“I don’t want this in a text,” he responded cautiously as Anaya nodded, also realizing that they didn’t want an electronic trail. “Have Elise write it down.”
“What are you about to get me into?” Jay asked, and his tone was cautious.
“I need you, Jay,” Devesh said. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Devesh gave the address and disconnected the call. “We have to get rid of anything that has Reign on it. If Jay lands in the pokey, Reign will kill me.” He gestured to the secret door. “Grab the fire extinguisher and that metal trash can from the kitchen.”
Anaya rushed to comply.
Howard’s wide-eye panic was warranted. Devesh stood on a chair and removed the batteries from the smoke detectors throughout the place.
She came back, fumbled with the pin a few seconds, pulled it, and aimed in the direction so that whatever blast would come would go directly into Howard’s face. She was poised for whatever action Devesh needed.
Devesh snatched open the packages that had him and Reign on the cover, and put a match to the DVDs before dropping them into a waste can. “Make sure its contained right in there. We’ll drop in more of them once those are destroyed.”
“I’ll go out to meet Jay when he gets here,” Anaya offered.
“No, I’ll do that.”
“You can’t leave me with him,” Anaya warned nodding toward Howard, then the blade she had brought in from the kitchen. “He might not be alive when you get back. Reign’s not the only one who knows how to cut someone too short to shit.”
Twenty minutes later, Jay slid the mouse from Howard’s hand and clicked on another set of folders—ones that Howard kept avoiding.
Anaya stiffened as snippets from recordings of women who had been drugged, then raped by Howard and some of his friends played on the screen.
“My God,” Anaya whispered, hand fluttering to her chest.
“How many are there?” Jay demanded.
“I … I don’t know,” Howard stuttered, clasping his hands so he wouldn’t interfere with Jay’s efforts.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Devesh roared, yanking the man’s ear so he was forced to look at the shelving system. “You have everything organized, cataloged, taped, and measured. Don’t tell us you don’t know.”
“I stopped counting a long time ago,” Howard whined, holding up his hands to protect himself.
Devesh slammed him further into the chair. “Pull their names and addresses.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Just calm down,” Howard said, trying to ward off any further blows. “Okay. I’ll get them for you.”
Howard wobbled over to the silver file cabinet, rifled through the contents, then slid a folder to Devesh.
“We’re going to stay here until you write a letter of apology to each and every one of them,” Jay said, and his tone was deadly.
“But that’ll be like I’m confessing,” Howard cried, as he flickered a look to the three people surrounding him.
Devesh flipped through the rest of the masters to find out what else the man had done. He froze when another familiar name came into view.
Before Devesh could drop those into the metal container, Anaya leaned over, glanced at the cover image and exhaled.
This time she was the one to lay a fist to the man’s face, tumbling him to the floor.
“He had our whole house wired,” she screamed as Devesh pulled her away. “He probably has something on everyone.”
Devesh gripped the chair and swiveled it so Howard was facing them. There was some truth in what Anaya said. “I want all of them.”
“Okay, okay.” He gestured toward the bottom shelf, and Anaya swiped the first ones within reach. Bhavin, Priyanshi. More of Reign. And even—
“Oh my God, Mumma and Papa,” Anaya yelled, smacking the top of Howard’s head, causing him to duck down.
Devesh put a vice grip on her arm to keep her from hitting him again, though he actually wanted to do so himself.
“None of Tiya,” Devesh said at the same time as Jay who narrowed his gaze on Howard, asking, “How is that possible?”
Howard first looked to Devesh and then Jay. “She’s the one who wanted the recordings,” he confessed. “She paid me to make them, let me back into the house late at night to adjust the cameras and put in new ones. She just wanted ones of you and Reign. She didn’t know about the others.”
Devesh was so livid he couldn’t put a voice to how he felt.
“We’ll only put fire to the ones of our family and leave the rest for the police to find.”
“But you said—”
Devesh glared Howard into silence. “I lied.”
“He could go to jail for those others,” Anaya offered, placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder.
“You’re right,” Jay responded, clicking the keys to bypass firewalls, find hidden falls, making sure everything related to the Maharaj family was erased off the hard drive. “These women are someone’s sister, or daughter, and by now maybe someone’s wife. He did this to them without their knowledge.”
Devesh gestured to the screen, then glowered angrily at Howard. “They should have a choice in whether they want to be subjected to police scrutiny and the court system. Some of them know you did something, but couldn’t prove it. Now …”
While Howard ranted and raved, pleaded and begged, they wiped the recordings he’d made of the women in their family and their mates. Devesh was barely holding it together with each one they uncovered. Jay watched closely as the man extracted every file from his digital library, the cloud, a backup server, and a file-sharing network. There was also a backdoor website that Devesh couldn’t navigate earlier. And he had tried several times.
“Put in the password,” Jay commanded.
“I can’t do that,” Howard cried, and he was trembling with fear. More fear than he’d shown all night if that was possible. “They’ll kill me if I do.”
Jay turned to look at Howard. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Howard held out his hand for his keys. Devesh reached into his pockets, then slapped them in his palm. Howard placed the keyfob near the right computer tower. Jay slid the mouse and clicked on a secret folder, and a series of earth-shattering images sprang to life across several screens.
At the point when Devesh didn’t think things could get any worse …
They did.
Chapter 41
Devesh, Jay, Howard, and Anaya left Howard’s place an hour later and slid by two late night convenience stores to buy enough stamps to mail off those letters and DVDs, and pick up three pairs of rubber gloves as well as a burner phone to report the crime. Both Devesh and Anaya had to ignore the constant calls and texts from their significant others, but Jay finally suggested, “At least say something. They’re probably worrying themselves sick about what’s going on.” They complied and simply sent an “everything’s alright, just tying up some loose ends” kind of text. The calls and texts from Reign and Pranav finally died down.
Then the group slid to the main post office in Los Angeles for Howard to drop more than seventy packages addressed to his victims in the late night slot, before taking him back to his apartment. They covered their bases by wiping down everything in the apartment that would have their fingerprints. Anaya put the extinguisher and other items back in place, but the metal trashcan was taken to Jay’s car.
“We’ve been watching way too much television,” Jay mused, as they moved out of Howard’s hearing to discuss the details of things they should do to cover their behinds.
“If that were true,” Anaya countered. Her voice was pure ice. “We’d be hiding a body right now.”
“That’s not funny,” Devesh said, locking gazes with his sister whose demeanor was colder than he had ever witnessed.
“I don’t think it was meant to be,” Jay replied. “We’re all on the security tapes. If
something happens, we might be in the hot seat right along with him.”
“Can you do something about that?” Anaya asked, and her expression was slightly alarmed. “We were doing something right. We shouldn’t be penalized for that.”
“Officer friendly won’t see it that way,” Jay answered. “If dude was so key on keeping this operation on point, he’d have some way of seeing who’s coming and going and a way to manipulate things.”
Devesh went to Howard, who was so unbothered by this that he’d lost his sense of fright and had fallen asleep. He shook the man hard enough to snatch him from his nap. “Do you have a feed into the building’s security cameras?”
Howard blinked, cowered in the chair and then shook his head as though to clear his thoughts. “Yeah.”
“Show me,” Jay demanded, wheeling Howard’s chair to the desk.
Howard leaned forward, stretching his tied hands toward the keyboard.
“No, just navigate me to it,” Jay said, settling into the chair. “I’ll do the rest.”
“He can do it faster,” Anaya offered with a pointed look at Jay.
“He could also hit a few keystrokes that we aren’t aware of and wipe his entire computer. Then all of those children will stay lost.”
Minutes later, Jay had processed the video that had been taken when they first arrived. The sun was rising when he finally figured out how to splice the images where it removed the clips that showed when the threesome had come into the building and when they left. Those guards needed to be fired. They were so busy between sleeping and watching a porn vid—Jay recognized as Howard’s work—that they never caught on to the perfectly-timed blips on the screen when Jay looped in earlier footage.
They decided against using the burner phone, and with the threat of losing an entire finger, Howard made the anonymous call to local law enforcement right from his cell and house phone, then another to the FBI directly. To speed things along, Jay had Howard send a few of the most explicit and damaging of the pictures to the tip line for the police department.
Anaya and Devesh followed Jay’s lead and unplugged all the wiring and connections between the computers so that Howard would have a hard time wiping out any evidence in the time it took for the police to arrive. Jay queued up the security video so that it stayed in one final thirty-minute loop before he and Anaya left the apartment and waited in the car which they drove to the back entrance. They signaled to Devesh with a text when the first of the patrol cars arrived.
Devesh left some of the more incriminating evidence spread throughout both places, jammed a nail in the secret door so it wouldn’t close, then beat a hasty retreat down the back stairwell. The three of them took off in Jay’s car, dropping the metal trashcan off in a dumpster near the meat market a little distance away from Howard’s place.
The entire episode had taken nearly all night, and when they were done, Devesh told Jay, “Remind me not to ever get on your bad side.”
“You married my bad side,” Jay replied.
Devesh hadn’t made it into the foyer of his home when a call from Anaya came through.
“They just rushed Mumma to the hospital,” she said, then filled him in on what little she knew.
“I’m on my way,” he said and disconnected.
“What’s wrong?” Reign asked, placing the last of his clothes in a garment bag. They were supposed to leave for Chicago tomorrow for the closing on Reign’s house that her nephews purchased. Looks like there was a good chance they wouldn’t make it.
“All this drama has taken effect on Mumma. Seems that she had a heart attack or something.” He exhaled slowly, trying to tamp down on his fear as the realization that he could lose such a precious woman because of his baby sister’s actions hit him full force. “I could give Tiya the spanking my parents should’ve given her a long time ago.”
“I’ll stay here,” Reign said, watching him frantically gather up his things and make his way toward the front door. “Call the minute you know something.”
Devesh froze with his hand on the knob. “You know, I miss them so much when they’re traveling,” he whispered. “I don’t think I could ever … if they ….”
She went to him, wrapped her arms around his waist. “Don’t think about any of that right now.”
“Go on and get Aunt Kavya and the kids.” He took her hand. “You all are coming with me. “
The Maharaj family were gathered in the waiting area down the hall from Mumma’s room in the intensive care wing. All of the children spilled out into the brightly lit hallway, with the parents hanging nearby.
“This is your fault,” Tiya screeched, causing everyone—even other families—to focus in their direction. “You brought this woman into our lives, and it’s been chaos ever since.”
“Wasn’t chaos until you took it there,” Devesh snapped, and Anaya quickly came to his side. “Wasn’t chaos when I wrote you that check. Wasn’t chaos when we saved your ass. Well, Reign’s presence in my life correlates to all of that new money in my bank account when you’re asking me to … ‘help a sister out’”. He scanned the solemn expressions from the rest of the people in the waiting room. “Any one of you have something to say about Reign being here, make sure you have an open wallet to go along with your big mouth.”
The nurse with a mocha complexion nodded her approval, but gestured for Devesh to use his “inside voice.”
“And since my children are here,” Devesh said in a lower tone, leaning in so there was only a few inches of spaces between them. “This is where you take a hike.”
Tiya huffed, ran to the elevator and Hiran was right behind her.
Leena and Kamran rushed down the hallway to be with their cousins. Reign moved to Anaya, whose tear-filled eyes mirrored those of several others nearby. “What are they saying?
“They’re still doing tests,” she said, and Pranav placed his arm about her shoulders, but his expression was grave.
“What happened, Papa?” Devesh asked.
“She was in the living room. Tiya was pleading with us to let them move back in. They have been living in a motel. We said no. Then she demanded that we give in to her wishes.” Papa ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “She said we owed her because we were to blame for what Mitul did to her. She said it’s entirely our fault. I thought we were going to have to call the police. She was so… difficult.”
“She’s always been difficult; you just spoiled her a little too much,” Devesh said, taking in the people who were watching their exchange, but keeping their distance. “Now she has to be a grownup, and she doesn’t like it.”
“True,” Papa said, grimacing. “But we spoiled you, too, my son.”
“Not quite as much,” Devesh said, clasping a hand on his father’s shoulder. “But I still turned out alright.”
Leena and Kamran came back to be near Papa who held them to his side, despite the worry in his dark brown eyes.
“That you did, son,” Papa said, finally giving up a smile. “That you did.”
“And I’m glad you didn’t let Tiya guilt you into anything. She’s not right about that. Mitul is to blame.”
Leena left Papa after a squeeze of her hand in his before going to Reign.
“I do not want Tiya here,” Papa said, glancing in the direction Tiya went in. “She raised her hand to slap your mother. She has never done such a thing before. What is wrong with her?”
“Where do you think she ran off to?”
“Tiya?” He peered down the hall. “Maybe the cafeteria. Hiran’s always hungry.”
Devesh aimed in the direction of the elevator.
“Devesh,” Reign called after him. “Don’t do anything that’s going to require me to come up with bail money.”
He paused, but only for a split second; didn’t turn to face her as he said over his shoulder, “I can’t promise that.”
Then he took off in a sprint.
With a few seconds of careful thought, Reign pressed Leena into A
naya’s arms and quickly ushered Kamran to Papa, then took off in the direction of her husband.
“Devesh, calm down,” she warned, watching as he kept pressing the call button for the elevator to come.
“She tried to put her hands on my mother.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, angling so she was in his path when the silver doors opened.
“She has lost what little mind she had,” he responded, pushing up his sleeves. “I’m going to help her find it.”
“Devesh, you can’t put your hands on your sister.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, taking out his cell and punching in a few keys before stepping onto the elevator. “I have something else entirely in mind.”
Tiya visibly paled when she looked up from her spot at a corner table in the brightly lit cafeteria. Devesh was barreling down on her. She shrank back, almost cowering, the contents of her drink nearly spilled on Hiran.
Devesh’s movements were so frantic and out of sync that it caused others to look in their direction. Some quickly shifted to booths or tables that were much further away.
“Nebraska or Alaska?”
Tiya first looked to Reign, then back to Devesh before she grasped his meaning. “I don’t know anyone there.”
“And that’s my point. There’s no way for you to cause trouble for anyone there or here.”
“You can’t make me leave,” she said in a false show of bravado that Hiran tried to mimic by puffing out his chest.
“Yes, he can,” Reign said. “All it will take is having Mumma file a restraining order against you if you don’t leave peacefully.”
Tiya showed all thirty-two of her pearly whites. “She would never do that.”
“Just like she would never believe you would hit her?”
“I didn’t hit her,” Tiya protested, but quickly averted her eyes.
“You came close enough,” Devesh said through his teeth. “Too close to allow you to be near her again. First with my wife, then my daughter, and now with my mother. You’re like the Energizer Bunny—you keep coming and don’t know when to quit. But I know how to make it stop.”
“We have that video,” she said with a lift of her chin before locking a victorious gaze on Devesh. “That’s a game-changer.”
Loving Me for Me Page 27
