Chapter 8
Rico
The safe place was ugly on purpose.
Old clinic. Brick walls. No sign. Two exits, roof access, basement tunnel. Places like that did not make people comfortable. They kept people alive.
Maya sat in the back room wrapped in a blanket, eyes red, body jumping at every sound. Tammy stayed with her until the girl's breathing steadied.
Damian pretended the cut at his side was nothing.
Tammy caught him doing it and pointed at the chair.
"Sit."
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Tone whispered, "History is being made."
Damian sat.
Doc Preston arrived ten minutes later with a medical bag and an attitude. "I was asleep."
"Now you're not," Damian said.
Doc looked at Tammy. "You putting up with him voluntarily?"
"Unfortunately."
"Tragic."
For a few minutes, the room almost felt human.
Then I looked at Tammy again and saw Savannah in her face.
Not all of it. Tammy was her own woman. Different mouth. Different way of holding herself. But the eyes were enough to make years move under my ribs.
She noticed.
Of course she did.
In the hall, she stopped in front of me. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you lost somebody and found me."
I had no answer that would not make it worse.
She softened, but only a little. "I don't know how to be that for you."
"I know."
"I'm Tammy."
"I heard you."
"Did you?"
I looked at her then. Really looked.
"Your name is Tammy. I don't know what to do with the rest yet."
That was the truth.
She nodded. "Me either."
Darius came down the hall before either of us could say more. "We found Jalen's car. Meatpacking district. Blood in the trunk."
Damian stepped out of the exam room with a fresh bandage and murder behind his eyes.
Tammy blocked him before he could turn that into movement.
"Send someone who is not you."
Damian looked at her.
"You giving orders now?"
"Yes."
Tone sipped vending machine coffee. "Queen moves."
Nobody laughed, but Tammy almost did.
I went with Darius.
Jalen's Mercedes sat under a dead streetlight two blocks from the warehouse. In the trunk was his blood-soaked shirt, a phone, and a small recorder.
The recorder started the second I touched it.
Jalen's voice came out shaking.
"Damian, if you're hearing this, I didn't have a choice. They had my brother. They knew about the accounts. I moved the files because they told me to. I didn't know Karl would die."
He breathed hard, crying now.
"They wanted the old trust files. Anything connected to Malcolm King, Savannah Vega, Elaine, and Evelyn Brooks. They said the girl was proof."
Then the part that changed the room before we were even back in it.
"Don't trust Lewis. Not the detective. His brother. He's not dead like everybody thinks. He's Bishop."
A hit cut him off.
Bishop's voice came through.
"That's enough."
The recording ended.
My phone rang.
Unknown.
I answered before Darius could stop me.
A woman's voice said, "Hello, Ricardo."
Nobody called me Ricardo except ghosts.
"Elaine."
She laughed softly. "I hear you found your niece."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"Touch Tammy and I will kill you myself."
"You sound like Savannah. She always threatened things she could not stop."
The call ended.
I called Damian.
"Elaine knows Tammy is alive," I said.
His voice went colder than the night.
"Bring everything back."
I looked at Jalen's bloody shirt.
Then toward the city Savannah had died in.
For years, I had wanted answers.
Now answers were coming faster than any of us could survive.