CHAPTER 21
The Woman in the Photograph
SERENA CARTER
THE REAL KEY TO THE EMPIRE.
I stared at the words while Agent Harris chased the ambulance through downtown Louisville.
Dymond was inside.
Shot.
Barely alive.
And the people driving her had just crashed through a police barricade.
“Who is Serena Carter?” I asked.
“Karen’s younger sister.”
“My mother never mentioned a sister.”
“Your mother doesn’t mention people she can’t control.”
“She didn’t mention being alive either.”
Harris swerved around a police cruiser.
The ambulance remained three blocks ahead of us, its red lights cutting through the darkness.
My chest burned beneath the bloody hospital scrubs.
Every breath hurt.
Every turn pulled at the bullet wound beneath my collarbone.
I held the photograph tighter.
Serena had been standing outside my beauty supply store holding Jayce’s hand.
The picture had been taken before this nightmare started.
Before Dre died.
Before I knew Dymond existed.
Before my mother returned from the dead.
“How did Serena get close enough to touch my son?”
“She used a different name.”
“What name?”
“Ms. Renee.”
The name hit me.
A woman named Renee had visited my store twice during the summer.
She told me she owned a salon in Lexington and wanted to purchase wigs in bulk. The second time, she arrived while Jayce and Amaya were helping me stock shelves.
She bought Jayce lunch.
Gave Amaya twenty dollars.
Asked me questions about my business.
My children.
Their school.
Their father.
I thought she was being friendly.
She had been studying us.
“She came into my store.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“We’ve been tracking her for eleven months.”
“You were watching my store too?”
Harris kept his eyes on the road.
“We watched everybody connected to Serena.”
“So you knew somebody was targeting me.”
“We didn’t know why.”
“You could’ve warned me.”
“And said what? A woman claiming to be a salon owner might secretly be your aunt and the legal controller of a dead criminal empire?”
“That would’ve been a good start.”
“She wasn’t considered an immediate threat.”
“She just stole an ambulance with my dying sister inside.”
“Serena didn’t steal it.”
“Then who did?”
“Her medical team.”
I looked at him.
“You know where they’re taking Dymond.”
“I know where they usually take people.”
“Usually?”
“Serena operates private surgical facilities across three states.”
“For the Circle?”
“For anybody who can’t walk into a regular hospital without being arrested, questioned, or killed.”
That sounded like half the people in my family.
“Then why did you tell police to stop the ambulance?”
“Because once Serena has Dymond, she has what she needs to rebuild.”
“The empire has no money.”
“The empire was never only money.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Because you keep thinking eight hundred million dollars was the prize.”
“What was?”
“Access.”
“To what?”
Harris glanced toward the photograph in my hand.
“Ports. Police databases. Federal evidence rooms. Military contractors. Foreign accounts. Serena doesn’t need the Carter money. She needs the key that made the money invisible.”
The ambulance turned onto Market Street.
Harris followed.
The rear doors suddenly opened.
A man in paramedic clothing leaned out.
Gunfire shattered our windshield.
“Down!”
I dropped beneath the dashboard.
Harris returned fire through the broken glass while controlling the car with one hand.
A bullet ripped into the headrest above me.
The ambulance doors closed.
Harris hit the gas.
“Are they trying to kill us?” I asked.
“They’re trying to make us stop.”
“What’s the difference?”
“If they wanted us dead, we would be.”
I reached beneath Harris’s jacket and took his second gun.
He glanced at me.
“That’s federal property.”
“So am I, apparently.”
The ambulance turned toward West Louisville.
We followed it beneath the overpass.
Another vehicle appeared behind us.
Black SUV.
No headlights.
Harris checked the mirror.
“Serena’s people?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Serena doesn’t use black vehicles.”
“That’s your evidence?”
“She believes black is obvious.”
The SUV accelerated.
Its passenger window lowered.
I recognized the man holding the rifle.
The Circle guard who escaped from the alley behind the church.
“Behind us!”
Harris swerved as the rifle fired.
Bullets tore across the trunk.
We were trapped between Serena’s ambulance and the remains of the Circle.
I leaned through the broken rear window and fired.
The first shots struck the SUV’s hood.
The third shattered its windshield.
The vehicle moved closer.
The passenger aimed again.
Harris slammed on the brakes.
The SUV rushed past us.
I fired into the rear tire.
Rubber exploded.
The SUV spun across the street and struck a utility pole.
Harris accelerated again.
The ambulance was gone.
“Where did it go?”
He touched the navigation screen.
No signal.
“They disabled the tracker.”
“You put a tracker on the ambulance?”
“I put one on Dymond at the bridge.”
I turned toward him.
“When?”
“While the paramedics were working on her.”
“So you expected somebody to take her?”
“I expected everyone to try.”
“You included?”
“I’m trying to keep her alive.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I knew Terrence.”
Dymond’s father.
The man who had raised her.
The man she believed was her biological father until the truth about Victor surfaced.
“How did you know Terrence Carter?”
“He was a federal informant.”
I almost laughed.
Another secret policeman connected to another member of my family.
“Did Dymond know?”
“No.”
“Of course she didn’t.”
“Terrence agreed to give us the Circle in exchange for protection for Camille and Dymond.”
“What happened?”
“He was killed before the deal was complete.”
“Victor?”
“We believed so.”
“But?”
“Serena’s name appeared in Terrence’s final report.”
My mother had given Dymond to Camille and Terrence.
Serena had tracked Dymond’s adopted father.
She had tracked my children.
And now she had Dymond’s wounded body.
“What did Terrence write about her?”
“One sentence.”
“What did it say?”
Harris looked at me.
“Karen buried the wrong sister.”
My phone rang.
Tasha.
I answered immediately.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Where are you?”
“Still on the bridge. Police have us separated.”
“The children?”
“Safe. Jayce and Amaya are with Laila inside a federal vehicle.”
“Don’t let anybody move them.”
“Key, you’re with a federal agent.”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you trust the federal vehicle?”
“Because every person who told me they were protecting us eventually tried to kill somebody.”
“That’s fair.”
“How are Nesha and Momma?”
“Nesha’s going to the hospital. Momma refuses treatment until they find Dymond.”
“What about Monica?”
“In custody.”
“Shay?”
“Also custody.”
“Rome?”
“Arguing with police.”
“He must be feeling better.”
A second call appeared.
Unknown number.
“I have to go.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll call you when I know.”
I switched calls.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke.
“Agent Harris is lying to you.”
Serena.
Her voice sounded familiar.
Ms. Renee.
The woman who had stood inside my store praising my business while secretly knowing everything about me.
“Where is Dymond?”
“Alive.”
“Let me speak to her.”
“She’s unconscious.”
“If she dies—”
“She was going to die inside that ambulance if I didn’t take her.”
“You ordered your people to shoot at us.”
“I ordered them to discourage Harris.”
“Bullets are discouraging.”
“They missed.”
“Barely.”
“Not barely.”
I looked toward Harris.
He couldn’t hear Serena’s side of the call, but he knew who it was.
“Hang up,” he said.
Serena heard him.
“Ask Agent Harris why his name wasn’t inside the archive.”
I repeated the question.
His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“That archive was incomplete.”
“Dymond released everything.”
“No system contains everything.”
Serena laughed through the phone.
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Harris wasn’t investigating the Circle.”
I kept my eyes on him.
“What was he doing?”
“Protecting the federal branch.”
Harris reached for my phone.
I aimed his own gun at him.
“Keep driving.”
“Keyshia, she’s manipulating you.”
“She says you work for the Circle.”
“I worked inside it.”
“As an agent?”
“Yes.”
“Under what name?”
He didn’t answer.
Serena answered for him.
“Agent Marcus Harris was known as Shepherd.”
The name appeared in my memory.
One of the folders Meech had copied from the ledger was marked SHEPHERD OPERATIONS.
I assumed it referred to a system.
It referred to a man.
“You were in the ledger.”
“Under an alias,” Harris said.
“Were you paid?”
“To maintain my cover.”
“How much?”
“That isn’t important.”
“How much?”
“Four million.”
I pressed the gun against his ribs.
“You took four million dollars from the Circle?”
“The funds are still sitting in an evidence account.”
Serena laughed.
“No, they aren’t.”
Harris’s face changed.
“They moved when the empire liquidated,” she continued. “Ask him where.”
“Where did the money go?”
“It was redistributed with everything else.”
“To victims?”
“Yes.”
Serena answered again.
“His ex-wife received it.”
Harris reached across me and ended the call.
I struck his hand away.
“Pull over.”
“We need to find Dymond.”
“Pull over!”
He stopped beneath an abandoned railroad bridge.
I kept the gun trained on him.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I infiltrated the Circle nine years ago.”
“For the FBI?”
“At first.”
“What changed?”
“Victor learned my identity.”
“And instead of killing you, he bought you.”
“He threatened my family.”
“There’s always a threatened family when people explain why they betrayed somebody.”
“I gave him limited access.”
“To what?”
“Federal investigations.”
“You helped him stay ahead of raids.”
“Yes.”
“Did Terrence know?”
“He discovered it.”
“Is that why he died?”
“I didn’t kill Terrence.”
“But you told Victor he was informing.”
Harris looked away.
That was enough.
“You got Dymond’s father killed.”
“I was protecting my daughter.”
I laughed.
The sound surprised both of us.
“My father said the same thing before he died.”
Harris faced me.
“If Victor exposed me, my daughter would’ve lost both parents.”
“So you traded Dymond’s father.”
“I made a choice.”
“No. You sacrificed somebody whose face you didn’t have to see.”
I opened the passenger door.