Illegal. Illegal. Simone knows that this is not to do with her, but the adrenaline is too high to think straight. Michaela walks slowly off the coach, the moment drawing out like an exhaled breath.
And that’s it. If the sniffer dogs did alert, Michaela got distracted, but maybe they didn’t at all. Maybe they were barking at something else. Maybe it was all nothing: a routine search, called off.
Simone can hardly believe it.
The driver starts the engine, Michaela gone, just gone, some other poor person in the hands of the justice system, not her, and they’re crossing a wide bridge, skies high above them, upended soup bowls of darkness and stars, the blue and red lights of the police cars flashing intermittently, but not for her, and she’s done it, the drugs are safe in the coach, and she’s as high as if she’s taken the whole lot herself.
CHAPTER 20
You’re back across the border. Bag secured?
Off the coach, Simone turns in a slow circle. Somebody knows she is here. Somebody is watching her. The British man files off the coach, too.
And then the text becomes green, and a Reply button is visible.
Yes, she replies, without thinking.Is my daughter alive?
Go to the original meeting place. Destroy this phone then put it in the trash.
No answer on Lucy. Simone closes her eyes, rushes across the car park, opens her car and is safely inside before she cries. She cries out of relief that she made it, out of nervous energy, out of fear for Lucy.
She’s done everything they have asked for. She must be only moments away from her daughter. She will hand her half of the bargain over, and she will, in return, get something back that is priceless.
As Simone drives back, she is distracted by something on this side of the road that she didn’t see on the way: a collection of buildings, a kind of strip mall, clear white blocks against the sky, anachronistic-looking palm trees around them.
And, within them, as casual as a post office: a gun shop, lit up, open twenty-four hours. Simone’s going too fast to do anything about it, so she passes it, but then finds her footleaving the accelerator without her permission, a physical enactment of her thought processes, the car slowing in response. The empty highway, the straight horizon ahead, and she slows and slows and slows and then stops, thinking of that hanging rifle in the garage in Mexico. Thinking of how she wished she had her own to face whatever is coming up for her.
Isn’t it sensible to arm herself? She is about to meet criminals, kidnappers. She, a woman who is small of stature, who is vulnerable, who wants her daughter back. She could level the playing field. Have a gun, let them know she has a gun. Show up with the gun.
Having a gun might save her daughter’s life.
She’s stopped now on the highway, skewed across it. She looks up at the sky, trying to find some sort of answer from the universe. But all she sees are stars. There, in a stationary car, Simone stares. More stars come out the longer she looks, until the sky is sugared with them, a great arc clustering together like a fractured vase repaired. She’s never seen so many, nor any so vivid, but she has no idea what they might mean. Buy a weapon, as a law-abiding woman who would never hurt anyone unless she had no choice? Or drive on, and regret going in exposed, soft-bodied, alone and female?
She sighs, but Simone can’t stargaze or navel-gaze here. Maybe it’s because she’s lost too much in her life. Or maybe it’s just being a mother. She doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, either. She’s got to move. She is in danger, or, rather, her daughter is, but it amounts to the same thing: do anything, at any cost, to get her back.
The shop calls itself Guns Here. She will just look inside; she probably can’t even buy anything as a tourist. That is the line she tells herself, like a politician who begins to believe their own spin.
It’s a pale-coloured prefab building; looks like it might sell office supplies or furniture, double-height and bland. A neon sign in the window simply readsGUNS – OPENin red, lit-up letters. Automatic doors, bollards outside, plate-glass windows. The only thing that is unusual is, of course, the guns. Simone feels a repulsed kind of fascination as she looks at them. They’re on display in those windows, rows and rows and rows of them sitting like cakes in a bakery, only black and metal and deadly. She places a hand on the warm glass, and as she does so she sees that it’s been recently broken in the bottom-left corner, a spider’s web of pieces not yet repaired.
She hesitates, but only for a second and enters. And, as she does so, she sees the other sign in the window, this one handwritten:Private Seller – No Background Checks Necessary foranybody, and that is the precise moment that Simone knows she is going to leave with a gun.
CHAPTER 21
The place is empty, and the first thing Simone smells when she enters is metal. The metal of car mechanics’ garages. The metal of blacksmiths’ forges. And the metal, too, of blood. She finds herself wondering, in a dark recess of her mind, under what circumstances most people come here, and whether that’s why the opening hours are 24/7. Standing directly in front of the door is a standalone ATM. The type that might, in England at least, charge a withdrawal fee or eat your card. Simone flicks her gaze to the pistols, clocks the price and gets out her debit card. She doesn’t want a gun transaction on it, and paying in cash is the next best thing, even though the ATM is right in the shop. She isn’t hiding it from the police, she tells herself, but doesn’t believe the lie.
She navigates the screen, selectschoose own amountand types$2,000. Declined. Tries$1,000. It accepts it and spits the bills out, as worn and papery as an old man’s handshake.
She walks a slow, scared loop around the shop. A large and crumpled American flag dresses the back wall. An employee – no more than twenty-five – stands behind the counter. After a second, she realizes he’s playing a game on his phone that as she gets closer to him reveals itself to bePokémon.
She takes a steadying breath. ‘A pistol, please,’ she says, like she’s ordering a cappuccino. The employee glances up, meets her eyes, then nods.
‘Type?’ he says, one word, upspeak at its end.
‘I … don’t know,’ she says, wondering if she should have disguised her accent, but it’s too late now. The man – name badgeKYLE– doesn’t seem to care at all. He rubs at his face, turns away from her and begins to open cabinets with a set of keys attached to his belt. His phone lies on the counter, tinkling absurdly withPokémonmusic.
He’s wearing a black Guns Here T-shirt, but creeping up from the back of his neck is a tattoo, wolves, and Simone studies them, wondering if she will remember this. He’s sunburnt, and she finds herself thinking how come he ended up here, what he wants to do for a living, where his mother is.
From the cupboards he gets out five guns, which he lines up on the glass cabinet in front of her. Simone is reminded absurdly of her engagement to Damien. Never people to obey tradition, they agreed to get married one Tuesday night in front ofThe Great British Bake Off, bare feet together under a blanket on the sofa, and the next day went ring shopping, velvet boxes lined up just like this.
