That was a first for me. I recalled Mother teaching me to drive and telling me about the friend of a friend's mother, someone like that, who had been in a terrible accident passing a truck in a bad rainstorm. She had been paralyzed, and I had learned the lesson from her example that you simply couldn't take the chance. I learned to accept being stuck and hoping the semi would take the next exit. Which they almost never did.
But now I had passed a semi in the rain, and I had lived. No crash. I felt invigorated. I had to do this three more times over the next thirty minutes until the rain ended. At one point I had to pass four semis in a row. I prayed more during that half hour than I had in years. By the last time, I still didn't feel comfortable, but I did have a better sense of what to do and confidence that I wouldn't end up in a wheelchair. Shelly had always said, "You never know what you are capable of until you have no choice but to do it." She was right.
Finally, after the rain ended and I was near a little Florida town called Lake City, the red dot stopped. I drove toward it for ten minutes, and the dot still didn't move. Good, I thought. Maybe she's parked for the night.
She was. The dot was somewhere in one of those cheap two-story motels, where all the doors open to the outside and there's a walkway on the second floor. I was relieved to have located her and also relieved to be able to stop driving.
Mark had told me the GPS beacon was accurate to a few feet, but I didn't think I would be able to pick out her room. I had realized hours earlier that I didn't know what kind of car she was driving. The lot was not completely full, but there were a bunch of rental cars, so I couldn't even guess which one would be hers. The best thing to do was to wait until morning. The sign in front of the motel said they had free breakfast. At some point Christine would come outside, either to eat or to leave.
I parked around the corner of the building where I could see the driveway and the office. I unplugged the tablet, nervous about running down the battery on the Vue. Even after moving the boxes around, I realized that there wasn't as much room to sleep in the back as I had thought. Still, it was more comfortable than sleeping in the driver's seat. I pulled out a little pillow, wedged myself between some totes, and tried to position my head so that my neck wouldn't hurt in the morning.
I replayed the events of the day. As I shifted from my left side to my right, unable to get comfortable, I got angrier and angrier about Christine. My stomach growled. I tried to make a plan for the morning, but the rational part of my brain had already checked out. Being exhausted and not being able to sleep was frustrating. Finally I let myself think about Mark for a while, and I relaxed in his arms as I finally drifted off.
13
A truck horn from the highway jolted me awake, and it took me a minute to remember where I was. I shook myself to awareness in the soft pink light of dawn and tried to stretch. Crawling up to the front seat, I saw the clock on the dashboard: six fifteen.
The red dot was still in the same place, overlapping my blue dot. That made me nearly forget my sore neck. Still, Christine or no Christine, I was in desperate need of coffee.
I tried to make myself presentable, which was not so easy to do after sleeping in a car. I couldn't find a comb without digging through multiple bins, which would have kept me visible in the parking lot for too long. Instead, I rubbed off the eyeliner that had formed dark circles under my eyes and consoled myself that this was not the kind of place where people dressed for breakfast.
I put the tablet under the driver's seat and grabbed the backpack as I got out of the Vue. There had been five bullets chambered in the .38 in New Orleans, and I had shot two at the Camry. I would not allow the three remaining bullets out of my sight. I peeked around the corner and didn't see anyone, so I nonchalantly walked by a couple of the first floor rooms as if I had been staying there and went into the door marked "Office."
As I had hoped, the coffee was ready and no one seemed to pay any attention to me. They had some fruit, and a banana tasted good after a day of eating nothing but granola bars. What I really wanted was bacon and eggs, but that did not seem to be in the cards.
The breakfast room was shaped like an L, with the front desk on the long side. Two small tables with four chairs each were in the nook, along with a table of food. There was a hallway that looked like it might lead to a bathroom, and I was back there exploring when I heard the main door open. I ducked out of sight around a corner and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw an old black couple walk in.
Safe, and lucky it was not Christine. I went out the back exit. That left me on the far side of the building, which meant I could not see anything, including Christine. I walked around to the front of the office but on the side that was away from the guest rooms, finishing my banana and sipping the coffee, trying to look like I was stretching my legs. Which was pretty easy, because I was.
Then I put my phone, still completely turned off, to my ear and pretended to be talking as I kept peering around the office building to see where Christine was.
While I waited, I thought through what I would say to her. Retrieving my purse would be fairly straightforward, but getting information from her was going to be hard.
I remembered being in elementary school. Christine had stolen cookies at lunch from a smaller boy who all the parents described as "slow." The little boy cried and reported it to a teacher, who confronted Christine. Christine's response was to lie coolly, and we all thought she was brilliant. The sandwich bag with cookie crumbs was on the floor under our table, and she denied the accusation as if she were innocent as a baby. The teacher eventually gave up, as Swanson Elementary School lacked fingerprinting capabilities, and by the afternoon I felt so sorry for the little boy that the next day I gave him my cookies plus an apple, sort of like interest. But Christine laughed about the episode and would taunt him under her breath when only a few of us—and he—could hear.
Now I was the one confronting her, and I hoped I would be more successful than the teacher.
I waited most of an hour before she appeared. She looked a little better than I did, since she had a sink and towels and my comb and all, but not much. When she walked into the office I lost her for a few minutes. I was nearly ready to get nervous when she came out, finishing a cup of coffee and looking around. I took a step back behind the building and counted to ten.
When I peeked back she was walking toward the rooms. She went up the stairs and walked to the fourth door down. The blinds were drawn and I hoped they'd stay that way. When she closed the door behind her I walked across the parking lot toward her room. I glanced at the few other guests who were beginning to move around. Nobody noticed me.
On the second floor walkway, I counted four rooms—Room 213—and knocked, hoping that she wouldn't notice that it was too early for my cover to work. I took Mark's gun from the backpack and stuck it in the back of my jeans. This was more difficult than they make it look in the movies, and the metal was very cold. I didn't want to use it, but I wasn’t going into her room without the gun.
"Housekeeping."
"Can you come back in a while?" Christine sounded a little stressed. Yeah, things are tough all over.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're full tonight and I really need to get the room cleaned." At seven thirty a.m., this was completely ridiculous thing to say, but I was hoping that Christine would not think it through. If she did not let me in, I would have to wait until she opened the door to leave, and there was not any place on the walkway where I could discretely loiter.
A minute passed. I crossed my fingers and knocked again, looking away from the door so she would not recognize me through the peephole.
"Ma'am?"
The door opened, slightly. I put my leg in far enough that she could not close it, which she started to do as I turned toward her and she saw me. I pushed my way in and shut the door, standing in front of it as she made the most amazing face. Or, probably better to say, faces. In a couple of seconds, she went from scared to laughing. I had never seen that h
appen so quickly on somebody.
"You found me."
"You've got my ID. You've got people after me. And you've taken all my money."
Where the conversation would go from here was less clear, so we both stared at each other for a minute. I broke the stare to look around the room. I didn't see anything that was an easy weapon for her. It was just a normal cheap motel room, with the bed taking up most of the space, and a sink in the back next to a door which must have been the toilet and shower.
When I returned my attention to her, I saw a glimmer of something in her eye. She backed up and sat down on the bed. Her face started to redden and she dug out a tissue from her pocket to wipe her nose.
I waited. In sales training they had said "whoever talks first loses." It was true selling steaks, and it was true now.
She sniffled and wiped her nose again. She was acting, but I must admit she was convincing. I might have fallen for it, but I'd seen her with the little boy, and a dozen other kids throughout the years, including me. I put my right hand on my hip, ready to reach for the gun if I needed to. I didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry, Tina." More sniffles. "I had to get away." She looked up, and saw that I was unimpressed. "You don't get it," she was whining now. "Frank and I were like the Kansas City mob’s back office in Omaha. We knew too much. They were going to kill me if I testified. The FBI wouldn't be able to stop that."
"Then why did you agree to testify?"
She looked at me the way she had looked at the slow little boy.
"Because they arrested me. Look, Tina, I was the one who was handling the money. We were trying to make it look legitimate, but the government figured it out. And it was my signature on the cash deposits. I had to buy time and telling them I'd cooperate was the best way to do that. Right before they picked me up I had seen on Facebook that you were headed to New Orleans. When I needed to get away, it was the perfect cover."
"And you thought it was okay to drag me into this."
A blank look washed across her eyes. She'd never considered that pulling in an innocent third party was a problem. Now that I'd mentioned it, she had to take a moment to reclaim her moral dignity. Her arms at her sides, she sat up a little straighter. "It wasn't just the money."
Now I was curious.
"They want to kill Moreno."
Now I was really curious. "Who's Moreno?"
"The President of Peru. He'll be in Miami the day after tomorrow for that summit. He's the first guy who's been able to make real inroads into the cartels down there. So of course the cartels want him dead." Moreno must have been the guy on the radio.
"The cartel that you stole money from?”
Christine looked puzzled for a second, then smiled. “You’ve been watching the news. Did you see the videotape of me in the courthouse? Somebody told me I was on CNN.”
I’m being shot at and she’s thinking about being on TV. I sighed. “How do you know they’re going to kill him, and why didn't you tell the FBI?" I dropped my arm and shifted my weight a moment, then caught myself from relaxing. My hand returned to my hip, near the gun.
"I didn't know about it before I left Omaha. In addition to the mob money, Frank also managed money for one of the cartels. When I got to New Orleans I called him to let him know I was okay. He told me about the assassination plan then."
"Why would a drug cartel let a mobster handle their money?"
"Because he was good. We were good. He had great connections and I knew how to hide transactions."
"And yet the FBI caught you." I couldn't resist a cold smile.
"You have no idea how hard it is to move millions of dollars of cash around," Christine snarled. "And we did this for years. We were a great team." She emphasized "great" a little too much, and my smile grew.
"You're sleeping with Frank. That's why he trusted you with the books." This was not a question. Her response was too quick, which resolved any lingering uncertainty I might have had.
"He trusted me with the books because I was good."
"Yeah, I'll bet." This was fun, but it had stopped being productive. "Does he know where the money is? And who froze my bank account?"
She took a breath and for a moment I saw a glimmer of real fear.
"You stole the money from him?" This was not what I expected, even from Christine. "You stole drug cartel money from your boyfriend, the mobster? I thought you were so good together."
"He'd been cheating. She's younger, of course, and I needed to take care of myself. So about a year ago that's what I started to do: take care of myself. It was relatively small amounts, not easily noticed. But pennies make dollars, right? Finally Frank figured it out." She put her hands on the edge of the bed and leaned forward, ready to stand. I took a step toward her and stood as tall my five feet five would allow. She let me win, this time, and stayed seated. "When we spoke I told Frank that the money was somewhere it's not. He'll probably find out in about an hour, when the bank opens, that I lied to him." Her face showed that she clearly understood the ramifications of that lie, but then she changed the subject.
"So I need to get to Miami to keep them from killing Moreno."
Normally I let people slide when they arrange the facts to make themselves believe that they're good people. But normally people don't steal my identity and get me chased by feds and criminals. I wasn't going to make things easy for Christine.
"So it was just the money, then, when you left. You wanted the money and you threw me under the bus to get it."
Her mouth attempted a remorseful expression but her chilly stare gave her away. I just looked at her, not speaking.
"Okay, yes, I did."
"And what about my money?" My voice quivered from anger.
"What about your money?" Christine stood up and out of habit I took a step back. I caught myself before lifting my second foot, and recovered my position in front of her. New Tina reemerged.
Christine saw my right hand move toward the back of my waistband. Her eyes didn't leave my right side.
"You stole it. Or you froze my accounts." My voice was strong now.
"You probably just overdrew them or something."
We were standing less than a foot apart; I was afraid I was close enough that she could grab the gun. I took two steps back and drew the weapon. Her eyes widened, more from surprise than fear. "You're not going to use that."
"Maybe." I held the gun with both hands, trained on her chest. "Why don't you tell me what you did with my money? Then you don't have to find out what I'm capable of."
"Okay, yes, we shut down your accounts. I didn't want you able to follow me." She pouted when she said this, which I found comical and could not help but smile. This seemed to annoy her. Good.
"Who is 'we'? Frank?"
She looked like she was going to answer and then her eyes suddenly tightened up. New subject." How did you find me?"
"I tracked your cell phone." I lowered the gun a couple of inches but kept both hands on it.
"The burner? Really?"
I nodded.
"Were you followed?" She did not ask by who.
"Out of New Orleans. I think I lost them."
She shook her head, and when she spoke her voice was higher. Something warmed her eyes just a smidgeon. "You never lose them. Don't you see? That's the point: you never lose them. I thought I had, and then you show up, and they probably followed you here. Do you know who it was?"
"Couple of Latino-looking guys in a white Camry."
"Old or young?"
"Young. At least, one of them was. I couldn't see the driver very well. The guy in the passenger seat had a really thick neck. He shot at me, by the way."
Her mouth tightened. "Jesus, Tina, put that gun down."
I didn't move.
"Tina, those are the cartel's guys. They want their money and they were following you to get to me."
The knots in my stomach returned. I backed up a couple of steps and dropped my left hand from the gun. I tried to keep
one eye on Christine while moving the curtain back and peering through the dirty window. No cars or people outside, but my view was limited. I needed to get this moving along.
"Give me my ID," I said.
She looked at me for a minute. I could follow her thinking. If, in fact, we had both been followed to the motel then there was no point in her continuing to pretend to be me. On the other hand, if she assumed she would be able to get out of this mess, my license would come in handy for her to disappear. Of course, for this to work she had to make sure I was no longer in a position to reclaim my identity. A position, like, say, dumped into one of the construction sites I had driven by last night.
We both came to that conclusion simultaneously, and her eyes narrowed at the same time that I swallowed hard. I hadn’t thought that Christine would be capable of murder. But now the look on her face told me I may have been wrong. I didn’t want to stick around to find out. I took a side step from the window toward the door, my eyes frozen on her. Then a honking car drew my attention for a split second. That was long enough.
Christine reached out and grabbed my right wrist, twisting my arm so that the gun pointed down. I pulled my arm back and she grabbed at my neck with her free hand. She used her head as a battering ram and pushed me backwards against the door. That made me drop the gun and knocked the wind out of me. New Tina, however, was not going to go down easily. I grabbed Christine's neck, tight, and pulled her up. She kicked at my leg but hit the door instead. Leaning against the door I had great balance, and I used my foot to push her shin out from under her. She lost balance which meant that for a moment my hands around her neck were all that was holding her up. She gasped. Then I kicked her knee, although my angle was bad so she regained her footing.
I kept half an eye on the gun, which was on the floor. I brushed it further from her with my foot, but she was watching it, too.
I kicked her other shin out from under her. I didn't drop my arms, and it took her a second to get her weight back on her feet. That was all the time I needed, as I had decided that getting out fast was more important than my driver's license. I flung her back, hard, and she fell onto the bed. I grabbed the gun, opened the door, and ran out without bothering to look where I was going.
Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure Page 6