Chapter 29

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

U lysses

Hearing the commotion coming from the front of the El Diablo club house, Angel and I rush out of his office just as we reached an agreement to test the hunch, and it was little more than that. Something about the assistant pastor didn't sit right with me. For several days, probably more than I liked, I second-guessed myself about why I was reacting to him and his insistence to help as stemming from his interest in Kandie.

However, the more I removed myself from the situation and thought about it, he seemed to give off the same vibe as one of the unsubs who lurked around the crime they committed to get some type of sick satisfaction from it.

"Something about him just don't seem right," I told Angel and Xander-Rafe Leroi, Kandie's cousin that took time off from his job from the Birmingham Police Department CRT to come and help with the search as we met in Angel's office. Searching their faces, I all but begged. "Or am I on some bullshit with the way her disappearance is getting to me?"

"Nah." Xander-Rafe shook his head. "I felt like something was off with the dude from the moment he showed up the other night. He's way too animated. Then he pulled me to the side, and all but implicated you in her disappearance."

I stood back on my heels at his words.

"We'll get some guys to track him," Angel said.

"I'll do a deeper background check and see what I can come up with." Xander Rafe-LeRoi adds.

"All this sounds good, but I don't think we have that kind of time." My hand fists just as the outcry from the front sounds.

Our eyes touch briefly, all having heard Kandie's name. We rush down the hallway that spills out into the main area of the club just as Snake rounds the hallway with a naked, unconscious Kandie in his arms.

"What the fuck?" Angel and Xander-Rafe both yell, seeing Kandie draped over Snake's arms, looking as close to death as I have ever seen a person. The words that follow barely register as I stride over to the biker.

"She fainted after she said there are kids being kept at that old school that twisted ass bishop had." He hands her over to me like the precious treasure she is.

"C'mon," Angel says, turning to the rear of the hallway. I have medical equipment in the loft now that I'm not here full time anymore. He already has his phone out dialing. "Dr. Everything," he says over the line, calling Mimi by the name she's come to be known in the community. "Kandie showed up at the clubhouse. We need you to get here as soon as you can. Alright." Never breaking stride, he leads me up the back stairs to the loft apartment he has above the club. Never having been here before, I briefly notice how out of sync it is to the rural community we live in. It would be better placed in New York with all the steel and concrete. Kandie's loft still manages to hold the southern charm of our hometown.

Following him into the loft and up a floating staircase that opens up into a massive bedroom suite, I place her in the center when he says, "Here you go."

I half listen as he tells me where everything is. My eyes are glued to her sunken cheeks and the deep purple bruises under her eyes. Whoever had her this last week starved her. Her lips are chapped. All the healthy glow she normally has is gone. Her skin looks ashen and wane.

Rage eats me up. My fists clench so hard I can hear my knuckles cracking.

"Mimi will be here in a bit." I nod, not bothering to take my eyes away from her diminutive form covered in the buttercup yellow duvet that I instinctively know was a choice he made for his wife Ezekiel-Jane, who Kandie mentioned loves the color.

"I'm heading out to get those kids," he says grimly, but I'm not listening. I'm kneeling now by the side of the bed. I don't even know how I got here.

Silently he leaves, and it's just she and I. She's almost like the child I once knew in those covers looking vulnerable. How the fuck did she get back to the children's home and why would Nathaniel take her there? I'll bet my entire Shelby inheritance that smarmy motherfucker had something to do with this.

He always seemed to not be there when we got messages from the stalker. Then the other day Pastor Burrell said he wasn't the one who spread the information about Kandie's loft being vandalized but that it was the Assistant Pastor Nathaniel.

Kneeling, I take her way too cold hand in mine. I haven't prayed since the night my father died, but I do now. I pour my soul out to God, asking Him for the miracle of a second chance with this woman whom I've loved since that night I came home all those years ago. Probably since before then but I just didn't realize it. I always admired her in some way. The way she fought to save her sister then stood up for those kids, even though she faced a prison sentence until she was finally cleared.

"I should have come back for you. I never should have let what I thought you not writing me stop me. We were just kids. Just kids." Hot tears splash on our hands as I hold hers clasped in both of mine.

I've cried twice before. When my dad and mom died, not that it's anything to brag about. I know I'm fucked up. Still brutally broken sobs rack my body as relief and grief gather me close. I'm so fucking grateful she's alive. I don't know what to do. Losing her would have ended me, more than the roadside bomb that almost blew off half my face ever could.

I have no idea how long I stay kneeling at her side, begging God to bring her back to me.

"Hey, U." I look up to the somber face of Mimi our Dr. Everything as she stands just inside Angel's bedroom.

"Ahem," I clear my throat, standing to look down at her. "Hey, Mimi." She's in pink scrubs and has on those shoes doctors wear. Her hair's tied back in a neat bun. No jewelry, no make-up, but she doesn't need any of that. All the Love women are beautiful.

"Angel called and said that somehow Kandie got herself free. She was here, and I needed to get here as soon as possible to check her out. Is it okay that I have a look at her?" She's asking as a curtesy because she's already heading over to Kandie. "There's some things Santiago is bringing up in case I need them. Can you go help him so it won't take more than one trip?" She slips into the restroom and I hear water running. I know she did house visits when Angel was stabbed by Rudy so she more than knows her way around the loft. More than I do, I suspect.

Without a word of complaint, I make the two trips with Santiago for all the medical equipment Mimi felt necessary to bring with her.

"Snake said they were going to pick up some kids from the same place Kandie was being kept and they probably weren't documented," Santiago says, hefting a box filled with supplies.

We stop in the main lounge of the club. The members made it into a temporary triage center. Not knowing what condition the kids would be in, they'd set up stations under Angel's sister's Lourdes direction. As a resident being mentored by Mimi, she used to work with her when she does pop-up clinics in rural areas for underserved communities.

By the time I'm done helping with the set-up, nearly an hour has passed.

"We're good if you want to go see about Kandie," Lourdes tells me.

Trudging up the stairs, I nearly stop and turn away from the overwhelming feeling of uselessness I feel. Once again, I showed her that I couldn't be counted on. I failed her. Still, I push forward, knowing I'm not worthy.

When I enter the loft, I move like a wraith up the stairs, following the light spilling out of Angels' bedroom.

"How is she?" I ask Mimi, who is filling out a chart and checking Kandie's vitals.

"Good. She's going to be fine. Just banged up really bad. She has a couple of bruised ribs. There are contusions on her feet. Her windpipe is bruised. And her eyes have busted capillaries when someone tried to choke her to death." She looks down at the chart and makes more notes. The silence is loud between us.

"Was she sexually assaulted?" The words sound dead in my own ears.

"U," she sighs. "I already told you more than I should," she hedges.

"I'm the law. I'm the one investigating her disappearance," I manage to get out in an almost professional way. Though we both know Kandie and my relationship has been anything but professional.

"She's also the woman you love. And don't look at me like that. Everyone knows it — we been knowing it. It's the town's cutest little secret. How you and Kandie can't stand each other but can't stand to leave each other alone." She shrugs. "I know my cousin, U. She'll want to tell you what happened herself. She'll never forgive me for telling her business. But," she says when she sees me swelling up like I'm about to combust, "I didn't see any indications, though that's not necessarily saying anything. I've already given her a medical prophylactic and the necessary medications to head off any type of STDs. The main thing is she's alive and we need to be grateful for that because she fought her ass off trying to escape whoever did this and only prevailed by the grace of God and her own will." Mimi clears her throat, her eyes shining with love and pride.

She scoots out of my way as I approach Kandie's bedside again. "Couldn't have been any other way," I say, kneeling against the side of the bed again. "She knows she's all I got. She knows how much I need her. How much we all need her."

Looking at the face I want to wake up to every day for the rest of my life, I promise, "Now that I have you, I'm never letting you go."

My knees are numb by the time Angel comes back and asks me to join him, Xander-Rafe Leroi, and his lieutenants as they share news that relieves and frustrates me.

They found the kids, had them checked out, and got them to safety. It took a lot of the staff from the medical center coming to the clubhouse to work through what was left of the night to attend to the kids Nathaniel had plans to victimize. Though they'd been physically brutalized and nearly starved, he hadn't had his father's proclivities toward kids. None had been sexually assaulted.

"He's dead. Seems like it happened in the shower. Somehow, Kandie got the better of him. He had a bed spring jutting out of the mush she made of his face. She did that in what looks to be a frenzy after she managed to stab him in the throat with it."

Grunt and murmurs of satisfaction fill the room at Angel's words. Pride soars within me at the same as the rage I can barely hold on to eats me up. I should have been there. I should have never left her side for one moment, knowing this motherfucker was out there.

"He had some type of dark web livestream going that was still active by the time we got there. I got my people on it, tracking the motherfuckers down. Even called in a favor from Nikko Savalle and Hisashi Takeda to help. Both of them are genius with tech. We'll get these sick fucks. I'm tired of them thinking they can prey on me and mine and get away with it." I listen as he goes on to tell me how they found nearly three dozen kids in the subterranean cells.

"He's been a very busy boy since he came back to town. He was the bishop's son, Nathaniel Smith. Thought burned to death and buried in the collapse of the children's home," Xander-Rafe LeRoi tells us, pulling up video footage to the abandoned children's home. "This is what it looked like three years ago. Somehow, he slipped under the radar with the deed and started building on things out there. It was slow going because he didn't want people knowing what he was up to."

"You saying he did all this alone?" The skepticism bleeds through my words.

"Can't say for sure, but this is surely a case for the FBI to investigate. Those kids were brought over by Rudy's crew and have been down there ever since. The ones we could get to talk only mentioned him." Xander-Rafe LeRoi shuts down the videos. "We are doing a deep search into his financials and where he's been since he got out of the children's home. It was always assumed he was there when it went up in flames now we don't know. So much of that mystery remains for now."

All of us are tense with frustration and the implications of what more predators focused on our small community can mean.

"We will find them, root them out, and kill them all," I promise to the room at large.

"Fuck yeah."

"Damn straight."

To the man, we all agree to annihilate the threat.