Wrong Chance (30 page)

This time Hakeem removed Jazz's sunglasses and found her eyes again. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

“Promise.”

“You got my word. Now lock the door and call my friends.” Hakeem ducked into the bathroom because there was no way he could make it to his gun safe in the bedroom.

C
hance hit the crest of the stairs with sheer determination to write on Jazz with his scalpel and to watch her suffer as she bled to death. “Never liked this hide-and-seek shit, Ms. Writer Lady,” he said, looking at the five doors lining the narrow hallway, wondering which door he would find his prize behind. “Eeny meeny miny moe. Caught an author by her toe. If she hollers, don't let her go. Eeny meeny miny…moe.” He pushed open the door he pointed at.

Hakeem stood there armed with a can of Lysol and Aspen's lighter.

Chance said, “I must admit, I'm surprised to find you home this morning, Detective.”

Hakeem sprayed the homemade torch in Chance's face, burning a layer of skin, singeing his eyebrows and mustache. Then Hakeem slammed into him like an angry elephant. The force of their backward momentum broke the oak banister, jarring the gun under Chance's shirt loose, sending it hurling down the stairs. Hakeem and Chance saw it slide to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

“Dude, don't think that makes this a fair fight.” He head-butted Hakeem, sending him backward a few feet with blood pouring out his nose, then he hit Hakeem with a flying knee to the sternum that blew the wind from his body.

Hakeem went down hard. The tight hall reeked of burnt hair.

“Ever had someone kick your ass, Detective Eubanks, and talk to you while they're doing it?” Chance grabbed Hakeem's head and rammed it into the wall.

Hakeem went down again and tried to crawl into the bathroom to regain his faculties, reclaim some sense of direction. Chance repeatedly slammed the door on Hakeem's leg. Hakeem howled each time agony jettisoned up his leg.

“I'm really disappointed, Detective,” Chance said, standing over him. “I had you pegged as a worthy opponent.” He stomped the injured leg. “If you plan on saving her, you're gonna have to take a better stand than this, dude.” He shoved Hakeem's head in the toilet. “You gotta fight really hard for what you believe in. Right now I'm not convinced you believe in much of anything.” He held Hakeem's face in the water. “Drink up.”

•  •  •

Jazz placed the phone back on the nightstand beside a picture frame that was turned face-down.

Buank. Buank. Buank. Buank.

The room was neat but smelled like it had been bottled up for ages. Posters of LeBron James and Nicki Minaj covered the walls. The bed was made as if no one ever slept in it. Among a stack of
Hip Hop Weekly
magazines and an Honor Roll plaque proudly displayed on the dresser was the biggest remote control boat Jazz had ever seen.

She heard the bumps and bangs of a violent tussle outside the door. When she heard a grown man holler like he was dying—not sure if it was Detective Hakeem Eubanks or Chance—she opened the window overlooking the roof of the sunporch.

Buank. Buank—
“What are you doing?” Jaden's nerves were shot.

“We're not sticking around to see who wins and opens that door.”

•  •  •

Hakeem had nothing left. Unconsciousness loomed in his immediate future. He coughed up water from his burning lungs as Chance dragged him from the bathroom by his injured leg into the narrow hall.

“Always liked fighting in tight spaces,” Chance said. “It makes it personal, don't you think?” Chance came down on Hakeem's leg with an elbow.

Every nerve ending in Hakeem's body sent excruciating pain throughout his body. He expressed his discomfort through his mouth.

“Which room is she hiding in? Dude, you better tell me or I'll do it again.”

“Hakeem,” someone called out.

“Drew, get out of here,” he yelled.

“I heard gunshots and Keebler's—”

“Who's this pretty thing joining our party?” Chance said as Drew reached the landing. He sprang to his feet like a cat. “And I'm diggin' the bunny-eared slippers.”

“Run, Drew. Get out of here or he'll kill you.” Hakeem tried to get to his feet. “Run, dammit.”

Chance started toward her.

“Run for what?” She raised her Glock 17 semiautomatic. “I got my permit to carry, and I told you I'm from Garden Valley.” She squeezed the trigger and stopped Chance in his tracks.

O
ne hundred and ninety-nine. That's how many days it had been since Cashmaire was in the same room with her husband. That's how many days it had been since he wished death on her. The memory of it was fresh in her mind as if it were yesterday.

There was so much pain. Her lies had surfaced and ripped the fabric of their timeless love like the windshield had ripped the skin of her face. She desperately wanted the reassurance of his compassionate blue eyes, but he refused to connect gazes. She panicked when she saw her life walking out the door, the one man who validated her existence as a woman. “Chance, wait, please. What can I do to make this right?”

All he gave her was his back. “Drop dead, you nasty nigger bitch.”

Her emotions were caught in her throat. She thought of that October day in the hospital every day since their separation, yet all she wanted him to do was hold her and tell her that everything would be all right; that all this could disappear and things could go back to the way they were when they were in love.

But none of that was possible now that Chance was sitting across from her in a police interview room dressed in county jail orange and wearing cuffs and shackles.

“You showed,” Chance said, his voice edgy. “I appreciate that, Ms. Davenport.”

“You demanded to see me.” Then: “Anything you say to me will be used against you. I advise you to have your lawyer present.”

“I know what I'm doing. Since he works for me, I insisted he take the day off.” He tilted his head toward her. “It took you two weeks to come check me out. That's disheartening. Thought my popularity was up there with the death of my buddy Osama Bin Laden. You been catching the news? Isn't that terrible what SEAL Team 6 did to him?”

“I'm a busy woman, Mr. Fox. Why am I here?”

He nodded to the surveillance camera mounted on the wall.
“Law 5: So Much Depends On Reputation. Guard It With Your Life.”

She studied his addictive blue eyes. His third-degree burns had healed nicely since the day of his arrest, and he showed no signs of discomfort from being shot in his shoulder and side. Then she contemplated the camera and all the cons a recorded conversation between them could expose. She strutted out the interview room and into an adjacent office where a smorgasbord of officers were gathered around a monitor watching Chance give them the finger.

Chance stood in front of the camera digging in his nose. “Eat this, you fuckin' pigs.” He smeared a booger on the lens and then waved. “Bye-bye, you eavesdropping shitheads.”

“Ugh.” Aspen turned up her nose. “That's nasty. He's an ornery motherfucker.”

County Prosecutor Scenario Davenport broke through the gathering and shut the monitor off.

Aspen frowned. “What in the hell do you think you're—”

“Save it, Detective Skye,” Scenario said, throwing up a hand. She then proceeded to take off the monitor's USB cord.

Hakeem struggled to hobble to the front of the crowd. He pushed through Chief Dwight Eisenhower and Detective Leonardo Scott. He winced and gritted his teeth as he maneuvered on the crutches. From the thigh down, Hakeem's leg was covered with a fiberglass
cast with six titanium screws protruding from it. Four above the knee, two below it. Eisenhower rushed to help, but Hakeem backed him off with an icy glare.

“Goddammit, Eubanks, if you won't use the wheelchair until you're better like you're supposed to, then let somebody help you.”

“I'll have a lame leg for the rest of my life, Chief. Let me live with it my way.” Then: “Ms. Davenport, we have every right to hear what—”

“I'm not trying to hear it, Eubanks. There's no law that says you do. Find somebody else's shoulder to boohoo on. This conversation is between me and him.” She heard someone question the meaning of Law Number 5 as she went to the door. “He quoted a strategic principle from Robert Greene's
The 48 Laws of POWER,”
she said, closing the door behind her.

She went into the interview room and threw the USB cord on the table.

Chance clapped. “That was an awesome performance you did playing Ms. Scenario Davenport for the camera.” His eyes shifted toward her. Nothing else moved. “So, Cashmaire, honey, how much did he pay you to ruin my life?”

A
cold chill ran through Cash. “I—” She cut herself off to swallow the aggravating lump in her throat. “Chance, I love you. Never would I intentionally set out to ruin your life.”

“Love knows nothing but the truth.” Then: “How much, Cashmaire?”

Shaking her head, clearly in the dark, she said, “I don't know what you're referring to.”

“That prick Leon.”

She saw where this was going, a road that was better left untraveled.

“He paid you to go out with me so they could sit back and laugh at us when you kissed me. How much did he sell you my life for?”

“Laugh at us?”

Sheer amusement danced in Chance's eyes. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You don't freakin' know, do you?” He giggled. “This shit gets greater with each revelation. All of them knew, Cashmaire. They all knew you were a dude on the inside. Even that long-legged cunt girlfriend of yours.”

So many thoughts penetrated her head as her husband's words found their mark. The memories played on the screen of her mind like a DVD stuck on fast forward. The voices of the starring characters in her mental production reminded her so much of Alvin and the Chipmunks. How did anyone learn of the secret she guarded
as if its exposure was a threat to national security? Until now she had never viewed it like Chance's life had been exchanged for a tangible. There was no doubt that Chance would further be offended if he knew what Leon had actually paid her. Then one distinctive memory stood out like a Sunday matinee at a dollar show.

Cash sat alone in the CSU cafeteria, high on marijuana and shunned by her peers because of her gothic style. Extrovert by nature; introvert because of shame and low self-esteem. A beautiful, tall sister dressed to the nines put her lunch tray on the table and sat down in front of Cash. The sister's hair flowed down her back like a Dark and Lovely model, just long enough to be perfect. She had the prettiest cocoa skin Cash had ever seen on a human being. Cash almost lost her breath when she looked into the woman's radiant eyes that oozed intelligence. No one had ever voluntarily sat at the same table with Cash since her enrollment and she preferred it that way. She didn't want anyone to know she even existed. Cash looked around the cafeteria hoping the marijuana didn't have her hallucinating.

The sister offered a hand, an iron grip for a woman. “Hi, I'm Jazz. I'm new here, but I was thinking we could be friends.”

“Jazz knew,” Cash whispered more to herself than to Chance.

“You got it, kiddo. She only wanted to meet you so she could write about you, lab rat you in a book.” Then: “It's eating me to know what my life and family dreams sold for.”

She turned away, not believing what she was about to say. “I did it for a nickel bag.”

“Five dollars' worth of weed?” His blond brows pinched together. “I killed my buds 'cause you wanted to smoke a couple joints?”

She wanted to justify, lie if she had to, but the words couldn't get past the lump in her throat.

He laughed. “Wifey, their blood is on your hands.”

C
hance watched as Cash slumped into the chair. Serves her right, he thought. Even if she didn't get a full dose of the venom dripping through his veins, at least she got enough of it to make her woozy.

“Family means everything,” Chance said, switching gears like an Indy 500 race car driver. “Mother sewed the theme into me from the time she squeezed me out her funky twat.” Bitterness crept into his voice. He wanted her to understand his rage. “She tightened the stitch with a curtain rod after I became numb to the extension cords and being locked in the basement for days without food and water. Brownie, my Labrador, was the only one there to comfort me while I healed from the beatings.” Then: “It sucked learning the meaning of family from Mother, but it stuck.”

She was too quiet. He could tell she was contemplating several sympathetic responses. Her eyes bounced around the interview room, then landed on him as a tear fell.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I didn't know.”

He shrugged a
don't be.
“Just comes down to what family means to you and how far you'll go to preserve your meaning, to protect your God-given rights. As I lay in that stinky cold basement, healing, I dreamed about the woman I'd marry and the children we'd have. I knew every detail of my perfect world, how we'd raise our children
to be better people than we were, how we'd teach them a progressive meaning of family. I even knew the color paint that would be in their rooms.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the table. “They conspired and took that from us. When I met you, the details were complete.” He gestured to the paper. “You should have told me the truth. We could have worked through it.”

•  •  •

Cash's fingertips stroked the truth of her lies condensed into the suicide note she'd written so long ago.