“What about me?” Box asked.
“I need you in a different car,” Poole said. “I’m going to put some of the gold and cash under your spare tire. If something happens to me and Sturg, you’ll still be outside with some resources.”
—
LATER,in bed, Poole said, “We’ll drive separate routes down to Arizona. You drive five miles over the speed limit all the way, don’t attract any attention. Don’t take a drink—not a single fuckin’ cocktail. I don’t want you blowin’ a twelve and having the cops taking the car apart.”
Box nodded and asked, “Where are we going, exactly?”
“Can’t tell you that, yet. I gotta go on the Internet and do someresearch. After we get there, we’ll get a decent motel and lay up for a while, check out the situation. Find someplace nice, quiet, white, maybe a little older. Rent a house, settle in.”
“Sounds right,” she said. “Could we get together at night, along the way?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be driving a different route. I don’t want them spotting you, tracking you, then spotting me. And vice versa. I think we’re okay, but I don’t want to take any chances. That’s why we’ll split up the money—if something happens to one of us, the other one’s still outside and has some cash to maneuver with.”
“Right now, we got one car too many,” Box said.
“I’ll drive it back to Dallas tomorrow, store it with the truck...”
“You know what?” Box asked. “I’d feel better driving the truck. Would you mind?”
“No, that’d be fine.”
“Maybe I’ll put a couple pieces of furniture in it,” she said.
Poole laughed and then said, “That’s not a bad idea, actually. Antique lady, out scouting around. Cops won’t give you a second look.”
“When do we go?”
“Well, Sturgill’s getting antsy about going up to Canada,” Poole said. “I’d say tomorrow morning, early.”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“I’m a little tense, myself,” Poole said. “But what it is, is what it is.”
She looked at the clock and said, “I’m going to sleep with you overnight, but I’ll go mess up the bed in my room before we leave. So it looks sleeped in.”
“Why don’t we make this one look fucked in?” Poole asked.
“Good with me,” Box said.
—
AS POOLE, BOX, AND DARLINGworked through their next move, Kort spent a lot of time pacing. Lying faceup on the motel bed was still painful. Facedown, she couldn’t see the TV, which was rattling along endlessly about the upcoming election, and she was too cranked to watch it anyway. She still had a Ruger.357 with a belt clip, and she got it, loaded it, and clipped it to the back of her sweatpants and pulled her sweatshirt over it. The weight of the gun caused her pants to sag, but that was the least of her worries.
What to do when the other “ladies” showed up? If they came in with guns, Kort wouldn’t go easy, but, she thought, she’d probably go.
Made her cry, thinking about it. Life so far had been one long roll in the shit. The only thing she really liked about it was using her tools. The surge of pleasure and power she got from torture was as addictive as methamphetamine.
She went out only once, bought a pay-as-you-go burner phone, made the one-ring call to the secret number, and stopped at a pancake house, where she bought a double stack of buttermilk pancakes with link sausages, ate until she felt nauseous.
The knock on the door came at mid-afternoon. She was lying facedown on the bed, listening to CNN, and the knock made her jump. She slid off the bed, pulled her sweatshirt down, smacked her lips a couple of times, pushed her hair back, went to the door, and said, “Yes?”
A woman’s voice: “Open up. It’s us.”
—
“US”turned out to be two women, late thirties or early forties, thin and tough like beef jerky, short hair, one blond, one brunette, small gold earrings, and ink: tattoos running up and down their exposed lower arms and legs, peeking out of the V of their blouses. The taller of the two had a triangle of three crude ink dots on her right cheek next to her eye. Some kind of secret prison symbol, Kort thought.
