by Rebel Hart
Finally, he released me, but kept a hand resting on my arm. “Please be safe.”
“I will, and I’ll visit again really soon, I promise.” I stood up on my tippy-toes to kiss him on his cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
With one last quick hug, I gathered my keys and phone and left.
Avery said she’d come back and get me, but it was still early and I didn’t want to bother her. I took a cab home instead. When I got inside, everyone was sitting around in the living room, apart from Sicily, who I assumed was upstairs.
“Hey,” Avery greeted as I walked in. “I told you I'd come back for you.”
“I know, but I wanted some alone time. The conversation with my parents did not go as I expected it to.” I flopped down onto one of the couches next to Avery.
“Did they take it really hard or something?” Alistair asked.
I looked across the room to where Nathan was sitting on the ground in front of Nikita. “Turns out, your dad handpicked me to be your trophy.”
The statement sucked the energy out of the room. “What?” Nathan said. “I picked you. To hurt Deon.”
I chuckled. “That's what he let you believe. I'm not sure why, but Connor wanted to hurt Deon long before you did. Maybe because of what his mom did? He promoted my dad and moved us near Deon, then he told my dad before Deon got arrested that he was unsafe, and that they needed to keep me away from him. Even his mom. Then not long after Deon went to prison, he promoted my dad again, and moved us out here to be near you.”
“You think Connor had something to do with Deon going to prison to begin with?” Colette asked.
Nathan sighed. “I’ve been thinking that could be the case for a while, but if he met and picked you out before that, he had something premeditated for long before I got mad and wanted to get my revenge on Deon.”
“Jeez,” Kyle said. “How long has Connor been manipulating all of our lives?”
“Since before birth,” Nathan hissed. “And I played right into it.”
“You didn't know,” Nikita and I said in unison.
Colette leaned forward. “Yeah. Besides, you couldn’t have—”
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” All of our heads turned at the sudden exclamation, followed by the pounding of feet down the stairs. Sicily jumped down into the living room, skipping until he was dead center in the group, and then he started to dance. “I’m good. I’m so good,” he sang. “I’m good. OH! Who’s good?”
He pointed at Brayden, who apprehensively said, “Uh, Sicily?”
Sicily did a pelvic thrust. “That’s right! It’s Sicily! I am so good.”
“Hey, Mr. Good?” I asked. “Why are you so good?”
“I’m glad you asked, gorgeous.” He held up a piece of paper. “I found Deon.”
I jumped up. “What?!”
“Are you serious?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah!” Sicily yelped. “He’s in Maine!” We all stared at him blankly. “What?” he asked.
I walked over to Sicily and punched him in the arm. “We already knew he was in fucking Maine!”
Sicily rubbed his arm, beyond used to my tendency to swing when I got annoyed. “You didn’t let me finish.”
I backed away from him a little bit. “You have five minutes.”
“Alright, so. Anisa and Cobalt brought me the phone of the two guys we captured—cakewalk to break, by the way—I found messages from some people who had captured him at some point, but he got away,” Sicily said. “The places they were discussing are near a handful of the pings from when Deon was calling you and Nathan, meaning he started in that area and stayed in that area. About an hour from here, near the prison. At first I was afraid that the calls may have stopped because he went back to prison, but I searched the database, and he’s not listed. More than likely that means…”
“He visited,” I finished.
“Exactly,” Sicily said. “So I’m thinking he might have made a plan to go there and get some help and then ditched his phone.”
“Venom,” I said.
Sicily nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. So technically, I don’t know exactly where he is, but I’m guessing he does.”
“Who?” Nathan asked.
“There was a guy who took Deon under his wing when he was locked up and made sure he got his education so that he could rejoin high school when he got out,” I explained.
Sicily nodded. “Deon told me Venom was like a dad to him. I hate that it took all of this for me to realize it, but if Deon needed help and he couldn’t come back here for it, he’d go there for sure.”
“But Deon’s on the run. He couldn’t just walk into a prison,” Colette said.
“From what Deon told me, Venom sort of has his run of the place. He might have known who to talk to in order to speak with Venom without being tagged,” Sicily said.
“It’s worth a shot,” I said. “We should go and talk to him and see if he knows anything.”
“There are visiting hours tomorrow,” Avery said, and I looked over to see she was already clicking rapidly through her phone, “but only one person can visit at a time.”
“Shoot,” Nathan said. “I hate the one-on-one thing lately. It always feels like there’s some information that gets missed when only one person can represent.”
“I get it, but there isn’t anything we can do, and because I’m the crux between you guys and Deon, I feel like I should be the one,” I said.
Colette shivered in her seat. “At the risk of sounding like a spoiled, rich princess, I can’t imagine going and sitting in a prison. You’re so much braver than me, Cherri.”
“Believe you me, the thought doesn’t inspire sunshine and rainbows, but we don’t have any other choice. Venom could be the one person who can get us in touch with Deon, and for him, I’d do anything.” I imagined being able to see Deon soon, or even just hear his voice. There was nothing that could scare me enough to keep me away from following that lead.
“Next stop, prison?” Kyle said with a chuckle.
I nodded. “Yep. Next stop, prison.”
20
Deon
I was trying to decide how long I should wait before going out and looking for Felicity myself. Yes, I’d promised her that I would stay in the house and not risk anything else happening to me, but I also promised Venom that I would look after Felicity just like she promised to look after me. I never should have let her go to visit Nico on her own. I could appreciate what she was doing, especially because she was doing it for me and for Venom, but regret was a washing over me like poison.
The sun had been up for hours, and it was getting close to twelve hours since the absolute latest I would have expected Felicity to come home. Something was terribly wrong.
It was a good thing I’d fallen asleep at the table, because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep. I still felt groggy as I stood up off the couch in the living room and patted my leg to call Concrete to me. He rushed over, tail wagging, excited to get out, but I was bringing him along as backup. I imagined Felicity had to have guns of some type hanging around her house, so I did a sweep of the place looking for one. I checked every nook and cranny I could think of, but nothing turned up.
Maybe in her car.
Rushing out into the garage, I grabbed the keys for the more ‘suburban mom’ car that Felicity had and ran over to the door. I unlocked it and climbed in with Concrete right behind me and started to search all over the car for a weapon of any kind. Worse case scenario, I could run back in for a butcher knife or the axe she kept to chop wood for her fireplace, but I didn’t relish walking into a possible fight without something that would help me long range. Any of Connor’s thugs would be strapped to high hell, and it didn’t make me comfortable to imagine literally bringing a knife to a gun fight.
“There has to be one in here, Concrete,” I said. “I wish you could help me look.”
Concrete just stared at me, though some of his jovial mood had
left him—he must have been able to read my panic. I dug my hands into the glove box, under the seats, in the center console, and even checked the trunk, but there weren’t guns of any kind.
“Dammit,” I growled. “The axe it is, I guess.”
Sliding out of the car, I started back towards the door into the house, when suddenly the garage door started to open. If someone snatched Felicity, they’d have her keys and garage door opener; hell, that car was programmed to take her straight home just by asking it to. Anyone with access to her car would have no trouble getting in. My eyes scanned the garage for the best weapon to defend myself with, and landed on the barbell to my bench press. I rushed towards it, pulled the weights off as quickly as I could, and whipped around with the barbell in hand.
Just to see Felicity driving her car back into the garage.
I didn’t know if I was angry, relieved, or stunned. Her hair and makeup were a mess, almost as if she had run into some trouble, but when she parked the car, pressing the button to close the garage as she did, she looked over at me like I was the lunatic.
“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping out of the car. “You gonna hit me or something?”
“At the risk of sound totally disrespectful, where the fuck have you been? You told me a few hours when you left last night,” I hissed. “Did something happen?” She walked around the car and I noticed that her clothes were a little more disheveled too. There were a few dark spots around her neck, and the more I started to realize what had happened, the more I was wondering if it would have been better if she’d just gotten into a fight. “Did you… cheat on Venom?”
She let out a sigh. “I keep thinking I’ll be able to do stuff without having to explain it to you, but you’re too on the ball for that.” She waved a hand as she turned to walk inside. “Come on. I need some coffee for this hangover and I owe you some answers.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. For a moment there, I was dreading having to explain to Venom that I let Felicity leave after he explicitly told me not to do that, and something bad happened. Was I going to have to reveal his wife’s affair? He meant more to me than most people in my life, and even though I’d developed quite a love for Felicity as a pseudo-mother, I couldn’t just sit by and say nothing if she was sleeping around behind Venom’s back.
I set my barbell down and walked back into the house, following the sounds of Felicity already putting together a cup of coffee. She was still wobbly as she worked, so I walked over, took the can of coffee from her, and pushed her lightly towards the kitchen table. She didn’t argue, and dropped into the seat, setting her head down on the table’s surface.
My hands were shaking as I brewed the coffee. Was it fear? Was it disappointment? No one likes having the people they care about disillusioned, but it was worse than that for me. Felicity loved Venom, that was obvious. Did she do what she did just to get some help in our plight?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Felicity started. “And it’s not that. What I did has nothing to do with you, Venom, or finding Connor. It was a happy coincidence.”
I looked back over my shoulder at her. “I wouldn’t call it happy.”
“Garrett’s been in and out of lockup damn near our entire relationship, Deon,” she said. “The first few times, he’d say ‘Aw, baby. I don’t expect you to just wait around for me. You’re a woman, you have needs too,’ and I always thought it was insane, because I’d committed myself to him. Even before I got married, he was the only man I wanted. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything behind his back.”
I pulled a mug out from the cabinet as I listened to Felicity’s story. As soon as the coffee was done brewing, I poured some from the pot into the mug, not bothering to add any creamer. Carrying it over to her, I set it down on the table and then sat down across from her. She took a long sip in spite of its heat, and then let out a sigh.
“I figured you’d need it black,” I said.
She held up the mug cheers-style. “This is good. Thank you.” She looked up. “It was around the fifth time Venom went in. It was just a small stay, he wasn’t even upstate, just in the county jail, but I was struggling. He’d been so busy leading up to it, he hadn’t touched me in two months, maybe three? Then he went and got arrested. I thought I was going to lose my mind.” She grimaced at me. “Sorry. This probably isn’t what you want to hear about your dad and step-mom.”
“I think I’m far, far past an ordinary relationship with anyone at this point,” I replied. “And I think my best chance for feeling better is if you tell me everything.”
“He told me to do it. Garrett did. Nico and I have known one another almost as long as I’ve known Garrett, and we’ve always had a little thing for one another. Nico wouldn’t dare even look at me, but when Garrett told him it was okay, we just sort of fell into something. It was comfortable, like being cared for by a friend. He doesn’t expect anything more from me and I don’t expect anything more from him. I really did give him the info I got from the road show, and he really did pass it on to hopefully get us a lead, but once the business was over, he poured me a glass of wine, then another, then another, and…” She waved a hand through the air. “I feel horrible. I fell asleep because with all this shit going on, the level of stress relief it provided me knocked me out. I woke up with a bad hangover, so I still had to wait a couple of hours to be okay to drive. I wanted to call, but you don’t have a cell phone.”
“Not by choice,” I said. “This is convincing me that it needs to change.”
Felicity shook her head. “You don’t want them to be able to track you in any way. Trust me, this is best.”
“Well then you at least need to write down your cell phone number so I can keep it on me,” I said. “If I’d been able to call you at least, I wouldn’t have panicked.”
“I can do that.” She took another heavy sip of her coffee. “The thing is, though your dad did tell me it’d be okay, whenever he finds out it’s happening, it kills him, so I don’t tell him. I know you love him, I do too. He’s my husband, and if the circumstances were any different, I’d never, but—”
I held up a hand. “While I don’t like the idea of lying to Venom, I understand your position. It probably makes him feel better to think that you’re being taken care of without knowing the details, so I’ll keep it to myself.”
Felicity let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Do you think differently of me now?” she asked.
“No. If anything, it just makes me more angry that this isn’t all sorted out yet. I want everyone to be able to get back to their lives. You too,” I said. “You said you gave your info over to Nico?”
“I did, and he was over the moon. He’s pretty sure that the information I got is going to be the missing link to tracking Connor down, or at least someone who has helped him recently. He’s pretty sure it may take us back to Postings though,” Felicity said. “A two-hour hike into the lion’s den. If Garrett finds out we’re doing that, he’s going to go bat shit.”
“Well, there may be another option if it comes to that,” I said. “My brother is still there, and Cherri, and their friends. Nathan is probably the only man up to the task of facing Connor head on, so if we really do get a lead that takes us back to Postings, maybe you can make contact and give them what you know. We can leave me out of it, just in case, and Nathan can follow it up on his end. When it’s all set, I can go home and explain the rest.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Felicity said. “Although, if your brother really is as smart as you say he is, he’ll probably be able to figure it out.”
I nodded my head. “Oh, there’s no question Nathan will know the second you call him that I’m with you. All we can do is continue to deny it and let him finish the job. If he thinks I’m safe and that getting the job done will make it so I can come home, he’ll do it without question.”
Felicity smiled. “You have a lot of faith in your brother.”
I let out a little snicker. “Yeah. It’s kind
of weird. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t actually know him all that well, but that one year we spent together, I loved being around him. Once I went missing, I’d call him and it felt more like having, you know, an actual brother. I put all the mess with Cherri out of my mind, because I know Connor manipulated him the most of any of us. I can’t imagine what he went through after I left. It still gives me guilt to this day.”
“I’m sure he feels guilt too,” Felicity said. “It’ll be good when this is all cleared up so you two can hug it out. You’ll need it.”
The thought of hugging Nathan made me feel awkward, but she was probably right. “Come on. Finish your coffee. I’ll get you a glass of water, and you’re going to bed.”
She laughed. “Yes, mom.”
I helped a very wobbly and hungover Felicity up to her bed and set a glass of water on her bedside table. She sat down on the bed and fell back fully clothed, and I laughed. “Don’t stay like that.”
“I won’t,” she snapped. “I’m the mom. Quit bossing me around.”
I shuffled Concrete into the room to snuggle with her while she slept and then I left the room and pulled the door closed behind me. Relief didn’t cover how I felt about knowing Felicity was okay, but if it was possible, this just raised the stakes. Every day that we didn’t catch Connor, things got worse. If we didn’t hunt him down and stop him soon, everything was going to be damaged beyond repair.
21
Cherri
I should have expected that I would struggle to sleep the night before the prison visit. I changed into my PJs, climbed into bed and turned off the lights as if I was actually going to be able to sleep, but nothing could be further from the truth. One hour passed, two, three, and I still hadn’t drifted off. All I could think about was talking to Venom and the possibility that he would be able to help me find my way back to Deon.
