chapter 1

“Good evening, beautiful! Are you missing me as much as I’m missing you?”

“Silly question, Noah. I can’t wait until you get your fine black butt back to Atlanta and your primary job of taking care of me and this bratty little girl you’ve left me with.”

“Tomorrow morning, Andrea. I’m catching the first flight out, and as far as our spoiled daughter is concerned you’re as much to blame as I am.”

“Not true, handsome. I only pick her up when she’s crying; you walk around with her cradled in your arms, just because you think she’s beautiful. There will be no spoiling Ms. Thing tonight. I’m exhausted. I am going to keep her up as close to my bedtime as possible and then give her a good bath right before I put her butt down. If this works out, I should be able to get a solid four or five hours of sleep before she wakes up for her next feeding. ”

“Sounds like a doable plan, Andrea, and I promise you that all of the sacrifices we’ve both made will pay off real soon. I think this trip will turn out to be a huge turning point in the life cycle of our business. But we’ll get into that when I get home. Where is my daughter right now?”

“On the floor next to me sleeping peacefully. She’s resting up now, so that she can spend half the night keeping me awake with her screaming demands for attention. Ashley is growing up much too fast for me and she’s only nine months old this week. Are you sure you want to have another bundle of joy? One seems to be enough for my poor old soul.”

“You’re the incubator. You tell me when you’re ready for another bundle of joy. I just know that I want a little boy, and the sooner the better but I’m not going to demand that you produce right away.”

“Did I hear you say demand?” Andrea asked, letting me hear the laughter in her voice. “I missed loving you this past week,” I continue ignoring her question and changing the subject entirely. “Am I allowed to sample the goodies when I get home?”

“Hell no, smart ass,” Andrea answered playfully. “You just called me an incubator, and you think I’m going to let you enjoy the richness of my soul? How much money do you have? I may let you buy a little.”

“You’re my wife, why do I have to pay to play? Me begging for the good stuff should be price enough,” I ask, enjoying our game. “You should be paying me, ‘cause you know I got skills.”

“Noah, anything you do know about loving a woman, I taught you. And I still haven’t been paid in full for those lessons but I’ll give you a discount when you get home if you say the magic words.”

“I love you, Andrea.”

“Bingo. The sweet stuff is yours, baby. Hurry home, because my tired ass is missing you.”

chapter 2

I got there early in the morning on a moonless night. I like working this time of the morning. Article I read years ago talked about the deep-sleep period for most folks being between 2:00 and 4:00 AM. For the jobs I get paid for, this seemed like the most humane time.

I been described by folks on the street as a nameless, heartless spirit. I just think I’m a badass nigga trapped in a small-ass midget body. I’m rolling with my ass-kicking all black working shit on -- rubber sole shoes, loose fitting cotton pants, knit hat with the eyes and mouth cut out, custom made leather jacket with hidden pockets for my tools, turtleneck sweater, and black gloves. The only thing that don’t match my purple-black skin is my silver-gray eyes and hair that I guess I got from some dumb ass slave master, generations ago.

The house I’m looking for is in one of them uppity black sections of Atlanta. They say this Hidden Hills hood covers over one hundred acres and got more than fifteen different subdivisions and a thousand plus homes. You’d never catch a nigga like me living here. When are niggas going to learn? They always going to be niggas no matter where they live.

The thing pissing me off the most right now is the fact that my so-called boss didn’t give me no damn time to case this kill. But money talks and bullshit walks, and he’s going to pay a good bit for this one. I don’t know much about his ass, even though I work for him. The word at the club is that he’s untouchable. Now, this don’t mean shit to me since I’m in the profession of touching the untouchables. The only thing I give a damn about anyway is the Benjamins, and they always come as promised. One of the few things I don't learned from the white boy is how to hide my money. As soon as I get them, I place them in my offshore account. Ain’t no fucker can touch my money once I make that deposit.

Mr. Mysterious did tell me this kill would be a no-brainer. I fucked up by waiting so close to the killing time to find the house, but I’m here now, and she got no idea how close she is to meeting the devil himself.

Her crib is surrounded on the backside by the golf course that snakes throughout the entire subdivision. Why a bunch of niggas would want to live on a damn golf course is beyond me. They should know by now white folks don’t want them playing they sports.

The house is a two-story gray stucco with huge windows that run across the entire back of the second floor, which faces the golf course. I circled the block looking for a in and out as well as a place to hide my ride. It ain’t really my ride but the dude I borrowed it from won’t know it’s missing until he wakes up in the morning.

Being a typical home owner in Atlanta, she had the alarm company signs posted all over the front and back of the house, but she didn’t have any of the floodlights that are installed all over the house turned on.

After parking the ride on the other side of the golf course, I cross the backyard green and work my way back to the house. After checking out the cheap alarm company signs I figure that all of the lower-floor doors and windows got alarms but not the upstairs windows. Adding motion detectors and window alarms on the top floor were usually more than most Joe’s were willing to pay for.

Normal folk get so comfortable in their hundred-thousand-dollar homes, protected by their $24.95 a month security system. Talk about a false sense of security. I been breaking into these houses since grade school, even went so far as to work for one of them national home-security companies for a couple of months, just to get the upper hand for gigs like this one. Luck’s on my side tonight ‘cuz the suction cups I bought along for my hands and knees work better on stucco than any other surface. I pick the room in the darkest part of the house with a full-window entrance. I check one more time to make sure the glass-cutting tool is where I put it earlier and start up the wall.

It only takes about sixty seconds to climb the wall and position myself where I can see the entire room. I can’t see much but I can make out that it’s a baby’s nursery, complete with a pink crib and all the extras. Fuck! That asshole didn’t tell me the lady had a kid. I don’t see a motion detector or window alarm connected to the window, and I can’t tell if there’s a baby in the crib from here. I don’t see a light for one of them damn baby monitors, though. The last thing I need now is for Momma to hear me climbing through the window on one of them damn things.

I check the window, and it ain’t locked, so I don’t need my glass cutter. After quietly slipping into the room, I check out the crib. Damn, a baby, and as close as I could tell, a little girl about three or four months old. That asshole knows my rules, and the main one is I don’t do kids for any reason or amount of money. Hell, I ain’t worrying about this now. He didn’t pay for the kid anyway, so Mom’s the only one getting put to sleep permanently tonight.

I check the outer hall that leads straight through the den and past those big-ass windows and ended in what looks like the master bedroom. Lowering myself to the floor, I crawled through the den to the doorway of the bedroom, which was open.

This room is pitch-black but I can make out a king-size bed and the outline of a body. As my eyes continue to get used to the dark, I can see her face on the pillow at the head of the bed.

Damn this bitch is beautiful. She’s a dark-chocolate sister with long, brown hair and white folks’ looks, pointed nose, high cheekbones, and thin lips. I always been attracted to the more chocolate variety, and this sister is definitely the chocolate color I like. If this shit wasn’t given to me so screwed up, I would love to lay a little pipe of my own before I do her up permanently. But, the last thing I want is to get caught with my pants down screwing some bitch I’m supposed to be killing, ‘specially since I ain’t too thrilled about doing this last- minute shit to start with. If I’d had time to case the joint and built a file on her, a little stray stuff wouldn’t hurt.

I think about it for another second before I rise from the floor like a demon ghost in one of them horror movies and walk to the head of the bed. I take the nine-millimeter with the silencer from my holster, point it at her peacefully sleeping forehead and squeeze the trigger. Her body jumps at the moment of impact and now she has a pretty little entrance wound but the back of her head is splattered all over the headboard and bed. I shoot her again in the heart just to make sure.

I holster the nine and grab a plastic bag and a pair of scissors from one of my pockets. I cut a long lock of hair from her shattered head and put it in the bag. I quickly retrace my steps into the nursery and check on the still-sleeping baby one more time. She’s a pretty little kid. I guess she got her good looks from Moms since I ain’t never seen Daddy, but Mom’s should have kept her nose out of other people’s business.

After exiting the way I came, I am halfway across the green before I get one of my kooky ideas. Taking the cell phone out of my pocket, I dial 911.

chapter 3

“Stephanie, do you have the boarding passes?”

“Of course I do, Noah, isn’t that why you pay me the big bucks?” Stephanie replied with her eyes twinkling in their easygoing, mischievous way.

“Don’t start with me, woman. You know it’s too early in the morning for your sarcastic remarks,” I exclaimed, trying to keep the playful smile on my face from spreading as we rushed through New York’s Kennedy airport bound for the red-eye to Atlanta.

I don’t care how early I rise or how insistent Stephanie is in ringing my room, I’m almost always late. It can be a meeting with my staff or this flight to Atlanta; I simply have no real concept for time. It’s not entirely my fault on this occasion though. I had to stop and pick up a gift for Ashley, and this beautiful stuffed pink elephant just seemed to cry out her name to me from the concourse gift store. There are so many moments I’ve missed in her life already, and she’s only six months old. I can’t say I didn’t realize the sacrifices that would have to be made before I started this business. I knew that for my software company to survive, we as a family would have to make some major sacrifices.

“Are you ready to start practicing your breathing, Noah?” Stephanie whispered as she settled into her first-class window seat after helping me stow our briefcases and notebook computers in the overhead storage area. “At least I can’t complain about our travel arrangements,” she continued. “We do stay in the nicest hotels, and always fly first-class. I just don’t know if I’ll ever get used to your fear of flying. How could such a big, strong man turn to mush as soon as he sees an airplane?”

Stephanie is a pretty woman, thirty-two years old. Single, pale skin, long blond hair, with the typical middle-class housewife demeanor on the outside. This physical appearance fooled me in the beginning. Stephanie has turned out to be a dedicated and driven employee. Hiring her was one of the first things I did after moving back to Atlanta and getting my MBA in information technology from MIT. I originally met Stephanie during a summer internship when we were both working as assistant librarians at Morehouse College. She’s always been the first one to the office and the last to leave. When we get this contract to design, and support the billing and security software package for Hospital Management and its thirty private hospitals, she’s the first person I plan to reward with a big fat bonus check.

As I eased into my seat I couldn’t shake the rumbling in the pit of my stomach. I hate this feeling that always rears its ugly head when it comes to flying. There are really only two things I hate about flying, the takeoff and the landing, which you would never guess by my cool expression, or at least that’s what I hoped to be displaying. By the time we had taxied down the runway and were given permission to lift off, Stephanie was snoring softly. I, on the other hand, was practicing my breathing and focusing on helping the plane achieve its maximum altitude. After a surprisingly smooth departure on my part as well as the plane’s, I relaxed for a minute then allowed my body to breathe on its own without my explicit instructions. It didn’t take long afterward for me to fall into my self-analyzing mode. I began by critiquing myself on the presentation I had given the day before. I’ve always found this personal assessment of my presentations the best way of improving myself for the next contract proposal. My team and I had worked hard over the last six months on the software and contract foundation in conjunction with the team from Hospital Management. The chance to design the operating software and provide support for state and private hospitals would allow my company, HSD, Inc., for the first time since its inception, to have a truly profitable future.

Presenting the software was a breeze. I’ve never had a problem speaking to large groups of people, especially a group of upper class, white male executives. For some reason my presence seems to throw them for a loop and before they can re-adjust, I’ve usually stolen the show. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years wondering what exactly it is about me that unnerves so many of my white male clients. I’ve never been able to see myself as an imposing figure, but at six-foot-one and two hundred and twenty pounds, almost everybody else does.

I still spend a useless amount of time wondering if it’s my size, heritage, or the fact that I’m a highly educated black man that creates this uneasiness for most white folks. If I had a dollar for every person who asked me if I played football, I could probably pay off my overhead for the next three months. Not that this assumption has not helped me. For some unearthly reason, white folks are more inclined to accept a black male as a part of their world if he’s an athlete. Conveniently forgetting that if they saw this same man walking down the street, they would politely go out of their way to avoid him. And the reality is I’m probably the last person anyone who knew me years back would pick for any sort of sport.

I only weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds when I graduated from high school and was voted class nerd unanimously four years running. Being known as “Professor” in an all black inner-city school wasn’t the most positive aspect of my teenage years. I always knew I was smarter than most of my classmates and quite a few of the teachers, too.

Once I went to college, I still had a hard time finding an equal. The only thing that kept me grounded was my Pops. He had no problem reminding me that just because I had book sense didn’t mean that life was mine for the taking. “Sleepy” as my father is affectionately called because of his droopy eyes never missed an opportunity to remind me of his number one rule. “Book sense is useless without common sense and street sense.” My daddy is a proven veteran in the street-sense department, having grown up in one of the worst projects of New Orleans.

My father was also a hard man before he married my mother and moved to Atlanta. I’m still amazed by the fact that whenever we visit New Orleans, people still speak of my daddy with reverence. As an adult, I still like to hear of his adventures as a Black Panther in the turbulent Sixties, but it has become so difficult to separate fiction from the truth. I do know for a fact that he was a major force in changing the way blacks are accepted today in white America. He didn’t walk with Martin Luther King, Jr. or believe in the non-violent approach.

I have been told many times how in a street fight my dad was the best. I guess this would be a lot more credible if Pops would authenticate some of the stories. But one of his unspoken rules is to never confirm or deny anything that would make him bigger or smaller than he really is. The only thing he would ever confirm was that if it weren’t for the Black Panthers he would have never met my mother. I have no real memories of my mother, just images in my head from pictures I’ve seen of us together. God, I would give almost anything to remember her smell, the sound of her voice, or the smile on her face. She died in labor bringing my baby sister, Gina, into this world when I was about a year old.

Talking about my mother automatically sends my father into an immediate funk. I guess loving a woman fiercely is an inherited trait for the males in my family. The moment I met Andrea, I knew she was my eternal soulmate, and after five years of marriage I would still do anything for her and our beautiful daughter.

Everything about us has been against the given rules, even the way we met. Gina had been bugging me for two weeks straight to take her to Club Nexus, which had recently opened. Although I had just started my business and there were a million things to do, I agreed only to get her off my back. Club Nexus was a huge place, built in an abandoned warehouse in the heart of Atlanta. It had three different levels, and each floor offered a different type of music and clientele.

Gina knew I hated to dance but she still insisted that we do the dance club mix, which was on the very top floor. She always insisted on dancing with me first until she could scope out the attractive available men. I’ve been used many times over the years as a make-believe boyfriend to help her fend off the brothers she just didn’t want to be bothered with.

While dancing with Gina, I noticed this beautiful, tall, dark skin sister with a tantalizing smile. I couldn’t tell what kind of body she possessed because of the business suit she was wearing, but I did notice the lack of a wedding ring on her finger. She definitely made a brother use his imagination with the seductive way she moved. She continued to smile and look in my direction for the next three songs. Gina noticed this, too, and whispered to me, “That impolite bitch has no idea I’m just your sister and not your girlfriend. I don’t like being disrespected, and if I were your girlfriend, she’d have a grade A ass whipping coming her way.”

Gina disappeared after the third song and I took my usual nightclub position at the bar, drinking Sprite. Minutes later, Andrea Houston walked off the dance floor and introduced herself. Ten minutes into the conversation, I told Andrea that she would be my wife. I’ve never felt so stupid for saying and doing the things we did that first night together, but I’ve never experienced anything more comfortable either. That night we broke every rule we were ever taught, from never opening oneself up to anyone, especially not a stranger in a nightclub, to never falling in love and going to bed the first night you meet someone. We danced and talked till the early-morning hours. We had so much in common, from our professions to the fact that neither of us smoked, did drugs of any sort, or drank alcohol, to our last names. Andrea told me she never wanted to change her last name and when I told her my full name, Noah Houston you couldn’t have painted a bigger smile on her face.

I found out that Andrea was a systems engineer for a major computer firm in Atlanta. She understood my desire to own my own company, as well as visualize the concepts and direction in which I wanted to go before I could even finish describing them. After tracking Gina down and giving her the keys to my car, Andrea and I left in her car and headed for the nearest restaurant for coffee. As much as I wanted to take Andrea to the classiest place in Atlanta, there was only one spot open at four o’clock in the morning and that was the Waffle House.

Known for its ninety-nine-cent waffles and waitresses from hell, this would never be the place I’d take someone I wanted to impress, but Andrea didn’t care. It was like she wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her. I don’t think there has ever been another night in my life before or after Andrea that I just didn’t want the moment to end. It still feels like a dream when I look back at that night. We ended the morning at her house, in her bed. I had never met a woman as passionate and intense as Andrea, nor have I ever trusted a woman as totally as I did that night. Making love to her was like surrendering my entire soul, not caring if I’d ever get it back. Andrea and I were married three months later, and I have never considered being with another woman or a time when she would not be in my life. After the birth of our daughter, I really felt like I had been blessed under a special star.

“Excuse me, sir, would you mind waking up your companion and asking her to fasten her seat belt, we’re about to land,” the male flight attendant said interrupting my introspection.

“Sure, no problem,” I answered as I reached over and shook Stephanie out of her semi-deep sleep.

We landed in Atlanta fifteen minutes later and were halfway through its huge airport when my name was announced over the paging system and I was told to report to the airport’s security office.

“Stephanie why don’t you go and get your luggage while I find out what major catastrophe has happened to mine.”

“No problem. I’ll also pick up the car if you give me the keys. You know I’ve been looking for a reason to drive that Jag of yours anyway,” she replied with the same whimsical look that she saves just for me and my relationship with my car.

One of the things I bought after getting our house was my Jaguar. It was the first brand new car I had ever purchased after a lifetime of clunkers that drove me crazy and left me abandoned on many a lonely highway road. While walking to a gas station after one such incident, I vowed that after I got this business going I would buy my dream car, which happened to be the Jaguar Vanden Plas. It’s a long, stylish car with a deep blue leather-and-mahogany interior, loaded with a trunk CD changer and phone system. This was my one real luxury.

I tossed the keys to Stephanie and proceeded to find the security station. I got directions from a baggage clerk and headed that way.

The security office was on the lower level. Since the Olympics, the Atlanta airport is one of the most secure places in the state. When I entered the office, a pretty black female officer manning the desk was deep in a conversation on the phone, and it took her a couple of seconds to notice me standing there.

“Excuse me. My name is Noah Houston, and someone here paged me.”

“If you wouldn’t mind having a seat, someone will be with you in a minute, Mr. Houston,” she replied, ending her conversation and hanging up the phone. As I turned in the direction of the available seats, she started whispering into a desktop voice module.

I wasn’t seated ten seconds before a huge white man in a dark gray suit entered from one of the side doors. He stood at least six-eight and weighed close to three hundred pounds, with a marine cadet crew cut. He resembled a prehistoric man in an ill-fitted tailored European suit.

“Morning, Mr. Houston, my name is Detective Charles Harris, and I’m with the Atlanta Homicide. Airport security has allowed me to use its office this morning, so do you mind coming in and having a seat. I have some questions for you,” he said pointing to the opened door.

“I’m sorry but what would a homicide detective want with me?” I asked incredulously.

“I’d like to speak with you in private if you don’t mind.”

“Well I do mind! And I’m not going anywhere until you tell me right here and now what the hell is going on!”

“If you insist Mr. Houston we can do this here but I would have preferred to broach this subject in private,” he continued with a tight smile working across his face. “I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Houston, that your wife was murdered last night.”

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