CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The “girl” was waiting in the library, which was next to the parlor, along with DeVontay. They’d been there for hours, as they were questioned by the police first, and then Mr. Webster and his son. And all of them looked at them with utter disdain. Like they were the real kidnappers!
Janita was so devastated as they sat in that room that she sat slouched down on the sofa.
In her slacks, her tucked-in blouse, and her blazer and loafers, she looked like she always looked while on duty.
But she didn’t feel as if she was on duty.
She felt as if she was on trial. And her body showed the difference.
“What’s taking them so long?” she said with agitation in her voice as she removed the rubberband from her thick hair, gathered her hair again, and then wrapped the band around it.
It felt as if they’d been in that “holding cell” for nearly all day.
Ever since it happened. “We need to get back on the streets. This is just a waste of time.”
“They’ve got the police looking for her,” Von said. “What more can we do?”
“We can try to find her, that’s what.” Janita was irritated, but her brother knew she was just scared. “They acted like we were the kidnappers.”
“Especially Mr. Webster,” Von agreed. “That’s a mean sonofabitch.”
“His wife was kidnapped. How do you expect him to act?”
“He doesn’t care about her or he wouldn’t cheat on her like that.”
Janita knew about cheating men, alright, but she never stuck around like Reecie Webster once she found out what they were about.
She wasn’t about to school her brother about something she didn’t know about herself.
She just wanted Mrs. Webster back home and safe and sound. That was all she wanted that day.
The door to the room opened and one of Mrs. Webster’s younger sons, although he was around Janita’s age, the one they knew as Dray, leaned inside. “My father wants to see you.”
About time! They both stood up.
“Just her,” Dray said.
Janita gave her brother a reassuring look, but he knew better. They wanted to drill down on her again. Treat her like dirt again. “We do everything together. We’re a team,” he said to Dray.
“Not today you aren’t,” Dray said to him. Then he saw the concern on her baby brother’s face. “I won’t let them treat her too badly,” he added.
It wasn’t much, but Von took it. “Thanks man,” he said, and then Janita left the room with Dray. Von sat down and prayed when she left.
But when Janita followed Dray next door and walked into that parlor room where the Webster family was located, she was so nervous that she thought they could hear her heart hammering.
But when she walked in and she and Hawk locked eyes, both of them had an immediate reaction.
For Janita, it was a kind of embarrassing awkwardness. This man hit on her once, and she turned him down. She just knew he was going to go hard on her.
For Hawk, it was just seeing her again that got a reaction out of him.
And it wasn’t embarrassment that she had turned him down a month ago, nor was it awkwardness.
It was that jolt again. As if she was shaking him up again in ways that were out of character for him.
He dealt with beautiful ladies every day and he never wanted to take them to bed or get to know them better or any of that.
He never gave those ladies a second thought.
But he thought about her many times in the days after they met. And it disturbed him mightily.
Was this the “girl” his father was talking about? Was this young lady his mother’s bodyguard? “Hello.”
Although she was still awkward around him, at least his face was the first non-accusatory face she’d seen all day.
These people hated her guts for what happened to their mother on her watch, and rightly so.
But it still hurt deeply to be looked upon with such disdain.
And although she knew he was one of Mrs. Webster’s sons too, and they had that brief history together, he seemed to at least be willing to treat her outwardly with some respect even if he inwardly he probably despised her too. “Hello,” she said.
She recognized every one of Mrs. Webster’s children, not because she’d been introduced to them, but the moment she won that contract she went online and checked out that entire family.
“Your name?” Although she had an initial electrifying impression on him when he first met her at his house that night, he had forgotten her name.
“Oh I’m sorry.” She stiffened her spine and spoke up. “I’m Janita.”
But she didn’t speak up loud enough for Hawk. “Ja-who?”
Janita cleared her throat, which was never a good sign. “I’m Janita Cooper. My company oversees your mother’s security.”
Wait a minute. His mother told him that she was her assistant. But she was, in actual fact, her bodyguard? Her? “Which member of your staff was on duty when this happened?” He assumed it was some seasoned veteran who’d seen it all before. Including kidnappings.
Janita knew she was about to disappoint him too. “My brother and I were on duty because my brother and I are the only employees of Cooper Security.”
Hawk was astounded. “You’re joking?”
Minka laughed. “I told you!”
Hawk was shocked. She was no kid, but she was no seasoned veteran either! Perhaps her brother was? “Where’s the brother?” he asked. “Bring him to me.”
Dray rolled his eyes. He could have brought the brother in when he brought the sister in. “I hope you people make up your minds,” he said. But he left the room once again and went and got Von.
While they waited, Janita and Hawk kept taking peeps at each other when they thought the other one wasn’t looking.
It was as if they still remembered that night vividly.
As if both of them, in their own way, had considered what might have been had she not turned him down, and regretted that they’d never know.
But when Von walked into that parlor, Hawk was too amazed to consider anything.
Because when he saw that Von was even younger than his sister, and that he looked like he could still be in his teen years, he knew this couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t be! “Were you in charge when my mother was kidnapped?” he asked Von.
“Yep,” said Minka. “He was in charge. This child was in charge.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Janita corrected him.
But Minka ignored her the way he always ignored difficulties. “It gets crazier and crazier,” he said.
This was a joke to Minka, but it was an affront to Hawk. This was their mother they were talking about. He had a fixed frown on his face. He needed to understand this! “So you were in charge?” he asked Janita.
“Yes sir.”
“You’re an experienced bodyguard?”
“Yes sir.”
At least that! “For how long?” he asked her.
Janita wished to God it was more. “Four years, sir.”
“Four years? That’s all?” Hawk couldn’t believe it.
Minka laughed and shook his head. “I told you.”
Hawk looked at his father. “Pop, how on earth could you have hired a security firm where the seasoned vet has only four years of experience?!”
“It was your mother’s doing,” William fired back.
“When I suggested she needed to have a bodyguard, she wouldn’t hear of it.
Her driver was quite enough. But I insisted.
And that’s when she insisted that if she had to have a bodyguard, she wanted a black-owned security company to get the contract.
And I could not talk her out of it. Even when I discovered there were no black firms in Brackenridge except for this girl’s firm.
And you know your mother. She didn’t want a firm from Nashville nor Memphis.
Oh no! She insisted it had to be a local firm from right here in town.
And unfortunately,” he said as his face became even more distressed, “I allowed it. Lord help me, but I allowed it.”
Janita and Von glanced at each other. Mr. Webster was acting as if hiring them was the worst thing ever.
“There was nonetheless a bidding process,” William continued. “You never hand your business over to anybody without them fighting for the right. And she bid accordingly.”
“He means she bid dirt cheap,” said Minka, whose sarcasm even Janita could see masked his pain.
“And they got the job,” William continued, giving Minka a cold look. “I had no idea it was just the two of them.”
Hawk knew it was admirable of his mother to want to help a small, black-owned business.
But this was her safety they were talking about!
His father should have overruled her the way he overruled everything else she did that bordered on insanity.
But he needed the facts. “Tell me what happened,” he said to Janita.
Janita swallowed hard. Even though she could tell he was disappointed with her too, he at least wasn’t nasty with it. Or accusatory. He seemed to want to understand it better.
It also didn’t hurt that he had the most strikingly beautiful brown eyes.
She remembered how they bore into her when they first met.
Looking into such kind, beautiful eyes gave her courage.
“We picked her up for the wedding rehearsal. But then she said she felt like a new dress today and ordered us to take her to Ellen’s Boutique. ”
Nobody was surprised by that. Spur of the moment was their mother’s stock and trade.
“So we took her to Ellen’s clothing store on Sunset. She was in the VIP dressing room trying on different dresses. I stepped away from the door for only a few minutes.”
“You stepped away?” asked Hawk.
“Only for a few minutes. I could still see the door from where I was standing. But then I heard a loud scream. When I ran into that dressing room, she was already gone. That’s when I discovered that the wall behind the vanity had a hole somebody had hammered through.
So I crawled through that hole and ended up on the other side in the alley.
And that’s when I saw the getaway van. I tried to take out the tires, but it got away. ”