Butcher-knife man growled: “Give it up! Cash. Wallet. Hurry!”

So Middleton reached under his gray sports jacket and came out with Beretta steel.

“Go, baby!” yelled the robber to a waiting car. He dropped the knife.

“Freeze, baby,” Middleton shouted, “or I’ll blow his head off, then kill you too!”

Middleton kept the robber in his vision while turned toward the rusted car idling at the curb, its front passenger door gaping open like the maw of a shark.

Never heard it roll up behind me. Never saw it coming. Wake up!

The robber said: “We want a lawyer!”

Middleton jerked his head toward the open car door—but kept his gun locked on the robber. “Get in and you might get out of this alive.”

The hands-high scruffy man eased into the shotgun seat of the idling car. Middleton slid into the backseat behind him, told the boney young woman with blazing eyes behind the steering wheel, “Do what I say or I’ll blast a bullet in your spine.”

“Baby!” yelled her partner. “You were supposed to beat it outta trouble!”

Not anger, thought Middleton, that’s not the music. More a plea. And sorrow.

“Fool! He’d have lit you up! Word, Marcus: I ain’t never gonna leave you go.”

“‘Knew you weren’t meant for no thug life.” Notes of pride. Sorrow.

“Where?” the woman asked the dark silhouette in her rearview mirror.

“We’re going to Baltimore,” Middleton said. “Drive.”

4 - S. J. ROZAN

4

S. J. ROZAN

Swift and silent as a cheetah after an antelope, the dust cloud chased the approaching Jeep. Almost, you could imagine it putting on a burst of speed, catching the Jeep and devouring it. Squinting over the sun-baked soil, Leonora Tesla gave in to an ironic smile as she found herself rooting for the dust.

Since she’d come to Namibia she’d seen this contest often, the predator running the prey. Conscientiously, she told herself not to take sides—they were all God’s creatures, and they all had to eat—but her heart was always with the prey. And her heart was usually broken, because the predator usually won. Now she was on the other side, but—as usual, Leonora!—in a hopeless cause. The dust would lose this race, settling into defeat as the Jeep came to a stop in front of her hut.

At least this time, she wouldn’t have to worry about heartbreak: This would not be a life-and-death struggle, only an annoyance in her day.

“He’s a funder,” her program manager had said over the village’s single crackling telephone, calling from Windhoek, his voice equal amounts sympathy and command. “You will have to see him.”