Kort jammed on the brakes and Annie banged against the front seat and swore, and then she popped the car door and she was out and running to the cop car, which had swung in an uncontrolled circle off the highway, and she was on it, the machine gun pointing through the driver’s-side window at the cop, who was trapped in his seat, and she was screaming, “Let her out or I’ll kill you. Let her out or I’ll kill you...”
The cop’s face was ashen with fear, looking down the barrel of the M16, two feet from his head. Annie heard the lock pop on the back door, and she yanked the handle, and she moved the gun toward Box and shouted, “Out. Out and get in the red car. Out and get in the red car. Get out or I’ll kill you right here.”
On the highway, a brown Porsche SUV had slowed, the driver watching the scene at the cop car. Box got out of the backseat of the cop car, hands still cuffed behind her, and jogged toward the red car. The Porsche had now stopped in the road, and Annie lifted the rifleand blew out its front tires, then fired another quick burst at the back fender of the cop car, rattling through the metal like a steel drum.
Box was in the backseat of the red car, and Annie piled in behind her and Kort took off.
She drove hard for two minutes, pulling fast away from the cars now piled up behind the Porsche. “Faster,” Annie shouted. “Faster, goddamnit, or I’ll kill you.”
Kort had the gas pedal welded to the floor, then braked hard at Lake Forest Drive, took a left, accelerated past the trees, then off the road and into them. As she did it, Rosie was coming down the street in the RV. The three women in the red car, led by Kort, with Annie running hard, half-dragging Box, piled into the RV that was already rolling back to the corner.
Rosie took a right, back toward the place where the highway patrolman was now standing outside his car, talking into a radio. A half dozen cars, including the Porsche, were now off the road beside the cop car. Annie was kneeling next to the driver’s seat and said, “Don’t speed, but gotta hurry before they shut off traffic, gotta hurry...”
They went past the cluster of cars as two cop cars, light bars flashing into the afternoon, screeched around the corner off Fort Worth Highway. Rosie turned on Allen, drove out on the Fort Worth Highway, turned left. They passed the jail, and then Main Street, going straight west out of town.
Kort and Box were lying on the RV’s floor, and now Box asked, “Who are you? Who are you?” though she was afraid she knew.
Kort said, “We want our money back.”
Box said, “Oh... fuck... no.”
—
A HALF HOUR LATER,as they pulled into the Walmart Supercenter in Mineral Wells, the College-Sounding Guy called to say, “The cops don’t have any idea of what you might be driving. And don’t tell me. You’ve stirred up a hornets’ nest and I’d get as far away from there as you can, as quick as you can.”
Annie, Rosie, and Kort gathered around Box, and Annie said, “You’re going to have to tell us where the money is. ’Cause if you don’t, this lady”—she tipped her head at Kort—“is going to go to work on you with some, you know...”
“Home improvement tools,” Kort said, with a gleam in her eye.“You know—hammers, saws, drills, box cutters. That sort of thing.”
Rosie said to Annie, “We might need some plastic sheets.”
“We’re at a Walmart, what better place to get them?”
Box, still cuffed, said, “I’ll tell you where your money is, if you take the cuffs off. I’m not going to try to run, you’re all meaner than I am. My arms and shoulders are killing me.”
Rosie and Annie looked at each other, and then Annie said, “If you try to run, we’ll kill you. We’re not fooling about this, Dora.”
“I believe you,” Dora said.
“I’m okay with taking them off,” Annie said to Rosie. To Box: “We’vegotsome handcuff keys. I don’t know why.”
“Sure you do,” Rosie said. “Because of April.”
“Let’s not talk about April,” Annie said. “If I never see that chick again, it’ll be way too soon.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds sorta hot,” Box said.
Rosie and Annie looked at her, and Annie said, “Interesting.”
—
WHEN THE CUFFSwere off, and when Kort had stopped complaining about how that made everything harder, and working on Box with her tools would get some straight answers, Box rubbed her wrists and said, “It’s this way. My boyfriend and I...”
“Gar Poole,” Kort said.
“...yeah, Gar. We split up and we are looking for a new place to hide, after Dallas came apart. Gar’s got the money. We’re supposed to meet in New Mexico, tomorrow or the next day. He thinks the cops have me now, but I have a phone number for him. We can call, you can listen in. He’ll trade the money for me.”
“You sure of that?” Annie asked.
