I opened the front door and there were two detectives in suits and a uniformed officer standing behind them. The detective in front was a white woman in her forties with a badge on her beltand a folder in her hand. She had the face of someone who’d done this so many times it stopped being interesting, but she was going to do it anyway because that’s what the folder said to do.
“Serenity Banks?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Morrison with the Metropolitan Police Department. We have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the murder of David Jamison, issued by the state of Connecticut. You’ll be extradited to Hartford to face charges.”
The kitchen disappeared. Rita’s voice disappeared. The entire house went silent like someone had pressed mute on my entire life. I heard the words but my brain was running them through a filter that couldn’t make sense of what was happening because David Jamison had been dead for twelve years and buried in a place nobody was supposed to find and the only people who knew what happened in that cabin were me, my mother, and Dante.
My mother.
She did this. From beyond the grave or from whatever arrangements she’d made before Quest got to her, Vivica had dropped the last bomb she had left. The receipts she kept. The insurance she’d been holding for a rainy day. She used it. She actually used it against her own daughter.
“Ma’am, I need you to turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
“I’m seven months pregnant,” I heard myself say, and my voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside my body.
“We’re aware, ma’am. We’ll make accommodations. But we need to proceed with the arrest.”
Rita was behind me now. I could hear her cane on the hardwood and feel her presence at my shoulder, and her voicecame out sharp and loud and full of a fury that could’ve peeled paint off the walls.
“You are NOT taking my grandbaby out of this house in handcuffs. She is pregnant. Do you hear me? She is PREGNANT.”
“Ma’am, please step back.”
“I will not step back. I will stand right here and I will call every lawyer in this city and I will raise holy hell until?—”
“Grandma.” My voice cracked. “Call Justice and Prime.”They put the cuffs on me in Rita's foyer with my grandmother screaming behind me and my baby kicking against my ribs like even she knew something was wrong. I looked down at my belly and my wrists and thought about the girl I was when I killed that man in that cabin twelve years ago. Fifteen, pregnant, and terrified. And here I was again. Pregnant and terrified. The only difference was this time I had people who would fight for me. I just prayed they'd get to me in time.
54
Mehar
I was asleep when it started. Head against the window, blanket pulled up to my chin, drooling on the leather seat like a woman who had zero shame about napping at 30, 000 feet because growing a human being inside your body is exhausting and I was done pretending otherwise. Quest had told me to sleep while he handled the flying and I didn’t argue because the man had been doing this for over a decade and I trusted him with my life. Literally. I was handing him my life and our baby’s life every time I got in this plane and I did it without a second thought because that’s what love looks like when it’s real. You stop calculating the risk.
We’d been in the air for about two hours. Somewhere over open ocean between the coast and whatever Caribbean island Quest had booked for us. The sun was out, the sky was clear, and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep was Quest humming something under his breath while he checked his instruments and me thinking that this was the most relaxed I’d ever seen him. No phone calls, no meetings, no security updates, no brothers needing something. Just him and the sky and his pregnant fiancée snoring in the passenger seat.
The first thing I noticed was the sound changing. Or actually the sound disappearing. The engines had this steady hum that I’d gotten used to on the Sedona trip, a constant vibration that became background noise after the first twenty minutes. That hum stuttered. Then it came back. Then it stuttered again, longer this time, and the plane shifted slightly to the left before correcting itself.
I opened my eyes and looked at Quest.
His face told me everything I needed to know before his mouth said a word. His jaw was locked, his eyes were scanning the instrument panel rapid-fire, and his hands were moving across switches and gauges with a speed that didn’t match the calm voice he used when he finally spoke.
“Peach, I need you to sit up and put your seatbelt on.”
“What’s happening?”
“Just put your seatbelt on. Tight.”
I sat up and buckled in and watched him work the controls while my brain tried to process what was going on. The instrument panel had lights I’d never seen before, red ones, flashing in clusters near the fuel gauges. Quest was tapping one of the gauges with his finger like he was hoping the reading was wrong and the glass was just stuck.
“Quest. Talk to me.”
“Fuel pressure is dropping on both engines. Simultaneously.” He said it without looking at me, his eyes locked on the gauges. “That doesn’t happen from mechanical failure. Both lines don’t lose pressure at the same time unless the problem is at the source.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means somebody tampered with the fuel system before we took off.”
