Page 16 of Omar

I crouched down so we were level and looked at him until he stopped talking.

"The woman on Nostrand," I said. "Don't touch her again."

He held my eyes for a long second.

"That Supreme's woman, fam. You know that, right?"

"I know whose woman she is."

"Then you know what this is."

"I do."

He didn't say anything after that.

I stood up, rolled my sleeve down, and walked back to Utica.

My knuckles were split across two of them and bleeding a little. I pressed my thumb into them as I walked. The bar I'd watched him come out of still had people outside on the sidewalk talking. A window above the street had a TV going behind a closed curtain.

I got in the car but didn't start it yet, just sat there with my hand on the steering wheel and thought about the half-step stumble when Holt first grabbed her, the speed she'd recovered it in, and the two fingers she'd used to get his hand off her wrist like it was something she'd done before.

I called Devon back.

"It's done."

"How bad?"

"He'll walk. He'll know."

Devon was quiet for a moment. "Supreme's going to hear about this before morning."

"I know."

"You want me to wake Kadeem up?"

"No. I'll see him in the morning."

I ended the call and put the phone face down on the passenger seat.

I sat with the engine off for another minute. Then I started it, pulled out, and drove home.

The notebook was still on the passenger seat from the afternoon. Holt's name at the top of the page. The line drawn down to TK's outer contact. Two networks linked through one bad afternoon on Nostrand.

The other thing on that page was a name from Devon's older files. A peripheral name that had been showing up in money routes that ran through the same era my father had been running the outer network. A name that meant nothing on the surface and a lot underneath if you knew what you were looking at.

I kept driving with the page open in my head.

Chapter 7

Asha

Supreme's phone rang in the bedroom. I was at the kitchen table with a client file open in front of me, going through the product order I needed to place before the weekend. The coffee next to my elbow had gone cold an hour ago.

He answered on the second ring. His voice came through the open door loud enough to reach me.

Yeah. Yo, who's this?

I kept my eyes on the page.