Chapter 40 Quest
Quest
Kacey. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, since I last sent money. I knew this visit was coming eventually but I wasn’t expecting it today. “Send her in.”
She walked through my office door with red eyes and a tissue balled up in her fist and I knew before she opened her mouth that Prime’s staging had finally surfaced. She sat in the chair across from my desk and took a breath that shook on its way out.
“They found Thad,” she said.
“What?”
“I got a call from the morgue this morning. They found his body in an abandoned building that used to belong to someone named Rashid Muhammad.” She wiped her nose with the tissue.
“I did some research on the man. His compound was raided over a year ago. He was involved in some pretty dark stuff. But he’s dead now.
So who was working with him? Who could’ve done this to Thad? ”
I sat back in my chair and let myself look like a man processing information he was hearing for the first time.
I’d had months to prepare for this conversation.
Prime and I had discussed exactly what the story would be if Thad’s body ever turned up.
The narrative was clean and it led in one direction.
“We just killed Rashid’s last soldier,” I said. “A nigga named Mega. He was behind the warehouse fire, the robbery, the casino shooting. He was at war with us for months. If Thad got caught up in that, Mega probably took him as collateral.”
“But he was tortured, Quest.” Her voice cracked.
“The coroner said he’d been held for months.
Months. Whoever did this kept him alive and hurt him over and over again.
His body was…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
She pressed the tissue against her mouth and closed her eyes and her shoulders shook.
“Mega was a sick individual,” I said. “He kidnapped my sister and held her in a motel for days. He forced drugs on her. Tortured her. The man was capable of anything and now he’s dead. He can’t hurt anybody else.”
“But why Thad? What did Thad have to do with any of your business?”
“I don’t know, Kacey. Mega targeted people connected to our family.
Thad was around. He may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
” I looked at her across my desk and felt the weight of every lie I was telling settling into the space between us.
This woman had no idea that the love of her life had killed Mehar’s sister.
Had no idea that Mehar had kept him in a cage for months.
Had no idea that Prime had staged the body to look like BCC work.
She was grieving a monster and I was helping her do it because the alternative was worse.
“I’m going to cover the funeral,” I said. “Whatever you need. The service, the burial, flowers, all of it. And I’m going to make sure you and the kids are taken care of. Financially. For as long as you need.”
She broke. Full sobbing, face in her hands, body folding forward in the chair. I stood up and walked around the desk and put my hand on her shoulder and let her cry because that’s what the moment required. Comfort for a woman who deserved it even if the man she was mourning didn’t.
“Thank you, Quest,” she said between sobs. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do any of this.”
“Thad was family. That makes you and his kids family too. We take care of our own.”
The door to my office opened. Mehar walked in mid-stride and stopped when she saw me standing behind Kacey with my hand on her shoulder and Kacey sobbing in the chair. Her expression shifted from confused to concerned in about half a second.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in a meeting,” Mehar said.
“It’s okay. Kacey, I need to speak with her but I’ll be in touch about the funeral arrangements. We’ll handle everything.”
Kacey stood and wiped her face and gathered herself.
She looked at Mehar and something moved across her expression.
Not suspicion exactly. Something more instinctive than that.
Her eyes lingered on Mehar’s face for a beat too long, studying her with a focus that had no logic behind it but plenty of intuition. Then she turned back to me.
“Thank you again, Quest. I’ll call you about the arrangements.”
“Take care of yourself, Kacey.”
She walked past Mehar toward the door and Mehar held it open for her. Kacey didn’t acknowledge the gesture. Just walked through it with her tissue and her grief and that look still sitting behind her eyes.
Mehar closed the door and turned to me. “What was that about?”
“They found Thad’s body. Prime’s staging worked. It was found at one of Rashid’s buildings. I told her Mega was probably responsible.”
Mehar was quiet for a second. Whatever she was feeling about Thad’s body being found, she processed it privately and quickly. “And she believed it?”
“She doesn’t have a reason not to. Mega’s dead, Rashid’s dead, and the body was found in the right place. The story tells itself.”
“Did she give me a look on her way out or was I imagining that?”
“You weren’t imagining it. But she doesn’t know anything. She’s just a grieving woman looking for something to be angry at and you were the closest target.”
Mehar nodded and let it go because that’s what she did. She processed, she filed, she moved on. She didn’t sit with things that couldn’t be changed.
“Thank you for covering for me,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I did.”
She smiled and sat on the edge of my desk, which was her favorite spot in this office for reasons that had nothing to do with sitting. “So. Are you packed for tomorrow?”
“Been packed since yesterday. You?”
“Almost. I can’t decide between two dresses and I might just bring both.”
“Bring both. Bring ten. I don’t care. Just be ready by 8 AM.”
“You better not crash that plane, Quest.”
I laughed. “I’ve been flying for years, Peach. You’re safe with me.”
“I better be.” She leaned in and kissed me soft and slow and the office and the lies and Kacey’s grief all faded into the background for a few seconds. When she pulled back she looked at me with those eyes that made me want to cancel every meeting I had and lock the door behind us.
“8 AM,” she said.
“8 AM.”
She hopped off the desk and walked out and I sat there for a minute thinking about the ring in the safe at home and the red rocks in Sedona and the woman I was about to ask to spend the rest of her life with me.
Then I thought about Kacey’s face when she talked about Thad’s body being unrecognizable.
The coroner’s report. The months of torture.
All of it traced back to Mehar and Prime and the cage that nobody would ever know about.
I’d carry that secret for both of them. For as long as I lived. Because that’s what you do when you love somebody. You carry the weight they can’t hold anymore and you don’t complain about it and you don’t put it down.
I closed my laptop and grabbed my keys. Tomorrow I was flying to Arizona to ask a woman to marry me. Tonight I was going home to pack a ring and pretend the world was simple.