Gold Hill (46 page)

The young man made an
unconscious click of his tongue. He fell back in his chair and
looked away. Yvonne could almost feel the intensity of the look the
agent gave the young man. She didn’t want the young man to suspect
her game so she clammed up.

“
How do you remember now?”
The second woman’s voice was snide.

“
My husband wrote it on
the inside of my hand in marker,” Yvonne opened her left hand so
the woman could see. “It says, ‘I love you. Tanni’s married to Jer.
You’re finally home.’ And on my ring finger it says, ‘We’re getting
married tomorrow.’ So many words he had to write on the sides too.
See.”

Yvonne held up her
hand.

“
I’d recognize Rodney’s
handwriting anywhere,” Yvonne said. “He learned from my Aunt NeNe.
We were so poor . . . Oh Lord, we didn’t have school
or running water. Dirt floors and an outhouse, if you were lucky.
Aunt NeNe was from the city. She taught us to read, write, type,
and to think.”

Yvonne chuckled. She was
pretty sure she’d won the young man and had the girls on the hook.
She had to set it. Yvonne sighed.

“
Rodney, that’s my
husband, he’s a lot older than me. Five or six years. I guess now
that I’m in my forties, it’s not so much older, but he always
seemed o-l-d to me.” Yvonne smiled. “His momma was the only thing
close to medical in our area. She helped give birth to me and
Rodney was there. That’s how we met, in case you were
wondering.

“
We lived out on the
fields. His daddy share cropped the farm where we lived and the one
next to it. My aunt had an arrangement with the man who owned the
fields. She did his bookkeeping in exchange for letting us live
there. We also processed some of the food and took care of the
livestock. Gosh, from the time I was one or two years old, I was
collecting eggs, washing cucumbers, packing potatoes into boxes,
milking goats . . . That was our life.”

“
Of course, the best part
about it was Rodney,” Yvonne said. “He and his sisters worked at
our house while his older brothers and his daddy worked the farm.
He was the youngest and his mother’s favorite. She convinced his
daddy that Rodney was a weak, sickly child, who wouldn’t amount to
much.”

Samantha and the agent
laughed.

“
I know,” Yvonne beamed at
the young people. “You should see my husband. He’s tall, taller
than the agent there, big . . . ”

Yvonne used her hands to
indicate his muscles.

“
His hands are as big as
basketballs,” the agent said.

“
That too,” Yvonne said.
“And he’s smart. Really smart. Aunt NeNe taught him to read behind
his daddy’s back. He read every book in our house. Aunt NeNe would
barter for books for him. I’d sneak them to him.
He . . . ”

Yvonne’s face radiated with
joy.

“
He’s amazing,” Samantha
said. “My dad had him over for dinner when he was first out of
prison. He and my dad talked until the morning about life, justice,
the prison system . . . He left a big impression on
my father and he’s hard to impress.”

“
We met the General and
your Mom a few times when I worked for the DA,” Yvonne said. “Nice
people.”

“
What I can’t get over is
how Rodney isn’t mad about Aaron Alvin sending him to prison,”
Samantha tried her hand at Yvonne’s game. Yvonne smiled to
encourage her. “I’d be furious.”

“
Rodney’s not like that.
He’s . . . ” Yvonne’s entire face broke into a
smile that seemed to light up the room. “The best person in the
whole wide world. He could always make the very worst thing seem
beautiful. When I was four or five, the owner of our house gave me
seven chicks to raise. I loved those chicks, played with them,
named them, fussed over them, fed them, and then one
day . . . ”

Yvonne glanced up to see if
she had the young people’s attention. Seeing their interest, she
sighed.

“
They were fryers,” she
said. “Aunt NeNe told me they were fryers but I didn’t know what
that meant. My chickens were rounded up and killed. I was so upset
I ran and hid. I cried for hours until Rodney found me. He didn’t
belittle my feelings or tell me to grow up. He told me I had given
the chickens the sacred gift of my love and they could in turn pass
my gift along. So by loving even one chicken as much as I did, I
was passing love to all the people who benefited from her. He told
me that I loved because I was a loving person and that I was the
best kind of person, a rare precious jewel.”

Yvonne nodded.

“
Those words,” Yvonne
said. “They’ve meant a lot to me in the last years. They helped me
turn horrible days and nights into bearable survival. I loved
because that’s who I am and I had to believe that my actions would
help others even if I didn’t know it.”

When she looked up, she saw
that she had the young people’s full attention. Samantha’s mouth
had dropped open a little. Yvonne gave her a little nod.

“
From that moment forward,
all I ever wanted was to be married to him,” Yvonne smiled. “Him
too. He told me he wanted me to be in his life forever. Kind of
silly, I guess, but that’s when we decided to get married. Because
I was living with Aunt NeNe and my momma was raped, I didn’t have
anyone to sign to let us get married early. We had to wait until it
was legal for me. We got married at the courthouse and took to the
road. Rodney got into Metro College and my momma was
here.”

Yvonne’s flushed with
emotion and she smiled to herself.

“
It was a pretty exciting
time,” she said.

“
You waited two years to
have Tanesha?” Samantha asked.

“
We didn’t want to be too
poor. I mean, we knew poverty. We didn’t want Tanni to know it like
we did,” Yvonne said. “Rodney had finished two years in school and
I’d been working for the DA about as long. We bought this cute
little house caddy-corner to my momma’s house. We were so, so, so
happy.”

Her words hung over the
room. She glanced at the young people. They looked like they were
working out what happened. Yvonne was afraid to move or she’d break
the spell.

“
I saw that interview,”
the young woman nearest to her said. “You know the one with Tanesha
and Jeraine?”

Yvonne shook her
head.

“
Tanesha and Jeraine were
interviewed by Diana Sawyer,” Samantha said.

“
I wasn’t allowed a
television or a phone or a computer,” Yvonne said. “I didn’t see
it.”

“
I bet we can find you a
copy.”

The young man pulled
Samantha’s laptop from under the table and opened it up. He typed
for a while and then turned the computer so everyone could
see.

“
Look! That’s Tanni!”
Yvonne said. “That’s Jeraine!”

“
Shh . . . ” Samantha shushed
her.

Yvonne leaned forward. For
the next forty-five minutes, they watched Tanesha and Jeraine.
Yvonne sniffled at some places. Near the end, the blonde lady asked
if Tanesha had one wish. Without hesitation, Tanesha said, “That my
mother could come home.” Tanesha’s eyes welled with tears and
Jeraine hugged her close.

Yvonne began to cry. The
hopelessness and desperation of her situation overwhelmed her. She
was just a small woman in a world of powerful men. She was caught
by the spider.

She felt a strong hand on
her shoulder.

“
It’s time to let us go.”
The agent’s Queens accent added a measure of threat to his words.
“You don’t want to do this.”

“
We already have,” the
young man’s voice cracked with desperation.

“
You haven’t done a
thing,” the agent said. “You were supposed to do something, but
they’ve clearly been detained. You haven’t done it. Yet. You can
decide not to do it.”

“
But . . . ”

“
You broke our phones.
That’s all. Mine was a government issue. I’ll get another the
moment I walk out of this room. Sami?”

“
I hate that phone,”
Samantha said.

“
All this woman wants to
do is live the rest of her life with her family,” the agent said.
“Don’t you think more than twenty years of rape and torture is
enough? Hasn’t she suffered enough?”

The young people stared at
the agent. Yvonne knew that this was the moment. These young people
would either let them go or kill them. The thought of never seeing
Rodney or Tanesha again overwhelmed Yvonne. She bent over and
sobbed into her hands.

The young man stood from
his seat. The two young women looked at him. He nodded his head and
walked to the door. Using a key, he opened the door.

“
Go,” he said.

Faster than she could
blink, the agent lifted her from her chair and they were trotting
down the police hallway with Samantha at their side. They reached a
door and the agent set her down.

Boom!

The agent kicked the door
open and he was carrying her again. They reached an elevator and
Samantha pushed the button. When the elevator didn’t come, Samantha
ran to the stairwell. The door was locked.

They could hear people
moving in the building around them.

They could hear people
coming for them.

Samantha pointed to the
restroom sign. They ran down the hallway to the women’s restroom
and slipped inside.

There was no way to lock
the door. The agent leaned his weight against it.

Terrified, Yvonne felt like
her heart was going to beat out of her chest.

This was it.

She would either die today
or go home to live forever.

Bang
! Someone hit the bathroom door.

Chapter Two Hundred and
Sixteen

“
Get in the last stall!”
Agent Rasmussen yelled to Yvonne.

Scrambling on her hands and
knees, Yvonne shimmied into the small stall near the end. A tall,
thin woman, she stepped between the toilet and the tile
wall.

Bang
!

Someone hit the bathroom
door.

Bang
!

Someone hit the door
again.

Bang
!

Feeling something drop on
her, Yvonne looked up. A tiny brown skinned woman’s face peered at
her. The woman held her finger to her mouth and Yvonne nodded. The
woman lowered a rope to Yvonne and demonstrated with her hands what
to do with it. Yvonne clipped the rope around her middle and was
pulled up into the ventilation system. Hands, lots of hands, pulled
her into the duct. She scooted on her back until she reached some
kind of a cot.

Zoom
!

The cot whisked through the
ducts like an amusement park ride. Terrified, she closed her eyes
tight. The cot jerked to a stop.

“
Yvie!” he
said.

She opened her eyes and saw
Rodney’s face.

“
Oh Rodney, you always
make the worse day better,” she said.

Laughing, he helped her up.
She was standing in a room surrounded by Denver Police Officers and
military people. Men and women in blue suits were working on
computers. She recognized drawings from her journal on more than
one computer screen. Standing in front of four computer screens
near the center of the room, General Hargreaves’s daughter Alex
waved to her. Someone dropped a blanket over her shoulders and it
seemed like everyone was talking at once.

She heard a laugh and saw
Samantha Hargreaves lifted out of the air conditioning duct with
that cute Agent Rasmussen crawling out behind her. They held each
other for a moment before looking around.

Yvonne threaded her finger
through Rodney’s and looked up at him.

“
I guess this is it,” she
said.

“
This is what?” Rodney
asked.

“
We get to live happily
ever after now.”

Overwhelmed with emotion,
Rodney held her close.

~~~~~~~~

Friday mid-day — 12:15
p.m. PT (1:15 p.m. MT)

“
Where would you like to
go to lunch?” Seth asked.

He held the door of the
concert hall open for Ava and followed her through it. With his
phone pasted to his ear, Schmidty followed them. They were almost
to the limousine when Seth’s phone vibrated. He stopped to open the
door for Ava before checking. He smirked at the text and got in the
car. Schmidty slipped in behind him and closed the door.

“
What’s with you and your
phone today?” Ava asked.

“
What do you mean?” Seth
asked.

“
Usually Schmidty has your
phone,” Ava said. “At least when I call, I always get
him.”

“
I had a few things I
wanted to keep an eye on today,” Seth said.

“
Redoing the sound tracks
has screwed up our schedule,” Schmidty said. “We’re already
starting to get ready in Denver.”

“
Uh huh,” Ava said. “You
know, you smile like that whenever you lie.”