Her comment sparked a déjà vu in Angel, stopping her dead in her tracks. During the Month of Murder, Roc and Zoom had used the same tactic. Create confusion, murder, and then escape in the chaos. It was a timely thought that made her instantly aware of her surroundings. She felt her life was in danger, saw it coming for a split second, and then all hell broke loose as the mall erupted in gunfire and screams. The first shot from Rahman grazed her in the upper arm as she pushed people out of her way. The second shot shattered the window behind her as she dove for cover.
“Fuck!” Angel cursed at the sight of her own blood, adrenaline pumping too fast for her to feel the pain.
“Angel!” Goldilocks screamed, not knowing how serious her wound was.
“I’m good! Move! Where’s Capo?! Capo!”
Angel came up firing recklessly, almost hitting two young girls.
The mall was in total chaos. Six shooters and Rahman were all trying to take Angel down.
Capo pulled his gun and popped the safety.
“Angel!” he called out, peering from a rack of T-shirts.
His voice and words were rewarded with a barrage of gunfire. He returned the shots, but the next round found its way into the flesh of his neck. Two more shots finished him off.
“Capo!” Angel screamed from behind the counter. She and Goldilocks were using it for cover. She watched as Capo was gunned down and fired on the killer.
“Move with the crowd! He won’t shoot into a crowd!” Angel commanded Goldi, then reloaded her nine. “Let’s go!”
Goldilocks emerged from their hiding place first, gripping her pistol like a trained gunman. Two of her three shots found fatal homes in the flesh of two of the shooters. As she and Angel ducked and dodged through the crowd, Angel was amazed at her accuracy. Damn, this bitch shoot better than me.
Rahman and his team circled the mall, trying to cut Angel off and fish her out of the crowd. The mall police were looking for the shooters in the midst of the madness.
Angel saw the police at the door and made a decision to dip through the exit that led to the subway that ran under the mall.
“She took the stairs!” Hanif shouted to Rahman. They both headed in that direction.
“Freeze, or I’ll shoot!” a cop screamed at one of the shooters, before catching two shots in his face from a second shooter to his left.
“Ock! Let’s go!” Hanif screamed.
Angel and Goldilocks jumped down the steps three at a time and fired back up to keep Roc at bay.
The people waiting on the train platform screamed and ducked as Angel and Goldilocks ran down to the far end.
“Go back, Hanif! I got it from here! Police is everywhere! Let me do this,” Rahman ordered.
“You sure?”
Rahman nodded, and Hanif moved in the opposite direction, away from Rahman.
Rahman skipped down the steps, staying close to the wall as he reached the platform. The train hadn’t arrived yet and the people were hiding behind whatever they could.
“So this is how it ends, Roc, huh?” Angel screamed from behind a steel support column. She fired two shots that struck the wall inches from Rahman’s head. “I know you can hear me, muthafucka!”
Rahman remained quiet, inching closer to the pinned-down Angel. She peeked around the column, and he let off three shots in rapid succession. She nodded to Goldilocks next to her, who hunched down low and crept along the opposite side, attempting to circle around and trap Roc.
“You wanna kill me, Roc? You want me dead? After all we been through?” Angel saw that Goldilocks was ready.
Angel came out from hiding, her gun lowered. “Here I am.”
Rahman slipped out from behind a beam and was about to squeeze off a shot when he felt a powerful thud in his upper back that slammed him face-first into the pavement.
It was Goldilocks. She had crept up behind him from the other end of the platform. Once Roc came out, he was so focused on Angel, he was a sitting duck for Goldilocks. But he had come prepared. The bullet crumbled on impact as it hit his Kevlar vest instead of penetrating his flesh.
Goldilocks was about to fire on Roc again, but Angel yelled out, “Goldi, behind you!”
Two police officers were at the top of the stairs. Angel fired over Goldi’s head and her bullets caught the cops dead in their tracks, dropping them to the floor. The distraction, however, was enough to give Rahman a chance to roll onto the tracks just inches from the third rail.
The platform rumbled as a train steamed in on the other side. Angel and Goldilocks jumped on the train.
“You missed me, Roc! But, I’m not gonna miss you. Holla back!” she yelled, holding her wound as the doors shut and the train pulled off.
Rahman sat with his throbbing back to the concrete wall, listening to Angel’s taunt. He had missed. Now all he could do was wait until she hollered back.
He struggled to his feet and disappeared down the dark tunnel, making his escape.
PEACE
CHAPTER TEN
I’m going to miss you, Ms. Martin,” Susan, her secretary, confessed warmly.
They stood in Nina’s office among cardboard cartons waiting to be removed.
“Me, too, Susan. I know we got off to a bad start and all…”
“No need. It was all a misunderstanding. I know I can be a bitch sometimes. But we worked it out and that’s all that matters,” she said. “So what’s the plan? Got a better offer somewhere else?”
What is the plan? I don’t even know.
Nina didn’t have a better offer. In fact, she wasn’t looking for one. She had impulsively handed in her two weeks’ notice almost on the spur of the moment. She needed to get away.
After the breakup with Dwight, she tried to refocus on work but just couldn’t pull it together. She knew Dwight was perfect for her and she had been a fool.
So she had to get away. She felt it was her only choice. Her financial investments were sound enough to live off of. What wasn’t sound was her peace of mind. She knew the only way to move on with her life and be free of the ghosts of her past was to relocate. Maybe down south, maybe out west. But first, she booked a Caribbean cruise vacation. She would sail around the islands, figure out a plan for her future, and decide what she wanted out of life. Money wasn’t the issue. She had enough in savings to cover her relocation, and Nina didn’t have to work. She worked because it was what she had chosen to do with her life.
“Well, whatever you decide, I wish you the best,” Susan said, sensing Nina’s hesitancy to discuss her plans.
“Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate that.”
Susan walked to the door and put her hand on the knob. She turned around and faced Nina.
“Even though things didn’t work out with Dwight, I think you are a good person and you deserve the best. Don’t let disappointments make you not believe in rainbows. There’s a pot of gold for everybody. You just have to find it.”
I just have to find it? Yeah, maybe she’s right or maybe I just lost my pot of gold when I let Dwight go.
Susan walked out leaving Nina to ponder.
Three days later, Angel retaliated.
She drove silently in a blue Taurus rental and a blonde wig, her arm in a sling. Every time she moved it, she felt pain, and every time she felt pain, she thought of Roc.
Angel had to hate him. She had to despise him. She knew what she had to do, and the only way she could carry out what she had to was to let hate boil inside her. The look in his eyes on the subway platform played over and over again in her mind.
“Here I am,” she had said to him, stepping into his path.
Angel thought of how he hadn’t hesitated to raise his gun, eyes focused like a hawk’s, ready to shed her blood like she meant nothing to him.