“She’s gonna kick your ass,” Charlie mumbled as he headed to the door, and opening it, he went through to the parking garage with Angel.
Owen looked at me and then Cooper. “Where’s the other one?”
Will started to laugh, and I spun on my heel to go grab Charlie. As I pushed open the door, it was knocked back on my face, throwing me back. I heard Charlie grunt as he fell against it.
“Onyx!” he yelled.
Pushing with all my strength, I felt Owen and Cooper at my back. When we burst through, Charlie was unconscious on the ground, lying across the door, and a car was disappearing out of the parking lot, taking Angel with it.
“Coop!” I was already running for my car, and I looked back to see him dig the keys out of Charlie’s pocket. “Stay with that fucker!” I yelled at Owen. “No one gets near him!”
Cooper threw the keys at me, and we were chasing the car. “Find him.”
“I am,” he snarled. “Get me up to speed.”
“She got a call from a guy she went to college with, telling her about a freshman point guard. She went out to look at him. She liked what she saw. She was making the move to sign him.”
“Next right. She flip?”
“No. I took him.”
“So, the kid’s signed?” Cooper asked in confusion. “Turn left. What’s the problem? Straight through the lights.”
“It’s that Christie kid, I know it is.”
“The brother?”
“No.” I grabbed my cell and called Jer. “It’s me.”
“You got her?”
“No. I was running a check on Judd Christie’s family. It’s on my laptop in my room. Check his father.”
“Where’s the brother?”
“I don’t know, Jer, check the dad.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Talk to me,” Coop demanded. “He’s on the sixty-five.”
“Heading where?”
“Brentwood?”
“This makes no fucking sense,” I shouted as I hit the wheel.
“We’re going to get her,” he assured me. “She’s too fucking annoying for something like this to be the end of her.”
“She signed the kid. The father was in a car accident the year before. Hit-and-run. I’m pretty sure it was Judd Christie that hit him. Judd Christie did not get signed by her, he acted out, he spiraled, and he committed suicide.”
“He hit a car and didn’t know if he killed someone,” Cooper said to me in understanding. “I saw the headline. It said Carmichael was in a bad way, not sure if he’d make it. Police were looking for witnesses.”
“He wasn’t that badly injured,” I said as I glanced at him. “Where?”
“Still on sixty-five.”
“Why would they say he was worse than he was?”
“Slow news day? I dunno. Who cares? The boy sees it, panics, doesn’t think life’s worth living, boom. Gone. Almost a year later, the guy whose car he hit,hisson is signed by the very agent who rejected him.” Cooper looked at me. “That’s . . . thin.Unless it wasn’t Carmichael thatgothit, but did the hitting, and the kid was too high to know he wasn’t in the wrong.”
Jer called back. “Hey, the dad just got out of County five months ago. No money, no home, family wants nothing to do with him. He owes a lot of gambling debts.”
“Scrap what I just said, looks like we have an answer.” Cooper looked down at his tablet, checking Angel’s progress. “You know, just once,” Cooper said quietly, “I’d like it to be for good old-fashioned revenge. Fuck, even love.”
“But it’s always about the money,” I told him grimly.
“Every fucking time,” Cooper agreed.
