by Cynthia Dane
“Are nowhere to be found.” Vincent put a heavy hand on Nala’s shoulder and turned her toward him, his voice lowering as he tried to speak out of security’s hearing range. “Something is going on, Nala. Something neither you nor I can comprehend. I don’t know who those people are, but…” He motioned to a small envelope tucked in his inside pocket. “We are definitely not safe. Hawk was going to kill us all tonight.”
I knew it. Nala sucked up her fear and tried to put on the bravest face she had. “Are you hurt?” she asked meekly. Her fingers clutched his jacket. “I’m scared, Vincent…”
“I know, darling.” He pulled her into his embrace, letting her tears hit his clothes. “We’ll get through this. You have to believe me. You are never leaving my side until this is over.”
What he didn’t tell her was that “until this is over” could very well mean their deaths.
Chapter 8
Nala was still shaking when they returned to Vincent’s loft. The security team did their customary sweep and didn’t find anything. Vincent told them to bring in more people and double their vigilance. When the captain suggested they officially go to the police with everyone’s testimony - and the captain swore up and down he had a very good relationship with local law enforcement - Vincent convinced him that when it came to Xavier Crow, nobody else could be trusted. Not even the police.
Vincent consented to two bodyguards staying inside the loft that night, taking shifts with another pair. He and Nala went upstairs with drinks while the security detail sat on the couches downstairs, doing more sweeps, looking out windows, and communicating via their phones. With so much activity going on, Nala and Vincent were forced to keep their voices at lowered whispers.
“Who are they, Vincent?” Nala huddled in her sweats as she continued to lightly shake on the bed. “I’ve always known there’s something off about them. Please tell me you’ve looked up their real identities.”
“I did a long while ago. Jay and Marguerite Jones. He’s in hedge funds and she… well, there was nothing about her besides basic profile shit. They were both squeaky clean. Nothing stood out.”
Nala furrowed her brows. “You mean it was eerie how nothing stood out.”
“I don’t think they’re who they say they are, but if they have real information out there, I can’t find it. I can barely break into Crow’s security.”
“Maggie gave you something, right?”
Vincent pulled the small envelope form the end table. “She told me to open it with you. It was the first thing she gave me. There was no time to discuss further, because Hawk wasted no time. She wanted to take us out first. I think she was actually targeting Maggie before me. I was lucky that she was already so alert.”
“So was Jay. They knew that was going to happen.”
Vincent nodded, opening the envelope. Inside was a single piece of paper containing a typed letter. He spread it out on the bed and focused the nearest lamp, so the soft yellow light illuminated Maggie’s words.
I cannot tell you my real name. I risk even telling you this much. Whatever you do, do not dig into my identity. You could possibly greatly compromise what I have already achieved, and I will have to kill you.
They were off to a fantastic start already.
I am on your side. I am like you in that I have been touched by Crow’s evil hand.
Two years ago, I lived in a community not too unlike this one. Xavier Crow was buying up land all over Washington, which included my town. On one of his parcels he built a daycare. I enrolled my son, who was four at the time.
It turned out that Crow over-purchased the town. Soon his allotted funds dried up with little return. Whispers of him going after phony insurance claims arose, but nobody could prove anything. I should have acted, but I didn’t expect the worst case scenario. See, I had my son in daycare because I was a single mother with a full time job that often went into overtime. On the night I will never forget, I had to work late. I phoned the daycare and one lovely lady there agreed to stay late with my son until I could pick him up. By the time I got there the whole daycare had burned down. Both my son and the woman died inside.
I do not doubt that Xavier Crow burned down the place to get insurance money. Whoever did it for him must have thought nobody would be there so late. There hasn’t been a day that goes by that I wish I had gotten there even half an hour earlier. Maybe I could have done something. Maybe I could have saved my son and that woman. But mostly my son, who was the most precious thing in the world to me.
My son is not the only victim. I know others have died by command. I will not rest until there is justice. You are meddling. I infiltrated long before you, and I must ask that you back off. For your own good, and for the best chance at justice that we have.
I am sorry about Tasha Nazarov. I am sorry about Desirée Whitmore. Their deaths did not have to happen. I sent Nala that photo that I stole from Crow’s personal office because she needed to know the truth. I recognized Nala the moment she entered The Aviary for the first time. I know that Xavier Crow did too. You were made the moment you started lying.
Tasha was known as Raven when I first infiltrated The Aviary. Of course I did not know her relationship to Crow until I did some digging. When I found out she was one of his top researchers, a lot of things started to make sense. For one, the girl was never happy in our group. I could tell that her relationship with Crow was not her choice. If you told Tasha Nazarov that she would never have to come to another club meeting again, she would be the happiest I ever saw her. I won’t upset you with the things they did there, but as far as I can tell, there was some other reason Raven was in the group, and it was not because she was Crow’s real girlfriend. Since her death, Crow has not had a partner aside from Hawk. I’m sure he wanted us to think that he was grieving. Nobody asked any questions. We all long learn to not ask about group members who disappear. I knew Othello and Sparrow as well. Othello cost Crow a lot of money with a bad shipment, and he moved to Germany to get away from his wrath. If you’ve seen the news lately, you’ll notice that it didn’t work out that great.
Vincent, I do not have any information on Desirée’s death. I’m sorry. I’ve done my own digging and my guess is probably as good as yours.
Please do not interfere with me. I am on your side in that we both want justice. But I will not stop until it’s done. If you get in my way? I apologize in advance for what I have to do.
Maggie.
Nala could not face the piece of paper after she was done reading. “I don’t believe it,” she muttered. “How could Tasha have been that man’s partner in any way? She would have never been into that sort of thing. She was as vanilla as basic ice cream.” Nala knew that a woman who appeared vanilla on the outside may very well be kinky on the inside, but she knew her sister. Tasha liked flirting, she probably liked sex, and she was always going on about guys when her time allowed, but the idea of her being into BDSM was about as likely as Nala becoming a housewife. Nobody would have been surprised with Nala being kinky. Submissive, maybe, but overall kinky? Yeah, right. Nala should have seen it for herself before meeting Vincent. “There must have been something in it for her. Why would Crow risk her quitting? She was one of his top researchers.”
“Do you still think that he had her killed because of her research?” Vincent folded up the letter. “I’ve been questioning that myself lately. Then again, I don’t know what the alternative could have been.”
Nala shook her head. “A part of me doesn’t want to know. I think it would hurt me even more than I already am.” Nala thought back to that photo, of her sister trapped next to Xavier Crow, looking like the most miserable woman in the world. This was happening to her and she never told me. Why? Because she thought I was too young? Because she didn’t want to scare me? What else was going on in her sister’s life that Nala never found out about?
“I’m sorry you had to know any of this.” Vincent put the letter away. “I’m going to go downstairs and start my resear
ch again. Maggie can tell us to stay away from her investigation, but I have my own to continue. I have to know why Desirée was killed. I have to find some piece of evidence we can use against him.”
“Please be careful.” Tears were spilling from Nala’s eyes again. I cry so much lately. I didn’t cry this much before. She had been holding too much in, apparently. “I love you, Vincent. I don’t want to lose you too.”
He kissed her forehead and caressed her cheek. Even so, his legs crawled off the bed and took him away from her. “You won’t lose me, and I won’t lose you. Starting today, you’re not leaving my side. I can’t risk it.”
Nala waited until he was downstairs before burying her face in her pillow. I’m sorry, Tasha. I’m sorry I could have died tonight. How many times had she almost died now? This was her first official encounter, but what about the things that were caught before she ever knew about them? How many plans that were never carried out? Where was Hawk right now? Maggie? Who was Jay to Maggie? He was never once mentioned in her letter.
She felt like she had more questions than answers now. When sleep did not come easy, Nala focused on the sounds around her. She settled on the sounds of Vincent typing downstairs. The man was going to give himself blood clots and carpal tunnel working on those computers all day, but Nala knew it would be worth it. Everything they did had to be worth it now.
***
Vincent wasn’t kidding when he said Nala had to constantly be by his side. When she attempted to go to work the next day, he told her to call in sick. “Quit, honestly,” he told her. “You don’t need that job. If you want a job when this is over, I’ll help you find something much better.” Instead, he had to swing by his office to contend with some neglected business, and Nala went with him - at his insistence. Because nothing was better than being tailed by bodyguards and looking Andrew in the smug face while she sat on Vincent’s office couch and played escapist games on her phone.
She wished that there was something she could do to help, but she didn’t know coding. She didn’t know how to hack. Those things were so beyond her that she couldn’t tinker with the fans on Vincent’s machines even if she wanted to. The fact he put them together was too much to fathom in the first place.
My boyfriend is a computer genius, and I’m useless. Nala’s anger had abated recently. Now she was more sad than angry. Sadness did not fuel the need for revenge.
When they were home, their lives revolved around what the security brought them to eat and otherwise live. They didn’t dare go out. When Nala asked why they were not hotel hopping again, Vincent told her that it was pointless. Hawk would always know where they were. That didn’t make much sense to her, but she decided to trust his judgment. Every day the security team - that she had no choice but to trust as well - swept the loft and Vincent’s car for anything nefarious. They had yet to find anything, but Nala knew it was only a matter of time. She was starting to become more paranoid than Tasha was in the end. Because I know what’s going on. Did my sister have any idea? Just how scared was Tasha in the end?
She often counted in her head. Maggie and Jay were an outlaw couple. Robin and Lucian were not much better off. That only left Sebastian and Quail, as well as Joseph and Starling. Would Crow try to off them too? Was he going to nuke the whole Aviary before the tell-alls began? If Crow was ever arrested, surely every Aviary member would be brought in for questioning.
Nala lost herself whenever she could. Video games. Phone games. Books. Anything was better than watching Vincent haunch over his dining table, surrounded by large machines as he tried to hack into Xavier Crow’s private databases. The man needed a team, but he was only one man - one very, very smart man who knew what he was doing, but one man nonetheless. The frustration on his face was enough to make Nala throw up sometimes. All she could do was cook him dinner and try to entice him with video games as a break. That lasted about half an hour at a time. Then Vincent was back at the computers, grumbling, cursing, and threatening to throw machines across the room. The security personnel ignored them both unless otherwise summoned.
Nala got used to their presence to the point she stopped recognizing them. Oh, there were some men and occasionally a woman wandering around the loft while she watched TV or cut onions in the kitchen. They walked around the building outside at all hours of the day. They were armed. They were dangerous. Yet as long as Vincent kept paying them, they stood around his house utterly silent, and always observant. They were like the shadows in the corner.
Two days later, Nala heard something she never thought she would.
“Holy shit!” Vincent leaped up from his seat, staring wide-eyed at a white screen on his main monitor. “I fucking did it.”
Nala turned on the couch, wondering what that meant. “You did what?” Hey, if he was excited, then so was she! “You found some evidence?”
“I hacked into his personal email. Nala!” He pivoted toward her, eyes wide and wild. “Do you understand? I broke through to his email! Not his business emails, although I can use this to access those too. But his personal emails.”
Nala stood, letting the TV remote she held fall to the floor. “Have you found anything yet?”
“I don’t know… but I have little time. I’m sure he has it set that he’ll be notified of another IP address accessing his email. I probably have a few hours at the very most!” He sat back down, focusing on the screen as if it were a giant Christmas present. “Don’t bother me, okay? I’m going to be printing like a mad man for the next few hours.”
He did.
The printer never shut up. Nala did what she could to help, such as replacing ink, refilling the paper, and then going up to one of the security guards to ask for a paper run down at the local office supply store. By the time a man returned with a stack of computer paper, Vincent had queued a hundred emails to start going through.
Nala organized them for him. Emails about private holdings. Emails sent to Aviary members, sometimes about business deals and others chastising them for not participating enough. One sinister email to Lucian last week said, “Now, Mr. Clark, let’s be reasonable… your darling girlfriend is in the hospital. Perhaps it’s time to pay up what you owe.”
The emails Nala let herself read were truly a sociopath’s diary. Veiled threats. Direct threats. Musings between him and other close confidants about what it would be like to do this and that, none of “this or that” being anything cheery. Did red-heads really feel more pain? Or was it less pain? Would Melanie feel a lot of pain in the hospital? When he more or less told Hawk to cut the break-lines to Othello’s car when she “went on a sojourn to Germany,” he implied that he wanted Melanie to live - and feel pain.
“The beautiful birds of The Aviary need to have their wings clipped eventually. Otherwise they will stray too far from their nests and learn too much of the world. Women should be submissive, demure, but always available. To me and other men. That is true joy.”
Vomit!
“This is so much fucking evidence,” Nala muttered in awe. “Vincent, we’ve got…”
A loud clatter erupted as Vincent dropped the cup he held. Nala’s head shot up. What she saw was the death of her boyfriend’s ability to keep his cool.
“GET OUT.”
The nearest bodyguard slowly lifted his head with only mild interest. “Excuse me, sir?”
“I said get out!”
Vincent shouted at every man in the room, until all three bodyguards shuffled out, mumbling about a crazy client. Nala stayed in her seat in the living room, holding a stack of emails she was in the middle of organizing. When Vincent returned from his frantic, frothing pacing, it was with total darkness in his eyes.
Was he going to tell her to get out too?
“What is it?” Nala squeaked, holding the papers in front of her mouth. “What did you find? Vincent…”
He sat back down in his seat, head in his hands.
Nala got up. This was the first time they were alone in days, and there was hardly a
ny intimacy between them. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to pull his head to her chest and run her fingers through his dark hair. “I don’t know what you found,” she would say, “but know that I’m here and that I love you.” Yeah, right.
She glanced at the computer screen. An email, like all the others. An old email, based on the date stamp. Three years ago. Apparently Vincent decided there was enough damning shit already and started honing in on the crap he really cared about - Desirée and her death.
In fact, the email that was open on the screen came from Desirée.
“Mr. Crow, let me say that I do not intend to press any charges. Please do not think that! I want this to blow over as smoothly as possible. I do intend to leave the project, however. I’m sorry that I have to do this, but I hope you understand the conflict of interest we now face.
On the subject of the child, I have not had the paternity test completed yet. However, since my fiancé and I have been mostly apart these past three months due to our schedules, I hope you understand when I say that… without a doubt, this child is yours. I will not be pressing charges for the event that brought this child’s creation, but I do hope we can work out some kind of support. My fiancé and I have considerable debt and raising a child is not cheap in this day and age. I feel that for a man of your standing this is not too much to ask. My lawyer is willing to work with yours over whether to do a monthly stipend or an upfront amount to cover the child’s life. It can be put into a trust, if you’d like. I also do not expect you to be a part of the child’s life, and, as I’m sure you will agree, it may be best that you are not. I am not going to tell my fiancé about these events. Of course, this will all be settled for sure once I get the paternity results back, but please know that I am a confident woman.”