Hope Is Love

by Hubbard, Sylvia

  “Are you sure someone didn’t come take her?” Nicole questioned.

  “He didn’t stutter!” Onyx seethed.

  Guilty, Nicole said, “I didn’t think she’d leave so quickly.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?!” James asked.

  Nicole looked at him with her eyes filled with remorse, still wringing her fingers. “I thought there would be more time when she told me last night she wanted to leave. I knew there was really no stopping her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” James asked hurt.

  “I really thought there was more time!” she cried.

  Ethan came to his wife to comfort her. “Where did she go, Nicole?”

  “Yes, Nicole. We’d all love to hear this one?” Onyx stated.

  Nicole pushed away from her husband and wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked sternly at Onyx. “I didn’t help her escape. I know Mitch told me that Jona wanted to get something from her coat and he must have assumed she came back in when he set the alarm, but I didn’t help her escape. She was going to do that whether anyone helped or not.” She looked at James with a softened expression. “It wasn’t you, James. It was her past. She was uncomfortable and upset. I thought today we would all make her feel at home. That’s why I suggested the trip to their father’s cabin out by Midland, Michigan. I thought a nice drive this morning and being around lots of people who cared for her would be more of an incentive to stay.”

  “So do you know where she is?” Sheriff questioned.

  Nicole went back to wringing her fingers again. “I do, but I can’t tell.”

  The entire room went silent as everyone looked at Nicole as if she had spoken the most ridiculous thing in the world.

  “Can’t or won’t,” Onyx asked as she moved her coat back slightly and rested her hand on the knife that was high around her thigh.

  James had no doubt Onyx could hurl the lethal object so hard the tip would piece into Nicole’s heart quickly before anyone could possibly stop her.

  “I can’t,’ Nicole said firmly.

  Onyx hands gripped the handle and James moved in front of Nicole. “Nicole, if you understand how deeply I feel for her,” James pleaded. “Why are you keeping this information away from me? You know whether I know or not, I’ll go out there and stay out there until I find her.”

  Worry was in every inch of Nicole’s face, but her lips pursed to show she was going to be stubborn.

  “Talk to her Ethan,” James warned.

  “Before Onyx does her own talking,” Sheriff warned.

  Before Ethan could say something, Nicole beseeched him, “Please Ethan don’t try to make me break my promise I made to Jona. It was the only way to get her to tell me anything. I swore on the life of my child! I cannot do this and I love you so much and would never want to keep anything from you, but you must understand.”

  He kissed her brow gently. “I understand, Nicole,” he said lovingly and looked over at Onyx. “You’ve got to think of something else in order to find Jona.”

  “What if I beat the crap out of Nicole until she tells me?” Onyx said simply.

  Protectively, Ethan said, “Then my brother and I will have to stop you.”

  Onyx shrugged indifferently. “You can try.”

  “Wait!” Sheriff said stepping in front of his cousin facing Nicole. “You said you promised her you wouldn’t tell anyone, but you never promised you wouldn’t show anyone, did you?”

  Nicole’s eyes widened and then narrowed at the implications. “That’s the same.”

  “Only if you really think about it,” James said. “This can work in both our favors Nicole. You show me and I’ll retrieve her.”

  “But I’d still be telling you, just not verbally,” Nicole reasoned.

  “What if I take out your tongue? She’s uneducated. She won’t think you said a thing,” Onyx said.

  “Onyx! Quit threatening to do bodily harm to Nicole. She’s pregnant!” Ethan growled.

  “As if that’s an excuse not to whip her ass. Whatever!”

  “Seriously Onyx, you need a good fuck!” Sheriff sneered.

  Onyx shot back, “You need to shut your fucking mouth up Sheriff and go find another girlfriend since the other one ripped your heart out.”

  Sheriff narrowed his eyes at his cousin. “You bitch.”

  “I’m not scared of you, Onyx,” Nicole said bravely. “Despite how uncomfortable you make me feel, but if it’ll make you stop upsetting my husband, I’ll show you, if you take me with you to see her with you.”

  “No,” Ethan and Onyx said.

  “I’ll go with her,” James assured his brother. “I’ll be there and I won’t let anyone hurt her, Ethan.”

  “I don’t care if she had the whole army with her,” Onyx sneered. “I don’t want her with me. She can show me where Jona will be and then I’ll send her away.”

  “No, no no!” Nicole refused. “I’m going!”

  “You aren’t!”Ethan protested.

  Chapter 29

  Two hours later, Sheriff was driving to the Westside of Detroit, near the I-96 Interstate wth Onyx, James and Nicole. After driving over railroad tracks, Nicole told them to go two blocks and look for a special house on the street.

  One way had houses while the other way had a lot of vacant lots and burned down houses.

  Onyx was talking to someone on speaker about the area. “Treasure, can you look up to see who owns any property over here that we should know or get suspicious? Or is there any gang activity we need to be aware of?”

  A soft feminine voice came back in response. “No gang activity, but a while ago there were a high number of women getting raped in the area - Seems like the trees that surround the railroad tracks were good for predators. They stopped all of a sudden about three years ago when some company called Zilla Inc bought out the two blocks of land in the area, but haven’t done a thing to rebuild the area. Strange though, this isn’t a corporation. It’s just called Zilla Inc, which is a sole proprietorship.”

  Onyx frowned. “Zilla means shadow.”

  James gasped. “That’s her friend. She said she had a friend who dressed like a boy called Shadow!”

  “Stop!” Nicole ordered as Sheriff was about to drive by the worst house on the block that leaned into another burned down home. “That’s the house!”

  “That’s not a house,” Sheriff said. “That’s an apocalypse ready to happen. The structure isn’t even live-able.”

  “That’s it,” Nicole said confidently.

  Onyx turned around in the passenger seat with her obsidian eyes narrowed distrustfully. “You wouldn’t pull my leg and give me reason to stab you for pissing me off.”

  Instead of answering, Nicole got out of the Escalade and James followed. Onyx told Sheriff to drive around and they’d call him if they needed him.

  No one was around from corner to corner, but that didn’t stop Nicole from walking towards the worst structure. James stopped her from walking on the porch because it was almost collapsed and any weight would bring the entire porch down.

  “It’s too dangerous,” James warned.

  “How else are we to get to know if she’s here if we can’t get to the door?” Nicole questioned.

  “There are other doors,” Onyx surmissed. “Let’s go to the back or side. Someone did something to this place, James. Look at the lock.”

  James saw there was a brand new lock on the door and also that the bushes on the side were recently cut back enough to not look neat, but off the house itself.

  “You carrying?” Onyx asked James.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you shoot?”

  “Without question,” he assured her.

  Onyx looked as if she doubted him, but proceeded on.

  “I’ll knock,” Nicole insisted when they found a back door. The side door to the house was on the other side where the other house leaned against this house making it impossible for anyone to gain entry. “You two stay back unti
l we get around to the door.”

  “If you’re hurt in any way, Nicole. Ethan would never forgive me,” James said sternly to his sister in law. It had taken a lot of convincing to make Ethan stay behind until Onyx was in the room alone with him for five minutes. James felt honored his brother had trusted Nicole to come along without him, but James knew Onyx must have said some choice words to also see the reason of not coming either. “I’m standing beside you and I’ll do whatever I can to protect you.”

  Nicole smiled. “Thank you, James.”

  Onyx snorted in disdain. “And when you get to that door I’ll protect you too, but if you hear me say duck and you don’t, be ready to get a knife in your back.”

  Nicole looked seriously at Onyx. “Just make sure you say duck first.”

  The creases of Onyx’s lips cracked, which was a clear indication the minx had the same mischievous thought of doing some bodily harm to Nicole.

  James noticed there was trail through the tall grass in the back that led to the door, which indicated there was traffic coming from this home. His biggest worry was that some wild animal would jump out of nowhere and attack Nicole.

  Nicole knocked hard on the door. There were eight dead bolt locks on the door of varying age. The top one looked a year old while the others couldn’t have been anymore than a couple of years to three years.

  After a minute, no one answered and Nicole’s slumped in disappointment. Onyx had moved slightly to the side of them to look more around their back in case anyone decided to walk up on them.

  “Let’s go,” Nicole said impatiently.

  Just as she turned to walk away the door flung open and all James saw was a twelve gauge rifle and someone saying, “Who the fuck are you?”

  James pulled Nicole behind him to look at what he thought was a boy. This supposed boy looked at him, Nicole and then saw Onyx and slammed the door with a shocked gasped filled with fear.

  “Do people just don’t like you?” James asked amused at Onyx now that there wasn’t a gun on him.

  Onyx had already raised two small knives, but hadn’t used them. James didn’t doubt the lethal woman could have shot them whether Nicole and James were in the way or not, but just like James she’d most likely felt the small woman dressed like a boy was harmless.

  ”Get the door open, big white boy,” Onyx sneered.

  He didn’t take the name calling to heart and knocked on the door harder than Nicole. “Open this door or I’ll break it down.”

  “Get away from my door or I’ll shoot you through it,” the woman-boy threat came back on the other side of the door.

  “We just want to know about Jona!” Nicole said.

  There was no sound on the other side and Nicole knocked again. “Please let us see Jona!”

  “She ain’t here.” came a muffled response.

  “Open the damn door!” James said.

  The door opened to the smaller woman dressed like a boy, but as James looked more at the female, he realized she was a child! A very tall child, but a child - no more than about fourteen or fifteen. Was this Shadow or just a gang of girl’s dressing like boys. She had the sagging pants, hat and large shirt on of dark colors. What threw everyone off was that she was almost six feet tall, with flawless light cocoa skin and hiding a lean figure in the oversize clothing. She hid her dark eyes with the brim of her hat, but there was no doubt once someone stared hard, they could see she was going to be a looker in a few more years.

  “You’re Shadow?” James asked surprised even though he knew the answer.

  “Yeah, what’s it to you honky?”

  He was taken aback because he had never been called a honky - ever! This little girl must of had real balls with her mouth.

  “Jona is here?”Nicole asked.

  “Shit, I told you, Jona ain’t here,” Shadow sneered. “And I don’t know where she’s at. She was here bamming like she the damn police this morning, grabbed some stuff and said if someone came looking for her don’t tell them shit.”

  “You taught Jona on the street?” James questioned.

  “I do a lot of shit.” Shadow shrugged a shoulder and looked warily in Onyx direction for a quick second.

  Onyx held the small knives behind her back. “We already can see you do a lot of shit, Zilla with all that damn ink on your hands and cuts to your finger tips, I bet you make a killing in fake I.D., huh?”

  Shadow jammed her small hands guiltily in her pants. “Fuck y’all !” She started to close the door, but James put his foot in there to stop her.

  “We need to know where she is, Shadow.”

  “I don’t have to tell you shit. Snitches get stitches ‘round here, plus Jona don’t be found unless she wanna be found.”

  “You taught her!” James said. “Every survival skill on the street, she learned from you. She told me. We need to find her.”

  “That ain’t my problem, white boy. Jona knows these streets like the back of her hand this morning and she looked like a woman with a lot of problems. Shit, she even looked like she was tempted to leave out of town.”

  James didn’t know why he felt he was dealing with Onyx. “We aren’t leaving unless you tell us where we can find her!”

  Angrily, Shadow yelled, “I ain’t telling you shit! Get it through your thick white head, honky,”

  Onyx was in front of James so quickly, she moved like the wind and though she was shorter than Shadow, she flipped the little girl so quickly until Shadow was lying on her back and Onyx was on top. Onyx knees held down Shadow’s arms and pointed a small blade on Shadow’s neck. “Say shit one more time, bitch! Please do it so I can cut your motherfucking tongue out.”

  Nicole put her hand on Onyx’s shoulder. “We do need that tongue Onyx if we want to find Jona.”

  “Get offfa me.” Shadow screamed trying to throw Onyx off

  As light as Onyx seemed, she knew how to distribute her weight to her advantage so Shadow wasn’t getting up unless Onyx wanted that to happen.

  Onyx knocked off Shadow’s hat and leaned down holding Shadow’s face firmly in hand. “Where’d you get eyes like that, Zilla?”

  Shadow froze instantly and looked terrified up at Onyx. “Fuck you!”

  Moving the blade to the side of Shadow’s face, Onyx said in a ominous tone, “I could surgically remove your eyeballs keeping you alive the whole time and then take them to the person I think those eyes belong to.”

  Even James shivered at the thought that Onyx’s words sounded so damn true and he wondered just how insane this bitch was. “Or Shadow, you could tell us where we can find Jona and we’ll get her off of you.”

  Shadow started talking after a few seconds. “Eleven forty-five tonight go to the men’s club on the Livernois. The most beautiful woman goes up on stage about that time and everyone will be watching the stage, so you can slip in the back. Jona’s helping them out tonight to get some quick money to leave town tomorrow morning. She said she ain't coming back for a couple of weeks, but just to get her case and leave again.”

  Onyx pulled out the ratty small dingy pencil case James remembered being in Jona’s coat. “This case?”

  “You stole her case!” Shadow sneered. “You bitch!”

  “I didn’t steal this from her. I stole it from the person who stole it from her.” Onyx got off of Shadow and put a hand down to lend a hand in helping Shadow up. “Why that club?”

  “Cuz it’s my job to be there every Monday and help, but I got some business and Jona needed a little bit more cash before leaving out of town, so I offered her the job. She looked desperate to do anything for cash.”

  “Thank you,” James said gratefully.

  Shadow disregarded the help and stood up on her own. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”

  “At least she didn’t say shit,” Nicole said.

  “We’ll leave you be,” James promised. “If the information you gave us proves results.”

  “They’ll leave you alone,” Onyx agreed following James and Nic
ole as they started to walk away. “But I’m coming back to find out who gave you those eyes, Zilla. I expect you better tell me.”

  Zilla slammed the door after yelling another, “Fuck you.”

  “Why are you so curious about her eyes, Onyx?” James asked when they were back inside the Escalade.

  “Because when I see eyes identical to my brother, I just gotta find out!” Onyx said very angry as Sheriff drove away from the house.

  “How do we know Jona wasn’t hiding in that house and this Shadow wasn’t lying to us?” Nicole asked.

  “She wasn’t. Her breathing rate was escalated and I can tell when someone’s lying,” Onyx said obviously.

  “Can’t we just go to the club now?” Nicole suggested.

  “No,” James said. “Gentlemen’s clubs don’t even think about opening until after the lunch crowd.”

  “I’m familiar with this one,” Onyx said. “We need to get there before that time because it gets a fire violation crowd every Monday about the time Zilla said it does.” She called up Treasure on the speaker phone. “Can you find me something on anyone called Zilla?”

  “Zilla isn’t a common name,” Treasure said on the other line. “Boy or girl.”

  “Hermaphrodite,” Onyx said in a teasing voice. “But from the breast size and waist, I figure her to be about fifteen or sixteen. African american born in the United States. I suspect Midwest from the accent and she’s got a high intelligence but I bet she doesn’t register that anywhere-

  “Zilla Costello from Chicago!” Treasure interrupted. “Scored a 140 on an I.Q. test given to her at six years old, but I don’t see that she’s registered at any school. Oh boy!” The sound of Treasure’s voice didn’t seem too happy.

  “What?”

  “There’s no father listed on the original birth certificate, but the mother is Sharlie Costello.”

  “The bitch slut reporter?!” Sheriff sneered.

  Onyx shook her head in defeat. “Can you give me a location on Sharlie now?”

  “She’s moved to Davenport Ohio,” Treasure said. “But you show your face up to Sharlie and you know you aren’t going to get anything.”