No stone unturned, p.1
No Stone Unturned, page 1
NO STONE UNTURNED
Also by Brandon Massey
Novels
Thunderland
Dark Corner
Within the Shadows
The Other Brother
Vicious
The Last Affair
Don't Ever Tell
Cornered
Covenant
In the Dark
Frenzied
Nana
The Quiet Ones
Collections
Twisted Tales
No Stone Unturned
Brandon Massey
Dark Corner Publishing
Copyright © 2022 by Brandon Massey
Dark Corner Publishing Edition: January 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Dark Corner Publishing
Atlanta, GA
www.darkcornerpublishing.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
No Stone Unturned/ Brandon Massey – 1st edition
ISBN: 979-8-9854216-0-6
For devoted fathers everywhere
Contents
1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10
11. 11
12. 12
13. 13
14. 14
15. 15
16. 16
17. 17
18. 18
19. 19
20. 20
21. 21
22. 22
23. 23
24. 24
25. 25
26. 26
27. 27
28. 28
29. 29
30. 30
31. 31
32. 32
33. 33
34. 34
35. 35
36. 36
37. 37
38. 38
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40. 40
41. 41
42. 42
43. 43
44. 44
45. 45
46. 46
47. 47
48. 48
49. 49
50. 50
51. 51
52. 52
53. 53
54. 54
55. 55
56. 56
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About the Author
1
A month ago, if you had told Eric Newton that he would be worried about his adult daughter’s safety, if you had said he would plan to ask her to move in with his family, as a tactic to keep her away from her shady boyfriend, he would have frowned and responded: “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else. I don’t have any adult children.”
What a difference a month could make.
On that breezy Saturday afternoon in October, Eric sat at a table on the patio of a tavern called Binge, at Atlantic Station. Atlantic Station was one of those mixed-use developments that had been thriving all over metro Atlanta, a blend of retail, dining, and high-priced condos and townhouses linked together via walkable spaces. As a long-time realtor, Eric loved seeing the local market experience yet another real estate boom, but as prices continued to climb, he sometimes wondered how anyone could afford these properties.
He checked his wristwatch, though his iPhone lay on the table next to his glass of unsweetened iced tea. He was forty-three and usually embraced the practice of using a smartphone for everything, but the watch had sentimental value. His granddad had given it to him.
The Citizen timepiece was old, but accurate. It was a quarter past two o’clock. His twenty-year-old daughter, Destiny, was fifteen minutes late.
He picked up his phone. Destiny hadn’t messaged him since yesterday, when she’d confirmed she would meet him for lunch. He fired off a text to her: I’m here at Binge. How far away are you?
He waited to see the three little dots that would indicate she was replying, but the message box remained empty.
Sighing, he looked around the restaurant. Binge Tavern specialized in high-end bar cuisine, if there was such a thing: burgers made from grass-fed beef and topped with artisanal cheeses, free range chicken wings, street tacos, craft cocktails, beers from microbreweries. A selection of vegan dishes rounded out the menu.
Eric hadn’t eaten anything all day and had been fighting to ignore the tempting aromas of food swirling around him, and as he scanned the place, he avoided looking at anyone’s plate, but it was tough, because the spot was crowded. Beyond the black wrought-iron fence marking the edge of the dining area lay a sidewalk; beyond that lay one of the main streets that wove through Atlantic Station. Pedestrians and cars shuttled back and forth.
He didn’t see his daughter. She still hadn’t replied to his text, either.
Eric called his wife, Alyssa. She answered on the second ring. He pressed the phone against his ear and heard gleeful laughter—their two children, Elijah, and Brooklyn, probably playing a game.
“Hey,” Alyssa said. “How’s lunch going?”
“I think she stood me up. She ghosted me, whatever they call it these days.”
“If she’s not there yet, she’s most likely stuck in traffic. You know how crazy things are in the city. Endless road construction, a couch dropped in the middle of the highway, maybe a flock of wild turkeys blocking the road.”
“Maybe she’s still mad at me,” he said.
Last weekend, they’d invited Destiny to their house for dinner. She and Eric had gotten into a debate about the value of a college education. Eric argued that a degree was the golden ticket to the American dream. Destiny said the gig economy and side hustles were the future, and college was for suckers. He said she was young and would learn the truth soon. She said he was old and out of touch. Finally, Alyssa intervened like a referee and convinced them to change the subject, but blood had been drawn, and by the time Destiny left their house later that evening, Eric noticed a coolness in her gaze when she said goodnight.
Yeah, if the contest for “Dad of the Year” were a real thing with Destiny, he was lagging way behind in last place.
He had brought Destiny a small gift, as a peace offering: a hardcover edition of Kindred, by Octavia Butler. In a prior conversation, she mentioned she was a fan of Butler’s work. The book lay on the edge of the table, wrapped in a red ribbon with a nice bow on top.
“She’ll be there soon,” Alyssa said. “When she does, try to relax and have fun, babe.”
Alyssa was a licensed clinical psychologist, and after thirteen years of marriage, she knew him better than anyone. Sometimes, he believed she knew him better than he knew himself.
“It’s her boyfriend, you know,” Eric said. “He’s filled her head with all kinds of nonsense. I’ve got to convince her to stay with us for a while, get her out of his orbit.”
“The kids would enjoy having her here. I would, too. But when someone is in love . . .”
As Alyssa left her sentence unfinished, Eric glanced toward the road and saw the black, murdered-out Cadillac Escalade. Actually, he heard it first. The SUV sounded like a music festival on wheels.
The Escalade swerved to the sidewalk adjacent to the restaurant patio. The passenger door flew open as if kicked. The thunderous hip-hop music broadcast from inside boomed louder, drawing looks of annoyance from everyone in earshot.
Eric rose from his seat. A fist of tension clenched his gut.
The Escalade belonged to Clive, his daughter’s boyfriend. Eric would have recognized the blacked-out SUV with the customized twenty-six-inch wheels anywhere; a blue Georgia State Panther logo adorned the rear windshield. The guy was a former student, maybe.
But everything about the situation felt wrong to Eric. Chalk it up to parental instinct.
“Gotta go,” he said to Alyssa. “Talk soon.”
Pocketing his phone, he started across the patio. The red-haired young woman serving his table gave him a questioning look.
“I’ll be right back,” Eric said, not slowing. “Hold my table, please.”
He was at the edge of the patio reaching for the gate when he saw Destiny climbing out of the vehicle: she was slim, shared Eric’s mahogany complexion, with ebony hair styled in shoulder-length braids. She wore a black blouse cut to display the tattoos on her toned arms, distressed jeans, and black wedge sandals.
It looked as if someone—Clive, presumably—were trying to keep her from getting out. From Eric’s vantage point, he couldn’t see inside the truck. But it looked as if Destiny snatched her arm away. She yelled something, raised veins standing out like cables on her neck. The music was too loud for Eric to know what she was saying, but her body language set alarm bells ringing in his thoughts.
His heart pounding, Eric arrived at the SUV as Destiny finally jerked free and bounced onto the sidewalk. She looked up at him.
Her copper-brown eyes glistened with tears. At that moment, this young woman might have been only two years old, not twenty. How many times had his other young children given him a look like that when something had gone wrong, a plea for
Destiny swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and her armor was back in place.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. Although she’d told him she had lived in Atlanta all her life, she had only the faintest hint of a Georgia accent. “Traffic sucked.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“This is the place, yeah?” She sniffled, almost angrily, and nodded toward the patio. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, did he hurt you?” Eric stepped toward the still-open passenger door, directly into a wall of sound.
Destiny hooked her thumb toward the restaurant and said something, but the music drowned out her voice. Besides, at that moment, Eric cared only about this guy, Clive.
Clive sat behind the wheel like a lounging lion. He wore a gigantic pair of sunglasses and an Atlanta Braves cap cocked sideways on his head. He had a burly physique draped in a sports jersey so oversized it might have been a kaftan.
He grinned at Eric and lowered the volume of the music.
“Yo, you her old man, huh?” Clive said. “Damn, y’all look just alike. Spittin’ image, bruh.”
Clive had a goatee bristling with gray hairs. How old was he? Destiny had never disclosed this man’s age, but he had as much gray as Eric did.
It made everything about the situation worse. Unconsciously, Eric clenched his hands into fists.
“Did you hurt her?” Eric asked.
Clive’s grin broadened. He shifted in his seat, slid his right hand to rest on something wedged next to him.
Eric noticed the glint of steel under his fingers. Eric wasn’t a firearms expert, but he guessed it was a Glock.
Eric took a step back. He felt as if the ground had split open beneath him.
An image flashed through his mind, with lurid clarity: Clive shooting him in the gut right there in front of a hundred people and driving off while Eric bled out on the sidewalk. Men—especially, Black men like him—had been killed over lesser offenses.
“Shut the door, pops,” Clive said, hand caressing the pistol. “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”
Eric swallowed, his mouth feeling full of sour grit.
He stepped back and closed the door.
The Escalade rumbled away. Destiny touched Eric’s arm carefully, as if fearful he might shatter into a thousand tiny bits.
“Can we please go inside now?” she asked.
2
Back at the patio table, Eric’s hand shook so badly that when he lifted his glass of iced tea, the liquid nearly spilled over the rim.
“God, I could use a drink so bad.” Destiny studied the laminated menu. “Can’t you? You look like you need one, old sport.”
Eric’s brain felt foggy; Destiny’s swirl of words hadn’t fully registered. “Clive showed me his gun.”
“Everyone’s got a gun.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been here before, yeah? What’s good?”
Her nonchalance about what had happened was either a brazen attempt to change the subject, or proof that she believed such interactions were normal. From what Eric had learned about his daughter in the month since she had entered his life, he suspected both explanations might bear some truth.
He pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly. His heartbeat decelerated as the shock wore off, but he wasn’t ready to let this go.
“Has he ever used that weapon on anyone?” Eric asked.
“I’m his girl, not his PO.”
“PO?”
“Parole officer.” She shook her head, looking as exasperated as a parent trying to explain obvious things to a dull-witted child. “You should have asked him.”
“How old is he? He’s got as much gray hair as I do.”
“Wow, I seriously hope you didn’t invite me here to talk about him.” Destiny rolled her eyes dramatically. “He’s thirty-eight, thirty-nine. Not as old as you, Mr. Eric.”
“Please, don’t call me that. That makes me sound like I’m a Sunday school teacher.”
“Hmph.” She flashed a mischievous grin. “If the shoe fits . . .”
“Seriously, this guy, he’s almost twice your age, Destiny. He’s taking advantage of you.”
“How do you know I’m not taking advantage of him?” She winked.
The server stopped by their table. Destiny ordered a Moscow mule and confidently produced an ID card when the server asked.
“I want it in the copper mug, too,” Destiny said, as the server noted the request. “Blend it with top shelf vodka, not the house junk.”
After the server had departed, Eric said, “Top shelf vodka? You don’t turn twenty-one until the end of the month. Is that a fake ID?”
“You are way too uptight right now, Eric. I mean it, you should get a drink too, a real one, instead of sipping on that tea.”
“Let me see it.” Eric extended his hand across the table.
Destiny dropped the ID card into his palm. To Eric’s untrained eyes, the fake was indistinguishable from the genuine article.
“You can get in trouble for using this.” He handed it back to her.
“Like you didn’t have one when you were my age. I know you used one to get in all the clubs and hang with the hotties. Don’t lie.”
“Who gave it to you? Clive?”
As if speaking the man’s name had conjured him from the ether, the Escalade circled back to the adjacent road, bass rumbling from the speakers. The SUV lingered for a beat near the patio before rejoining traffic.
Destiny’s jaws clenched, and she lowered her head, as if avoiding Eric’s gaze. She tapped on her iPhone.
“He’s keeping tabs on you,” Eric said, in the gentlest tone he could manage. “You aren’t his property, Destiny. This possessiveness of his is dangerous.”
“I thought your wife was the psychologist.” Destiny shot him a sharp look. “Ready for some counseling? What answers do you have about my biological mother, Dad?”
Eric leaned back in the chair. The server returned and placed Destiny’s cocktail on the table. His daughter picked up the copper-plated mug and sipped with relish, her gaze never leaving his face.
She had asked him the one question to which he lacked a satisfactory answer. Who was her mother?
Facts: He’d learned about Destiny only because of his older sister, Valerie. Val had an Ancestry.com profile and had submitted her DNA sample for analysis, since she studied genealogy as a hobby. Wanting to learn about her biological family, Destiny had joined Ancestry.com, too. She’d been raised in a series of foster homes, gotten adopted when she was ten, and her adoptive mother had recently died of cancer. She had no records of her birth parents and craved answers.
Destiny and Val discovered on Ancestry that they shared a “close” family connection, with Val identified as a probable aunt. Well, Val had only one sibling: her baby brother, Eric.
When Val texted Eric a photo of Destiny, to say his jaw had hit the floor was a massive understatement. There was no denying the similarities in their appearance.
An expedited paternity test was merely a formality, but it confirmed the relationship—and Eric’s life immediately became, exponentially, a lot more complicated. He was happily married and had two children with Alyssa. Brooklyn was eleven and Elijah was eight. He had been preparing to eventually deal with teenagers. Now, he had a twenty-year-old?
Sometimes, he still couldn’t believe it.
As useful as Ancestry had been in bringing Destiny to Val and Eric, she hit a wall on the maternal side. Her mother, whoever she was, didn’t have a profile listed on the service.
Naturally, Destiny had looked to Eric to fill in the blanks. He’d been forced to confess, to his utter shame, that he had no idea who her mother might be.
He would have been twenty-two years old when Destiny was conceived. He didn’t know if she had been born prematurely, but he had worked out the most probable timeline, and none of it clicked with what had been going on in his life back then.
In January of that year, he’d been in a car accident. He spent over two weeks in the hospital, most of that time in a comatose state. After he regained consciousness—thankfully with no brain damage—he had moved back in with his grandmother, to recover. Then, he finished his bachelor’s degree at Morehouse, got a job, and tried to build a stable life.
Back then, he wasn’t “hanging with the hotties” in nightclubs and bedding women left and right; casual sex had never been his style. He had been dating a young woman before his accident, but they had broken up a few months after he recovered. When Destiny came into his life, he tracked down that old girlfriend, and she insisted that she wasn’t the mother of any child of his and thought he was nuts for even asking her.
