“I’m sure.”
Annie took out a cell phone, but Box shook her head. “Not that phone.” She pointed her finger in the general direction of Walmart. “They got all the cheap phones we need, right in there. We make one call, we throw it away.”
Kort, for once, was on her side. “That’s right,” she said. “Everybody tracks phones.”
“I knew that,” Annie said. “Let’s go get some phones.”
23
LUCAS,astonished, got off the phone and turned to Bob and Rae and said, “Well, the dope gang showed up.”
Bob: “Where?”
“The cop who was taking Box to Fort Worth—they shot up his car, grabbed Box, and took off. Nobody has any idea where they are.”
Rae opened her mouth but nothing came out for a minute, then she sputtered, “You gotta be... How?”
“Pulled up beside the guy on the highway, blew his tires out with an automatic weapon, stuck the gun in his face, grabbed Box, and took off. Two women did it, one of them was probably this Kort, don’t know the other woman, they were both wearing masks. Nobody got hurt, but the highway patrol’s deeply pissed.”
“There’s one glass ceiling that’s gone—now we got dope cartel gun-women,” Bob said.
Rae said, “She’s dead. Dora is.”
Lucas ran both hands through his hair and said, “Losing my shit, here. Nothing we can do about it right now—let’s move.”
“Where?”
“Wherever he is. Poole. Gotta get the posse going,” Lucas said.
They talked to Forte, who already had the posse moving.
“We’ve had a complication,” Forte said. “That burner that Poole’s carrying is T-Mobile and their coverage isn’t so good in southwest Texas. He shows up, then he drops out. Still looks like he’s heading toward I-10, he ought to be there soon, but right now, we can’t see him.”
“Can’t sit on our ass, Russ. Goddamnit, we need to get on top of him. Help us out here.”
“We’re talking to the Texas Highway Patrol people about a roadblock on I-10, and they’re willing to do it. Once he gets past a certain point, he won’t be able to get off. The guy who’s organizing things for the patrol is a Captain Tom Johnson. He wants to meet you at a Shell station out on the interstate...”
—
THEY RENTEDtwo GMC Terrains, Bob and Rae in one, Lucas in the other. Once on the interstate, heading east and south, they passed a sprawling industrial complex on the south side of the highway, with distant hills that Lucas thought must have been in Mexico. A half an hour after they left the airport, Lucas led the other two off the highway at the Fabens exit and found Johnson inside, chatting with acashier. Johnson was a tall man, with a wind- and sunburned face, and a brushy blond mustache. They took a table in the back and Johnson asked, “You heard about the problem in Weatherford?”
“We heard,” Rae said. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a problem, I’d call it a disaster. Anything new?”
If Johnson was offended, he didn’t let on: “They found the car back in some woods, a red Camry. They must’ve had another vehicle hid out to pick them up.”
“Of course they did,” Lucas said. “It’s Kort. Probably the same gun she used to shoot up Soto.”
Johnson didn’t know about that, so they told him about the murder at the town houses. “Sounds like cartel business,” he said. “They’re getting bolder all the time. A few years ago, they would have written the money off. Not now. Now they come and get it.”
Lucas outlined Poole’s probable route across Texas, and Johnson said, “We knew that much. What we thought was, we’d set up a checkpoint at the intersection of I-10 and I-20, which is down the road a way. Once they get that far, they’re locked into the highway. We see anybody turning around, we’ll run them down. I’ve got eight cars available, two men in each one, all of them with rifles.”
“When are you setting up?” Lucas asked.
“Soon as you say, ‘Go.’”
“Go. And we’re going with you.”
“After we get a couple of burritos,” Rae said. “I haven’t had anything to eat since that half-a-flapjack.”
