“Hello?”

  “Hey, son. I was just calling to let you know my flight will be in first thing in the morning. How has business been?”

  Adrian paused when he felt Kiesha’s hand find its way to his. He glanced over at her, and she smiled gratefully at him. He tenderly squeezed her hand before looking back to the long road ahead of him.

  “Everything is fine, Pop. Business is business.”

  Lost and Found

  by

  Marcus Weber

  Chapter 1

  After serving ten years in the Marines, Sheba Styles was getting out. She joined when she was 18, and there she found great fulfillment and great personal satisfaction living and fighting as a Marine. But the time had come to put that life behind her and begin a new chapter. Her aunt Millicent had recently died, and it was time for her to come home and take care of her family.

  Sheba checked out of the Panzer Kaserne barracks in Böblingen, Germany—the headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps European and Africa commands—and headed for the States. She planned to visit a friend and fellow Marine, Colin Web, in Albany, New York. He was there on leave spending time with his family. She spent the day with him, getting some much-needed R&R before heading to the Albany bus terminal for the trip to Atlanta.

  “Why are you taking the bus?”

  “Because I like it. I like to sit back, relax, and look out the window. Despite how fucked up it can be sometimes, this is a beautiful country we live in.”

  “Greatest country in the world, Marine,” Colin laughed.

  “True, but that would be ex-Marine.”

  “Whatever. When you’re a Marine, you’re a Marine for life.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe that you’re getting out. I thought we’d be doing what we do until we were old and gray.”

  “There was a time when I thought that too. I planned to retire after a distinguished thirty-year career. But it’s time for me to go home and take care of my family.”

  Her cousin Chanel had been in her ear for years about the family being in disarray and Sheba needing to come home. Those pleas fell on deaf ears until recently. Her grandfather had always handled all the family’s business, and when he passed, that responsibility fell to their oldest daughter, Millicent. Now that her aunt had passed, there was no one to take care of her grandmother’s affairs. Miss Pearl was the woman who raised Sheba, and she felt that responsibility now fell to her.

  “And I know how close you are to her, so I get it.” Colin leaned forward. “I just don’t like it, that’s all.”

  She chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll be able to push through somehow,” Sheba said and got ready to leave for the bus terminal.

  The next stop for her was Atlanta, Georgia. Although Sheba was born in New York, she had lived in Georgia for as long as she could remember. And when her mother died when Sheba was 8, her grandmother raised her. This was her first trip stateside in five years. It was a choice that she made to stay away, but now it was something that she regretted. Despite her feelings about her aunt Millicent, Sheba should not have let that separate her from her grandmother and the rest of her family.

  Her Greyhound bus was scheduled to depart at ten forty-five p.m. and arrive at New York’s Port Authority in Manhattan at one thirty-five a.m. When the bus arrived in New York, Sheba grabbed her backpack and exited the bus. There was layover of an hour and ten minutes before she had to catch the bus departing for Baltimore, Maryland, at two forty-five a.m.

  With time to kill, and never having been to New York, Sheba decided that she would leave the terminal and take a walk around the city that she’d heard so much about her entire life. It wasn’t like Sheba could see much in the time that she had, but at least she could say that she’d been to Times Square, the world-famous tourist destination and entertainment center.

  There weren’t many people on the street as she strolled casually down Eighth Avenue toward West Thirty-ninth Street, looking up at the buildings and in the windows of the stores as she passed thinking that she wasn’t impressed. She had been to cities around the world, and this was one of the so-called greatest cities on the planet, so she was expecting better. She had to take into account that it was damn near two in the morning, and then there was the fact that bus stations were never located in the best part of town.

  “So cut the Apple some slack,” Sheba said aloud as she heard what sounded like an argument.

  Being a trained observer, and curious to the point of being nosy by nature, Sheba slowed her pace as she approached the alley where the sound was coming from.

  “What do you mean you ain’t got it?”

  “I mean, I ain’t got it with me, but it’s close!”

  Sheba peeked in the alley and could see four men, all with guns in hand but they were not pointed at each other. One of the men was carrying a briefcase in his other hand. She had accidentally walked up on a drug deal in progress.

  This is what I should have expected, Sheba thought as she looked on.

  After taking a second or two to laugh at the irony, Sheba was about to move on when one of the men raised his gun and shot the man with the briefcase in the head. The sudden sound of the gunshot startled her, and Sheba watched as the man dropped his gun and then the briefcase before dropping to his knees and falling flat on his face.

  “Oh, shit,” she said in a whisper.

  That was when the shooting started, and Sheba hit the ground. She lay there with her hand over her head as the shooting continued and then stopped just as suddenly. Sheba got to her feet, brushed herself off, and then looked into the alley. There lay the dead man with the gun and briefcase on either side of him. Sheba looked around the street. There didn’t seem to be anybody around, and that included the men who had done the shooting. She looked at the dead body once again and then at the briefcase.

  Suppose it’s full of money?

  Sheba looked around the street once again, then to the dead body and the briefcase, and she started for it. Without doing any serious reconnaissance of the situation, her assessment in the moment was that all the men were dead and that money was there for the taking. Sheba stopped and looked around one more time before she scooped up the briefcase and the gun and made her way back to the bus station as quickly as she could.

  Chapter 2

  “Where the fuck is the briefcase?” one of the men asked seconds later when they got back to the alley.

  “It was right there,” the other said, pointing to the spot where the briefcase had been.

  “Well, it ain’t there now! Come on!” he shouted and ran toward the street.

  “You see anybody?”

  “No, wait.” He pointed down the street. “Blue jacket, heading for the bus station. Come on!”

  “That looks like a woman.”

  “I think you’re right,” he said as both men ran to the bus station and went inside. “You see her?”

  “No, do you?”

  “No. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Fuck that. We gotta find her.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe she’s getting on a bus that’s leaving soon.”

  “Good idea. Let’s check the departure board.”

  The men rushed to the board and saw that two buses were departing shortly. One was going to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the other to Baltimore, Maryland.

  “I’ll take Baltimore, and you head for Philly,” one said, and they split up.

  As he got closer to the gate, he could see that the bus was boarding. He rushed to the door and was about to grab the handle when a ticket agent stepped in front of him.

  “You have a ticket?” he asked, knowing that all the passengers had boarded.

  “No, but I gotta get out there.”

  “Not without a ticket,” the agent said firmly as an NYPD officer walked up.

  “Any problems?”

  He had just killed a man, and the gun was in his pocket. “No, Officer,” he said, backing away with his hands up. He went back to the departure board to meet up with his partner.

  “Did you see her?”

  “If I did, would I be standing here empty-handed waiting for you?”

  “What now?”

  “I’m thinking she had to get on one of those buses.”

  “Unless she came in one door and went out another.”

  “That’s possible, but no. She came in here to get on a bus and get out of the city.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I take Baltimore, and you head for Philly,” he said and began walking quickly toward the exit.

  He rushed to catch up before he asked, “You mean drive to Philly?”

  “And get there before the bus does, so you better hurry up, because you gotta steal a car first.”

  “Why I gotta steal the car?”

  “Because I got the keys,” he said, dangling them in front of him.

  “You fuckin’ suck.”

  “I’ll call you when I get to Baltimore.”

  “I knew I should have driven,” he said, and the men rushed off in different directions.

  * * *

  Once Sheba was back on the bus, she relaxed in her seat and tried to behave like she hadn’t just witnessed a murder and there wasn’t a briefcase full of money sitting on the seat next to her. They had crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, and most of the other passengers had turned off their overhead lights before Sheba picked up the case and placed it gently on her lap. Surprised that it wasn’t locked, she cracked open the case slightly and looked inside.

  “Dayyymn,” she said in a whisper, closing the case and locking it.

  Instead of the money that she was expecting, Sheba found four kilos of cocaine.

  “I just knew it was money.”

  She sat looking out the window, wondering what she was going to do with that much cocaine, but she knew the answer.

  “Sell it.”

  It wasn’t that she was a stranger to the game. It was sort of the family business. Her parents sold drugs in New York until a warrant was issued for their arrest and they fled to Atlanta. However, her father didn’t stay long. He thought it best that they separate, and he went to Detroit, intending to make something happen to get them back in the game. He was killed by undercover police officers during a buy. Her mother stayed involved in the game until she died two years later speedballing heroin and cocaine. Sheba also had a couple of cousins in the game in Atlanta who she would talk to about getting rid of the kilos. With that settled, Sheba looked out the window at the night sky and relaxed in her seat for the ride to Baltimore.

  When the bus arrived in Baltimore for a scheduled thirty-five-minute stop, Sheba decided to get off to use the bathroom and get something to eat. But since it wasn’t a food stop, she would have to settle for whatever she could find in the vending machine. Not wanting to leave it on the bus, she got the gun that she had taken from the dead man, got her backpack, and took the briefcase with her.

  Sheba entered the terminal and looked around for the restroom sign. Once she saw it, she headed in that direction along with a few of her fellow passengers. Therefore, she didn’t notice that her pursuer was walking right behind her.

  He thought about simply snatching the briefcase from her hand and running, or better yet, he could shoot her in the back of the head and take the case from her dead body. But there were cops in the terminal, and either plan would cause too much attention. He followed her to the restroom and planned to make his approach once she came out. Then he’d walk up behind her, shove his gun in her spine, and walk her out of there quietly.

  “Easy peasy.”

  That plan went out the window when a cop walked by just as Sheba came out of the restroom.

  “Shit,” he muttered and went after her, thinking that the plan was still viable, but he just needed to catch up with her before she got back on the bus.

  As she walked back to the bus, Sheba got a sense that caused her to glance over her shoulder, and she saw the man following. She recalled seeing him in the lobby when she came into the terminal and then again outside the restroom when she came out.

  Instead of returning to the bus, Sheba walked a little faster into a crowd of people heading toward the exit. That made it harder for him to see her. He watched her weaving through the crowd but quickly lost sight of her. He rushed outside and looked around, but he didn’t see her anywhere. And then he felt the feeling of metal in the small of his back.

  “You need to stand real still and don’t make a sound.” Sheba reached around and took the gun from his waist. “Now we’re gonna walk. Nice, slow, and quiet,” she said, knowing that she was going to have to kill him.

  There was no other choice.

  Although Sheba was no stranger to killing in combat, this would be different. This would be murder. But in the back of her mind, Sheba knew that it could come to this as soon as she opened the briefcase and saw that she had stolen four kilos of cocaine. He and his partner had already killed for it, and that brought up another question.

  Is he alone?

  She needed to end this. It was just a matter of where. Just then, the man turned quickly and lunged for the gun. Sheba stepped back, raised the gun, and fired twice. Both shots hit the man in his chest and the impact took him off his feet.

  Sheba stepped up and stood over him. He was still alive, holding his chest and looking up at her. She shot him once more in the chest and once in the head before running away from the scene.

  Chapter 3

  Once she was a couple of blocks away from the bus station, Sheba stopped running but continued walking quickly. Knowing that she’d just killed a man and there may be more men looking for her, Sheba decided not to get back on the bus. But she still needed to get off the street.

  “Taxi!” she shouted and waved her arm in the air until one stopped, and she got in.

  “Where to?”

  “Take me to a hotel near the airport.”

  “You got a preference?”

  “Is there a Marriott?”

  “Courtyard.”

  “That works,” Sheba said, and the driver took Sheba to the Courtyard by Marriott in Linthicum.

  Upon her arrival at the Courtyard, Sheba went to check into the king suite and went to the room. Her first order of business was to call Chanel to tell her not to pick her up at the bus terminal.

  “I decided to drive instead.”

  “Why? You hate to distance drive. What’s up with that?”

  “I need to think and clear my head,” Sheba said instead of telling her that she was safer driving than on the bus.

  “I thought that was the whole point of catching the bus.”

  “It was, but the bus wasn’t gonna stop where I wanted it to,” she said, thinking fast.

  “Where did you wanna stop?” Chanel asked, because being naturally curious to the point of being nosy ran in the family.

  “I won’t know until I see it. It’s called being spontaneous. You should try it sometimes.”

  “I know Miss Rules and Regulations isn’t telling me about spontaneity.”

  “Oh, but I am. It’s something that I’ve discovered lately. Acting on impulse and living in the moment.”

  “How’s that working for you?”

  Sheba glanced at the briefcase and the gun on the bed. “I’ll let you know.”

  “So when should we expect you?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime tonight, early tomorrow maybe.”

  “Could you be any less specific?”

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “Nothing, I just need to know what to tell Grandma when she asks. You know she’s been asking all day.”

  “Tell her that I’ll see her either tonight or tomorrow.” She paused. “Chanel?”

  “Yes.”

  “You better not have planned a welcome home party for me.”

  “Welcome home party, no. Because you already said, ‘I don’t want no damn welcome home party,’” she said, imitating the way Sheba barked orders that just about everybody in the family followed. If Sheba said it, it was law.

  “Better not be.”

  “What did you tell me? You said you don’t want no damn welcome home party, so there isn’t gonna be any damn welcome home party.”

  “All right, then. I will see you when I see you, cuz. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep before I head out.”

  “All right, then, Sheba. You drive safe, and I’ll see you when you get here.”

  “You gonna be at Grandma’s?”

  “I’m not leaving until you get here,” Chanel said and ended the call.

  After talking to Chanel, as promised, Sheba got undressed and headed to the bathroom. After a long, hot shower, she got into bed and tried to get some sleep. It wasn’t easy at first, as Sheba kept replaying the murder over and over again in her mind, trying to think if it could have gone another way, but all the while knowing that it went the only way that it could have.

  Not only had Sheba witnessed a drug deal gone terribly wrong and one man murdered, but she had also taken the drugs. She was going to have to kill him no matter how it went. His lunging for the gun just made it easier for her. The question was posed once again.

  What now? Sheba asked herself, and the pursuit of an answer was enough to lull her to sleep if only for a little while.

  When she woke up a couple of hours later, Sheba had some idea of what she was going to do next. It involved food, so she got dressed and walked across the street to the Chick-fil-A to get something to eat. When she got back to the room, Sheba took out the gun she’d used to kill the man, as well as her service weapon, and placed them both on the table in front of her.

  As she ate her food, Sheba took apart the murder weapon and broke it into its four basic parts: the action, the frame, the clip, and the barrel. With those two tasks taken care of, Sheba called to rent a car. Once she was ready, she caught the hotel’s airport shuttle to pick up the car for a slow drive to Atlanta.

  When she stopped for gas in Richmond, she threw away the action before returning to her vehicle and continuing south on Interstate 95. She threw away the frame during a food stop in Raleigh, the clip in Florence, and the barrel was left in a gas station garbage can in Columbia, South Carolina, before she went and checked into a hotel for the night.