Chapter 28 Quest
Quest
“What’s good?” Prime asked when I stood up from the couch reaching for my keys.
“Some shit with Mehar and her security. I gotta go.”
“You need us?”
“Nah. Stay here. Mega is supposed to be here in the morning. Don’t let Camille or Lyric leave this condo. I’ll be back.”
I was in the car and on Route 50 in under five minutes.
Mehar had given me her location and I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on my phone tracking her pin.
Every red light felt like a personal insult.
Every slow driver in the left lane was testing my patience in ways they would never understand.
I found the spot about twenty minutes later.
Back road, no streetlights, exactly where she described.
The SUV was on its side in the ditch with the headlights still on, casting a yellow glow across the gravel.
Two motorcycles parked nearby. Two bodies on the ground beside them.
And about thirty yards into the tree line, my girl crouched behind an oak with a Glock pointed at my chest until she heard my voice.
“Peach. It’s me.”
She lowered the gun and I pulled her up and held her against my chest and felt her shaking. Blood on her lip, a bruise forming above her left eye, glass in her hair. But she was standing and breathing and the two men who tried to take her were not.
I looked over at the bodies. One with a hole where his face used to be. The other with two in the chest. Both clean shots.
“My baby got good aim,” I said.
She laughed and then started crying and then laughed again because that’s what happens when the adrenaline wears off and your body doesn’t know which emotion to land on.
I held her until she settled and then we went to check on Rider.
He was still in the passenger side of the overturned SUV, just regained consciousness, but and banged up bad.
Bruised ribs, a cut on his forehead, and his left wrist was swollen. He’d survive.
We got him out of the truck and into my car. I called the cleanup crew to handle the scene: two bodies, two motorcycles, and an SUV that needed to disappear before morning. They’d handle Davis’s body with respect. He’d been good to us and he deserved better than a ditch on Route 50.
I drove back to Camille’s condo with Mehar in the passenger seat and Rider stretched across the back.
Mehar was quiet most of the ride, staring out the window, her hands still trembling even though she was trying to hide it.
I reached over and put my hand on her thigh and she put her hand on top of mine and squeezed and we drove the rest of the way like that.
When we walked into Camille’s condo, Lyric was the first one to open her mouth.
“Why is she here?” Lyric said, looking at Mehar with the expression of a woman who thought her night was about to get worse.
“Don’t start with me, Lyric,” Mehar said. “I will beat your ass the same way I did at the grand opening. Try me tonight and find out.”
“And I’ll let her too,” I added.
Lyric’s mouth opened and closed and she looked at Camille for backup but Camille was sitting on the couch with her hands on her belly looking like a woman who had accepted that her living room was no longer hers. Lyric huffed and crossed her arms.
“This is so disrespectful. I’m the reason you even know Mega is her cousin. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be looking for him.”
“And I said thank you,” I said. “You want a trophy too?”
Camille’s head snapped toward Lyric. “You told them? You told them about Mega?”
Lyric shrugged. “He was hiding in our house, Camille. You didn’t even tell me he was here. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not snitch!”
“Ladies,” Prime said from the kitchen doorway. “Save the drama. We got bigger problems.”
He was right. I pulled Prime and Justice aside and told them to go home. Get some rest. Mega was coming in the morning and I’d handle it from here.
“You sure?” Justice asked.
“Yeah. Go get your daughters before Rita kills Storie,” Mehar said from behind me.
Justice rubbed his temples. “Man, I gotta fix that shit. That girl has lost her mind. Rita called me talking about she had to get the belt out.”
“She did more than get it out,” Mehar said. “She used it.”
“Good. Maybe that’ll straighten her out.
” He didn’t look convinced. “Aight. Call us if you need us.” He dapped me up and headed for the door.
Prime followed after giving me a look that said be careful without saying the words.
They ordered an Uber back to Rita’s house since I was the one that drove.
Rider settled onto the couch with ice on his wrist. Lyric disappeared to the back. Camille went to her room. Mehar and I sat in the living room in the dark and waited for morning.
She fell asleep against my shoulder around 3 AM. I didn’t sleep at all.
The sun came up slow and gray through Camille’s living room windows.
I’d been sitting in the same position for four hours, Mehar’s head on my shoulder, my gun on the armrest, my eyes on the front door.
Rider was across the room in a chair by the window with his weapon in his good hand even though his left wrist was wrapped in a dish towel full of ice.
At 9:47 AM a key turned in the front door lock.
I moved Mehar’s head gently off my shoulder and stood up. Rider raised his weapon. I positioned myself behind the wall that separated the foyer from the living room and waited.
The door swung open. Mega walked in carrying a bag from Home Depot and a coffee. He took two steps inside and saw Rider’s gun pointed at his face and the coffee hit the floor.
“Don’t,” I said from behind him.
He spun toward my voice and my fist met his jaw before he finished the turn.
He stumbled backward into the door and I hit him again, in the stomach this time, and he doubled over and the Home Depot bag fell and I grabbed the back of his neck and drove his face into my knee.
Something crunched. Blood sprayed. He dropped to the tile floor gasping.
“Where is my sister?”
“Quest, listen to me.” He held his hands up.
I kicked him in the ribs. He rolled onto his side wheezing.
“Where is Serenity?”
“I did all of this because of your mother!” He was spitting blood and talking fast, the way men talk when they know the next wrong answer might be their last. “Vivica hired me. She reached out to me months ago through a connect inside the prison. She told me to hire the Vipers, to target the warehouse, to get close to Serenity for information. All of it. I was working for her.”
I stood over him and let those words sit in the room.
My mother. Vivica Banks. The woman who lied about my father, who orchestrated the attacks on my business, who used Mega as a puppet to tear my family apart from the inside.
I filed that away because right now Serenity was the priority and Vivica was in a cell where she’d stay until I was ready to deal with her.
“I don’t care who hired you,” I said. “Where is my sister?”
“I’ll tell you where she is. But please don’t kill me. Please, Quest. I’ll tell you everything. Just promise me you won’t kill me.”
He was crying. Full tears, snot, blood from his broken nose mixing with the tears running down his face. This was the man who kidnapped Serenity, got her hooked on cocaine, beat her, assaulted her, and used her as a pawn. And now he was on Camille’s foyer floor crying and begging for his life.
“I promise I won’t kill you slowly,” I said. “When it happens, it’ll be quick. That’s the best I’m offering. Now talk.”
“She’s at a motel outside Berryville. The Mountain View Inn off Route 340. Room 6. She’s there.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, alone. I left her there when Camille called.”
“Tied up?”
He hesitated. That hesitation told me everything.
“Did you tie my sister up and leave her alone in a motel room?”
“I had to. She would’ve run.”
I wanted to kill him right there. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to put a bullet in his skull and step over him and keep moving. But a scream from the back of the condo stopped me.
“CAMILLE?” Lyric’s voice, panicked. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with the baby!”
“She’s faking,” I said.
“She’s not faking.” Mehar was already on her feet, moving toward Camille. She looked down at the floor, then at Camille’s face, then back at me. “Her water broke, Quest. This is real. She’s in labor.”
“Now? Right now?”
“Babies don’t wait for convenient timing.”
Camille came stumbling out of the hallway gripping the wall with one hand and her belly with the other. Her face was twisted in pain and there was fluid running down her legs and she was breathing in sharp gasps.
Camille screamed again and grabbed Mehar’s arm and Mehar held her steady and looked at me with an expression that said handle this because I’m handling her.
“Lyric,” I said. “Take Camille to the hospital. Right now. Take her car. Go.”
She grabbed Camille’s purse and her keys and helped Mehar guide Camille toward the door. They stepped around Mega’s bleeding body on the floor like he was a piece of furniture. Lyric and Camille disappeared into the elevator and the condo got quiet again.
Mehar looked down at Mega and then at me. “We’re taking him with us?”
“Yeah. He’s gonna show us exactly where she is.”
I pulled Mega off the floor by the back of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. His face was wrecked, nose broken, lip split, left eye swelling shut. He didn’t resist because there was nowhere to resist to. Rider took his left arm and I took his right and we walked him to the car.
Mehar drove. I sat in the passenger seat. Rider sat in the back with his gun pressed against Mega’s ribs. We pulled out of the parking garage and headed south toward Berryville.
Mega was sniffling in the backseat, blood dripping onto his shirt. “You promised you wouldn’t kill me slowly.”
“I did,” I said without turning around. “And I’m a man of my word. When it happens, you won’t feel a thing. But right now you’re alive because my sister needs to see the man who took her in handcuffs before he stops breathing. She deserves that.”
He didn’t say anything after that. Nobody did. The car was quiet and the highway stretched out in front of us and somewhere at the end of it, in a motel room off Route 340, my baby sister was tied to a bed waiting for somebody to come.
We were coming.