex had sent over.
Chanel stared at the image of Cameron on the board.
For a second, I thought she might cry. Instead, my sister-in-law got angry.
The look on her face looked deadly. I knew this was deeply personal for her.
“I believe that bitch was drugging me before I was voluntarily doing drugs. I think that’s why I lost Xander.”
Xavier rubbed her back, and Kenya gripped her hand in support.
Nobody said anything. What could we say?
The best revenge was to put a Beretta in Channy’s hand and let her finish her.
I looked around the room, at my family. I looked at all of the various photos of the woman who was trying to destroy our lives.
As much as I hated the bitch, what burned deeper inside of me was my hate for Sharon.
Sharon made Kenya second-guess herself her whole life. She was never smart enough, pretty enough, or good enough to please her mom when the whole time that fuckin’ lady had enough skeletons to run a graveyard.
She was the reason Cameron grew up without a mother and had a deep hatred for two women who could have accepted and loved her. Sharon was the reason Jared became a number in the system.
Sharon was the reason that every member of the Price family would die a slow, painful death.
I looked at my family. “We may not know where Cameron is, but we end Carmen tonight. Cameron can’t have any more allies.”
Nobody argued, because everybody knew the truth. Jared was fighting for his life. And if we waited too long, we gave Cameron time to calculate her next move.
We sat in that war room together, and we built a plan.
X told us about all the private exits and entrances of the prison that he studied methodically in the first several years of his bid, when he made secret escape plans.
Channy, who had met several clients in the business rooms before, told us about the office layouts where Carmen would meet her staff.
Kenya had Alex hack into Juliet Anderson’s calendar and confirm that she visited the prison twice a week to meet with her staff.
I’m sure news about her father’s death had gotten back to her.
I hoped she was sloppy enough to lead us to her sister, but Alex told us Carmen stayed in character, attending all her meetings like nothing happened.
That told us she would show up to work tomorrow as planned.
Based on Xavier’s description of the prison and the online layouts, Kenya built a clear map and carefully marked our entry and exit points.
We all had a clear picture of our plan. We would pay off the greediest guards.
We would distract their horny asses with YaYa and Channy while Zay and I grabbed Carmen.
We would need to kill any of the guards who saw our faces and make it look like a prison brawl gone wrong.
We would need to use the guards’ guns for any shots taken, and we would leave Carmen’s body as a casualty tale in the prison.
She dedicated her life to the injustice and inhuman treatment of folks, so now her body had to hang in display for others to see.
The war room looked different now. It looked like a battlefield. Photographs covered the walls. Cameron’s face sat dead center. I stood near the board studying her picture while Xavier leaned against the wall beside the window.
His arms were crossed. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were cold.
Anybody who didn’t know him would have thought he was calm.
I knew better. That man was one bad update away from burning the city down.
My brother took an eighteen-year bid without thinking twice about protecting his Angel twenty years ago.
To protect her and their daughter, I knew my brother would take a lifetime more.
Chanel sat beside him, flipping through files.
Every few minutes, she would stop reading and stare at Cameron’s photograph.
I could tell she was trying to understand how somebody could dedicate decades of their life to hating another person.
Kenya finally broke the silence. “You know what bothers me most?”
Everybody looked at her.
She shook her head slowly. “Cameron had several opportunities to move on.”
Cameron wasn’t a victim. Maybe she began as one when she was a young girl, navigating the world without her mom.
But after purposely plotting to destroy her sister’s life, once she knew firsthand, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows in college; it was a different type of cruelty.
No one could empathize with Cameron, not after all this, not after years of manipulation.
“She could’ve built her own life,” Kenya continued. “She could’ve gone anywhere. Done anything. She could have made Sharon’s life miserable. She’s the one who hid her.”
Kenya’s eyes drifted toward the photograph. “But she chose violence.”
A heavy silence settled over the room.
Chanel chimed in, “Imagine spending twenty years competing with somebody who doesn’t even know they’re in a competition.”
That’s exactly what happened. Chanel spent years building a life, Cameron spent years studying it. Twisting herself around, Chanel and anyone attached to her.
Xavier rested his hands on Channy’s shoulders, grounding her.
“An Angel could never understand crazy people.”
Chanel leaned back against him automatically.
“I know.”
“No.” His voice softened. “I mean that.” He kissed the side of her head. “Some people are just broken.”
Watching my brother and his heartbeat connect and locking eyes with the love of my life made me grateful for my family. That’s what this was really about. I could give a fuck about revenge or politics.
Everything we were doing came back to protecting the people sitting in this room and the lives we’d created.
One thing I knew for certain was that come tomorrow, Carmen Price would be a dead woman walking.