Page 114 of Kissed By The Trillest Thug 3

The next message was a clear still from one of the exterior cameras. The vehicle filled most of the picture, and this time the plate was visible. I enlarged it. Then another message came through.

Penelope: My dad’s security said they’re still following the car through different cameras. They don’t have an exact location yet.

I stared at the screen. It wasn’t enough to move on, but it was the first solid thing we’d had in weeks.

“Everything straight?”

I looked up, and Pops was watching me again. For half a second, the old instinct came back to tell him everything. I wanted to let him decide what came next. Then my eyes dropped to my brother sleeping against his chest before moving to Ma in the hospital bed.

“Everything is cool,” I said before locking my phone.

“I’ll come back while you get your hip checked.”

Pops nodded slowly. I could tell he still felt like something was off, but he didn’t push.

I kissed Ma on the forehead before leaving. Tahari was still sitting beside Maliah when I reached the waiting room. She had shifted in her sleep and was leaning against him now, her head on his shoulder. He had one arm around her while scrolling through his phone with the other. I sat in the chair across from him. Then I forwarded the picture. His phone vibrated. He put the phone closer to his line of sight before his eyes lifted to mine.

“They got the plate,” I said quietly.

“Anything else?”

“They are still following him on the cameras.”

He nodded once. That was all we needed to say. There was nothing left to discuss until we had somewhere to go. I leaned back while Tahari returned his attention to the picture. Maliah slept against him, completely unaware of what was happening between us. That was how I wanted it. For once, everybody didn’t need to carry the same problem. My phone vibrated again a few minutes later.

Penelope: They found the car on another camera farther down that same road. They’re checking businesses around there to see if they can follow it after that.

I read the message. Tahari glanced at me but didn’t ask what she said. I looked down the hallway toward Ma’s room. Pops was holding his newborn son and probably still trying to talk himself out of getting his hip checked. That was where I wanted him. I looked across at Tahari and saw that he had the same look that I did in his eyes. He was ready for war. The only thing that we needed was a location. And once we had it, I wasn’t going back into that room to ask Pops what we should do next.

Chapter 23

Ghost

Iknew going inside that building had been a mistake. There were too many cameras for me to convince myself otherwise. Whether anybody had paid attention to the footage yet wasn’t something I could know, but I wasn’t sticking around long enough to find out. The car I was in had to go. I left it miles away from where I’d been staying and walked away with my backpack over one shoulder. It made getting around harder, but keeping a vehicle that could now be connected to my face would’ve been worse. I had already made one careless decision. I wasn’t making another.

By the afternoon, I had a cheap prepaid phone in my hand. I hadn’t carried one since ditching the last phone with the Camry. That had been intentional. A phone made it easier to reach people, but it also made it easier for people to find me, and disappearing had mattered more. Today, I needed to reach somebody. I sat in the back of a small motel room staring at the phone while the television played low across from me. The room smelled like old cigarettes even though there was a no-smoking sign on the door, and the air conditioner rattled every few minutes like it was struggling to stay alive.

None of that bothered me. What bothered me was how long I sat there before dialing Ma.