I don't know a lot about what my brother did during that time. I know some of it. I know enough that I wish I knew less. But there's this thing about secrets — they don't disappear just because nobody says them out loud. They just sit there. Taking up space. Changing the shape of everything around them.
I got to the address ten minutes early.
Old house. Not abandoned, just tired-looking — the kind of place that used to be something and wasn't anymore. Four Escalades in the driveway, all of them dark. I parked across the street in the Scat Pack with the engine off and watched. I'd ended up under a dead streetlight without thinking about it. That kind of thing was starting to happen automatically.
I didn't know exactly what I'd shown up to. I had my guesses.
I watched the front door.
Here's what Jordan doesn't talk about — the part where he sits and watches. He always does that. He'll take it all in before he does anything, like he's running calculations. Looking for the version of events where everything goes fine. I used to think that was him being careful. Now I think it's just the way his brain works when it's scared.
The girl came out first.
Young — maybe twenty-one, Hispanic. She moved fast, not quite running, scanning the street. The second she cleared the door her eyes found the car and she ran. She was in the passenger seat before I'd fully processed that she was coming.
I drove.
Then the gunfire started.
I didn't flinch. That surprised me more than the shots did. I just accelerated, hands steady, eyes on the road. I didn't look back.
I asked him once — way later, when I already knew some of this — what he thought about during that drive. He said he thought about traffic. Running the route in his head, calculating whether he'd hit the light on Garfield or make it through. He said he wasn't scared. I don't know if I believe that. I think he was scared and just didn't have a word for what scared felt like anymore.
The girl stared at me the whole way. I had my mask on — I always wore it on jobs, that was the rule I'd made for myself — and I didn't take it off. Maybe it scared her. I thought about saying something. Couldn't think of what. So I kept my eyes on the road and didn't say anything at all.
Zen's shop was fifteen minutes out.
It felt longer.
* * *
Only Zen was there when I pulled up.
He stepped out from the bay before I had the car fully in park. The girl was out the door and across the lot and had her arms around him before I even cut the engine. Zen let her. He held her for a second with one hand flat on the back of her head — practiced, like he'd done it before. That told me something.
Then he walked over to my window.
"Good shit, kid."
He said it level, without much behind it. Looked at me for a beat longer than necessary. Then told me to come inside.
* * *
The shop smelled like oil and cold metal and something else I couldn't name. Zen sat across from me at a workbench, two folding chairs between us like it was a conference room.
"Full-time," he said. "The thing you've been doing stays the thing you do. But I need a driver on call. Weekly pay. You stay masked, you stay unknown. And when you want to leave, you can leave."
I looked at him. "Leave."
"You're a kid," he said. Not condescending. Just a fact. "But if things start getting told — things only you'd know — I'd hate to be forced to clean that up."
"I don't snitch."
"Then we wouldn't have any problems."
He reached behind him and set a piece of cloth on the bench between us. Orange. Folded like it meant something.
"Welcome to FTM."
I picked it up. "I have to carry a flag?"
"Only on missions. So we know who's with us."
For The Money. That's what it stood for. He found that out later. I found it out later still, through a way I'm not going to get into. And I remember thinking: at least it's honest. At least it doesn't dress itself up as something else. Some crews have names that sound like family, like something worth believing in. FTM just says what it is. Jordan probably appreciated that.
I took the flag home in my jacket pocket.
* * *
I got to my room, closed the door, sat on the floor with my back against the bed.
And then I screamed into my hands.
Not long. Just once. Quick and muffled and gone.
I sat there for a while after that, staring at the carpet, the orange cloth folded on the floor next to me. My brain was already doing the thing where it sorts itself out — filing what happened into the parts I could live with, the parts I'd deal with later, and the parts I was just going to put somewhere dark and leave there.
I'd said yes.
I wasn't sure why that surprised me. I'd known for a while if i was ever asked i would say yes. There was a version of this where I could've walked away after the drive, taken the thirty thousand, called it a day and went home. That version had existed.
I'd killed it myself.
I put the flag in the bottom of my sock drawer, under stuff I never wore anymore. Then I sat back down at my desk, put my headphones on, and opened the laptop.
I had a song due.
The thing about Jordan is he always finds a way to keep going. I used to admire that. I used to think it meant he was strong. I still think that, kind of. But I've started to understand that sometimes the people who never stop moving are running from something. And the scary part isn't the running. The scary part is they're so good at it they don't even feel the distance they've covered until they're somewhere they never meant to be.
I don't know how far he was from himself by then. I don't think he did either.