“I have my ways.” I leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Sit down, Mekhi. We need to talk.”
He stood there for a second trying to read me. I could see his brain working, trying to figure out if this was a friendly pop-up or something else. I kept my face relaxed. Warm, even. Let him get comfortable.
He dropped his bag by the door and sat in the chair across from me. His own guest chair in his own office. I know he felt the disrespect. I wanted him to.
“How you been, man?” I asked. “It’s been a minute.”
“I been aight. Business is picking up. Freetown’s expanding into…” He trailed off, studying my face again. “What’s going on, Quest?”
“You ain’t come see Aziza yet. She’s doing better. Off the ventilator. Getting stronger every day. Mehar’s barely left the NICU since we brought her in.”
“That’s good to hear, man. I’m glad she’s pulling through.”
“Yeah. It was real scary for a while though. She was born premature because her mama was stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere. Weeks of living on a deserted island because somebody caused our plane to crash and left us out there to die.” I paused. “But you knew that, Mekhi?”
His jaw tightened but he didn’t say a word. It got real quiet in that office.
“So let me ask you something.” I sat forward and folded my hands on his desk. “Did you know your brother was working with the Rios cartel?”
“What?” He shook his head quick. “Nah, man. I don’t even know what you talking about.”
I chuckled. It was a low, tired sound. “Mekhi. Come on now. We was like family. Don’t insult me.”
“I’m serious, Quest. I don’t know anything about?—”
“My real family is in the NICU because of what your brother did.” My voice dropped but I didn’t raise it. I didn’t need to. “Now I’m gonna ask you one more time and I really need you to think about your answer. Did you find out before I went down into that ocean, or after?”
He stared at me. I stared back. The AC hummed above us. Traffic moved on the street above us like the world was still spinning at its regular speed. But inside this basement office, everything had stopped.
“I already know the truth, Mekhi. I know about Zephyr. I know about Janelle. And I know you set them up in that little brown house on Burkhardt Lane in Durham, the one with the chain link fence and the broken porch light.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. It was small but I caught it. It was the moment he realized this wasn’t a conversation. It was a sentencing.
“How long did you know?” I asked.
He swallowed hard. “I didn’t know about the cartel shit. I swear to God, Quest. Zeph came to me after everything went down and said he was in trouble. Said some people were after him. He’s my brother. What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to call me.”
“And let you kill him?”
“He tried to kill ME.” I let that sit for a second. “He tried to kill my fiancé. My unborn daughter almost died because of what he set in motion. And you hid him.” I shook my head.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
Mekhi sat there rubbing his hands together with his leg bouncing. He couldn’t look at me. Then he looked up with wet eyes and asked the question I’d been waiting for.
“Man, what did you do?”
I pulled out my phone, tapped the screen, and set it face up on the desk between us. The video played without sound but it didn’t need any. The brown house on Burkhardt Lane was swallowed in flames. Orange light ate through the porch, the windows, the roof. By the time the clip ended, there was nothing left but smoke and wreckage.
The light from the phone screen flickered across Mekhi’s face. I watched it hit him. His brother, his sister, that little brown house. All of it was gone.
“They’re dead,” I said quietly.
He shot to his feet so fast the chair flipped behind him. His whole body lunged toward the desk but I had the gun out of my waistband and leveled at his chest before he could clear thecorner. He froze. His hands came up slow, palms out, fingers trembling.
