by Teri Woods
“Angel!” Goldilocks screamed, not knowing how serious her wound was.
“I’m good! Move! Where’s Capo?! Capo!”
Angel came up firing recklessly, almost hitting two young girls.
The mall was in total chaos. Six shooters and Rahman were all trying to take Angel down.
Capo pulled his gun and popped the safety.
“Angel!” he called out, peering from a rack of T-shirts.
His voice and words were rewarded with a barrage of gunfire. He returned the shots, but the next round found its way into the flesh of his neck. Two more shots finished him off.
“Capo!” Angel screamed from behind the counter. She and Goldilocks were using it for cover. She watched as Capo was gunned down and fired on the killer.
“Move with the crowd! He won’t shoot into a crowd!” Angel commanded Goldi, then reloaded her nine. “Let’s go!”
Goldilocks emerged from their hiding place first, gripping her pistol like a trained gunman. Two of her three shots found fatal homes in the flesh of two of the shooters. As she and Angel ducked and dodged through the crowd, Angel was amazed at her accuracy. Damn, this bitch shoot better than me.
Rahman and his team circled the mall, trying to cut Angel off and fish her out of the crowd. The mall police were looking for the shooters in the midst of the madness.
Angel saw the police at the door and made a decision to dip through the exit that led to the subway that ran under the mall.
“She took the stairs!” Hanif shouted to Rahman. They both headed in that direction.
“Freeze, or I’ll shoot!” a cop screamed at one of the shooters, before catching two shots in his face from a second shooter to his left.
“Ock! Let’s go!” Hanif screamed.
Angel and Goldilocks jumped down the steps three at a time and fired back up to keep Roc at bay.
The people waiting on the train platform screamed and ducked as Angel and Goldilocks ran down to the far end.
“Go back, Hanif! I got it from here! Police is everywhere! Let me do this,” Rahman ordered.
“You sure?”
Rahman nodded, and Hanif moved in the opposite direction, away from Rahman.
Rahman skipped down the steps, staying close to the wall as he reached the platform. The train hadn’t arrived yet and the people were hiding behind whatever they could.
“So this is how it ends, Roc, huh?” Angel screamed from behind a steel support column. She fired two shots that struck the wall inches from Rahman’s head. “I know you can hear me, muthafucka!”
Rahman remained quiet, inching closer to the pinned-down Angel. She peeked around the column, and he let off three shots in rapid succession. She nodded to Goldilocks next to her, who hunched down low and crept along the opposite side, attempting to circle around and trap Roc.
“You wanna kill me, Roc? You want me dead? After all we been through?” Angel saw that Goldilocks was ready.
Angel came out from hiding, her gun lowered. “Here I am.”
Rahman slipped out from behind a beam and was about to squeeze off a shot when he felt a powerful thud in his upper back that slammed him face-first into the pavement.
It was Goldilocks. She had crept up behind him from the other end of the platform. Once Roc came out, he was so focused on Angel, he was a sitting duck for Goldilocks. But he had come prepared. The bullet crumbled on impact as it hit his Kevlar vest instead of penetrating his flesh.
Goldilocks was about to fire on Roc again, but Angel yelled out, “Goldi, behind you!”
Two police officers were at the top of the stairs. Angel fired over Goldi’s head and her bullets caught the cops dead in their tracks, dropping them to the floor. The distraction, however, was enough to give Rahman a chance to roll onto the tracks just inches from the third rail.
The platform rumbled as a train steamed in on the other side. Angel and Goldilocks jumped on the train.
“You missed me, Roc! But, I’m not gonna miss you. Holla back!” she yelled, holding her wound as the doors shut and the train pulled off.
Rahman sat with his throbbing back to the concrete wall, listening to Angel’s taunt. He had missed. Now all he could do was wait until she hollered back.
He struggled to his feet and disappeared down the dark tunnel, making his escape.
PEACE
CHAPTER TEN
I’m going to miss you, Ms. Martin,” Susan, her secretary, confessed warmly.
They stood in Nina’s office among cardboard cartons waiting to be removed.
“Me, too, Susan. I know we got off to a bad start and all…”
“No need. It was all a misunderstanding. I know I can be a bitch sometimes. But we worked it out and that’s all that matters,” she said. “So what’s the plan? Got a better offer somewhere else?”
What is the plan? I don’t even know.
Nina didn’t have a better offer. In fact, she wasn’t looking for one. She had impulsively handed in her two weeks’ notice almost on the spur of the moment. She needed to get away.
After the breakup with Dwight, she tried to refocus on work but just couldn’t pull it together. She knew Dwight was perfect for her and she had been a fool.
So she had to get away. She felt it was her only choice. Her financial investments were sound enough to live off of. What wasn’t sound was her peace of mind. She knew the only way to move on with her life and be free of the ghosts of her past was to relocate. Maybe down south, maybe out west. But first, she booked a Caribbean cruise vacation. She would sail around the islands, figure out a plan for her future, and decide what she wanted out of life. Money wasn’t the issue. She had enough in savings to cover her relocation, and Nina didn’t have to work. She worked because it was what she had chosen to do with her life.
“Well, whatever you decide, I wish you the best,” Susan said, sensing Nina’s hesitancy to discuss her plans.
“Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate that.”
Susan walked to the door and put her hand on the knob. She turned around and faced Nina.
“Even though things didn’t work out with Dwight, I think you are a good person and you deserve the best. Don’t let disappointments make you not believe in rainbows. There’s a pot of gold for everybody. You just have to find it.”
I just have to find it? Yeah, maybe she’s right or maybe I just lost my pot of gold when I let Dwight go.
Susan walked out leaving Nina to ponder.
Three days later, Angel retaliated.
She drove silently in a blue Taurus rental and a blonde wig, her arm in a sling. Every time she moved it, she felt pain, and every time she felt pain, she thought of Roc.
Angel had to hate him. She had to despise him. She knew what she had to do, and the only way she could carry out what she had to was to let hate boil inside her. The look in his eyes on the subway platform played over and over again in her mind.
“Here I am,” she had said to him, stepping into his path.
Angel thought of how he hadn’t hesitated to raise his gun, eyes focused like a hawk’s, ready to shed her blood like she meant nothing to him.
Who the fuck is he? Fuck him! Fuckin’ sellout! she chanted in her mind, trying to convince herself that she hated him.
And, oh, how she wanted to. But something in her heart wouldn’t let her. Several times, she fought the urge to turn back. But pride pushed her forward as she headed to the conclusion of her mission.
Roc had to die, and she would kill him. But it wouldn’t be out of hate.
Angel hit the Trenton exit off the turnpike and drove through the city looking for the Muslim girls’ school on East State Street. She remembered Roc telling her about it in his prison letters and how good he felt at the accomplishment.
The school wasn’t difficult to find. The small brick building was on a corner, a playground and a parking lot in the back. At nine on a Saturday morning, only a few girls were in school for special Qur’an and Arabic lessons.
An
gel had planned on attacking Ayesha first, but Roc covered his tracks well and protected her whereabouts. Even when she ran the plates of his car, her connect said the address was 25 Branford Place, the masjid in Newark. Angel settled on the next best thing.
His cause.
She knew how to get at Roc from the start but held her trump card, hoping she would never have to use it. When he made the fatal mistake of trying to kill her, she put it in play. The move was like everything else was to her. Business. Nothing personal.
Angel got out of the rental, threw on dark-tinted shades, and looked around. The area was quiet and peaceful. She adjusted her sling, which held a concealed revolver, and approached the school.
“Okay, Rasheeda. I want you to draw me alif,” the female teacher instructed. She wore an orange kemar and white niqab. On the floor around her were nine young girls between the ages of eight and ten, struggling to learn their religion.
Rasheeda, tall for her age, approached the board and took the chalk from the teacher. She drew a straight line that resembled the letter L.
“Very good, Rasheeda. Class, this is an alif. Say it with me. Al-lif.”
“Al-lif,” the class repeated.
“Alif is like the letter A in English. Can anyone tell me a word that starts with the letter A?” the teacher asked.
“Allah,” one girl said.
“Asad, which means lion,” another suggested.
“Angel.”
The teacher looked up to find a strange woman in an obvious wig, with a large golden dragon dangling from her neck, leaning with her arm in a sling on the inside of the door frame. She knew she wasn’t one of the girls’ mothers.
“Can I help you?” the teacher asked.
“I was wondering if I could speak with you for a moment,” Angel requested politely.
The teacher looked at Angel then at all nine little faces.
“All… all right. Class, keep studying your lesson book.”
The teacher walked over to Angel. “How may I help you?” she politely offered, trying to mask nervousness behind hospitality.
“Please, don’t be nervous. I just need to meet someone here, and I need you to wait with me until he arrives,” Angel said softly.
“I… I don’t under…”
Angel slid the pistol out of the sling. The teacher gasped with fright. “Please don’t…”
“Shh…” Angel quietly silenced her. “Don’t alarm the girls. I won’t hurt you as long as you cooperate. If you don’t, I will kill everyone here.”
The statement was simple yet so menacing that the teacher knew the woman meant business. Her eyes glazed over with tears as she contemplated the safety of the children.
“I’ll… I’ll do whatever you ask. Just don’t…”
“Hurt the children?” Angel finished her plea. “We already discussed that.” Angel pulled out her cell phone and handed the teacher the phone.
“Dial this number.”
Rahman closed his cell phone. He did it without emotion, without words, and without choice. He had no choices because Angel had left him none. He listened to the Muslim sister’s trembling voice.
“Brother, Angel is here,” the teacher said as tears streamed down her cheek. She finished reading the note Angel had passed her. “She has a gun and there are nine little girls here.”
Then Angel got on the line and finished. “I know you won’t call the police, but if you’ve changed that much, you know the consequences. Come alone and unarmed, one hour, your life for theirs. A minute late, start subtracting from nine. You bring a gun, I’ll kill them with it.”
Click.
Rahman resigned himself to his fate. The game was over and Angel had won.
You can’t win, Roc, he remembered her saying, but he had brushed it off as an empty threat.
You missed, but I won’t, nigga, she had promised that day on the train platform.
Angel had laid at his feet his entire cause, represented by nine little Muslim girls, the ultimate sacrifice.
Your life for theirs.
Anyone could live for the cause, kill for the cause, even die for the cause in the heat of battle. But to be asked to trade your life for another’s when you could sit safely at home was what separated the faithful from the false.
Do you think that you will be left alone, saying you believe, and not be tested?
Rahman recited the Qur’anic verse over and over again in his mind. There was nothing he would not do for a cause that involved Islam. Nothing.
Your life for theirs.
Rahman didn’t hesitate. He had to do what he had to do. Only one obstacle remained. His family.
Rahman grimaced over what he had to say to Ayesha. Could he just kiss her and walk out, leaving her with the impression that he’d be back, and then go to Angel, never to return?
It would be a lie, and their relationship had never been based on lies. Of all the blood he had shed, lives he had ruined, and money he had made, he never lied to Ayesha about anything. She had stayed with him through thick and thin, through his wickedness, his incarceration, and his rebirth, each time sacrificing a part of herself to accommodate his intentions. All she ever asked in return was his love and support. All she wanted was for him to be a good father to their three children. She would sacrifice for her family. She already had.
Didn’t Ayesha and his children deserve his presence? Hadn’t he put them through enough? How could he leave his children fatherless, taking life from them to give to nine more? What if he didn’t go?
He shook off the cowardly thought because he realized he had created the situation. If he didn’t go, blood would surely be on his hands.
He had no choice.
Rahman rose from his stupor and went into the bathroom to make wudu for prayer, his last prayer. He unfolded his prayer rug and stood before his Lord to offer the two ra’kahs of prayer Muslims do before imminent death.
He bowed and fell on his face. As he prayed, tears lined his face and wet his beard. He cried not out of fear of death but because he had failed.
As he prayed, Ayesha came to ask him to go to the store to get some milk. She found him in prayer, sobbing hard, and it made her want to go to him and embrace him. Instead, she waited by the door until he was finished.
“Baby, are you okay?” she asked.
He couldn’t even look her in the face. She approached him and touched his shoulder.
“We’re out of milk. I wanted you to go to the store for me,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
Rahman wrapped his arms around her waist and cried against her stomach. The force of his tears ran down Ayesha’s cheeks and they cried as one even though she didn’t know what she was crying about. She held her husband’s head nervously. She had never seen him cry like this before and couldn’t imagine what had caused him to be so emotional.
Rahman rose to his full height and continued to hold Ayesha tightly. Finally, he said, “I… have to go.”
The way he said “go” she knew it wasn’t the type of go she had heard before. It made her search his eyes frantically for answers.
“Rahman, what do you mean ‘go’? Go where? Where do you have to go?”
“Ayesha, something has happened that… that I can’t stop and I can’t let it go on either,” he said, trying to explain rationally what her emotions would never allow her to understand.
“No! No, Rahman! Wherever it is, whatever it is, no! You can’t go!” she said, trembling, fearing the worse.
“Ayesha…”
“Then I’m going, too! If you go, I’m going, and the children are going. We’re all going, Rahman.”
Ayesha was hysterical. Her instincts told her that something terrible was threatening to rip their lives apart.
He grabbed her arms with force and shook her, hoping to make her understand.
“Nine little girls, Ayesha. Nine little girls are going to die unless I do! If I don’t go, they die! Do you understand? I have to go!”
> Ayesha would hear none of it. She wrapped her arms around his neck like a vise.
“You promised me, Rahman! You promised me you wouldn’t leave me! What about that? You can’t leave me now, leave us,” Ayesha pleaded selfishly.
“Ayesha, please. There’s nothing I can do. Please. Don’t make it harder for me. Don’t let the kids hear us,” he pleaded softly, but Ayesha was in hysteria’s grip.
“No! They will hear if that’ll keep you here! Ali! Aminah! Anisa!” she yelled, tearing herself from Rahman’s arms and running into the living room.
“Ayesha!”
Rahman followed her into the living room.
“Go to your father! Go to Abu and tell him not to go! Tell him not to leave us!” Ayesha cried from the depths of her soul.
The children understood nothing but their mother’s tears. They ran and wrapped their little bodies around Rahman’s legs and each other.
“Abu? Where are you going? Don’t go. Please!”
“Abu, don’t leave us!”
“Daddy!”
The chorus of young pleas tore Rahman in two pieces, father and man.
“Tell them, Rahman. Tell them! You tell them where you’re going!” Ayesha screamed. She fell to her knees, pleading and praying. “Nine little girls… but what about your own three? You can die for strangers but you can’t live for your own family?”
Rahman knew if he didn’t pull himself away he’d never leave. He hugged and kissed his begging, wet-faced babies and embraced his wife for the last time.
“How could you do this to me, Rahman? How?” she repeatedly asked as he rocked her in his arms.
“I’ll meet you in Paradise. Insha Allah,” he said before pulling away, leaving his children wrapped in their mother’s arms, not knowing why their daddy was leaving.
Rahman looked at them once more and said a silent prayer for their protection. Then he was gone.
Nina pulled up to her house and climbed out of the car. It was still morning but the sun was already scorching.
She looked at the For Sale sign on her lawn. This was the first home she had ever purchased and she couldn’t believe she was selling it. She never thought she’d move. She never thought this wouldn’t be home. Luckily, the market was strong with the low interest rates and the house had sold within ninety days after being placed on the market.
