Baby Momma 2 (18 page)

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 officers 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.

“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 hands 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.

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.

With Honey and Angelo in hiding I was anxious to find Keyshawn and the kids. I'd asked Jim to pick me up a new phone since I'd dropped mine, and even though he was watching the house, I was still too scared to go back to that place. I dialed Keyshawn's number.

“Michelle?” he answered, and I could hear the kids screaming for me in the background.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, it's me. They let me go. Honey fucked up and had her prints on the gun. I guess she wasn't expecting me to grab it, but combined with the footage from my home surveillance and Jim's security info to back me up they didn't have anything to tie me to the murders. I had an alibi and they had no material evidence. We even got records of Larissa's calls to Lania the day she disappeared.”

I could hear the stress in his voice. I could only think what he was going through tryin' to keep up with two kids. “I'm so sorry. I tried to keep you and the kids safe for as long as I could, Michelle. Angelo's my half brother by marriage so goin' against him would have caused major shit with the family. I had to do whatever I could to keep me safe and pray you would still make it out of there okay. I had no idea why they wanted to get to you; all I knew is Lania and Angelo's new woman had it out for you since the day we met to look at that property, and, as part of the family, I either went with them or I was automatically against them.”

I had to give Honey credit, she'd set this shit up damn near flawlessly. If I hadn't had the foresight to grab her gun after I'd knocked her unconscious there wouldn't be any reasonable doubt to stop them from pressing full double homicide charges against me.

“I wanna see my babies, Key. I miss you guys so much. Where are you?”

“Meet me at the spot where we first met. You already know Trey and Taya been missin' you something terrible. I have been too.”

I was still paranoid as hell and I called Jim to make sure I wasn't being followed before I left the hotel I was staying in. I sent someone ahead to scope out the only place I could think of that Keyshawn could have meant. After getting the all clear from Jim I rented a car and went to see my babies, all of them. As I pulled into the circular driveway I couldn't help but notice the place was just as I remembered it; not a hedge, leaf, or stone was out of place. So much of our heartache started all because of this property, and I couldn't help seeing the irony in the fact that here I was once again, right back at square one.

“Momeeeeeeee.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I knelt down to hug Trey. There was a point when I thought I'd never see my son again; looking into his bright eyes and kissing his smiling face filled me with so much joy.

“I'm so glad you made it out of all this okay.” Keyshawn walked out of the back door holding Lataya in his arms. They both had the biggest grins on their faces.

Standing, I couldn't hide anything as I walked over to kiss them both. I felt at peace and there was so much love in my heart for Keyshawn. No matter what doubts I'd ever had about him or where our relationship would go, he'd saved my children for me and I'd always owe him my undying gratitude for that.

“So what do we do now?” I looked at him still holding Lataya and tried to figure out how we could still make it out of this and salvage something from our relationship.

“We leave Florida. Angelo and Honey gonna be lyin' low for a minute. Lania's pretty much wanted right now for her connection to Larissa goin' missing. I say we see what Cali is like, or Maryland.”

I understood what he meant but I couldn't see me running from yet another situation. “I say, we like Florida, and we stay right here. You keep playin' ball for the Legends and I'll keep doing what I do. When they come for us,
if
they come for us, we'll be ready.”

“So you wanna stay right here? Right in the middle of Angelo's stompin' ground?”

“Keyshawn, what good is leaving gonna do if they'll follow us wherever we go? If Angelo gonna send men out to wherever we are? We'll be runnin' our entire lives.”

He handed me Lataya and was looking at me in disbelief, like he couldn't imagine me wanting to stay in Florida. “I can't do that shit, Michelle. I was supposed to take Honey her daughter that night and put Trey back on a plane to Virginia. They both probably want me dead. If not now then they will as soon as they've realized that I ain't do what I was s'posed to do.”

“So what are you telling me, Key?” Looking him in his eye I dared him to tell me he was gonna leave me, standing right there with my son and my daughter like we weren't shit after all we'd been through together. I couldn't see it happening. But he didn't need to tell me anything. Kissing me on my forehead, he turned and walked toward his car.

I couldn't believe this nigga was walkin' out on us like this, but I expected it. These weren't his kids, I wasn't his wife, and he had his own problems to deal with. Grabbing Trey's hand I walked into this new, cold, empty house. It was time for us to start over. No drama, no bullshit, no ghosts, and no craziness. I didn't need anyone else to help me with my kids. I could and I would do this all on my own.