‘Where are we going?’ she said, moving up behind him. ‘To the motel?’
‘That’s right.’
‘We’ll be safe there until morning?’
‘No.’
Down into the dark towards the next sidewalk. The Flyaway Lounge just ahead now. They started running again when they reached the parking lot, cutting through towards the motel. Rader was first to the Shelby. He saw headlights flash, an SUV swinging into the lot. Rader opened up and they both climbed in.
‘Get down,’ he said.
Kerri stared out at the same thing he saw: a dark-blue Ford Expedition crawling forward past the motel towards the far end of the swimming pool. It stopped, blocking the exit. Lights were up full beam.
Rader drew his gun again, said: ‘Get down low, hands over your ears, don’t move.’
Kerri shrank against the seat and then folded towards the dash until he only saw the top of her head. She said nothing.
Rader, cocking the .45, put the Shelby in gear and wheeled forward, the engine growling with each slight tap on the accelerator. He rolled the window. The SUV didn’t move now, even as he edged to within forty feet. Rader slowed, the Shelby’s deep snarl echoing in the lot. Then he reached out with the .45, aiming just above the roof of the SUV. Rader squeezed the trigger, the gun bucking a fraction, the sound booming out like a firecracker over downtown Torrent City.
He pulled the car into reverse and spun around, ripping past the line of cars as bullets sprayed from the SUV. Moving fast across the bottom of the lot, he roared up past the opposite end of the pool, firing. The first shot hit the Ford’s hood, the second skimmed the roof. Rader crushed the accelerator, heading straight for the side of the Ford. He blasted again, and this time the Ford swung into reverse, tires screeching as the driver made a wild right, hitting a garbage can. Rader heard more shots as the Ford edged towards the motel, still barring the exit.
Now he threw the Shelby back into reverse, hurtling along the pool edge towards the cars. The Ford remained at the corner of the motel, lights still full beam. Rader gave it five seconds and then he reached out again, the hammer back on the .45. He ripped forward, blasting out the headlights, barreling up towards the Ford, which reversed, crushing the garbage can, and smacked the corner of the motel as it tore across the sidewalk. Rader floored it, out of there, ducking as he passed the Ford and making a sharp left onto the road. He didn’t see the Ford in his rearview.
‘You know a quick way out of downtown?’
‘I wish I did,’ she said.
Rader drove onto Domingo Boulevard, where light traffic passed in both directions. Another glance in the rearview.
‘You can sit up now.’
‘Can I trust you?’
‘No, but you can sit up while you tell me what I need to hear. After that all bets are off.’
‘You can go off people,’ she said, rising against the seat, pulling at the belt. ‘I don’t give second chances. That’s a rule I live by.’
Rader just kept driving.
She made a face.
‘I’m not a trick and you’re not any kind of hustler,’ Rader said, ‘at least not in the usual sense. Beyond that I don’t know who you are, and beyond that I didn’t care—except for the fact that you almost got me killed tonight. And so now I do care, and that’s gonna be a problem for you.’ Rader made a quick glance in the rearview, seeing only the same traffic, and then he took a longer look at Kerri, who was watching him.
She touched her neck, blinking a few times. Her voice was very dry. ‘Man, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘if I nearly got you killed. I didn’t mean—’
‘Same goddamn difference.’ Rader stopped at the lights down at the bottom of Domingo, heading towards the business district.
‘So now you hate me, and I got one more enemy.’
‘I don’t feel anything more about you than other people who get in my way, and it’d take something for that to change. Just for the record, I only bought you that twenty-dollar cocktail because I smelled trouble the moment you laid eyes on me, and I wanted to know how you fit in Skylar’s world.’
‘How do you fit?’ Kerri said.
‘I’m asking the questions.’
‘I don’t get the right to ask one?’
Rader glanced at her, said nothing.
She said, ‘You “outed” me, remember? And I can’t go back in there.’
‘Why would you want to?’
‘You said they’ll kill me if I go back.’
‘I asked you why you’d want to,’ Rader said. He rode through the business district, the new traffic lanes empty of workers and the buildings illuminated in a muted yellow. No one walked on the sidewalk, and only a few cars headed in the direction of the hotel. Nothing behind him now except an out-of-service bus. Rader left it behind as the next set of lights turned yellow.
‘It’s work,’ Kerri said. ‘You have your work, whatever that is, and I have mine.’
‘Let’s get it straight. When your work brings trouble on me, that’s the end of it. You understand?’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I do, and I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you finger me—and who did you think you were fingering?’
‘I thought I was fingering a guy who worked for Skylar. That we were in real trouble. We were about ready to move with our thing—’
‘In the casino?’ Rader said.
‘Yeah, the casino. We were ready to move, and then we got some information, and you more or less fit the description of the kind of person we believed was onto us. Do you understand that, or maybe you don’t care?’
‘You are in real trouble. And you’re out of your depth. That’s what happens to amateurs.’
She was nodding. ‘I see that now, and I already apologized.’
There was nothing to say to that. He asked himself how mad he still was at her—he asked himself what he wanted from the situation beyond information. More than anything he wondered if he believed her equable demeanor.
Rader drove in silence through the business district until he came to an intersection. He turned left, following local signs; another sign pointed northwest to Ohio.
‘You’re trying to get to Skylar’s money,’ he said.
‘That was the plan.’
‘You’re trying to get to it, and there’s a problem. There’s always one, and I was it—you imagined.’
‘There was more than one problem.’
Rader glanced at her.
She said, ‘We believed that we were being investigated.’
‘And you were chief filter.’
‘I was trying to protect my investment,’ Kerri said.
‘Well, you blew it—and you blew it for those other dummies who attempted to kill me.’
Kerri dipped her head, her dirty-blond hair covering the side of her face. She said nothing at first. ‘They had their own thing going.’
‘And you blew it for me,’ Rader said.
‘They deserve all they got.’
‘You blew it for me,’ he said again.
‘As I explained...’
‘You’re sorry.’
‘Would you rather I wasn’t? Would you rather I was seething right now, a wildcat?’