“I know that you miss her, babe. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. This little baby isn’t even out of me yet, and allI want to do is protect him and keep him safe. But… it’s been a year.” Chaya’s words were so final.
She, like everyone else, thought that it was time that I gave up on the notion that my daughter was still alive. They wanted me to believe Harbor was gone and that all I had to look forward to was the fact that maybe her body turned up somewhere off the side of some road or buried in the fucking pines. I wasn’t ready to give up on her like that. There was more to it than anyone knew, and I didn’t trust a soul with even attempting to help me in putting the pieces to the puzzle together. I treaded a dark path, one that I had set for myself. Once I began that road to perdition, there would be no turning back. Somehow, I stupidly believed that she was still out there.
Shrugging her hands off of me, I rose to my feet and took the last of the bourbon in my mouth.
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s been ten years!” I barked back at her.
Chaya flinched from my rage. She didn’t get it. Neither she nor anybody else could fathom the battle going on inside me. I was raised by the streets, but I had tucked that shit away a long time ago for the sake of my family. I tried to do the right thing and walk the straight and narrow. Getting sucked in by people that had their own agendas, I became nothing but a pawn. Hacking wasn’t a world like selling drugs or stealing and robbing. It was all chess. Your next move always had to be you best move. Somebody remained two steps ahead, and I had to make sure I never allowed anybody too close.
“This is my fucking daughter!”
“And I am carrying your son!” Chaya raged, eyes widening as she cradled her belly with her hand. “What the fuck are we to you, Harold, hmm?” she demanded, mouth tight with anger.
I had fucked up. My eyes closed heavily. Intoxicated, with all of the events that transpired threatening to break through, I had to check myself. Slamming my glass down on the desk, Ibrought angered eyes up to hers. My buzzing phone interrupted us. Gazing at the display, I saw that it was one of my co-workers, and I shook my head while sending him to voicemail.
“I gotta get some air,” I grunted, snatching my blazer off the back of my chair and marching to my office door.
“We ain’t done here! How the fuck do you think it’s okay to just walk away from me?” Chaya was hormonal and pissed the fuck off as she trailed behind me, cussing me out all the way to the fucking door.
By that time, I was just too fucking lit to care. After stepping outside into the cloudy night, I hopped into my Mercedes G-Wagon and dialed the number in my phone back while pulling off. My wife was in the driveway throwing a real live fit as I left her in the rearview.
“What you got for me?” I asked, whipping my car down the driveway so that I could take off.
“Meet me at Starbucks on Monroe,” my ex-partner, Ohan, responded before hanging up.
When I arrived at the location, Ohan was seated outside at a table having his coffee. Scrolling in his phone, he brought his eyes up when he saw me approaching. We dapped each other up, and I took a seat across from him at the table. It was a cool afternoon, but there was still a little nip in the air lingering so I tucked my hands into the pocket of my jacket.
“What’s this about?” I cut right to the shit, and he slid a folder across the table to me.
I flipped it open, and the first image froze me up. Harbor was walking with Harmonie and their friends to the party the night she was taken. Dragging my gaze from the paper and up to Ohan, I remained silent while he stared blankly back at me.
“The fuck is this?” I demanded, flipping to the next page.
+It was a list of names. Some that should ever be mentioned again, and a few I had forgotten about.
“That’s everything that we got from that night,” Ohan expressed. “They arrived at the party around eight. Stuck around ’til about eleven thirty. Harbor left with a girlfriend, Alba. Alba told the police that she and Harbor were going back to the car to wait for her boyfriend… Lock, right?”
“That’s right,” I answered, scrolling the list of names and trying to find one that stuck out.
“This van was parked there, according to surveillance, from the time that they arrived. Nobody moved in or out of it until Harbor came out of that house,” Ohan described, piquing my interests. “I think they were waiting for her.”
“But why?” I asked the million-dollar question.
What the fuck was all of that about? Why my child? The more I asked myself that, the heavier that sinking feeling became in my stomach. Shit wasn’t adding up. I tried to look at the shit from every angle, and something told me I was missing a key point. An entire year had gone by, and I had turned up nothing.
“What the fuck does my daughter have to do with anything? Nobody ever made a ransom demand. She’s just gone. I searched her background. I know that she was doing some shit on the low to make some extra cash, but it was nothing life threatening. She switched a few test scores and fudged some progress reports for people. That was it. Hardly anything to get snatched up for,” I muttered, slamming the folder shut.
The frustration level I had was only growing.
“Walk me through that night, for you,” Ohan urged me, leaning forward and keeping his stare burning into mine.
“What?”
“You have looked at this from every angle. The one thing we never considered is that somehowyouare the reason this happened,” Ohan articulated, finger pointed at the table.
“You saying my daughter was taken because of me?” I sneered at him and also sloped forward, lowering my tone.
“Law, I ain’t blaming you. But come on,” Ohan said, his brows knitting in a thoughtful frown. “Think about this shit. We’ve done a lot of shit,” he pointed out under his breath. “Some of that shit fucked up a lot of lives. Every now and then, somebody comes from the woodwork to draw us out.”
