Glancing up I could see us pulling up to a loading dock of some sort. There were large storage containers all over the place, like the one Jim said they’d found Rasheed’s body in. Panicking I tried to slide the gold chain over my wrist so I wouldn’t drop it, but my handcuffs were in the way. On a desperate whim, a spur-of-the-moment thought, I glanced at the key and back at the lock on the cuffs. Skeleton keys are supposed to be able to unlock any lock. I looked up at Honey to see if she was paying me any attention. Nervously, hands shaking from the cold rain and adrenaline, I jammed the little key into the lock and twisted. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes closed tightly, thinking the cuffs would just clink, unhinge, and fall off at any second, and I could try to either roll out of the car or jump Honey when she wasn’t expecting it. When nothing happened I damn near broke down.
“You ready to be reunited with your wife? Lania said y’all weren’t gettin’ along an’ shit so I guess you can thank me for makin’ the ‘’til death do you part’ part of your marriage happen so quickly.”
I could feel myself giving up, or accepting my fate, to put it in better words. Lania, Angelo . . . So far this sounded like a bad joke and everyone in my life was in on it except me. Rasheed, and possibly Larissa, were both dead—it was starting to look like a bad dream come true, and I just didn’t understand or know Keyshawn’s place or his role in any of it.
The car came to a stop. Maybe it was the way the loading docks smelled or because I thought I was about to die; I was feeling like a complete idiot. The one time I decided to finally let someone else into my life they managed to shred it completely apart. My stomach was getting queasy, and I watched as Honey picked up the gun from the passenger seat and started to get out of the car. For some reason, even though it was pretty much over for me, a sense of desperation set in. I looked around, desperate for anything to help me out. I even tried the key again, twisting it frantically back and forth in both directions. I must’ve been turning the key in the wrong direction the first time. The lock on the cuffs clicked and they silently slid off. Fuck. That’s all the fuck I had to do? I looked down, amazed that the key had worked. This was my chance, my last chance, probably the only opportunity I’d have at saving myself.
Honey was shielding herself from the rain as she got out to open the back door, ready to pull me out. I took that as my opportunity, and with the cuffs around my knuckles I pushed the door hard back at her, catching her off guard. Her feet slid in the mud and she fell backward.
The fact that I wasn’t wearing any shoes worked to my advantage. I hopped out and dug my toes into the moist ground, giving myself better leverage as I lunged and climbed on top of her. Before she could raise her gun or get herself up, I hit her across the jaw. The inside of the cuffs cut into my skin and I ignored the pain shooting through my fist. I hit her three, four, five times, punching her repeatedly until the muscles in my arm started to shake and her body had gone limp, blood streaming from her nose and the corner of her mouth.
Searching her pockets I grabbed her cell, the pistol from her hand, and the keys to the car. I climbed into the driver’s seat, intent on heading back to the house to get Trey and Taya and gettin’ us the fuck out of town. Damn. Jim’s cell number was programmed in my iPhone and of course I didn’t have it memorized. If I could just get to the house, something in the contract had his number on it. He’d know a safe place for me to take the kids. It took me a few minutes to get used to the car’s controls. I was flying in the direction of my house, hydroplaning on turns and curves, intent on getting myself there before Honey had another chance to finish me off.
Her phone started ringing from the seat beside me and my heart almost stopped beating in my chest when I saw Keyshawn’s name. Why is he calling Honey’s phone? Should I answer it and let him know I’m okay? He gave me the key to my cuffs—obviously he wanted to help me. If I don’t answer, what will he think had happened to me? What does he have planned for my children? I couldn’t risk it.
“Why are you calling this phone, Key?”
“Oh my God. No, Michelle! You didn’t. What are you doing right now?” He sounded shocked and angry at hearing my voice, not the excitement I’d have expected hearing at me just barely escaping death.
“What am I doing? What the fuck are you doing, Keyshawn?”
“It’s a lot to explain, baby. I’ve been helpin’ keep you alive as much as possible without compromisin’ myself. If you on Honey’s phone I’m guessin’ you in Honey’s car?”
“Yeah. I used the key you gave me. In the envelope.”
“Fuck!” Keyshawn rarely cursed and that one word scared the life out of me. What did I “save” myself into?
“Michelle, you gotta get out of that car, right now. Wipe your prints off the steering wheel and run from it. I’m packin’ up some of your and the kids’ things. I’m on my way to pick you up. I’ll have the kids with me.”
“Why? What’s wrong, Key? You have to tell me.” I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car into park. Using the bottom of my shirt I wiped the steering wheel. It was too late. I could see the red and blue lights comin’ at me through the wind and rain. This bitch set me up.
“I didn’t give you the key to use, Michelle; that’s why when you set it down I ain’t say nothin’. When I woke up and you were gone and it was gone . . .” His voice was drowned out by the sound of the sirens and the squad cars that surrounded me. That’s when I realized he didn’t spell “lose” wrong. He was trying to tell me not to use it. “Don’t ever luse it.” If I would’ve been thinking clearly maybe I would’ve picked up on that shit.
“Ma’am, get out of the car with your hands up.” Slamming my hands up against the steering wheel I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. If I’d have just run on foot I could have gotten away. That bitch anticipated my every fuckin’ move just like I’d done with Rasheed, and like a mouse in a maze I’d blindly walked right into this brick wall, thinking it was a way out.
CHAPTER 29
IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL
For half of a heartbeat I actually debated pushing the gas pedal to the floor and gunnin’ it up out of there. I had no idea where I’d go or how far I’d get, but the image of every officer in the county opening fire and killing me before I could get more than a hundred yards away squelched the idea. I could only imagine the types of drugs Angelo and Honey would have stashed up in that damn car just to set my ass up—probably enough to put me away for life. Now I had an unregistered pistol with an illegal silencer on it in the passenger seat of a stolen car full of drugs, and no ID, with absolutely no logical explanation for any of it except that a woman who was supposed to have died in prison kidnapped me from my home at gunpoint and this was where I’d ended up. Yeah, I could see the cops believing that shit.
“Get on the ground now,” someone yelled at me from somewhere in the rain. There were at least six different sets of high beams pointed in my direction, blinding me. I did as told. The cold, wet pavement scraped against my bare legs, rain ran into my eyes, for the second time in one night I was cuffed. A female officer grabbed my hands and forced them behind my back, almost pulling my arm out of the socket. I was pulled roughly to my feet and dragged over to stand beside one of the squad cars. Who knew what the hell Honey or whoever said when they called this bullshit in or how many drugs they told them I was carrying? I had an flashback of Rasheed being hauled out of his car and all I could think was that karma was definitely a complete and absolute fucking bitch.
One of the cops went through the glove compartment and came over to me with several pieces of paper in his hand. “Is there any reason why you’re driving Mr. Curtis Daniels’s vehicle, ma’am?”
I just stared at the officer blankly. No, I didn’t have a damn reason. I was shocked—why the fuck did Honey have Curtis’s car?
“Holy fuck, Miller. Come look at this shit!”
I was half pushed and half dragged toward the trunk of the car, where the other two o
fficers were gathered. When my eyes finally landed on what they had back there that had them so in awe I almost fainted. They’d unzipped a large bag and the only thing I could make out was Curtis’s body before gettin’ sick. The smell of decaying flesh and the way he looked after being locked up in there decomposing in the heat for three or four weeks was unbearable. After that I was surrounded by pitch black. The haunting image of Larissa’s face stuffed in the trunk underneath Curtis, the overwhelming smell of bodies, making everyone cover their mouths, fighting the urge to gag, her eyes dull and lifeless looking back at me, it was all more than I could handle at one time.
The smell of unwashed bodies and urine woke me up. I thought I was having a bad dream, that Honey and the car . . . everything was a bad dream. I opened my eyes. I was lying on a hard bunk, there was a toilet sticking out of the wall in front of me, and the realization set in that I was in a holding cell.
“Hello? Officer?” I looked out through the thin metal bars; there was a desk over in the corner but no one was there. Larissa’s face . . . I couldn’t get the image out of my head and I fought the urge to curl up in a ball and just cry. My clothes, well what little I’d had on, were taken from me and I was left in all-white cotton pants and a matching shirt.
“Look who’s finally awake. Fuckin’ Sleepin’ Beauty over here.” One of the officers walked in, eatin’ pork rinds out of a bag, wiping the crumbs on his uniform. He was a pudgy pink-faced white man with a double chin that jiggled when he spoke.
“My name is Michelle Laurel, it used to be Michelle Roberts. I would like my one phone call please.”
“Yeah, yeah, and motherfuckers in hell want ice water. You’ll get your phone call when we ready to give you one.”
“Stop fuckin’ with her, Simmons, let her have her call.” A female cop walked up, slappin’ him playfully on his back. She was younger, probably about my age, brown skin, with friendly eyes.
“Can you look up a number for Jim Bartell please?”
Jim was the only person I could trust right now. She sat down at the desk for a moment, looking at her computer, before coming over to let me out, handing me the number on a Post-it note. She led me over to another room that looked like a cell, except it was surrounded with Plexiglas and had a phone in a center.
“I’m Officer James. Towanna James. Just let me know when you’re done.” She smiled at me and I liked her immediately.
I dialed Jim’s number and almost cried when he answered. I was rambling and talking so fast, trying to tell him everything that’d happened literally overnight since he’d left that voice mail, it was a wonder he could keep up with me, but he did.
“This ain’t as bad as you think, sweetheart. I’m sorry you’re in there right now but be patient. Me and one of my boys will personally go by your place and pull all the security footage. I know you didn’t commit them murders, sweet pea. I also record all of our conversations, so we have documented instances of you fearing for you and your late wife’s lives. Our first suspect right now is gonna be that Honey woman, since she was the last person we saw Larissa alive with. It’s a start and we’ll go from there.”
I hung up the phone, content that Jim would somehow work things out for me. I was confident that as long as the kids were with Keyshawn they were fine. Hopefully he’d grabbed enough Pull-Ups for Lataya to last a few days, and wherever he’d taken them, I just prayed it was someplace Honey and her people didn’t know and couldn’t find out about.
CHAPTER 30
AN UNMARKED MARKSWOMAN
“What the fuck, Honey?” Angelo was pacing back and forth lookin’ like he was ’bout to burst a damn blood vessel. “Get the bitch, let her take the car. That was it. It was simple, so fuckin’ simple.”
“It was a mistake, she knocked me unconscious. I didn’t know she’d take my gun.”
Yes, we’d gone over the plan a million fuckin’ times and had a million different scenarios. But not one included her whoopin’ my ass with her handcuffs and takin’ my damn pistol. We’d definitely underestimated little Miss “I’ll Think You Into Some Shit Before I Beat You Into It,” aka Michelle. I was still recovering from a broken nose, an’ that bitch fractured the bone just beneath my fuckin’ eye. I looked like I could be the poster child for spousal abuse.
“Yeah, but what the fuck have I always told you’s? Neva’, neva’, leave your weapon or lay it down, right? I knew I shoulda went with you, sent someone with you.”
I ain’t answer. There was no point; he wasn’t looking for no answer, he was just talkin’ to hear himself talk right now and that was that.
“You my woman an’ it’s my job to protect you. I gotta figure out how to get us outta this city. We gonna have to lay low until this shit blow over.”
“Ount need protectin’, baby. I made a honest mistake an’ I’ma fix this shit.” We were sittin’ up in one of Angelo’s penthouses that was considered off the radar, one of his getaway spots for times like this when shit got too hot to be out on the streets. I was jus’ sittin’ my ass in one of the black ostrich recliners, starin’ out through the huge floor-to-ceiling window in the sitting room at all the city lights that lit up Miami at night. From up here it looked like we owned this city, and somewhere down there, in spite of everything I’d planned, Michelle was still runnin’ around a free woman.
“Bella, sweetie—you’s got so much to learn. Up until that pistol you were the perfect weapon. A ghost, a ninja assassin, an unknown assailant who could strike anyone anywhere and vanish with no past and no file. You were untraceable. But now, they know you’re out there, and they know you’re gonna come back.”
He had a point. I wanted to get Paris back and Michelle knew I would die before I let her keep my child. If Lania coulda controlled her damn nigga we would not have had half of this problem. I went to Michelle’s house afterward but Keyshawn’s ass was gone. He’d taken Trey and Paris to who knew where and hadn’t been seen since. I got up and walked into the bathroom.
“We not done talkin’; where you goin’?”
“I’ll be right back, Angelo.”
Walkin’ into the penthouse bathroom was like goin’ into a damn mini spa. Heated marble floors, crystal knobs on all the Koehler faucets, I was gettin’ used to havin’ the best of everything. I turned the water on, watchin’ it swirl around the crystal bowl basin. I looked at myself in the mirror. When did I become this woman, this rich man’s canary to be kept in a cage—this bloodthirsty killer? It was like I was living a double life.
The real me was hidin’ away somewhere deep down inside, waitin’ until the all clear was announced so she could come back out. I should have done this shit a long time ago. Reachin’ into the medicine cabinet I grabbed a razor blade from Angelo’s shaving kit and some alcohol to sterilize the blade. Trenisha’s past was what got me caught up and I needed to erase that bitch once and for all.
“Angel face, you all right in there or what?” Angelo was knockin’ on the door but at this point I couldn’t open it. The shit hurt worse than I thought it would and shock and too much fuckin’ pain was going through my arms for me to even move from where I was sittin’ on the side of the tub to let him in.
“Honey? You good? What’s goin’ on in there?” He kicked the door open; wood splintered around the lock, and I looked up at him, teary eyed, tryin’ not so fuckin’ hard not to let him see me cry.
“I erased her, Angelo. There ain’t no more Trenisha. There ain’t no more Honey. That shit won’t ever happen again.”
“Fuck, woman, what the fuck did you do?”
Blood was all over me, it was all over the bathroom floor. He knelt in front of me and held up my bloody hands. I’d taken the razor blades and sliced the fingerprints clean off of my fingers one by one, cutting deep enough to where there were now only bloody pads where my skin used to be.
“No more mistakes, Angelo. I promise.”
“Oh my God. Let me see. What made you do this shit?” He snatched his shirt off and grabbed my han
ds and started wrapping them up in it, trying to stop the blood.
I winced because it stung, but didn’t pull my hands back.
“We gonna get my daughter. I don’t care where I have to go or what else I have to do. All I want is my daughter.”
“Yeah, Honey, we gonna get our princess I promise. On my life, I swear we’ll get her back.” He kissed my forehead, smoothing my hair back, and I drifted into sleep or passed out, I wasn’t sure which. But my last thoughts were of a beautiful little baby girl with golden skin and chubby cheeks. Smiling at me though long, curly-ass lashes, it was a smile I’d seen a million times and I felt as though I hadn’t seen that smile in a million years—it was my smile.
CHAPTER 31
WHEN IT ALL COMES DOWN
All the shit Honey and Angelo put me through to get me locked up and not one ounce of it could stick. Jim went to the DEA and all the charges against me were dropped within a week. The pistol that was used to murder Larissa was also the same gun used to kill Rasheed. There was no way I could have been in Virginia at the time he was murdered and when they ran the gun through forensics they found a second set of prints along with mine that belonged to Trenisha, also known as Honey. They did an autopsy on Curtis’s body and his estimated time of death placed me at Chuck E. Cheese with the kids. They even pulled the photos from the hard drive in the booth from that day to help verify I couldn’t have been the person to stab him and then cut off his arm.
It was such a relief to be treated like a normal member of society again. They’d reopened Honey’s case to determine how someone declared dead could be walking around committing murders. Honey was on all the bulletins and wanted ads; they had an older picture from her first prison arrest but it was a close enough resemblance for someone to identify her, and it did not surprise me at all that she’d suddenly vanished off the face of the earth along with Angelo and Lania.
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