Friday, March 17
11:30 a.m.
Savannah, GA
Rashida was so tired she couldn’t think. Outside the bank, Chief Wilson had treated her like a colleague. Once they arrived at the police station, he began to treat her more like a suspect as he tried to determine what role if any she had played in the attempted theft.
Jackie had been dragged off the parade route and subjected to the same treatment. Rashida could hear her voice rising in anger in one of the other interview rooms as she undoubtedly tried to explain how Destiny managed to pass all the background checks Jackie had allegedly subjected her to. Rashida wondered the same thing, but she was too busy trying to save her own ass at the moment to worry about someone else’s.
She had been answering questions for hours. She had told her story so many times she could recite it by heart, yet she was no closer to understanding what had happened. Had she been so blinded by her feelings for Destiny it had affected her ability to see the truth? She should have trusted her instincts. She had told herself they were moving too fast. She had told herself she didn’t know enough about Destiny to fall for her, but she had tumbled anyway.
Destiny, who had seemed too good to be true, had turned out to be exactly that. She wasn’t an out-of-work security guard. She wasn’t a former soldier. She wasn’t the sensitive woman who had sparked Rashida’s interest and found her way into her heart. She was a liar and a thief who had been using her from the day they met. She had been recruited by Harry and paid to feed her lies.
And I swallowed every one of them.
Rashida shook her head disconsolately. She had been fooled by not one woman she thought she could trust but two. Was she really that naïve?
Chief Wilson showed her Destiny’s rap sheet. Thumbing through it, Rashida could hardly believe what she was reading. Check fraud, deception, identity theft, breaking and entering. The charges went on and on. The Destiny she knew wasn’t capable of such things. The Destiny she knew didn’t cross the line between right and wrong. But the Destiny she knew didn’t exist. Destiny Jackson wasn’t real. She was someone DaShawn Jenkins and Harry Collins had created.
Rashida pushed the file away. The answers she needed weren’t inside a manila folder. They were in DaShawn Jenkins’s head. And, perhaps, her heart.
Rashida knew little about Destiny, but what she did know she loved. She knew far too much about DaShawn. None of it good.
She wanted to know why DaShawn had done what she did. She wanted to know how DaShawn could seem to care about her yet use her so cruelly. She wanted an explanation. But not from DaShawn’s lips. DaShawn was the most skilled liar she had ever met. She wouldn’t give her another chance to weave her spell.
She rubbed her eyes, which itched from unshed tears. The answers she sought would have to wait. Today she just wanted to get away from it all. Let someone else deal with the fallout for once. She was done.
“You’re free to go,” Chief Wilson said after nearly three hours of questioning.
Rashida stepped out of the interview room like a punch-drunk boxer. She stared at her cell phone, but she didn’t know who to call. She was the person everyone reached out to in such situations, not the one who did the reaching. Who could she count on to have her back? Jackie was still being put through the wringer, Dennis and the members of executive management were partying on the sidelines, and Ted had taken his wife and kids out of town for a weekend getaway. Who was left?
“There you are.”
Relief flooded through Rashida’s body when she saw Daniel striding across the lobby. She could always count on him to be calm even in the midst of a storm. She listened to him detail how he had explained the attempted robbery to the rest of the employees and informed them she was okay. He had also drafted a press release he would issue as soon as he and the police department’s public spokesperson conducted a joint press conference scheduled to take place within the hour.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
He gave her a much needed hug.
“Go home and get some rest. You’ve done enough for one day.”
“Should I tender my resignation now or later?”
Daniel placed a hand on her shoulder and fixed her with an earnest look. “Your job is safe. So is Jackie’s. What happened wasn’t your fault. It was Harry’s and Destiny’s. DaShawn’s.” He waved his hand. “Whatever her name is. This unfortunate incident has illustrated there are some obvious flaws in our screening and selection process for new employees, but those can be addressed at a later date.”
Rashida lifted her shoulders in an awkward shrug. “I have to tell you I’m at a loss. A crime was being planned right under my nose and I didn’t see it happening. I’m personally and professionally embarrassed for allowing this to transpire on my watch. Please accept my deepest apologies.”
“Rashida, you didn’t do—”
She raised her hands to prevent the expected show of sympathy. She didn’t want forgiveness. She didn’t want understanding. Because she didn’t feel worthy of either. She felt empty inside. Like she’d given everything she had to give and then some. She had spent every minute of every day trying to prove her worth. In two short weeks, all the hard work she had put in establishing her personal and professional reputations had been erased. Nearly twenty years gone. Just like that. She didn’t have the energy to start over.
“I’ve told my story to the police and you’ve already notified the staff,” she said with a weary sigh. “I’ll write a detailed memo for the board as soon as I get home, but I don’t know what else I can add that won’t appear in the official police report or be reported on the news. Obviously, I’ll make myself available to testify when the case comes to trial.”
“There isn’t going to be a trial. DaShawn confessed to everything and the rest of her cohorts are tripping over themselves trying to cut deals of their own. Even Harry’s spilling her guts. Her parents are on their way to the station with a prominent attorney in tow, but she must not be too confident in his ability to get her off because from what I hear, she’s telling everything she knows.”
Rashida felt her heart begin to race. She didn’t care about Harry’s admission of guilt or the others’ attempts to make life easier for themselves. Despite everything that had happened, she cared about DaShawn. Still.
“DaShawn confessed?” She felt a silver lining begin to form on the dark clouds hovering over her head. “So she was working with the police.”
Daniel’s skeptical look blunted her burst of happiness.
“She’s working to reduce her sentence. I don’t think becoming an informant at the last minute is the same as working undercover. It will get her out of prison faster, but it won’t make her any less guilty.” He led Rashida out of the police station to his waiting BMW. “How did you manage to see through her?” he asked after he deposited her in the passenger’s seat and slid behind the walnut-accented steering wheel.
“What do you mean?” she asked, fastening her seat belt.
Daniel drove toward the bank’s parking lot, taking Rashida to her car. “You were scheduled to be in Springfield today, not downtown. Did you sense something was wrong?”
Rashida pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She could have lied to make herself look good in Daniel’s eyes, but she chose to go with her favorite mainstay, the truth.
“I didn’t sense anything. She had me completely fooled.”
She remembered how stupid, how gullible, how deluded she had felt when Destiny—DaShawn―had revealed herself to be a common criminal. A product of the life Rashida had escaped not the one she had built.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
DaShawn had pulled the wool over her eyes once, but Rashida would make sure neither DaShawn nor anyone else would ever get a chance to repeat the feat because she would never allow anyone to get that close to her again.