As she rounded the corner, Sydney could see Jason leaning against the back of the building, looking at his cell phone. Wow, he is so cute, she thought as she watched the sunbeams play off his chiseled profile. The butterscotch trim on his Louis Vuitton leather jacket complemented his complexion perfectly. Sydney paused to smooth down the front of her hair before walking over. She was almost in front of him before he noticed her approaching.
Jason immediately straightened up to greet her, “Hey! I wasn’t sure you got my message in time.”
“Yeah,” Sydney replied softly. “I, um, didn’t bother to reply since I was already down here.”
“That’s cool,” Jason nodded. “You look nice.”
“Thanks,” Sydney responded as she looked down at the black-and-white Calvin Klein swing coat she was wearing. She shifted from foot to foot as a million emotions ran through her. She felt like she should say something, but she just couldn’t figure out where to start. “So, um, how was your weekend?” she asked lamely.
“Let’s just say I’ve had better,” Jason laughed bitterly as he tugged at his navy Yankees cap.
“Yeah, me, too,” Sydney admitted. She started twisting her right earring as the uncomfortable tension hung between them. She looked both ways at the deserted parking lot.
Finally, Jason cleared his throat. “I called you back, you know, after everything,” his voice faded away.
“Yeah, I guess I was driving and missed the call,” Sydney responded as she switched the bag to her other shoulder. “You didn’t leave a message, so I wasn’t really sure you wanted me to call you back.”
Jason sighed as he scuffed the bottom of one of his all-brown Nike Air Force Ones against the pavement. The thumping sound pierced the air. “I guess I called to apologize,” he mumbled as his eyes remained downcast. “I didn’t mean for things to go so far. But when my call went straight to your voice mail, I just assumed that you were still with Marcus and I just hung up.”
Sydney was surprised how little his words did to make her feel better. Maybe it was the whole Marcus drama, but for some reason, she just wasn’t in the mood for another sorry apology. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t,” Sydney said with a shrug. “But it’s cool.”
“Is it?” Jason questioned, his voice rising just a tad. “ ’Cause I’m really messed up about this whole thing and, I don’t know, you seem pretty okay.”
Sydney tried to conjure something really reassuring and positive to say to get the two of them back on track, but she drew a complete blank. “It’s not that I’m okay, J, it’s just that it’s a lot,” Sydney answered slowly and truthfully. “There’s so much going on with me. And I want to tell you. But I never really know what I can and can’t say, because I never know how you’ll react.”
Jason’s head snapped back slightly as an expression of disbelief clouded his face. “What are you talking about? You can tell me anything,” he retorted, clearly offended. “You make me sound like some kind of…I don’t know, some kind of monster!”
“Can I tell you anything, Jason? I don’t know what it is, but I feel like no matter what I say or do, you won’t ever really trust me. And seriously,” Sydney paused and took a deep breath before she blurted out the question that’d been on her mind since Saturday. “What is the point of us if you don’t trust me?”
“You don’t know what it is?” Jason snapped as he pushed off the wall and stood over Sydney menacingly. “Weren’t you the same broad who went behind my back and had a date with Marcus the last time we were dating?”
“And I said I was sorry,” Sydney responded nervously as she reflexively took a step back. “I know what I did was wrong, but it was only one time.”
“Do you know? Or are you just playing some type of game with me?” Jason growled.
Sydney’s heart started pounding in her chest. She was not feeling Jason’s tone or the sinister look in his eye. She snuck another look at the deserted parking lot and regretted her decision to meet him so far away from where anyone might hear them. “You know what, Jason?” Sydney said hesitantly as she nervously fingered the Cartier bracelet. “I don’t think this is working for either of us right now. I think that we may have taken things a little too fast…”
Sydney didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence before Jason grabbed her by the right arm and twisted it. “Oh, you think you can just make a fool of me and get away with it?”
Sydney whimpered as tears filled her eyes. “Jason, please. Please stop,” she begged. “I’m not trying—”
“You’re not trying to what?” he demanded as he shook her forcefully. Sydney tried to yank her arm away but his grip only got tighter. “You’re not leaving me.” Jason threw Sydney against the wall.
“Ouch, please, Jason,” Sydney sobbed from the sharp pain where her shoulder hit the concrete. Her bags and personal items were scattered around her. She cowered fearfully. “Please stop. I’m sorry. Please!”
“Oh, you ain’t sorry yet, you selfish, conniving brat,” he threatened as he raised his hand. Sydney closed her eyes in anticipation of the impending blow.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Carmen suddenly shrieked from out of nowhere.
“Get the hell away from her, you asshole,” Rhea yelled as the two came hurtling around the corner.
Jason looked up at the two girls running at him and stepped back from Sydney. He shook his head and looked completely bewildered, almost as if he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. “She started this…she made me,” he stuttered as Rhea’s oversized lavender quilted Marc Jacobs bag connected with his right shoulder.
“Help! Somebody help us!” Carmen screamed at the top of her lungs as she raced to her friend’s side. She helped Sydney scramble a few feet away.
“Omigod, you freak! Get the hell away from her!” Rhea screamed as she connected with the side of Jason’s head. She knocked his Yankees cap to the ground.
“Rhea, it’s enough,” Carmen called out. “He’s not worth it!”
“You crazy bitches! You all deserve one another,” Jason hissed from between his arms as he blocked the blows. He stooped down to make a quick grab for his cap and turned to run away.
“I got your bitch,” Rhea yelled from behind him when she finally stopped brandishing her bag like a lethal weapon. She walked over to where Carmen was holding Sydney.
“Omigod, thank you so much,” Sydney sobbed. “How did you know?”
“Shh, it’s okay, calm down,” Carmen soothed her. “It’s okay, we’re here. It’s okay.”
“Girl, what in the world? Is that fool crazy?” Rhea exclaimed in disbelief as she looked at her friend sitting on the ground crying. She started picking up Sydney’s scattered belongings.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Sydney said, shaking her head. Tears continued to streak down her face. “I just told him that it wasn’t working out, and the next thing I know he snapped.”
“Wow! You are so lucky we had a substitute teacher today! That’s the only reason Carmen and I came out behind you. We wanted to tell you not to rush back to class,” Rhea explained as she walked over and held Sydney’s hands tightly. Sydney just shook her head as her sobs and tears finally started to subside. She slowly rubbed her bruised shoulder.
“Did he hurt you?” Carmen asked with concern when she saw Sydney wincing in pain. “Honestly, I think we should go to the principal’s office right now.”
“Absolutely, Syd,” Rhea co-signed.
“But what will people say—it’s his word against ours? Who’s gonna believe us?” Sydney asked, suddenly uncertain as she thought about how crazy the incident might sound to anyone who hadn’t witnessed the altercation.
“Damn what people say. You’re Sydney Duke,” Carmen said vehemently.
“We got you, Sydney,” Rhea swore truthfully. “We got you.”
Sydney sat silently thinking about Carmen’s words before finally standing up and straightening out her clothes. “You’re right. I’m Sydney Duke and I’m better
than this,” she said determinedly as she reached for her things. “And no one is going to hurt me and get away with it ever again.”
18
LAUREN
She’d seen the “Crime Stoppers” billboard hanging on the side of a hair-braiding salon at the end of a row of stores near Pride and actually considered that she might just have to use the number that time she went looking for Jermaine and, instead, got her first verbal smackdown from Brandi. On her train ride home that day, Lauren even gave a nervous giggle as she fingered the number on her cell and zoned out, imagining how the police cars, lights and sirens ablaze and the “Bad Boys” theme song blaring from giant speakers, would speed up to the tiny storefront with cops and K-9s swarming from every which way, looking to drag Brandi away to the pokey. But then she dismissed the billboard, the number, and the Brandi-goes-to-jail fantasy as quickly as she’d conjured it, recognizing that once she stepped just one of her pretty pedicured toes back over the Buckhead line, there would be absolutely no need to call the snitch hotline. Wasn’t nobody coming to the Duke estate.
But the West End was a whole ’nother story, and Lauren had come to recognize one true thing: As long as Smoke was running around the West End, no one—not Lauren, not Sydney, not Jermaine, not Uncle Larry, not Dice, not even Altimus and Keisha—was safe. This was on Lauren’s mind when she tiptoed into Sydney’s room, laptop in tow, looking for some help dropping dime on the guy who was threatening to single-handedly dig up all the Duke family secrets and ruin life as Lauren knew it. Sydney’s light was on, but her eyes were closed.
“Syd, wake up,” Lauren whispered, shaking her sister’s arm. It was a little after midnight. Altimus, keeping another late night holed up in his lawyer’s office strategizing over his ominous tax situation, had come in only a few minutes earlier and already had eased into a closed-door nightcap in the library, while Keisha was about two hours into dreamland. “Syd! Come on, wake up—it’s important. I need your help!” Lauren whisper-shouted.
“I’m not asleep,” Sydney said, turning over to face her sister. Her mascara and thick black eyeliner were making dried tracks all the way down her face; pink lipstick smudged her cheek and pillow. Sydney swiped her hand under her eye; Lauren saw moisture.
“Um, what’s going on, Syd? Why are you crying? Is everything okay?” Lauren asked, leaning in for a close-up view.
“Everything is fine. There was an eyelash in my eye, that’s all,” Sydney insisted halfheartedly. Lauren looked at her twin with a knowing eye but held her tongue. Something was up.
“Look,” Sydney insisted, deciding to just tell the truth. “I’m okay, really. Some stuff with Jason went down and I’m a little upset, but I’ll be over it by morning—no biggie,” she reassured, sitting up in her bed. “What’s up?”
“Well, um, I think I may have found out what happened to Rodney,” Lauren said, skepticism rimming her voice. “Or at least I think I found a way to get the heat off everyone.”
“What?” Sydney asked. “What are you talking about, Lauren?”
“Don’t you remember that text I sent you? Seriously, I think I might have figured out how to get everybody off the hook,” Lauren said.
“Wait, so that was for real? I mean, you don’t get people ’off the hook’ for murder,” Sydney said. “You find the person who actually did it so innocent people don’t have to go down for something they didn’t do.”
“Well, then, let me be the first to say to you that I don’t think our dad has to go down for Rodney’s murder,” Lauren said simply.
Sydney squinted, unsure whether she’d heard her sister correctly. “You’re saying you don’t think Dice did this? Or are you saying that you don’t want him to go to jail over it? Because if you’re suggesting either one of those, I would almost be forced to think you actually care what happens to my father,” Sydney said.
“I do care about our father, Sydney,” Lauren said, annoyed. “It’s just that—”
“That’s news to me,” Sydney interrupted sarcastically.
“Look, I didn’t come in here to get into a debate over whether or not I love my father,” Lauren snapped. “And blog bulletin: Lauren has feelings, and she happens to be capable of caring about other people. But just because we’re twins doesn’t mean we have to think alike. You of all people should know—”
Sydney raised her hand, motioning that she didn’t need to hear any more of her sister’s soliloquy. “I get it, I get it,” Sydney said. “I don’t want to argue about it.”
“I wasn’t trying to argue. I came in here to tell you that Dice didn’t kill Rodney, and Altimus and Mom probably didn’t have anything to do with it, either. He didn’t come right out and say it, but Uncle Larry thinks a drug dealer named Smoke killed Rodney over some girl.”
“A girl? What kind of girl do you kill somebody over?” Sydney asked, confused.
“Maybe she has some extra grease in her pork chops or pearls in her na na—how in the hell would I know that?” Lauren retorted. “Uncle Larry said something about how she had this guy’s baby and Rodney was messing around with her and the drug dealer doesn’t play that with his girl. It sounded like a lot of things, but none a reason to beat someone to death. But what do I know about all of that? What I do know is this means we’re all off the hook over this.”
“And exactly how is that possible if everybody thinks one of our dads did it?” Sydney demanded.
“That’s where this comes in,” Lauren said, turning her laptop so Sydney could see it.
“Crime Stoppers?” Sydney asked. “That’s your big idea? You’re going to call Crime Stoppers and do what? Tell them you found the real killer? Okay, O.J.,” Sydney said skeptically.
“Come on, Syd, it can’t be that bad an idea. People really do get caught behind this Crime Stoppers thing.”
“Methinks you’ve been watching too many episodes of Law & Order,” Sydney laughed, shaking her head.
“Seriously, come on, Sydney, hear me out,” Lauren said. “I just Googled it, and there was a story I read that said that here in Atlanta they’ve used it to solve a bunch of crimes, and you don’t even have to testify in court or anything, you’re just giving them a tip and the police follow up.”
Sydney rubbed her temples and winced. “I have a serious headache,” she said. “All of this is just too much.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to Dice when he goes down for a murder he didn’t commit,” Lauren sighed.
“You know he really loves you, right?” Sydney said quietly.
Lauren cracked her neck and held on tighter to her laptop; she wanted to acknowledge what her sister said, but she wasn’t really ready to deal with the implications.
“I’m just saying, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he knew that the one girl he loves as much as me acknowledged him,” Sydney said.
“First things first,” Lauren said. “He may be happy to hear those three words, but I’m thinking he’ll be even happier to get the monitoring bracelet off his ankle. And that can’t happen until I make the call.”
Sydney reached for her cell and handed it to Lauren. “Do your thing,” she said.
Lauren stared at the phone and slowly pulled it from Sydney’s fingers. “Well, um, let me just see what else it says about making this anonymous. Do you think they’ll trace it back to your phone?” she asked, staring at the numbers.
“You have a point,” Sydney said. “What does the Web site say?”
Lauren pushed the space bar on her MacBook, which had gone to screen-saver mode. When the Atlanta Crime Stoppers page popped back up, she focused on the dark blue line that read “Submit a tip online.” “Look, I don’t have to call,” she said to Sydney. “All I have to do is fill out this page and send it in. It says you don’t have to give your name or anything.”
Sydney sat up and peeked at the screen for herself. Satisfied her sister knew what she was talking about, she said, simply, “Well? Get to it.”
And Lauren did, typing in as much informa
tion as she could about the man she was certain was going to get her father and her boyfriend off the hook for a crime she was now sure neither had committed. “Now, how in the hell am I supposed to know how tall he is and how much he weighs?” Lauren questioned.
“Can you give a guess?”
“I mean, if I get it wrong, won’t that keep them from finding him?” Lauren questioned.
“You can still estimate, though. Think about it: Is he as big and tall as Altimus?”
“No, he’s smaller—much smaller. Like Marcus’s height.”
“Marcus isn’t that small,” Sydney said, frowning.
“Well, he ain’t as big as Altimus, that much I know,” Lauren said.
“Whatev, Lauren,” Sydney snapped. “If he’s Marcus’s height, he’s about five-nine.”
Lauren scrolled down and clicked on 5′9″. “He’s about Marcus’s weight, too. How much does Marcus weigh?”
“I don’t know—I wasn’t at his last physical.”
“Come on, Syd, work with me, not against me,” Lauren insisted, rolling her eyes for emphasis.
“Okay, okay—he’s about one seventy-five, one eighty,” Sydney said.
Lauren scrolled down some more. “Dang, they want his cell phone, his addy, they want to know what scars and tats he has, what kind of dogs he has, his weapons. How in the hell am I supposed to know all of that?” Lauren asked, exasperated. “Like, maybe, I don’t know as much as I think I know. Maybe,” she added, “this isn’t a good idea.”
Sydney touched her sister’s shoulder to calm her. “Come on, Lauren,” she said gently. “You can do this. I know you can. You can just put as much of the info in there as you can, and let the police sort out the rest. If you don’t say anything, though, then you’re leaving it up to the police to figure it out, and you see what that’s got us.”
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