“I damn shole did,” Mace said, prompting Cannon to mug him.
Shaking her head at Cannon, Nahla stood and walked over to hug Capri.
“I did too.”
“’Bout time you showed up. We’re over here workin’, and you tryna be fashionably late and shit,” Cannon said without looking up from his laptop.
He, Nahla, and Mace had been sitting at the kitchen island for the last fifteen minutes, waiting for Capri to get there. They were about to finalize the details of Nahla’s story and put the plan he and Mace had been cooking up over the phone into action.
As Capri walked past her brother, she mushed the side of his head before taking her seat.
“Aight,” Cannon said. “It’s time to end this.”
“Where are we starting?” Capri asked, opening her laptop.
“Let’s walk through what we have from the beginning,” Cannon replied.
For about an hour, they pulled every hidden piece of the conspiracy into the light. Capri was recording the timeline, Mace verified law enforcement procedures, and Nahla primarily provided the information. Cannon was working to stitch the operational logic together, using what they already knew and what Ox told him to finalize things.
After a while, they seemed to have it all together:
Deputy Allen forged the seizure paperwork.
Sheriff Redding issued the orders for the illegal raids under the guise of public safety.
Blue Stone Holdings—which Deputy Allen’s wife runs—transferred ownership on paper.
Darius Laston, who worked asBlue Sone Holdings’accountant, funneled the money, and Ox’s company bulldozed the sites—literally destroying evidence by prepping the land for sale.
It was a large web of threats, assault, forgery, and payoffs, but they had finally tied it all together.
They all sat back in their chairs once they were done.
“Dang,” Capri said after a while. “It’s kind of unbelievable that little ole Lyle PD is capable of all this. This is so much bigger than dirty cops. It’s a full-blown RICO.”
“One they would have gotten away with if they had succeeded in intimidating my sources,” Nahla said.
“One they would have gotten away with it if you weren’t the one digging into it. Nahla, youdidthat,” Capri said, smiling at her friend.
“Thank you, sis.”
“So, now that you have all the pieces, it’s a matter of playin’ your cards right. Just publishing the story might not be enough to change what’s happenin’. We’ve gotta go bigger,” Cannon said.
Nahla frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mace spoke up then. “Cane and I were talkin’ earlier about who from the law we should involve. You could take your evidence to Jasona’s Police Department, but it’s a gamble. If we get someone connected to anyone in Lyle, it could all blow up in our faces. We need to go above local law enforcement.
“I was tellin’ Cane that I have a few contacts in the CBI. That’s who we need to give this to.”
Cannon nodded. The Chaney Bureau of Investigation was precisely the type of power they needed involved in this.
Mace continued. “My associates are real ones, and I know they’ll do right by your hard work, Nahla.”
Nahla perked up. “State-level oversight sounds like our safest bet.”
“I agree. And Nahla, you used to write for one of the biggest papers in the country,” Capri said. “Do you think they would also publish your story? I mean, people around this region of Chaney readThe Citizen’s Eye, but people all over the country read theAJC.”
Nahla nodded slowly. Cannon chuckled because he could see her wheels turning. “Yeah, I still have a great relationship with the editor-in-chief there. I’m sure they’d run the story for me. And Jai City’s paper probably would too, when they hear that it’s a state-level case. I have some people I can reach out to down there too.”
