She leaned back and held the gun on him. She smiled, almost apologetically, and said, “Don’t make a sound.”
From her back pocket, she produced a knife. The spring-assisted blade snapped open and she slipped it under his waistband. He gasped at the touch of steel along the inside of his left leg. She sliced and then his sweatpants and boxers weren’t in the way anymore.
She leaned back farther, grinding her pelvis hard into him, and repeated the same trick with her pants. He felt the tip of the knife graze his belly, and when he looked down a thin cut welled with a trace of blood.
She pressed her forehead to his chest and slid it forward, using her forehead to pin him by the throat on the bed. He heard fabric ripping and then she slid her hips down and took him inside her.
She rode him slowly at first, and then with a ferocity that scared him. It felt great. Was this crazy bitch gonna kill him? Oh God, it felt great. This crazy bitch was going to kill him.
She made tiny, mewling cries, weak and soft, in contrast to the sexual assault that was blowing his mind.
When he came he cried out and she cracked him across the face with the gun. She choked him with her left hand and rode him all the harder. Leproate bit the inside of his cheek to stay quiet and everything went white for a while.
She made a violent, spasming finish, and he felt the grip on his throat relax. He heard her panting and opened his eyes. All he saw was the cold, black hole of a .40-caliber muzzle pointed right at his face. It was a small thing, but pointed at him, it looked big enough to swallow his whole world.
From beyond the gun, she said, “Don’t fucking move.”
Yes, ma’am, he thought, realizing that he was out of breath.
She got up, wrapped a towel around her shredded pants, and left.
Leproate lay on the bed, panting, excited, satisfied, and very afraid. When he stopped shaking, he got up and looked at his face in the mirror.
“What the fuck was that?”
He was still asking himself as he fell asleep.
SEVEN
The next morning it might have all been a dream, except for the bruise on his temple and the raw patch on his throat. Wellsley had said, “Good morning,” and nothing else. Every bit as cold and distant as she had ever been. In a way he was grateful he wasn’t sitting next to her on the plane flight back. He was confused. He had no idea how to feel about any of this. Cheap airline coffee, guilt, and lust churned around in his stomach all the way back to Tallahassee.
He still hadn’t called his wife. How could he? What would he say? She would hear in his voice that something was wrong. He didn’t know what she would assume, but it would be bad. She would probably worry about him. She always worried about him when he was away. That he would be in danger, be shot on the job. A flash of pleasure through his loins and the image of Wellsley’s athletic, gyrating body on the other side of the .40-caliber muzzle.
He shook his head and tried to get a handle on things.
By the time the plane landed, he had almost convinced himself he was in the catbird seat. He was running a shit-hot case, had a hot partner whom he was banging. Sure she was crazy, but that added to the spice. After years of boredom and drudgery, life was finally paying him back. He walked quickly through the airport, but couldn’t outrace the doubts. Focus on the case, he thought. Just focus on the case.
When they got back to the war room at the Florida Highway Patrol HQ in Tallahassee, everything had fallen apart. The video techs were gone and the walls were bare. A trooper said, “Don’t worry, we put everything in a box for you after we took it down.”
“Why’d you take it down?”
“Game was called on account of rain,” said the trooper.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Leproate, his lack of sleep getting the best of him.
“Hurricane. Governor’s declared a state of emergency.”
“What?”
The trooper explained that in the last forty-eight hours a tropical storm had become a hurricane and was bearing down on the panhandle. How quickly your luck could change. Wellsley said, “I’ll get the stuff,” and left in search of the stuff.
Leproate and the trooper took a second to watch Wellsley walk away. Then got ASAC Harberg on the phone. “Boss, they shut us down,” said Leproate.
“I know, Agent. Act of God, nothing the bureau can do.”
“But boss, things are heating up. With what we got from Saint Louis, I think we can nail them if we get a little cooperation. They’re sitting on it somewhere, waiting for things to cool off. If we can get one more piece of the puzzle.”
“What you’ve got is a hunch. And I like your hunch. But there’s nothing I can do. You are ordered to give the Florida Highway Patrol your full cooperation.”
“There’s twenty-three million dollars in the wind here. That’s more than Dunbar. It’s the largest armored car heist in US history. If we move now—”
“Agent, it’s a shit-hot case, but a hurricane is gonna plow into the Gulf Coast. It’ll tear hell clear up to Georgia. That could be billions in damages. Just pray to God New Orleans doesn’t get pounded again.”
“Game called on account of rain…,” Leproate mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“That’s what a trooper just said to me.”
“That’s not exactly right. It’s not a game, Agent, it’s a series. We don’t have to win them all, we just have to win most of them.”
Leproate hung up the phone on the shittiest pep talk ever.
Wellsley came back into the room, carrying three boxes of their casework. She said, “The major asked us if we could stop by his office so he could have our cooperation.”
Leproate said, “Follow me.”
Out in the parking lot, she dropped the cases into the trunk. Leproate slid in behind the steering wheel.
“What about the major?”
“I don’t have any cooperation to give right now. I’m going to drive around and try to find some,” said Barry, surprised at how those words sounded in his voice. She slid into the passenger seat and smiled at him. For the first time since last night, she didn’t look so sinister to him.
He wheeled out of the parking lot, following the flow of traffic, neither of them saying anything. Finally Wellsley said, “They’re still there, right?”
“Probably.”
“I mean, if that’s their MO, then they’re down there somewhere, waiting for the heat to pass.”
“Yeah,” said Leproate, “they don’t know that the game was called on account of rain.”
“Just because the FHP doesn’t want to get muddy.”
“What?”
“They’ve called a mandatory evacuation,” said Wellsley.
Leproate nodded.
“Would you just leave twenty-three million dollars lying around?”
“No,” said Leproate, “I’d wait until everybody else cleared out, and then split at the last minute, letting the storm cover my tracks. Everybody else running for cover, nobody standing out in the rain, looking in trunks.”
“Or you might hunker down and wait out the whole thing. Either way…”
“There’s always a few that stay behind,” said Leproate.
“So we drive around, see who’s left.”
Leproate pulled into a supermarket parking lot. He opened the trunk and rummaged around until he found a map. He unfolded and refolded until it showed the panhandle. He drew a small circle around Sopchoppy. “Somewhere after this.”
Wellsley leaned in close and he caught the smell of her. She was sexy without even meaning to be. Leproate enjoyed it anyway.
Wellsley took the pen and drew a wider circle. Panacea, Alligator Point, Carrabelle, Ochlockonee Pointe. It was a lot of territory. “It’s big,” he said.
She indicated Alligator Point. “Lotta rental houses around here. Wouldn’t you want to stay on the beach?”
A fat raindrop hit the map with a surprising crack. Then another. Leproate folded the map up
, and they got back into the car.
“Let’s just go have a look. Maybe we get lucky,” said Wellsley.
“Are you asking me?”
“You are the agent in charge,” she said, her expression neutral.
He put the car in drive and turned south.
EIGHT
As they drove they heard that Hurricane Kristy had been upgraded to a category two. What had seemed like a good idea in Tallahassee felt worse as they drew toward the coast.
Leproate recognized the surreality of it. The steady flow of cars to the north as they flashed badges through checkpoint after checkpoint. One trooper told them, “I know you’re FB of I, but I wouldn’t stay down there long, unless you feel like getting washed out to sea.”
Leproate thanked him and they drove on. In the mirror he could see the deputy shaking his head as they drove off. Maybe he was right.
Still, not everyone was fleeing. In the small town of Medart, they saw four young kids standing in front of a boarded-up convenience store. They cupped cheap, thin cigars against the wind. Just waiting for traffic to die down so they could loot the place, thought Leproate.
Wellsley rolled down her window and asked them, “You live here?”
“Can’t afford to be from nowheres else,” one of them said, and they all laughed. Their laughter sounded as if somebody had disturbed a murder of crows. Leproate drove on, taking a turn around the town. The only other people they saw were covering windows with boards and hunkering down for the storm. Shit poor, but citizens one and all. They drove on.
The farther south they went, the darker the sky became. Leproate said, “You know what it would mean if we nail these guys?”
“When,” said Wellsley. “When we nail these guys.”
But Leproate had doubts. They were off book here, for sure. And the FBI was a by-the-book organization. So far they could write this up and make it come out OK. Hell, everyone knew the rules could be bent, if you showed results. It was just like the army in that way. Sometimes it just wasn’t possible to follow all the orders and get the job done.
But God help the soldier who broke the rules and didn’t come through.
They drove south until they couldn’t drive south anymore. Through the swamp, through scattered habitations and the occasional vacation home. On the long, open stretches of road the wind blew the car around more. Leproate began to feel more and more foolish.
They drove out onto the point, and the unbroken view of the approaching storm it granted them was a terrible thing to behold. Where the road bent, to the right, it looked as if the world had been swallowed up by a vengeful ocean and dragged into the maw of the storm. The waves crashed into the seawall and splashed onto the road. In the ocean beyond, flashes of lightning could be seen amid the darkness.
Wellsley touched him and said, “We’ve come this far.” He knew it was foolish, but the gesture gave him strength.
As they drove along the beach a wave broke over the road. Just a fine spray on the windshield, but Leproate said, “We’re gonna make this quick.”
Wellsley said, “If they’re here, they’ll be easy to spot.”
On the left, beach houses stood abandoned against the wrath of the storm. They were so close to the water, the storm was already sending waves into them. Nobody hiding in there. The isthmus widened, and Leproate took the next road to the right, heading toward the bay. They passed a number of fancy houses, built on stilts, with no sign of human life.
Leproate took another right and drove along a canal that led to the bay. Ahead was a cinder-block house nestled in the trees. The windows were boarded up, but the light in the carport spotlit a battered Subaru BRAT. A man stood next to it with a shotgun cradled under his arm and a bottle of beer in his hand.
They pulled up and he gave them a wave. And a skeptical look. They hurried under the shelter.
“What in the hell are you kids doin’ out here? Don’t you know there’s a hurricane on?”
“FBI. Why haven’t you evacuated?” Leproate demanded.
“Ain’t got nowhere to go. Too old to care much. What’s your excuse?”
“We’re looking for men who robbed an armored car,” Leproate said, feeling silly as he said it.
“Have you seen anything strange?” Wellsley asked.
The surf crashed against the beach on the seaward side of the point as the old man took a pull off the bottle of beer. He tossed the empty bottle into the back of the Subaru and squinted against the wind.
“Three guys I ain’t seen leave yet, renting a house two turns down on the canal. Been here about a month. Never talk to nobody.”
“Thank you,” said Leproate.
As they got back into the car, the old man said, “You take care of that purty little lady.”
NINE
“Condescending old fuck!” Wellsley said as she slammed the door.
“Forget about him,” said Leproate as he started the car. He left the lights off and drove slowly, winding around the canal. When he got to the second turn, he saw the dock light flickering in the driving rain. He stopped the car.
“You ever done this before?” Leproate asked.
Jesus, he’s losing his nerve, thought Wellsley. “Yeah, two-by-two cover.”
“There’s only two of us.”
“Let’s just go have a look. If there’s only three of them.”
“I just don’t want…,” Leproate said.
Oh, fucking spare me, Nancy boy, Wellsley thought. Rather than hear any more of this bullshit, she shoved out of the seat and took point.
They leapfrogged, using trees, the house next door, and finally a boathouse as cover. It didn’t matter, thought Wellsley; who could see shit in this rain? All they could make out were shadows moving around a boat. What kind of person took a boat out in this weather? Nobody was that crazy. They had to be unloading the cash.
Leproate came up beside her on the boathouse wall. “How do you want to do this?” Fucking finally, she thought, a man who will listen. Although he had to fear for his life to come to his senses.
“You take the right, I’ll take the left. We wait until they are all in the open, then order them to disarm.”
“I’ve never…,” he said, looking particularly lost with his thinning hair plastered to his forehead.
“Center mass, keep shooting until your target is down,” said Wellsley, sounding irritated and not caring. “Look, you give the command, I’ll shoot.”
“Only if you have to…,” said Leproate.
“Only if,” she said, and peeled off to the left.
When she stepped out from behind the lee of the boathouse, she settled into the Weaver stance she’d been taught at Quantico. She held her gun lightly and easily, and let her feet glide across the ground as she watched the silhouettes of one of the men drift across her front sight.
Men. Her whole life it had been men. They held the power. They abused the power. And when you really needed them, they fell apart. Like what had happened with Dad after Mom died. And then there had been no one to protect her and Janet from the men.
A female high school teacher slept with one of her students and she went to jail. But a powerful man bought and sold little girls, and nothing happened to him. She was their victim and under their thumb everywhere she went. And why? They weren’t stronger, they just had…money.
She heard Leproate yell, “Freeze, FBI!”
Four shapes in the darkness. Three bad men, and the fourth…her partner.
All three of the shapes in the darkness turned, and she could see their faces in the light above the dock. There were two old men and one young. Men. Men with money she could take. What would they do if she had the money and they wanted it? What had men always done to her?
She thought of Janet and pulled the trigger. Sometime after she dropped the first two, Leproate recovered from the shock enough to start shooting. When they were all down, she was aware of him yelling at her, but the waves beating against the shore were too loud fo
r her to hear him. Then she realized it was her pulse. He was an idiot anyway. She needed to make sure they were all dead.
She hurried to the guy in the middle. He was still alive. The ugly black shape of a revolver lay on the sandy soil next to him. She picked it up.
Leproate was still making hysterically angry noises. She ignored his words. They didn’t matter. She turned back and pointed at the ground next to the tall one. “Is that a weapon?”
When Leproate whirled, in fear for his life, she shot him in the back of the head. She resisted the urge to gloat, and hurried to the boat. She wanted to see it. The money. Her ticket out. Out from underneath the thumb of men forever.
The boat was empty.
She left the boat and went to check the vehicle, a large, crew-cab pickup truck with a cap on the back. As she passed the young man, she realized he was still alive, but in bad shape. She frisked him and took his gun as well. Do everything in the right order, she told herself. First find the money.
There was no money in the truck. They hadn’t unloaded the armored car yet!
She went back to the young man. She asked him where the truck was. He said, “Fuck you.” She shot him in the leg and stood on the wound for a while. His screams made her smile. Then she asked him again, already prepared to shoot him in the ankle next. Lots of nerve endings in the ankle.
This time he told her what she wanted to know. She thanked him. Then shot him in the face.
She left Barry where he was and loaded the bodies into the boat. Then she cast off and took the boat out into the canal. Where the bay opened up into the ocean, she pointed the craft directly into the storm. She lashed the wheel, opened the throttle, and dove into the water off the starboard side.
The Gulf was warm and, even with the waves, inviting. Wellsley was a strong swimmer, but she didn’t need it. The waves carried her toward the shore. Mother Nature herself was helping her.
The waves tossed her up onto the beach, and she crawled and tumbled beyond the surf. She coughed for a while and cleared her throat of the salt water. Then she turned and looked at the line of storms bearing down on the coast. In the strange eddy that she found herself in before the edge of the hurricane, the sky was black, but there was no rain. The wind howled over the point and threatened to knock her from her feet.
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