Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I headed into the kitchen for coffee and found Keely’s note just as my phone rang.
D
Went to CE.
LY.
<3 K
I answered it without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Dima,” one of Keely’s brothers said. “It’s Copper.”
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting at my place for over an hour for Keely to get here, and she’s nowhere in sight. Is she still asleep or something?” he asked.
I froze.
“She’s been gone for a while,” I said.
I pulled up the security app on my phone and looked at the time stamp for when the alarm was turned off.
“Over an hour ago,” I said. “She should’ve easily been there by now.”
I looked at her location next and saw that she was somewhere near downtown.
“It looks like she’s downtown, near her old work,” I said. “Like four or five blocks away.”
“She’s not answering her phone,” he said, sounding worried now. “Why would she go there?”
Why indeed.
“Let me call you back,” I said.
I called Keely and got her voicemail.
I called her again and the same thing happened.
On the fourth try, with her non-answer, I called my brother. “I need your help. You’re at your office, right?”
He was the closest, at just under ten minutes away.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
I sent him there, then started gathering my things.
I’d need my wallet, keys, and computer.
Only when I got the call from my brother to say that her phone was there, and nothing else, did I call Lev and Apollo.
Something was very, very wrong.
And the feeling in my stomach told me I didn’t have much time.
“I followed the movements from here.” He pointed at our house where the cameras had caught her getting into the car. “To here,” he said. “She gets out of the car, and there’s a man with her. The man pulls her with him to the driver’s side window, he hands the woman a stack of cash and the woman takes off.”
“I’m already looking that up,” Apollo said as he started typing away at his computer.
Lev was doing the same thing from the other end of the table, but he was focused on watching the movement of the car through traffic.
The two of them had gone from the Uber to the black SUV with paper plates, and then Chester had taken off heading toward Irving.
“Got her,” Apollo said. “Look.”
He pointed to the screen at the head of the table and we all watched as the Uber driver had picked up Chester earlier. They’d talked for a long time in front of his house, and then they’d taken off.
“Chester,” I said.
“That’s the FBI agent, right?” Chevy asked.
There were a ton of us in the conference room of Castanon Enterprises.
Chevy, Copper, Cutter, Shasha, Apollo, and several other Truth Tellers, along with a few of Shasha’s guys.
“Fast forward to now,” Apollo said as he switched to another screen.
“Is she going to a police station?” I asked.
“Sure is,” Apollo grumbled.
Shasha pulled his phone out and placed it to his ear.
He said a few words in it, and then Haze was outside as he met the terrified Uber driver.
They spoke for long moments, and all the while, Shasha listened on, his brows furrowed.
Haze brought the Uber driver inside, and then Shasha hung up his phone. “He’s taking her to his office.”
Meaning we could do what we needed to do without the cops getting in our way.
“Got them!” Lev cried out in excitement. “They’re here.”
He shot the feed to the screen that Apollo had just taken over, and side by side we watched the Fort Worth police department parking lot, and the quick shift of street cameras as we followed the SUV that Chester had led Keely to.
Keely who looked out the window and took every single thing in that she could about her location.
“Let’s go,” I said to no one and everyone.
“We’ll stay and feed you information,” Apollo said, indicating Lev and himself.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Thanks.”
The rest of us poured out of the building, heading to our vehicles that were all parked right out front.
I took off first, heading toward where I guessed they might be.
I received text updates on my watch, telling me which roads to take and when to wait.
It appeared that Chester was trying to make sure he didn’t have a tail.
I spotted the SUV in my peripheral vision and pulled off to a side building to keep him from seeing me.
The next update came moments later.
Lev:
Just pulled into a parking lot off Commerce. Big white building. Looks empty.
I parked my bike in the closest parking garage then set off on foot.
The rest of the misfit crew went to their own locations, and all of us converged on the building from different locations.
Shasha met up with me first, followed by Cutter, Copper and Chevy.
The rest stayed back, ready to lend a hand, but staying at their bikes and vehicles just in case they needed to move.