Not My Brother's Keeper

Chapter 13: Hurting Game

            The day before Valentine's Day turned out to be devastating in more ways than one. I came to campus on that cold and cloudy Thursday to the news that Stephon had been kidnapped while heading into the student athletic center with his teammates. According to what his teammates said at the scene, a black SUV pulled up and three men wearing all black jumpsuits and red masks hopped out and grabbed Stephon. There was a fight between the masked men and Stephon and his teammates, but the men were able to take Stephon and drive off. Things took another strange turn while I was in my first class of the day. I received an email to my personal email account from Tommy's school email account.

"If you go to the cops, Stephon will join Tommy forever," said Byron as he read the email aloud from my phone. "We know you know. You know what to do. Give us what we want."

"I have no idea what any of this means," I said to him. "Byron, this doesn't sound like the fraternity at all. Why would they take Stephon? And where would they even keep him at? I'm starting to think this is something else."

He handed my phone back to me and suggested, "Or they're messing with you just like they're doing with Derrick."

"So, you think Stephon is in on this?"

"No, but I do still think the fraternity is doing this. You can already guess who was tapped to investigate Stephon's kidnapping."

"Warren?"

"Yep. Langston just texted me that Warren begged to be the lead and only investigator on the case. This is all connected, Cameron. They know you're onto them because of Dr. Gilmore. He knows you were in his office but he can't prove it. He also doesn't know about me. If any of them knew I was helping you, they'd be worried and would've done things differently."

"Something just doesn't feel right with all of this. Last week, I flirted with Gabe to get an invitation to the fraternity's secret Valentine's Day party and I'm pretty sure he got turned on by me. And I received two different invitations to the party. One came the exact same day I flirted with Gabe and the other came the day after. I have no idea if they both came from Gabe or if he sent one and someone else from the fraternity sent the other. If it's the latter then something isn't right. Why would he send me an invitation and then one of his frat brothers send another?"

"Hmm, what are you thinking?"

"I think they're going out of their way to screw with my head. I honestly don't know what to believe, Byron. There are points in my conversations with Gabe where I truly feel like he's not a part of this. But he has to be, right? He's the leader of the fraternity."

"You may be onto something. There could be an angle we're not considering with all of this. They could be keeping him out of the loop to muddy the waters." He paused as if he were deep in thought for a little while before saying, "We can't deviate from our plan. We're just going to have to assume Gabe is a part of all this and that he's just as dangerous as the others. I mean, what are the chances that he's not involved and he's the leader of the fraternity?"

"The chances are slim but you're right, we need to assume he's in all of it. I can't take any chances with this. Do you think they'll hurt Stephon?"

"If they catch you trying to make an effort to bring outside law enforcement into this, then yes they will. They know he was Tommy's boyfriend and they have no qualms about killing gay men. Both he and Derrick are in danger."

"Derrick? Derrick is most likely helping them."

"Yeah, but he doesn't have their loyalty. They're only using him to get to you. And that brings us to the other part of the email. What is it that you know and they need so bad that they're going through all of this to obtain it?"