A police officer was in the Buick Lucy shot at. And shegot him. He must have been getting out right as she fired. She remembers the hand that they saw emerging. But Lucy didn’t know he was a cop. She didn’t.
Lucy has shot a police officer.
Simone has murdered a man.
And there is no evidence, anywhere, of why.
In the photographs is her hire car,thishire car, skewed in front of the messenger’s car, its registration as clear as day. If they haven’t got their names from the photographs, they will be able to get them in minutes from the hire company.
Hence Damien’s oblique message.
They have him.
They know.
They’re probably interviewing him right now. He’s taken the world’s biggest risk telling her anything at all.
And all the while, the Buick wasn’t the kidnapper; it was the police. She can hardly bear to think it, but they ran for no reason. They ran because of the appearance of the car, and the hand, and simple good old-fashioned fear. The panic that they wouldn’t be believed.
The articles’ contents begin to blur together.A large shipment of cocaine was found near the body; an attempt to bury and hide its contents had been made … An as-yet-to-be-identified body discovered by the side of the road in Texas … TWO WOMEN IN DRUG DEAL GONE WRONG … Mexican border drugs transaction results in murder and second attempted murder of an officer who was sure to have witnessed the transaction …
She stands there, refreshing the page. And there it is.
Simone and Lucy Seaborn have been named as the suspects in a murder and a second shooting committed only hours ago by …
Simone wants to lie down, suddenly, right there on the warm tarmac of the forecourt. She wants to flatten herself on the boot of the car and never get up again.
They can’t go to the airport.
The police want them for murder.
Are they going to hand themselves in? Simone stares into the bright lights of the petrol station, but she isn’t thinking, not any more. The adrenaline has worn itself out. So many decisions made, all bad ones. The road is still so quiet, and Simone finds an air of unbelievability about it, that anything significant could be happening, out there in the silence and the stillness. She could simply close the web pages and unknow it, just for a second.
The world may be quiet, but this doesn’t mean that the police are not on their way. Simone shivers with the thought.
They have got to disappear. If they aren’t going to tell the police the truth – and be believed – then they have got to vanish. Haven’t they?
Shouldn’t they go back?
She puts her head into her hands, trying to think. She calls Damien one more time, but he doesn’t answer, probably can’t. Is likely in some police interviewing suite somewhere.
She thinks how his sudden appearance looks. He flew out here with no warning, told Luan it was a business transaction. It looks like Simone found an opportunity. The text she sent to him about their business bank account. She remembers it with a dull thud. The only thing she put in writing, right before she went to Mexico.
It looks like she wanted him, their business accountant, out here to deposit money.
Money she made from a drugs transaction.
How could they all have been so stupid – and so very unlucky?
It’s decision time. That is what her inner voice tells her. Yet again. Another decision, another impossible choice.
Simone creeps into the silent car, thinking of the cashier, who could come out of the back room at any moment.
She waits for several seconds, listening to Lucy’s even breathing, as deep and as soft as winter snow, the way she has a thousand times before.
‘Lucy,’ Simone says in a low voice. She’s on the right, Simone the left, the driver’s and passenger’s seats inverted, like the world they find themselves in.
‘Huh?’ Lucy startles awake, part of her brain still on alert. Simone feels her heart drop in sympathy as she bypasses stirring and goes straight to bright, shining terror.
