The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,128
I’m not moving in. You can call Aunt Shelly, and you can call the bank, but I’m not giving you my rent money.”
“This is not the time to be selfish! Your sister needs your help, Zhorzha! You owe her that!”
I thought about that pile of cash in the safety-deposit box. Lawyers ain’t cheap, Uncle Alva had said, and at the time, I’d nodded, but as I walked out of Mom’s house, with her yelling after me, I made up my mind. I wasn’t going to spend a dime of that money on a lawyer for LaReigne. To get Mom’s yard cleaned up, yes. To hire a family court lawyer to get visitation with Marcus, yes. But for LaReigne, no. I didn’t care if half of it was supposed to be for her. She chose Tague Barnwell. Let him hire her a lawyer.
I went back to my motel, took Leon around the block, and fed him some real dog food. Then, even though it was only noon, I took a big dose of THC and got in bed. There was a Bewitched marathon on TV, and I laid in bed with Leon next to me, watching Bewitched and making lists on my phone. I’d already made a huge list of things to do for Mom, but I started one for myself, too. I needed a lawyer, a job, a veterinarian, and a place to live with a yard.
Toward the end of the afternoon, when I was looking at houses for rent, my phone rang again. I let it go to voicemail and a few minutes later, there it was: Miss Trego. Boyd Mansur. We need to talk.
CHAPTER 49
Zee
Mansur’s voicemails started out polite, but I knew he would get around to threatening me eventually. A week later, while I was standing out in Mom’s yard watching the truck driver park the dumpster, I got the message I couldn’t ignore.
Miss Trego. Boyd Mansur. I would prefer not to issue a warrant for you as a material witness, but if that becomes necessary, I will.
After I signed for the dumpster, I called Mansur back.
“So let’s talk,” I said. “I don’t know anything, but I guess you need to hear it from me personally.”
“Why don’t I come to your mother’s house, so I can talk to you both? Two birds, one stone.”
“That saying is actually kill two birds with one stone. Are you trying to kill my mother?”
“Miss Trego, I don’t wish to distress your mother or you, but I do need to talk to you both.”
I didn’t want to meet him at Mom’s and he wouldn’t talk in public, so I went to his hotel room, which was a lot nicer than mine. He had a suite at the La Quinta on Kellogg, and it even had a little kitchenette and a table, which was where we sat.
“Before we talk about anything, I have one question,” I said. “Are you going to arrest me? Because I’d need to find somebody to take care of my dog.”
“No, Miss Trego. Unless you plan to make an unexpected confession to something pretty substantial, I’m not going to arrest you.”
I knew he was getting ready to lay some shit on me, because he set up his laptop. The first thing he showed me was black-and-white footage from a surveillance camera, showing LaReigne standing outside a door.
“There’s LaReigne,” Mansur said, and paused the video. “Waiting at the rear door to the education building, where the volunteer ministry meets. Normally this door would have been locked, but your sister’s ministry group got permission from the chaplain to use the yard for part of their . . . ritual. This is just as the riot started and after the first corrections officer was killed in the education building. At that time, a few inmates and the volunteers locked themselves in a classroom. All of the volunteers except Molly Verbansky and LaReigne. I want you to look at the time stamp on it—seven-sixteen P.M.—because here’s footage from a different camera at the same time.”
He clicked PLAY and the video switched to two people standing at a chain-link fence. A woman, so probably Molly, and a man with something in his hand.
“That’s Conrad Ligett, using a pair of wire cutters that Molly Verbansky smuggled in—we’re not really sure how.”
“Is this for real a prison?” I said. “I’m not kidding, my nephew’s grade school is more secure than this.”
“Normally, the alarm would have been raised by now, but we believe the riot in the