Out of Control

Taquandria “TQ” Brown sat patiently in the car she had rented on Bell Street and waited. She looked at her watch, and thought that if things went the way they were planned, that they should be there any minute. What she didn’t know was that she was being watched.

A few blocks away, at approximately 10:25 A.M. a 2000 black Taurus sedan pulled into the parking lot at the Citizen’s Bank and Trust Company on Piedmont Avenue. Darryl and Alan Abraham, along with the two men they hired, entered the bank.

They had been laying low in Atlanta for two months, because they were forced to leave New Jersey after barely escaping when Nick Simmons and Rain Robinson came after them. Darryl and Alan along with Blue Claxton had engineered the robbery of two of their gambling houses.

On the night of the robbery when Rain saw Blue getting out of his car, anger welled up inside her as she walked toward him. Rain wanted to pull her pistol and blast him as soon as she got close enough, but there were too many people around.

Instead of getting him someplace where they could talk quietly and there were less witnesses, Rain confronted him as soon as she was close enough to do so. She started to pull out her gun; Blue was faster with his and shot Rain in the chest, but she survived.
 
When she got out of the hospital Rain told Nick, “Blue had a team hit both our spots. They got damn near two hundred thousand dollars of my money and I want it back.”

After Jap tracked down the rest of the men who were involved in the robbery, Nick and Rain killed them. Then, they followed TQ to a house where Darryl was hiding out. Nick told Rain to wait at the car while he checked out the house. But Rain didn’t listen. Darryl was alerted to their presence outside the house and made his move. Before Nick could get his gun out, Darryl drove TQ’s car through the garage door and opened fire with a Micro Uzi SMG. Nick and Rain hit the ground.

Darryl stopped the car and came out firing.

Nick and Rain kept their heads down.

“TQ!” Darryl yelled and began shooting again.

TQ came out the front door with a knapsack over her shoulder; she too was carrying a Micro Uzi. She fired as she walked around to the passenger side. Darryl got back in the car, while Taquandria kept firing. When Darryl slammed his door, Taquandria jumped in and Darryl drove off. Nick and Rain got up and fired at the back of car as it drove away with the money.

But now they were running out of money.

It took a little while, but Jap, one of Nick’s best men, found out where they were hiding in Atlanta. When he saw them casing the bank, he let Nick know what was going on. Nick decided to let them take the bank and they would hit them afterwards. Nick brought his team, which included Rain Robinson, Monica Wynn, Travis Burns and Jackie Washington to Georgia. Travis and Jackie used to be part of a robbing crew. They’d hit
banks, grocery stores, jewelry stores, and anything else that they could hit quick and come away with a large return for their investment of time. Now Travis used his computer hacking skills to rob banks, while Jackie ran a gambling house for Mike Black.

The team leader was Monika Wynn. She served in an Army Special Forces Unit with Nick. She was a munitions expert, trained in weapons and commando tactics. Monika was Alpha, Nick was Beta, Rain was Gamma, Travis was Delta, Jap was Epsilon and Jackie was Omega. Their van was parked up the street from where TQ waited.

“Everybody down!” Alan yelled and fired one shot at the ceiling. Everyone in the bank immediately hit the floor. Darryl moved to get the employees out of the offices. Then, he approached the branch manager and put a gun to his head. “Give me the key to the cart.”

“What key?”

Darryl hit him in the head with the barrel of his gun. “Give me the fuckin’ key or die now!” he screamed.

Mike Black and his daughter, Michelle, left Meka Brazil at Atlantis and headed home. Things had gone from great to really fucked up for Meka. She was Black’s financial advisor and for a while, when the market was up, Meka flew high along with it, and when it dropped she came down hard. It wasn’t that she had made bad investments. When consumer confidence in the stability of the markets dropped and investors began pulling money out, Meka lost big.

As a result of those losses, she was let go by the firm she was working for and they went under shortly after that. Now Meka only had one client left and she knew from her previous experiences that they weren’t using her to launder their money. She knew that game and how it worked, because it was how Meka earned a living while she lived in Miami. When things got a little hot in Miami, Meka moved north and put that life behind her, or so she thought.

One night when Meka came home, she unlocked the door to her apartment and flipped on the lights. Her apartment looked like it had been hit by a cyclone. Then she felt the cold steel at the base of her neck. “Hello, Meka.” She recognized the voice. It was Cerrone Merkerson. Before she left Miami Meka stole half a million dollars from him. She knew he was there to kill her.

He gave her a couple of days to come up with the money Meka owed him. Meka spent the day on the phone at her office trying to come up with at least some of the money she needed to give Cerrone. But her efforts were not successful. It was getting late in the day and she was running out of options fast.

When Meka got to her apartment that night, she was surprised to see Cerrone lying on her bed. Meka’s eyes cut immediately to the gun lying next to him. It took some doing, but Meka was able to calm Cerrone down. She started walking toward the closet. “Where you think you goin’? I ain’t done with you,” Cerrone said and pointed the gun at Meka.

“I’m going to put on something special for you,” Meka said and kept walking toward the closet. “You don’t need that gun. I told you, it ain’t got to be like that.”

“Hurry up,” Cerrone said. He put the gun down and leaned back as Meka disappeared into the closet. When she came out of the closet, Meka walked toward him with her eyes focused on his gun. Meka reached the bed, took the gun from behind her back and pointed it at Cerrone.