CHAPTER 19
A Mother’s Price
“Seven million dollars was never an inheritance.”
Gas rolled across the sanctuary floor.
“It was my payment.”
Nesha stared at the screen as if the woman standing beside Victor had reached through it and struck her.
“My mother is dead.”
Monica Reed smiled.
“That’s what they told you.”
Nesha’s knees gave out.
Karen caught her before she hit the floor.
The gas climbed past our ankles.
White.
Thick.
Sweet-smelling.
My head began to spin almost immediately.
“What kind of gas is this?” I shouted.
Victor answered.
“The kind that makes death look peaceful.”
Dymond fired at the screen.
The bullet shattered it, but Victor’s voice continued through the church speakers.
“Destroying the picture does not destroy me.”
I grabbed my father’s command device from the floor.
The screen displayed one message.
LOCAL AUTHORITY REVOKED
Monica’s matching device controlled the sanctuary now.
Tasha ran toward the doors and pulled.
Locked.
Shay fired twice at the handle.
The bullets flattened against reinforced steel.
“No exit!” she shouted.
Karen dragged Nesha toward the altar, trying to keep her above the gas.
Nesha’s face had gone pale.
Her wound had reopened again.
Blood and gas.
Either one could kill her.
“Tasha, the lock!” Dymond shouted.
Tasha reached into her jacket and removed the black device.
She pressed it against my father’s command unit.
Both devices flashed.
TRANSFER AUTHORIZATION AVAILABLE
CARTER BLOOD REQUIRED
“Keyshia!” Dymond called.
I pressed my bleeding palm against the silver circle.
The command device vibrated.
A list appeared.
TRANSFER CONTROL
REJECT SUCCESSOR
EMERGENCY PURGE
I selected REJECT SUCCESSOR.
The screen flashed red.
DENIED
SUCCESSOR HOLDS FOUNDER AUTHORITY
Shay began coughing.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Monica outranks us,” Dymond said.
Nesha looked toward the broken screen.
Her mother’s voice filled the room.
“You cannot reject what was decided before any of you were born.”
“Momma,” Nesha whispered.
The word sounded like it hurt more than the bullet.
Monica went silent.
Then she answered.
“You shouldn’t call me that.”
Nesha pulled away from Karen.
“I was five years old when you disappeared.”
“I know.”
“They told me you died in a car accident.”
“I know.”
“I cried for you every night.”
Monica’s voice remained cold.
“You survived.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“You were provided for.”
“By who?”
“Kendrick.”
Nesha laughed, but it turned into a painful cough.
“A man I didn’t know was sending me birthday cards without his name while my mother pretended to be dead?”
“He watched you.”
“You watched Keyshia.”
Monica said nothing.
Nesha understood.
“You knew about her this whole time.”
“I knew who her family was.”
“You knew she was my sister.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me become her best friend without telling me?”
“It was safer.”
Nesha looked at me.
Everybody in our family loved that word.
Safer.
As if a lie stopped being cruel when somebody claimed it was protection.
The gas reached our knees.
My lungs tightened.
“We can have this reunion later,” I said. “How do we stop the gas?”
Dymond took the device.
“Emergency purge.”
“That sounds dangerous,” Tasha said.
“So is breathing.”
Dymond selected it.
Another warning appeared.
PURGE REQUIRES TWO FOUNDERS
FOUNDER ONE: MONICA REED
FOUNDER TWO: VICTOR HALE
“No Carter override?” I asked.
“No.”
Shay stumbled toward the altar.
“Then we’re dead.”
“No,” Karen said.
She lowered Nesha beside the pulpit and looked toward the wooden cross behind us.
“The original church system wasn’t built by the Circle.”
“Who built it?” I asked.
“Kendrick.”
She grabbed one side of the altar and pushed.
It didn’t move.
Dymond and I helped.
The heavy wooden structure slid across the floor, revealing a metal door beneath it.
Karen dropped to her knees and entered a code.
The panel flashed red.
“They changed it.”
“What was the code?” Tasha asked.
“Karen’s birthday,” Victor said through the speakers. “Kendrick was sentimental. Monica is not.”
Monica’s voice followed.
“Try Nesha’s.”
Karen entered the date.
The panel unlocked.
Nesha stared toward the speakers.
“Why are you helping us?”
“I’m not.”
The metal door opened.
Fresh air rushed from a narrow maintenance passage.
Victor’s voice sharpened.
“Monica.”
“You asked me to kill the Carters,” she said. “Nesha is a Reed.”
“She carries Carter blood.”
“She carries mine too.”
For the first time, something human entered her voice.
Not love.
But ownership.
Monica wasn’t saving her daughter because she cared about the years she had missed.
She was saving what belonged to her.
Karen helped Nesha into the passage.
Tasha followed.
Shay entered behind them.
Dymond stood beside the opening.
“Go.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“The archive.”
“We don’t have time.”
“If Monica has founder authority, she can erase everything the second we leave.”
“Then let it burn.”
“That evidence is the only thing standing between you and prison.”
“My children need a mother more than they need me proven innocent.”
Dymond looked at me.
“Your children need both.”
The gas reached my waist.
My vision blurred.
She took the command device and ran toward the side door leading back to the archive.
I grabbed her coat.
“No.”
“Trust me.”
“I barely know you.”
“You know enough.”
The words stopped me.
I knew she had protected Jayce and Amaya.
I knew she had faced Victor on the riverboat.
I knew she had been offered power and chosen family instead.
That was more than I knew about people I had loved my entire life.
I released her.
“You have sixty seconds.”
“Give me ninety.”
“You get sixty.”
She disappeared into the gas.
I entered the maintenance passage and pulled the metal door closed behind me.
Fresh air filled my lungs.
I coughed until my chest felt like it had been torn open again.
Blood spread through my bandage.
Tasha saw it.
“You’re bleeding.”
“So is everybody else.”
“That doesn’t make it normal.”
The passage was barely wide enough for us to crawl.
Karen stayed beside Nesha.
Shay moved ahead, searching for an exit.
“Where does this lead?” I asked.
“Old priest’s quarters,” Karen answered. “There’s a staircase to the alley.”
“You knew about this place?”
“I helped Kendrick build the first archive.”
Nesha looked at her.
“You knew my mother was alive?”
Karen stopped crawling.
Silence answered first.
“How long?” Nesha asked.
“Nesha—”
“How long did you know?”
“Since the beginning.”
Nesha’s face changed.
She had spent years treating Karen like the mother she no longer had.
Sitting at her table.
Listening to stories about Keyshia’s childhood.
Trusting her.
All while Karen knew Monica was alive.
“You let me cry at your house every year on the anniversary of her death.”
“I wanted to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Monica threatened your life.”
“My life has been threatened for three days. Everybody suddenly knows how to tell the truth now.”
Karen reached for her.
Nesha pulled away.
“Don’t touch me.”
I understood her anger.
Karen had been my mother.
Died.
Returned.
Lied.
Nesha had borrowed pieces of her because she believed her own mother was gone.
Now she knew both women had watched her grow up inside a lie.
A loud bang echoed behind us.
Then another.
Dymond.
“Keep moving,” I said.
We reached a ladder.
Shay climbed first and opened the hatch.
Cold night air poured into the tunnel.
She stepped into the alley and immediately froze.
“What is it?” Tasha asked.
“Company.”
Men surrounded the exit.
Six of them.
All wearing black.
Circle.
Shay raised both hands.
One man took her gun.
“Everybody out.”
We had escaped the gas only to crawl into another trap.
Karen climbed out with Nesha.
Tasha followed.
I came last.
The man searched me and removed my weapon.
“Where’s Dymond?” he asked.
“Dead.”
He struck me across the face.
My knees hit the pavement.
“Wrong answer.”
Tasha moved toward him.
Another guard aimed at her chest.
I wiped blood from my mouth.
“She went back for the archive.”
The man touched his earpiece.
“Target is still inside.”
Target.
Not Dymond.
Victor wanted her alive.
The alley door opened behind us.
Dymond stumbled outside, coughing.
She carried my father’s command device in one hand.
The other was raised above her head.
“Looking for me?”
Two men rushed toward her.
She dropped the device.
It struck the pavement.
The screen cracked.
Every light beneath the church turned off.
The guards looked toward the building.
That was their mistake.
Dymond pulled a gun from beneath her coat and shot the first man.
Shay grabbed the weapon from the guard beside her.
Tasha pushed Nesha behind a dumpster.
Karen fired the gun she had hidden against her lower back.
I tackled the man who had struck me.
We hit the pavement.
Pain tore through my shoulder.
He wrapped both hands around my throat.
I drove my thumb into his eye.
He screamed and loosened his grip.
I grabbed his knife from his belt and buried it in his side.
He collapsed beside me.
Gunshots filled the alley.
One guard ran toward the street.
Dymond shot him in the leg.
Another disappeared around the corner.
Then it was over.
Six men lay across the pavement.
Three dead.
Two wounded.
One missing.
Dymond picked up the cracked command device.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Downloaded the rest of the archive.”
“To where?”
“Every news organization in the country.”
Karen stared at her.
“You released everything?”
“Names, payments, videos, contracts.”
“You exposed judges.”
“Yes.”
“Federal agents.”
“Yes.”
“Foreign officials.”
“All of them.”
Karen grabbed Dymond’s arm.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?”
Dymond looked down at her hand.
“I turned the Circle into a straight line.”
Sirens rose in the distance.
Not one department.
Dozens.
The archive was public.
Every paid officer now knew their name might be exposed.
Every honest officer knew the biggest corruption case in American history had opened beneath a Louisville church.
And nobody knew which kind was coming toward us.
Meech’s voice came through the broken device.
“D, you need to move.”
“Where are you?”
“Two blocks north. Deon’s crashing.”
Shay ran toward the street.
“Get him to a hospital.”