We sat in silence after that. I watched him work, entering numbers and being very thorough walk going through different files. At least an hour had passed of me just watching him, then his radio went off.
"We got a black BMW circling the main road," one of his guards said. "Not on the property yet but they're checking the perimeter."
Kaseem's whole body went tense. He pulled up the cameras on his computer.
I looked at the screen and my breath caught.
It was Nyla's car. They tracked my location because we all had been sharing locations for years.
"Oh my God," I said. "I promise I didn't tell them where you live. Those are my best friends. They tracked my GPS because I had been missing for days. They're looking for me."
My heart was racing. This was bad. This was really bad. The last thing I needed was for this man to think I’d set him up or brought problems to his home. In this short amount of time, I realize that him and his family valued their privacy.
"Call them. I need to hear that’s what it is. Don’t coach or coerce the conversation. Talk regular.” he said.
I did that and he watched the camera feed while I called Nyla back.
"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
"We tracked your location," Nyla said. "You were acting strange on the phone. We need to know you're OK. We're outside where your phone pinged, but I don’t see nothing but dirt roads.”
"Hang up the phone," Kaseem said through clenched teeth. "Power it off. Now."
I powered it off and he sat there scratching his head for a second. I was scared of what he was abut to do. I really did not tell them to show up here. I was pissed.
"Your friends must really love you," he said. This had taken me aback.
"They do, and we usually talk all day everyday. So this is different for them. It’s natural them to be worried.” I said.
He picked up his radio. "Go get them out that car. Take devices. Blindfold them. Bring them here.
My stomach flipped. "Wait—"
"Relax," he said, and his voice was calm. "I'm not mad. I know you got snatched without notice. People gonna look for you. That's normal." He leaned back in his chair. "GPS can't track past the outside of the compound anyway. It'll just show them they're somewhere on the land. They won't be able to find their way back here on their own. It’s good."
I watched him move through this like it was nothing. Like having my friends show up at his gates was just another situation to handle.
And he wasn't angry at me for it. That was the thing that got me. He understood.
Fifteen minutes later, his guards came back with Nyla and River in the back of a black SUV, both of them blindfolded, both of them talking a million miles an hour as we stood in the door, waiting for them to get out.
"Where is she? Where are you taking us?”Nyla was saying. "Tatti? TATTI?"
"If you hurt her I swear to God—" River started.
"Chill," Kaseem said to his guards. "Take the blindfolds off."
They did. Nyla and River blinked and looked around, trying to figure out where they were. Then their eyes landed on me and they ran toward me without thinking about where they were or who was watching.
Nyla grabbed me first, pulling me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe. "Don't scare us like that again. We thought something happened to you and we were about to be next.”
River was right behind her, hugging me, then pulling back to look at my face. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
"I'm OK," I said. "I'm really OK."
They both looked at Kaseem standing across the porch, and I watched them process what they were seeing. A man. A fine man. In what was clearly a nice house. With me.
River's eyes went wide.
