Still, I wanted to at least make sure she was okay. I also understood that people sometimes didn’t know how tocommunicate effectively and felt that noncommunication was a form of communication. In this case, it was not. Nothing about her body language around me said she didn’t want to be bothered, so I was at a loss for words.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Unc. You good?”
“Chozen. I’m good. How about you? How’s school going?”
“Everything’s good.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“Uncle Carrington, I’m not gon’ lie. I’m worried about someone.”
“A woman, no doubt.”
“Yeah.”
“RJ told me about the lunch date last week.”
“She has health issues. Cancer being the worst. She ghosted me after last Wednesday, and she hasn’t been to class. I need to make sure she’s good. She was in quite a bit of pain the last time I was with her, so I’m scared something could have happened. You are the only person I know that can find anybody. I just need to ease my spirit, because it’s in turmoil right now.”
“I understand. I’m hoping for the best for you. What’s her name?”
“Azari Michaels.”
“Do you have a middle name?”
“Nachelle, and she’s thirty-one. She’s from Atlanta, not Cove City.”
“Okay. I’ll look into it right now. Anything else you can tell me about her? It’ll help weed out other profiles if more than one pops.”
“She’s a single mother to a three-year-old, and of course, she’s a student at Blake U.”
I could hear his fingers tapping away. He wasn’t a P.I., but he sure in the hell could have been one. He carried an angerinside of him when it came to his biological father. The man had an affair with his mother and was a Baptist preacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He pretty much kicked them out on the street, not giving a damn what happened to them. He learned how to locate people and found his brother, Ryan Charles Senior, who was RJ and Noah’s father, to pretty much give him the business. I had to assume that he couldn’t locate his father.
Anyway, he perfected his skills and found them, gaining employment with JC Architectural Firm. After a while, RJ figured out he was trying to fuck up his business. They had a brief come-to-Jesus meeting, and RJ fired him, but eventually, they resolved their differences and became the best of friends, although they were uncle and nephew. They were only a year apart, RJ being older. Knowing what I knew about RJ’s thuggish ass, I was surprised he let him come back from that bullshit. However, from what I heard, Uncle Carrington helped RJ get out of all sorts of trouble because he knew how to hack into shit, manipulate shit, and locate people.
“I found her.”
I sat up in my chair. “So she’s alive?”
“That’s what I’m looking for now. I don’t see any records of death. Just an accident years ago, a childbirth, and a lease agreement. She’s an amputee?”
“Yes. They had to cut her leg off last year due to an infection in her knee, stemming from a faulty knee replacement.”
“I see a class-action suit for that. Why didn’t she join?”
“I don’t know if she even knew about it. She never mentioned it. We’ve only really been around each other for two days, Monday and Wednesday last week.”
“Well, I don’t see any recent activity to indicate anything happening to her. You want her address?”
“Yeah. Can you screenshot it and send it to me?”
“Mm-hmm. So what are you going to do? I mean, when you come face-to-face with her, what are you going to say?”
“That I’m glad she’s alive and walk away.”
“Okay. Don’t get in any trouble, Chozen. You know we’ll have your back if you do, but at the same time, we would prefer you didn’t.”
