Page 24 of All Out of Love

Grayson stared at the commissioner. Most in his circles were elitist. Even he would probably be classified that way because it was the only circles he knew. But he’d never known Ollie to be racist. Yet he was beginning to sound like one. But needed the asshole’s help. “Where is she?” he asked him.

“She’s been booked already.”

“Bring her here.”

“Now come on, Grayson. You know that’s highly irregular.”

“Bring her here,” Grayson said again.

“You’re trying to get me fired? We don’t operate that way.”

“You’re the Commish. Who’s going to fire you?”

Oliver had to smile again. He had an answer for everything! He leaned over and pressed the button on the desk phone. “Bring Jameesha . . I mean,” he said as he looked at the name in the folder again. “Bring Jameesha Latoya Morgan into room eight.”

“Yes sir,” the colonel on the other end of the call said.

Oliver ended the call. “You owe me one,” Oliver said and meant it.

But Grayson didn’t respond. He made it his life’s work to owe no man anything, and that included Oliver Norman.

“So what’s the deal?” Oliver asked him.

“What do you mean? What deal?”

“What’s with you and this girl?” Then he smiled again. “I’ve never known you to be down with the swirl.”

Grayson didn’t respond. He could never understand how so many acquaintances thought they knew him so well when they didn’t know him at all.

When Oliver was reminded, by Grayson’s silence alone, that he never was the type to play along, he got down to business too. “So what exactly do you want from us? Her bail hasn’t even been set yet.”

“I don’t want bail,” said Grayson. “I want the charges dropped.”

Oliver was shocked. “Dropped? Oh come on, Grayson! It’s no longer aiding and abetting an armed robbery. Which is bad enough. But a man has been murdered! There’s no way she’s walking from that.”

Grayson looked at Oliver. He didn’t know the state of the victim. “He died?”

“He succumbed to his injuries and passed away, yes. Which means your little girlfriend is looking at a murder charge on top of everything else. There’s no way we can drop a murder charge.”

“She didn’t murder anyone.”

“How do you know that? You wasn’t in that store and I wasn’t either.”

“What about the footage from the store’s cameras?”

“There are none,” Oliver declared. “That’s why they robbed the place. They knew there weren’t any working cameras in that rathole.”

Grayson exhaled. He could only imagine how devastated Latoya was going to be when she heard the news.

And then there was a knock, the door was opened, and Toya walked in.

Grayson’s heart dropped as soon as he laid eyes on her. He could see the pain and confusion and terror all over her deep-toned, dark-brown face.

She looked at the wrong side of the room when she first walked in. Then she saw the commissioner, whom she didn’t know, and then she saw Mr. Carrington. The man she phoned. The man she was certain wasn’t going to show up because he hardly said a word to her. But there he was. Sitting in that room in his fancy dress, looking like the last place on earth he expected to be was in some dingy detention center on her behalf.

On her behalf.

That was the part that choked her up. He came on her behalf. And she couldn’t help it. She hurried to him with emotions welling up inside of her.