CHAPTER 18
The Man I Called Daddy
“Your father.”
Shay’s words hit harder than the SUV.
For a moment, I forgot about Deon’s gun.
The wrecked van.
The traffic stopped around us.
The blood soaking through my hospital scrubs.
All I could hear was my father’s voice from the warehouse.
Which one?
The way he asked which daughter had been shot.
The way he knew about the tunnel beneath the bank.
The way Uncle Kendrick warned me before the explosion.
Don’t trust the police inside your family.
My father had been the unknown man on Nesha’s phone.
He had sent Dre to the basketball court.
He had activated the weapon beneath my passenger seat.
He had stood beside me afterward and let me believe someone else had murdered Dre.
“You’re lying,” I said.
Shay smiled.
“You said the same thing when Dre told you your mother was alive.”
“Why would my father kill Dre?”
“Because Dre was supposed to lead you to the folder, not explain it.”
“So he silenced him?”
“He cleaned up his mistake.”
Dymond stayed low beside me, her gun pointed through the broken windshield.
Deon and the other men spread out behind Shay.
They weren’t shooting anymore.
They wanted something.
The command device.
Meech held it against his chest.
Shay extended her hand.
“Give me the device, and you can leave.”
“With Nesha?” I asked.
“Nesha is no longer part of this deal.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She should’ve remembered whose side she was on.”
Tasha raised my second gun from the back seat.
“What side are you on, Shay?”
“My own.”
“That red dress says you’re still at a birthday party nobody attended.”
Shay’s smile disappeared.
“You always thought you were better than us, Tasha.”
“I pay my taxes and don’t shoot people from moving vehicles. The bar wasn’t very high.”
Deon lifted his weapon toward her.
I aimed at his face.
“Point that gun at my sister again.”
He laughed.
“You gonna shoot me through a windshield?”
“I’ve done harder things this week.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Shay glanced toward the highway behind her.
“We have less than two minutes before police arrive.”
“Good.”
“No,” Dymond said quietly. “Not good.”
I understood.
The police weren’t coming to rescue us.
My face was on every station in Kentucky. Dymond was wanted for the riverboat shooting. Tasha had killed Lawson. Meech was driving a wrecked van filled with illegal equipment.
The only person who might not be arrested was Shay.
That told me everything I needed to know about who had called the police.
“Give her the device,” I told Meech.
His head snapped toward me.
“What?”
“Hand it over.”
“Keyshia—”
“Do it.”
Dymond looked at me.
I tapped one finger twice against the side of my gun.
A signal.
She didn’t know what it meant, but she understood enough to wait.
Meech slowly reached through the broken windshield and held out the device.
Shay walked closer.
One step.
Two.
Deon stayed behind her with his gun aimed at Meech.
The second Shay reached for the device, I fired.
The bullet struck Deon’s shoulder.
Dymond kicked open the side door and shot the man beside him.
Tasha fired through the back window.
Meech dropped the device and threw himself beneath the dashboard.
Shay grabbed my wrist as I climbed from the van.
We crashed onto the pavement.
Pain ripped through my wounded chest.
My vision turned white.
Shay climbed on top of me and wrapped both hands around my throat.
“You always ruin everything!”
I struck her across the face with my gun.
She fell sideways.
I rolled on top of her and pressed the barrel beneath her chin.
“Where is Nesha?”
Blood spilled from Shay’s lip.
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“With your father.”
“Where?”
“If I tell you, he’ll kill Deon.”
I looked toward her brother.
He was on his knees twenty feet away, holding his wounded shoulder. Dymond stood behind him with a gun against the split-crown tattoo on his neck.
“He’s about to die anyway,” I said.
Shay’s eyes moved toward him.
For the first time, she looked afraid.
“St. Augustine,” she whispered. “Your father is beneath the church.”
“With Nesha?”
“Yes.”
“And my mother?”
Shay hesitated.
I pressed the gun harder against her skin.
“Is Karen with him?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
The sirens grew louder.
Dymond dragged Deon toward the SUV.
“Conversation over. We need to move.”
Shay laughed beneath me.
“You think you can drive away? Every police car in Louisville is looking for you.”
“Then they won’t be looking for you.”
I struck her across the temple.
Her body went limp.
Tasha stared at me.
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m trying something new.”
Dymond shoved Deon into the back of the SUV.
“Bring Shay.”
“Why?”
“Because family makes good leverage. Victor taught me that.”
Meech picked up the command device and laptop.
We transferred to Shay’s SUV seconds before the first police cars appeared around the curve.
Dymond drove.
I sat in the passenger seat.
Meech and Tasha stayed in the middle row with the laptop. Deon and an unconscious Shay were in the back.
Police lights filled the mirror.
“Can this thing go any faster?” I asked.
“It can,” Dymond said, pressing the gas. “But the traffic can’t.”
Cars blocked every lane ahead of us.
The semi-truck that almost struck the van sat sideways near the barrier.
“No way through,” Tasha said.
Dymond drove onto the shoulder.
The SUV scraped against the concrete wall, throwing sparks behind us.
A police cruiser followed.
Another moved to block the exit ramp.
Meech connected the Circle device to his computer.
“Give me thirty seconds.”
“For what?”
“To turn us invisible.”
“This is a truck, not a magic trick.”
“The Circle controls traffic cameras, police dispatch, and license-plate readers. If this device still has administrator access, I can make every system report a different vehicle.”
The police cruiser struck our rear bumper.
Deon groaned in the back.
Shay began waking up.
Tasha pointed her gun over the seat.
“Go back to sleep.”
Shay blinked at her.
“You kidnapped me?”
“Technically, you kidnapped yourself when you blocked the highway.”
Meech typed quickly.
The command device flashed.
A list of active users appeared.
VHALE — FOUNDER
KREED — FOUNDER
MCARTER — ADMINISTRATOR
DCARTER — PENDING
I stared at the third name.
MCARTER.
My father.
“You see that?” I asked.
Meech nodded.
“Administrator access.”
“What does pending mean beside Dymond?”
“She was selected as Victor’s replacement.”
Dymond’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“I never agreed to that.”
“The Circle doesn’t require agreement.”
Meech opened my father’s profile.
Most of the information was encrypted.
One line wasn’t.
CURRENT OPERATIONAL TITLE: THE WARDEN
“The Warden,” Tasha read.
Deon laughed from the back.
“You finally met him.”
I turned around.
“What does that mean?”
He leaned his head against the seat.
“It means Victor handled the money, Kendrick handled the records, and your father handled law enforcement.”
“My father isn’t a cop.”
Deon smiled through his pain.
“Not one you can find on payroll.”
My stomach twisted.
Every police raid.
Every charge that disappeared.
Every detective who had watched my family.
My father hadn’t been hiding from the empire.
He had been protecting it.
The cruiser behind us closed the distance.
Meech pressed a key.
Every traffic light at the exit turned green.
Cars began moving.
The police radio inside the SUV came alive.
“All units, suspect vehicle now identified as a white Chevrolet Tahoe traveling west on Interstate Sixty-Four.”
Dymond looked in the mirror.
“We’re in a black Escalade.”
“I told you,” Meech said. “Invisible.”
The cruiser behind us slowed.
Then took the next exit, searching for a vehicle that didn’t exist.
For the first time in several minutes, I breathed.
“How far to the church?” I asked.
“Seven minutes.”
My phone rang.
Daddy.
Nobody spoke.
I answered on speaker.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere you shouldn’t come.”
His voice sounded exactly the same.
Calm.
Protective.
The voice of the man who held me while I cried at the warehouse.
The voice of the man who had murdered Dre.
“Is Nesha alive?”
“Yes.”
“Momma?”
“For now.”
Tasha leaned closer.
“Why did you take them?”
“I didn’t take Karen. She came willingly.”
“Then let me speak to her.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because she has a gun pointed at me.”
I looked at Dymond.
She raised one eyebrow.
That sounded like my mother.
“If she has a gun, why are you still talking?” I asked.
“Because Karen knows killing me will kill Nesha.”
“What did you do?”
“I connected Nesha’s heart monitor to the archive security system. If my pulse stops, the room seals and releases gas.”
Tasha covered her mouth.
“You built a dead-man switch beneath a church?”
My father almost laughed.
“The church existed because of the switch.”
“What do you want?”
“The command device.”
“Victor wants it too.”
“Victor is finished.”
“He’s alive.”
“Alive isn’t the same as powerful.”
“Dymond liquidated the empire.”
“I know.”
There was no anger in his voice.
That frightened me more than rage would have.
“You don’t care about the money?”
“The Circle existed before the Carter accounts.”
“Then what was all of this for?”
“To identify who could lead after Victor.”
My eyes moved toward Dymond.
Pending.
“You did all this to test her?”
“Not only her.”
“Who else?”
“You.”
The answer made my skin crawl.
“I don’t want your Circle.”
“You think the Circle is a group of criminals sitting around a table. It is an international network built into the systems people trust most—police, hospitals, banks, courts, prisons.”
“And you expect me to lead that?”
“No.”
He paused.
“I expect you to destroy what refuses to follow you.”
Dymond shook her head.
“He’s trying to divide us.”
“I can hear you, Dymond,” my father said.
“Good. Then hear this—you’re not putting us against each other.”
“You have spent your entire life fighting women who wanted your position.”
“Keyshia doesn’t want my position.”
“No. She wants your blood.”
I looked toward Dymond.
Victor’s daughter.
My sister.
The woman who had helped save my children.