She was glad when he let the subject drop.

Naeema looked out the tinted window as the landscape changed from the tall buildings surrounding Penn Station to the storefronts of downtown to residential town houses. Soon the streets were lined with more lots where houses once stood than actual homes. Whether from the riots of 1967, the demolition of the high-rise projects, or natural disasters, there were still areas of certain wards of the city that couldn't seem to recover.

Naeema loved her hometown and she wanted the best for it.

"Shit," Bas swore as a man stumbled back into the street.

He slammed on his brakes and their bodies jerked forward. Naeema reached her hands out and pressed against the dashboard to stop herself from lunging forward any further without her seat belt on. She cried out when the body fell back against the top of the roof.

BAM!.

Two women came running into the street to start throwing hard blows against his body. One woman's shirt was torn in half and her bra was down under one of her breasts, exposing a big and bumpy brown nipple. One of them punched at the man's head as he tried to curl his body into a ball and her hand missed his head and slammed against the windshield.

"Ah, man, fuck this shit," Bas spat as he reached for the door handle.

Naeema reached over and pressed her hand against the horn as Bas climbed from the car.

They seemed to fight the man even harder.

As she watched Bas easily remove each of the women from atop the man and the hood of the car, she knew two women straight fucking up a dude was nothing but pussy problems and dick drama. The man jumped to his feet once he was free and the headlights spotlighted the scratches on his face, the swelling of his bottom lip, and his clothes, nearly ripped to shreds on his body. As Bas spread his arms wide to try to hold back both of the women from jumping on him again, the dude turned and took off running up the middle of the street. His knees damn near touched his chin, he was booking it so hard.

Naeema laughed.

The women both pushed Bas out of the way and he stumbled back as they turned on each other and started fighting while the man's figure receded with each bit of distance he put between them. As they pulled at each other's hair and tugged like crazy, they both fell back between two cars parked in front of a large bank.

Naeema laughed harder.

Bas studied the hood and the windshield before he finally got back into the car. He glanced over at Naeema covering her mouth as she continued to laugh. "That shit is not funny," he said, sounding irritated as he steered the car around the fighting women and the crowd surrounding them in the street.

Naeema fought like crazy to swallow back her laughter. "Is the car okay?" she asked.

Bas shrugged one broad shoulder. "It don't matter. It's getting chopped up tomorrow."

Stolen car. I knew it.

Naeema shook her head at the whole encounter they'd just had. The streets of the hood stay popping with some mess. Big tittie just flopping around like a fish out of water.

When they had driven fifteen blocks or better and past the man, still running up the middle of the street like he knew hell was on his heels, Bas and Naeema glanced at each other and then they both broke out laughing.

10.

Two weeks later

"So, you avoiding me?"

Naeema froze in the doorway of her house with her hands still on the knob as she looked at Tank sitting on the edge of her bed. She leaned against the door and let her eyes take him in. Still Laz Alonzolevel fine, in a navy V-neck that pressed against his muscles and looked so good against his brown complexion. His elbows were pressed on his knees and his hands were loosely clasped in the space between them. She lightly shook off that intense initial reaction she had at the sight of him. "You haven't called me either, Tank," she said.

"You left me," he said.

"A year ago," she shot back as she finally stepped into the house and closed the door. "And in that year we talk sometimes and sometimes we don't."

"And we fuck sometimes and sometimes we don't." His eyes were bright with something. Some emotion.

She couldn't identify it.

"True," Naeema finally agreed. "But that doesn't give you a right to do a B&E."

Her eyes shifted to the large plastic container her TV sat on. Inside it was a smaller container with everything in the world she had of Brandon's.

"Sarge let me in . . . after he called me to say you went missing for two weeks," he said, looking down at his hands, then at her as she stepped into the living room and dropped the Louis Vuitton garment bag she was carrying over her arm.

"Sarge?" she asked in disbelief.

"That's right."

She looked up as her elderly tenant-who paid no rent-stepped into the living room from the kitchen. That was a first as far as Naeema knew.

So this little mini-intervention is serious as hell.

"You all right?" he asked, those sharp eyes on her as he scratched his scruffy beard and shifted back and forth in his boots like he wasn't comfortable being in her space.

Naeema opened her mouth.

"You all right," he said again, this time as a declaration, before turning to shuffle back into the kitchen with a rough wave of his hand.

Naeema closed her mouth and arched her brow.

She wasn't surprised when the door leading to the basement slammed and echoed through the house.

Tank stood up and his presence seemed to make the room smaller. "I think we need to give each other some space," he said.

"You mean some more space," she said as he walked over to her.

"What kind of games are you playin', Na?" Tank asked. "I told you we needed to do something and then your ass disappear for two weeks?"

Naeema reached up and stroked the side of his face as she closed the gap between them. "Tank," she whispered up to him.

"Nah," he said, leaning back from her touch and sidestepping the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest.

She got stiff with anger, feeling rejected. "So you not feelin' me now?" she asked, pointedly reaching for him.

"So you want me to use you for sex? You want me to chop you down like any other bitch in the street and then walk away before I even zip my dick back in my pants?" He grabbed her by the waist and then gripped the back of her neck to roughly bend her over before him. With her ass spread before him in the maxi dress she wore, he ground against her, his arm stretched as he kept gripping her neck to hold her down. "This what you want, huh?"

Naeema looked at him over her shoulder. "Fuck me," she said, grinding back against him.

Tank's face became cold as he roughly pushed her from him.

She stumbled forward and almost hit the wall. Reaching out with both hands, she blocked the fall then stood up to slowly turn and face him.

"If you lookin' for dick on demand, then buy you a dildo," he said, striding to the front door.

Naeema leaned back against the wall and looked over at him. "Don't leave me, Tank. I need you. Don't walk out that door," she said, reaching up to remove the black wig she wore. She flung it across the room.

Tank froze at the door.

She felt those invisible waters rise again, covering her and drowning her. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt her anxiety literally make her skin itch. Tank was her drug and she needed a hit. She jerked the straps of her dress down and pushed it over her hips and ass to puddle around her feet.

His back was still to her and she walked up behind him to press herself against the length of him as she dragged her hands down his chest.

"I'm not feeling this shit no more, Na," Tank said, reaching up to catch her hands before they slipped inside his pants to stroke his dick.

She laughed as she freed her hands and pushed him back against the wall. "Yeah, right," Naeema said, her voice slightly mocking.

He grabbed her hands again.

She looked into his face.

"Where you been the last two weeks, Na?" Tank asked.

Her eyes shifted away from him. "I was-"

"Don't lie to me," he ordered in a hard voice.

I was laid up with a thief who might be the murderer of my son.

"I took a little trip and I shoulda let somebody know. My bad," she said.

Tank still held her hands in his as he stared down into her face. His eyes opened wider in a sudden awareness. "You rawin' that dude?" he asked, his hands tightening on hers.

"I'm not fucking nobody else, Tank," she told him honestly. And she wasn't.

Most of the time she sat around that suite alone waiting on Bas. His situation at home kept him busy and she was more than fine with that. They were still playing the flirting game. But she knew she had to find out the truth soon or risk blowing her cover when he did make a play for more than just flirting. That shit was stressful and she truly could use a little Tank in her life to make her forget for a while, the way only he could, physically and emotionally.

He released her hands and brought one of his up to grip her chin tightly as he tilted her face upward. Her eyes studied his and she saw the conflict within him rage in the brown depths. She gasped as her chest radiated with pain.

She loved this dude and he meant more to her than a fuck.

Tell him.

Something must have shown in her eyes because his face changed quick as hell.

Tell him.

She shifted her eyes away and he jerked her face to make her lock her gaze with his again. Tank released her face and stepped back from her. He looked pained that she was keeping something from him.

He knew her better than anybody else in the world.

He knew her and he loved her. She had no doubts about that. But she couldn't face telling him the truth and seeing disappointment in her for not stepping up to her responsibility or anger at her for lying to him and keeping her son a secret. She couldn't do it. Especially not right then, when everything else seemed to be weighing her life down.

Shaking his head, he reached past her to open the door. She didn't reach for him. She didn't stop him.

And just like that he was out.

She slid down the wall and pulled her legs to her chest as she rested her head on her knees.

Hours later, Naeema left her bathroom with her damp body in a plush black robe that she'd swiped from Tank when she left him. She picked up her TV from atop the plastic container to remove the lid and pull the smaller container from inside it. With it tucked under her arm, Naeema turned her fan on low and let it rotate, even though the house wasn't hot. Climbing onto the middle of the bed, she set the container before her and opened it.

Right on top was a big eight-by-ten-inch photo of Brandon when he was in first grade. The night she went to Ms. JuJu's to check her-and wound up getting thoroughly checked her damned self-the woman had blessed her with photos of Brandon she'd collected during the years Naeema had missed.

She smiled a little as she touched his face before she set it down and picked up the next. Photo by photo, she saw her son grow year by year until his eighth-grade graduation photo was the last of the pile. "Damn," she swore at the senselessness of it all.

Brandon had been a hustler like his daddy-making it do what it do by whatever means necessary-and although he didn't sling dope like his daddy he started out hustling backward just like him. Wasting a lot of time out of his life appearing busy and gaining not a motherfucking thing but a police record. Ms. JuJu was right. She did her best but Brandon needed somebody wise to the streets to see that hunger in him and kill it.

He needed us.

Getting up from the bed she dug her purse out from beneath the garment bag and pushed aside that same wad of money from the robbery and removed the gun she took from Rico, unloaded it, and set it in the container next to her 9mm. That gun was in her name and it woulda been dumb as hell to kill someone with it. She smiled, thinking of the days when Tank took her to the range and taught her to shoot after he bought it for her.

She felt so alone in her search for her son's killer, and she knew Tank would've had her back if she'd had the balls to reveal her truths to him. He always had been her protector and if he knew she was in the streets of Newark straight running up on fools and being undercover with a gang of thieves, he would've flipped the hell out.

More and more she was feeling like she needed someone to talk to about it. Someone to run shit by to make sure she was seeing everything clearly and not getting caught up in her own head. She opened the file again and pulled out the notebook she kept with it. Under her list of suspects she scratched off Rico, put bold-ass stars next to Red, a question mark next to Vivica, and a circle around Bas. That left Hammer, Nelson, and the dude Brandon stole the cell phone from.

A look at the updated police report would help but she wasn't trying to ask Tank for more help with it. She tried to find more info within his juvie record but that was one of the crimes not listed in his report.

It was time to put more pressure on the Make Money Crew because Naeema was ready to get it handled and leave them the fuck behind.

Especially Bas.

Her eyes shifted to the Louis Vuitton bag on the floor. He gave it to her along with the clothes inside it. If her fireplace was working she would light the bitch and shove the bag into the flames. Not that she didn't love authentic Louis . . . she just didn't want it from Bas.

She didn't want a damn thing from him but the truth.

But what if he's not in on it? What then?