But Janita viewed Hawk, because he was Mrs. Webster’s son, as her client too. And if the client wanted her in the backseat, that was where she sat. “Yes sir,” she said as she got inside and sat on that backseat beside him.
She, in fact, sat very close beside him since he was sitting in the middle, was leaned forward, while she sat as far against the door as she could, leaned back. And Von drove them away.
They rode in silence, driving down every side street they came upon, but to all three of them it felt kind of pointless by this point. It felt like trying to find a needle in a haystack in the ocean.
After nearly an hour of this, Hawk then sat back, crossed his legs, and looked at Janita. Up close, her eyes seemed filled with so much compassion and concern. She was, in a way, as devastated by what happened as he was. She took her job to heart. She didn’t phone that shit in.
His mother, he was beginning to realize, was in good hands.
“You’re not her assistant,” he said.
Janita always wanted to correct that record. “No sir.”
“Why did my mother claim you as her assistant rather than her bodyguard?”
“Probably because she didn’t want to deal with theshe’s too young to be your bodyguardbacklash.”
She was probably right, he thought. “Did you search to see if there were any cameras at any of the businesses that surrounded that clothing store?” Hawk asked her.
“I did, yes sir. My brother and I searched every inch of the area surrounding that boutique. Oddly enough, there was only one camera and it was on the front of the building. That van was around the side of the building where there were no cameras that we could find.”
“Tell him how we searched that entire area, Neet,” Von said.
She thought she had just told him that very thing, but she knew Von was as nervous and scared as she was. “We tried to find cameras from other businesses as well,” she said, “but there were no other businesses along the route that we believe that van had taken.”
“Like they had mapped it out with precision,” said Hawk.
Janita nodded. “Yes sir.”
“What about businesses further away? Did you check those cameras? They might capture that van on its way to that boutique.”
“I tried, sir, but most of those businesses wouldn’t allow me to view their cameras. But I mentioned it to the police.”
“And?”
“Chief Donnally told me to mind my own business.”
Hawk’s jaw tightened. He knew how nasty that town could be toward people of color. The only reason he and his siblings weren’t mistreated was because the cops, and the citizens, were afraid of their father. But they knew it was aprivilege no other blacks in town enjoyed. “Take me to that boutique,” he said.
And Von, who was excited to be driving The Hawk around because his favorite singer and crush, the beautiful Kemberly, was signed to Eagle Records. “Yes sir,” he said, and took off.
But what Janita noticed as they drove to the boutique was that Hawthorne Webster continued to stare at her. It took her a minute, but when she got up the nerve, she looked at him. And even in the backseat of that car, where there was no natural light, his chocolatey brown eyes still sparkled.
But it was only when she looked at him did he ask her a question. “How old are you?”
Von immediately looked through the rearview. What did that have to do with anything? Then he wondered if Hawk Webster was interested in his sister. Could it be possible???
But Janita knew that was an impossibility. He didn’t give a damn about her. He wanted to know her age because he was still questioning her competence. “I’m twenty-eight.”
“That’s kind of young to own a security firm,” he said.
Janita looked at him. She was a bit offended. “I once heard your mother say you were nineteen when you started your record company.”
“That is true. But I deal in music and dreams. Not life and death.”
“Dreams are life and death. Especially when they don’t come true.”
Hawk thought about that young man who tried to kill him because his dreams were “kicked around.” And he knew she was right. “What did you do before you opened your security firm?”
