Page 99 of Omar

"Put it down," I told him.

He raised it instead. I closed the distance before he could decide what to do with it, knocked the barrel aside with my left hand, and hit him in the throat with my right. He dropped the gun, both hands going to his neck, choking. I hit him again in the temple. He went sideways into the wall, then down to the floor. My guy zip-tied him while he was still trying to breathe.

The back room was where the money was. Two lockboxes on a table, a counting machine, stacks of bills sorted by denomination. A third man was in the room sitting behind the table with a laptop open. He looked up when I came through the door, assessed the situation in about two seconds, and put his hands on the table.

"I ain't armed," he said.

"Smart."

My guys secured him while I went through the lockboxes. Cash, all of it. Maybe eighty thousand in mixed bills. Supreme's collection money from the Flatbush territory, sitting there waiting to be cleaned through the shell companies and pumped back into his property portfolio.

I photographed the laptop screen before closing it. Devon would want the data.

"We're taking the lockboxes," I told my guys. "And the counting machine. Everything that's got prints or data on it, we take."

"Those lockboxes are heavy as hell," one of them said, lifting the corner of one. It didn't move much.

"Then lift with your legs." I grabbed the other side. The metal box weighed at least forty pounds, packed tight with bundled bills. We hoisted it off the table and carried it between us to the hallway, the weight pulling at our shoulders, our feet finding the dark corridor by memory because nobody was turning on lights.

The staircase down to the street was narrow, steep, the metal treads slick from the night air coming through the gap at the bottom. I went first, backing down one step at a time with the lockbox between us, the edge of it digging into my palms. My guy on the other end was breathing hard, his grip shifting, trying to keep the weight balanced.

"Watch the last step," I said over my shoulder. "There's a lip."

We got the first lockbox to the bottom. Set it down on the sidewalk, both of us flexing our hands. My second guy was already coming down with the counting machine in a duffel bag, the weight of it swinging against his thigh. The third was behind him with the laptop bag.

"Second box," I said, and went back up.

The second lockbox was heavier. More bills packed tighter, the metal handles cutting into my fingers. Halfway down the stairs my foot slipped on the wet tread and the box lurched sideways. My guy caught his end, braced his shoulder against the wall, and we held it there for a second before finding our footing again.

"Easy," he muttered.

"I got it."

We made it to the street. Two lockboxes, one counting machine, one laptop. All of it sitting on the sidewalk outside a building we'd just taken by force in a neighborhood that belonged to Supreme. I checked the street both ways. Empty. A car passed on the cross street, headlights sweeping the intersection, then gone. A dog barked from behind a fence three houses down.

"Cars," I said. "Now."

We split into pairs. One lockbox per car, the counting machine and laptop in mine. The cars were parked two blocks away on the residential street. We moved fast, staying close to the buildings, keeping the lockboxes low. The weight slowed us down. Forty pounds of cash in a metal box isn't something you jog with. My forearms were burning when we reached the first car.

My guy popped the trunk and we loaded the first lockbox. I carried the second to my car, got it into the back seat, threw a jacket over it. The counting machine went in the footwell. The laptop bag on the passenger seat.

I got behind the wheel, started the engine, and checked the mirrors. Empty street. No movement behind us. No headlights following.

Devon's voice came through my earpiece as we pulled away from the block. "Flatbush is clean. You're clear on all surrounding streets. James is thirty seconds out on East New York."

I drove north toward Bed-Stuy while Devon fed me updates from James's operation. The East New York location was a storage unit near the expressway, heavier security than Flatbush. Four guards, two outside and two in. James had more bodies with him and the approach was different but the objective was the same: cash, records, lockboxes.

"James is in," Devon reported. "Two outside guards down. He's breaching the unit now."

I parked on a side street and sat with the engine running, both hands on the wheel, listening to Devon's voice through the earpiece.

"First inside guard is down. James is moving to the back."

Then a sound that made my grip tighten on the steering wheel. Two shots, rapid, muffled but unmistakable through the comms. A shout, cut off halfway. Something heavy hitting the floor.

Then nothing.

The radio went dead. No static, no voices, no Devon narrating. Just silence in my ear and the engine humming and the streetlight casting orange through the windshield.