She picked herself back up and sat down on the toilet, and waited.
Next to her, the tap-tap-tap continued for another minute.
Then two…
Allie thought she might have to wait even longer when the tap-tap-tap finally stopped. The sound of clothes rustling followed, then the toilet flushing.
About damn time.
Allie stood up and quietly unlocked her stall door — but didn’t open it — and drew the P250 and waited. The woman next door didn’t seem to be in any hurry and took her sweet time opening her own door. When Allie finally heard the clack! of the lock sliding out of position, she stepped outside just as the woman was coming out, preoccupied with the smartphone in her hands.
She stepped in front of the woman, who almost bumped into her, but managed to stop in time and lifted her head. She was in her thirties and attractive, even if she did overdo it with the makeup, especially those bright-red lips. If Allie didn’t know better, the woman was either on a date or hoping to get one at the truck stop. She was in the middle of texting when she stopped, then opened her mouth to say something, but Allie clasped her hand over those shiny lips and showed her the gun.
The woman’s eyes expanded at an incredible rate and her body stiffened, but before she could react — minus the already muffled sounds against Allie’s palm — Allie pushed her backward into the stall until the woman stumbled and sat back down on the toilet with a loud thump.
Too loud, and Allie heard the woman in the first stall to her left shuffle her feet in response. Allie waited for the woman to follow through, but there was just a brief rustling of clothing, then silence again.
Allie turned back to Lipstick, who was staring wide-eyed at her. She leaned forward and whispered against the woman’s face, “Relax; I just want to use your phone. Don’t make a sound, okay?”
Lipstick’s head went up and down like a bobblehead.
“Girl to girl,” Allie whispered, “I just want to use the phone, then I’ll leave, and we’ll never see each other again. Sound good?”
Another enthusiastic round of bobbling.
“Good,” Allie said, and pulled back.
The woman, without prompting, held up her phone. Allie removed her hand from Lipstick’s mouth and thought about checking if there were bright-red marks on her palm, but didn’t. She took the proffered smartphone instead.
She thought about calling Lucy but decided against it. The woman in the next stall was being very good about minding her own business, but that might not last if Allie started talking on the phone about men with guns and teenage girls being held in the back of semitrailers. Even if she lowered her voice to whispering level, that might actually be even worse since it would just create even more curiosity.
She brought up the phone’s texting function instead and punched in Lucy’s number, then made sure the sound was muted to silence the swoosh! effect each time the phone sent or received texts. It took Lucy less than ten seconds to answer, then a full minute of back-and-forth between the two of them for Allie to get everything she needed across. It helped that they had developed a texting shorthand that cut down tremendously on unnecessary letters.
Allie had taken a gamble and put her gun away in her front waistband, then took a couple of steps back so Lipstick didn’t get any bright ideas about lunging for it. The entire time she was tapping on the smartphone, Allie kept one eye on the screen and the other on the woman, even though, as it turned out, she didn’t have to. After watching Allie doing nothing but typing for a full minute, the woman started to look a little bored, which brought a slight smile to Allie’s face. A bored hostage was more manageable than one who was worried about not making it through the ordeal. Apparently Allie had been a lot more convincing than she thought.
When she was finished communicating with Lucy, she deleted the messages, then made sure to do the same with Lucy’s number. She holstered the gun and handed Lipstick back her phone. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t leave for five minutes, and don’t tell anyone, okay?”
Lipstick nodded, though by the expression on her face Allie didn’t entirely believe her. But the woman was being smart and agreed anyway. After all, only an idiot argued with someone with a gun. No, you told them everything they wanted to hear. Allie guessed she had a minute, tops, after she left the bathroom before Lipstick followed and told everyone she could grab about what had happened.
Maybe that would be enough time. And if not, well, she’d figure it out when she crossed that bridge. After all, this entire night had been one big, improvised act already. If she hadn’t lost it when Vanguard murdered those troopers, or when Reese and Dwight almost murdered that security guard, what was one more?
She stepped out of the stall and immediately heard the lock clacking into place behind her. That brought out another smile as she wondered if Lipstick actually thought a stall door would be enough if Allie wanted to get back in there. Still, the woman locking herself in was a good sign. That meant she wasn’t planning on coming out anytime soon. Maybe Allie would even get more than just a one minute head start.
Don’t push your luck, girl.
She hurried to the door and stepped outside.
“Man, when you girls go to the bathroom, you really go to the bathroom.”
The sound of his voice surprised her and the hairs on the back of her neck snapped straight, but she exerted every ounce of willpower under her control not to spin around to confront him. Instead, she stopped and turned around calmly, as if she expected him to be there when she came out of the bathroom.
He was leaning casually against the wall at the back of the hallway that separated the men’s and ladies’ bathrooms, his arms folded across his chest. He didn’t quite look impatient, but he was clearly trying to get the point across that he had been there, waiting for her, for a while.
“I hope you remembered to wash your hands,” he smiled.
She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be charming, because there was very little Reese could do or say that she would find charming — except maybe shoot himself and remove one of her problems. That would just leave Dwight and the two in the semi…
“You checking up on me?” she asked. They were close enough that she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard, even with the din of people in the dining room behind her.
“Not at all,” he said. “I’m just ordering some extra food for the road. Looks like we’re going to have a long night ahead of us.”
“I hope you didn’t order a chicken sandwich for me again.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Not enough to eat it twice in a row.”
“Then I guess you better go out there and order something for yourself. That way you can’t complain about it later.”
“You’re paying, right?” she asked, and turned around.
He chuckled behind her. “By the way, meet anyone interesting in the ladies’ room?”
She stopped and looked back at him. “No. Why?”
He was still watching her, this time with that familiar intensity that always unnerved her. “Some woman was telling the waitresses about a weirdo outside the ladies’ room asking people for their phones.”
Bitch, Allie thought, and said, “I must have missed her.”
“Lucky you.”