Plausibility (27 page)

“I don’t want that, Seri,” Quill explained, sitting on the end of the bed with her head down. “I’ve never had a normal life. We’ve always lived on the radar. It’s what I know. It’s what I’m used to. Can you understand that?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Seri’s.

“I’m trying, Quill.”

“Will you help me, Seri?”

“Quill, I___,”

“You don’t have to go with me, just help me track him down. You did it once,” Quill interrupted.

“And it took me almost a year.”

“I have almost a year before I will really be 18.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“Promises about what?” Monica asked, walking in.

“That I will talk to her mom about her coming to stay with me for a week before school starts,” Seri lied.

“Whoa, I’m still not going to some fucking high school with a bunch of drama infested teenagers,” Aquilla assured them both.

“You’re a teenager, Quill,” Monica reminded her, plopping beside her.

“But, I’m more like a 25 year old teenager. Reese and Lil drive me crazy.”

Monica and Seri laughed, but knew she spoke the truth. She was way beyond her age of 17.

“Hey! Let’s smoke a joint!” Aquilla exclaimed excited.

“NO!!!” Monica and Seri both yelled at the exact same moment.

“Geesh, alright, alright, I get it.”

“Come on. We have to go sit by the fire with your family,” Monica lured the two.

“Great, are you sure we can’t smoke some of that first?”

“You stay away from weed. I think you’re allergic to it or something,” Seri teased, ruffling her hair. She felt even more compelled to be there for her now after reading her secrets. Nobody could understand Julius without reading that, let alone comprehend Quill’s feelings for him.

Aquilla liked her Aunt Kerri, and her Uncle Jake was funnier than shit. It wasn’t near as bad as she thought it was going to be. Of course, she did have Monica and Seri there for refuge too. That probably helped.

“You should go get your flute and play something for us, Kerri,” her grandpa urged.

“You play the flute?” Quill asked.

“Yeah, a little,” she replied modestly.

“She plays more than a little. She played for the New York Philharmonic for three years,” her Uncle Jake boasted.

“You did?!” Aquilla asked, excited. She would love to see the
New York Philharmonic in concert.

“Do you like orchestra?” Keri asked surprised.

“Yeah, and I love to hear the flute. Play something for us,” Quill begged.

Aquilla’s
cousin Samantha ran to her car and got the flute. Aquilla was astounded. Her Aunt was amazing. It was beautiful. Seri and Monica watched Quill get lost in the melodramatic melody. Neither of them pictured Quill to be into that sort of music, let alone the flute.

“That was beautiful,” Aquilla proclaimed when she modestly dropped the flute. “Can I see it?” Aquilla asked.

Kerri handed it over with a smile, happy that someone in her family finally appreciated the sophistication of the flute.

“May I?” she asked, dying to play. She couldn’t remember the last time she played. She missed it.

“Absolutely, do you play?” Kerri asked.

“A little,” Aquilla replied, just as unassertive as her aunt.

Aquilla brought the flute to her mouth and positioned her fingers. She closed her eyes and played, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from the movie “The Lion King.” It was breathtaking. Even Reese had tears in her eyes.

Aquilla was a little embarrassed when she blew the last long note. She hadn’t realized she had lost herself so deeply into the music.

“Aquilla, that was beautiful,” Liz exclaimed, wiping a tear.

“Thanks,” Aquilla said, handing the flute back to her Aunt Kerri.

“How did you learn to play like that?” Kerri asked.

“I had a teacher since I was seven. Have you ever heard of Randy Durban? I was taught by a nephew of his.”

“Randy Durban’s nephew taught you to play? It wasn’t Johnathan Durban, was it?”

“Yes. You know him?”

Kerri sat down with her hand over her heart. “Are you seriously telling me that Johnathan Durban taught you to play the flute?”

“Who’s
Johnathan Durban?” Reese was the one to ask.

“Oh My God!
He is the most amazing flute player in the world. I think he was even better than his uncle Randy.”

“Oh, me too
, without a doubt,” Aquilla agreed with all eyes on her and Kerri, having no idea who they were so excited about.

“How in the world did you luck out?” she wanted to know.

Aquilla shrugged her shoulders. “I was only seven. I don’t really know how my father acquired him. He taught me from the time I was seven until I was fourteen. When we moved, I had another teacher, but he wasn’t near as talented as Johnathan was.”

“I cannot believe that
Johnathan Durban was your teacher. This is crazy. That must have cost your ____ somebody a lot of money.”

“Yeah, probably,” Aquilla agreed with a sad tone. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made her miss her father and Julius. She wanted to be back there. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She would never complain about being isolated, if only she could go back.

“I’m kind of tired. I think I’m going to turn in,” she announced and walked back toward the cabin alone.

Seri showered and joined her already in bed. “Do you want to read some of Julius’s writing?” she asked, crawling into bed beside Quill.

“No. I don’t want to think about that anymore. I want you to tell me about you. Make me think about something else.”

Seri took a deep breath. She wasn’t overly excited about going down memory lane either. “What do you want to know, Quill?”

“Where did you grow up?”

“In New York.”

“Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“I had a sister, Lakota. She died seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Seri. Where you close to her?”

“Very. We were raised by my Grandma Violet.”

“Where were your parents?”

“I never knew who my father was and my mother is serving a life sentence.”

“WHY!?!” Aquilla asked, shocked. She was expecting to hear how perfect her family was.

“She was a heroin addict. I was only two and Lakota was four. She gave birth to a baby boy and dumped him in an alley, wrapped in a trash bag.”

“Oh My God, Seri, are you serious?” Quill asked, sitting up with chills running down her spine and arms.

“I am,” Seri replied sitting up too. “Want to burn one?”

“Uh…Yeah,” Quill replied.

“Lock the door, and don’t you dare tell Monica on me,” Seri demanded as she moved to her bag. She instantly regretted her decision to let Quill smoke weed. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she was enabling her. Just because she used it as an escape didn’t mean she should be teaching Quill her bad habits. She knew exactly why she did it. She thought of Quill like she thought of Monica. She didn’t see her as a 17 year old child. See saw her as a friend
, a very good friend.

“Tell me what happened next,” Aquilla requested, taking the joint from Seri.

Seri laughed. “I don’t know what happened next. I told you I was two. I don’t remember any of that. I wouldn’t remember my mother had my grandma not had pictures. We went to live with her and she raised us.”

“How old was Lakota when she died?”

“She was twenty two,” Seri answered, hitting the joint.

“I have a feeling this is the part where you are going to tell me how you got involved with the FBI,” Quill assumed.

“I had just gotten my two year degree in criminal justice and was in police academy for maybe two weeks. I knew she was messing with drugs a little. I wasn’t too worried; I didn’t think she was into anything too dangerous. It was the people she was hanging with that should have had me worried.”

“Why?” Quill asked, intrigued with Seri’s story.

“They used her to pay off a debt.”

“What do you mean?”

“The leader of the pack, Felix Lopez, he owed a bunch of money for some cocaine that had gotten seized before he had a chance to disburse it and get the money. Lakota was beautiful. I swear that girl didn’t have one flaw.”

“You’re kind of beautiful,” Quill offered, still smoking on the joint.

Seri smiled over at her. “Thanks. Anyway, Lopez didn’t have the money to pay and offered my sister in exchange for half the payment.” Seri stood and walked to the window. “They fucking gang raped her and left her for dead. The authorities didn’t give a shit. They probably thought the world was better off. They made her out to be some street walking whore. She wasn’t, Quill. She was in college to be a nurse. She just ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time.”

“And you went after them?”

Seri nodded, hiding the roach in her bag. “Monica and I, both. I continued to go to police academy and she continued to work on her phycology degree. We spent every free minute we had learning these guy’s every move. Lopez was into more shit than either of us thought, kind of the same thing your father was into. He had mass quantities of drugs being brought into New York on an almost weekly basis.”

“When we finally had enough to go to the authorities, they laughed at us and sent us on our way. I wasn’t giving up. I wanted the little fucker to pay.”

“Is that what the vengeance means on your tattoo?”

Seri nodded and sat back on the bed with her.

“Did you kill someone, Seri?”

“Lots of someone’s, Quill, and I didn’t care. I didn’t and still don’t feel one ounce of remorse for what I did. I was going to make sure they never did to another girl what they did to my sister.”

“But how did you get Lopez? Did you kill him too?”

“No. I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him ass fucked in prison for the rest of his life. It only took a little over four months to get inside his apartment. That was crazy too. The guy lived in the hood. His apartment building looked like it needed to be demolished, but when you got to his eight floor apartment, it was fucking amazing, like you walked into a different world.”

“But how did you get to him? How did you end up in his apartment? I know how those guys work, remember? I lived with two of them. They don’t do the dirty work. They have lots of little gatekeepers keeping people like you away.”

“Aquilla…You just told me I was beautiful,” Seri said, batting her eyes.

Aquilla laughed. “And you used it,” she replied with more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah, it was cheesy as hell. I couldn’t get to the guy to save my ass. I knew his every move. I knew what times, what days, where he ate, when women came and left his place. Hell, I even knew when and where his shipments were coming from, but I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t go through any of his followers, they never really got to him either, and I had already disposed of most of them.”

“I feel like I’m watching a movie. My nerves are going crazy waiting to find out how you got to Lopez.”

Seri smiled at her. She freaking loved that girl. WHY? That was the question she couldn’t answer. “One afternoon, I was on his turf, wearing
a hoody and dark sunglasses. I was leaned against a pole, pretending to be on my phone right in front of the bistro table that I knew he sat at every day. I listened as he made a call.

“
Yo, bring me some pussy later on.”

“Seven.”

“I don’t give a fuck as long as she’s hot. I don’t want no skanks.”

“He was smart. He never stayed on the phone long enough to trace a call. Monica and I were smarter, well Tina was the smart one.”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, she was another friend that wanted no part of Monica’s and my revenge. She used my laptop at a public library and got into more records and illegal shit than I’m sure anyone could. She was the one that got the call trace down to forty five seconds. That is unheard of. She’s a freaking computer genius. If anyone can split atoms, it would be Tina.”

“Does Tina work for the FBI now too?”

“Yes, behind the scenes of course.”

“Did she help find my father?”

“She did,” Seri answered truthfully, wishing for the first time that she was never involved in finding Romano Chavez.

“If you’re so good at investigating, why didn’t you know about me?”

“I couldn’t get in that house to save my ass. I didn’t know about your father’s little chattel business. You didn’t come out of that house, or if you did, I never saw you.”

“How long were you there before it all went down? How long were you watching my house?”

“I was only there a couple of week’s right before we closed in.”

“I probably never came out then. When my father was nervous about something, he wouldn’t let me leave. That was the first day I was out of the house in weeks. He thought whatever was going on had died down and let me go.”