Chapter 39
39
“ A ll these fucking reporters, and is that Umber’s truck?” Ray asked as he pulled into my driveway. I’d been so far up in my head that I didn’t even notice her truck. Then again, the reporters and their vans were a valid reason to have missed it. I hated this shit. The issue was that this was a quiet neighborhood in the suburbs. Nothing ever happened here…until it did.
“Of course it is. Who else do we know with a dusty-ass pickup truck?” I replied.
Ray laughed. “Leave Umber alone. If we ever need to survive in the wilderness and shit, we got us an expert.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t have time to pretend I’m not a killer right now. She shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, but she’s probably just worried about you. Damn, am I really the voice of reason right now?”
“It would seem so because it ain’t shit reasonable about what I wanna do right now.”
“I feel you.”
He’d barely put his vehicle in park before I hopped out of it, making quick strides to my front door while ignoring the shouted voices of the reporters.
“Mem! Wait!” Umber called, her voice ringing loud as she climbed out of her truck and trotted toward me.
Well, if the press didn’t already know my name, they did now, or at least the abbreviated version of it.
I told myself not to snap at my baby sister. It wasn’t her fault I was craving blood like a damn vampire. So, I took a deep breath and unlocked the door, turning to wait for her.
As soon as she reached me, she pulled me into a hug that I involuntarily leaned into.
“Lil told me what happened! Daddy is a wreck; you gotta call him! Are you okay? How is Bo?” she babbled.
By then, Ray was standing a few feet behind Umber, giving me an admonishing look.
Rolling my eyes at him, I told my sister, “I’m fine. Bo is doing okay. Come on inside,” before backing out of her embrace.
I stepped into the mess the police had made of the house and wanted to scream. Then, I was reminded of the blood in our bedroom doorway.
I didn’t realize I had blanked out until Umber spoke. “You shouldn’t stay here.”
Frowning, I focused on her. “What?”
“You don’t need to stay here with the press and this being a crime scene and all.”
I shook my head, trying to rid it of the cobwebs. “No, I mean, yeah. I’ll…I still have the apartment.”
My tall-ass little sister moved closer to me. “I don’t think you should be alone right now. You can stay with me.”
My eyebrows flew up. “Um, I ain’t pissing and shitting in no outhouse, Umber.”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “It’s a composting toilet, and it’s inside the house!”
“Nah, I’m good. There’s security at my building, and the reporters won’t be able to get in.”
“What the fuck is a composting toilet?” Ray asked.
“So, it’s a dry toilet. The waste is broken down by microorganisms into compost!” Umber excitedly explained.
“Yeah, you don’t need to be alone, but you ain’t gotta use one of them dry shitters, either. You can stay with me and Lilith. We won’t ask you to babysit,” Ray offered.
I started to protest but realized that was actually a good idea. It made for great logistics. So, I said, “Okay, I’ll stay at the Nation house.”
Umber threw up her hands. “Y’all stay hating on my place!”
“Damn, this was the shortest retirement in modern history,” Jerryn quipped. “I saw that text saying you need me and damn near fainted. Management ain’t working for you?”
Holding my phone to my ear with my shoulder, I activated the VPN on my laptop and logged into The Agency’s database. “You seen the news?” I asked.
“You know I don’t watch the news unless I’m on an assignment. I recently became unemployed, Raja. Remember?”
“Then that explains it. Someone entered me and Bo’s house and shot him. I’m okay, before you ask. I pursued the shooter but couldn’t stop them. Don’t know who it was. They had on a ski mask and dark clothes. He or she shot him in the chest, but I think that’s because they didn’t expect him to be at the bedroom door. Probably planned on headshots while we were asleep. All our surveillance was disabled. Two of our security guards were shot dead. One is missing.”
“Okay, you got a name for the missing one?”
“Yep. I already gave it to Montana. She’s also going to hack into some of the doorbell cams and shit in the area. I need you to look into a list of people. Check out their bank transactions, text messages, phone calls. I need to see who set us up.”
“But—”
“I know this is Montana’s thing, but I need more than one person on this digital stuff, and you have resources that specialize in chatter.”
“Raja, I love you, but I can’t ask her to do this. We made a deal…”
“Jerryn, I wouldn’t ask if I could avoid it. Someone shot my husband.”
Silence, and then he said, “You really love him. You’ve always loved him,” as if just realizing this truth.
“Jerryn, I know you and I…we shared something in the past, but?—”
“Raja, I never expected you to feel for me what I felt for you. I always got that your heart was unavailable. It’s just…he doesn’t deserve you. You know that, right?”
“No, I’m no better than him. I realize you think I’m altruistic because of the targets I choose, but I’m still a killer. I’ve trained other killers. Neither him nor I deserve love, but we found it in each other. I…I need him.”
He sighed into the phone. “It would be best if you asked her. She’s always liked you.”
“I’m down.”
Tatiana McReynolds was an absolutely gorgeous ebony-skinned woman with long limbs and a crown of soft-looking kinky hair. She was dressed elegantly in a white shift dress and bare feet, sitting on the sofa in the modern style home she and Jerryn shared. She greeted me with a smile and pulled me into a hug as I sat down beside her.
“So good to see you, Memphis!” she gushed. It was weird hearing her speak in her real accent after she’d used the fake American one for so many years.
“Good to see you, too. Jerryn told you about my predicament?” I asked.
“Da. Your husband was shot. You’re trying to find the culprit.”
I nodded. “And I need your help, your…expertise.”
Her eyes drifted to her husband whom she obviously loved. I hated to mess up the little “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement they made to save their marriage, but desperate times…
“I’m okay with it…for her,” Jerryn assured her.
She returned her gaze to me. “Come. I’ll help.”
I followed her into her home office, a space that was off limits to Jerryn. I felt privileged to watch this woman work. Born and raised in Russia and highly perceptive, Tatiana was recruited by her home country’s government to train and work in intelligence. She was sent to work in the US ten years ago, met and fell in love with Jerryn five years later. He pretended to be a software analyst while she pretended to be in data entry. Of course, they both eventually figured out the truth and made the aforementioned agreement. So yeah, I was soliciting help from an actual Russian spy who was planted in my country to fuck it up.
A means to an end and all that shit.
“All these people are related to your husband?” she asked as she tapped away at her computer’s keyboard.
“Correct.”
“Crazy family?”
“The craziest.”
She giggled as her elegant fingers continued to work.
I watched her until a text from Lilith came through: How you spend the night and leave this morning without saying good morning or bitch, fuck you or something?
I didn’t answer.
“This will take a while, but I will get the information you need. You can stay or I can send it to you. You have ProtonMail, TorBox, something like that? Oh! The Agency has its own host?”
“It does, but I’ll wait.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
I’m not sure how much time had passed or how long I’d been sleeping in that chair in Tatiana’s office when she shook me awake and informed me that she was done, but I was rested enough to sit at her computer and begin loading the information onto the external drives I’d brought with me, and then I left, hoping I hadn’t fucked up my friend’s marriage while trying to save mine.