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  The code she lived by helped her sleep at night, but she knew it would never make her rich. She wanted to live high on the hog like Ice did, but she wasn’t willing to pay the price. That was okay for now, but what was she supposed to do when she could no longer do what she was doing now? What was she supposed to do when someone younger, faster, and stronger came along?

  She closed her eyes, feeling like Scarlett O’Hara. She’d worry about the future tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day.

  Chapter Three

  Bathsheba stood on the coffee table, lifted the ceiling tile, and retrieved her laptop from its hiding place. She needed to update her case files while the details were still fresh in her mind.

  She lowered the tile into place, climbed off the table, and sat on the ratty plaid couch. Both the sofa and the matching chair had come with the apartment and had probably been handed down from one tenant to another for about twenty years. She didn’t want to think about the source of some of the stains on the worn material. The stains added to the authenticity of her cover, so she didn’t try too hard to scrub them out, but she felt like taking a shower each time she sat down, five-second rule be damned.

  The apartment was small, with only a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. The living room—like the rest of the place—was cramped, with just enough space for the table and chairs and a small stand for the miniscule TV, but it was more room than she’d had growing up, and it was all she needed until her job here was done.

  Her real place near the gay bars and restaurants of DC’s Dupont Circle wasn’t much bigger than this one, but it was both miles and worlds away from the Middle East. The place she currently called home was a run-down apartment complex inhabited by people living well below the poverty line. If you could call it living. For some, it was more like surviving.

  Sitting on the newspaper sections she had spread across the couch to protect her skin from the various bodily fluids that had made themselves a permanent part of the fabric covering the cushions, she logged on to her laptop and opened a series of files. She knew she was taking a chance by keeping the computer with her when she had left every other part of her life behind, but both it and the files on it were password-protected, so she felt relatively safe. Relatively being the operative word.

  Her nerves were so on edge, a bump outside the double-locked door almost made her jump out of her skin until she realized the noise had been caused by a wayward throw from a game of catch taking place in the litter-strewn street. She took a deep breath to get her heart out of her throat.

  She kept telling herself to relax, but her mind wouldn’t let her. She kept waiting for someone to recognize her. To remember who she once was. To discover who she had become.

  She doubted the neighborhood folks that remembered her had followed her progress out of the ’hood. They didn’t know about her graduation from the police academy in DC or her life and career there. Their focus didn’t go past the bars of the cage in which they had been trapped. One day soon, she hoped to find the key to that cage. When she did, she could unlock the door for good. Or until the next wannabe kingpin came along. As soon as one fell, there was always another waiting to take his place.

  “One step at a time.”

  After she added the details of her most recent round of surveillance to her case notes, she closed the file and accessed another. She stared at the pictures displayed on the screen—a flowchart of Ice Taylor’s operations. Ice, naturally, was at the top of the chart. Desmond Lassiter, his second-in-command, was just below him. After that, it got interesting. Bathsheba followed the branches of Ice’s criminal family tree, the lieutenants and the street soldiers that reported to them.

  The captions under the photographs read like something out of a crazy baby name book. Ice. Dez. Rico. One-Eyed Mike. Hercules. Winky. Bigfoot. Half Pint. Little Tony. Raq.

  Bathsheba leaned closer to the screen to get a better look at the picture of Raq, taken either before or after one of the underground boxing matches that had given Ice’s favorite enforcer her street cred. In the picture, a black sports bra accentuated Raq’s broad shoulders and solid core. Her thickly muscled legs looked like tree trunks, even under loose-fitting basketball shorts that hung just past her knees. Her fists were raised to her chin as if she were posing for a boxing poster. Bathsheba wondered if Raq could have been a professional boxer. The skills were there, and she certainly had the power to go pro. All she needed was the opportunity. Whether by circumstance or design, Raq’s opportunity appeared to have been missed.

  Bathsheba shut down the computer and closed it with a click.

  “This is no time to start getting sentimental,” she cautioned herself. “She made her choices. Now she has to live with the consequences.”

  But a shadow of doubt entered her mind as she returned her computer to its hiding place. Ice was her target, and she wouldn’t stop until she took him down, but how many of his crew would end up going down with him? Most were young and impressionable with limited options and next to no resources. They were only doing what they had been ordered to do. Just like she was.

  “It isn’t your job to worry about what happens after they get arrested. It’s your job to make sure they get the chance to find out.”

  Her assignment could take a few weeks or a few months, depending on how quickly she was able to infiltrate Ice’s operation. Meeting Raq was a start. Now she needed to press her advantage without being too obvious about it. Until she got some traction, she felt like she was spinning her wheels.

  She needed to move. She needed to do something so she could feel useful. She went for a run to clear her head. She didn’t have a particular destination in mind when she left the apartment, but her body must have because it led her right to Pop’s. She had already gotten in some cardio work, thanks to the mile-long jog, so she wrapped her hands with some borrowed tape and headed for the speed bag.

  The movements were mind-numbing—she could do them with her eyes closed—but the positioning gave her the perfect vantage point. The location of the bag she favored allowed her to see the entire room without having to work too hard, though the burning muscles in her arms and shoulders might beg to differ.

  She bounced on the balls of her feet as she kept up a steady rhythm on the punching bag. The air-filled leather bag slapped against her churning fists and the rebound platform. She hadn’t trained this hard since she was a rookie at the police academy when she had treated every day as a test to prove she belonged. The surroundings were different, but not much had changed. Four years later, she was still trying to prove something. Not to everyone else. To herself.

  “Wassup, Zeke?”

  Raq’s voice, a deep alto dripping with a molasses-thick East Baltimore accent, pulled Bathsheba out of her head and forced her to focus. She watched Raq and Zeke Walker slap palms and give each other a one-armed hug.

  Zeke didn’t appear to be a player in this complex shell game. He allowed Raq to train in his gym, but he seemed to be doing it out of genuine affection rather than loyalty to Ice. None of Ice’s other fighters ever trained here. They simply showed up for their fights—spare tires, bad technique, lack of endurance, and all. But Raq was different. She trained like she was fighting for a purse worth millions instead of a few hundred dollars.

  Bathsheba suspected she was fighting for something even more valuable than money: respect.

  Raq, who was wearing the same outfit Bathsheba had seen her in the day before—a white tank top and a pair of cut-off heather gray sweatpants—quickly made her way over to her. Bathsheba tried to temper her excitement as she approached.

  “Did you get your days mixed up or something?” Raq asked with a smile. “This ain’t Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.”

  “Really?” Bathsheba gave the speed bag a final punch and put her hands on her hips, allowing her weary arms a brief rest. “I must have lost track of time.” She stretched her arms to alleviate the lactic acid buildup in her shoulders, biceps, and triceps. “Your ’
rows look good.”

  “Thanks.” Raq ran her hand over her freshly braided hair. The cornrows were so tight she looked like she could barely blink. “I wanted to look good for my fight tomorrow night.”

  “You’re fighting again? I thought you were injured.”

  “Not anymore.” Raq flexed the fingers of her left hand to show they still worked. “Are you coming to watch me fight? Me and King’s girl, Pepper, are going to be getting it on.”

  Pepper. That was a new name for Bathsheba to add to her growing list. She filed it away in her memory bank until she could get to her computer and store it permanently.

  “I’d like to come, but I don’t have a ticket.”

  “You know where to get one, don’t you? Just go to Miss Marie’s and ask for the Blue Plate Special.”

  Like their professional counterparts, Ice’s fights were limited to ticketholders only. Similar to a rave, attendees weren’t allowed entrance unless they could produce a piece of paper bearing the appropriate coded picture. The “tickets” were sold at the soul food restaurant Ice owned and had named for his mother, but unlike collard greens, fried chicken, and ox tails, they were definitely not on the menu.

  “Are you gonna come?” Raq asked with a puppyish enthusiasm that made Bathsheba want to run a hand over her tight-ass braids like she used to do to her little sister before Mary pronounced herself too grown for such things.

  “That depends.” Bathsheba tried to play it cool despite her racing heart. “If I do, will you take me for that drink you promised me yesterday?”

  “Sure,” Raq said with a grin. “We can hit Club Peaches afterward, and you can help me celebrate my victory.”

  “Yo, Raq!” Zeke called out in the anachronistically deep voice that didn’t match his slight frame. “Time is money. Get your ass in gear.”

  “I’d better go before he threatens to sic the old man on me,” Raq said, looking uncharacteristically cowed. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, right?”

  Her eyes bore into Bathsheba’s, seeking her approval. Bathsheba’s handler had said there would come a time when the assignment would seem like too much. When she could no longer distinguish who she was from who she was pretending to be. She had said she could handle it. Now she had to prove it.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Chapter Four

  Raq could hear the buzz of the gathered crowd begin to grow louder as she went through her final preparations in the makeshift dressing room. The unheated warehouse was drafty and cold, but she had managed to work up a sweat nevertheless.

  Even though she wasn’t the headliner, she knew practically everyone in the house had come to see her. They wanted to know if she still had It. The indefinable something that separated her from everyone else. The thing that made her special when she stepped into the ring and made people keep their distance when she walked the streets.

  “What are you going to do out there?” Zeke asked as she shadowboxed in a corner.

  Exhaling through her nose, she snapped off two quick jabs followed by a roundhouse. “Stun her with the left and drop her with the right.”

  “That isn’t what we agreed to.”

  Ice’s cold, calculating voice made Raq shiver as if someone had just walked over her grave. Zeke stretched himself up to his full height to show he wasn’t intimidated by Ice or the half-ton of muscle surrounding him. Ice and Zeke had never gotten along, and the tension between them had only gotten worse over the years. Raq knew she was the source of their conflict, but she didn’t know how to resolve the problem in a way that would please both sides. Both said they wanted what was best for her, but she doubted anyone knew what that was, including her.

  Ice tugged at the French cuffs peeking out of the sleeves of his tailored suit. “When we talked, I thought we agreed tonight’s bout would last three rounds.”

  “It will,” Raq assured him.

  “Even if you tied one hand behind your back, this fight shouldn’t go past the first round,” Zeke said.

  Ice slowly swiveled his head toward Zeke like a bird of prey zeroing in on its next meal. “If I were talking to you, I would have addressed you by name. Unless you hear me call your name, stay out of my business, punk.”

  Raq flinched at Ice’s casual use of the derogatory slang term for a gay man. Zeke visibly bristled at the insult.

  “If you put a leash on your dogs for five minutes, I’ll bet this punk could kick your ass, you shiny suit-wearing motherfucker.”

  Hercules took a menacing step toward Zeke, but Ice held him back by holding up a hand in front of his beefy chest. “Chill, man. I paid too much for these shoes for you to ruin them by getting this little bitch’s blood on them.”

  “Whatever, man,” Zeke said.

  Ice’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I need you to step outside for a few minutes, Ezekiel, so Raq and I can discuss business.”

  Zeke stood firm. “I’m not going anywhere, Isaac.”

  Raquel flinched inwardly. No one called Ice Isaac except his mama. “It’s okay, Z,” she said, stepping between him and Ice. “I’ll be fine.”

  Zeke looked at her hard. “Girl, are you sure?”

  “You heard the lady,” Ice said.

  Zeke waved him off. “You sure?” he asked again. Raq nodded. “All right then. I’ll be right outside that door if you need me.”

  But they both knew that once he set foot out the door, Ice’s bodyguards wouldn’t let him back in.

  “Stay strong,” Zeke whispered before he left the room.

  “Do I need to remind you about the terms of the agreement we made two days ago?” Ice asked.

  “No, I remember. You want me to string this fight along until the third round before I drop the hammer.”

  Ice arched an eyebrow. “What if I said the terms had changed? What if I said I needed you to lose?”

  Raq’s heart sank. She had never lost a fight in her life. Hadn’t even come close. Now Ice wanted her to drop one on purpose? How would that look? How was she supposed to score a big money fight against a man if she lost to a woman who was new to the game? “You want me to take a dive?”

  Ice smiled suddenly. “No, girl. I was just kidding.”

  But Raq heard the unspoken coda to his statement. This time.

  He placed a brotherly arm around her shoulders. “Now go out there and show the people what you can do.” He tapped her chest with his fist. “Just don’t do it too fast.”

  “You got it,” she said with a grateful smile.

  She was grateful because she knew she had dodged a bullet. Every other time Ice had asked someone to throw a fight, he hadn’t rescinded the request. Her time would probably come one day, but today was not that day. She wanted to look good for the people who had ponied up their hard-earned money to watch her fight. And she wanted to look good for Bathsheba. Assuming Bathsheba had kept her word and showed up tonight.

  Raq didn’t know what she was looking forward to more—getting back in the ring again or taking Bathsheba out on the town after it was over. Easy. Going out with Bathsheba sounded a whole lot better than pretending to struggle against someone she could beat in her sleep.

  But pretending to struggle was better than pretending to lose.

  After Ice left, she picked up a towel and prepared to walk to the ring. She didn’t know why Ice had suggested she spend her advance on a robe when he knew perfectly well the only accessory she wore to the ring was a towel with a hole cut in the center so it could drape over her shoulders, back, and chest just like Mike Tyson back in the day.

  Zeke stuck his head in the door. “You all right?”

  “It’s all good.”

  “Cool.” He looked relieved. She saw a flash of metal as he shoved his right hand in his pocket. Instead of bringing a knife to a gunfight, he had brought brass knuckles. Talk about old school. “I’ll see you out there.”

  Zeke turned to leave. Since he wasn’t part of Ice’s crew, he couldn’t accompany her to the rin
g. One of the few people she could depend on to always be there for her would be relegated to a seat in the audience instead of one in her corner. But that was okay. Because in the ring, the only person she could depend on was herself.

  She opened the door and walked out. The noise hit her first. The smell soon followed. The sound of the announcer hyping up the crowd as he introduced the principals. The smell of greed, avarice, and good old-fashioned bloodlust. Shouting bettors waved bills in the air as she and her opponent approached the ring from opposite directions.

  Pepper Martinez was big and strong with a long reach. She had earned a reputation as a brawler during a stretch in the pen, but Raq had seen enough of her fights since she’d been on the outside to know exactly how to beat her. Pepper telegraphed her punches, especially her right cross. All Raq had to do was wait for the big windup, slide to her right, and fire off a barrage of her own. To please Ice, though, she needed to spend the first two rounds pretending she couldn’t find a way past Pepper’s pathetic defense before she walked right through it in the third.

  Raq climbed into the ring and raised her arms over her head to salute the cheering crowd. Dancing on her toes, she turned in a slow circle as she tried to spot Bathsheba in the audience. Her breath caught when she saw Bathsheba sitting in the third row looking fine as hell. She was wearing all black: boots, jeans, and a button-down shirt. Her hair was down, spilling on her shoulders and down her back. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her lips were painted an inviting shade of plum. Raq wondered if the rest of her was just as juicy.

  In a few hours, she thought as Bathsheba returned her smile, I may get a chance to find out.

  The referee was unlicensed, like everyone involved in the evening’s events, but he looked the part as he called Raq and Pepper to the center of the ring. His instructions were close enough to the real thing to pass muster, but Raq zoned him out as she sized up her opponent.