Reckoning Read online

  Sharpe was skeptical; thankfully, I still had authorization from the DA’s office to be able to interrogate suspects, something that I usually tried to avoid doing unless the circumstances made it absolutely necessary. This was definitely a textbook definition of that very circumstance. “Do me a favor; when you light him up, don’t make it look bad, you feel me?”

  He called for one of the detention officers to get sirius from the holding cell. The minute he sat down in the interrogation room, he immediately got agitated. “Why am I back in here? I gave you what you wanted. What do you want to do now, torture me?”

  I walked through the door, locking eyes with him as soon as I sat down. He took one look in my eyes and instantly his demeanor changed. “Sir, please forgive me, i wasn’t aware You needed to speak with me. What questions do You have that i can answer for You?”

  “you have Me at a disadvantage; have we met before?”

  “No, Sir, we haven’t, but i have known of You for a long time, through mutual acquaintances. i have also served Lady Neferterri on occasion and Mistress Lohyna.” He looked nearly in awe of me for some reason, and I couldn’t figure out where the reverence came from. Outside of my work through the firm, I hadn’t earned much of anything to get the “rock star” treatment.

  He mentioned Lohyna’s name and the next thing I knew, I heard a knock on the window. “Excuse me a moment.”

  When I got inside the observation room, there was a concerned look on Sharpe’s face. I wasn’t sure what to think of it until he showed me paperwork and shook his head. “We just got the fax from our forensic accountants just now. Lohyna has an account that was just wired one hundred thousand over the last two days. You might have been right; he’s covering for someone, could it have been Lohyna since he’s served her before?”

  “Did it say where the transfers came from?” I wasn’t ready to bury Lohyna yet; nothing and no one were ever what they seemed. I’d learned that over the past eighteen months. “Where did the money come from? Lohyna isn’t exactly rubbing elbows with Atlanta’s high society and such.”

  A grin popped across Sharpe’s face, like he knew I would like the answer to that question. “Neal Segal.”

  I felt like I’d won the lottery. “Tell me he wasn’t that fucking sloppy? Oh, he’s so fucked. I feel like I need to be the one to arrest him.”

  “Niki is requesting an arrest warrant as we speak.” Sharpe took the paperwork back from me before he nodded in sirius’s direction. “Until we can get him in the box, there might be a need to connect the dots and make this all work. Since he’s already gushing for you more than he has for anyone else, maybe you can get him to bust this case open.”

  He had a point, and this was one of those times where I needed to use the advantage I had to do what needed to be done.

  I walked back into the room, looking straight through him with this intense expression on my face. He looked a little spooked, like he might have known I was on to something. Before I could speak one word, he started tapping his fingers on the table, avoiding eye contact the best way he could, anything but the prospect of facing me.

  “Sir, i’m scared. i thought i could go through with it, but i can’t anymore. It’s not worth it.” The flood gates were opened and I hadn’t had a chance to really even go into my shtick. “i gave the information to create Lohyna’s account to someone i thought i could trust. i was in love with her; she said that if i confessed, i would be able to qualify under the First Offender laws and maybe get a suspended sentence as long as diamante didn’t die.”

  “Who was the person you thought you could trust? Who was she?” This situation began to turn in a direction that I didn’t expect, but the wild part was that once he painted himself into a corner, it all made sense.

  He confirmed Ramesses’s suspicions with the mention of one name. “Serena Ashton.”

  Wait a damned minute? He couldn’t be talking about her, could he?

  The more I thought about it over the next few moments, the more it made sense. She was the one that he was obsessed over, she was the one who waited long enough to figure out when to even report her missing, and went through back channels to report her missing. Considering she didn’t know whom to contact, she had to be told by someone to come find me and me only.

  The look in his eyes lent themselves to the severity of the situation. If he was willing to burn her and anyone else to preserve his freedom, it could be that he was lying to cover himself, too.

  I needed more before I could be convinced. “And how do you know Serena?”

  “she used to serve Kraven at one point in time, and i met her at his house for a private party. We fell for each other that night and we were together for a while before Kraven released her from service.” sirius tried his best to wipe away tears as he began to realize how badly he’d been played. “She came to me one night after we were intimate one night, told me that she knew who replaced her, and she wanted her out of the way, badly.”

  “How do you figure into this scenario, sirius? Tell me what happened to diamante, were you the one who roughed her up?”

  “i never touched her, Sir; i swear that i didn’t. That night, Serena called me and told me where i could find diamante. When i got to where she was, she was beaten up badly. i couldn’t let her die, Sir. i picked her up and put her in my car and drove her to Emory; my sister works there, and i knew she would cover for me and try to take care of her.”

  “Who is your sister? Wait a minute, never mind, I think I already know.” My mind went back to the charge nurse who had all the clout and power when she took us to Kendyl’s room to begin with. “So, Serena had a hand in this, too, right?”

  “Yes, Sir. i thought she loved me. i can’t believe i almost gave up my freedom for her. And for what? A measly hundred grand? What was i thinking?”

  “Did you realize that you almost helped a woman kill her sister, dude?” I couldn’t resist rubbing it in. He needed to know how deep this shit went. “I mean, I get it; sometimes you think you got it figured out, especially when they tell you all the right things. You knew what you were thinking, but you weren’t ready to do hard time, were you?”

  I sat there watching as he put his head in his hands and tried his best to look like he hadn’t fallen victim to a pretty face, when the reality of his acts slapped him hard across the mouth. It was very hard not to fall victim to someone who had you wide open. If someone even tried to sound like they had never been made a fool of, they’d never been in love before.

  The fact that he was able to come to his senses and not put himself in a bad position should’ve been a prideful moment for him. It wasn’t going to be easy to recover from this, but at least he had his freedom. That’s something no one should ever give up for anyone they weren’t married to or related to, and even then I would question their sanity.

  “You thought you were in love, man. It makes fools of us all.” I rose from the table and headed for the door. “I’ll let Sharpe know that you need to be processed out. There’s no need to hold you any longer.”

  “Thank You, Sir, i really appreciate it.” The tears flowed freely as he realized that he was off the hook. He motioned for me to come over to him, leaning me close so I would be the only one to hear what he had to say. “i still have something that i think You might be able to use, in case Serena tries to pin this all on Kraven. She’s not about to get away with this like her hands weren’t dirty in all this.”

  Listening to him explain what Serena did to her sister was enough for me to vomit. All this over something so petty? And the things she did to get away with it was enough to have me steaming mad.

  She was going to pay, and she was going to pay dearly.

  I got back into the observation room, and Sharpe had some more good news for me. “Kendyl is awake, and according to the nurse we were dealing with, she wants to talk to us.”

  “Follow me, gentlemen; she’s awake and alert, which is interesting to say the least. Usually the speech pat
terns are the last to come into clarity, but she’s a strong girl.”

  We walked with Kim to Kendyl’s room, and sure enough, she was watching television and laughing at the ratchetness on the screen. I could relate; I needed something to take my mind off my troubles, too. Not that I watched nonsense like that on the regular, but it was a necessary evil, so it didn’t bother me in the slightest.

  Kim entered into the room first to introduce us to her. “Ms. Ashton, these are the gentlemen I was telling you came to see you a couple of days ago. This is Detective Sharpe and Detective Law.”

  “Hello.” She smiled at Sharpe, but she gave me a curious look of recognition. “i know You; my former Sir doesn’t like You very much. It makes this easier to do knowing that You’re helping with this case. Poetic justice, in a sense.”

  I almost wanted to laugh, but I kept my head for the sake of the conversation we were about to have with her. Sharpe shook his head; I didn’t think he realized how small the kink community was in the different cities throughout the country.

  “It would be a bit of poetic justice indeed, Ms. Ashton.” Sharpe began working through the evidence in his head to figure out what to ask first. “The first question would be if you remember what happened to you?”

  “How could i forget?” Kendyl sat up in bed for a moment, taking a sip of the juice on her tray. At first it looked like she was going to tear up as she recollected the events of that night, but the switch went off in her head and her face was expressionless. “My sister tried to kill me.”

  “Wait a minute, how did you know your sister tried to kill you?”

  “The person who was with her called her by her name, that’s how.” Kendyl looked directly at us, nearly sounding deadpan with her response. “He called her by her name, which pissed her off, to say the least. I actually played dead to keep them from beating me any more than they already had. The other guy supposedly checked my pulse and couldn’t find anything, so she told him to get rid of the body. By then, I’d blacked out. When I woke up, I was here at the hospital.”

  “Well, sounds like we have a positive ID of the real suspect.” Sharpe looked over at me, watching me shake my head. It wasn’t a complete identification; the other man she was referring to was the last piece of the puzzle. He pressed Kendyl for one last question. “Was the other man your former Sir, Kendyl?”

  “Yes, it was.” Kendyl closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to realize the depths of the treachery against her. Her eyes found me the minute she opened them. “Kraven i expected this from; His words to me one day a while back was, ‘I drop bitches, they don’t drop Me.’ i should have been more careful, should have kept my head and told someone that i was dealing with Him, but He was so insistent on being private, and at the time i was really into Him. He’s a psychopath, Sir; He needs to be put away. i should have listened to my Mistress.”

  I’m going to bury him for good. She gave me the information I needed. Conspiracy to commit attempted murder would fit nicely on Kraven’s smug ass. This couldn’t have gone any better. The only thing that was left was the big reveal to both of them when we had them brought in and arrested.

  I walked over and kissed her palm, a smile crossing my face as I got the chance to tell her the news I knew she wanted to hear. “I’ll be sure to let your Mistress know you’re here. I’m sure She’ll be thrilled to know you’re alive and well.”

  “i miss Her so much. Yes, please let Her know; i can’t wait to see Her.”

  As we headed out of the hospital, Sharpe continued to muse over what he’d witnessed. “I have a feeling that I need to learn a thing or two about this community you are a part of. I have a feeling it’s going to be an eye-opening experience, and it might help me moving forward, if we keep working these types of cases.”

  “Yeah, it might help on a lot of fronts, bruh. It just might help indeed. Now, let’s take out the trash.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Consider tonight’s series of unfortunate events a prime case of “dueling banjos.”

  This shit was so hilarious, I wouldn’t have believed it if someone sat me down and told me about it.

  I had to walk between two observation rooms to watch the drama unfold, but it was must-see drama that had to be viewed. Anything else would have been uncivilized!

  Serena was in one room being interrogated by Niki, while Kraven was in the other room being interrogated by Sharpe. Both had the evidence to put each of their respective suspects away, but it was fun to watch the two of them squirm as they each were being put through the rigors of the interview. It was times like this when I missed being in the box, the intensity of it all. The only thing I could do now was watch and enjoy the show.

  “Why in the hell am I here? I thought your people already had the suspect in custody?” I heard Kraven through the speakers, demanding to be told what was going on with him and why he was arrested. “There’s no way in hell that I could be arrested. Where’s my lawyer?”

  “He’ll be here shortly, Mr. Segal, and until he shows up, I wanted to remind you of your rights again, to make sure that you understand them before you start saying anything more.” Sharpe knew Kraven was trying to bait him; I warned him about that the minute the arrest warrants were issued. It was entertaining hearing about how he got popped at his house, and watching him squirm was the stuff of legend. “Would you like for me to read you your rights again, so we’re clear?”

  “You don’t have to do a goddamned thing for me except let me out of this room and let me go about my business.” Kraven was really animated and pissed! It was a damn shame all of that bravado would go to waste. “I swear, I’m gonna have your job by the time we’re done here.”

  The first thing Sharpe dropped on the table top was a stack of papers, which housed the information that sirius had provided for us. It was the wire transfers from Kraven’s account to Lohyna’s “new” account, not even two weeks old. He directed Kraven to read the contents of the paperwork, studying his face as the reality of the situation began to sink in.

  Gotcha, you sick son of a bitch.

  “Now that I have your attention, Mr. Segal, can you explain how you were able to open an account in your ex-wife’s name, without her consent or signature, and wire money into that account from an offshore bank account?” Sharpe wanted to laugh at how panicked Kraven looked at that moment, and I was waiting for the exact timing when Kraven would earn his scene name and turn into a turncoat against his co-conspirator.

  “Wait a minute, you got this all wrong, detective. I didn’t open this account; it was my submissive, Serena, who did this. I swear it! It was her idea to get rid of her sister after she dumped me to be with my ex.” The words came fast and heavy from Kraven, each one putting the nail in his coffin without him even realizing it. He should have waited for his lawyer; it shouldn’t have taken something so simple to make him crack. “Don’t you get it? I would never have laid a finger on heaven, even though she dumped me. Why would I even bother; I had her sister, and I have her again now.”

  “That’s not what the victim stated, sir. In fact, she’s willing to testify that you were there with her during the commission of the crime. You’re going down, sir; your best bet is to admit to it so we can at least try to find some way to get the DA’s office to grant you some leniency.”

  Sharpe was about to dig in deep, but I wanted to see what was going on with Niki and Serena. I didn’t want to miss out on the fun over there, either.

  Sure enough, by the time I got into the other observation room to pick up on the action, my girl was damn near waist-deep putting Serena away. “What sick mind does something like this to her own flesh and blood?”

  “First of all, if any of you idiots had been paying attention, you’d realize that she’s not my sister; she’s my half-sister, thanks to my father marrying that woman after my mom passed away.” Serena was as hot as Kraven was in the other room. “Secondly, I didn’t do anything to her, fuck you very much.”

  “Yea
h, that’s what you’re saying now, and I beg to differ, seriously. You’re a slick one, all right, and you had my detectives believing that you cared about her, too? I should go ahead and have aggravated assault charges pinned on you and ask for the maximum. That should have you on ice for the next twenty years or so.” Niki was using the sharp knives on her, slicing as deeply as she could. “We know your Sir was with you when you both tried to kill your sister. It’s only a matter of time before the one who sings first gets the best deal. So, do you want to be the bird that sings, or are you going to let your Sir throw you under the bus to save his own neck?”

  “My Sir would not do anything of the sort. He loves me too much to let me burn like that.” Serena seemed defiant to the very end. They deserved each other as far as I was concerned. “I already know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work; you don’t have anything to hold me here.”

  “Oh, you don’t think we do? Well, how about I show you what we don’t have and let you make the final call over what you think we do and don’t have, okay?”

  Once the evidence got dropped in her lap of what we knew, including the fact that her sister was conscious and talking, her eyes widened and she was ready to sing a different tune. “It was his idea! He was pissed about her leaving him and he knew I was still salty about being dumped for her. He said we could be together if I did this for him.”

  “So, you sold out your sister—excuse me, half-sister—for some dick? And not just any dick, some old, decrepit, shriveled-up limp shit, too.” Niki was laying it on thick, scoffing as she tried to wrap her head around the concept. “Damn, I could see if it was my Sir, as fine as he is, but all I can say is wow. He must have put it on you, girl.”

  “Oh, I get it, you’re in the scene, too, huh? I should have known by the way you move and talk that you were. Kraven is more of a man than your Sir could ever be, whoever the fuck he is. Bitches don’t leave him; he leaves bitches and moves on to the next.”