“Is it?”
“Yes. Next you’ll be telling me that Superman is my father.”
He shook his head. “No. It would be more like Professor X. You’re getting your comics mixed up.”
“Whatever. The whole thing is ridiculous.”
“Maybe.” Ghost sipped his coffee while he evaluated her. “I’m going to do some more digging around. But something isn’t jibing, in my opinion. Roger and the other guys think that you must still be caught in the White House’s crosshairs. Maybe the order has something to do with that exposé you and your friend published, because her name came across the wire as well.”
“What?” She sprung to her feet. “Then we got to go help her.”
“Slow your roll,” Ghost said, leaning back in his chair. “What do you think we are, the A-Team? And even if we were, we don’t have the ability to be in two places at one time. I put my and my crew’s neck out on the line as a favor to my man Kadir. I know that he would want me to keep an eye on you, if I can. The other chick isn’t my problem.”
“Then she’s my problem,” Abrianna said. “She’s in danger because of me. I took my story to her, remember?”
“Yeah. And judging by the media blitz that she’s been on, she owes you at least a dozen roses and a box of chocolates.”
“We can’t sit here and do nothing,” Abrianna snapped.
“Calm down,” he told her. “Before I walked in here, we confirmed that your girl is back at her office. I sent Roger and Wendell to keep an eye on her for the next twenty-four hours. You might want to suggest to her the next time you talk to her that she might want look into hiring security until this whole thing blows over.”
“When will that be?”
“I’m guessing not until there’s a change in the administration.”
“You mean if the president steps down?”
“It makes sense, I suppose. But it’s stupid, if you ask me. If you and this reporter chick disappear, surely he’d be suspect number one. But, hey. Who says that you have to be smart to be president?”
“So what do I do until then?”
Ghost shrugged. “I can stash you back at my warehouse apartment. No one should think to find you there.”
“What about my friends?”
“Hey, I’m not housing a fraternity.”
“If I’m in danger then they are, too. Three of them have already been hurt.”
He stared, and when it was clear that she was finished, he said, “Oh. I’m sorry, I was waiting for you to get to the part where this was my problem.”
“Forget it. I’ll stay with Shawn. Thank you very much.” She turned to leave.
“And what are you going to do about these guys trying to take you out?”
“Not your problem, remember?” She reached the break room’s door when she heard Ghost curse.
“All right. All right. They can stay there, too,” he grumbled.
Abrianna stopped, plastered on a smile, and turned around. “Your hospitality is greatly appreciated.”
“Bite me.”
* * *
Dr. Zacher arrived at what looked like a battlefield. T4S’s cloned police cars and tow trucks hustled to clean up the carnage and haul the ambulance up the steep embankment.
Lieutenant Jessup Acosta spotted Dr. Z. climbing out of his car and stopped directing his crew to march over.
Dr. Z got straight to the point. “What the hell happened?”
“We were hit, sir,” Acosta said. “Twelve of my men were wiped out.”
Dr. Z growled. “I can see that you were hit. The questions are how and by who?”
“That, sir, I’m afraid I don’t know. It was a simple extraction. Rushed, but we did the pickup with a two-car backup. The team made it within six miles of the facility when someone unleashed holy hell. Only one of my men had enough time to radio for help. The transmission was mostly of gunfire. It sounded like a goddamn war zone. By the time we got here . . .” Acosta shook his head.
“And the package?”
“Like I told you on the phone, sir. The package is MIA.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Dr. Z stepped away and looked down the long embankment and then out into the surrounding trees. “Did you search the woods? Maybe she’s hurt somewhere out there?”
“I got a team doing a grid search right now. If she’s out there, we’ll find her, but I don’t think she’s out there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because whoever gunned down my crew clearly wanted to intercept your package. Do you have any idea who that may be?”
Dr. Zacher shook his head. “I have no idea what the hell is going on. But I better figure it out, and quick.”
“What about your other package? Still want us to make a move on it?”
Dr. Z needed a moment. He didn’t like making moves when he couldn’t see all the chess pieces on the board, but time was of the essence.
“Sir?”
“Stick to the schedule,” he told Acosta before turning and storming back to his waiting car with the cracked windshield. But before Dr. Z climbed into the backseat, he called out to Acosta. “Hey! I want everyone on radio silence. You never know, we could have a ghost in the machine.”
30
Abrianna returned to Shawn’s apartment with Ghost trailing behind her. Carving a huge smile, Abrianna explained to her best friend that they both needed to move out of the apartment for a little while, electing not to tell him about the whole getting hit by a car and kidnapping incident, but without it, her reasoning stood on shaky ground.
“You’re not making any sense,” Shawn said, eyeballing Ghost by the door. “And you haven’t told me where you picked up the black terminator from.”
“He’s a friend.”
He shook his head. “I know all of your friends, and he ain’t one of them.”
Sighing, she filled in a few more boxes. “His name is Ghost.”
Shawn laughed. “He is aware that we can see him, isn’t he?”
“I met him through Kadir. He helped us expose Judge Sanders and kept me and Kadir off the grid. I really can’t tell you more than that right now. But I will eventually. Please. Can you trust me?”
Shawn drew a deep breath. “You know, I didn’t listen to you once, and it landed me in this chair. So . . . all right. If you say that we have to move with your Suge Knight two point oh, then we’ll move.”
Ghost grunted.
Abrianna threw her arms around Shawn and squeezed. “Thank you.”
“Now if you two are finished insulting me,” Ghost said, “can we please get this show on the road?”
* * *
Castillo told herself that she wasn’t going to Dennis’s place the entire time she was driving over there. When he answered the door, he was in his black boxers and an open gray robe. He took one look at her and sighed.
“You haven’t been returning my texts.”
“I know. I’ve been busy,” she said.
“Busy breaking your arm, I see.”
She shrugged. “Car accident.”
“I know. I read the report.” He took a swig of beer.
“Are you going to let me in?”
“See. That’s the problem. I keep letting you in, on your terms and on your schedule. Right now I’m asking myself why.”
“All right. Fine.” She spun and marched away. She didn’t have time for this.
Behind her, Dennis sighed and opened the screen door. “Gigi.”
She stopped.
“C’mon in.” He said it as if the words chipped off a part of his soul.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Hell, no.”
Castillo turned around and saw the misery written on his face. She walked toward him, stopped with an apology on her lips, but then crossed the threshold without saying a word.
The house was wrecked. Empty pizza boxes, beer bottles, and discarded clothes littered the place.
“Had I known you were coming, I would have
picked up,” he said, closing the front door.
“Or at the very least call a hazmat team.” She glanced at him. “What’s going on?”
“Just more shit at the job.” Dennis swigged his beer before adding, “Some high school kids partied with that fuckin’ Cotton Candy shit.”
Castillo’s heart dropped. She knew that his department had been trying to get a handle on the designer street drug Cotton Candy. It was known for its pink coloring and its ability to produce something called a supernova high. A single dose could last for days and was often fatal.
Dennis shook his head to stop tears from leaping down his face. “Twelve souls, Gigi. Gone.”
“Damn.” She moved toward him.
He stepped back. “I’m sorry. This shit is fucking with my head. It’s not just kids.”
“You guys still have no leads about where this shit is coming from?”
“Honestly, Gigi, I have no idea why I even do this shit anymore. The streets are flooded with drugs, both legal and illegal. There’s no end to it. And it’s all walks of life. You know that shit was even at that crime scene at the Hay-Adams.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well. At least there we know the drugs weren’t what killed the congressman.” He set the bottle down on the counter. “I don’t want to talk anymore about this. Are you staying the night?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether the bedroom looks like the living room.”
He took her by the hand. “Why don’t we go and find out?”
31
At midnight, the Dragons Templar came to order. The members, in leather masks and draped in black robes with fire-breathing dragons stitched in gold across their chests, chanted in ancient Coptic and bowed and passed a flame from wick to wick until the last. Golden emblems of a battling two-headed dragon hung around their necks.
The excitement was palpable. The second Saturday of the month was date night and everyone, including Cargill, couldn’t wait to select a new beauty to share his and Lovely’s bed tonight.
Cargill was a lucky bastard. He’d always known that. Born with a golden spoon in his mouth, everything was handed to him. Money, cars, boats, and planes, he hadn’t hit a double-digit age before he discovered that money also bought people, people who’d do anything to please him. He had his father, Duke Lynnwood Parker, to thank for that, like he thanked his father for inducting him into the Dragons Templar. At nine, Cargill had been the youngest inductee. To this day, he relished the memory of his first date night. His father had watched as Cargill strolled around the dolled-up orphans with the instruction to find the one that he wanted to kiss the most. He thought it was silly until he stopped in front of a stunning, seven-year-old black beauty with eyes so dark that they made him feel funny inside. Her name was Abrianna. A strange name, he’d thought, but it was one that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Cargill thought his father would be mad that he’d chosen a black girl. He’d never heard him say anything positive about black people. However, that night, Duke Parker was pleased and was only too happy to instruct Cargill on the right way to kiss and touch his new toy. He didn’t like his father touching Abrianna. He made her cry, but by the time it was all over, Cargill was indebted to his father for the lifelong lesson. However, he did eventually anger his father when he insisted on playing with only Abrianna for months afterward. Cargill refused to pick another girl when new children arrived on date nights. After six months, his father took matters into his own hands and broke his black doll. She died with those big, dark eyes pleading to breathe and tears streaking down her face. Cargill had never fought his father before, but he did that night. He kicked, screamed, and raked at his father’s hands, trying to loosen Duke’s grip on Abrianna’s neck, but Duke Parker didn’t let go until Abrianna stopped moving.
Cargill cried for weeks after and then never again.
Putting away the memory, Cargill took to the lectern and welcomed his members and promised them all a great night, when a sudden cacophony descended into the room. “EVERYBODY, DOWN!” An army of federal agents charged into the hall, assault weapons drawn and pointed in everyone’s faces. The costumed children screamed as grown men trampled them, racing for an exit.
Cargill raked off his mask and dashed off the stage. However, he didn’t get far before an agent tackled him. His lungs emptied in a whoosh, but Cargill still wrestled to break free. He was almost successful when another agent pressed the barrel of an assault weapon at the back of his skull.
“Don’t move!”
Cargill froze. “You’re making a big mistake,” Cargill gritted.
“Shut up, you sick fucker. You’re under arrest!”
* * *
Ghost’s warehouse apartment
“Breaking tonight, Billionaire Cargill Parker was led away in handcuffs tonight from the exclusive Lynnwood Club for running what the authorities have described as a sophisticated child sex-trafficking ring. More than two dozen children have been taken into custody. We’re told that the arrests are the direct result of an anonymous tip to the FBI and Homeland security.”
Abrianna stared at the television in the living room. Her father, head down, attempted to avoid the surrounding media cameras as federal agents led him to a waiting FBI van.
“Cargill Parker is the president and subsidiary holder of Parker Petroleum Industries, the third largest privately held company in the United States. He is a fixture in Washington, D.C., for his political advocacy and philanthropy.”
“Bree? Are you all right?” Shawn nudged.
“Huh?”
“Are you all right?”
The reporter ended the report and handed off the next segment to the journalists at the studio.
Abrianna recovered. “Yeah. Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be all right?” She powered off the television, but remained rooted before the blank TV screen. A knot hardened in her chest as her mind reeled.
“C’mon. It’s me,” Shawn said. “I know this shit bothers you. That asshole is going down—and on national TV.”
Silence.
“Bree?”
She shrugged, determined to be indifferent. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me. He’s . . .”
“He’s dead to you,” Shawn finished. “I know. You’ve been saying that for years. But—”
Abrianna snapped, “But what?”
“The timing,” Shawn said. “It’s odd, no?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m paranoid. Getting shot kind of does it to you, but . . . the FBI and Homeland Security, busting him so soon after that exposé? It’s fishy, if you ask me. The government raced around this city for weeks and couldn’t find you or Kadir, but suddenly they get an anonymous tip on daddy dearest? You buy that?”
“I’m stunned that they arrested him,” she said. “I always thought that . . . he was untouchable.”
“He was . . . until his daughter tried to take down a president.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking the empire is striking back,” Shawn said.
“And Darth Vader thinks that going after my evil father will get to me? Ha! They’re barking up the wrong tree. They can fry his ass for all I care.”
Shawn didn’t respond.
“What? You think I should give a shit?”
“No.”
The clipped answer agitated her. “Then what? Spit it out.”
“What if they don’t stop at your father? What if they keep digging until they find something or someone that you do give a shit about? The feds clearly still have you in their crosshairs. And no shade, Bree, but you got a lot of skeletons in your closet. They’re going to bust down every one of them that you think is locked and hidden.”
Her heart skipped. Will this shit ever end?
“All I’m saying is that you need to watch your back.”
“That’s all that I’ve been doin
g,” she snapped.
Abrianna’s cell trilled. She glanced at Shawn, and he wheeled himself over to the coffee table. “It’s Tomi Lehane,” he said, tossing the phone to her.
She caught it, hesitated, and then answered the call before it transferred to voice mail. “Hello.”
“Bree, Tomi here. Have you seen the news? Your father has been arrested.”
“Yes. I saw the coverage last night.”
“Is there any truth to what they’re saying?” Tomi pressed.
She didn’t answer.
“Bree? Are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“So . . . does your silence mean what they’re reporting is true?”
“Are you asking as a reporter?”
Tomi hesitated, “I guess that’s a fair question.”
“And your answer?”
“Okay. Off the record, but I need to know the truth before we do interviews. It’s important that I know how many lions are waiting in the den. This has the potential to derail our plans to plea Kadir’s case and get him released. The last thing we want is for the public to lose sympathy or start more unfounded conspiracy theories.”
“We already gave them a video and a damn taped confession from the murderer.”
“Yeah. But the propaganda machines are working overtime. People are suggesting the video was doctored and the confession coerced. We’re not out of the woods yet. And if I know anything about this town, your father’s arrest is no coincidence. The White House is playing a few cards.”
Abrianna shook her head. “I don’t know how they can make my father’s situation have anything to do with me.”
“Bree, you already have a few character strikes against you with your . . . profession. These charges against your father will make people question whether you’re truly a victim or a criminal opportunist.”
Abrianna flinched. Victim meant weak. “Are you finished?”
“I’m being real. You’ve never done press junkets. Trust me. They’re going to do everything they can to strip the skin off your back and smile while doing it. Do you know whether there’s any truth to this stuff about your father?”
“Adopted father.”
“Bree . . .”
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