Free From Cape Town with Love by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Blair Underwood Page A

a couple thousand dollars would go a long way. Remembering Oliver made me smile.
    I couldn’t wait to tell April about my day.
    Liar,
my memory whispered. April had called me twice the day before, after I left her stranded, and I hadn’t called back. I wasn’t interested in either the pity or the anger in her messages. If she was pissed at me, maybe it was better that way. Give it all a clean break.
    We were gone.
    Grief came, so crisp that it shocked me, maybe the worst of my life. If I hadn’t been surrounded by strangers, I might have screamed.
    At long last, I was in love.
    Fuck.
    Two months after our visit to Langa, Maitlin messengered me a wedding invitation and a phone number to make travel arrangements for two to São Paolo in March. In a handwritten note, she thanked me for donating money to Children First. I’d asked for anonymity, but Mrs. Kunene must have told her. I didn’t mind.
    My father didn’t feel up to a trip overseas, so I took Chela with me instead. I could write a book about my adventure with Chela at the wedding of the year in São Paolo. Let’s just say that Chela gained a newfoundrespect for me and my growing clout; and I wouldn’t go back there without a bodyguard of my own. But that’s another story.
    Maitlin’s wedding and its guest list whipped the tabloids into such an orgasm that they forgot her pending adoption. But two days after the wedding, when the news was reporting that Sofia Maitlin and her new husband were honeymooning in Cape Town, I got a text from an unidentified number, a one-line message:
    WE GOT HER!—S.M.
    The next day, the television screens were full of visions of Nandi on Sofia Maitlin’s arm. It was the most satisfaction I’d ever felt after a job.
    If only real life had fairy-tale endings.

SIX
JUNE 2009
    DON’T WORRY—CHELA HAS BEEN GOOD. YOU SHOULD BE PROUD! CAN “DADDY” COME OUT AND PLAY?—A FRIEND INDEED
    The text message blipped across my phone on a Friday night, on a rare evening when I was thinking about going out. Dad had company, so I didn’t feel any pressure to stay and keep him company while his lady friend, Marcela, was at her book club meeting.
    I had a spy in my life, and now she knew my cell number
and
my email address. It was the third message in seven months, arriving as unexpectedly as the first—I’d gotten the first one right after I solved the T. D. Jackson case, while I was sitting on the plane bound for South Africa. My “old friend” knew things about my life he, or she, shouldn’t.
    And two of the messages mentioned Chela, which made me nervous. Outside of a very small circle of people who had a stake in keeping their mouths shut, no one knew how and why Chela lived with me. But my spy knew.
    I cursed myself again for not working harder to make Chela’s adoption legal. I’d traded calls with a lawyer as soon as I got back from South Africa, inspired by my visit to Children First, but I’d let it slide. My case had complications: Chela was a runaway and a fugitive, and I had beenharboring her illegally. I was also a single man trying to adopt a teenage girl with a history in the sex game. Trying to adopt her might cause more problems than it would fix, especially with her eighteenth birthday only a year away. I had kept her out of trouble, for the most part, and I hoped that was enough.
    But someone out there wasn’t willing to forget about us.
    I walked across the hall to Chela’s room and knocked. Through the door, techno music played with the wildly earnest drone of hormonedrenched dance clubs. Chela cycled between techno and Metallica; I longed for the days when it was nonstop rap. When she didn’t answer, I knocked louder and tried the knob. The door was locked. Strictly verboten.
    â€œHey,”
I said.
    The door flew open. Chela had her phone to her ear and her Gucci bag on her shoulder, ready to go out. At