Page 70 of Search My Soul (Taylor Family Saga #3)

“Aye, Grim. What’s good, man?” Mav greeted me the moment I stepped into his home. He had been working for me for years, and this was my first time visiting his home. As I looked around the mini mansion, I was impressed by the decor. I could tell his wife had a heavy influence on the design.

“I don’t know. I guess it all depends on what you have to tell me.” A week had passed since I requested he hack the investigator’s computer. I was hoping he would be able to offer me a sense of comfort.

“Understood. What’s up, Huncho? Y’all can follow me to my office. My wife just gave birth to our daughter a few days ago, that’s why I had y’all meet me here.”

“Damn, man. Congratulations. You should have told me, and we could have rescheduled or something.”

“Naw, I know how important this is.” We followed him into his office and took a seat around the table.

He had a nice little setup with a bunch of monitors, computers, and other gadgets I wasn’t familiar with.

There was a bookshelf behind him, and it made me think about my baby.

Juicy was a book nerd, and I hadn’t realized how bad it was until she moved in.

In the first month, she had two bookshelves set up in one of the spare rooms. I offered to turn it into her own little reading space since she spent so much time in there.

“All right, so this is all the information I was able to obtain from the investigator’s computer.

It appears that he has been trailing you and Pure for a while.

He doesn’t have any real incriminating evidence outside of a handful of photos of you leaving various buildings.

Most of his searches have been centered on Salvador.

I found a few articles saved on his computer, and I believe I found a motive for why he seems so invested,” he explained.

When I read through the articles, they all appeared to reference the same case. The caption read, Star Witness in RICO Case Goes Missing Without a Trace . As I continued to read, the dots still weren’t connecting until I got the photos in the folder. When I glanced up at Mav, he simply nodded.

“Apparently, his brother went undercover to try to get close to Salvador. When they indicted him, the brother was placed in witness protection before the trial. You already know how they get down, so I don’t know why the government didn’t have a tighter security detail on the man.

Needless to say, days before he was scheduled to testify, he turned up missing.

The guards who were watching him were found hanging from a tree and Welsh’s brother was nowhere to be found.

“They had to call a mistrial since he was their star witness and Salvador was let go. Then weeks later, the brother’s body parts were delivered to Welsh’s house along with a dead rat.

Welsh was a private investigator prior to his brother being murdered, but he stopped taking on clients in order to catch his brother’s killers.

You would think he would be smarter than this, but he must be a glutton for punishment.

” I listened intently as Mav ran all the information down to me.

I could tell by how sloppy he was moving that this was more personal than anything.

However, he was going up against a powerful entity, and he was no match for him.

“This shit is crazy. He might as well sign his own death certificate because as soon as Salvador finds out, he’s a dead man. I understand wanting revenge, but this is a suicide mission. No one has ever gone against Salvador and lived to talk about it.”

“Damn right. Based on the information I found, the commissioner told him to let it go. He became obsessed with trying to take him down, but unless he has some airtight evidence, the D.A. isn’t going to look his way.

The good news is that you have nothing to worry about.

There was nothing incriminating in his files, and even if there had been, he had obtained the footage illegally.

” I planned to hit up Benny, Salvador’s right hand, as soon as I left here.

“Oh shit!” Huncho shouted, causing Mav and me to turn in his direction.

“You good? What’s going on?” I inquired, seeing the frustration on his face. He swiped his hand down his face before saying a word.

“We’ve got a problem, boss. You ain’t gon’ like this shit at all.” He huffed. Something about the way he was reacting made me nervous. I had a feeling whatever news he had was going to change my life, and not for the better.

“Remember when you told me that you were gonna look into the strip club that ol’ girl worked at?”

“Yeah, it slipped my mind, but I remember.”

“Well, I had a feeling you were gonna forget because of everything that’s been going on, so I went out there.

Duke had one of his managers give me access to the cameras so I could see if the same girl actually worked at the club.

” Huncho paused for a moment. I could see it in his eyes that he didn’t want to deliver the news to me.

His head dropped and I braced myself for whatever it was.

“When Mace and I combed through the footage, we found the girl with the purple hair. Her real name is Lemonica Reynolds. She’s the sister of those niggas we knocked off.”

“Okay, that’s good news. Why are you looking at me like somebody died?”

“Grim, this shit ain’t easy for me to say.

Not only did we find the girl, but we also found out who her accomplice was.

We used dates from the shooting to match it with the dates at the club.

The other girl worked there, too, and we caught footage of her wearing the same hair and outfit the night of the shooting.

” Huncho clicked on a few things before handing his phone over to me.

When I pressed play, my heart sunk to my feet.

I shook my head in disbelief even with the evidence staring me right in the face. There was no way this could be real. I refused to believe it.

“No. No. It has to be a coincidence. There’s no way it was her.” I fumed.

“I’m sorry, Grim. We found the two of them in the parking lot together and we were able to cross reference the make and model of her car and everything.

They were talking and then she followed behind her in her car.

It was her,” Huncho replied solemnly. I sat there dumbfounded, trying to find the appropriate response.

“That isn’t all,” Huncho spoke lowly. I could feel myself about to spazz out, but now wasn’t the place or time for it.

“Just tell me.”

“I didn’t want to bring this to you without confirmation, so I had JD and Romell trail her for the last two weeks.

She met up with someone, and they sent over some photos and a video clip.

” Huncho retrieved his phone and showed me a video along with a series of photos.

It was the same girl from Remi’s house, only her hair was different.

“She was in the house for about thirty minutes before she left back out. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she went to your grandmother’s party, so she saw Remi there.

There’s no way she didn’t recognize him.

At first, I thought she was playing you, but I believe it’s deeper than that.

Remi had to know who she was too. Even with a wig on, her face isn’t one you forget. ”

My mind began to replay the interaction between the two of them and that was when I remembered him mentioning the tattoo on her thigh. Juicy tensed up when he made the comment, but I thought it was because she didn’t know him. It never dawned on me that the two of them might know each other.

“What are you thinking?” I quizzed. Huncho may have been young, but his intuition was on another level, so I wanted to know where his head was at.

“To be honest, everything about the shooting seemed off to me. He never had that kind of money at one time, but he conveniently decided to hit up two other houses that my crew normally does pickups for. Then he missed the drop off, claiming that he wasn’t feeling well.

I spoke with Ammo, and he told me that nothing was wrong with Remi when they were in the car together that day.

In fact, he told him that his bitch was coming over to fuck that night.

“Then there was the shooting itself. If they were planning on robbing him, why did the girl go back and save him?

If the bitch knew there was a chance he would wake up and identify her, why would she take that kind of risk when she could have left him for dead and taken off with the money?

These were all the questions running through my mind, so I put a tail on him too.

“When you said he was in a wheelchair, I wondered who was taking care of him and where he was staying. When we pulled up to his house, the place was vacant. I thought that was strange because we made sure the blood was cleaned up after the shooting.” Again, Huncho shifted the photos so I could see it.

“This is the same house ol’ girl and Neeya were coming out of.

We have multiple pictures of Remi and ol’ girl going in and out of the house.

He was in it the day your girl pulled up, so she can’t deny knowing him.

Based on the information available, it appears that this might have been a setup on a larger scale than we originally thought. ”

“That doesn’t make any sense though. If him and his bitch were in on it, who shot him? This shit is crazy.” I found myself flipping back between the pictures and videos.

“I was able to download the footage of that night from Welsh’s computer if you want to watch it again,” Mav offered. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around any of this. Had Remi set me up to steal from me? It didn’t make sense to me, but all of the evidence was right in my face.