Page 37

Cruz

Jamo still had yet to call and give Maasai a number, which had me thinking he was working with somebody else.

It had only taken us three hours to get shit together and fly out, though, so we were already moving faster than he could think, maybe.

I pulled a blunt out of my pocket and started rolling up while we waited.

“Aye, flame up,” I told Maasai, tossing him the rolled blunt and a lighter.

My nigga had been pacing since we’d touched down and snapping on anybody who asked him even the simplest question.

I knew exactly how he felt because Maagic was just as much my sister as she was his, and knowing she was with a nigga who didn’t value life was scary, but we needed to stay cool.

“Yeeeeah, pass me that too!” some nigga named Ace said from across the room with a wide grin.

“Hell naw, I ain’t smokin’ after all you niggas. One in eight niggas got herpes, so out of everybody in this muthafucka, at least one of y’all niggas bumped up. Roll yo’ own fuckin’ weed.” I frowned, dead ass serious as I threw him a blunt and the bag of exotic I had on me. I wasn’t fucking around.

“Man, I ain’t got shit!” he grumbled along with a few others, but that shit was going right in one ear and out the other.

“I guess I’ll never know ’cause y’all gone smoke your own shit.” I hit his complaining ass with a deadpan stare until he looked away and started rolling up like I’d told him.

“Yo’ ass crazy,” Maasai said with a mouth full of smoke. I just shrugged though and accepted the blunt back from him.

“Better crazy than sorry, muthafucka?—”

His phone ringing cut me off, and his expression once again became serious as he answered with it on speaker. “Nigga, what took you so long?”

“Aye, I told you I’m the one making the rules, little McCarter! I had to crunch some numbers, but now that I have, I need 1 mil. You think you can?—”

“Done. Where we meeting at so I can get my sister?” Maasai rushed.

“Whooowhooohooo! Look at you, big baller, maybe I should ask for more since that was so easy,” Jamo’s simple ass said, and I shook my head.

Greed would be the downfall of many a nigga.

I mean, he was going to die, but he could’ve at least been happy about what he thought he was going to get before he met his maker.

“Naw, a million is what I got, and I’m already in New York, so let’s set this shit up. I also need a sign of life, nigga. I ain’t just handing over shit without that.”

“Didn’t I say I’m making the rules here? Damn, you hard headed.”

“You might be making the rules, but I got the money, so if you want it, then I need to talk to my sister,” Maasai bucked up, and the line went quiet for a minute.

“Sai! Hurry up and come get me, this nigga stank!” Maagic’s aggy ass voice filled the room, and I almost laughed at her still being a brat despite being held captive. Even Maasai had to smirk at that shit, especially when Jamo came back on the phone.

“Ayite, ayite, you heard her rude ass. Now I’m gone call you back with a location to drop the money, and once I know it’s there, then I’ll let you know where you can pick up Ms. Big Mouth,” Jamo grumbled, annoyed, and I already knew Maagic had to be giving his ass hell.

“Hell no! How do I know if I give this shit to you, I’ll get my sister? We need to do the shit at the same time, scary ass nigga!”

Jamo’s laugh came through, and I couldn’t wait to punch his stupid ass in the mouth.

“Didn’t I say I was making the rules? If we have to do it at the same time, then I got to find another location that ensures my getaway.

Call me scary all you want, but I ain’t stupid!

Wait for the call!” he spat, hanging up, and Maasai let out a frustrated curse.

“You think that nigga workin’ with somebody?” I asked the question that had been on my mind for a while as I handed the blunt back to Maasai. His eyes squinted, considering if that were possible, before shaking his head.

“Who would he know out here that he’d trust like that? As far as I know, his ass only got family in Chicago, and I never saw him with any of them muthafuckas.”

“True.” I nodded. Aside from Titus, I never really saw Jamo with anybody, even when he went out.

He was always up under Maasai’s uncle and shit, not even around bitches much either, but it still didn’t make sense that he was needing to keep calling us back.

Then again, I hadn’t ever been in no hostage situation, so I didn’t know what was normal for shit like this.

“Hey! Hey, I got it!” Mari shrieked from across the room, and Massai and I rushed over to the table she was set up at.

She’d been trying to hack Maagic’s phone since before we arrived, and it looked like she had finally got inside.

Everything from emails, texts, and phone calls from Maagic’s phone was filling up the computer screen.

Mari cleared all that away and went straight to the iPhone tracking app, where we could see Maagic’s little head bobbing over a house not too far away.

“Shiiiiit, let’s go!”

Everybody in the room started loading up their weapons, and I made sure I had my switch ready as we filed out and separated into two vans.

Half the team went in one while me, Maasai, Mari, and the rest of the guys rode in the other.

Since we didn’t know New York well, we were using navigation to take us to where she was, and even though the tracker didn’t look like she was far, it still took us an hour to get to the unassuming house.

We all looked at each other in confusion at the middle-class neighborhood we’d arrived at, and Maasai glanced back at Mari.

“You sure this is it?” He studied the two-story brick house with his head tilted because it didn’t look like the type of place somebody would keep a hostage, especially Jamo’s broke ass.

It was too many neighbors and movement, but middle-class people could be weird ass kidnappers.

Keyani had me watching true crime, and a lot of that shit was happening in regular-looking houses too.

“Yeah, it’s still pinging right there,” she said as we drove past to get a better look, only to pull back around and park a couple of blocks away.

It was still too light to run up in there guns blazing like I wanted to, especially if his ass wasn’t there, but I could already see that Maasai was ready to blow our cover if it meant getting at Jamo before he could hurt his sister.

“Fuck it, let’s go,” he huffed, confirming my thoughts, but I stopped him.

“We gotta think of something else. What if he not keeping her in the same place as him? You don’t wanna run in there and tip him off that we found them and Maagic holed up somewhere else.”

“Shit, you right,” he cursed, dropping back into his seat.

“How the fuck we gone find out if they in there?” He was talking more so to himself than to me, but I could already see the wheels in his head spinning when he slowly turned to Mari.

“You think you’d be able to get in there, Mari?

” She’d been typing away on her laptop, but her head snapped up when she heard her name.

“Get in like sneak through a window?”

“Naw, through the front door.” Maasai shrugged. “You’d set off less alarms than any of these niggas knocking on the door. You just gotta come up with a worthy story to get yourself inside,” he told her like it was that damn simple, and she cocked her head with pursed lips.

“It’s a middle-aged man, right? No need for a worthy story, but just in case it’s a woman who answers, then I’ll just say I need the phone.

” Mari rolled her eyes, and I had to admit that made sense.

Jamo’s old ass would either want to help or want to fuck her, and any woman seeing her wouldn’t automatically assume she was a threat.

She definitely looked the part in her Gen-Z ass crop-top and jeans combo.

We decided she’d turn her phone off for the lie that hers had died and send her in with another one of ours so she could message us the recon.

Once she was suited up, she went walking down the street, swinging them damn box braids, and from where I sat, she looked like she belonged there and hadn’t just arrived with a van full of killers.

She made it to the door, and I strained to see who answered, but wasn’t having any luck as they talked.

A second later though, I smiled wide as Jamo stepped out and looked up and down the street before she disappeared inside.

It took five minutes for her to let us know that there were only two people there, Jamo and a younger dude. It took another ten to find out that she thought she might have heard some muffled screams coming from somewhere, and then immediately after, a jumbled mess of letters.

“Something’s wrong, let’s go,” Maasai said, getting his gun ready.

He directed the other van to head around back to cut them off if they tried to run while we went through the front.

It was still broad daylight, so we tried to be as discreet as possible, parking our van right out front and rushing out SWAT team style.

The front door wasn’t even locked, so we easily got in, and the other nigga Mari spoke of was sitting on the couch and immediately jumped to his feet when he saw us.

Maasai sent a bullet to the middle of his head, dropping him, and we spread out through the house just as the back door got kicked in.

When we cleared the first floor, me and Maasai went upstairs, checking each door on the short hall. It didn’t take us long to find Mari in one of last rooms being held at gunpoint by Jamo. He was using her as a personal shield on some hoe shit, leaving only his face exposed as he talked reckless.

“I knew y’all had sent this little bitch, with y’all weak asses!”