Bryce nodded once. Then he said something that I felt in my chest. “Whoever did this, I’mma kill them. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care what it costs. When we find out who put their hands on that plane, I’m handling it personally.”
I didn’t respond to that because there was nothing to respond to. He wasn’t asking for permission. He was stating a fact. And honestly, he’d have to get in line behind me and Prime because the list of people who wanted to put a bullet in whoever did this was growing by the day.
I satin Quest’s office at the casino and worked through the logic one more time.
The motorcycle was expensive. The sabotage was professional. The operator knew the property, the schedule, and the camera layout. That narrowed it to someone with significant resources, inside knowledge, and a motive strong enough to attempt murder on a pregnant woman.
Rodrigo Rios.
Quest killed his brother Mateo in his own home. Shot him in front of his wife LaLa. Then threatened LaLa’s son to ensure her silence. That was the kind of act that echoed through a family for generations, and the Rios family wasn’t a regular family. They were cartel. They had infrastructure, money, and a tradition of answering blood with blood that went back decades. If LaLa broke her silence and told Rodrigo what happened, and I had to assume she did because fear keeps people quiet only until grief gets louder, then Rodrigo had everything he needed. The motive was personal. The resources were unlimited. And the executionwas exactly what you’d expect from people who operated at that level, clean, professional, and designed to look like an accident.
Rodrigo wouldn’t have had the gate code himself. But cartel operatives didn’t need gate codes. They needed one person on the inside willing to provide access, and money had a way of finding that person. I kept coming back to who that person might be and the list made me uncomfortable because every name on it was someone I’d sat across a table from.
I was going to find Rodrigo. After I got my answers about Quest. Despite the evidence I still believed he was alive. My brother was a fighter. Hell, Mehar was a fighter. They both survived hell and in my heart, I knew they were out there waiting for us to find them.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Erika with a photo attached.
They were at Hershey Park. Dream was in the foreground on some kind of spinning ride, arms up, mouth wide open, chocolate smeared across her cheek. She looked so alive and happy. This was what I had wanted for her. This was something I didn’t have time to give her right now. Her yellow t-shirt was wrinkled and her braids were wild and she was radiating joy at a frequency that made my eyes sting.
Behind her, leaning against a fence with her arms crossed and her face arranged into an expression of profound disinterest, was Storie. Sunglasses on. Phone in hand. Looking at Hershey Park like it had personally insulted her intelligence. She was surrounded by families having the time of their lives and she looked like she’d rather be literally anywhere else on the planet.
Erika’s caption:One of them is having the best day of her life. The other one told me Hershey Park is“mid.”
I stared at that photo for a long time. My girls. Safe and fed and loved and annoyed and happy and bored in all the rightways. Dream being Dream. Storie being Storie. Monica’s parents and sisters holding them together while their father was three hundred miles away trying to hold everything else together. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be the one wiping chocolate off Dream’s face and arguing with Storie about why she should put the phone down and enjoy something for once. I wanted to be a father and nothing else, just for one day, without the casino and the investigation and the missing brother and the sister on house arrest and the suspect list and the charter plane at five AM.
I typed back:Tell Dream I love her and she better bring me back some chocolate. Take Storie’s phone and force her on a rollercoaster. Have fun!
I put the phone face down on the desk and breathed. One breath. Two. Then I opened my laptop and pulled up the charter company’s flight plan for tomorrow.
A knock on the office door pulled me out of it.
“Mr. Banks?” One of the floor managers was standing in the doorway. “There’s a woman at the front asking to speak with you. Says her name is Kacey Williams.”
I hadn’t spoken to her since Quest’s last check-in with me about the monthly payments. I didn’t have time for this right now. I had a five AM departure, a flight plan to review, and about four hours of sleep standing between me and a search mission. But turning away a woman with two kids whose father was dead because of decisions my family made wasn’t something I was built to do.
“Send her back.”
She walked in looking different from the last time I’d seen her. Not better or worse, just different. Her hair was pulled back, she had on jeans and a blouse, and there was something in her posture that was more deliberate than the exhausted, grieving woman who used to take Quest’s envelopes with shaking hands.She looked like a woman who had made a decision about something.
“Hey Justice. I appreciate you seeing me. I know it’s late.”
“You’re good. Sit down. What’s going on?”
She sat across from me and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll get straight to it because I know you’re busy. I’ve been grateful for everything y’all have done for me and the kids. The money, the funeral, covering the house for those months. Quest didn’t have to do any of that and neither do you. But I’m not trying to live off handouts forever. That’s not who I am. I’m not a lazy do-nothing bitch. I can cover my own.”
“Nobody thinks that, Kacey.”
“I know. But I think it. I’ve been sitting in that house collecting checks and feeling useless and my kids are watching me do it. Kalani asked me last week why I don’t go to work like her friend’s mom and I didn’t have an answer. I need to work, Justice. I need to do something. Even if it’s just serving tables in one of the restaurants here. I’m not too proud for that.”
I respected that. I respected it more than she knew because I understood what it took to say those words to a family that had been writing you checks. There was humility in it, but there was also steel. She wasn’t begging. She was presenting herself as someone who was ready to move forward and asking for the opportunity to prove it.
“I can make that happen. Come to the office Monday morning and we’ll sit down and figure out the best fit. We’ve got openings in the restaurant and the hospitality side. We’ll find something that works with your schedule and the kids.”
“Thank you.” She exhaled and I could see the relief settle across her face. Then she paused. “I tried calling Quest a few times to talk to him about this first but he hasn’t been answering. Is he okay?”
“He’s out of commission for a little while. I’m handling things in his absence.”
“And Mehar? She doing alright? Getting close to having that baby, right?”
