Page 96 of Kandie Shoppe

“Hey, U.” I look up to the somber face of Mimi our Dr. Everything as she stands just inside Angel’s bedroom.

“Ahem,” I clear my throat, standing to look down at her. “Hey, Mimi.” She’s in pink scrubs and has on those shoes doctors wear. Her hair’s tied back in a neat bun. No jewelry, no make-up, but she doesn’t need any of that. All the Love women are beautiful.

“Angel called and said that somehow Kandie got herself free. She was here, and I needed to get here as soon as possible to check her out. Is it okay that I have a look at her?” She’s asking as a curtesy because she’s already heading over to Kandie. “There’s some things Santiago is bringing up in case I need them. Can you go help him so it won’t take more than one trip?” She slips into the restroom and I hear water running. I know she did house visits when Angel was stabbed by Rudy so she more than knows her way around the loft. More than I do, I suspect.

Without a word of complaint, I make the two trips with Santiago for all the medical equipment Mimi felt necessary to bring with her.

“Snake said they were going to pick up some kids from the same place Kandie was being kept and they probably weren’t documented,” Santiago says, hefting a box filled with supplies.

We stop in the main lounge of the club. The members made it into a temporary triage center. Not knowing what condition the kids would be in, they’d set up stations under Angel’s sister’s Lourdes direction. As a resident being mentored by Mimi, she used to work with her when she does pop-up clinics in rural areas for underserved communities.

By the time I’m done helping with the set-up, nearly an hour has passed.

“We’re good if you want to go see about Kandie,” Lourdes tells me.

Trudging up the stairs, I nearly stop and turn away from the overwhelming feeling of uselessness I feel. Once again, I showed her that I couldn’t be counted on. I failed her. Still, I push forward, knowing I’m not worthy.

When I enter the loft, I move like a wraith up the stairs, following the light spilling out of Angels’ bedroom.

“How is she?” I ask Mimi, who is filling out a chart and checking Kandie’s vitals.

“Good. She’s going to be fine. Just banged up really bad. She has a couple of bruised ribs. There are contusions on her feet. Her windpipe is bruised. And her eyes have busted capillaries when someone tried to choke her to death.” She looks down at the chart and makes more notes. The silence is loud between us.

“Was she sexually assaulted?” The words sound dead in my own ears.

“U,” she sighs. “I already told you more than I should,” she hedges.

“I’m the law. I’m the one investigating her disappearance,” I manage to get out in an almost professional way. Though weboth know Kandie and my relationship has been anything but professional.

“She’s also the woman you love. And don’t look at me like that. Everyone knows it — we been knowing it. It’s the town’s cutest little secret. How you and Kandie can’t stand each other but can’t stand to leave each other alone.” She shrugs. “I know my cousin, U. She’ll want to tell you what happened herself. She’ll never forgive me for telling her business. But,” she says when she sees me swelling up like I’m about to combust, “I didn’t see any indications, though that’s not necessarily saying anything. I’ve already given her a medical prophylactic and the necessary medications to head off any type of STDs. The main thing is she’s alive and we need to be grateful for that because she fought her ass off trying to escape whoever did this and only prevailed by the grace of God and her own will.” Mimi clears her throat, her eyes shining with love and pride.

She scoots out of my way as I approach Kandie’s bedside again. “Couldn’t have been any other way,” I say, kneeling against the side of the bed again. “She knows she’s all I got. She knows how much I need her. How much we all need her.”

Looking at the face I want to wake up to every day for the rest of my life, I promise, “Now that I have you, I’m never letting you go.”

My knees arenumb by the time Angel comes back and asks me to join him, Xander-Rafe Leroi, and his lieutenants as they share news that relieves and frustrates me.

They found the kids, had them checked out, and got them to safety. It took a lot of the staff from the medical center coming to the clubhouse to work through what was left of the nightto attend to the kids Nathaniel had plans to victimize. Though they’d been physically brutalized and nearly starved, he hadn’t had his father’s proclivities toward kids. None had been sexually assaulted.

“He’s dead. Seems like it happened in the shower. Somehow, Kandie got the better of him. He had a bed spring jutting out of the mush she made of his face. She did that in what looks to be a frenzy after she managed to stab him in the throat with it.”

Grunt and murmurs of satisfaction fill the room at Angel’s words. Pride soars within me at the same as the rage I can barely hold on to eats me up. I should have been there. I should have never left her side for one moment, knowing this motherfucker was out there.

“He had some type of dark web livestream going that was still active by the time we got there. I got my people on it, tracking the motherfuckers down. Even called in a favor from Nikko Savalle and Hisashi Takeda to help. Both of them are genius with tech. We’ll get these sick fucks. I’m tired of them thinking they can prey on me and mine and get away with it.” I listen as he goes on to tell me how they found nearly three dozen kids in the subterranean cells.

“He’s been a very busy boy since he came back to town. He was the bishop’s son, Nathaniel Smith. Thought burned to death and buried in the collapse of the children’s home,” Xander-Rafe LeRoi tells us, pulling up video footage to the abandoned children’s home. “This is what it looked like three years ago. Somehow, he slipped under the radar with the deed and started building on things out there. It was slow going because he didn’t want people knowing what he was up to.”

“You saying he did all this alone?” The skepticism bleeds through my words.

“Can’t say for sure, but this is surely a case for the FBI to investigate. Those kids were brought over by Rudy’s crew andhave been down there ever since. The ones we could get to talk only mentioned him.” Xander-Rafe LeRoi shuts down the videos. “We are doing a deep search into his financials and where he’s been since he got out of the children’s home. It was always assumed he was there when it went up in flames now we don’t know. So much of that mystery remains for now.”

All of us are tense with frustration and the implications of what more predators focused on our small community can mean.

“We will find them, root them out, and kill them all,” I promise to the room at large.

“Fuck yeah.”

“Damn straight.”

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