Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
James listened to the raid playing out in real time in his ear. The FBI team, supplemented by six HICC operatives, were quietly making their way through the woods surrounding Sweet Dreams, incapacitating the security team. A cleanup crew followed, gathering each of the men into custody.
“Team B, two at your nine, twenty meters ahead,” another voice said.
He assumed the crew was from HICC, but Lovell hadn’t met any of them.
Whoever they were, he had no idea if they were sitting in some building in DC or in a van around the corner.
Or on the other side of the world, for that matter.
Regardless, this op wouldn’t run smoothly without them.
Systematically shutting down the Sweet Dreams security cameras and motion sensors as the raid teams made their way closer to the house allowed them to move through the forests like ghosts.
“Another six minutes and you’ll be clear,” Hershorn said. She stood beside him, watching her teams on a screen, orchestrating last-minute changes. There hadn’t been many, but an unexpected departure of a client and a herd of deer she hadn’t wanted to startle had forced a few readjustments.
“Ready on go,” he replied, his eyes locked in the direction of the house.
He tuned out everything except his mission; he wasted none of his focus on wondering what was happening inside the house, or what it would be like to confront his brother and sister.
He thought of nothing but getting in, getting the information they needed, maybe some of what he wanted, and getting out.
He didn’t expect “closure,” wasn’t even sure what that really meant, but he’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t expect something.
Maybe the ability to finally put his past to rest?
No, he’d done that long ago. Maybe he hoped to see his siblings through the eyes of a man rather than a child.
To see them as who they were rather than what they’d never been to, or for, him.
Understand them, and their relationship to him, in a way that would let him clear the filmy remnants still tying them together.
Hope was a funny thing, though. Pandora had trapped it in her box, a symbol of its enduring nature. But the part of that story that always stuck with him was the fact that hope was in the box in the first place—the box containing all the world’s evils.
“Two minutes,” Hershorn said.
He nodded, not taking his eyes from the path he’d take. A crackle of activity unfolded in his ear: Khafra’s team had cleared the house. Charnette’s was moving in, securing the path he’d take to the office where the nightly meetings occurred.
Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out.
“Clear,” Hershorn said.
The only acknowledgment he gave was to take off toward the house without a backward glance.
Ninety seconds in, the house came into view.
Another sixty seconds and a member of Charnette’s team ushered him in through a door in the garage.
Thirty seconds later, he stood in front of the office, eyes on Charnette as she silently told him to hold.
Muted voices filtered through the solid wood. He tried to catch the words and cadence as he waited for the green light. An agent knelt at his feet, feeding a small wire under the door. A tiny camera. It would give them important intel, but he remained focused on the voices.
There, the unmistakable pitch of a woman. His sister. The rumble of a deeper voice, one he didn’t recognize, followed by another.
A tap at his shoulder brought his attention back to Charnette. She made a circle with her finger, then held up two, before indicating the corners of the room.
He nodded. In addition to the four people he’d come to see, two security guards were stationed in the corners closest to him.
As he stepped into the room, they’d have a chance to flank him, but there was nothing he could do about that.
He wasn’t about to stand with his back to the door.
It would signal unease, a weakness, to Malcom and Chanel, and pose a barrier to Charnette and her team when the time came for them to enter.
She held his gaze for the count of four, then nodded and stepped back.
Setting his fingers on the levered handle, he took a deep breath, pressed down, and walked through. He didn’t stop until he reached the middle of the room.
Bracing himself, he didn’t wait long before the two security guards took him down. He put up no fight as one knelt on his back and the other rushed outside to investigate how he’d managed to walk in.
“Hello, Malcom, Chanel,” he said, his cheek pressed against the carpet. “Long time no see.”
The guard’s hands traveled over his body, looking for weapons. When he completed his sweep, he remained in position, a bony knee digging into Lovell’s back and a vise grip around his wrists.
“He’s got a vest on,” his octopus friend said.
A beat of silence followed. Lovell couldn’t see his siblings but sensed they were silently communicating with each other.
“Let him up,” Chanel said. “We can always shoot him in the head.”
A comforting thought.
“Search him for a wire,” Malcom ordered.
The guard jerked him upright; Lovell went willingly.
The man was a good three inches shorter than Lovell but had about thirty pounds on him.
As he searched the usual places for a wire, under his shirt, in his pockets, Malcom dropped his hand to the desk and slid a drawer open.
Lovell tensed when his brother reached inside, but rather than pull out a weapon, he withdrew a small black device.
As the guard finished the physical sweep, Malcom approached.
“Thrilled to see me, big brother?” Lovell asked.
Malcom’s eyes never left his as he crossed the room and handed the device to the guard. “Search him again, Feddy.”
“You’ve probably heard by now that Beeker is dead and Weeks is in custody,” Lovell said as Feddy ran the electronic device around his body, reminding him of a TSA agent.
He’d been assured that the two-way device attached deep in his ear would give no signal, but even so, tension eased in his chest when Feddy stepped away with a shake of his head.
“He’s singing like a bird,” Lovell continued, then inclined his head. “Although he doesn’t know that much, does he?”
Malcom turned his back on him and walked away, circling the desk to stand behind Chanel. Neither Ken nor Adam Gareth had moved from the chairs they sat in flanking the antique oak monolith.
Lovell smiled. “Quite an interview panel we have going on,” he said, nodding in their direction.
“By the way, even if you’d succeeded in killing me, you wouldn’t have inherited anything.
I have a will. I have people and organizations who I want to take care of in the event of my demise.
” A not-so-subtle reminder of how different his life was from theirs.
“Close the door, Red,” Malcom said.
Lovell glanced over his shoulder as the second guard did as ordered, then positioned himself in front of it.
In the grand scheme of things, five-to-one odds weren’t all that different from six-to-one.
Still, he wouldn’t have minded if Charnette’s team had been able to grab him.
She would have if he’d moved far enough away that it could be done without commotion, but Lovell wasn’t that lucky. Not in this, anyway.
Deciding he’d said enough, Lovell waited for one or the other of them to jump in.
In the weighted silence, he scanned the space, his attention lingering on his siblings.
By now, they’d know something wasn’t right on the home front.
Their security should have stopped him; he never should have made it to their inner sanctum.
What he found interesting, though, was that none of the four appeared overly concerned.
From bravado or because they had an escape route they were confident in, he didn’t know.
The guards, on the other hand, well, their nervous energy filled the area behind him, bumping into his body, testing his focus.
He could smell their fear, too. Nothing about this situation would end well for them.
They’d either disappear into the night the way their colleagues did, or Malcom would hold them accountable for the grievous breach.
A punishment they weren’t likely to survive.
“Nothing, Boss. We’re getting nothing from the team,” Red said, his finger to his earpiece. Malcom cut him off with a sharp look. Lovell flashed another smile.
“You don’t have to worry about him telling me something I don’t already know,” Lovell said.
Malcom slid Ken a look. Lovell would give credit where credit was due, his brother was no longer the hotheaded, trigger-happy punk looking to make a name for himself. His eyes promised the same retribution, but Malcom was in complete control of himself.
“Bold of you to stop by,” Chanel said, her husky voice unmistakable despite almost everything else about her having changed. At least the superficial things. Her hair, her skin, her clothes, her makeup. Her monthly aesthetic upkeep probably cost more than she’d ever made back in Trenton.
He tipped his head. “Well, when one discovers his siblings are trying to kill him for an unspecified inheritance and then finds out that they run a human trafficking and sex ring, and a very lucrative one at that, it does beg the question as to why I should enter the belly of the beast. But I’m a curious guy, so here I am.
How’d you find me and why come after me when you have all this?
” He lifted his hands, gesturing to the opulence of the room.
If he had to guess, it was modeled after a room in the White House. Or maybe a chateau.
“Because we could,” Chanel said, ignoring his first question. Another sharp look from Malcom.
“But could you? Really? Because here I am,” he replied. “Alive and well.”
“For the moment,” Ken said.
“Cliché, Keshaun. You never did have any imagination.”
A tense silence fell over the group. He could stand there the rest of the night waiting for them. He had nowhere to go. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He had Daphne waiting for him in the hotel room.
“So, Nicole Monroe,” he said. “I’m not surprised you finally lost your shit with her.
Even as inseparable as you were growing up, you bickered a lot.
Like an old married couple. When she finally cut you loose and started doing something with herself other than selling drugs or her body, that must have stung, Chanel.
The girl you’d always managed to keep under your thumb had broken free, was making a life as far away from you, in every way, as she could.
New friends, an education, a good job, maybe an apartment in a decent part of town, friends, real ones, and a chance to not have to look over her shoulder every three seconds.
Leaving Chanel Washington behind without even a backward glance. ”
“Little good it did her,” Chanel said, a cold venom dripping from her tone. “She’s dead and gone and, as you say, I have all this.” She mimicked his earlier gesture. “I’d say I came out on top in that friendship.”
“When you kill the competition, that happens,” he said.
Chanel laughed. “Nicole wasn’t competition. She came back that day to convince me to join her.”
He sighed dramatically. “And that’s why you can’t have nice things, Chanel. Or nice people. Because you destroy them.”
She rolled her eyes, reminding him of the girl she’d been. “Nicole was a stuck-up bitch. Thought she was better than the rest of us.”
“So you killed her? Kind of fitting to then take her identity and turn it into everything she was fighting to break away from,” he said.
“She turned her back on everyone and everything she knew,” Chanel said. “She got what she deserved. And before you ask, no, I don’t regret pulling the trigger.”
“In the same way, I won’t regret pulling this one,” Malcom said, withdrawing a pistol from beneath his jacket.