LET ME GO (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 5) Read online

  You might never see him again if it goes wrong, Eva Rae.

  I kissed his head, then smelled his hair. “Are you going away again?” he asked as he spotted my sports bag of clothes. My gun was placed on top of it, and I reached over to cover it up.

  “Mommy has some work to do, buddy, and needs to go on a little trip for a few days. But Grandma is here, and she’ll take real good care of you.”

  “Ugh. I hate her food; you know that. And she never reads the story the fourth time like you do, and she doesn’t do the voices correctly. I’d rather have Matt take care of us. He’s really good at bedtime stories and at playing cops and robbers.”

  My heart sank when hearing his name. He hadn’t even wanted to talk to me when I called earlier. He told me he was in the middle of something important, and that we could talk later, then hung up before I could even protest.

  “I know, sweetie,” I said. “But I’m afraid that we’ll have to try and do without Matt this time, huh?”

  Alex pulled himself out of my grip, then jumped to the floor. “You shouldn’t have invited him to move in with us if you didn’t plan on keeping him,” he said. “It’s like that dog that followed me home from school one time. You told me I shouldn’t have invited it inside the house, remember? It’s like that, Mommy. You should have known better.”

  With that, he walked to the door and left my bedroom. I sat back with a feeling of defeat as the realization sank in.

  I had lost Matt, hadn’t I? I had lost him for good this time.

  Chapter 74

  Matt stared at the phone like he had for the past hour. He had hung up on Eva Rae when she called, but now he regretted it. He wanted to talk to her; there was no one on this planet he’d rather talk to than her right now, but he simply couldn’t. He couldn’t stand being dragged into more trouble or any more muddy emotions. It was simply becoming too encompassing, too much for him.

  “You wanna go again?” Elijah asked.

  Matt nodded and grabbed the stack of cards. They were playing UNO, their favorite game these days. Ever since Matt had put a limit on how much screen time the boy was allowed to have, he and Elijah had been spending a lot more time together, playing cards, reading, or even just talking. Elijah still didn’t say much, but Matt gave him the time he needed, never pressuring him, and listened carefully and attentively whenever he did open up. Soon, he had started to learn things about the boy as he shared details about himself. Like the fact that his favorite color was purple. That he liked to watch Anime. That he hated school, but if he had to choose, math was probably his favorite subject. He also learned that Elijah didn’t enjoy sports, but he loved to draw and that his big dream was to become an animator once he grew up.

  Matt handed out the cards and picked them up to look at his hand. He couldn’t stop thinking about Eva Rae and worrying about her, even though he really didn’t want to. He was waiting for her to come to him, for her to ask him to come back, say she was sorry for how it had all gone down with him moving in.

  He just feared that she never would, and right now, he couldn’t even stand talking to her, let alone seeing her again. He needed a break from her and all the drama constantly surrounding her.

  He didn’t understand her; he had to admit. What had happened to her? It was like she didn’t even care anymore. She didn’t care about them anymore. Was it just because of losing Chad? Was it her grief that made her so distant?

  “It’s your turn,” Elijah said with a sigh. “Hello? Where are you?”

  Matt smiled and returned to his son. He grabbed a card. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where my head is at today.”

  “Where it always is. With her,” Elijah said with an exhale. “You’re always thinking about her, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that then,” Matt said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s getting annoying. She’s not that special, you know. There are other women out there who’d treat you a whole lot better.”

  Matt stared at Elijah, then down at his cards. Was the boy right? Was he just being blind?

  “UNO,” Elijah said.

  Matt stared down at his cards, then put one down on the pile. Elijah grinned and put his last card on top of it.

  “I win again.”

  “Argh,” Matt said, laughing. He then reached over and grabbed Elijah and began to tickle him. The boy laughed loudly, and so did Matt when the doorbell rang.

  “Give me a sec,” he said, then rushed to the door and opened it.

  “Alex?” he said, baffled.

  Matt looked behind him and to the side to see if Eva Rae was with him. The boy stormed past him into the living room.

  “What are you doing here…alone?”

  The young boy turned to face him, his eyes determined, arms crossed in front of the chest of his police uniform.

  “Matt. We need to talk.”

  Chapter 75

  “I know it’s a lot to ask to have me here, but I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t exactly afford a hotel room since I’m not really making much money these days.”

  I blew on my coffee and looked up at Priscilla, whose daughter had been victim number six. I had known Priscilla for years while living in D.C., and her house hadn’t changed one bit. I couldn’t exactly say the same about her. Losing her daughter had burned its marks into her usually so pretty face. She had lost at least fifteen pounds and seemed so fragile I was afraid she might break. On the counter behind her stood pictures of Stacy from when she was just a child. I remembered that happy girl as she played outside in the street, learning to ride her bike, and then later, as she took care of my girls once they were born and played with them in our yard or babysat for us if we needed it. She stared back at us from those deep brown eyes like she was begging us to figure this thing out and find the person who murdered her. I had promised her mother I would, and I wasn’t going back on that, especially not now with everything that was at stake.

  But it meant I would have to risk everything. I was well aware of this. If I was arrested up here, during the protest, there was no way I could argue that I wasn’t a part of the Blue Lives Murder movement. Isabella had convinced the investigators in Orlando that I had no knowledge of the ambush, but they could still change their minds. Cops had been shot, and they were hungry for justice. The sensible part of me knew I should have listened to her and not come to D.C., but how could I with what I knew?

  “It’s good to see you. You’re welcome here anytime; you know that,” Priscilla said, placing a hand on top of mine.

  I sipped my coffee, nodding. “That’s really sweet of you; thank you.”

  “So, what’s going on?” she asked.

  It was getting dark outside as the sun had set. I felt exhausted from all the traveling, but I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. I was too stirred up inside to be able to find rest. “Why are you here? I’m guessing it’s not for the protest tomorrow.”

  I swallowed while tapping my nails on the side of my cup. “Actually, that is exactly why I’m here. See, I realized recently that I had been looking for the wrong motive. This case isn’t about those that are being swatted.”

  A deep furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  “One hundred and twenty-two police officers have killed themselves so far this year in the U.S.,” I said. “One of them was the man who accidentally shot a young guy named Peter James in New Orleans after getting a call stating that he had just shot his dad and was about to shoot his mother and sister as well. On November twenty-second last year, dispatch received the call to nine-one-one, and Officer James Reed, leader of the SWAT team in the New Orleans Police Department, was the guy who gathered his team and surrounded the house. As the boy came to the door, they believed he went for a gun. They believed he was armed since that’s what he’d said in the call, and they shot him right there on his mother’s front porch. A second later, his mom comes running
out, screaming, the same woman they believed he had shot. In that second, Officer Reed knew he had made a huge mistake. After the story came out, the public demanded that Reed had to be fired and prosecuted because Peter James was unarmed. And so, he was. He was acquitted in court, but he couldn’t escape the hurt inside from having taken this young boy’s life, so on September twenty, almost a year later, he grabbed his gun, placed it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His five-year-old daughter found him in the shed in the backyard. Her life is ruined too. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  Priscilla still looked at me like she didn’t quite understand. Priscilla was a professor and taught math at Howard University. She was a very smart woman.

  “It’s like ripples in the water,” I said. “As I looked through all the cases that I suspect our Swatter is behind, I see similar stories. Six of the officers who were involved in deaths during these swatting incidents have committed suicide. Eight have been fired, three have left the force voluntarily, at least two that I have found have been divorced, one is in a mental institution.”

  Priscilla nodded. “So, what you’re saying is that they hurt too.”

  I nodded. “I kept wondering about the Swatter’s motives. He couldn’t possibly know that the people he swatted would be killed or even hurt. A lot of cases don’t end badly, and that’s what bothered me until I found out that they weren’t his targets. It wasn’t the gamers that he was attacking.”

  “It was the police,” Priscilla said.

  “Exactly. It was all about the police all along. They were the real targets. It was meant to hurt them, to make them suffer. No one will ever get over shooting an innocent boy. The gamers and your daughter Stacy were just a means to an end. This killer has a message for us all, and it’s not very pleasant.”

  “But what does he want out of it?”

  “Exactly what he is getting. He has chosen famous gamers or other celebrities like Liam Berkeley’s son, just to make sure the media would write about it. Sometimes, it was even broadcasted live if they were live streaming at the time of the swatting. He doesn’t just want to hurt the officers involved; he wants us to hate the police. Look at what happened to Officer Downey’s son, Nathan Downey. He was beaten up on his way home from school by a mother and her children. He almost died from his head hitting a lamppost. As far as I know, he hasn’t woken up yet. It’s stuff like that he wants. He wants a war against the police.”

  Priscilla stared at me.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” I asked. “Look at what is happening tomorrow. Millions of people will protest against police brutality. People are angry. Amal Bukhari, who is behind the march, was one of his victims. Look at how much hatred she has been able to stir up toward the police. I fear more people will get hurt tomorrow on both sides of this. As Matt said, there are no winners here; there’s only more hurt. Meanwhile, the Swatter can sit back and enjoy his work. No one will ever know what he has done.”

  There was a long silence between us as I drank my coffee, staring at my old friend while she pondered this information.

  “Say something,” I finally said.

  “I…I don’t really know what to say, to be honest. It’s just a little hard, you know? To see the police as victims,” Priscilla said. “After what happened to my baby. I wasn’t there when it happened because she was in her own condo, but they shot her, an innocent and unarmed young girl. I can’t help but be so incredibly angry with them. Our kids are being shot down in the streets, Eva Rae.”

  I nodded. “I know. And it’s awful; of course, it is. But we can’t let this guy win. He’s the murderer here. He’s the one who made the calls, and he’s doing it again and again all over the country, destroying lives all over the place. We can’t let him continue, Priscilla. And we can’t let hatred win.”

  Chapter 76

  Amal looked at herself in the round handheld mirror that Samir was holding up for her. She was trying to put on a little make-up, but the eyeliner kept smearing, making her eyes look like she had been crying.

  “Ugh,” she said, trying to fix it.

  “You look fine,” Samir said, smiling. “You don’t need any more.”

  Amal tried once again with the eyeshadow, but her hand was shaking too badly to be able to do it properly.

  “Here, let me,” her brother said and took it from her hand.

  Amal hadn’t slept much the night before. She had been in terrible pain and couldn’t find rest, even though she took the pills the hospital had provided her. It was like they didn’t really help anymore.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling at her brother. He leaned forward, and she closed her eyes so he could get to them. She felt the brush touch her eyelid gently and swipe a couple of times to the side, then opened them to look in the mirror.

  “Not bad,” she said. “You’re actually pretty good at this, Samir.”

  That made him laugh. There hadn’t been much to laugh at in the past few weeks, and especially not since they had left on the trip to D.C. She sensed in her brother that he was greatly troubled and felt terrible for putting him through such deep pain. He was worried about her doing this; there was no doubt about it. He was scared she wouldn’t make it.

  Amal grabbed his hand in hers and squeezed it. They were in a small camper behind the stage that had been put up for her and for the other speakers that would come out on this day. The stage was placed outside in the street with Capitol Hill in the background. So many stories of pain and suffering caused by the men in blue were going to be told from that stage today. It was going to go down in history. And she had played a significant part in it. For that, she was very satisfied.

  “All right,” Samir said with a sigh. “We should get you rolled out there. There’s five minutes till you’re on.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “Yes. Let’s do it.”

  She stopped herself and winced as a wave of pain shot through her body, closing her eyes for the seconds it lasted.

  “Amal? Are you all right, Amal?”

  She lifted her head as the pain subsided, but it didn’t go away completely. “Yes,” she half-moaned, “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for this? I mean, I could go out there instead if needed,” Samir said. “I could tell them what you’ve gone through. I’ve been there all the way.”

  She chuckled and patted him on the arm. “That’s sweet of you, but we talked about this before. They’ve come to see me. They need to see me, see what those pigs in blue did to me. It’s vital for the cause, Samir. I am vital to the cause.”

  He nodded. “All right, all right.”

  Samir grabbed her chair and rolled her toward the exit, where there was a ramp. He rolled her down onto the asphalt, and as she came outside, she could suddenly hear the roar of people from the other side of the stage. It sounded so massive; she almost forgot to breathe.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I sure do.”

  “Doesn’t it sound amazing?”

  “It sure does.”

  The voice came from behind them, and they both turned to look. A woman walked forward into the sunlight. She was short and chubby and had her red hair pulled back in a ponytail. The security guards blocked her way instantly, and she raised her hands to show them she wasn’t looking for trouble.

  “Who are you?” asked Samir.

  “My name is Eva Rae Thomas, and I need to talk to Amal. It’s important.”

  “Why would she talk to you? There are millions of people out there waiting to hear her speak. How did you even get in here?”

  The woman nodded with a sigh. “I know a few people around here. And you will listen to me because I have information that’ll make her want to change her mind about going up there in the first place.”

  Samir made a face and scoffed. “Why on Earth should she listen to you? Security, we need her out of here…”

  Amal stared at the woman, then remembered something. Amal reached up her hand an
d grabbed Samir by the arm.

  “No, Samir, don’t. I want to hear what she has to say.”

  Chapter 77

  “I know who you are,” Amal said. “You were the one who sent me that email, weren’t you? I remember your name, Eva Rae Thomas.”

  I sighed and approached her as her guards backed off and let me through. The noise from the massive crowd on the other side of the scene was overpowering. Amal stared at me, head slightly tilted, eyes narrowed.

  “You knew I was going to be shot. You sent me an email telling me I was going to get shot by the police. I didn’t read it till after it happened. So many times, I’ve thought about how stupid I was for not reading it. It wasn’t like I didn’t see the email. I saw it before I got on that airplane, but I just didn’t read it till later because I was waiting for what I thought was an important email, one that I believed was more important than yours trying to save my life. How silly I was, huh? Maybe it could all have been avoided, had I only taken the time to read what you wrote.”

  I came up to her, and she reached out her hand. I placed mine in hers. She was pale and weak, but underneath it all, you could still see the beautiful woman she had once been.

  “Why have you come?” she asked me.

  I breathed heavily. “I needed to get to you before you got up on that stage.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be helping him out by going up there. This is what he wants. This was his plan all along, to make people hate the police.”

  A furrow grew between her eyes, and she gave me a suspicious look. “What are you saying? He? Who is he?”

  I swallowed. “The guy who tried to kill you. The same guy who sent the police after you on the airplane. Have you ever wondered who placed that call that made the police think you were carrying a bomb?”

  “Of course, I have.”

  “Well, I’ve been chasing him. You’re not the first he did this to; I have a list of people, and a lot of them have ended up dead. For a long time, I thought he was trying to get back at you because of who you were, that he held a grudge of some sort, or maybe it was a revenge issue, but lately, I’ve come to realize that it’s a lot bigger than that. This guy has a bigger agenda, and you’re playing a huge role in that. If you go out there and speak against the police, encouraging the hatred, then you’re just helping his mission.”