Obsidian Faith (9 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“Want my bacon?” Trevor remembered how much Shanice loved bacon for as far back as those early days in the group home when she’d bartered with him for his bacon.

Her amber eyes were sullen. “No thanks.”

Trevor sighed. “’Nice, you know Isaiah would throttle us both if we let anything happen between us right now.”

Something in his words must have given her hope because she smiled. “I know, right?”

“What’s your Dad got, thirty pounds on me? I’m not trying to fight Papa Bailey right now.”

“He’d definitely kick your ass,” she said, taking a slice of the bacon he’d offered earlier. “But I’d like to think that I’m worth a good ass-kicking.” She bit down on the crisp bacon and chewed.

Trevor tried not to become mesmerized by her lips. He took a drink of coffee. “You’re worth a dozen or more good ass-kickings, but I want to finish college and you need to get into college, then maybe we can go out on a date, or something.”

“Really?”

He smiled. “Really. But you have a few more rites of passage to experience and I’ve got to take the IT industry by storm and build something so I can provide for a woman like you.”

Shanice grew serious. “I’ve always loved you, Trevor, but I’ve been in love with you since that time you were about to kick Owen Nettles’ ass for spreading rumors about me.”

“You don’t know that, yet, Shanice. We’ve never had that kind of relationship, and it was never possible for me before now. That would’ve made me a serious pervert.”

“Do you know that in the old days, girls got married at thirteen?”

“Yeah, I think I paid enough attention in grade school to remember something like that.”

“And Amy March was about the age I am when she fell in love with Laurie.”

“So, you think I’m your Laurie?” Trevor said with a smirk.

“I know you’re my Laurie.”

That was the last time Trevor saw Shanice before he was arrested on the eve of his graduation.

Trevor decided that getting arrested was the most surreal experience ever, especially if you are a college student so close to graduation you can taste it.

When he began baiting the feds with his hacks, he assumed they would act slowly, like most people, including his uncle, said they did things. He’d hacked into the FBI’s database and he knew they were on to him, so he decided to run the program the week of graduation, thinking they’d probably not pick him up until sometime after he had his diploma in hand.

The funneling would proceed slowly for seventy-two hours, then it would ramp up and take the balance of what he’d targeted from each state at once and hide it in the various overseas accounts he’d selected. Then he’d conveniently get arrested before he could divide it with his partners. This was his grand plan. He wanted the FBI to arrest him so Phil and the mob couldn’t touch the money, and couldn’t touch the Baileys, otherwise they’d never get the money. Then he’d have to win the trust of the feds to get them all out of the mess he’d gotten them into.

Trevor was sleeping off a bender when federal agents swarmed his frat house. He woke up from the gentle nuzzling of an assault rifle against the back of his head.

Two agents in assault gear yanked him up off the bed by and he stood before them in his boxers, hands behind his head just as they’d posed him while they read him his rights. He didn’t know what possessed him, but he decided to goad them a little.

“Geez, how many feds does it take to arrest an unarmed college student the day before his graduation?” Trevor said to the only suit in the room, who happened to be a tall African American man who looked uncannily like Will Smith in the Mohammed Ali film.

The movie star look-alike answered him without missing a beat. “Every fucking one of us.” Then punched Trevor’s lights out.

When Trevor recovered, he was in what he could only describe as an interrogation room. His head lay on a table with drool running out the side of his mouth. When he sat up and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand, he saw that the table was bolted to the floor, and there were two hard plastic chairs, one in which he was seated. His right hand was cuffed to one of the table legs.

The Will Smith wannabe entered the room carrying two coffees.

“I’m Special Agent Hemphill. You look like you could use one of these.” He set one of the coffee cups in front of Trevor and kept the other one for himself, then moved to sit down on the other side of the table. The folder he carried in nestled under the crook of his arm was now splayed in front of him.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Trevor Landon Kyle.” The dude even talked like Will Smith from Bad Boys.

“In what manner, Special Agent Hemphill?” Trevor said, playing dumb.

“Listen, cut the shit. I know and you know what you’ve been up to. You’ve been funneling money from the coffers of state unclaimed property funds to overseas banks.”

Trevor looked affronted. “Who, me?”

Hemphill hit the table and Trevor flinched in spite of himself. This is what he had wanted, just not the day before he was to graduate, and now that he was in the hands of the feds and wasn’t going anywhere before they got his story, he decided he might as well cooperate.

“Okay, okay. You’ve got me. I’ve been a bad boy and now it’s time for the U.S. Government to punish me. I confess. I, Trevor Landon Kyle, am guilty of funneling millions of dollars from state unclaimed property funds, and I’m not certain I know how to retrieve it.”

“What do you mean, you’re not certain? It’s a simple matter of reversing your program right?”

“Well, not really. I’d have to have access to a computer to write a program to override my original one, which I might add, took me years to perfect.”

“You’re shitting me, Kyle.”

“I shit you not, Agent Hemphill. It’s going to take years to back out of the code and find the fifty random passwords to reverse the program and restore the funds to the fifty states they came from.”

“I’ll arrange to get you computer time wherever you land, but in the meantime, we’re going to turn you over to the U.S. Attorney’s office so they can try your ass.”

Oddly, Trevor breathed a sigh of relief when he heard these words. They processed him into the federal holding center to await trial. Two weeks into his stay, Trevor got a visit from Isaiah Bailey who, through his network of prison ministers, called in a favor to visit him.

The guy was in tears when they ushered Trevor into the private visiting room. Isaiah grabbed him and gave him the biggest bear hug ever, sobbing so hard, Trevor couldn’t stop a few tears from falling from his own eyes as well. When Isaiah pulled himself together, they sat across from one another at a table much like the one that had been in the interrogation room at the holding center.

“Trev, man. Tell me you didn’t do this.”

Isaiah’s pain was so palpable, Trevor wanted to break down and tell him the truth, but if he did, Isaiah would confront Philip and the connections Phil had with the mob would put Isaiah and his family in jeopardy. Trevor couldn’t have that. Shanice was part of that family and he would protect them with his life, even if it meant losing his freedom for a while.

“I can’t say that, Isaiah. I did this. No one else was involved.”

Isaiah’s brow furrowed. “I know Phil gambled a lot. Are you sure he didn’t put you up to this?”

Trevor swallowed and lied again to Isaiah’s face. “No, Philip was too busy gambling to monitor my activities. After David died, I continued to hone my hacking skills and I rummaged through some of Philips work papers and found out about the unclaimed property funds each state held. Then I figured out how to cover my tracks, but I guess I didn’t cover them well enough. The feds have been monitoring my activities for a couple of years. Then finally before the day of my graduation, they had enough to arrest me.”

“Trevor, you’re going to go to prison for this. You can’t steal that much money, which you’ve refused to restore, and expect them to give you probation. Can’t you do your hacking magic and restore the money?”

“No. It’s going to take several years to do that.”

“You know this has devastated Shanice. Nothing Brenda or I have said or done has consoled her. You’ve got to give her some closure. Since you seem so hell-bent on throwing your life away, don’t let her throw away hers. She was in line for valedictory honors, but your mess has her grades slipping, and she’s moping around the house.”

“I’m locked up, Isaiah. What do you want me to do?”

“Release her from the hope that there will ever be anything between you.”

Isaiah’s words shredded his heart, but Trevor held his face impassive as he responded to the pastor’s request. “Okay.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Trevor! Oh my God, Trevor, tell me this is some case of mistaken identity. You didn’t really take that money. Did you?”

Trevor was elated to hear Shanice’s voice over the phone, even though she was clearly in some distress over what he’d done, but he couldn’t reassure her otherwise. He also could not go easy on her. Isaiah wanted a clean break so she could have a chance at a normal life—without Trevor in it.

That was a tall order, but Trevor would deliver, because the alternative was seven years of heartache for her.

“Trevor?”

“Hello, Shanice.” He knew his response was lame, but he wasn’t ready to let go right off the bat.

“You’ve been in jail over a month and the first thing you say to me is ‘Hello, Shanice,’ like nothing’s happened?”

“I was doing this for us. Two orphans who got screwed over by the system. Don’t you see? I thought I was smart enough I’d never get caught, but I messed up, okay?”

“Are you even listening to yourself, Trevor? You make it sound like we’re victims, but we stopped being victims the moment we were both adopted by loving families.”

“My loving family died, remember. I had Philip Kyle as a foster parent for three years.”

“Okay, living with Phil hasn’t been a cakewalk, but you were still cared for by us. The years you had with David and Elena had to have made some impact on your life. This isn’t what they taught you. All this comes from Phil’s influence, doesn’t it?”

“That’s just it, Shanice. You had the cakewalk. I had a nightmare.”

“Then why didn’t you let my Dad help you? They asked you so many times about Phil, but you made it seem like everything was okay.”

“Well, that’s neither here nor there, now. I’ve done this and now I have to pay my debt to society.”

“But if you were coerced by Phil, the lawyers can help you.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Shanice. I’m not a minor and I’ve confessed. Phil didn’t write the programs, or move the funds. I did that. Now I have to pay for what I’ve done.”

“Trevor... ” She sniffed, and that gave away that she was crying.

“Shanice, you have to go on with your life.”

“No.”

“Yes. You have to live like you never knew me, because I’m going to be here awhile.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“No, you won’t. If you care about me, you’ll do this for me.”

“No, Trevor. I love you, I can’t let you go through this alone. One for each other and each other for one... right?”

“No, Shanice. That was a dream. A fantasy created by two poor little orphan kids who’ve now grown out of it. This is the real world now, and you and I have to live in it.”

“Trevor, please.” She said this through a gut wrenching sob.

“It’s for your own good. You have a bright future ahead of you. Don’t snuff it out for a convict.”

“You are not a convict and I’ll never think of you that way.”

“Yes, I am, and I have the number to prove it. You have a chance to graduate with honors and be that nurse you’ve always wanted to be. Take it.”

“Trevor, I’ll never give up on you.” Shanice was sobbing openly now.

“I have faith that you will be the man David and Elena hoped to raise.”

Trevor had to say the words that would give her the clean break Isaiah wanted. “Then you’re the only one.”

Shanice proved to be as stubborn as she was beautiful. Although he never wrote her back, Trevor got a letter from Shanice almost every week until about a month before he was tried and shipped off to his destination.

Eighteen months after that heartbreaking conversation with Shanice, Trevor was transported to the federal prison at Victorville, California. The terrain surrounding the facility looked nothing like Trevor was used to in Florida, where there was lush vegetation and lots of green space. The area surrounding the complex was mostly asphalt, concrete and gravel. The trees and greenery that made up the landscape dotted the area like sad punctuation marks.

Trevor didn’t know a single soul when he arrived, except one. The first day, Trevor was escorted to meet the FBI agent assigned to his case.

“Hello, Kyle.” Special Agent Donald Hemphill in the flesh greeted him.

Trevor was oddly happy to see the agent, but he wouldn’t dare let him know this. “How’d you pull this off? I thought I was going to get to start fresh with a new suit.”

“It’s called a transfer, inmate. Sort of what you just experienced, except I get paid to do it as a free man. Unfortunately, you don’t.”

Trevor pulled out a chair and plopped into it.

Hemphill’s eyes blazed in a glare that might scare a lesser man. “Did I say you could sit?”

“I figured I’d save you the trouble,” Trevor said. No sooner had the words left his lips than he found himself jacked up against the wall. The agent was surprisingly strong even though he was about the same height and build as Trevor.

Hemphill’s nose was centimeters from Trevor’s as he spoke. “Listen, Kyle. I don’t have time to play games with you. I’m here for one reason and one reason only. That’s to retrieve the billion dollars you stole from the fifty state government coffers you saw fit for rob for your own perverse pleasure. I am not your friend or your goddamn babysitter, and the sooner you get that through your thick skull, the better.”

Trevor didn’t know why he pushed Hemphill the way he did. Maybe it was because he felt completely alone for the first time in his life. He’d finally pushed Shanice away, or that’s what he currently believed, because he’d not gotten a letter from her in about a month.

Isaiah and Brenda didn’t write, but they made sure he had money in his commissary account, and would send holiday cards with their ministry newsletters attached, giving him updates on them and their family. Sometimes there were also pictures of their children, and this included the woman he loved more every time he read her letters and saw an updated photo of her.

Trevor raised his hands in an act of surrender. “Okay, okay.”

Donald let him go and took a seat. “Now sit down and let’s talk man to man.”

It was no surprise to Trevor that they first discussed another deal. If he was able to retrieve the funds in three months, the agency was willing to give him an early audience with the Probation Board, and to sweeten the deal, they would consider restoring his civil rights.

Trevor knew three months would only put him on the streets again only to put the Bailey family in danger, and he’d be manipulated by Phil and his mob connections to help them get the money. Then they would disappear to some country where they couldn’t be extradited back to the United States, and he’d be left holding the bag. Literally.

Trevor’s only option was to stay in prison until he devised a plan that worked to trap Phil and his co-conspirators, and to safeguard the Baileys and secure his freedom. Until that time, he would have to bullshit Special Agent Hemphill enough to keep him interested until the right opportunity presented itself.

“It’s impossible, I can’t override the program in three months, but I can write a new program.”

Hemphill nodded. “What timeframe are we talking?”

“With a couple hours of computer time a day only, I’m guessing five years.”

“Five years?”

“And that’s the most conservative estimate. That’s not taking into consideration testing time, and reworking if the tests fail.”

“We only have the manpower to allow you two hours of computer time a day, Kyle. The FBI has other important cases to work on besides yours.”

“I know, which is why I’m trying to be straight with you about how long it’s going to take.”

“You created the program that took the funds in two years.”

“And I had more computer time after classes, in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, or was just plain bored.”

“If that’s what we have to work with, then I suppose that’s what we have to work with.” Hemphill stood. “We’ll start tomorrow.”