One Safe Place (25 page)

“Meeah—”

She softly she placed her finger over his lips. “Shhh,” she cut him off. “I know you have to do what you have to do concerning this situation; I'm just asking you to be careful. I love you. Now I'm going to get some more coffee, and pray some more, giving more thanks. When I come back, tell me more about these children, my daughter's half-brother and sister.”

“Okay, baby, I'm glad I'm back here with you. Tell God thank
you for me. But there is one thing, though, I need to know right now.”

Meeah turned her head to the side, and she saw a puzzled look on Tylowe's face. “What, baby? What's wrong?”

“Don't you love me enough to smell my funky underwear?”

She slowly walked away while saying, “Baby, since the first time you left your funky drawers on the floor, I've been smelling them. That's why all this works.” She ran her hand over her ass and made sure he saw her switching as she left the room.

The rain was letting up and the wind was dying down. The skies were now light gray as Tylowe and Meeah drank another morning cup of coffee. Tylowe told the rest of the story about the kids, their great-aunt and their mother. He told her how the mother had been using the name Elnah Runway.

“Her real name is Queen Frêche. She's my sister. She is an older half-sister,” Meeah said.

Tylowe's head whipped to the point he felt a sharp pain. “Baby, I've met some of your half-sisters and brothers years ago. We have pretty reliable information that she's the daughter of a former president of Martinique.”

“Yes, you know my father had other children. I met many of them after he passed. Well, Queen was one of them. I saw her on and off during my childhood. I was told she was my second cousin by my mother and father. I always thought it odd that my father had this girl with him sometimes while we vacationed in different parts of the Caribbean. The truth is my father had an affair with her mother, who was married to President Frêche, and he raised her as his own to avoid embarrassment. Maybe he didn't care, and just loved her, period.

“My father and the president are cousins. When my father passed, Queen was at the funeral in Cuba. You know we Canadians often
go to Cuba, and that's where my father wanted his ashes to be thrown in the sea. Queen told me she thought she was my sister. The president could not have children. The man who raised her had suspicions that her father was the one who provided the seed.”

“Meeah, my head is spinning.” Tylowe saw the sweeping view from his bedroom go back to darker gray.

“My heart is ripping, Tylowe. You said this woman—my half-sister—was viciously murdered. She has a child whom you say the girl at least looks and sounds like Mia.”

“This is confusing, dear. Do you know why she would use the name Elnah Runway, since you used the same last name?” Tylowe asked.

“Simple. She, too, was married to Elliot. I told you when we met, and after you found out that Elliot was my husband, that he had done a lot of dirt. I heard rumors he had another wife before me. When I asked him he said no, but others whispered in my ear. I'm assuming it was my half-sister, Queen. It makes sense now.”

“Why?”

“When she and I met as adults in Cuba at my father's funeral, she was going by the last name Runway. As a child, the few times I was around her, she went by the name Elnah because she hated the name Queen for some reason. I could be wrong and there could be another connection, but I don't see how.”

Tylowe stared blindly out of the windows as his mind strained to comprehend. Nothing made sense, but in other ways it did. Men creating children, not knowing they had created lives they should care for. Women having children and not knowing by whom, and potentially by someone they wished it wasn't. It tore at Tylowe. He had gone ten years with a child on this earth, not knowing his sperm had created her.

“I'll be back with more coffee,” Meeah said. She went back into
the kitchen and sat at the breakfast nook, praying again while she wept.

She came back into the bedroom. From across the room she saw Tylowe sitting in a chair by the windows. He had on a blue silk smoking jacket and black silk pajama bottoms. She viewed her husband as black royalty, but right now he looked so sad. She walked over to him and handed him his coffee.

“Tylowe, I want the kids to come here. I want to do this along with you and raise them and protect them.” She dwelled on what she wanted and along with him, watched the clouds over the lake move like something was pulling them. Bits of sun peeked through. “Those kids didn't ask for any of this, and they stand a good chance to be left along the wayside with no one to love them. We have a lot to share. And we need to do this for them, and Tylowe, we need to do it for us.

“We have two grown girls, and they should be a part of this, especially Mia.” Meeah sat in the chair across from him. She placed her long brown legs in his lap. He rubbed the bottom of her feet.

“Are you sure? Every day you could be reminded of the hurtful times you had with their biological father.”

“He's a nonfactor to me. I have you. I have the kind of man who has run away the storms that evil man poured on me. No matter how many kids he fathered, I believe all kids should have a chance, no matter what country they come from or what human provided the seed.”

“Meeah, if that's what you think we should do, I'm all for it. I will say this, though. We need to know everyone you are related to, and I hope are not.”

“What, you don't want to be my cousin?” They laughed, but it was subdued.

“Meeah, we have to think beyond just giving the kids a home. It appears that someone wants these kids dead. Money sitting in foreign bank accounts to the tune of millions is slated to go to the kids when they reach a certain age. We are dealing with Elliot, we are dealing with the Russians, and we have been there before. It wasn't easy. You know it took the Canadian government and lots of lawyers to untangle us from all that many years ago.”

“The question is, is it the right thing to do?”

Tylowe stood up and lifted Meeah's hand and she stood with him. He kissed her forehead. “Yes, it's the right thing to do, and the only thing to do.”

The rest of the morning they talked about the lives coming their way, and all the things that would have to be done. There was still a great danger in all that was going on. Precautions were necessary and changes had to be made.

After the morning filtered in to the afternoon, Tylowe called Psalms and let him know a new day brought forth new revelations, terminations, and culminations.

T
he man screamed as the injection went in his back, but the sound was muffled by a rag stuffed in his mouth. Mommy Dearest would have screamed, but her vocals played defiant and she was gagged. Her face showed her true feeling—fear.

Dillard and his mother, Lilly, had terrorized Darcelle Day's future and her daughter's well-being. Now Psalms and Mintfurd were doing the same to them. The ex-husband of Darcelle had picked a fight that he would leave from with more than a black eye.

The ex-husband's mother also played her revolting part in creating the hell that had Darcelle living in confusion about her and her daughter's safety.

Anyone who had an evil thought about a child declared war with Psalms Black. This was his war now. Psalms served his righteousness as if he were a white hot poker straight out of hell, and he accepted no pleas for leniency.

Often Psalms' vengeance involved someone harming or threatening children. In thinking about a child, he'd quickly think about the hell Evita had lived in her father's house of horror.

Most people were talkers. Psalms Black was not a talker. He was a man of action. Knowing most would act as if they saw nothing if faced with civic duty, hearing people say things such as, “If someone does this, I'll cap their ass, or I'll kick someone's ass” would draw his anger.

Darcelle's ex-husband lay prone, tied down right next to his mother. As a matter of fact, Dillard and his mother, Lilly, were tied together face to face, hip to hip. Naked. Strange. The foulness of their own incest for the first time felt ugly.

“Maybe this is some old English monarchy shit, but you endanger your own daughter with this uncouthness and I'm gonna make you deal with a lifetime of pain.” Psalms' words crawled up to their ears like a rattlesnake. He paced around them as if he was about to strike with deadly force.

“So you two fuck each other…dear mommy and her birthed child, and then want to add the foulness of your sickness as a threat to a child? You threaten to blackmail the mother of your child by exposing your own sickness. And you do this for more money so you can keep living in this beautiful condo?”

Psalms looked over and nodded to Mintfurd who had another electronic device in his hand. Mintfurd, with his pretty, handsome face that never changed expression, tapped several positions on a touch pad. The ex-husband's body jerked as if he were in an electric chair, and he gurgled a sound not known to humans.

They were on the top floor of an extremely nice, but older, condo on the Southwest side of Queen Anne Hill. From the unit, there was a spectacular night view of the Puget Sound waters and downtown Seattle. It was the opposite view that Psalms had from his condos on the Northwest side of Alki Beach.

A cruise ship was coming in from Alaska; several tugboats assisted it into port. The new Ferris wheel on the pier shone blue and bright against the night sky. The top of the Space Needle glowed orange to symbolize the coming orange full moon.

Psalms walked around the place in a white lab coat, holding his white latex-gloved hands behind his back. He looked like a bodybuilder
playing a surgeon. Mintfurd was dressed the same way, but with his size, he looked like a whole church choir dressed in white.

“I want this place,” Psalms said.

Mintfurd nodded.

Darcelle's ex-husband was still screaming, but it was faint to the ear. The injection he was receiving with a needle made for a horse felt like a spinal tap with no pain killer as it went into his back. Mommy Dearest couldn't comfort her mother-fucking son. She vomited in her son's face as she finally lost control of her defiance.

She reminded Psalms of a man he and his Navy SEAL team had captured to extract some information. She had the same look of defiance despite taking the same ass-whooping that would stay with that man the rest of his life.

• • •

At midnight, Psalms had exited a black SUV, carrying what looked like a bottle of wine in a pretty red silk bag. He wore a slightly oversized fedora with a wide brim tilted downward along with round glasses. He looked to be a gentleman caller for a late-night rendezvous. It was not an altogether rare sight in Seattle, a black man coming into a nice building at night. Mintfurd had already made it possible to enter through the electronic door. He had already bypassed the security system and camera digital recording through the Internet. He downloaded footage from other nights, showing people going in the building, but now it would be time stamped at the same time Psalms entered. Mintfurd killed the feed of the back entrance and dubbed in other footage, so he could come in when Psalms opened the back door.

It wasn't super spy science; it was simple matter for today's electronic engineers. Traveling up the service elevator and down the
hall safe and sound, Mintfurd pushed a button on a control key fob and electronic magnets unlocked the door. With a dart gun in hand that could have been a hundred years old in design, Psalms entered the condo.

The TV was on a Sirius XM radio station. The Beatles' “Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club” played throughout the condo.

Psalms walked up to the man sleeping in a lounge chair on the deck. The deck was glass-enclosed, so it was warm enough to sleep with the Seattle night skyline as the last thing to see as one fell asleep. Psalms walked around him and put the gun in front of the man's face.

Something in humans alerts the subconscious and makes most aware danger in front of them. He opened his eyes and he saw death coming if he yelled. Psalms signaled to get up and come inside. Inside on the living room floor, Mintfurd had Mommy Dearest already naked and gagged, lying on a plastic painter's tarp. The Beatles music changed to the song, “Come Together.”

• • •

Twenty minutes later, Psalms had a rather long and wide hypodermic needle inserted in the man's back and Mommy Dearest had just vomited in her son's face. She couldn't take the look of pain on his face anymore, and she cried like a mooing cow. Her turn with pain was still to come.

“Here's what's going on folks. You will leave Darcelle alone. You're not even allowed to have a bad dream about her. From this moment on, you don't have a daughter and you were never married to Darcelle. You will sell this condo. My people will be in contact. All the money will go in to a trust fund for Darcelle's daughter because, as I said, you don't have a daughter anymore. You and
Mommy are filthy pieces of shit, and I'm not allowing you to smell her sweetness, and I sure as hell don't want her to think you're worthy of her child's love.

“What is happening to you, what you're feeling, in your back, is me inserting a small electronic capsule in the muscle near your spine. Now, don't worry; it's not close enough to cripple you…yet. But what do you have to worry about?” Psalms did something unusual when he was putting in work. Work was life and death. He chuckled with a sinister growl.

Mintfurd narrowed his eyes.

“What you have to worry about is that if I push a button and the pain you feel from the capsule goes into you, you will have a little explosion inside your body.

“Your life is in that capsule. If you make one false step, I will release the meningitis in your body. If you don't know, it's an infection of viruses and bacteria, or other bugs, in proximity of your spinal cord leading to your brain.