Chapter 9
Quest
I saw her before I parked.
She was sitting on a concrete bench under a fluorescent light near the entrance of the rest stop with her knees pulled up to her chest and her wrists chained together in her lap.
There was blood on her face, blood on her clothes, blood dried dark on her forearms where it had run down from her wrists.
Her feet were bare and cut up and she was holding a half-eaten honey bun in her bound hands and chewing slowly like her jaw hurt.
I pulled the Maybach into the closest spot and got out.
My legs moved but the rest of me was somewhere between fury and something I didn’t have a name for.
I’d seen a lot of things in my life. I’d sat across from men begging for their lives and felt nothing.
I’d pulled triggers and slept soundly the same night.
But seeing Mehar sitting under that light looking like something that had been dragged through hell and then left at a rest stop with a vending machine snack broke something in my chest that I couldn’t put back together by the time I reached her.
She looked up at me and her eyes were swollen and exhausted and relieved all at once, and for a second neither of us said anything. I crouched in front of her and put my hands on her knees and my hands were shaking.
“I’m here,” I said. That was all I could get out at first.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against mine and closed her eyes. The chain between her wrists clinked against my jacket and I could smell fear and stress all over her. But she was still in there. Under all of it, she was still my Peach.
I helped her to the Maybach and opened the passenger door.
She climbed in and I watched her pull her bloody bare feet up onto the leather seat and curl into herself.
I took off my jacket and laid it over her because the night air was cold and she was shaking.
Then I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot heading toward my vacant estate in Middleburg, Virginia.
I bought it a few years ago and go out there when I need a break from the city.
But it was time that I bought something new.
We drove in silence for the first few minutes.
I kept one hand on the wheel and one hand on her knee because I needed to feel her breathing.
She sat curled against the door with my jacket over her shoulders and the chains resting in her lap and her eyes half open, staring at the road ahead without really seeing it.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. It came out of nowhere, unprompted, like she’d been holding it since before the warehouse and it finally found its way out.
“For what?”
“For Dame CoCo. For the dungeon. For all the shit I hid from you. I should’ve told you and I didn’t because I was scared you’d look at me different and I couldn’t handle that. But I’m done. That life is done. I just need you to know that.”
I glanced at her. The bruise under her left cheek was deep purple and swollen, her lip was split on one side, and there were red marks on the corners of her mouth from the gag.
This woman had been chained to a ceiling for twenty-four hours and the first thing she wanted to talk about was the secret she kept from me.
“That’s in the past,” I said. “All of it. We ain’t going backward.”
She nodded and something in her shoulders released, something she’d been holding since the night I said “cool we done” and walked away from her. I could see it leave her body and I hated myself for putting it there in the first place.
A few miles passed before she spoke again.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I left Janelle on the floor and I don’t know if she’s breathing. Thad’s finally dead. I killed him.”
She said it with no emotion, the same way she’d told me about Ahmad, the same way she’d told me about the cage. Like she was reporting facts that she’d already processed and filed and moved past while the rest of the world was still catching up.
“Where’s the warehouse?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was off a gravel road somewhere. It’s off 97 somewhere south of here, maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”
I pulled out my phone and called Justice first.
“Is Mekhi with you?”
“Nah, he left about an hour ago. Didn’t say where he was going. How’s Mehar? Did you find her?”
“Yeah, I got her. She’s safe. I need you to stay with Bryce and don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll hit you later.”
Mekhi left an hour ago. I filed that and moved on because I could only deal with one crisis at a time and Mekhi’s movements were a problem for tomorrow.
I called Prime next.
“I need you to check a warehouse off 97 in Maryland. Mehar escaped from there tonight. There’s a body inside, possibly two. I need you to handle it.”
“Whose bodies?”
“Thad and Janelle.”
Prime was quiet for a second. “Aight. I’ll take care of it. What about Bryce? Zainab is worrying me about him.”
“Justice has him. He’s fine for now.”
“Cool. I’ll hit you when I know something.”
I hung up and Mehar was staring at me from the passenger seat with an expression I couldn’t fully read.
“Bryce?” she said. “What does my brother have to do with any of this?”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Shortly after the casino shooting, Mekhi grabbed a kid connected to the Vipers. The crew that shot up the grand opening and put Zephyr in a wheelchair. That kid turned out to be your brother.”
She sat up straight and her face changed completely. The exhaustion was still there but something hot flashed through it. “Wait what? I knew it. I knew he was doing something shady. So you have him locked away somewhere?”
“Justice has him and he’s safe. I found out he was your brother the same night you went missing, Mehar. It all happened at once. I was trying to find you. He’s the one behind the robbery and fire.”
“Is he hurt?”
“No. He’s at Justice’s place. He’s fine.”
“That boy, I swear to God.” She pressed her bound hands against her forehead and closed her eyes.
“I knew he was into some bullshit. I told him to be careful when we had dinner and he just smiled at me and said ‘I will, sis’ like he wasn’t out here running with a gang.
You have to hide him, Quest. If whoever he’s working for finds out he’s been taken, they’ll come for him. ”
“He’s working for Mega.”
Her eyes opened. “Mega. Your sister’s Mega?”
“Yeah.”
“So the man who was beating Serenity is the same man who hired my brother to attack your family.” She shook her head slowly. “This is insane.”
“I know. But Bryce is cooperating. He gave us Mega’s location, his stash house, everything. He’ll be safe as long as he stays put.”
“He better be.” She looked at me and her eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion. “And you better not hurt him, Quest. I don’t care what he did. That’s my blood.”
“I’m not going to hurt your brother.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. But he has to pay for the damage he’s caused.”
She held my eyes for a long second, deciding whether to believe me. Whatever she found in my face must have been enough because she nodded once and then looked down at the chains on her wrists and let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside her for hours.
She was quiet after that. Her eyes got heavy and by the time we crossed into Virginia she was asleep with her head against the window and the chains resting in her lap and my jacket draped over her shoulders.
The estate was dark when we pulled up. I’d bought this property three years ago as a retreat, forty acres with a main house, a guest cottage, a small hangar, and a private runway.
It was the one place in the world that had nothing to do with Banks Reserve or the casino or the streets.
It was just mine. And now it was hers too.
I carried her inside because her feet were too cut up to walk on gravel and she was barely conscious.
I laid her on the couch in the living room and went to the garage where I kept a toolbox with bolt cutters.
When I came back she was sitting up, looking around the house with glassy, half-awake eyes.
“Where are we?”
“Virginia. My place. You’re safe here.”
I knelt in front of her and took her wrists in my hands.
Gently, because the skin underneath the metal cuffs was raw and torn and crusted with dried blood.
She winced when I touched them and I stopped until she nodded for me to keep going.
I positioned the bolt cutters on the first cuff and squeezed.
The metal gave with a sharp snap and the cuff fell open and I eased it off her wrist as carefully as I could.
The skin underneath was angry and red and stripped in places where the metal had been grinding against bone for hours.
I moved to the second wrist. Same care, same patience.
She was watching my hands the whole time and neither of us was talking because the moment didn’t need words.
I cut the second cuff and it fell away and the chain pooled on the floor between us with a heavy clatter and Mehar looked at her bare wrists and then looked at me and her eyes filled for the first time all night.
She didn’t cry. Her eyes just filled and held and she blinked once and the tears stayed where they were. She wasn’t going to let them fall. That was Mehar. Even now, even after everything, she held the line.
“Thank you,” she said.
I kissed her left wrist just above the raw skin. Then her right. Then I stood up and held my hand out to her.
“Come on. I’m running you a bath.”