could happen. What if something went wrong or she came out of the store while they were taking the objective? Travis couldn’t take the risk of anything happening that would place Me’shelle in danger.
“Abort!” Travis said frantically.
“What?” Ronnie turned to Travis. “What you mean abort?”
“Repeat your traffic, Mr. Blue,” Jackie said.
“Abort! Abort!”
“Acknowledged, Mr. Blue. I’ll meet you at the drop-off point,” Jackie said as she started up the Toyota and exited the lot.
“What’s wrong, Travis?” Ronnie asked as he started up the car.
“I got a bad feeling about this. We need to abort,” Travis said to Ronnie.
“What kind of feeling? You see a cop or something?”
“It just doesn’t feel right, Ronnie, okay?” Travis screamed.
“Okay, okay, chill the fuck out, Travis. We out of here.”
As Ronnie left the parking lot, Travis looked back at the store and saw Me’shelle come out, talking to the bagman. This confirmed his greatest fear and provided justification for his actions. Ronnie and Travis drove in silence to the drop-off point where Jackie was waiting in the Q45. Once they abandoned the Ford, Jackie drove to Murray’s house to drop the car and pick up some money. Jackie and Ronnie remained outside while Travis went in to make the transaction.
“What was up with that?” Jackie asked Ronnie.
“I don’t know. One minute he was cool, and the next thing he’s hollerin’ ‘abort!’ like he lost his damn mind. Then he got all quiet. I don’t know what’s up with Travis,” Ronnie said.
“Maybe he saw something,” Jackie said.
“Maybe he’s losing his nerve.”
“Maybe, but whatever it is, we gonna have to watch Travis,” Jackie said. “’Cause I never seen him act like that.”
“I have. Saturday night at the party. You didn’t notice how he really wasn’t into it?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think nothing of it, ’cause when I came out of the room, he was fuckin’ the shit out Mystique,” Jackie said and laughed as Travis came out of the house.
“Yo, look, I’m sorry about what happened. I just got a really bad feeling, that’s all. It won’t happen again,” Travis said, but in the back of his mind he knew different.
It’s time to find a way to make it out the game.
Chapter Ten
At 9:30 p.m., Bruce Lawrence parked his car across the street from The Spot and turned off the engine. The Spot was a private club run by a guy named Rocky, who also dealt for Chilly. It was the kind of place where ballers, wanna-be ballers, thugs, low-rent gangsters and those hangers-on who just wanted to be down hung out. Chilly had told Bruce to meet him there at 10:00, but when Bruce arrived, he saw Chilly’s car already parked down the street.
Bruce had known Chilly for years, and Chilly liked or at best felt sorry for Bruce. This gave Bruce the advantage of being able to go directly to Chilly for product instead of having to deal with his more ruthless underlings.
He sat there for a while wondering what he was going to do. As usual, he didn’t have all of Chilly’s money.
After he gathered his courage, Bruce got out of his car and went inside. The place was jammed, and the music was loud. Bruce made his way through the crowd, looking for Chilly without success. Finally, he decided to ask somebody where Chilly was. “He’s in the back. In Rocky’s office, waitin’ for you.”
That was the worst.
Bruce felt like he had a better chance of leaving alive if he talked to Chilly with a lot of people around. He’d seen people go in the office and not come out. Bruce began to think that maybe Me’shelle was right. Maybe he should go home, get Natalie and Brandy and leave the city until things cooled out. He could take the money he had and go down south to Columbia, flip that money and come back when he had all that he owed Chilly.
He turned around, headed for the door and walked right into Derrick Washington, Chilly’s top
C. J. Cherryh
Learning to Kill: Stories
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