CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Where’s Donnie?” Brent asked as he and MaKayla and Reno and Sal walked into Jenay’s office at the hotel Big Daddy gave to her to run. Sitting behind her desk, she looked at them over her half-moon reading glasses as if they were the rudest people. “And good morning to all of you too,” she said.

“Good morning, Ma,” said Brent. “We saw Donnie’s car out front. We need to talk to him.”

“About the case?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought that was resolved last night.”

“It’s something else.”

“His name came up again,” said MaKayla.

“Again?” Jenay shook her head. “Somebody’s trying to tear this family apart. I hope you realize that, Brent.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I need to talk to Donnie.”

“I haven’t seen him. If he’s here, he’s probably out front with the clerks.” Jenay picked up her phone and phoned the front desk. “Martha, come here,” she said and ended the call.

Within seconds, the front desk supervisor walked into Jenay’s office. “Good morning.” They all spoke. “You wanted to see me, ma’am?”

“Have you seen Donald around here this morning?”

“Donnie? No ma’am. He hasn’t been here or we would have seen him up front. It’s been really slow this morning, and I’ve been behind the desk since four a.m.”

“But his car’s out front,” said Reno. “Maybe he’s bumping around outside.”

“If he was here, he would have come and saw me first,” said Jenay. “I’ve been here since late last night. We had a rowdy convention we had to get back under control.”

“Then where is he?” asked MaKayla. “Because that lime-colored mustang he keeps here in town to drive around in whenever he’s back home is parked out front. That’s Donnie’s car.”

“Did you call his cell?”

“On the way over here, I called him three times,” said MaKayla. “No answer.”

“I tried to call him too,” said Reno.

Now Jenay was getting worried. She phoned Charles. When she ended that call, they all were concerned. “He told Charles he was coming over here to spend some time with me. Charles hasn’t seen him since.”

They all were worried now. “I’ll have the girls check every floor,” said Martha, and she left the office.

Jenay phoned her grounds supervisor, who had not seen Donnie either. But the maintenance supervisor said he saw Donnie park his car a couple hours ago and then he got in a van with somebody.

“A van?” asked Jenay.

“Yes ma’am,” the supervisor said over the phone.

Jenay ended that call, and Brent went to her computer.

“What are you doing now?” asked Reno.

“He’s pulling up surveillance cameras to see what they might have captured,” said MaKayla.

Everybody gathered around Brent as he pulled up the numerous cameras on site. By the time he went through most of the footage, Charles and Gemma had arrived in the office. “You found him?” he asked.

But Jenay shook her head.

“Something’s wrong,” said Charles. “He came here to see you, and you haven’t seen him at all? And his car’s out front? Something’s wrong.

“Eddie said he got in a van,” Jenay said.

“A van?”

“Here he is!” Brent said after finally seeing Donald’s mustang drive into the parking lot.

Charles, Jenay, and Gemma hurried over to the computer screen, too, as they all watched Donnie drive up, and sit in his car on his phone. And then he finally got out.

But as soon as he did, a van pulled up, blocking his car in, and a tall white guy got out of the van and started talking with Donnie. There was nothing suspicious about it on its face, but they were all looking beyond the surface. Donnie and the guy even looked under the hood of the Mustang briefly, conversing with each other the whole time. But then the man said something that changed the expression on Donnie’s face. And then Donnie, still looking diligently at the man, pulled down the hood, locked his car, and then got in the back of the van with the guy, seemingly voluntarily. And the van drove away.

“Anybody know that guy?” Reno asked.

Nobody knew him.

“It wasn’t no kidnapping,” said Reno. “Looked like he willingly went with that guy to me.”

“Not to me,” Charles said with a frown on his face, and everybody looked at him.

“What did you see, Big Daddy?” asked Reno.

“That changed expression on his face.”

“He looked like he was all into the conversation.”

Charles shook his head. “I know my children. That was fear on Don’s face. They gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He either had to go with them, or face consequences beyond that van. Look,” Charles said as he leaned over Brent and rewound that video to show his son’s changed expression. What everybody else missed, except for Charles, was how Donald’s eyes glanced to his far left. But he did it so quickly that it was easily missed. “Did you see the way his eyes cut away from that guy and looked over to his left?”

They only saw it when Charles showed it to them. “Is there a camera over in the left side from where Donald was parked, Nay?”

Jenay shook her here. “Not over in that area, no.”

“Which means they knew there was no camera over there,” said Brent. Then he fast-forwarded the camera to where his brother got in that van and the van took off.

They waited for about ten seconds and then a green-and-gray Dodge Charger appeared on camera from that far left corner of the parking lot and then followed the van. “You’re right, Pop,” Brent said. “Somebody in that car either had a gun aimed at Don, or somebody was in that car Donnie cares about, and a gun was aimed at them.”

“Rewind it again,” Charles said. “Let’s see if anybody else is in that Dodge.”

Brent rewound it as MaKayla’s phone began to ring. They couldn’t make out who it was because the tint was too deep, but they did see that a second person was on the passenger seat.

“It’s Donnie!” MaKayla exclaimed when she looked at her ringing phone’s Caller ID.

“Put it on Speaker,” Brent told her as he quickly stood up and she answered the phone on Speaker. “Donnie, where are you?”

“Tell the truth, MaKayla, or they’re going to kill me.”

Everybody stiffened. “Who’s going to kill you?”

“You have to tell them the whole truth.”

“Tell who the truth?”

“They won’t let me go until you tell it and tell it all.”

MaKayla was getting frantic now. “Tell what all? What all are you talking about, Donnie?”

Charles snatched the phone from MaKayla. “Put them on the phone, Donald,” he ordered his son.

“They won’t come to the phone. She has to tell the whole truth, Daddy, or they’ll kill me. This is not a drill! They’re serious. You gotta make her talk and get me out of here. It’s scary here. This is a scary place. Please, Daddy. She’s got to tell the whole truth or they’ll kill me.”

“Hang up!” a male’s voice yelled out in the background.

“When will you call us back?” Charles asked desperately.

“In an hour,” said the voice in the background.

“I’ll call back in an hour. But you got to tell it all, MaKayla,” Donnie said again, and then the call abruptly ended.

“Good Lord, what’s happening?” a terrified Jenay asked.

“What’s the whole truth, MaKayla?” asked an equally terrified Charles.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about! I’ve been telling the whole truth all along, Big Daddy.”

“This shit getting crazier and crazier,” said Reno.

“My boy’s life is at stake,” Charles said to his daughter-in-law. “You’ve got to tell us everything!”

“I told you everything I know!”

“Not everything,” Gemma said in that cool way she was known for, and they all looked at her.

“What do you mean?” MaKayla asked her. “I’ve told everything I know about what happened in that hotel suite the day Judge Clayton was murdered. I told everything.”

“Maybe he’s not talking about that day,” said Gemma.

An odd look appeared on MaKayla’s face. On Brent’s face too. “What do you mean?”

It was obvious Gemma didn’t want to reveal it, but Donnie was in danger. All had to be revealed. “I met with the special prosecutor this morning. The MBI turned over tapes to her that showed MaKayla and the judge spending hours together in a hotel suite the night of Peg Newton’s retirement party.”

Everyone was floored. Especially Brent. “MaKayla, is that true?”

But when MaKayla responded by saying “ It was nothing ,” the room erupted.

“ Nothing ?” asked an exacerbated Reno.

“Are you shitting me?” asked Sal.

But Brent wasn’t histrionic at all. He was staring at his wife. “It’s true?” he asked her.

“But it wasn’t what they’re making it out to be, Brent.”

Brent’s impatience was beginning to surface. “Did you or did you not go to that hotel with Judge Clayton the night of Peg’s retirement party?”

“It was nothing!”

“Did you go there?” Charles yelled out. “Did your ass go there?!”

“Yes!” MaKayla bellowed out. “I went there!”

A silence fell over the room. “I’ll be damn,” said Sal.

“Ain’t this some bull?” asked Reno.

But everyone else was just hurt and baffled. “Why didn’t you just tell us that, Kayla?” Jenay asked.

“There was nothing to tell. Nothing happened. I told you we use that suite at The Hayton to meet with informants.”

“Are you telling me it was the same suite where the judge was later found murdered?” asked an amazed Reno.

MaKayla nodded.“Yes.”

“So you went over there to meet with an informant?” Brent asked her.

“Not an informant, no.”

Now Reno was baffled. “But you just said it was set up for your office to meet with informants.”

“It was, Reno. But Judge Clayton told me about this young lady who was alleging that an ADA in my office was harassing her to the point of stalking her. So I used my digital key to let her in the suite, and we went over there to meet with her.”

“Why would a judge need to go with you to meet some nobody girl?”

Reno asked the question everybody else wanted to know too. “Because she came to him initially,” said MaKayla. “She trusted him. It was all work-related. That’s why I never brought it up.”

“Was she there when you and lover boy got there?” Reno asked her. “I’m sure I already know the answer, but give us your best shot.”

MaKayla hated to admit it because she knew how it would appear to them. But she knew she had to put it all on the line now. “No,” she said. “She left before we got there.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Watch it, Reno,” said Brent, warning him about his tone.

“So since the girl wasn’t there,” asked a skeptical Reno, “you left too, right?”

“Eventually yes.”

“You left,” said Gemma, “but according to the prosecution, you left three hours later.”

“ Three hours ?” asked Charles. “What on earth were you doing in a hotel room with that man for three hours, MaKayla?”

“Talking, Big Daddy.” MaKayla’s once bellowing voice was now deflated. “That’s all we were doing.”

“Ain’t that much talking in this world,” said Reno.

“What were you talking about?” asked Brent.

“You,” said MaKayla. “And how you left the party without saying a word to me. I was hurt when I found out you had been there.”

“And lover boy was right by your side, in a hotel room of all places, to comfort you.”

“It wasn’t like that, Reno.”

“Sure it wasn’t.” Reno was no longer Team MaKayla. He was off that island.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jenay asked again.

“There was nothing to tell.”

“Why didn’t you tell me ?” asked Brent. “Forget them. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want . . . I knew that if I . . . I knew it would look bad. I knew it could be the last straw for you.”

“You figure?” said Reno snidely.

“How could you hold that back from Brent?” asked Charles. “I’m not liking this, MaKayla. I’m very disappointed in you.”

MaKayla’s heart dropped. “Nothing happened. Nothing was ever going to happen, I promise you that, Big Daddy. I would never have allowed it.”

“You had no business being there!” Brent yelled out. “Your ass had no business being there!”

MaKayla could tell his anger wasn’t because she was in a suite with a man, but because it was going to hurt her case significantly. She could tell he was terrified for her.

“We need to focus,” said Charles. “Is this what Donnie means about telling the whole truth?”

“That’s the question,” said Gemma.

“Because why would his kidnappers care about some tryst in some hotel suite?”

“Unless it’s all about making her look bad in the eyes of the family,” said Jenay. “Whoever’s behind this is trying to tear this family apart.” Then she looked at Reno. “And it just might be working.”

They all fell into an uncomfortable silence. Until Charles frowned. “I’ll be damn.”

They all looked at him. “What, Big Daddy?” asked Sal.

“I’ll be damn.”

“What is it, Charles?” asked Jenay.

“He said scary.” Charles said.

But nobody knew what he meant.

“Donnie said where they had him captive was scary. That it was a scary place.”

“So?”

“When he and Ashley owned that gas station off the highway, he said it was so isolated out there most of the time that it was scary. He used to call it the scary place. ‘I’ll be working at the scary place tonight,’ he would tell me.”

“You think he’s out there?”

“He was dropping a clue. He was giving us a clue!” And Big Daddy no longer was talking, he was running for the exit. Brent and MaKayla were right behind him.

But Brent stopped and pulled her back. “You’re staying here,” he said to her. “And I don’t wanna hear any lip about it.” Then he looked at his cousin. “Reno, you stay here with the ladies in case there’s any sneak attacks planned for this location. Sal, you come with us.”

Reno nor Sal was accustomed to anybody ordering them around, but it seemed like a good plan to them. Sal took off with Charles and Brent, while Reno remained back with MaKayla, Jenay, and Gemma.

“I pray Donnie’s alright. I pray they’re able to get him out of there alive.” Then tears appeared in her eyes. “What have I done?” she asked, pacing and rubbing her forehead. “What have I done?”

But Jenay and Gemma went over and hugged her. “Don’t beat yourself up like that,” said Jenay. “You haven’t done anything. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Whoever’s pulling the strings are trying to tear this family apart. But over my dead body,” she said proudly.

When she said it, MaKayla and Gemma pulled back and looked at her. Jenay was, not that long ago, thought to be actually dead before the truth was revealed. And they both laughed.

But then they thought about Donnie, and their levity didn’t last.