All Hail the Queen (27 page)

She headed back to Newark, checked on Sarge—who was sleeping with a bat in his hand, she parked the 'Hoe, and headed back out on the streets on her motorcycle. She could lose another fool on her tail quicker than with the SUV.

She walked through the entire house and saw the same chaos in each and every room. She didn't know how long ago it went down but it was clear the politician was looking for the proof Tank held over him.

And now I'm looking for him.

She saw the back door had been kicked in and shook her head. The door was cracked and one of the hinges was
broken. She wished she had been on the inside of the door when it flew open so she could have politely fired off a round of bullets—hopefully while their leg was still high in the air.
Fuck 'em up. Balls and all.

Before leaving the house she slid her gun back in its holster and walked over to the garage in the backyard. She was surprised to find the door still locked and secured even with the keypad on it. They made a bad assumption that his garage was just a garage. Their dumbness was her luck. She entered her birth date and walked in, flipping the switch to bathe it with overhead light.

He'd converted the small garage to a gym and her eyes fell on the heavy bag hanging in the corner. A vision of her hanging on to the bag as he fucked her from behind flashed.
If that shit could talk . . .

Naeema moved over to his large wooden desk in the corner and sat her gun atop the scarred wood as she took the seat behind it. She smiled as she looked down at a carving of her name in a heart. She traced the grooves with the tip of her index finger. That was a new addition.
I wonder when he did this.

As she turned on his all-in-one computer she went through the files stacked neatly next to it and the ones filed away in the three drawers. She wanted to find something—anything—to lead her to the politician's identity. Unlike her, Tank was so organized—a point of contention in their marriage—so he had made it real easy to breeze through everything. Client files. Employee records and time sheets. Receipts. Old tax returns.

Nothing stuck out.

She logged on to his computer, knowing his password
hadn't changed since their separation. He trusted her just as much as she trusted him. That was just fact.

“Follow the money,” Naeema whispered, pulling up and then logging in to his bank accounts. She knew that info as well.

“Well, damn, Tank,” she said at the total balance of his personal and business accounts. It was well into six figures.

She also took note that he had a safe deposit box as well. She could only pray whatever proof she needed wasn't safely hidden away in it.

Chewing on the pointed tips of the fake fingernails on her left hand, she used her right to scroll through his business accounts first. She went back nearly three months, opening every sizeable deposit. “But what blackmailer pays with a check?” she said softly, already thinking of leaving that particular trail unsearched.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, squinting as she clicked on the entry for a check in the amount of ten thousand dollars and enlarged the copy of the check.

“Looky here, looky here,” she read aloud. “Councilman Victor Planter. Humph. And the memo says for security detail. Bitch puh-
leeze
.”

She shook her head as she backed up and found three other ten thousand dollar deposits from the business account of the councilman's office.

She jotted down the dates and then jerked open the drawer to search the client files again going back to a date before the first check five months ago. Her pulse was racing as she did. Like a hound dog on the hunt for blood her tail was wagging. “Got you,” she said, pulling out the file. She missed it the first time because it just had his name and not his title.

There was a signed contract for services on file but Naeema wasn't buying it. “Nah, son,” she said, biting the side of her tongue as she pulled out the folders holding time sheets. “Naaaaah.”

She frowned at them only going back the two weeks before he was shot. She sat the files atop his desk and checked the computer but there was nothing there. Leaning to the side she looked down at the large paper shredder beside the desk. She had no minutes or even seconds of her life to spare pasting together shredded papers. “No fucking way,” she said.

She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs as she looked at the gym. It was right there on those mats that Tank taught and trained her how to defend herself. Many more times than not their wrestling moves, where he easily dominated and pressed her body beneath his, led to kisses, moans, and the rushed removal of just enough clothes for him to fill her pussy and stroke them both to a hot, sweaty nut.

They could never get enough of each other. Not in love, sex, or even when they were hard down at it arguing. It was never enough.
Fuck it.

With his injuries it would be a good minute before Tank would be able to wrestle with her on the mat . . . or in bed.

That's why I have to finish this before his enemy comes for him again while he's weak. To me, I don't have a choice. I'll be the strong one for now.

“No haps,” Naeema said, logging off the computer and replacing Tank's files before she left the garage. As she walked across the yard to the house she eyed the damaged
door again. Who knew how long it had sat like that. Tank was lucky he was in a decent neighborhood or his house would have been stripped completely clean. Fiends would have formed a fucking line to work together to get all his good shit out of there quick as hell.

She entered the house and jammed the door back inside the frame as much as she could. She looked around at the mess. As much as she wanted to continue to hunt down Tank's shooter, she wasn't sure which path to follow. Kevin Greene was the hit man and he was handled but who sicced him on Tank and then her? Murk or Councilman Planter?

With the blackmail angle added to the mix, Murk was no longer a definite and she wasn't sure if she pinned down the right politician. Sliding the gun into the mouth of the councilman like it was a steel dick would get her some serious answers, but it could also mean serious jail time if he was innocent. She wasn't willing to chance it.
Plus if he's a legit client of Tank's it wouldn't be good luck for the business.

Of course killing both would erase all doubts, but taking out an innocent man wouldn't be right. All she wanted was the man who put a hit out on Tank. That's it. That's all.

“Oh, fuck my life,” she said, picking up the broom from atop the items strewn from the cabinets on the polished wood floors.

Tank might get released the next day or soon after and she didn't want him to come home to the house being so fucked up. She had never been the domestic type and would much rather drop-kick an enemy than pick up broken plates, pots, and canned goods.

“This some real bullshit right here,” she grumbled, dumping a dustpan filled with shattered glass into a garbage bag.

As she moved from room to room setting things right, she was still trying to process all the new shit added to the mix. Blackmail and political corruption.

Naeema didn't bother much with politics. Outside of voting for Barack to ensure his first and second terms she didn't get into the rest of the mess. Just like with the police, she didn't feel like weeding through who was real and who was fake.
Fuck 'em all
was her motto. Selfish? Yes. And she knew it. But a politician having to be blackmailed into doing what the fuck he was elected to do anyway? Proof positive she wasn't all the way wrong.

In Tank's bedroom, Naeema bent down to scoop up all the clothes thrown to the floor from the dresser drawers and closets. She dumped them on the box spring haphazardly dropped back atop the bed frame. The mattress, sheets, and covers were across the room on the floor.

One by one she either folded his massive collection of designer T-shirts in dark colors or hung his button-down shirts back on the hangers that weren't broken in half. Those were dark as well.

She didn't know what rule book said bodyguards and security had to wear dark colors but Tank stuck to that shit. She pressed one of the V-neck tees to her face and deeply inhaled the scent of his cologne and the fabric softener still clinging to it.
He does look so good in dark blue. Black too. But nothing is sexier on him than the deepest darkest blue and gray. Gray too.

Turning with a stack of folded shirts on one arm she bent
at the hip to pick up one of the dresser drawers from the floor. She sat the shirts in it to free up her hand and then slid the drawer back into the opening of the dresser.

When she packed his bag for that weekend in New York she had been surprised to find the light gray shirt and reached for it with a desire to see him in anything but his beloved dark clothing. She thought the gray would be a good compromise. She was hella wrong.

You grabbed the wrong damn shirt.

Naeema paused in closing the drawer as she remembered how the blood from the gunshot wounds soaked the shirt turning the light gray crimson. So much blood. So many shots.

Naeema blinked with each echo of the bullets she recalled.

POW!

POW!

POW!

POW!

So much blood.

One of his beloved dark shirts wouldn't have shown the blood so much.

Naeema frowned deeply as she rose to her feet. She looked down into the drawer and then over at the bed. The gray shirt had stuck out to her because it was an oddity. It was different. It was something Tank didn't fuck with on duty. That was the first and the last. That she knew.

But she knew something else now. It came to her so easily
now
. She knew something that she should have known a long time ago. “Shit,” she swore as she turned and let her body lean against the tall dresser.

She closed her eyes. “Think, think, think, Naeema. Think, bitch. Think,” she urged herself, pressing her hand to the side of her face and rubbing it up and down distorting her features as she did.

“How did I miss it?” she whispered. “How the fuck did I miss it?”

Her heart pounded as she covered her face with her hands and let her body sink until she sat on the floor among Tank's things. Clarity was a motherfucker . . . especially when it proved you were wrong. Dead wrong.

“I killed the wrong man,” she gasped as she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

She felt numb. She had killed before but it was always to right a wrong. To fix shit. To make someone pay. To strike back.

Kevin Greene was dead by her hands and he was no innocent. But he did not shoot Tank. She killed the man when his crimes warranted a solid ass whipping at the most. She took his life for nothing.

POW!

She flinched at the memory of his blood and brains splashing against the window behind him. Death was nothing new to her. But killing someone who didn't deserve it was. It was like the need for revenge put up a shield that protected her from the magnitude of the violence she wrought.

But the shield was down now. She was vulnerable and she felt every bit of the guilt, the regret, and the remorse.

POW!

Her stomach moved in reverse and she hustled to her feet to run toward the adjoining bathroom.
She slipped on something and fell to her knees but she quickly recovered and made it to the commode just as she hurled the contents of her stomach. It seemed to go on endlessly and she was weak by the time her stomach settled down and she slumped to the floor, clutching the toilet as she breathed deeply and winced at the taste of vomit coating her mouth and tongue.

Father God, forgive me. Please.

The rest of the night came and went as the time hit midnight. Naeema's hands tightly gripped the handles of her motorcycle as she road through the streets of Newark. She felt her cell phone vibrating against her chest inside her bra but she ignored it. It had to be Tank and she didn't want to lose focus. She didn't want her thoughts muddled and confused.

She didn't want to fuck up. Not again.

For the last few hours she sat in Tank's house and ran over everything in her head again and again. She made sure her memory wasn't fucking with her. She had to be sure that rushing and being blinded by rage didn't leave her shortsighted and confused. She had to be sure that she was gunning for the right person this time.

She had to. Her conscience—which was admittedly as changing as the direction of the wind—would accept nothing else. But not getting to the bottom of it was impossible as well.

Naeema weaved in and out of the cars lining South Orange Avenue as she headed from Newark's downtown area to the section bordering the township
of South Orange. A half a block before the town she turned into the driveway of a white stucco two-story house with green shutters.

She parked and quickly climbed the steps to the front door. She had barely rung the doorbell before the door opened and Grip's tall, opposing figure filled the frame. His eyes filled with surprise at the sight of her.