Caught Up

by Shannon Holmes

  “I’m looking to buy a gun,” she responded. “Do you have any?”

  “Well, of course we do. What kind are you looking for? A high-caliber firearm? Or maybe something smaller?”

  “I don’t care, just as long as it holds a lot of bullets.” Dixyn didn’t know exactly what she would do if she found B-Dub. But she would arm herself just in case things got ugly. She only knew that, given the situation, she was doing what any parent would do, and that was going to New York City to find her child.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dixyn drove nonstop through the night on I-95 and then the New Jersey Turnpike to New York City. The frustration of not being able to adequately provide for her daughter, then not being able to protect her, festered in her mind. Every minute she spent away from Ava was killing her. She wondered how B-Dub was treating her, what he was feeding her, and where she was sleeping. She thought about the terrible things that could possibly be happening to her.

  For the entirety of the ride, Dixyn’s imagination ran wild as she considered just how B-Dub had gotten her to lower her guard. While she and her daughter were fast asleep, B-Dub had been wide awake in the living room, plotting and scheming. His devious mind must have been working overtime, Dixyn mused. He must have patiently waited an hour or two before executing his plan. Now his words turned out to be prophetic: There’s a lotta different ways of hurtin’ a person without gettin’ physical. The words echoed in her ears. B-Dub had taken away almost everything she held near and dear on this earth. Now Dixyn wanted it back.

  After the fact, Dixyn had discovered the broken hanger that B-Dub had used to unlock the bedroom door. Yet she still wondered how he had been able to leave the premises without stealing a vehicle. Thanks to an old security camera that her mother had had installed on her porch a long time ago—after her home was broken into while she was on vacation—Dixyn was able to find the answer.

  She had gone into her mother’s bedroom and replayed the surveillance footage from that morning. On the small monitor, Dixyn watched grainy black-and-white footage that showed a dark-colored SUV with New York license plates, driven by a female, pulling up into her yard and B-Dub exiting the house carrying her sleeping daughter. So there it was, clear as day.

  Dixyn had pulled out her phone and punched in the first New York address she’d recorded from B-Dub’s mysterious documents. Common sense told her to check out all the New York addresses; B-Dub had to reside at one of these places. At least she hoped. At this point, hope was all she had. So she headed to New York on a wing and a prayer.

  Now that she was able to really think about it as she drove north, she saw how B-Dub thrived on keeping whomever he dealt with off balance. If one couldn’t predict what he was going to do next, then one couldn’t mount a defense against him.

  B-Dub must have thought that New York City was big enough for him to hide in. But as clever as he had been in the execution of his treacherous plan, Dixyn would prove she was equally as shrewd in tracking him down.

  She was proud of the way she was keeping calm and was able to figure out a way to track B-Dub down so quickly. And she was hoping the element of surprise would be on her side. She hoped that B-Dub had underestimated her. In fact, she counted on it. Dixyn promised herself one thing: whenever they met again, B-Dub would see a side of her that he had never even glimpsed.

  Dixyn interpreted her daughter’s kidnapping as the latest trial in a short period of her life filled with trials to determine exactly what she was made of. If this was indeed a test, Dixyn planned on passing with flying colors. She intended to put an end to B-Dub’s bullshit once and for all.

  More than her innate maternal instinct to find and protect her child, it was the desire for revenge that drove Dixyn to New York City to come face to face with a murderer on unfamiliar grounds. So while most of the other drivers on the highway obeyed the speed limit, Dixyn blatantly defied it. She had somewhere to be, and time was of the essence.

  One by one she staked out the half-dozen or so addresses scattered across the city. Dixyn saw no sign of B-Dub or that dark SUV. As time passed, she grew more frantic in her search for her baby. Then suddenly it dawned on her: Bryce and B-Dub were from Spanish Harlem. Dixyn felt she would be better off looking there. She went back inside her phone, and sure enough, there was a Spanish Harlem adress. Dixyn punched it in her GPS and quickly raced up there.

  * * *

  Inside a decrepit tenement building on 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, B-Dub relaxed with a female friend. Camilla exhaled a huge cloud of smoke and watched as it slowly dissolved into thin air. Now that her on-again/off-again boyfriend B-Dub was back in town, her routine was about to change—at least until he disappeared once more.

  B-Dub lived in limbo between New York and whatever town or city he was hustling in. No matter how good he had it, he always returned home, especially when things went bad and he needed to regroup.

  “Here, take a hit of this shit. It’s good,” she insisted, extending the blunt toward B-Dub. “It’ll git ya mind right.”

  B-Dub sat on the sofa just a few feet away, too preoccupied with surfing the Internet on his iPhone to hear what she was saying. Refusing to be ignored, Camilla waved the blunt in his face.

  “Yo, git that shit outta my face, fam,” he growled, pushing her hand away. “You know I don’t git high.”

  “C’mon, why you gotta be like that?” she said. “Just do it for me.” There was nothing that Camilla liked more than having sex while she was high. Smoking weed made her three things—high, hungry, and horny. She was beginning to wonder who else he might be fucking. B-Dub rarely, if ever, turned down an opportunity to have sex with her.

  “Camilla, you violating right now,” he warned. “I said no.”

  Reluctantly, she pulled her hand back and continued taking tokes on the blunt. Although she was mad as hell, she tried hard not to show it. She knew an argument would kill her high. The problems she was having with B-Dub were bigger than a blunt.

  Their relationship pattern always seemed to favor B-Dub. He came around when he wanted to and stayed away when he didn’t want to be bothered with her. Long ago, Camilla began to worry that this thing of theirs was merely a relationship of convenience. He was there for her financially whenever she fell behind on her bills or just needed a few dollars. She was there for him whenever he needed a place to rest his head or lay low. Whenever he needed sex, there were no strings attached and no questions asked.

  Camilla had a particular skill set in the bedroom that B-Dub had come to favor. Her oral talents were like no other woman who B-Dub had ever met. For that reason alone, he always returned to Camilla no matter how far away he had strayed. Truth be told, she hated him running in and out of her life. She always wondered where he had been, what he’d been doing, and who he’d been sleeping with. His behavior was so erratic that there were times when she didn’t even know if he was dead or alive. All she knew was that whenever he did return to New York, he was always flush with cash and driving an expensive car. And B-Dub wasn’t one to speak his business or bring the streets to her door. But judging from the large amounts of cash that he always carried on him, it was definitely something illegal.

  “Let’s fuck,” Camilla blurted out.

  Oblivious, B-Dub continued to do whatever he was doing on his phone. He didn’t even bother to look up at her.

  “Damn, man, what the fuck!” she cried out. “What a bitch gotta do to get your attention? Shit!”

  B-Dub diverted his eyes from his phone and shot her an evil glare. “I’m out!” he spat. As he rose to his feet, he felt a little light-headed from the secondhand weed smoke.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, where the hell you going?”

  B-Dub knew there was a difference between a female being nosy and being genuinely concerned. Right now, Camilla was just being plain nosy, and B-Dub wasn’t feeling her.

  “Yes, I do mind you askin’,” he countered. “I’m grown, fam. I pay ya bills; you don’t
pay mine. Just know this: I’ll be gone for a while, but I’ll be back. That’s all you need to know.”

  Camilla sucked her teeth. “So you just gon’ leave me here by myself, huh?”

  “You couldn’t come even if I wanted you to!” he barked. “You forgettin’ somethin’, fam. Who the hell is gonna watch my niece who’s sleepin’ in ya bed?”

  Shit! Camilla had totally forgotten about that. She kicked herself mentally for agreeing to watch the child in the first place. Although she didn’t voice it, she had her suspicions about the girl. She could just as easily have been his love child as his so-called niece. Although there was a vague resemblance between the two, Camilla had to wonder what person in their right mind would leave a child in the care of B-Dub.

  He had brought some strange things to her house before: shady characters, money, guns. However, a child for her to watch was a first. All he’d said was that she was his niece, and he left it at that. True to form, he hadn’t bothered to explain what she was doing with him or how long she would even be there. Not wanting to rock the boat, Camilla had just gone along with the situation. She’d asked him no questions and he’d told her no lies.

  “So what am I supposed to do in the morning if you’re not here when she wakes up hungry and there’s nothing here to fix her? Huh?”

  Standing by the front door, B-Dub dug in his pockets and removed a wad of money. He took out two twenties and handed them to her. “Whatever you do,” he warned, “don’t feed that little girl no pork. You hear me, fam?”

  “Yeah, okay,” she responded. Then: “B, you one funny nigga. You eat pussy, yet you worried ’bout someone buyin’ some pork wit’ ya damn money.”

  B-Dub didn’t find Camilla’s attempt at humor funny at all and simply walked out of the apartment. He knew that would hurt her more than anything.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted after him.

  * * *

  Having traveled through the night, Dixyn arrived in the city just in time to get a taste of the snarling rush hour. After being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic the entire way through the Lincoln Tunnel, Dixyn drove the streets to her Spanish Harlem destination.

  Dixyn took stock of her new surroundings. The first thing she noticed about New York at this time of day was that it was extremely noisy. She had lived in a small town in Virginia most of her life where there were ordinances against noise pollution. It seemed like every sound she heard here was amplified, from car horns to the casual pedestrian conversations. Dixyn was also leery of New York City from all the horror stories about tourists who found themselves in harm’s way after taking a wrong turn. She was determined to leave this city as she had come, and not turn into a statistic. Dixyn kept her eyes open and her mouth shut, observing everything around her.

  When she finally arrived, she glanced down at the address on the GPS, checking it against the numerals that hung on the building’s entrance, then found a parking space with a good view. Before she doing anything rash, she decided to conduct some surveillance of her own on the building, monitoring its residents’ comings and goings. Her visual senses began to sharpen as everyone she saw fell under suspicion. Anything that moved in or out of that building, she was on.

  A man and a small child leaving the building would be easy to spot, even from her current distance. Dixyn also figured that more than likely he had some type of female assistance. As far as she knew, B-Dub didn’t have any children of his own. He would need help to properly look after Ava. Whatever the case might be, Dixyn was preparing herself for any scenario.

  She didn’t know what her next move should be. She could either go knock on the door or wait around till B-Dub showed his face. For now, she decided to wait it out. But as badly as she wanted her daughter back, she didn’t know how long she could exercise such restraint.

  * * *

  As Ava awoke from her sleep, she looked around the room in confusion. This wasn’t her room; this wasn’t her grandmother’s house. She didn’t remember much about her abduction because B-Dub had slipped her a sedative to shut her up. Finally the effects had worn off, but little Ava still didn’t know where she was. She got scared and started crying, and stumbled off the bed. It took her a few steps to get her legs under her. She began the survey the place for any signs of life. It didn’t take long before she came across Camilla lying on the couch, all but dead to the world.

  “I want my mom,” Ava said as she tapped the stranger on the leg. “Where’s my mommy? I’m hungry.”

  Camilla startled awake and realized she must have fallen asleep on the couch after smoking that last blunt. “Little girl, stop hitting me, I’m up!” she shouted. “I’m up.”

  “Where’s my mommy? I’m hungry!” Ava cried.

  Camilla sat up on the couch, leaned forward, and looked the girl directly in the eye. She tried her best to be nice, but she was agitated after being woken so abruptly. “Look, little girl, I don’t know who your mother is or where she’s at, but your uncle will be back soon. Now if you stop crying I’ll get you something to eat.” She started gently wiping the tears away from the little girl’s face. Ava began to calm down.

  Camilla called the local Spanish takeout restaurant and ordered the special: a whole chicken with rice, beans, and plantains. “We gonna eat in a little while, okay?” she explained to Ava. “The food is on the way.” Camilla picked up the television remote and changed the channel to the Cartoon Network, then went in the kitchen and made the child a bag of microwave popcorn.

  She handed Ava the treat and the little girl began to stuff her face. “Damn, you really was hungry, huh? Girl, you sure fucking that popcorn up.”

  With the child momentarily quiet, Camilla grabbed a bag of weed that was hidden in her bra, and reached over to the coffee table and grabbed a blunt wrap and began rolling. This is the way to start your day, Camilla thought to herself.

  No sooner had she taken her first puff of her blunt than she began peppering the little girl with all sorts of questions in a childlike voice, questions that she didn’t dare ask B-Dub.

  * * *

  As the morning wore on, Dixyn grew increasingly impatient with this cat-and-mouse game. She’d had enough of sitting, waiting, and watching. With phone in hand, she sprang into action. Dixyn exited her car, making sure she locked the doors, and made her way to the building’s front door, which was not secured. She cautiously navigated the steps toward the second-floor apartment, constantly looking over her shoulder as if she were expecting B-Dub to suddenly appear at any moment. Before she even reached the apartment door, she was overcome by a strong scent of weed.

  Dixyn ignored it and knocked on the apartment door. She slipped her own phone inside her bag and stepped away from the door, out of view of the peephole, pressing her body up against the wall. With her hand still inside the bag, Dixyn gripped her gun and waited for someone to answer the door.

  “Who?” a female voice called out from within the apartment.

  Camilla was so high that she might have thought she heard a response. Either that or she now remembered that a delivery guy was supposed to be bringing her food. Whatever the case, Camilla unhooked the door chain without even looking out the peephole.

  Dixyn stepped in front of the door as soon as she heard the locks being unbolted.

  “You’re not the delivery guy. Who are you?” Camilla looked suspiciously at the unfamiliar beauty standing at her door.

  “Excuse me, I’m lookin’ for B-Dub,” Dixyn replied. “Is he in there?”

  Camilla immediately put two and two together and concluded that Dixyn must be the little girl’s mother. Realizing this was a chance to get in good with B-Dub, she decided to play stupid. “Who’s that? I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  Just as Dixyn was about to challenge the lie, a small child came from behind the door and clung to the woman’s leg. Dixyn looked down just as the child looked up.

  “Mommy?”

  Angrily, Dixyn pulled out her handgun, placed the barrel to
Camilla’s head, and shoved her way inside the apartment.

  * * *

  The sound of the lock cylinder turning alerted Dixyn to someone else’s presence. According to Camilla, who she had tied up and interrogated at gunpoint, B-Dub was due back anytime now. Dixyn had intercepted the delivery man, who came to the door to bring the food just like B-Dub’s girlfriend told her he would. So if Camilla was to indeed be believed, this mysterious person about to gain entrance to the apartment was none other than B-Dub himself.

  After the door slammed shut, Dixyn heard faint footsteps approaching. The way the apartment was designed, whoever it was coming down the hallway would have to pass the living room to get to the other rooms. It was there in the darkness of the living room that Dixyn lay in wait, ready to ambush her prey.

  “Yo, Camilla!” a man called out from down the hall. “Where the hell are you?”

  There was no mistaking that voice. Dixyn had endured the unpleasantness of it so many times that she could recognize it in her sleep.

  The closer the footsteps came the louder they grew, until finally B-Dub was upon her. Dixyn began to tense up at the sight of him. She gripped her gun tightly, watching and waiting.

  In the pitch blackness of the living room, B-Dub squinted, struggling to make out the form that sat motionless on the couch. Without appearing to give it any thought, he flipped on the light. If he was taken by surprise by the presence of Dixyn, B-Dub didn’t show it. His lips creased in a sly smile.

  Dixyn locked her eyes onto the man. “Didn’t expect to see me here, now did you? You’re not as hard to find as you may think.”

  “I see,” he responded calmly. “I underestimated you.”

  “That you did.” In one swift motion, Dixyn sprang up off the couch and leveled her weapon at B-Dub. “Ava, dear, please go to the bathroom,” she instructed, and the little girl quickly complied.

  Now B-Dub became visibly upset, and his smile turned into a frown. “Look, fam, put the gun down and let’s talk this thing out. This whole situation was a misunderstandin’. I thought you were goin’ to turn me in to the police. That’s the only reason why I did what I did. Ava’s my niece, my blood. Did you really think I was goin’ to hurt her?”