by Blake Crouch
Because she loved it.
19
On the edge of town, Isaiah directed Christian into the boondocks of a Super Wal-Mart parking lot. It was surprisingly busy considering the hour. This far out from the epicenter of Save-Money-Live-Better land was the territory of Winnebagos, car campers, and one U-Haul. Specifically, a 4x8 trailer already rigged to the towing package of a car that had piqued Letty’s fear several days ago in Arizona.
Isaiah’s black Tundra.
Letty climbed out and raised the door.
The four men had the trailer loaded inside of thirty seconds.
# # #
They hit U.S. 95 at 3:00 a.m.
Blasted north.
Isaiah driving.
By 3:15, the suburban sprawl had begun to relent.
Patches of lightless, unsettled desert scrolling past with greater frequency.
The glow of the Strip dwindled in the rearview mirror.
The sky trading the absurdity of the Vegas skyline for honest-to-God stars.
# # #
Even forty miles out of town, no one spoke.
As if their success up to this moment hinged upon a collective silence.
# # #
By four o’clock in the morning they were tearing through a landscape that looked ready-made for missile testing.
Scorched earth.
Joyless mountains.
No trees.
Snakeskin country.
It was Isaiah who finally broke the silence.
Said, “Christian. I’d roll with you again. You absolutely badass.”
Letty looked back, saw Christian smirking.
“And you, Letty,” Isaiah said. She could hear the celebration beginning to build in his voice. “Wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be here.”
She said, “I told Christian he’d make at least a million.”
“Nope,” Isaiah said. “My man stepped up on a moment’s notice. Saved the day. Let’s call it one point five. How you guys know each other back wherever you from?”
“He’s my therapist.”
“No, seriously.”
# # #
They rode toward Death Valley under a star-blown sky.
Letty’s adrenaline charge had tapped out.
She hadn’t been this dog-tired since the birth of her son.
Ize turned off the highway.
For several miles, they bumped along a one-lane road that snaked through the creosote.
The stars had just begun to fade and the sky to draw color when Letty spotted structures in the distance.
The road curved toward a collection of buildings. At first, she mistook them for a town, but on approach, she saw they were nothing but skeletons. Broken framework profiled against the sky.
Isaiah eased to a stop in front of the remnants of a three-story building.
The only part still standing was its facade.
The rest had been reduced to crumbling mortar.
Ize killed the ignition.
The silence that flooded in was graveyard quiet.
Through the dusty windshield, Letty spotted four cars parked a little ways down the road.
“Whose are those?” she asked.
“Ours,” Isaiah said. “They’re just rentals. I figured we’d split the dough here. Go our separate ways.”
Christian was sitting in the back between Stu and Jerrod.
He cleared his throat, said, “You’re absolutely sure we’re safe here?”
Isaiah glanced back between the front seats.
“U.S. 95 South. U.S. 93 South. I-15 South. I-15 North. U.S. 93 North. U.S. 95 North. Six main arteries out of Vegas. They’re looking for a vehicle that matches your white Suburban. They will check every motel and hotel within three or four hours, which is why we aren’t taking that chance. Why don’t you let the professionals do the thinking, my man. You’re in good hands.”
They climbed out.
It was almost cold in the desert ghost town.
No wind.
Letty glanced back the way they’d come. The dust trail of their passage beginning to settle.
Everywhere she looked—emptiness.
Isaiah walked out into the middle of the road. He stared off at the distant hills.
Then laughed—long and low.
Jerrod and Stu moved toward him, and as he turned, the trio embraced.
A fierce, sudden, emotional huddle.
“I’m so proud. We did it, boys. We did it. They’re gonna make movies about us.”
“Yeah,” Christian said. “And with a big surprise ending.”
Letty looked across the hood of Ize’s Tundra.
It took her a second to process Christian standing in the road with an AR-15 pulled snug against his shoulder, sighting down the Marines.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Raise your hands and get down on your knees.”
Isaiah’s head tilted. “What the fuck—”
The gunshot exploded across the desert, the round punching through the windshield of one of the rentals.
“Next shot goes through your eye. Ize.”
Isaiah, Stu, and Jerrod exchanged glances.
They slowly lifted their arms, got down on their knees.
“Join them, Letty.”
“What are you doing, Christian?”
“You’re going to make me kill somebody, aren’t you?”
She moved around the front of the car.
“Christian,” Isaiah said. “You want more money? An even split? We can do that. This hard-bargaining shit ain’t necessary. We’re reasonable men.”
Letty eased down into the dirt.
“Your offer of one point five million was generous, but I think I’ll have to settle for everything. Where are the keys to the Tundra, Isaiah?”
“Ignition.”
“Where are the keys to the rentals?”
“Center console.”
Christian fired eight shots in rapid succession.
Letty heard the air hissing out of the tires of the cars behind them.
“Everyone, flat on your stomach, spread out your hands.”
“I’ll find you,” Isaiah said.
Christian backed away, keeping the gun on them as he approached the driver side door of the Tundra.
“I could kill you all right here, leave you in the desert. Perhaps you should be thanking me for allowing you to live instead of making empty threats.”
“Nothing empty about them, my man.”
“Christian, please,” Letty said.
“Thank me, Ize,” Christian said.
“Fuck you.”
“Thank me or you die right now.”
“Thank you,” Isaiah said through gritted teeth.
“You’re welcome.”
Letty watched as Christian opened the door.
Isaiah said under his breath, “Anybody packing?”
“No.”
“No.”
Jerrod said, “I can get there. I can stop this.”
“He can shoot,” Isaiah said. “In case you missed the part where he went eight for eight on those tires.”
Christian reached into the car.
He cranked the engine.
Isaiah said, “I ain’t believing this shit.”
Christian jumped in, slammed the door, the engine revving.
The Tundra lurched toward them.
Letty didn’t even have time to get to her feet.
Just rolled out of the way as the tires slung rocks and dirt, the rubber tread passing inches from her head.
She sat up, coughing, wiping dust out of her eyes.
Isaiah’s Tundra sped off down the dirt road, taillights shrinking into the dawn.
Isaiah jumped to his feet, sprinted twenty yards.
He planted his feet and screamed at the sky, his voice racing across the wasted landscape, ricocheting between the buildings in the ghost town.
He turned and started back toward the group, toward Letty.
When he was ten feet away, she not
iced the knife in his hand.
“Isaiah, please.”
She scrambled onto her feet, backpedaling.
“You,” he said. “You did this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You brought Christian in.”
“I had no idea.”
He rushed her, swept her off her feet.
She struck the ground hard enough to drive the air out of her lungs.
Isaiah—all two hundred and twenty pounds of him—perched on her chest, his knees pinning her arms to the hardpan.
He dug the knifepoint into her face.
“I ought to carve you up right here. Leave you for the buzzards.”
“I didn’t—”
“Where did you find him?”
“I told you. He was my therapist. I ran into him at the Palazzo. He was suicidal. Had lost his family several months ago. He told me he’d come to Vegas to kill himself.”
Isaiah leaned in close.
“What else do you know about him?”
“Nothing. I only saw him in sessions.”
“You think he shoots like a shrink? Think he drives getaway like a shrink?”
“I’m more stunned than you are, Ize. I swear to you. I told that man my darkest secrets for six months.”
“Something ain’t right here.” He drew the blade softly across her throat. “I’ll find him,” Isaiah said. “And when I do, me and Christian will have a talk. He will tell me all of his secrets. If I find out—”
“You won’t, because I didn’t. If you want to kill me because I got played, go for it. But I’d never sell my partners down the river.”
Isaiah pushed the blade against her carotid.
Stu and Jerrod had wandered over. They stood behind Isaiah, staring down at her.
“What do you think, boys?” he asked. “Feel like watching her bleed?”
20
Letty walked alone down the dirt road away from the ghost town, back toward the highway.
Isaiah, Stu, and Jerrod had gone ahead.
She couldn’t see them anymore.
The sun crested a range of barren hills.
The desert went supernova.
She walked on, shoes scraping dirt.
Buzzards circled.
With each step, she became more thirsty, more exhausted, more humiliated.
Occasionally, blinding silver specks would streak across the far horizon. It was the highway, still miles away.
# # #
The sun was high by the time she reached the pavement, beating down with a kind of angry purpose.
There was no sign of Isaiah and the boys.
Sweat poured out of her.
She walked twenty feet down the road and then her legs failed.
She dropped.
Sat down in the dirt.
Stunned/crushed/confused/enraged.
Still trying to process what had happened.
If she wasn’t mistaken, it was four or five miles back to Beatty, the last town they’d passed through. But she was in no condition to make the trek. She’d left her purse and iPhone in Ize’s Tundra. Had a twenty dollar bill shoved down one of her socks, but not another penny, credit card, or form of identification to her name.
There was nothing coming in either direction.
The heat wafting off the blacktop like a furnace.
Scorpions watching her from the shade.
She couched her face between her knees and shut her eyes.
# # #
The sound of an approaching car brought her head up.
For a moment, she didn’t know where she was.
She hoisted her arm into the air and raised her thumb.
A Prius screamed past, kept going.
# # #
The sun bore down from directly overhead, and she could feel herself beginning to come apart.
You have to get up.
You have to walk to town.
You cannot just sit here and wait for a good Samaritan to stop.
Because they don’t exist anymore.
# # #
She walked up the shoulder of the highway, swatting at the swarm of flies and gnats that had been attracted by her salt-tinged sweat.
In the distance, the mini-roar of an engine.
She looked up.
Couldn’t see anything through the brutal glare.
Just blinding chrome and glass.
Thinking, If I took my top off, would they stop?
Could you handle that rejection if they didn’t?
She raised her arm, held out her thumb, but didn’t slow her pace.
Kept walking as she shielded her eyes.
The car streaked past.
She traded her thumb for a middle finger.
But something was different with this one.
The pitch of its engine had dropped.
She stopped, made a slow, staggering turn.
Damn.
Somebody had actually pulled over.
She stumbled toward the vehicle, moving as fast as she could manage, some part of her fearing that as she drew near it would turn into a mirage.
But the image held.
A burgundy Chevy Astro with deeply tinted windows.
She sidled up to the van’s front passenger door, yanked it open, climbed up into the seat. The air-conditioning was crisp and roaring out of the vents.
She looked over at the driver, her head spinning, unwieldy.
Said, “I can’t thank you e—”
At first, she thought she was hallucinating.
A symptom of heatstroke and exhaustion.
But when he spoke, the voice matched the face.
Christian said, “Shut the door, would you? You’re letting all the cold out.”
When she didn’t respond, he reached across her lap and pulled the door closed himself.
The desert raced by.
Christian reached down, grabbed a bottled water from between the seats, dropped it into her lap.
“Glad you were still here,” he said. “I swapped out Isaiah’s car as fast as I could, but it took longer than I’d planned.”
She unscrewed the water and sucked it down.
Still cold enough to trigger a brief, blinding headache, but she didn’t care. The thirst-quench was orgasmic.
“There’s a whole case,” he said. “Help yourself.”
She killed two more, leaned back in her seat.
They were speeding along on a descending grade.
The temperature readout passing the 110 mark.
The desert looking more hostile and unforgiving with each passing mile.
Like a lifeless planet. Like that painting in Christian’s office.
The hydration and the AC were going a long way toward clearing her head.
She looked over at Christian. He’d changed. Maybe others wouldn’t have noticed, but to her, a student of body language, it was like riding with a completely different man. He sat straighter. His shoulders implied confidence and ability. And there was a hardness in his face that hadn’t ever been there before.
He said, “Your pride is wounded. As it should be. But you should know something.”
“What’s that?”
“I am the very best in the world at what I do. The game was over before it ever started. It was like a middle school kid trying to compete in the PGA Championship.”
“Are you even a therapist?”
“Read a couple books. But it wouldn’t be fair to say I had a practice. Or a diploma. You were my only client.”
“How the hell did you do this? And why?”
“You first fell on my radar while you were still in prison. Friend mentioned you to me. Your work with Javier Estrada and Jack Fitch in the Keys was very impressive. Even then, I wanted to work with you, but I worried about your self-destructive tendencies.”
Beyond the windows, the vegetation was shrinking, browning.
He said, “When you turned up in Charleston, I went to C
harleston.”
“But I came to you.”
“Think back to how you first heard about me.”
“One of the girls in the halfway house recommended you. She told me you’d changed her life. Gave me your card.”
“Her name was Samantha and I paid her five thousand dollars to steer you to me.”
“Jesus. You’ve been running this grift on me for half a year. But you helped me. You actually helped me.”
“I’m glad. Although that wasn’t really the purpose.”
“I told you everything about me. Things nobody else knew.”
“I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’ve never taken an interest in anyone with such intensity. I had to know you inside and out, Letty. Your secrets and fears. I needed to see your naked soul.”
“It was a violation.”
“Yes, but a necessary one.”
“You were planning Vegas from the beginning?”
“No, that fell in my lap last month. Vegas was never the end goal.”
“So what was?”
“You. Meeting you. Vetting you. Learning everything about you.”
“I left Charleston and came west on my own. That was my decision.”
“Was it really? Let’s think back to the day you decided to leave. What happened?”
“A customer harassed me. I fought back. My boss fired me.”
“Because I paid them to. I wanted you to leave town. You’d been talking about it already. You just needed a push.”
“You sent me to Isaiah?”
“In a back channel sort of way. I knew he was planning to rip me off. You might even say I was so unreasonable in my terms that I encouraged it. Isaiah’s ambitious and fearless. But he’s lucky I didn’t leave him in the desert. I figured if he wanted to do the hard work, let him. I had Javier recommend you to him.”
“So I could get on the inside and you could manipulate me.”
“So I could manipulate everyone. It’s what I do. I took down a casino, kept one hundred percent of the haul, and all I did was drive. And I didn’t even have to do that, but I wanted to see you under pressure.”
“How’d you know I’d ask you to drive us?”
“I set it up perfectly. I had helped you with your addiction. Here was a chance for you to return the favor. Give me a taste of excitement. Snap me out of my misery. Possibly save my life. Even if you hadn’t called, I had alternate plans to catch up with Isaiah’s crew. I’d have won no matter what you did, Letty.”
“Who’s the man I stole the phone from?”