I left the apartment and sat in my truck and stared at the steering wheel. My phone had been buzzing all morning. Business calls, transport schedules, Zephyr’s physical therapy coordinator asking me to confirm his next appointment. Life was still happening even though mine felt like it was burning from both ends. My little brother couldn’t walk. My sister was in hiding. And my best friend wanted her dead.
Twenty years. Me and Quest been rocking for twenty years. Since we was seventeen running product in Banks Reserve trucks because his granddad’s company was bleeding money and nobody had a better idea. I taught him the street side. He taught me the business side. We built something together that turned both of us into millionaires and I never once questioned his loyalty or his judgment. Not once.
Until now.
My phone rang. Quest’s name on the screen. I let it ring twice before I picked up because I needed those two seconds to put everything I was feeling behind the wall.
“I got a lead on Mega,” he said. No hello, no how you doing. Straight business. That’s how it was between us now. “Riggs Road in Northeast. You in or not?”
“I’m in. When?”
“Now. Meet me on the corner of Riggs and South Dakota in thirty.”
“Aight.”
He hung up without saying bye. I did the same.
I made it to the corner in twenty-five. Quest was already there, leaning against the Maybach with his arms crossed. He looked like he’d finally slept since the last time I saw him, which was more than I could say for myself. Fresh clothes, fresh cut, jaw set tight. He looked like a man who had something worth protecting and was done negotiating with anyone who threatened it.
I parked behind him and got out. We stood on that corner about six feet apart and the distance felt like six miles. Two men who used to finish each other’s sentences standing in silence because neither one of us knew how to start a conversation that didn’t end in a threat.
“Where’s Janelle?” he asked.
“Where’s Bryce?”
He looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us answered. Two men holding each other’s blood hostage and both of us knowing it. Stalemate.
“We doing this or not?” I said.
He pushed off the car and walked toward the address. I followed. We moved in sync the way we always had because twenty years of operating together puts something in yourmuscle memory that anger can’t erase overnight. He went left, I went right. He covered the front, I covered the back. We didn’t need to discuss it. The choreography was automatic even if the trust behind it was gone.
The house on Riggs Road matched the description. Big, white shutters, two-car garage. Quest kicked the front door on the second try and we went in hot. Living room cleared. Kitchen cleared. Bedrooms cleared. Basement cleared. Every room in that house was empty. Not just empty like nobody was home. Empty like somebody had packed in a hurry and bounced. Drawers pulled open, closet half cleared out, a pizza box with two slices still in it sitting on the counter. He’d been here recently. Maybe even today.
Quest stood in the living room looking at a ring camera mounted above the front door. He reached up and ripped it off the wall with one pull, wires and drywall dust coming with it. He turned it over in his hands and looked at the lens.
“He saw us coming,” Quest said.
“Or somebody told him we was coming.” I looked at him and didn’t blink. “Your boy Bryce is the one who gave you this address, right? The same lil nigga who robbed you and burned your warehouse? And you just trusted him?”
“He’s cooperating.”
“He’s full of shit is what he is. He probably called Mega the second you left him and told him to dip. That kid can’t be trusted, Quest. I been telling you from the jump.”
“You been telling me from the jump that you wanted to put a bullet in his skull before you knew who he was.”
“And maybe I should’ve. Because now Mega’s in the wind and we got nothing.”
“We got the stash house on Benning Road.”
“Which is probably cleaned out too if Bryce tipped him on this one.” I shook my head. “You protecting that kid because his sister got you wide open. That ain’t strategy. That’s emotion.”
“Don’t talk to me about emotion. You got your sister in a hideout somewhere refusing to give up her location while she recovers from kidnapping my girl. That’s emotion too, nigga.”
“My sister is my blood.”
“And Mehar is mine.”
“See, that’s what I can’t get past.” I took a step toward him. “You known this girl for a few months. A FEW MONTHS. And you willing to throw away everything we built, everything we bled for, over a bitch you just met.”
