by Mason Dixon
“I think it’s telling she turned to me in her time of need. Her faith in Ice is obviously shaken right now. But she’s remained on his side for years despite previous ups and downs. Getting her to turn on him for good won’t be easy, but I think I can do it. I just have to figure out a way to convince her to cut the cord. Did you find the evidence I told you about?”
After Half Pint’s murder, Bathsheba and Raq had been ordered to clean up the mess. When they were done, they had dropped two trash bags in a Dumpster behind a nearby hospital.
“There was a ton of medical waste in the trash receptacle,” Carswell said. “The tech guys are running DNA scans on what we found and cross-matching it against the samples we pulled from Jefferson’s body to see if the new material can be positively identified as his. You don’t think we’ll get lucky enough to find Taylor’s DNA in the bags you tossed, do you?”
“I doubt it. He was too careful to leave any DNA behind. And he was wearing gloves, so there’s no gunshot residue on his hands. As for the clothes he was wearing during the shooting, they’re in ashes somewhere. I heard him give the order to one of his underlings to throw them in the incinerator as soon as he returned to his apartment. Even if we managed to find the gun Dez Lassiter tossed, chances are Taylor’s prints won’t be on it and the serial number will be missing, making it impossible to trace. My eyewitness testimony might be enough to build a case around—with a murder charge, we could put Taylor away for life—but I want to make sure whatever charges we do file stick. With no physical evidence to tie Taylor to Jefferson’s murder, he and his lawyer might find a way to wriggle out of our grasp just like they have too many times before.”
“What about security cameras?”
“They’re all over the lot, but I didn’t see any inside the storage unit. If the ones outside the hospital are functioning properly, they might have captured Raq and me ditching the trash bags. To anyone watching the footage, we would look guiltier than Ice would. If we went to trial, it would be our word against his—and whoever he pays to provide him with an alibi.”
“That’s not enough to guarantee a verdict. I don’t want this asshole getting off on a technicality or for lack of evidence.”
“Neither do I. I want the case against Taylor to be airtight. We’re almost there. I can feel it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Carswell said with a heavy sigh.
“Wait,” Bathsheba said, taking note of the air of defeat in his voice. “You’re not considering pulling me, are you?”
Carswell sighed again. “I’ve got to be honest. I’m feeling some pressure from my superiors. They want results and they want them yesterday.”
“I’m doing the best I can. Did they think I could waltz in here, bat my eyes a few times, and get Taylor to confess?”
“No, but I don’t think they were planning on the op lasting more than a few weeks. You were undercover for almost a month before you made contact. Now you’re coming up on two.”
“Some ops take years.”
“I know, but we don’t have that luxury.”
“That’s not what I was told going into this. I was told we would have all the time we needed.”
“I was there, remember? Look. I don’t want to shut things down when we’ve invested so much time, money, and manpower in this thing, but if the talk I’m hearing downtown turns out to be true, I may not have a choice.”
“Shit.” Bathsheba sat down hard. Even though he wasn’t in the same room, Carswell had just pulled the rug out from under her. “How long can you give me before you have to shut me down?”
He hesitated. “Two weeks. Maybe less.”
“That’s all?” Bathsheba asked incredulously.
“This is an election year, remember? Both the mayor and the governor are in the middle of tight races. They want Taylor in custody by election night.”
“Because claiming responsibility could give them the votes they need to put them over the top.”
“You know how the game is played.”
“Funny. From where I’m sitting, it doesn’t feel like a game. I’m putting my life on the line here and I’d appreciate a little backup.”
“I’ve been here for you every step of the way. Like you, I do what I’m told. I don’t make decisions. I only follow orders.”
“I don’t need lip service, sir. I need support.”
“I hear you. I’ll see what I can do.”
When she ended the call, Bathsheba tried to resist the urge to panic. She had to remain calm. When the stakes were this high, she couldn’t afford to make a mistake fueled by anger. Moreover, she couldn’t afford to worry about things she couldn’t control. Let Carswell worry about the logistics of the operation. She had to take care of the op itself.
She had returned to the Middle East to build a case against Ice Taylor and she wasn’t leaving until she was done. If the department pulled its support, she would finish the job herself. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she could do it on her own, however. She knew she needed help. And the woman whose help she needed the most was nowhere to be found.
*
Raq’s head was spinning. She felt like she was going in a million directions at once, and she had no idea which was the right way to turn.
King had asked her a question, and she had until Friday night to give him an answer. She should have told him to go fuck himself, but she hadn’t wanted to piss him off when he had six armed guards flanking him. She had told him she’d think about his proposition just so he’d let her go, but the more she thought about it, the more it began to make sense. Times were changing. Maybe she needed to change along with them.
When King’s men dropped her off on the corner, she called Bathsheba to see if it was safe to come over. After keeping her waiting for three hours, Raq didn’t know what kind of welcome she could expect to receive, warm or cold. Bathsheba wasn’t happy, but she said she could come over nevertheless.
“What happened to ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can’?” Bathsheba asked after she opened the door and invited her inside.
Relieved to be someplace safe for the first time in hours, Raq sank into the closest chair. “I was unavoidably detained.”
“Is that why I haven’t seen you at Ice’s place the last couple of days?”
“You’ve been training there despite what happened?”
Bathsheba shrugged. “I had to keep up appearances.”
Raq shook her head. Even though Bathsheba hadn’t known Half Pint, had his death meant so little to her? “I can’t pretend I didn’t see Ice do what he did.”
Bathsheba’s voice grew gentle. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about the first time you called? What Ice did? What he made us do?”
“Yeah.”
“So talk to me.”
Raq didn’t know where to begin. The room felt too close. Too warm. She pulled off her hoodie so she could get some air. “Could I get something to drink first? I’ll take a beer if you have one.”
“It’s six in the morning.”
For the first time, Raq noticed Bathsheba was still in her pajamas. Her dark gray thermal Henley and plaid flannel pants made Raq feel overdressed.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”
Bathsheba went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of beer in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. Raq drained half of the beer before she set the bottle down.
“On the way over here,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “I saw one of King’s guys posted on Half Pint’s corner.”
“King’s making a move on Ice’s territory?”
“Seems like it.”
“Have you told Ice yet?”
Uncertain whether she should answer the question, Raq drained the rest of her beer. “Not yet.”
Bathsheba’s eyes widened in shock. “Why not?”
“Because King offered me a job.”
“Did you take it?” Bathsheba asked in a whisper.
“What if you throw the fight and he rescinds his offer? Then Ice would be out to get you and King wouldn’t be around to protect you.”
“That was the first thing I thought of.”
Bathsheba curled her legs underneath her. “What was the second?”
“You. I thought about you and all the things we could do with the money King said he’d pay me. Then I thought about what Ice would do to you if I moved to King’s outfit and left you behind. If Ice thought we were in on it together….”
Raq let her voice trail off because she didn’t want to imagine how the sentence might end. Bathsheba was quiet for a long moment, no doubt filling in the blanks for herself.
“What does King want you to do?” she finally asked.
“All he wants me to do is box. I could leave all the other stuff behind. No more standing on corners. No more clean-up work.”
“King’s offering to pay you more money for less work? That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what I said, too,” Raq said with a hollow laugh. “He told me to consider part of it a signing bonus for switching teams. With the money he stands to make if I throw Friday night’s fight, he’d have more than enough to pay me what he promised.”
Bathsheba stared into the depths of her orange juice like the pulp floating in the glass was tea leaves she could use to tell the future. “With a deal like that, you’d be crazy to say no.”
“If I betrayed a man like Ice, I’d be crazy to say yes.”
“Even after what happened with Half Pint?”
“Especially after what happened with Half Pint.” Sudden realization settled on her like a lead weight. “I can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
Raq carefully placed the empty beer bottle on the coffee table so she wouldn’t be tempted to throw it against the wall and shatter it into a million pieces. “Because I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“But King offered you a way out.”
“He and Ice are about to go to war. Even if I switched sides, I’d still get caught in the middle.” Unwanted tears stung her eyes. “I don’t have anywhere to go, Bathsheba.”
“But what if you did? If you had a way out—a real way out—would you take it?”
“That would depend on the price I had to pay. If the price was right, I’d pay it in a heartbeat. But I’m beginning to think that no matter how much I save, I’ll never have enough.”
She slumped in her chair. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so dejected. Then Bathsheba stood and reached out to her.
“What are you doing?” Raq asked, staring at Bathsheba’s outstretched hand.
Bathsheba smiled down at her. “Offering you a way out.”
Raq’s gut told her the solution Bathsheba was offering was only temporary at best, but she reached for the lifeline nevertheless. She felt uncharacteristically nervous as Bathsheba’s fingers closed around hers, a probable byproduct of all the emotional upheaval she’d been through the past few days and especially tonight. But Bathsheba led her to the kitchen instead of the bedroom.
Bathsheba slid a chair away from the dining table and placed it in the middle of the room. “Have a seat.” She must have seen the puzzled look on Raq’s face because she immediately launched into an explanation. “When I was a kid,” she said, setting a comb and a container of hair pomade on the counter, “I used to love Sundays. Every Sunday, my mother would sit me between her knees and do my hair so it would be fresh for school the next day.”
As she talked, Bathsheba began the laborious process of loosening Raq’s cornrows. Raq quickly became hypnotized by the sound of Bathsheba’s voice and the rhythmic movement of her fingers.
“If the weather was warm,” Bathsheba continued, “we’d sit on the front porch and watch the people in the neighborhood doing their thing. If it was cold like it is now, we’d sit in the kitchen with the oven door open to help heat up the room. We didn’t have much when I was growing up, but it didn’t matter. Because on Sundays we had love and that was enough.”
The scene in Raq’s house during her younger years had been eerily similar. She could picture the straightening comb resting on a red-hot stove burner, the metal teeth heating to the appropriate temperature so they could take out the knots a plastic comb couldn’t tame. Except in her case, the comb had been used to straighten her attitude more often than her hair.
“When did it go wrong?” she asked, trying to forget the scars she had spent most of her life trying to hide. Both the ones that had been burned into her skin and the ones that had been etched into her soul.
“A very long time ago.” Bathsheba’s fingers paused for a few seconds, no doubt burdened by the weight of remembered pain. “I was ten when she started using. By the time I was thirteen, our roles were reversed. I was the mother and she was the child. Have you heard of that game Where’s Waldo? My mornings began with a round of Where’s Delilah? If she wasn’t passed out somewhere in our apartment, I had to track her down, bring her home, get her cleaned up, and try to get some food into her before I put her in bed or let her sleep it off on the couch. Then I had to make breakfast for my sister and myself and get both of us ready for school.”
“And now you’re taking care of me.” Raq closed her eyes as Bathsheba combed her hair.
Bathsheba chuckled softly as she used the comb to part Raq’s hair. “It’s not the same.”
“No? How is it different?”
After she had divided Raq’s hair into several sections, Bathsheba dipped her finger into the pomade and worked the gel into Raq’s scalp. “If I wasn’t around, you would still be able to take care of yourself. You’re here because you want to be, not because you need to be.”
Raq grabbed the chair and spun it to face Bathsheba. “I’m here because I want you.” She took the comb out of Bathsheba’s hands and placed it on the counter.
“I’m not done yet. I have to finish greasing your scalp, then I have to put your ’rows back in.”
“Later. I want to tell you something first.” She took Bathsheba’s hands in hers. “When King’s men snatched me up tonight, I wasn’t afraid of what they might do to me. I’ve taken too many beatings in my time. Taking another wouldn’t faze me. What scared me was the thought of losing you. Now that you’re in my life, I can’t imagine you not being a part of it. I had my doubts, but that’s over now.”
“Why did you doubt me?”
Bathsheba frowned and tried to back away. Raq, eager to relieve the hurt in Bathsheba’s eyes before it began to fester and grow, held her fast. “I didn’t doubt you. I didn’t trust myself. I told myself you were trying to take my place. I realize now the only place you want to be is by my side. If you’ll have me, I want to be at yours, too.”
“If I’ll have you? You’ve already got me.” Bathsheba freed her hands so she could caress Raq’s face. “You’ve had me from the day we met.”
“You busted my chops that day. I put some of my best moves on you and you brushed all of them off.” Raq smiled at the memory. “Why did you make me work so hard if we both wanted the same thing?”
“Some things are worth waiting for. Besides, I didn’t want you to think I was a pushover.”
“Baby, you are anything but that.” Raq pulled Bathsheba into her lap. “What time do you have to be at work?”
“I don’t.” Bathsheba draped her arms over Raq’s shoulders after she settled into a comfortable position. “Ice asked me to put in my notice after the New York trip so I quit the copy shop. Right now, my only job is keeping myself in shape.”
Raq slipped her hands under Bathsheba’s shirt and slid them over her increasingly wel
l-defined abs. “From the feel of it, you’re really good at your job.”
The hitch in Bathsheba’s breathing betrayed her growing excitement even before Raq saw the desire flaring in her eyes.
“There’s always room for improvement.” Bathsheba’s voice shook as Raq’s hands moved higher.
“Not from where I’m sitting. To me, you’re perfect.” Raq spread her fingers to cover more ground as she traveled up Bathsheba’s sides and around to her back. “You’re the best thing that’s come into my life in years. I don’t want to lose you.”
Bathsheba ran her hands over Raq’s hair, trying in vain to smooth the unruly curls the cornrows had left behind. “You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Good question.
Raq seemed to have found what she had been looking for, but Bathsheba felt increasingly lost. She needed Raq on her side if she was to have any chance of putting Ice’s organization out of business, but revealing her true identity to her didn’t feel like the right move. Not now. It was still too soon, even though Carswell made it seem like it was almost too late. Raq had finally started to trust her. To care for her. She couldn’t betray that trust by admitting she had been lying to her since day one. The bigger question was, how long had she been lying to herself?
She had tried to convince herself her attraction to Raq was tied to the false identity she had assumed when she went undercover. That it was something she could control. But her body’s reaction to Raq’s touch—the way her heart melted whenever Raq reached out to her—forced her to be honest. The person she was pretending to be wasn’t the only one who wanted Raq. She did, too.
Bathsheba shuddered when Raq’s fingers brushed against the underside of her breasts. She moaned when Raq gently pinched her nipples. She tightened her grip on Raq’s shoulders and her hips began to move of their own volition, grinding in slow circles against Raq’s firm belly.
Raq kissed her hard, parting her lips with her tongue and eagerly exploring her mouth. She slid her hands along Bathsheba’s inner thighs, teasing the sensitive areas until Bathsheba felt like crying out for more. She was breathless when Raq finally broke the kiss. Breathless and almost painfully aroused. She couldn’t remember when she had been touched like this. Tenderly. Firmly. Confidently. When she had felt like this. Wanted. Desired. And powerless to resist.
