by Sam Sisavath
“Jesus, dude, are you into her or something?” Dwight was saying.
Reese glanced over. “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me. You’re into her, aren’t you?”
“Am I suddenly back in primary school?”
“Answer the question.”
“No. Of course not.”
“Whenever someone says ‘of course not,’ that means yes. Cause if you are, just go back there and fuck her and get it over with. She’s not going to stop you.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with a proper response, Dwight.”
His partner laughed. “Hey, it’s just you and me and her in the car. She won’t know, and I won’t blab about it later. Go ahead. Climb back there. Just be careful; don’t wanna open that graze back up. And, oh, try not to let her shoot you again.”
“Shut up and drive,” Reese grunted.
Dwight laughed again but mercifully let it go. At least, for the moment.
His blood was pooling under him, and it should have made sitting uncomfortable, but Reese was far too relieved that they were still in the wind after everything—the sight of all those squad cars flooding the parking lot had made him overly pessimistic for a second—to let it get him down. He glanced down at his bandages again. Still no visible signs of fresh blood.
It was a good thing he had seen the glint of her gun coming out from behind her back a split second before she shot him. That early split-second warning had allowed him to twist just enough that the bullet went into his side instead of his gut. At the time he thought he could make himself small enough to force her to miss completely, but that was stupid, especially given the distance between them.
But she had shot him, and he hadn’t seen it coming. That was the thing that bothered Reese the most. He hadn’t seen it coming.
How the hell had that happened?
* * *
Dwight’s voice woke him up from his slumber: “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, it’s them. Answer the phone.”
Reese opened his eyes to a slight buzzing in his jacket pocket. The interior of the car was dead quiet and they were still moving down the interstate, which looked impossibly abandoned at the moment, except for the occasional vehicle on the faster left lane or coming from the opposite direction.
His body ached, but he ignored it and fished out the phone. The blood clinging to his fingers had dried, so he had napped for quite a stretch. He didn’t bother looking at the caller ID.
“Yes,” he said into the phone.
“We’re looking at the news right now,” a male voice said on the other end of the line. “The truck stop. Andy something.”
“Andy’s Gas N Eats.”
“Yes, that’s it. What’s your situation?”
Reese folded his palm over the phone, said to Dwight, “Where are we?”
“Next state over,” Dwight said.
“Roadblocks?”
“Haven’t seen one yet.”
He turned back to the phone: “We’re beyond the perimeter.”
“I don’t have to tell you what’s happened to the cargo,” the caller said. It wasn’t a question.
“No,” Reese said.
“Good. Because I hate wasting my breath on things people should already know.”
Reese rubbed at his eyes to help himself wake up, but the monotony of the view outside the car windows wasn’t a very big help. There seemed to be an endless series of empty black road in front of him and on the dark shoulder to his right.
“What are you going to do about it?” the man on the other end of the phone asked.
“I’m not sure what I can do,” Reese said. “If you’re worried about the cargo identifying you or even being aware of your existence, don’t be.”
“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t be worried about, Reese. The drivers, on the other hand. They’re yours, aren’t they?”
“We’ve worked with them in the past, yes.”
“How much do they know? About the operation? About us?”
“They know what I’ve told them, which isn’t very much. They’re freelancers; they know better than to ask questions.”
“That isn’t an answer, Reese.”
“Nothing. They don’t know anything about you.” When his caller didn’t reply right away, Reese said, “We’re not even sure if they’ve been captured alive. There was a lot of gunplay.”
“I think it’s best to assume they’ve been captured alive, don’t you? Just in case.”
“Agreed,” Reese said.
“I have to say, we’re a little disappointed.”
“I can assure you, so are we.”
“You’ve always come through for us, Reese. What went wrong this time?”
Alice. That’s what went wrong, he thought, but said instead into the phone, Her “We’re looking into it. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”
“Do that. In the meantime, what’s your current location?”
“We’re about three hours out from the midway point,” Reese said, and saw Dwight glance over at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Good,” the caller said. “We’ll talk again when you get there.”
“Again, our apologies,” Reese said. “We will, of course, not accept any forms of payment for this screwup. Hopefully you’ll let us make up for it.”
“We’ll see,” the caller said, and hung up.
Reese grimaced at a sudden spurt of pain as he put the phone back into his jacket pocket.
“We’re almost at the midway point,” Dwight said. “Ten minutes, tops. Why did you lie?”
“Because we’re not going there. Slow down.”
Dwight did. “What’s going on?”
“Before Alice did what she did, they called me, told me to cut our losses.”
“Fuck. That’s some hardcore shit.”
Reese nodded. “Yeah. Writing the girls off as a loss is a financial decision, but losing them to the cops, along with, potentially, the drivers, goes beyond that.”
“So I take it we’re not going to the midway point.”
“They were already looking to do damage control, and now we’ve just become another loose end that needs to be cauterized.”
“Ouch,” Dwight said. “I think there’s a word for this, if I’m not mistaken.”
“It’s not super fantastic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Reese said, and leaned back against his seat and closed his eyes. The throbbing had returned, and no matter what he did, it was getting more and more difficult to ignore them.
“You all right?” Dwight asked.
“I really could use some of those painkillers, partner.”
“Hurts, huh?”
“What do you think?”
“Must hurt a lot. You look like you’re about to poop in your pants.”
Reese sighed. “I need something.”
“Hold your horses.”
“Trying…”
It took thirty minutes, with Dwight driving around the scheduled meeting place, before they eventually pulled into a gas station. Dwight found a spot at the side of the main store, away from the bright lights in the lot. The semidarkness kept them, Alice, and the damaged windshield mostly hidden, just as long as someone walking by didn’t look too closely.
Dwight put the car in park. “What about your girlfriend?”
“We keep her alive for now,” Reese said.
“Give me one good reason.”
“Aren’t you curious who she is?”
“It’s pretty obvious who she is. Juliet’s in custody somewhere, and she sold us out. That girl back there’s a goddamn cop. She must have gotten her hands on a phone when you let her go into the diner by herself. Case closed.”
“I didn’t let her go by herself. I followed her.”
“Not quickly enough. That place probably had a pay phone…”
“She didn’t go for it.”
“You saw her?”
“I did. She didn’t use it.”
> Dwight shrugged, but he was not convinced. “Then she got her hands on a phone some other way. I don’t care how; I just know that she’s a cop and you should have left her back there. Better yet, you should have put one in her head as a good-bye gift. She did shoot you, remember?”
Reese shook his head. “I don’t think she’s a cop.”
“She has to be. It’s the only answer that makes any sense.”
“I don’t think so, but I’d like to find out for sure.”
Dwight squinted at him. It wasn’t nearly dark enough for Reese not to see the smirk on his partner’s face.
“What’s on your mind?” Reese asked.
“I think you don’t want to believe she’s a cop because you just want to keep her around.”
“I just want answers, Dwight. How long have we been partners? You know I don’t do well with blissful ignorance.” He sighed and tried to blink away a stab of pain. “Now can you please go into that store and get me something before I pass out again?”
“It’s a gas station, dude; don’t get your hopes up for a bottle of Vicodin.”
The ceiling light flickered on temporarily as Dwight opened his door and climbed out. Reese checked his bandages for the second time since waking up, and finding it stark white against the blackness of the car’s interior, leaned back and attempted to slow down his breathing.
He glanced up at the rearview mirror and looked back at Alice, still unconscious in the backseat. Or, at least, she looked the part. For all he knew, she could have been faking it. The woman was apparently very good at that. Which was just one more reason why Reese wanted to get to the bottom of who she really was.
After that, well, Dwight wasn’t completely wrong. She was much too dangerous to keep around forever. Sooner or later, whether he got his answers or not, they were going to have to say good-bye to her because they had more pressing business on their plates. That was something Reese had no doubts about, just like he knew there was nothing waiting for them at the scheduled midway point where they were supposed to meet their employers’ representatives but bullets with their names on them.
Live by the gun, die by the gun, isn’t that the old saying?
Fifteen
Her legs were broken. She was certain of it. Maybe both, but definitely one. How else to explain the explosion of pain that coursed through her body when she raised herself from…
A bed.
She was lying on a bed. How did she get on a bed?
After a while, she gave up trying to move and simply lay as still as possible. There was an odd smell about the mattress under her, but after fruitlessly trying to see in the darkness, she came to the conclusion that the odor wasn’t just from the bed, but all around her. While the aroma wasn’t completely gag-worthy, it wasn’t anywhere close to being pleasant. It was…sterile.
She reached down to touch her legs, hoping to—
There. They were still attached, and moving them while they hurt was still possible, so she hadn’t broken either legs after all. Thank God, even if she didn’t want to see what they looked like or what color they were underneath her pant legs. If the continuous throbbing that originated all the way from her toes and went up to her chest was any indication, it wasn’t pretty.
She tried to turn her head to get a better look at her surroundings, but just rising off the pillow (not fluffy exactly, but not too hard, either), regardless of how slight her movements, made her spine creak as if it might snap into a dozen pieces at any moment. The fact was, everything hurt, and maybe that was a good thing. Pain was better than not feeling anything at all after what had happened.
She was still trying to piece together the sights and sounds from memory when a male voice, familiar, said, “Maybe a broken bone or two.”
She turned her head slowly, very slowly, and saw him standing next to the window looking outside. Streams of moonlight splashed across one side of his face, and she thought, Of course he’s not dead. I’m not that lucky.
“Maybe a couple of ribs,” he said. “Legs look fine. Or, well, as fine as they can possibly look after what happened. The upside? They’re not twisted into odd shapes.”
Her sides were on fire, and every inch of her ached.
The car. She recalled the car.
It had come out of nowhere, bright headlights giving her just enough warning to jump—or start to jump, anyway—as it was about to strike. That stunt had saved her life, even if it didn’t spare her the brunt of the collision. She remembered rolling across the hood and impacting the windshield, hearing it shatter against her body, followed by that whole flying through the air moment that still felt like a dream, one that was happening to someone else.
But it was definitely me.
The fact that she was starting to remember the details was another good sign, because it meant she hadn’t broken her head open against the parking lot of Andy’s when she fell back down. Broken bones could be mended and gashes sutured, but there wasn’t a whole lot you could do for a cracked skull.
She should be grateful. Ecstatic, even, because despite everything she was still (mostly) intact. It was more than she could have asked for, though looking at Reese as he stood at the window peering out, his back to her, there was a very good chance her good fortune wouldn’t last. Lady luck, after all, was known to be a very fickle bitch.
They were in a motel room, that much she had managed to figure out. The slightly uncomfortable bed under her, the Spartan decorations, and most of all, the smell were all indications of that. They must have left the interstate behind by the lack of back-and-forth traffic noises from outside. How long had it been since she was upended by Dwight in Andy’s parking lot? No idea. It could have been a day or a week or just a few hours.
Reese was there, but she didn’t see Dwight. Not that she had any delusions she could take Reese even if he were by himself and wounded. Besides the fact he still had his gun holstered behind his back, she was in no condition to do anything other than stare at him. She couldn’t even breathe properly without her chest threatening to cave in on her, for God’s sake.
Maybe this is it. The end of the road. Lying on a stinking motel bed waiting for the ax to fall. I can definitely think of better ways to go…
“Why am I still alive?” she asked.
He looked over. His face was partially hidden in shadows, so she could only see one of his brown eyes. “If Dwight had his way, you wouldn’t be.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s running an errand. He’ll be back soon.”
Reese was doing everything possible not to show it, but she could tell he was in pain. It was in the way he stood, in the way he talked and even breathed. He was still wearing his black blazer, but he’d taken off his shirt and it was easy to make out the white bandages wrapped around his stomach where she had shot him.
“Dwight thinks you’re a cop,” Reese said. “He’s pretty sure of it.”
Is thinking I’m a cop good or bad?
More importantly, which answer would keep her alive a little longer until she could heal enough to fight back? She didn’t like the idea of dying inside this motel room. Hell, she didn’t like the idea of dying at all. At least, not yet. Not while Faith was still out there, somewhere…
“What do you think?” she asked him.
“I told him you couldn’t possibly be a cop.”
“You sound very sure of it,” she said, wondering if this was the right play. Was keeping him off-balance the correct move, or was it better to confirm his suspicions? Maybe it was the pounding in her head, but Allie found it difficult to think clearly.
Concentrate!
“I am,” he nodded. “I know cops. I’ve been around a lot of them, in a lot of places—cities, countries, continents. And you, my dear, are not one of them.”
He walked over to her. He was being very careful with his side, flinching whenever he moved or turned too quickly. Even reaching over and bringing a chair to sit down next to the bed made him wince no
ticeably.
“Which is why you’re still alive,” Reese said.
“Why’s that?”
“You’re not a cop, but you’re not a criminal, either. So what are you?”
“You seem to have all the answers. You tell me.”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Maybe I’m both.”
“Both?”
“A crooked cop. A cop and a criminal. I hear they actually exist.”
“They do,” he said, but then shook his head. “But you’re not that, either. I’ve been around criminals all my life. Small time, big time—all the other times in between. But you’re not one of them. I’m absolutely certain of that.”
“Apparently you know a lot more about me than I do.”
“Not true, but I’m getting there. You’re very interesting, Alice.”
“Did you find Juliet interesting, too?”
He smiled. “You mean, did we ever have a sexual relationship?”
“That’s not what I meant, but sure, let’s pull that thread.”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“She’s not my type.”
“Juliet is everyone’s type.”
“She’s Dwight’s, but I like my women more interesting. Like you, Alice.”
There’s that word again. Interesting. Well, I’ve been called worse.
“So what else do you know about me?” she asked.
“Not very much at all, Alice. Is your name even Alice?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie.”
“If you say so.”
“But I’ll call you Alice anyway. You look like an Alice.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure, why not. So tell me, Alice. Why are you here? At first I thought your goal was to save the girls, but if that were the case, you would have done it much sooner, well before Andy’s. You had so many chances before then.”
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Did what work?”
“The big rig. The girls…”
He nodded and gave her an almost amused smile. “It did.”
She sighed with relief and didn’t bother to hide it from Reese. She didn’t care if he knew; not anymore, anyway.