Heart of the Hustle

by A'zayler

  “Bullshit—or it would have been done before.”

  Reynolds exhaled and leaned against the headboard. “I don’t know what you want. The House doesn’t confirm judges. That’s the Senate’s job.”

  “Majority Leader McCullough is following your lead on this.”

  Reynolds chuckled. “You’re giving me way too much credit.” He reached over and groped the unconscious woman lying beside him. “I’m still horny.” He cast his gaze back toward Kitty, surprised to see a gun leveled at him. After a few seconds, laughter rumbled low in his chest. “Now what are you going to do with that?”

  “I’m about to make sure that I end up on that court . . . by getting you out of the way.” Kitty clicked off the safety.

  Too high to realize how much danger he was in, Reynolds laughed more deeply. “C’mon, Kitty. It’s only politics. It’s not personal.”

  “Politics is always personal,” she said and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter One

  In the rich suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia, drug lord and political insider Zeke “Teflon Don” Jeffreys had gathered his friends and valuable political D.C. clients at his lavish home to celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

  While he mixed and mingled, a motley crew of party-crashers was kidnapping his business partner-slash-lover, Madam Nevaeh, right from under his nose.

  “Hurry! Load her up.” Draya, dressed as a server for La Plume’s catering service, opened the back doors of the van.

  “We are going as fast as we can.” Abrianna Parker, disguised as a male server, complete with a mustache and padded chest, banged the madam’s head on one of the doors.

  “Easy,” Kadir Kahlifa, in disguise as a man twice his age, whispered back.

  Annoyed, Abrianna banged the madam’s head again.

  He frowned.

  Abrianna shrugged. “I’m petty.”

  “Are you two for real?” Draya hissed.

  Abrianna climbed up, still holding the front of Madam’s body.

  “Hey!”

  Everyone froze.

  “What are you guys doing over there?”

  Abrianna, out of view, mouthed to Kadir, “Who is it?”

  “Hey, I asked you guys a question!”

  “Security,” Kadir mouthed back.

  Horrified, Abrianna glanced around for a weapon.

  Draya spun. “Nothing. We’re . . . grabbing supplies for the kitchen.”

  A large, lineman-shaped security guy waddled closer to the open van door.

  Draya attempted to close one of the back doors to block his line of vision.

  “But what the hell is that?” He gestured to the bag and leaned forward.

  Panicked, Draya rammed the door into the nosy security guard’s face, shocking him. However, she hadn’t seen the drawn gun until it went off.

  BANG!

  Abrianna dropped Madam Nevaeh and screamed, “No!”

  Instantly, the four-hundred-plus-pound man flew backward and slammed against the back of the house and then dropped like a stone.

  Abrianna raced forward. “Draya, are you all right?” She gathered her friend into her arms. “Speak to me. Say something.”

  Draya lifted her shocked gaze. “How the fuck did you do that?”

  Julian croaked, “Somebody tell me that I didn’t see that.”

  Everyone stared at Abrianna, especially Kadir. “I, uh, uh—”

  “It came from over there,” a man shouted from the distance.

  “Fuck. We gotta go,” Kadir said, picking up Draya. “Get in the van,” he ordered.

  Everyone hauled ass.

  Julian climbed behind Kadir and placed Draya in the back of the van along with Abrianna and Madam Nevaeh.

  For a brief moment, Kadir’s questioning gaze met Abrianna’s, but then he slammed the doors shut—and raced to climb into the passenger seat. “Let’s go!”

  Julian jumped behind the wheel.

  The van peeled off as an army of security goons rushed around the corner and found their unconscious colleague.

  Rat-at-tat-tat-tat.

  Bullets punctured the back of the van; a few ricocheted, forcing them to duck or dive for cover.

  “What the hell?” Julian shouted, bringing everyone’s attention to the police cars streaming onto the estate.

  “Holy shit,” Kadir said, incredulous.

  Julian’s foot lifted off the accelerator.

  “Don’t stop,” Kadir shouted.

  Julian hesitated on seeing the swarm of blue lights, but then slammed his foot back down on the gas.

  The last two patrol cars swerved and blocked the van’s exit.

  “Don’t you fucking stop,” Kadir threatened again.

  Julian tightened his grip on the steering wheel. When they blazed closer and made it clear that the van wasn’t stopping, the cops scrambled to get out of the way.

  It was too late.

  “Hold on!” Julian cried, closing his eyes.

  BAM!

  Everyone and everything slammed forward.

  The two police cars spun like pinwheels in the van’s wake.

  Draya groaned.

  “You guys okay back there?” Kadir asked.

  Abrianna, sprawled beneath pans and supplies, pushed herself up and crawled to Draya.

  Draya rolled onto her back. “What the hell, Jules? Are you trying to kill me?”

  “She’s fine,” Julian said. “If Draya is bitching, then she’s okay.”

  “Are they following us?” Abrianna asked.

  The guys checked their mirrors. “Not that I can tell,” Julian said, relieved.

  “Yeah. Well. We better get off this road just in case.”

  “How is our other passenger?” Kadir asked.

  Abrianna turned and moved over to the insulated nylon bag and stopped short. “Uh, guys . . .”

  “What?” everyone asked.

  “There’s blood,” Abrianna announced.

  “She was hit?” Kadir asked, coming out of his seat to climb into the back.

  Abrianna pulled the zipper down and opened the bag. “Damn.”

  Blood bloomed across the center of Madam’s white dress, but Abrianna was certain that it was the bullet lodged in the center of Madam’s forehead that had killed her.

  Draya shook her head. “Well, I guess she won’t be telling us shit.”

  * * *

  Zeke Jeffreys hid his humiliation behind a stony mask while former police lieutenant Gizella Castillo gloated as they shoved his large frame into the back of a squad car. Once he was tucked inside and the door slammed shut, his black gaze zoomed to hers and transmitted the message that this game wasn’t over by a long shot.

  She knew that he was probably right.

  His guests were equally humiliated but more outraged at having to be loaded up in the back of police vans. Many of them had no idea of Jeffreys’s double life. They had no idea that while they were mixing and mingling, he was trafficking the designer street drug Cotton Candy. However, this time he had done so with undercover cop Steven O’Day.

  Castillo had wanted to bring the drug lord down for years but had never been able to scratch the surface. Police Chief Dennis Holder, an ex-lover and colleague, had clued her in about the planned raid and permitted her to be here to watch the whole thing go down. Other than a strange shoot-out involving someone jacking a caterer’s van, the raid had gone down smoothly.

  Now she wanted to see about putting the screws to Madam Nevaeh, Zeke’s business partner and rumored lover, about Abrianna Parker. Castillo had learned from Abrianna’s best friend, Shawn White, that Parker had been working for the infamous madam the night of Speaker Reynolds’s death. The first time Castillo confronted Nevaeh about this, she stonewalled her.

  But Castillo had a bad habit of never giving up. Holder had often joked that she was like a bloodhound. She never deviated from a trail. Never. Plus, Castillo had a history with Abrianna Parker. Six years ago she’d led a team that had rescued Abrianna, Tomi Lehane
, and Shalisa Young from the basement of madman and serial killer Craig Avery. Back then, Parker was a tough but scarred teenage runaway, who didn’t stick around long enough to answer questions about her abduction.

  It surprised Castillo when Parker blipped on her radar while investigating the new House speaker for Tomi Lehane, who was now a Washington Post reporter. It shocked Castillo when she realized that Parker was actually running from a murder scene.

  After a near forty minutes of threading through the handcuffed crowd, Castillo couldn’t find any trace of the madam when she was certain that Nevaeh had been in attendance earlier. For a fleeting moment, Castillo wondered whether the madam had been the one who’d hijacked La Plume’s catering van, but then dismissed it when she overheard someone say they saw that it was group of servers.

  Suddenly a group of officers scrambled to their cars.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, rushing alongside Officer Donovan.

  “They found the van,” she told her.

  “From the shoot-out?”

  “Yeah. Apparently it crashed down an embankment. The driver is deceased.”

  “What about the others?”

  Donovan frowned. “Others?”

  “Wasn’t it a group of servers?”

  She shook her head. “Dispatch only mentioned the driver.”

  Castillo’s hackles rose. “Male or female?”

  “Female.”

  Chapter Two

  The Bunker

  In an unknown place in an unknown location in the bowels of Washington D.C., Douglas “Ghost” Jenkins, lifelong political hack-tivist, pulled open the metal door of his underground bunker to see his old friend.

  “Well, if it ain’t Bonnie and Clyde,” Ghost said, blocking the entrance to his hideout. “Or should I say Clyde and Clyde?” He cocked his head at Abrianna and took in her outfit. “Nice disguise.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ghost’s gaze darted to Julian and Draya. “Damn, if every time I see you, man, your ass don’t multiply. What kind of place do you think I’m running here?”

  “Really? You’re going to do this now? I have an injured woman. She’s been shot.”

  Ghost straightened and glanced at Abrianna. “What? Again?” “Not me this time.”

  Draya raised her good arm. “It’s me.”

  Interest lit Ghost’s eyes. “Well, hello.”

  Draya frowned.

  “You’re hitting on an injured woman?” Kadir asked.

  “Is it my fault that women are always getting shot around you?” Ghost stepped back, allowing the small group to enter.

  Hunkered down behind a row of terminals sat a skeleton crew of millennial hackers. Ghost introduced them as “the fellas” to Draya.

  “Uh, nice to meet you,” she said and then looked to Abrianna like Who is this clown?

  “C’mon.” Abrianna led Draya toward the bunker’s back cot room. “I’ll fix you right up.”

  Ghost smiled as he watched them walk away.

  Arms crossed, Julian stepped forward to block Ghost’s view.

  “Oh. My bad.” Ghost looked to Kadir. “How many people are you planning to tell about this place?”

  “Chill. They’re cool,” Kadir said. “So what happened to you the other night? I thought you’d still be waiting to post bail.”

  “C’mon, playa. Am I the sort of person to give the cops my real ID?”

  “They were putting you in the back of a squad car.”

  “Some rookie busting my chops. You know how they do. Of course, I hope you got rid of the van. I had to report it stolen.”

  “Yeah. We traded that one in for another one and then filled that one with bullet holes too.”

  Ghost chuckled. “That straight and narrow path you swore that you were on isn’t looking too damn straight, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Kadir looked around and leaned in close. “What do you know about . . . telekinesis?”

  “What?”

  “You know . . .” Kadir shrugged, inched closer. “The ability to move shit with your mind. Have you ever known anyone who could—”

  “KADIR!”

  At Abrianna’s shout, Kadir and Ghost took off toward the back.

  In the cot room, Draya and Abrianna stood in front of a nine-inch TV.

  When the guys couldn’t see what the emergency was, Kadir asked, “Is everything okay?”

  Abrianna shook her head and then pointed at the news broadcast on the screen.

  “Federal Judge Katherine J. Sanders will be sworn in tomorrow as the eighteenth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, enabling President Daniel Walker to put his stamp on the court for decades to come. Sanders’s nomination had been slow walked, while the Republican Senate members waited to see whether the new speaker would pursue impeachment of the president. But with Speaker Reynolds’s death, the Senate majority leader decided to move ahead with the confirmation.”

  Abrianna stared transfixed at the image in the corner of the screen. “That’s her!”

  “That’s who?” Kadir asked.

  She pointed. “That’s the other woman from the hotel. That’s Kitty!”

  “Judge Katherine Sanders?” he thundered. “She’s the one you think framed you for murder?”

  “Yes! I’d know that face anywhere. It’s her!”

  “But why?” Kadir asked, puzzled.

  “Didn’t you hear the reporter?” Draya asked. “That speaker guy was going to impeach the president. An impeachment meant no confirmation. No Supreme Court.”

  Ghost slapped a hand across his forehead and whistled. “Holy shit. The same judge who sent you to the clink,” he said. “The new chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ha! Good luck taking her down.”

  “We’re going to need more than luck,” Kadir grumbled, ripping off his fake mustache. “We’re going to need a miracle.”

  Ghost shook his head. “Yo, dawg. That road you are on just got more crooked than a muthafucka.”

  “No shit,” Kadir hissed, staring at Judge Sanders’s image on the screen until the telecast cut to a commercial.

  Defensive, Abrianna glanced around the eclectic group and read doubt and disbelief. “You guys believe me, don’t you? I’m not making it up. She’s Kitty—the other woman at the hotel that night.”

  Draya pressed a hand against Abrianna’s shoulder. “I believe you.”

  “Yeah. I believe you, too,” Julian added, curling up only one corner of his lips. His eyes, however, avoided her gaze.

  Abrianna’s jaw hardened.

  Julian explained, “It’s just that . . . well, this is huge, Bree. The fucking chief justice of the Supreme Court? What the fuck are we going to do?”

  Abrianna’s body slumped. “I have no idea.”

  “Well. How about that?” Ghost said. “We’re all on the same page with our heads up our asses. Great!”

  Kadir cut his friend a hard look. “Chill.”

  “What? I’m stating facts. It’s a miracle that every Uncle Sam soldier isn’t pouring into this bitch and hauling our asses to jail right now. You’re wanted for bombing the damn airport, and your new chick here is wanted for killing the third most powerful man in America. Firing squads were made for terrorists like you two.” He held up a hand and added, “I’m just telling you how the media is going to spin it.”

  “And don’t forget the dead bitch we left back in the van,” Draya reminded them.

  Shut up, Abrianna mouthed.

  “Come again.” Ghost cupped his ear and leaned toward Draya. “Dead body? What dead body?” He looked to Kadir. “What the fuck is she talking about?”

  Kadir hedged.

  “Mutha—come here! Let me holler at you for a moment.” Ghost spun his boy by his shoulder and then shoved him out of the door.

  Sighing, Kadir went along. Deep down he knew that he was wrong for springing this situation on Ghost. If the roles had been reversed, he would have gone apeshit.

  Ghos
t hustled Kadir to the bunker’s break room and slammed the door. It took another minute to calm down and choose his words carefully. “There is no point in my asking whether you’ve lost your damn mind because I already know that since you’ve laid eyes on that suicidal stripper, you’ve completely checked the fuck out of reality.”

  “Ghost, calm—”

  “Ah, ah, ah.” Ghost held up a finger and shook his head. “You’ve lost any right to tell me to calm down. I’m not the one whose face is plastered on the news as a domestic terrorist.”

  “Hold up,” Kadir interjected. “You’re wanted by the federal authorities too for political hacking.”

  “For questioning . . . and for something that they can’t prove and, more importantly, my mug shot hasn’t debuted on a single wanted poster or news broadcast.”

  Kadir cocked his head. “Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous? Who? Me?” He waved the notion off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Kadir squinted and read the truth in his face.

  Ghost swung the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Who is the corpse?”

  Kadir sighed.

  “Please, please tell me it’s not the president of the United States.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kadir said.

  “Then who?”

  “Remember the madam we raced across town to talk to?”

  “You’re shitting me,” Ghost said. “She killed her?”

  “No. Abrianna didn’t kill her,” Kadir snapped. “We . . . sort of kidnapped her.”

  “Oh. Well. That makes more sense. What’s a little kidnapping every now and then?” Ghost shrugged with a straight face. “What the fuck, man? Snap out it!”

  “We didn’t have much of a choice since the woman cleared out of her estate. A friend of Abrianna was catering a party for the woman’s boyfriend, so her other friend, Draya, created these disguises and we crashed the joint.”

  “To kidnap the madam?” Ghost clarified, following along.

  “Right. Only . . . there was a hiccup.”

  Ghost crossed his arms. “That tends to happen when committing federal crimes.”

  Kadir glared.

  “What happened?” Ghost asked, rolling his hand, wanting to get to the end of the story.