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  His demeanor visibly changed. His body seemed to relax, his swagger seemed to return. He nodded at her as if to say, “Touché.” Elphonse turned back into the man she had expected when he arrived on her porch. He gestured toward some papers on her desk. “You’re reviewing the shipment schedule for the Norfolk branch?”

  She couldn’t understand it. Just like that, the single most sincere conversation they’d had in years was over. “I am. Actually, the Feds requested boatloads of information. Everything they’re looking at, I’m looking at. I don’t know if they understand what they’re seeing and I want to make sure they don’t miss anything, So far, the only anomalies I see are with manifests headed for Norfolk. Nothing major, but at a time like this, I need to be sure,” replied Nya, eyes dry but heart incredibly heavy.

  El nodded.

  “I’m also reviewing all the Hatsheput-bonded Art Sentries shipments from Charlotte Amalie. Daddy hasn’t confirmed it, but I’m not stupid. I know our logistics infrastructure was being used to smuggle drugs stateside. Since Marshall was also caught embezzling, we need to know just how much he took, how long he was taking it, and if there are any other clues that might lead to who was running this thing.” Elphonse nodded again. “Actually, I’m hoping this problem in Norfolk was Marshall, too. That way it’s already solved. Just look at it. In the report, one shipment entry indicated a single load of prints was transported on a cargo plane from the island. It had to be a drug run or something, but so far, there’s no evidence of that, or at least none that anyone is sharing with me.”

  Elphonse tossed the report down and came to stand beside Nya. He grabbed his car keys from the end table. “I don’t think you need to do this, little sister. You’re not a cop, and this is dangerous ground. If they aren’t giving you all the information, it’s probably to keep you safe.”

  “You just gave me an earful about my social responsibility. Thanks but no thanks for the advice.” She walked him to the door then.

  “Why must you be so hard-headed?”

  “Why must you pretend this means more to you than it does?”

  Elphonse winced, and Nya felt a wave of guilt ripple through her. But she didn’t apologize, and he didn’t say anything further. Instead, he surprised her once more with another awkward but seemingly heartfelt embrace. “Please try to stay out of trouble.”

  Nya leaned back and scanned his face, wondering at his mood. “I’ll try.”

  When he left she tried to reason out the strange exchange. And as she tried to decide what to feel, her house phone rang.

  “Hi, Nya.”

  “Hey, Lysette.” She slid back in her recliner. Lysette was about the only person she could honestly say she was glad to hear from. “I’m surprised you’re not still curled up under Jamie.”

  “Who said I’m not? You know we got back last night. He’s flying out tomorrow morning for a game and he’s going to be gone until Wednesday. Then he leaves Thursday and won’t be back for a week. I would go with him, but I promised to help out at the office. Sooo, we needed the time, you know?”

  “I know, ’Sette. You don’t have to explain anything to me. Did you see the article?”

  “Yes, I did. It’s awful. I can’t believe you didn’t call me right away.”

  “I was on a plane.”

  “Still, I expected to hear from you when you got here. I was surprised when Jenine called me looking for you.”

  “El said she called him, too. That’s weird. She didn’t call me.”

  “I tried your cell first. I got your voice mail.”

  Nya walked over to pick up her phone. It was dead. “Damn.”

  “Anyway, so we talked about it and she told me you came back today. I knew it had to be about the article but you know how your sister is. She didn’t tell me anything. What did Nyron have to say? I bet he went numb on his left side.” Lysette chuckled.

  “That is not funny!” Nya admonished with a grin. The timing was rotten, the situation dire, and yet her friend could make her smile. “Daddy was furious. I’m furious. If this reporter knew anything about us, anything at all, he would have known that we would never cut funding to those kids without good reason.”

  “He didn’t say you did anything.”

  “He didn’t have to say it. He implied it. He made our ‘no comment’ sound like a cover-up of our own wrongdoing. If he had just waited for someone credible to contact him from Hatsheput then—”

  “He had Marshall.”

  Nya took a deep breath then let fly a string of words not fit for mixed company.

  “Whoa, calm down, chick. You and I both know Marshall is a posturing idiot, but your dad tolerated him. Nyron let him keep making a stupid amount of money under a basically honorary title while he tried to figure out which position to put him in where he couldn’t do any harm. An outsider wouldn’t know that. Even your dad would have vouched for him. I can see why the man questioned us; he doesn’t know us. I don’t know Michael Harrison personally, but everyone I know who does has two things to say about him. One, he’s gorgeous. And two, the man has integrity.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Nya argued stubbornly. “What I do know is that this article will likely cause the criminals to go underground. He’s made the investigators’ jobs harder, as well as mine. I could still be enjoying myself on the island. Now Daddy’s interfering in something he at first ignored and Elphonse is over here questioning if I’m still real.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, hard to believe as it is, I’m not.”

  “I don’t even know how you talk to Elphonse anymore, Nya. Long before he got promoted to VP, he was cold and sarcastic. Now he’s so conceited and so out of touch. But for the dreads, you wouldn’t know the brother had any soul left in him. Plus he’s been acting real strange ever since he got here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I know I’ve been a little bitter in regard to El in the past, but I’m telling you what I’ve seen. Have you seen him with Nyron? Does Elphonse really think he’ll get that man’s respect by following up every sentence with, ‘Oh you’re so right?’ He’s a parasite, a sycophant, a sociopath. He’s a parasitic sycophant sociopath just sucking up as much as he can. I bet your father even tells him when to go to the bathroom.”

  Before the tirade became particularly nasty, Nya decided to break in. “Please put that psychology degree to work. Listen, you may forget, but I know you have a personal bias. Anyway, he’s only in Birmingham for the week that my Dad’s home. He’ll be back on the island soon. Let’s forget El for now. It’s Daddy who’s the problem.”

  “Why is he still harboring this grudge? Isn’t it enough he’s got you working twice as hard as any of the other VPs even though you get paid less? Must he watch every move you make? I think you ought to sue for sexism and reverse nepotism.”

  “You know what, ‘Sette?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I love you!” Nya didn’t say it very often. Her friend had taken care of her tension and guilt and ambition and despair and suspicion all at once. For that, she loved her deeply.

  “I love you, too, chick. Now tell me how the reception was. Tell me anything that doesn’t have to do with this awful mess.”

  Nya closed her eyes and described the homey reception in detail up to the point where they’d heard about the article and had the family meeting where she blew up at her father. She also told her friend about taking the first plane out. “Hey, guess what!”

  “What?” Lysette asked.

  “I saw the most gorgeous man of my life on the flight today.” She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering every detail of him. “He was tall and dark and he had these eyes, you should have seen them. They were like, like…I don’t know. They were even better than Denzel’s eyes.”

  “Not possible. Absolutely not possible. There are no eyes better than Denzel’s eyes. Not even Jamie’s eyes are better than Denzel eyes,” Lysette proclaimed.

  “His eyes were better
than Denzel eyes. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone that fine in my life. Body better than a Boris Kodjoe body.”

  “Now I know you’re lying! You know Boris and I are secret lovers.”

  Nya smiled then sank even deeper into her chair, just remembering. She closed her eyes and saw the man on the airplane. He had been so perfect, with skin dark like the tea her Grandma made. He had towered in the aisle with a wide, muscular chest tapering into a narrow waist and hips. She remembered how well his clothes had accentuated that awesome physique. God, but he was a handsome specimen. Too bad she had caught him reading that rag of a newspaper, the Harrison Tribune, but then he’d helped her with her bags and…

  “Oh, no! What’s this? Are you mooning? I can hear it over the phone! You are, aren’t you?” Lysette sounded excited. For years, she had been trying desperately to get Nya dating. “Wait,” she shrieked. “Before I get my hopes up, where was he sitting? Which class?”

  “First class, why?” Nya jerked the receiver from her ear when she heard Lysette squeal on the other end.

  “So that means he has a job that doesn’t require his name to be sewn on his front pocket.”

  Nya laughed, feeling her friend’s excitement through the phone lines.

  “That’s a good sign, very good!”

  “You know I don’t even fly first class. There’s no reason for it. Also, I hate to point this out, but your husband’s name is sewn on the back of his shirt,” Nya chided.

  “That’s different.”

  “Your brother’s name is sewn on the front—”

  “Hush!”

  Nya giggled.

  “So did you talk to him?”

  “No,” Nya replied.

  “Did he talk to you?”

  “Actually, he did. When I went down to grab my bags, he helped me get them off the belt.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you thank him?”

  “I did.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, then Daddy called and I had to take it. So we couldn’t talk anymore.”

  Lysette sighed heavily. “If you didn’t talk to him, even to get his name, and he didn’t talk to you, what’s the point of this story?”

  Nya chuckled, shaking her head. Only Lysette.

  “Well, don’t worry. I’m still going to get you hitched if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Nya had to hold her stomach, she was laughing so hard. She didn’t know how she’d make it through the constant agitation in her life if it weren’t for Lysette’s loud personality and perpetual warmth.

  They’d been friends since high school. Nyron Seymour had just moved his home office from the islands to Birmingham, and the family had moved, too. Every day Nya sat on the steps behind the high school band room alone, wishing she were back on the island. The girls hated her accent; the guys liked it way too much. She didn’t know why she had to go to public school anyway, no matter what her father said about building character. Worse, she had fallen behind since she had missed school during the move. But her biggest obstacle was the fact that she didn’t know a soul.

  One day after rounding the corner to the band room, Nya stopped abruptly; a short, tiny, light-skinned girl was sitting in Nya’s spot. She wore a bright orange-and-blue-striped sweater and baggy jeans way too big for her tiny frame. Nya had seen the little girl many times, usually at the heart of trouble. Nya approached slowly, wondering if the girl would move.

  “You Nya, ain’t you?” the girl asked, not moving from the spot. Nya stopped in her tracks and just nodded. “Where you from?”

  “St. Thomas,” Nya replied with apprehension.

  The girl crossed her arms in front of her. “Somebody said that was in America. You don’t sound American.”

  Nya started to explain, “It’s an island in the—”

  “I know it’s an island, I ain’t stupid. Yo folks rich?” Nya didn’t say anything. “I hear y’all got a house up on the mountain.” Again Nya nodded but said nothing. “Humph,” the girl sighed and looked away. “That means you’re rich.”

  Nya came closer. “Where do you live?”

  “Brighton, but my mama uses my grandma’s address so I can go to school here.”

  Nya started to question her as to where Brighton was, but thought better of it. The girl stared up at her with earnest eyes, as if studying Nya deeply. She thought for a moment, then slid over. Nya sat beside her.

  “I’m Nya Seymour,” she said, extending her hand as she formally introduced herself.

  The girl looked at her hand, then grinned widely. She shook it and said, “I’m Lysette. You in fourth period English with me. I like you. You got class.”

  “I do?” Nya asked timidly.

  “See what I mean?” Lysette laughed. That was the birth of a friendship that was now in its fourteenth year.

  Nya loved being friends with Lysette and having her as an integral part of her world. She remembered how Lysette had been so impressed by her house when she invited her over the first time. She had said that she was surprised a person could live in a place like that. She refused to believe Nya when she said that the house on St. Thomas was much bigger than the one in Birmingham. She walked around inspecting the place, extra careful not to track dirt or to touch a single thing. When Nya told her to lay her coat on a sofa and come up to her room, Lysette had been reluctant, not knowing if she should. Nya put hers down first and Lysette hesitantly followed suit. Then Nya said to her, “You can touch anything you want. You don’t have to worry, unless you have a thing about breaking stuff. I hear that some people do. It’s a condition.” Lysette wore a horrified expression until Nya told her that she was kidding. And that was the way that Nya introduced Lysette into a world filled with art and music.

  In turn Lysette introduced Nya into the social world of high school. Nya soon learned Lysette had one attribute that always kept her in trouble: her big mouth. Though Lysette’s wildness made Nya feel comfortable and made her laugh, it was constantly getting them both into difficult situations. Usually it would start with Nya being teased for being quiet and different. Then, without fail, Lysette was there to retaliate with something sharp and clever. Almost invariably a fight would ensue. Nya was still amazed at just how much strength and spirit that little girl had when she wanted to fight, and the superb communication skills she used to talk her way out of fighting when she didn’t. Luckily, they both made it through high school without getting expelled, even managing to graduate with honors. When they chose separate colleges, Nya talked her father into hiring Lysette to work summers at Hatsheput with her. Both girls spent their summers together on St. Thomas, working. Nya remembered when first they arrived and Lysette was quiet for the first time that Nya could remember. She had adored the island from then on and she had even had her own recent wedding there. They were more than friends, they were family.

  Chapter 3

  Michael sat in his favorite recliner, frowning at his cell phone on the table beside him. It was flashing and beeping and buzzing at him in regular intervals. He shifted uneasily in his seat. That had been happening since he powered it on after landing at Shuttlesworth. His sister’s angry mug had popped up on the screen more than once. He’d snapped the photo at one of her classic exasperated-with-my-brother moments. Watching it there on the table, he was almost afraid to touch it. There were also text messages, but he hadn’t looked at those, either. His old-school answering machine displayed a blinking red thirty-eight. There had been only about fifteen before he left. He held on to the outdated thing because there were messages on it that had changed his life. It was like his personal time capsule. But twenty-two additional messages could not be a good thing. The machine seemed to blink an angry red in impatience. Even when he was in Senegal and Hurricane Katrina had hit, he hadn’t had that many. They had to mean trouble, big trouble. He shuddered involuntarily.

  Usually, he immediately checked his voice mail and at the very least glanced at hi
s text messages. His job and his nature compelled him to be perpetually plugged in. Communication was his life. Contact was his life. And if all of this attempted contact represented something big, he knew that once he heard it, he would be halfway out the door. So why was he avoiding the inevitable? Why was he ignoring his hustling father’s constant mantra that time is money? His father had hustled for everything his family had, and had made sure to drive that lesson home. Michael had found that this was nowhere truer than in the news game. Big stories weren’t big until they were broken, and you couldn’t break a big story unless you were the first to it, as he had been with this Hatsheput piece.

  He shuddered as if someone had passed over his grave. The horrifying story about those young men and women being exploited had touched him as nothing had. Michael had seen atrocities. He’d spent nearly a year in the Congo and had come across every act that could defile another human being, and yet as he had stared into the eyes of evil, so did those around him. Evil was out in the open for public consumption. But these kids in St. Thomas had stars in their eyes. They came from hardship and had been promised a way out. They had been deceived, and it hurt his heart to think of it. Exposing Hatsheput had been gratifying, but he didn’t kid himself that there wasn’t an aftermath. Families had lost sons, and no article could bring them back.

  Maybe he was getting old. Hell, maybe he was getting lonely. There was no one waiting on him when he got home to blunt the sharp, gritty edge of reality he’d seen. All Michael had was the memory of an island that had oddly felt like home to him in those few hours he’d had to explore when he wasn’t working on the story. And, of course, he had the vision of that woman on the plane burned into his mind. His thoughts flashed between the story, the island, and her. A new, breaking story would definitely take his mind off those things, but exhaustion, both mental and physical, wouldn’t let him escape.

  What he wanted most was to shower, listen to a little blues, and maybe watch some basketball while lying on the couch. So he postponed the messages and headed up the wide, spiraling black stairs to the second level. About twenty minutes later, he got out of the shower hungry and in the mood for Otis Redding. It wasn’t long before the soulful voice filled his home. He remembered the luscious, appealing dream woman he’d seen in the airport. His smile broadened. Michael had to admit his fantasy had gotten way out of control. If she only knew… But that was the attractive thing about fantasizing about people you didn’t know: you wouldn’t, in all probability, ever see them again. You’d never have to be disappointed by the real thing. But he had approached her anyway to help her with her bags after they landed in Birmingham. Michael didn’t want to obsess over a fantasy. Yet he could not shake the sensation that with her a man wouldn’t have to worry about disappointment. For a moment he wished things could have been different. He hummed as he grilled a thick, juicy T-bone, baked a potato, and made his favorite lettuce, cheese, and bacon bit salad.