Page 100 of Omar

"Devon."

Nothing.

"Devon, talk to me."

Silence. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. My thumb found the comms button again. Thirty seconds of dead air. My hand went to the gear stick. I was calculating the fastest route to East New York when I pulled out of the parking spot, already driving.

"Devon, what the fuck is happening?"

Forty seconds. Forty-five. I was on the road heading east, running through every scenario. James down. Multiple casualties. The operation blown.

The radio crackled.

"Clear." Devon's voice came through, level but faster than usual. "East New York is clear. James is good. One guard pulled a weapon, James put him down. Everybody's breathing."

I pulled over and sat there for a moment. My hands were tight on the wheel. I loosened them one finger at a time.

"What happened to comms?" I asked.

"James knocked out the power going in. Killed the lights, killed the signal booster. I lost him for about forty-five seconds until his phone reconnected to the cell tower."

"Don't ever let me lose comms for forty-five seconds again."

"Wasn't my call, Omar. James made a tactical decision. The guard couldn't see to shoot in the dark. It was the right move."

I breathed. "Casualties?"

"One guard took a round in the shoulder. James's team is clean. Lockboxes secured, financial records recovered."

No bodies. Guards down but breathing. That was the plan: disrupt the money, take the records, leave Supreme's people alive to report back to him that his financial pipeline had just been ripped apart in two locations simultaneously.

Once Supreme heard about it, we'd already be planning night two.

I drove to James's location to check the haul myself. The storage unit was a concrete box behind a chain-link fence near the expressway on-ramp. James was standing outside with his team, two lockboxes on the ground beside them, a stack of files under his arm. Four guards were zip-tied against the interior wall, two of them bleeding from the face, one holding his ribs.

"How much?" I asked.

"More than Flatbush." James kicked one of the lockboxes with his boot. "Hundred and twenty, maybe more. Plus financial records going back months. Devon's gonna lose his mind over this."

I looked at the guards through the open door. One of them stared back at me with blood running from his eyebrow, trying to look defiant despite his hands shaking behind the zip ties.

"You tell Supreme something for me," I said to him. "Tell him his money's gone, his locations are done, and the Baptiste family ain't finished yet."

The guard didn't reply. I wasn't expecting him to.

We loaded the lockboxes into James's car. His team drove out first, then James, then me. Three separate routes back to Bed-Stuy. Standard protocol after any operation.

I met Kadeem at Ma's house. The kitchen was dark except for the light over the stove. He was already there, sitting at the table with two glasses and the whisky from Ma's cabinet. He poured without asking and slid one across to me.

"Both locations cleared," I told him, sitting down. "Flatbush had about eighty in the lockboxes. East New York came in heavier. James reckons a hundred and twenty, plus financial records from both sites."

"Any problems?"

"Clean run. In and out, no shots fired. Guards went down quiet."

We drank in the quiet kitchen with the stove light casting shadows across the ceiling. The house was warm around us, Ma asleep upstairs.

"Devon's pulling the laptop data from Flatbush right now," I continued. "Combined with what James pulled from East New York, we'll have Supreme's entire collection operation mapped out by morning."