Between Friends (23 page)

Read Between Friends Online

Authors: D. L. Sparks

Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #General, #African American Police, #Urban Life, #Thrillers, #African American

BOOK: Between Friends
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Chapter Twenty-eight
Idalis
“Lincoln, would please put the gun down.”
I sat on the edge of the couch and watched him pace the living-room floor. I kept eyeing the hall that led to the front door, trying to psyche myself up to make a run for it, but fear had me bolted to the couch. Every time I thought about how I had taken my phone out of my pocket and put it in my purse, I wanted to shoot myself.
“You know, Idalis, this shit didn't have to go down like this.”
“I never said—”
“Let's keep it real shawty, you don't have to say shit,” he shot back. “Your actions are enough.”
His voice boomed, making me jump.
The sudden movement caused the cut on the side of my face to hurt. I reached up and touched the bruise I'd received in the truck, on the way over here. It had stopped bleeding, but it hurt like hell.
“Why are you doing this?”
He stopped his pacing and stared at me like I'd just insulted him. “You already know the answer to that, stop playin' stupid, it's startin' to get under my fuckin' skin for real.”
Anger mixed with adrenaline took over and I jumped to my feet.
“You're the one who has been acting possessed! Since we putting it out there, let's keep it real. I've been walking around on fucking eggshells ever since Trip got back in town. It's like you don't even like me and I don't even know what I did! But you want me to believe you love me? Fuck you, Linc!”
This time it was his fist that caught my jaw, sending me to the floor. I pulled myself up on the couch just in time for him to reach down and pull my hair, yanking my head backward.
I swallowed the scream in my throat.
He bent down and got in my face. “You know what? You right. I don't like you, 'cause I don't fuckin'
trust
you! You been layin' up under me, fuckin' me, plannin' this bogus-ass weddin', and you don't want this shit.”
“I just wanted us to push the date back until things settled down that's all, Linc. I never said I didn't want to marry you,” I cried.
He tossed me back onto the couch and stood there, glaring at me. Just when I thought he was gonna hit me again, his phone rang. I froze as he put it to his ear, never taking his eyes off me.
“Yeah.”
I watched as he listened to the person on the other end. He was emotionless. Nothing gave me an indication of what the conversation consisted of, one way or the other.
“He just left?” He looked at his watch. “I'll call you back.” He slid his phone back into the holster.
“Showtime.”
My eyes darted to the hallway, then back to him. He stepped into my line of sight, but I looked down at the floor, refusing to look at him.
So he stooped down. Got eye to eye with me.
“What? You gon' try to run?” He looked over his shoulder to the hallway then back to me. “Go ‘head and see how far you get.”
That's when I did look up at him. He looked like the same person, but his eyes were emotionless, like someone had flipped a switch and turned him off. Yeah, he'd always been hard and at times unemotional, but I figured that just came with the job, but now ... Now it was like he was a shell. Like he was being manipulated by remote control. His anger was replaced with malice, and he was completely out of control.
The house phone rang and both of us looked in its direction. He stood up and holstered his gun. “Let it ring.”
“I ... It's probably India. I was supposed to pick up Cameron.”
“I don't give a damn! I said, let it ring.”
He walked to the front door, then made his way back into the living-room. Before he could get back down the hall good, the phone started ringing again.
“Lincoln, please. If I don't call her, she's gonna start to worry.”
“You know, Idalis, I like how you do a playa dirty, then wanna cry like you didn't bring this shit on yourself.”
“Lincoln, we been together since college. How can you say that?”
He sat on the arm of the chair. “Man, get the fuck outta here with that. You pissed that history away a long time ago.”
“So if you've felt like this, why didn't you just leave? Why stay and make both of us miserable?”
“Because it only seemed fair.”
“Fair? What do you mean
fair?”
I stood on wobbly legs as he made his way back toward me. He got in my face; he was so close that I could see the flare of his nostrils. I could feel his breath on my face.
“Did you really think I was gonna walk away so you could run yo ass to Trip?”
I took a step back and let that bounce around in my head for a moment.
“Why would you think I would run to Trip? Lincoln, we were getting married. We have a son together.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You sure 'bout that?”
My mouth went dry and I felt light-headed. I stood with my eyes fixed on him. I wasn't sure what direction to go with this conversation. I just knew whatever direction we went in, it wasn't going to be good.
He raised his eyebrows, leaned in a little closer. “What's wrong, Idalis? Cat got your tongue?”
I sank down on the couch. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
He pulled his gun from its holster and walked over to me. My heart raced as I prepared for another blow. Instead, he crouched down in front of me and tapped me on my knee with the barrel. “Speak up. I can't hear you.”
Tears rolled down my face. I could barely find my voice. “I don't know what you're talking about, Linc.”
“So you tryin' to tell me, you don't remember fuckin' Trip the night of his pop's funeral? You really want me to believe you don't remember how you didn't know who got you pregnant, so you decided to lie all these years?”
We locked eyes.
Suddenly I couldn't breathe.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Trip
With sirens blaring, I weaved in and out of traffic, making my way downtown, almost running down some club goers who were trying to cross in the middle of Peachtree. I pulled out my phone and dialed Idalis, but I didn't get an answer.
Just as I was about to toss my phone onto the passenger seat, it vibrated against my hand. Without looking at the display, I answered.
“Spencer.”
“Trip, it's Dionne.”
She was sobbing into the phone. “What's wrong Dionne?”
“Idalis is missing.”
“What do you mean?”
Her voice faded into the background as she yelled out to someone in the club telling them that she was on the phone with me, before she came back to the conversation. “Earlier tonight Linc came by here and was acting really strange.” Her voice still shaking. “I told her not to leave. I told her to wait for me.”
“Dionne, calm down and tell me what happened?”
She took a deep breath. “He was acting strange and he wanted her to leave. She promised she wouldn't go with him. She said she was going to break up with him and go to her mom's.
“But when I came outside”—she started crying harder—“her car was outside, and she wasn't. Her keys were on the ground next to the car, and she was ... She was gone.”
Her sobs made anything else that she was trying to say to me incomprehensible.
“Dionne,” I said, trying to get her to focus on my voice. “Dionne, did she say anything else when she was there?”
“Um, no. She just kept going on and on about too much time having passed, and not being able to fix things with you.”
“Fix things with me,” I mumbled to myself. “Okay, have you tried calling her?”
“Her phone was in her purse in the car. Trip, I'm scared. Please find her.”
“Have you talked to her mom?”
“No you're the first person I called.”
I didn't want her mother having to deal with this right now, not after just burying their grandmother.
“A'ight, don't call her yet. Her mom don't need this right now. I'll call you back when I find out something.”
I disconnected the call and cut across International Boulevard. Merging onto I-75/85 south, I sped toward a house, over in Cascade.
A house that was full of secrets.
Secrets that not even I couldn't imagine.
 
I jumped off I-285 and headed down Cascade. My phone lit up on the seat next to me and I snatched it up.
“Spencer.”
“What's up, Supercop?”
My jaw clenched and my blood ran hot. “This shit ends now, Briscoe.”
“This shit ends, when I say it ends, pot'na.”
“Where's Idalis?”
“That bitch right here. I guess you on your way to save the day, huh?” He let out a sarcastic laugh. “I should've put a bullet in your pot'na's head when I had the chance. Then I should've put one in yours in that conference room.”
“We was coming for you eventually, you was already fuckin' up.”
“That's what you think.”
“Let me talk to Idalis.”
“She's busy.” I heard some rustling on the other end before what sounded like glass breaking and her screams.
My heart ached with every slap I heard come across the line. I hit the gas and sped across Fairburn Road, passing Cascade Crossing. A moment later he was back on the line.
“You still wanna talk to her?”
“You better hope they get to you before I do—”
“Oh, you think just because you fucked her, you got claim to her?”
My grip tightened on the steering wheel as I bent the corner onto New Hope on two wheels. I had tunnel vision as I blew threw a light at the Camp Creek intersection. “Come on, man. Damn! Don't make me do this.”
“Do what you gotta do, Supercop.”
“Is that what this is about? Huh? You jealous of a fuckin' badge?”
“I ain't jealous of nothin'. You ain't got
shit!
As far as this bitch, Idalis, you want her? Come get her!”
“You have until I get there, to turn yourself in.”
“And if I don't?” he taunted.
I responded through clenched teeth, “I'm gonna arrest you
myself.”
He disconnected the call.
I hit speed dial and called Lenny. He answered on the first ring.
“Spencer, where are you?”
“Lenny he has Idalis.”
He barked some instructions to someone there with him before coming back to me. “I know, we already got units setting up outside the house.”
“I'm two minutes away.”
“Spencer, you need to let us handle this one.”
The house and the units came into sight when I bent corner. The flashing lights pierced the darkness of the otherwise quiet street; but my mind was on Idalis.
“Lenny, he made this personal, not me.”
He let out a sigh. “I know, but we can't have you flying off on this one. It has to be by the book, or he walks. You know that.”
“He shot my fucking partner, Lenny!”
Before he had a chance to try to continue trying to reason with me, and piss me off any further, I hung up.
My truck screeched to a halt next to the SWAT team's truck in front of the house on Fitzgerald Place. I threw it in park and jumped out and started for the house. I pushed by all the wide-eyed agents and officers, who were huddled around, undoubtedly trying to figure out the best way to handle this. Tension always ran high in these types of situations. When it involved a fellow officer, however, that definitely changed the rules. In all of my years in law enforcement, I'd dealt with more situations involving officers who had snapped than I liked to admit.
“Trip, don't,” Lenny called out.
I stopped in my tracks and turned around. Lenny and another agent were rushing toward me.
“You can't go in there. We don't know what we're dealing with.”
“Oh, I know
exactly
what we dealing with.”
I stared at the front of the house, looking for any type of movement coming from behind the windows. Anything to let me know that Idalis was okay.
I listened as Lenny gave me a rundown. “We have a perimeter set up. We're trying to establish some sort of communication. He's not going anywhere, Trip.”
My cynical brain was in overdrive.
I scanned the cars and the people who had started to gather on what otherwise would've been a quiet, suburban street in southwest Atlanta. Obviously, whatever had set Lincoln off ran much deeper than the regular “cop gone bad” scenario. He'd made this personal for a reason, and I had to figure out what it was before something happened to Idalis.
Lieutenant Jackson, with SWAT, walked over and extended his hand. I shook it and waited to hear what he had to say.
“We're trying to get a line in there. He won't answer his cell phone or the house phone. We have Georgia Power on the way out here to cut power and hopefully flush him out.”
“Flush him out, or piss him off.” I shook my head.
“We're doing everything we can to defuse this as peacefully as we can,” he continued.
“Well, cutting off the power and trying to have a heart-to-heart with him ain't the answer,” I snapped.
A look of agitation spread across his face. “So you think kicking in the front door is, Agent Spencer?”
His authoritative attitude was annoying the hell out of me. “No, I think APD keeping a shorter leash on their fucking officers and clerks from the beginning is really the best answer, Lieutenant Jackson.”
“So tell me, Agent Spencer, how would you handle it, then?”
“I would've never let the shit get this far, in the first place.”
Lenny stepped in between us. “Trip, that's enough!”
An APD officer came running up, getting directly in the middle of our heated discussion. “We got him on the phone. He's asking for Agent Spencer.”
We all stood there for a second. I watched as Lenny dropped his head and let out a sigh heavy with disapproval.
“Trip ... ”
Before he could say anything else, I was at my truck, securing my vest. Lenny was on my heels trying to talk me out of it, and Lieutenant Jackson was helping to secure me into the only thing that would stand between me and whatever bullet Lincoln had etched my name on. I tucked a smaller compact Glock 19 in the waistband at my back and shoved my .9mm in my holster.
“Trip, this isn't a good idea. Let another agent handle this.”
“I'm just trying to get you back to New Orleans, Lenny,” I assured.
“This isn't a game—”
My eyes met Lenny's. “Let me do what I do.”
I knew he was worried, but I didn't give a damn at this point. My only concern was Idalis; and right now, I needed to get her out of that house. My cell phone vibrated against my hip.
I snatched it off and answered. “Spencer.”
“If anyone walks through that door but you, a bullet is goin' in her head. You feel me?”
“If you want me, then put Idalis on the fucking phone.”
I heard a soft scream before her trembling voice came across the line. “T-Trip.”
My body tensed with the sound of her voice. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I could feel everyone's eyes on me; it was starting to fuck with me.
“Baby girl, are you okay?”
She sniffed and cleared her throat a little. “Yes. I'm worried about my sister. I was supposed to go get Cameron—”
Before she could finish, he took the phone from her.
“That's enough. You got what you wanted, now give me what I want.”
The line went dead.

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