The man in the helmet shook his head. “No.”
“A’ight. Thanks, bro,” Junior said, extending a fist bump out the window to the man.
I checked the gun clip one more time, removing it and counting each bullet it stored before slapping it back into the SIG Sauer. It was an old ritual of mine that I’d thought was long in the grave.
“Soon?” I asked.
“Like you anxious for this,” he joked dryly.
“Just to get Mariah back.”
In the back of the van, the other three of our party were suiting up.
“Bro, how many black faces you seen around here?” Sihad asked from the back as he zipped up his National Grid jumpsuit. The other two men selected by Junior were doing the same. These three were the best of the best, along with Junior and Paris, when it came to taking down enemies. Daddy called them our own personal black ops team.
An NYPD cruiser made its rounds. Junior nodded at the two officers from under his hard hat—just a big grin from another utility worker. There were a lot of police roaming around the residential neighborhood just off Richmond Terrace in Staten Island today.
A gas line had “conveniently” ruptured this morning, resulting in a suspension of service while National Grid worked on the repairs. Workers were going around notifying residents on the next block over, which was also affected, while we were concentrating on this block.
LC’s man Sihad was right about us sticking out in this predominantly white Italian neighborhood. Even dressed as gas company employees, we were sure to get cross looks. That was one of the reasons we needed to hurry—the other being that my daughter was probably being held here.
We split into two groups and walked down the street, clipboards and tool bags in hand. We went door to door, meeting with elderly women who spoke English as a second language, inspecting around their homes for any residual damage from the gas-line explosion—excellent work, which Orlando had arranged on short notice. All the while we were methodically working our way toward one particular home from two ends of the block.
“Think these are the ones who offed Pablo?” Sihad asked my brother, refusing to keep quiet. I think he was pretty close with Daddy’s old friend.
“Yeah. And Lou,” Junior answered.
“I just wanna get some get-back on that ass.”
All five of us convened in front of the house. The van parked outside was the same one used to take Mariah away from me. Chills overcame me as I recalled its sliding doors cutting me off from Mariah. Further proof that we were at the right place was the presence of Tony’s black Cadillac parked directly behind the van. Since Tony knew our faces, we had one of Junior’s boys go up the stairs to the front door, while Junior and I pretended to inspect the gas line on the side of the house. Gossip traveled quickly in this tight-knit community, so news of the gas-line rupture had surely made its way around the neighborhood, adding legitimacy to our presence there. Tony and his crew would have no reason to doubt utility company workers.
“She’s in the basement,” I gasped, staring at the unassuming slender window by my ankles, remembering the words Harris had whispered to me before we left to go our separate ways. He said he suspected our daughter was being held in a basement and that she was alive. He wouldn’t tell me how he knew this, but he swore me to secrecy. I would uphold my promise to keep it secret—for now.
“How do you know, sis?” Junior asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I just know. Mother’s intuition,” I answered.
“Then we can’t risk it. If we bust in there and blaze on ’em, there’s no guarantee someone don’t harm Mariah first,” he hissed, his confidence wavering.
But there was no time for second-guessing our plan. We needed to get in there fast. It came to me to “call an audible,” as they say in football.
“Leak! We got a leak!” I yelled from the side of the house to our men in the front.