“Yes.”
“Why did Vera and Cecil keep Tammie in their will?”
He sniffed back his tears. “I think it’s because she was the last one in their care and the only one they failed to help. On her deathbed, Vera asked Morgan, Kyle, and me to look after her. We still do, but I’ll be honest, I resent it. She never got clean. Since juvie, she’s been in and out of jail for a lot of things. Solicitation, shoplifting, assault.”
He paused. There were hundreds more stories about Tammie over the years. Ones the movies never quite got it right as to how bad those situations were in reality. It made confessing his true feelings hard to do, and he’d kept them bottled up for years. He suspected it was the same with his foster brothers, but none of them had dared say the words out loud until now.
“I hate her. I hate my sister for what she did to my parents and what she did to me.”
If there was a stronger word than hate, he would have used it. Loathe. Abhor. Detest. Some other description of the total disgust he felt when he dealt with Tammie. He recognized that she was a broken person, but the ugly in her made it impossible to see anything else. He didn’t have it in him to forgive his foster sister, even though he still helped her.
Sabrina kissed his neck. “We make a pair, don’t we? Both of us had sucky moms, both of us had nasty siblings, both of us are estranged from family. You let me cry it out, and now I’m letting you do the same. I vote to be done with other people’s bullshit. We’ll make our own life and family. I’ve decided it’s worth it for me to stay here and be a part of this community. It doesn’t matter about Scrap and me or Rodrigo’s shit or Tammie. I’m gonna stick.”
“Think you’ll ever be afraid of me?”
She laughed. He wasn’t expecting that reaction, and it startled him.
“Not in this lifetime, sugar. Now, let’s go home. If you want, I’ll let you be on top this time.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Jazz flexedher fingers and stretched her arms. She sat at her home computer desk, which looked like a command center in one of her favorite sci-fi movies. She’d expanded it to three monitors and customized everything with extra components that her friend and mentor, Copperpot100, told her about. The speed was off the charts and enhanced her hacking abilities to something the government might jail her for having.
“Here goes nothing,” she said under her breath as she wrapped her blue hair into a ponytail and placed her hands on the keyboard.
“Why are you whispering, babe?” Wolf’s voice boomed in the open room.
Jazz jumped with a cry. “Yah!Don’t do that!”
He laughed and came behind her to check out the windows she had open on the screens. “No one’s here but you, me, and Freya.” He nuzzled her neck. “You need to take a break?”
Don’t start something you can’t finish. Stop messing with me right now.“Don’t stop messing.”Argh!“I mean finish me now.” She rolled her eyes at her mixed-up words and took a breath to center herself. “This is important, right? Show some respect for the process.”
He chuckled and pulled up a chair. “Mind if I watch?”
“As long as you stay silent and just observe. Otherwise, go away.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
The construction workers completed their house last week, and they’d moved into the new digs as soon as the paint dried. The new design had an open floor plan with big windows and an extended deck to watch the Allegheny River flow by. Right now, Jazz wasn’t looking at anything other than the wall of computer power in front of her.
She took a sip of herbal tea from her unicorn mug and placed her fingers on the keyboard. They flew over the tiny squares in rapid motion, never stopping or faltering. Images came up on the triple screens—angles from different security cameras belonging to neighboring businesses, CCTV, and even some car dashcams. She zoomed in and out with dizzying speed, looking at reflections and shadows, license plates on cars parked on the surrounding streets where each incident took place, and even hacked into the cell videos taken during the rally. Many had been posted on social media, but nothing got the viral hits like the one showing Cam’s rescue of the child. Jazz enhanced that video until she could see the blood splatter from where Cam was shot. Then she noticed a person in the corner of the screen, filming the incident from the front angle.
“Look at that.” She pointed to the figure and zoomed in, enhancing and filling in pixels for clarity. “That woman took a video from the other side. Maybe she got a piece of the back part, where the shooter was on top of that building.”
Wolf perked up at that. “Can you find that video?”
Jazz continued to type as she searched. “I have to identify her first. I have a facial recognition program that should find—there. She’s employed by Marty’s Sweets over in Cannonsburg.Ooh, lookie! She entered the Date Knight contest with a hundred tickets. Looks like she won Melter.”
“The video, babe. Can you find the video?”
“I’m getting into her phone to see. This one has a tough firewall, but I’ll find the chink in the armor.”
Wolf raised an eyebrow at the contents of the computer screens. “I’m impressed and a little scared of you right now.”
Jazz grinned and took another sip of tea as the woman’s phone information loaded. “As long as I never have a reason to do a deep dive on you, you’re safe.”
