Up in Smoke_A King Series Novel

by T. M. Frazier

  “Why now?” Smoke asks. I open the front door and flick on the light, but nothing happens. Probably because I didn’t pay the power bill last month. “Why do you suddenly trust me to tell me whatever it is you’ve been hiding, now?”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” I say.

  Smoke darts back to the van and grabs a flashlight. He runs back, powering it on. He follows me into the dark house, lighting the way over to the door leading to the basement.

  I reach around and feel the wall under the sloped ceiling until I find the dial for the generator. I turn it, and after a few seconds, a rumble sounds. The lights in the basement flicker and blink until they’re fully on. The microwave button beeps with the reminder to set the clock and for once I don’t jump out of my own skin.

  Seems a little superfluous at this point.

  We get to the bottom of the stairs. Smoke sets down the flashlight and takes in the sight before him.

  The computers in the center of the room come alive. Several small fans underneath spin to keep it all from overheating in what sounds like a collective roar.

  “I call it the monster,” I explain as Smoke steps into the room. He stops to stare at the eight large monitors. Four on the long desk and four mounted above on pipes hanging from the ceiling.

  “You mean your old man called it the monster,” Smoke says, examining my life’s work. He turns to me. “I thought you said you were taking me to him.”

  I take a deep breath and stand between him and my life’s work. “I did take you to him.”

  “Explain,” Smoke says, crossing his arms over his chest. His vein is pulsing again and I know it’s a sign of his temper growing and his patience shortening. “Cause I don’t see anyone here but us and a bunch of computers your old man used to steal money from Griff.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I sit down at my desk like a pianist at his instrument. I run my fingertips lovingly over the keys. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. My fingers play the keyboard will practiced efficiency. The monitors flash screen after screen.

  Smoke stands behind me and watches. “Holy shit,” he whispers.

  “You already know my father was a hacker. Funny thing is he always told me he worked for the government. Later on, I found out it was all a lie. He was laundering money, but he wasn’t JUST laundering money, he was transferring funds for human traffickers. Taking the money from the people buying sex slaves and sending it to the people selling sex slaves.”

  I find my rhythm and glance up at the screens at the visual music I’m creating.

  “He spent his whole useless life helping those who buy and sell people. Hiding their monetary transactions so they wouldn’t get caught. HE was the real monster. THIS,” I wave my hands at the computer system I spent years perfecting. “is my monster.”

  “What the fuck,” Smoke says. I spin around in my chair and he looks from me to the screens, still flashing.

  “Frankie, you said you were taking me to your old man,” he growls.

  “And I said I did,” I argue.

  Smoke looks around. “Then where the fuck is he?” He asks between gritted teeth. “Don’t fucking toy with me.”

  “He’s over there,” I point to the darkened corner of the basement where only the bottom of a large blue rectangular freezer can be seen peeking out from under a blue roof tarp.

  Smoke rips the tarp away.

  He turns and storms over to me. His heavy feet thudding against the cement floor. He’s furious and aggressive and fucking beautiful all at the same time. My heart and head are pounding. I’m afraid for both myself and for Smoke. He grabs my chair, hands on both of the arm rests and leans in, his face in mine. I see the anger burning in his dark eyes, but I also see hurt, so much hurt my chest pangs despite the position I’m in with my feet dangling above the floor. He thinks I’ve betrayed him.

  “Where—” he snarls.

  I don’t take my eyes off his. “My father. Frank Helburn is there. He’s IN the cooler.”

  Smoke pushes off the chair and stands. “What?”

  I meet his eyes. “He’s in the cooler. He’s dead. My father’s dead. He’s been dead.”

  Smoke

  My ears are fucking ringing. Dead. The motherfucker I’d been looking for all this time is DEAD.

  I cross the room to the corner where the dusty blue cooler sits caddy corner underneath a section of dropped ceiling.

  I pull on the padlock, but it doesn’t budge. I look around and spot a pair of bolt cutters hanging from the wall. I grab them, snapping the lock off after several blood-vessel-bursting tries.

  I need to see for myself that the bastard is dead. I can’t decide if I’m happy or pissed off I didn’t get a chance to do it myself, but I’ll work that out later.

  The lid of the cooler doesn’t move when I try to raise it. I bend at the knees and use my back strength. It finally it gives. The ice lining the lid breaks off and shatters around the floor, bouncing around like tiny diamonds as they catch the light from Frankie’s monitors.

  Inside is yet another blue tarp which I hastily rip to the side revealing the frozen open-mouthed corpse of Frank Helburn.

  Fuck.

  Frankie stands beside me, looking down at her dead old man. I think she’s emotionless when it comes to seeing his dead body but then I see it out of the corner of my eye. She’s shaking. And not with despair either. I raise my eyes to hers and sure enough she’s staring down at him with so much hatred burning in her eyes I’m surprised the ice doesn’t melt. “For how long?” I ask.

  She meets my eyes.

  “Five years.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Five years. That’s not possible,” I say. “Morgan died a year ago and your old man killed her. So, you’re wrong, or you’re lying.”

  “Please sit,” Frankie pleads, with a hurt on her face that makes me pause to take a breath.

  I shake my head. “Truth first. What the fuck is going on here?” She’s just told me that the man I want to take out my revenge on is fucking dead. There’s no way I could be calm. Not now.

  Maybe, not fucking ever.

  “Okay.” She sits back down on the chair, and her fingers move so fast over the keyboard they blur together. “I’ll start at the beginning, if that’s okay?” she asks without looking back at me.

  It’s so unlike her to ask me before she does something. I’m not sure if I love it or hate it.

  She sees me nod in the reflection of one of the screens. She inhales a shaky breath. "I never saw my father much,” she starts. “But you know that already.”

  “Keep going,” I urge her on.

  She’s pulling up security feed for Aestro, and I recognize it as a company that does high-end systems for…well, people like me.

  “I spent my time in the house, and my father spent his down here. He ate down here. He had a cot down here that he slept on most nights. I always thought he was just a really hard worker. He told me he designed websites for the government.” She chuckles and looks up at the elaborate computer system. “I used to show my friends at school the White House website and brag that my father was the one who built it.” She glances at me. “The only meaningful time we ever spent together was when he was showing me how to use computers. I could type before I could write with a pencil. I could write in code better than I could write my ABC’s. Occasionally, he showed me a few tricks. I think he was showing off. It was the only thing he was ever really proud of. And it was all fucking bullshit.”

  “Like what kind of tricks?” I ask.

  “Like how to hack into the school mainframe and set off the fire sprinklers on prank day,” she says with a laugh. “Other tricks I picked up by watching him. I’d sneak down here and sit on the step that was covered the most by the shadows. He never heard me, but I watched him working. I can tell you I never saw a single picture of the White House on any of his screens.”

  Frankie was downright graceful. She barely blinked as she moved from one
screen to the next, and the fact that she could talk to me while doing it made me realize she was on an entirely different level of smart then the rest of the population.

  “And then one day,” she continued. “I’d learned enough from watching him and doing my own research that I realized what he was really doing.”

  “Hacking?”

  “Not just hacking. Trafficking. People. Women,” she grates, the anger in her words floods into me, and I can feel my blood boiling for her, which makes sense, because she’s a part of me.

  The sounds of the keyboard clicks grow louder as she pounds on them with a lot more pressure than needed.

  Frankie shakes her head. “He was a facilitator, a closer. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands of women around the world. I was so disgusted when I first found out that I didn’t eat for weeks.”

  Frankie’s fingers slow. “I was going to call the cops, but I wanted to confront him about it. So one day, I gathered all my courage and all my evidence against him. I stormed down here ready to be jury and judge only to find him slumped over his keyboard, dead.”

  “How did he die?” I ask, curious as to all the details surrounding the death of the man I missed the opportunity to kill.

  Frankie shook her head. “He was always really unhealthy. Never slept. Ate all the wrong things. Chain smoked sixteen hours a day. I think his heart just finally gave out.”

  “And you didn’t call anyone?” I ask, wondering why a girl her age wouldn’t reach out and call for help.

  “There was no one to call. I don’t have any other family, and I would’ve called the police or coroner or whoever, but then I wouldn’t have been able to stay here on my own and do all this.” She waved her hand at the monitors. Her eyes glassy. She sniffled. “So, I made a pulley with some chains, hung it from the ceiling, and shoved him in the freezer so that no one would know of his death, and I could live here and pretend to be him. Online anyway. That’s when I started my work.”

  “Which is what exactly?” I ask hesitantly.

  She smiles, beaming with pride. “When I realized I could hack my way into the dark web and continue his work, but in a different kind of way…I did. I knew the drop off points. The method of transport. It was all at my fingertips. I saved them, Smoke. I stole money from the assholes trading people like stocks on the Nasdaq, and I hired mercenaries to rescue them. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of women are now back with their families because I stopped it all.”

  “Holy shit,” I say, not expecting what has just come out of her mouth. I take a moment to process what she’s just told me. SHE’S been Frank. For YEARS, she’s been pretending to be Frank. She’s the one who stole from Griff.

  “Say something else. Something besides holy shit,” Frankie says.

  “I’m blown away here. I’m pissed you didn’t tell me. I’m surprised…and I’m fucking amazed. I’m kind of…proud,” I say, cupping her face in my hands.

  “No one’s ever told me they were proud of me before.” Her eyes light up.

  “Assholes. All of them,” I say. I mean it. Someone should have told this amazing girl every fucking day of her life how amazing she is.

  “I thought when you took me that day that it was about the money I stole. I didn’t tell you where Frank was and that he was dead because…”

  “You lied to me,” I accuse, sounding madder than I actually am. I understood her reasons for lying but the barbarian in me was still pissed.

  “Yes, because if I told you the truth you would’ve known it was me who stole the money, and—”

  “And you would be dead anyway,” I finish for her.

  She nods. “Because you thought you were looking for Frank Helburn, but you never were. You didn’t know it, but this whole time, you were looking for me.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “You manipulated me,” Smoke says. His proud is turning to pissed off again.

  “Yes, and I’d do it again,” I tell him, sticking up my chin.

  “Fuck,” Smoke curses, standing from the chair with such force it falls forward onto the ground. “You pissed off the wrong people, Frankie.”

  “But hopefully I saved the right ones,” I defend. “I couldn’t stand by and NOT do anything.” I stand and face him. “Anyone in my position would have done the same.”

  Smoke scoffs. “No, they wouldn’t. The people you pissed off wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

  “Any DECENT person in my position would have done the same,” I say, staring him down.

  “Decent?” Smoke asks with a laugh.

  I feel the corners of my mouth turning upward as Smoke walks up to me and cages me against the wall. He looks me in the eyes. I meet his gaze. Challenging him.

  Always challenging him.

  “My little hellion,” he murmurs. “But tell me something, Frankie.” He brushes his lips over mine then pulls back, teasing me. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Do all decent people bend their dead father’s corpses like a pretzel before shoving it in the motherfucking freezer?”

  “That’s unfair,” I say, talking through my teeth, barely moving my lips.

  “That’s what you don’t understand,” Smoke explains. “In this dangerous game, the one you’ve decided to play alongside some of the most dangerous people in the world, there are no rules. There is no fair and unfair. There is only dead and alive. Black and white. That’s it.”

  “Exactly, and a lot of women would be dead if I didn’t do what I did. Now, they’re alive.”

  I push against his chest and make a move toward the stairs, but he pulls me back. A million emotions are running through my mind along with a million worst-case scenarios.

  “What else you got?” Smoke asks against my neck. My pulse begins to race.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, sounding breathless.

  “Tell me what other secrets you’re keeping from me.” Smoke nips at my earlobe, and I can’t help the full-body shudder that erupts from within. I unwrap myself from his hold and turn to face him. “I can see there’s more.”

  Smoke watches as I go back to the desk. I lean over and hit a few keys. I’ve already cued up the surveillance video. I press play, and Smoke watches as Morgan is surprised by someone before it all goes blank.

  “My father was a lot of things,” I continue, reaching in my pocket I pull out the USB drive Nine gave me and plug it into the port. “But a cold-blooded murderer wasn’t one of them. At least, not in this case.” I point up to the screen at the still image that shows a very different picture than the one Smoke had showing my father walking away. I keep my cursor over the lower right-hand corner, blocking the full view of the photo. “Someone wiped the feed, then altered the photo. Do you know this man?”

  “Fuck, that’s Griff,” Smoke’s face reddens as his knuckles whiten. “Are you sure it’s real? That this one isn’t the fake one?”

  “I’m sure.” I say. “As I said, my father died five years ago. That I’m sure of. It couldn’t be him who killed Morgan. It wasn’t. It was Griff.”

  “How sure?” Smoke yells.

  I stand tall and refuse to recoil. “I’m positive.”

  Smoke exhales.

  “The white tux my father was wearing in your version of the picture? It was a rental that he wore once, to his own wedding to my mother years before I was born. It also happens to be the only photo that even the best hacker would ever be able to find of him.”

  Smoke turns and punches his fist through the drywall. I jump at the sound, my heart breaking for him over and over again. I’m in tears as I watch him crumble before me. My chest swells with both love and despair. “All this time. All this motherfucking time! I’m gonna rip his goddamned head off!”

  “Smoke!” I yell, frantically trying to get his attention.

  He looks at me, but he’s not seeing me. He punches the concrete wall over and over again. His knuckles are bloodied. His arms drip with red. The skin torn but he keeps going and going.

  “Stop!” I yell.


  “Why?” he grinds.

  “Because we need a plan,” I say, not backing down. “What happens now?”

  Smoke closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, he’s refocused. He smirks and lights a cigarette. “Now?” he chuckles wickedly. “Now, Griff and everyone he’s ever known and loved dies.”

  “Smoke look at me, look at me!” I yell, getting in his face. Needing him to see me. To hear me.

  He looks over my head, but I pull his face down and press my nose to his. “Smoke, calm down.”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do or say to get me to calm down now.”

  I step back, rip off my shirt and shove my shorts to my feet.

  “That’s not a fucking good idea right now, Frankie,” Smoke warns.

  “I’m a big girl. I can take it.” I step closer, pressing my body to his. He needs to feel our connection. I know sex won’t make the anger go away, but it could take it down a notch.

  “Frankie,” he warns. His pupils dilate. His nostrils flare.

  All I know is that I feel an overwhelming need to lift off some of the rage weighing on him so heavily, and I’ll gladly use my body to do it. I need to ground him to me. “Well, someone once told me I was dumb. Seems fitting don’t you think?”

  Smoke

  My hellion. My ballsy fucking hellion.

  Frankie has taken away my revenge then handed it back to me all in a matter of minutes. I’m a disaster. A swirling fucking hurricane about to unleash on everyone in my path and right now it’s Frankie who’s foolishly standing in the way.

  There’s no turning back. No going back to pretending that I don’t want this girl more than my next fucking breath. I don’t want to be careful with her. She’s not going to break although the thought of breaking her, breaking her IN, makes me salivate.

  “I’m not going to be gentle. I don’t think I can be,” I rasp, pulling her slender body to mine. I place my hand at the delicate curve of her hip and splay my fingers out on the pert top of her high round ass. I dig my fingers into her flesh, and her mouth opens and her eyes close. “Not now. Not after what you just showed me.