by Tiya Rayne
Priest continues to talk over Walker. “Before he left, he begged her to leave with him and she said no. Now that she’s gone, he’s trying for the less interesting version of her. And from the sweat and sex, I smell in the air this morning, you fell for i—”
That last word cuts off when Walker’s fist flies into Priest’s face. Priest rocks back but otherwise doesn’t move. Walker turns to me and I imagine the pain in my chest is written all over my face.
“I can explain.” I hold up a hand to stop him.
“Did you come back for her, did you come back for Red?” That’s all I needed to know.
I figured out he and Albany weren’t sexual, even before he told me. I assumed they had a fling, maybe even a special friendship. Maybe even more special than she had with the other guys at the Church.
That’s the picture I painted in my head. The one that allowed for me to drop my guard and trust Walker. However, if I am wrong. If he was in love with Albany and she turned him down that means he’s here for the exact reason Priest said. He went for the less fun sister. The desperate and lonely one that has trust issues. The one that told herself that knowing only the things her sister told her about this man was enough for him to break down her walls.
“Answer my question, Walker.”
Silence surrounds us again. Yet, I know the moment he’s about to admit the truth. His face falls and if I thought the look on his face earlier was broken, the one on his face now is pure devastation.
“Yes, I came back for Red.” The words are barely out of his mouth before I start to shake with tears. I’m an idiot. A fucking idiot. “But it isn’t what you think.”
I don’t give a shit about what else he has to say.
“I have to get out of here.” I head for the foyer. I don’t know where I’m going, but I have to get out of this room with him.
“Brooklyn. Brook, wait.” Walker tries to reach for me, but I yank away from him.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I scream before bringing my voice back down. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
I run for the foyer, toward the door. From the shuffling and grunting coming from behind me, I think Priest is holding him back. Storming out of the hotel room, I rush to the elevator.
I need to get away, get some fresh air. I climb in the elevator as soon as it comes and ride it down to the lobby. The moment the doors open, I rush into the lobby and out of the revolving doors.
The bright morning sun and the warm air help loosen my constricting lungs. I catch my breath as my tears continue to fall from my eyes. It’s been a long time since I cried over a guy. Not in seven years. I move away from the front door, stepping down onto the sidewalk.
I don’t want to think about Walker or how he hurt me. How I’m basically a replacement for the woman that didn’t want him. The one that everyone wanted. I shake my head at the way my thoughts are taking me. I can’t go down that road.
I need to be numb. I walk a little ways away from the hotel, being mindful not to go too far. There has to be a bar somewhere around here. I need to get shitfaced. I don’t even care that I hate the taste and smell of alcohol.
I’m not doing it for the taste, I’m doing it to not feel. This is why I had my walls. Usually, I would lose myself in a painting or drawing when I get this way.
I’ve always been able to deal with my shit when there’s a paintbrush or pencil in my hands, but I don’t have the time or the means to go look for art supplies. The moment I find a bar someone calls my name.
“Hello again, Brooklyn,” Detective Long says with a shit eating grin. “You’re a hard girl to keep up with.” Right as he approaches, another man that’s definitely a cop walks toward me. His hand resting on the gun at his waist as if I’m some kind of wanted criminal.
“What do you want, Long?” I make sure he can clearly hear my unwelcoming tone.
“You and I are going to take a little ride downtown.”
“The hell we are. You don’t have a warrant,” I say as he yanks my arm. My reflex to fight back rears up, but I tamp it down. Nothing good can come from me resisting arrest.
“Don’t need one. I’m only taking you in for questioning.” With his hand tightly wrapped around my upper arm, he drags me toward an unmarked car.
“Get in,” he says, opening the back door and shoving me into the backseat. “We’re going to hang out for the weekend.” He and the other guy climb into the front and we drive away from the hotel and my only source of protection.
Chapter 17
Her Sacrifice
Hawk
I rage against the hold Priest has on me. I have to get to her. I have to tell her the truth.
“She’s gone, Hawk. Let her go,” Priest says at my back. He finally lets me go and I sag against the wall in front of me before I ball my fist and punch it.
“You need to focus.”
I push away from the wall and glare back at the man that is pretty much like a father to me. We weren’t babied when we came into the Church. The organization stripped us of the innocence of childhood.
However, when my class came into the program, Priest was my trainer. He never coddled me, but we were close. As I stare back at him now I don’t know what the fuck to think.
“Why?”
“Because she needs to hear the truth.” He sighs. “And she gets under my skin.”
I shake my head. “It’s my truth to tell and only when I want to tell it.”
“What do you think you’ll do with her? You think they’ll let you keep her?”
“They let me leave. Everyone said they wouldn’t, but they let me leave.”
Silence greets me. He doesn’t move or react. He knows I hate when he does that.
“Why do you think that is? The Church has been around for thousands of years. And not one of us has ever walked away.
“Through blood or sword. That isn’t a fucking quote to place on T-shirts or to make us feel badass. You don’t walk away from the Church. Why do you think they let you go?”
I let his words sink in. I thought about that a lot when they first agreed to my resignation. Red was the one that told me I should ask.
She said that she could feel that my heart wasn’t in it anymore. In all honesty, I don’t think it ever was. The Church made me feel important. It made me feel as if I wasn’t the sick child that broke my parents up.
“I always thought you pulled strings for me,” I admit. At least that’s what I wanted to believe.
Priest grunts. “I tried, Hawk. I felt you slipping away from it. I knew that soon it was going to happen to you. Your lack of interest was going to get you killed. I even offered to take the Cardinal position the Church had been asking me to take.”
It shocks me to know that he went that far for me. It’s no secret that Priest should be Pope by now. The Church has been wanting him to move up in rank for years, but Priest doesn’t have the desire for it.
Plus, like with every organization, there’s a lot of politics. As liked as Priest is, he’s also hated, but to know that he offered to move up for me is humbling.
“What happened?”
He takes a seat back on the couch. “She happened. Sometimes, someone else has something more valuable to offer than you.”
“What did she offer?” My heart races. What could they possibly want from Red that she wasn’t already giving us?
A light scoff comes from Priest. “You have no idea of her full potential. She was more than a beautiful woman that could lure any man to his death. She was the Femme Fatale.
“Look at your situation, Hawk. Look at what all she accomplished to help you. The Church has wanted Fem for more than the Nunnery for years. I always stopped it and she agreed. I’m not even sure Pope wanted her to move up. We all had our reasons.”
I stand there lost to this new information. I knew Red was smart. I knew she was gifted. I had no idea how gifted. The last conversation we had the day she showed up after I had come back plays in my head.
/> “She showed up in my apartment about a week after I came back,” I say, thinking back to that night. Priest quietly listens without interrupting. “She was mad at me.” I smile thinking about it. “She demanded to know what took me so long.”
“Yeah,” Priest laughs. “She complained to me for two months about it.”
We both take a moment to remember the woman that we knew and loved. That was the first time I met Albany. She wasn’t Red, Fem, Rose or any of her other aliases, she was herself. I remember her voice broke as she reamed me out.
“What the heck, Walker? I expected so much more from you.” She took a seat and heaved a long heavy breath. “I sacrificed everything for you, I even gave him up—” She stopped as if she’d said too much. I had no idea what she had sacrificed at the time, but I get it now.
“She took my place. She gave herself over for a lifetime of servitude for me.”
“Not for you.”
It wasn’t only for me, yet still. “If I’d known… I would have never let her do it.”
“Yeah, I would have liked to see you try.” He climbs to his feet. “They release Beast in a few weeks. I still think they’re going to try to turn him on you.”
“Do you think he will do it?”
I came into the Church with the twins, Many, Beast, and Zel. Priest was our handler and he brought us up like siblings. Something the Church never was fond of. They didn’t like us to form attachments or relationships, not outside the organization or within it. They wanted us to be loyal, but not friends, in case they needed us to turn against each other.
A sigh escapes his lips. “Who knows, it’s Beast. Some shit went down last time they tried to wrangle him in. I had to call in Fem to calm him. No one knows what he will be like once they release him.”
I think back to that crazy shit I witnessed that night five years ago. I didn’t have the time to unpack that situation, so I shake the memory away. Priest steps around me, heading toward the door and I follow. A chill runs through me as the remainder of the memory fades.
“You need to focus. Time is running out. I bought you only two weeks, per her request. Don’t waste it.”
“I’m not. I’m chasing every lead,” I tell him. “I’ll find out who killed Red.”
Priest stops and turns toward me. “I’m not talking about that. No one gets a happy ending in the Church, Hawk. Not even she could grant you that.” With that warning, he turns to leave.
I understand his meaning. I’ll be damn if I settle for it though.
Chapter 18
Locked Up
Brooklyn
My stomach growls as I stare up at the dingy ceiling. I am livid.
I’ve been tossed in this cell since they picked me up Sunday morning. I haven’t seen Detective Long or gotten my fucking phone call. At least I think I’m supposed to get a phone call.
“I’m telling you, a girl as pretty as you would make a killing. And Sugar Baby is good to his girls.”
I’m in the holding cell with three prostitutes, a woman named Big Bertha that I’m not a hundred percent sure isn’t a guy and the one I call crack head Sally that has been sleeping since the time they tossed her in here with us.
“Juicy Kitty.” I cringe at the name she told me to call her. “I appreciate the confidence, but I don’t want to work for your pimp.”
I climb to my feet and head to the bars of our prison cell. I can’t believe I’m being held in this cell like I’m a suspect for my sister’s murder. I shake at the bars going stir crazy being confined like this.
The woman at the counter looks up at me and rolls her eyes. I swear if I catch that bitch out on the streets it’s on. Suddenly, a smiling Detective Long walks up to the bars and I take a step back.
The policeman with him uses his key to open the door. All the other women move forward. Well, all except crack head Sally who I’m now starting to suspect might be dead.
“Get your asses back,” Police officer yells at the other women before grabbing my shoulder and yanking me out of the cell.
“Good morning, Brooklyn,” Detective Long says with a shit eating grin on his face.
“I want my fucking phone call,” I demand. I don’t know who I would call. My only contact was buried almost a week ago and the one person that was supposed to be helping me, well.
“You’ll get your phone call after our chat.” He grabs my arm with a biting grip, but I don’t let on that he’s hurting me. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“I’ll put in a good word for you with Sugar Baby,” Juicy Kitty calls out as I’m being ushered away.
The trip to the interrogation room doesn’t take that long. When we arrive at the door, Long opens it and shoves me in, nearly causing me to crash into the table. He shuts the door and commands me to sit.
I have to close my eyes and count to ten. If he weren’t a cop I’d be whooping his ass all through this place. I take a seat and he sits across from me.
“Shouldn’t there be another cop? How can you play the good cop, bad cop role without another cop?” I may not be able to fight him, but I can definitely be an asshole.
“You always were the smart mouth problem child, weren’t you?”
My brows nearly touching, I peer back at the detective. “Oh, I’m sorry I don’t remember seeing you growing up. And since you weren’t there, you can keep your bullshit opinion about me to yourself.”
He snorts, rubbing at his chin. He then leans down at his feet to grab something before placing a tablet onto the table.
“Do you know what’s on this?” he asks.
I lean back in my seat. “Your porn collection?” I have no idea where he’s going with this.
He gives another one of his obnoxious chortles. “On this tablet are the files we have on you.” He presses a button on the side and the tablet lights up. He glides his finger across the screen skimming pages.
He continues. “Took me a while to get my hands on all this, and I had wanted to print this shit out, but the station has a paper limit. This baby is over two-hundred pages.” He laughs at his dumb joke before looking back up at me. “Fighting, getting suspended and running away from foster homes. You have a pretty extensive bio here.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Is this what you’re doing? You’re going to convict me with my foster care records. Nothing I did in that file was illegal. I served no jail time. In fact, those records should be sealed. No judge will give you the time of day with them.”
He shakes his head and then places his hands on top of the table. For the first time, I notice the bandage around his fist.
“You’re right. This won’t hold up in court, but it does give me an idea of how your relationship was with your sister. Looking at your records, I think I figured out your motive.”
Okay, I have to hear this. I sit patiently hoping he will explain.
“See,” he starts. “After reading your file.” He points to the tablet in front of him. “I went to read Albany’s. Only three pages. This one I could’ve printed.”
I’ve seen both our files before and I know that there’s more to her paperwork, but I go along with this bullshit story because the least he can do is entertain me after keeping me all night.
“Two hundred pages,” he says, holding his hands out like he’s weighing something. “Three pages.” He balances his palms back and forth as if to measure one as heavier than the other to show the difference in the size of reports. “Do you see the difference in these two files?”
I blink a few times and reply dumbly. “No, I don’t.”
His nostrils flare when I don’t play along with this stupid game. “Let me paint a picture for you, you’re an artist, right?” he says it mockingly. I don’t take the bait. “You see, I see two sisters. One quiet, shy, reserved, well-behaved, liked by all her peers and her foster parents.
“This child probably wants to be adopted. Maybe find a family that will take her in and love her. The second child.” He looks to his hand re
presenting my files. “Is problematic, a liar, aggressive, and violent. She gets kicked out of every foster home she has been in and even did a stint in a group home for girls.
“Now I imagine the first child grew tired of her sister’s antics. Always getting them removed from the safety of a good home. If I were the first child, I would grow to resent the second child. Maybe even hate her. Are you following me so far?”
“Oh yes.”
“Good, you see I believe that maybe after years of that resentment, first child finally told the second child how she felt and like everyone has said over the years, the second child flipped and killed the first child out of a jealous rage.”
He finishes his story and for about seven seconds, I keep a straight face and then I burst out laughing. I mean, I’m guffawing, and my eyes are tearing. I haven’t laughed this hard since I got that horrible visit.
“Oh man, you should be a writer,” I tease him. His face turns bright red.
“Laugh now, but once I start calling in character witnesses, oh, I’ll have enough evidence to convict you.”
“Are you high?” I’m asking a serious question at this point. “What are you going to convict me of? You can character witness me to death, but nothing will put me with my sister when she died. I don’t care how many people you get to lie on me, I didn’t kill my sister.”
“Then prove me wrong. Help me find the killer.”
“I already told you what I know.”
“Have you?” He narrows his eyes. “I know you went back to the crime scene.”
“Did I?” I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve watched enough crime dramas to know you don’t admit to anything until they show hard evidence. And even then, you deny that shit.
This cop has nothing on me because there’s nothing to have on me. Yes, me and Albany had petty arguments. They usually involved clothes or books she’d borrowed and not returned. Our fights lasted no longer than five minutes and usually ended with us laughing at each other. Never have I gotten angry enough to hurt her.