Collusion Read online

  “Is it my fault that women are always getting shot around you?” Ghost stepped back, allowing the small group to enter.

  Hunkered down behind a row of terminals sat a skeleton crew of millennial hackers. Ghost introduced them as “the fellas” to Draya.

  “Uh, nice to meet you,” she said and then looked to Abrianna like Who is this clown?

  “C’mon.” Abrianna led Draya toward the bunker’s back cot room. “I’ll fix you right up.”

  Ghost smiled as he watched them walk away.

  Arms crossed, Julian stepped forward to block Ghost’s view.

  “Oh. My bad.” Ghost looked to Kadir. “How many people are you planning to tell about this place?”

  “Chill. They’re cool,” Kadir said. “So what happened to you the other night? I thought you’d still be waiting to post bail.”

  “C’mon, playa. Am I the sort of person to give the cops my real ID?”

  “They were putting you in the back of a squad car.”

  “Some rookie busting my chops. You know how they do. Of course, I hope you got rid of the van. I had to report it stolen.”

  “Yeah. We traded that one in for another one and then filled that one with bullet holes too.”

  Ghost chuckled. “That straight and narrow path you swore that you were on isn’t looking too damn straight, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Kadir looked around and leaned in close. “What do you know about . . . telekinesis?”

  “What?”

  “You know . . .” Kadir shrugged, inched closer. “The ability to move shit with your mind. Have you ever known anyone who could—”

  “KADIR!”

  At Abrianna’s shout, Kadir and Ghost took off toward the back.

  In the cot room, Draya and Abrianna stood in front of a nine-inch TV.

  When the guys couldn’t see what the emergency was, Kadir asked, “Is everything okay?”

  Abrianna shook her head and then pointed at the news broadcast on the screen.

  “Federal Judge Katherine J. Sanders will be sworn in tomorrow as the eighteenth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, enabling President Daniel Walker to put his stamp on the court for decades to come. Sanders’s nomination had been slow walked, while the Republican Senate members waited to see whether the new speaker would pursue impeachment of the president. But with Speaker Reynolds’s death, the Senate majority leader decided to move ahead with the confirmation.”

  Abrianna stared transfixed at the image in the corner of the screen. “That’s her!”

  “That’s who?” Kadir asked.

  She pointed. “That’s the other woman from the hotel. That’s Kitty!”

  “Judge Katherine Sanders?” he thundered. “She’s the one you think framed you for murder?”

  “Yes! I’d know that face anywhere. It’s her!”

  “But why?” Kadir asked, puzzled.

  “Didn’t you hear the reporter?” Draya asked. “That speaker guy was going to impeach the president. An impeachment meant no confirmation. No Supreme Court.”

  Ghost slapped a hand across his forehead and whistled. “Holy shit. The same judge who sent you to the clink,” he said. “The new chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ha! Good luck taking her down.”

  “We’re going to need more than luck,” Kadir grumbled, ripping off his fake mustache. “We’re going to need a miracle.”

  Ghost shook his head. “Yo, dawg. That road you are on just got more crooked than a muthafucka.”

  “No shit,” Kadir hissed, staring at Judge Sanders’s image on the screen until the telecast cut to a commercial.

  Defensive, Abrianna glanced around the eclectic group and read doubt and disbelief. “You guys believe me, don’t you? I’m not making it up. She’s Kitty—the other woman at the hotel that night.”

  Draya pressed a hand against Abrianna’s shoulder. “I believe you.”

  “Yeah. I believe you, too,” Julian added, curling up only one corner of his lips. His eyes, however, avoided her gaze.

  Abrianna’s jaw hardened.

  Julian explained, “It’s just that . . . well, this is huge, Bree. The fucking chief justice of the Supreme Court? What the fuck are we going to do?”

  Abrianna’s body slumped. “I have no idea.”

  “Well. How about that?” Ghost said. “We’re all on the same page with our heads up our asses. Great!”

  Kadir cut his friend a hard look. “Chill.”

  “What? I’m stating facts. It’s a miracle that every Uncle Sam soldier isn’t pouring into this bitch and hauling our asses to jail right now. You’re wanted for bombing the damn airport, and your new chick here is wanted for killing the third most powerful man in America. Firing squads were made for terrorists like you two.” He held up a hand and added, “I’m just telling you how the media is going to spin it.”

  “And don’t forget the dead bitch we left back in the van,” Draya reminded them.

  Shut up, Abrianna mouthed.

  “Come again.” Ghost cupped his ear and leaned toward Draya. “Dead body? What dead body?” He looked to Kadir. “What the fuck is she talking about?”

  Kadir hedged.

  “Mutha—come here! Let me holler at you for a moment.” Ghost spun his boy by his shoulder and then shoved him out of the door.

  Sighing, Kadir went along. Deep down he knew that he was wrong for springing this situation on Ghost. If the roles had been reversed, he would have gone apeshit.

  Ghost hustled Kadir to the bunker’s break room and slammed the door. It took another minute to calm down and choose his words carefully. “There is no point in my asking whether you’ve lost your damn mind because I already know that since you’ve laid eyes on that suicidal stripper, you’ve completely checked the fuck out of reality.”

  “Ghost, calm—”

  “Ah, ah, ah.” Ghost held up a finger and shook his head. “You’ve lost any right to tell me to calm down. I’m not the one whose face is plastered on the news as a domestic terrorist.”

  “Hold up,” Kadir interjected. “You’re wanted by the federal authorities too for political hacking.”

  “For questioning . . . and for something that they can’t prove and, more importantly, my mug shot hasn’t debuted on a single wanted poster or news broadcast.”

  Kadir cocked his head. “Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous? Who? Me?” He waved the notion off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Kadir squinted and read the truth in his face.

  Ghost swung the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Who is the corpse?”

  Kadir sighed.

  “Please, please tell me it’s not the president of the United States.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kadir said.

  “Then who?”

  “Remember the madam we raced across town to talk to?”

  “You’re shitting me,” Ghost said. “She killed her?”

  “No. Abrianna didn’t kill her,” Kadir snapped. “We . . . sort of kidnapped her.”

  “Oh. Well. That makes more sense. What’s a little kidnapping every now and then?” Ghost shrugged with a straight face. “What the fuck, man? Snap out it!”

  “We didn’t have much of a choice since the woman cleared out of her estate. A friend of Abrianna was catering a party for the woman’s boyfriend, so her other friend, Draya, created these disguises and we crashed the joint.”

  “To kidnap the madam?” Ghost clarified, following along.

  “Right. Only . . . there was a hiccup.”

  Ghost crossed his arms. “That tends to happen when committing federal crimes.”

  Kadir glared.

  “What happened?” Ghost asked, rolling his hand, wanting to get to the end of the story.

  “Bruh, I’m still not sure. This guard showed up when we were loading the body up and I think . . .” Kadir glanced at the closed door and then crossed over to stand in front of it, to make sure that no one ente
red. He lowered his voice. “I think . . . Abrianna threw this four-hundred-pound guy up against the side of the house—without laying a finger on him.”

  Ghost stared.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Kadir tossed up his hands. “I don’t blame you. If I hadn’t seen the shit for myself I wouldn’t believe it either, but . . . there’s no other explanation. I saw what I saw.”

  “Catering?”

  “Yeah. We—”

  “Never mind. Finish the story.”

  “Like I was saying. The guy startled us, and when he approached the van to see for himself what we were doing, Draya slammed the van door into his face and his gun went off.”

  “So that’s how she got shot?”

  “Right. But when the gun went off”—Kadir voice went even lower—“Abrianna screamed and . . . this huge guy flew backwards. I mean literally up in the air and slammed into the side of the house, knocking him out cold. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Silence.

  Kadir’s hands fell to his sides. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Believe what? That your hooker girlfriend out there has super powers? Sure. Of course, I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Kadir’s gaze leveled on his friend. “I’m not bullshitting you, man.”

  Ghost evaluated Kadir and then took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “Okay? So you believe me?” Kadir checked, surprised.

  “I believe that you believe what you thought you saw.”

  Kadir ran that sentence back through his head. “But . . . you don’t believe it happened?”

  “Is it important that I believe it? Does it change anything?”

  Kadir sighed. “I guess not.”

  A few minutes later, they returned to the cot room where the group waited.

  “I’m not crazy,” Abrianna Parker insisted.

  Ghost folded his meaty arms while his black gaze centered on her. “I’ve only known you for a few days; I hope you don’t take offense but I personally think you’re batshit crazy and I don’t want anything more to do with this nonsense.” His lethal gaze sliced toward Kadir. “Look, bruh. We go way back, but this mess right here? I want no part of it.”

  Kadir squared his shoulders at the curt tone. Emotions warred across his face and, despite his own visible doubt, he defended Abrianna. “Why don’t we hear her out?”

  “Hear her out? She just said that the new chief justice of the Supreme Court—and your mortal enemy, I may add—murdered the House speaker of the U.S. Congress, the second man in line to the presidency. Do you know how fucking crazy that shit sounds?”

  “No crazier than half the conspiracy theories that you’ve entertained over the years. All of which has you huddled down here in this underground bunker, hiding from the feds in the first place. Is what she saying really that hard to believe?”

  Ghost opened his mouth but words never tumbled out.

  Kadir arched a brow and cocked his head.

  Ghost closed his mouth and then speared Abrianna with a look. “What happened to the madam? Wasn’t she supposedly behind the conspiracy theory when y’all left here the last time? Who is it going to be next? The president?”

  “Hey!” Kadir shoved Ghost, sending him careening into the nearest wall.

  “Yo, dude!”

  “Watch it,” Kadir warned.

  Julian crowded behind Kadir, ready to tag into the fight.

  Tension layered the room while everyone else held their breaths.

  Ghost backed down. “All right, man. My bad.” He clamped his mouth shut.

  Kadir glanced back over at Abrianna. “Please. Continue.”

  Abrianna battled her pride to get the rest of her story out. “Look, you guys already know the rest. It was my first night as an escort working for Madam Nevaeh. That woman showed up and introduced herself as Kitty. My john was happy when she arrived. They knew each other. We . . . partied . . . and when I woke up my client was missing part of his head and that Kitty bitch was nowhere to be found. I got out of there, but then gunmen showed up at my apartment. My best friend Shawn, who’s still laid up in the hospital right now, took a hit, but I kept running until I jumped into your car, Kadir.”

  “Where they shot up my car and I brought you here the last time,” Kadir finished the story for her.

  “Right.” She huffed. “Now. What are we going to do?”

  Everyone’s eyeballs ping-ponged around the room again. Clearly, none of them had a clue to what to do next.

  Ghost sighed.

  “Great,” Ghost moaned.

  Their gazes shifted around the room again.

  Roger, one of Ghost’s hackers, cleared his throat and drew everyone’s attention.

  Ghost’s brows climbed to the center of his forehead. “You got something to say? Speak up.”

  Nervous, Roger cleared his throat. “Well . . . I take it that the media received the image of Abrianna from the Hay-Adams Hotel security surveillance.”

  Ghost shrugged. “Yeah, and?”

  “Then Kitty, er, Judge Sanders should be on surveillance, too,” Abrianna said, grinning.

  Roger smiled. “Exactly.”

  Hope, the last emotion in Pandora’s box, filled the room.

  “But how are we going to get our hands on their surveillance footage?” Draya asked.

  Kadir’s handsome grin stretched. “How else? We hack.”

  However, hacking the luxury hotel turned out to be a more difficult job. Ghost and Kadir ascertained that it would require physical access to the hotel’s security server.

  “How are we going to manage to do that?” Abrianna asked.

  “My guess is that someone is going to have to pose as an employee and break into their security department. Once in there, upload a custom malware to give us access to their digital files.”

  “That sounds simple, which means it’s anything but,” Abrianna said.

  Ghost smiled. “Smart girl. I’d imagine posing as an employee would be difficult. Something as small staffed as a hotel, everyone would know everybody. Don’t you think?”

  “Well, it’s a pretty big hotel with shops and restaurants—but getting near security . . .” Abrianna shook her head.

  “Right.”

  Julian spoke up. “What if someone was applying for a job?” He had everyone’s attention and continued, “I worked security once at a hotel, and our security department was near the human resources office. New hires passed by our department every day.”

  Ghost and Kadir smiled. “You’re hired.”

  Julian blinked. “Me?”

  “Yep. You’re not on anybody’s radar. And you have the expertise to get in the door.” Kadir slapped Julian on the back. “First thing tomorrow you’re applying for a job.”

  Julian looked sick.

  3

  The morgue

  Zeke stood over Madam Nevaeh’s dead body lying on a cold slab in the city’s morgue. Rage boiled inside of him while he ground his back molars almost to dust. He didn’t believe for a second that Tanya a.k.a. Madam Nevaeh carjacked the caterer’s van and plowed through a pair of police cars during a shoot-out. That story didn’t make sense. But one thing was for sure, he was going to get to the bottom of it.

  “Sir? Is it her?” the morgue’s technician asked.

  Zeke gave a single nod and then watched as Tanya’s beautiful face was covered up with a single white sheet. He lingered an extra second, making sure that his emotions were suppressed deep into his gut before sliding on his shades and exiting the morgue. In the hallway, his new pair of henchmen, Defoe and Spider, fell in step behind him while he marched out into the night and toward a waiting black Escalade.

  “Where to next, boss?” the driver asked.

  “Home.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  The doors slammed shut after everyone had piled inside. In the next second, they pulled away from the curb. Stone buildings, one after another, zipped past his line of vision withou
t him really seeing them. He had one hell of a mess to clean up after last night’s raid. No doubt that overreaching bullshit had scared many of his friends on K Street and the military complex from wanting to do business with him. He had to figure out some way to set it right. Then there was Castillo’s smug ass. He’d long thought that police bitch was out of his hair, but clearly her pillow talk with police chief Holder meant that she would forever be a pain in his side. Plus, Tanya had told him about her showing up at her crib, asking a lot of question about Abrianna Parker.

  He sighed. Abrianna was another loose string floating in the wind that Zeke had to deal with. He had already taken care of her ex-boyfriend Moses. Really, putting a bullet in that shady muthafucka’s head was doing them both a favor. It was because of Moses that Zeke had been able to con Abrianna into thinking that she was in debt to him for eighty grand. She had more than that saved in a safe deposit box at the bank, but her shady-ass boyfriend stole that shit from her, too. Of course, now she didn’t know that Zeke had her money. Instead Zeke farmed her out to work off the debt with Madam Nevaeh.

  That shit was a big mistake. On the first night on the job, the bitch killed her client. It wasn’t just any client, either. He was the third most powerful man in D.C. To clear up the mess before she could lead the authorities back to his and Tanya’s doorstep, he sent his goons Roach and Gunner to her apartment to wipe her out. They critically wounded her friend but somehow Abrianna escaped and linked up with some terrorist muthafucka who blew up the goddamn airport.

  Now Nevaeh was dead.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. And more shit.

  Arriving back at his estate, he was disgusted at the sight of the night’s abandoned party. It was one more damn thing on his damn plate.

  Zeke stormed through the front door and marched straight to his study. There, he slammed the door and whipped off his shades and peeled off his jacket. After tossing them onto a chair, he loosened the top buttons of his shirt and paced for a good five minutes, trying to think about what his next move should be.

  One thing he wasn’t worried about was the trafficking charges. Those would disappear out of the system with a single phone call. At least he was pretty sure about that. Should he get on the phone and start an apology tour or . . . his gaze zoomed to the hidden door on the other side of the room. He strolled over and pressed a panel that made a portion of the wall slide open. Inside was a wall of security monitors that covered every inch of his house. He took a seat and pulled up the recorded images from last night. With so many people, he didn’t know what exactly he should focus on first. He settled on going back to the time he’d made his toast from the second-floor balcony. From there, he followed himself out into the backyard, where he’d last seen Tanya. Her displeasure with him was written on her face and in her body language. He couldn’t hear her words but he remembered them by heart.