“Yeah, lucky me.” Then, without missing a beat, “Are we going to stand in the bathroom hallway all night, or what?”
He grinned and was about to say something when one of his jacket pockets buzzed, and he reached inside and took out the same burner phone he’d been using all night. He held out a just one minute finger at her and answered the phone.
Allie nodded, but her eyes shot past him and went to the ladies’ room, expecting the door to swing open and Lipstick to race outside and start screaming about the crazy woman with the gun who had demanded to use her phone at any second.
But the door remained closed, and Allie thought, Maybe she’ll give me all of the five minutes I asked her for after all. Maybe if I’m really lucky, she’ll tack on an additional five minutes.
Yeah, right.
Reese was listening quietly to the phone and hadn’t said a word since he answered it. Maybe it was just the bad lighting in the hallway, but she thought she saw worry lines form on his forehead, which, if her mind wasn’t deceiving her, would be a first.
“All right,” he finally said. Then, sounding almost annoyed (Another first; maybe he’s human after all), “Yeah, I got it.”
He turned off the phone and stared at it for a moment.
“Who was it?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, or even seem to have heard her: “Reese. Who was that?”
He looked up at her and put the phone away. “They’ve been monitoring the news. The shooting, the roadblocks…”
“Who is ‘they?’”
“Our employers.” He pursed his lips. “They want us to cut our losses.”
“Cut our losses?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Get rid of the girls.”
No.
No, no, no, no.
Reese must have seen the stunned look on her face that she was unable (and didn’t want) to stop in time, because he frowned and said, “I’m sorry, Alice.”
“You can’t…”
“What they say goes.”
“They’re just kids…”
“You know the business we’re in. It doesn’t always end well. In fact, it rarely does—”
Click! as the door behind him opened, and the woman with the bright-red lipstick hurried outside, only to freeze in place when she saw Allie standing in the hallway in front of her.
“Oh, lord,” Lipstick said, so softly that Allie almost didn’t hear her.
Reese, standing just slightly beyond the opening bathroom door, was momentarily distracted by the woman’s presence, and he turned in her direction. It was all the opportunity Allie needed, and she reached back, found the holstered Sig, and drew it.
As she expected, Reese caught her sudden flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back to her, saw the gun in her moving right hand, and said, “Wait—”
But she didn’t wait, and shot him, the boom! of her gunshot like thunder, so loud that everyone in the building, including outside in the parking lot, would have heard.
Twelve
They had just crossed the state line when Hank looked over at Lucy, drawn by the relentless tap-tap-tap of her fingers dancing across the tablet’s screen.
“Did Allie finally call back?” he asked.
“No,” the girl said. “I’m just looking over a map of the state again, familiarizing myself with what’s out there. I have to tell you, there’s not much.”
“No, but it’s a quiet place to live. Or, well, it used to be.”
There was some kind of fancy color map on her screen as she scrolled back and forth, then up and down. If he lived another ten years, Hank would never get used to that kind of technology. Maybe he really was just a relic whose time had passed. Maybe the head honchos were right to push him out of the job. And maybe he had no business running around out here with a hole in his leg, trying to help some woman save a bunch of kidnapped kids.
So why did it feel so good?
Hank couldn’t remember another day that had been this exhilarating, and he had barely done anything except talk to the kid and get on the phone with Jane a couple of times. But it wasn’t the action, really, it was just the knowledge that he was back in the thick of it.
Goddamn, he had missed this. He had missed this a lot.
Lucy was leaning back in her seat, and she let out what sounded a lot like a sigh of relief.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“This is the first time Allie and I have been apart for this long for almost a year now. It feels weird.” She glanced back at Apollo. “It feels weird for him, too.”
Apollo, lying with his chin on the backseat, let out a whine of…agreement?
I swear that dog understands everything.
“It’s a hell of a thing she’s doing,” Hank said. “Risking her life for people she doesn’t even know.”
“Someone has to do it. Why not us?”
“Is that her or you talking?”
“Both. I’m the one who introduced Allie to Faith’s mother. We were in the same group…” She stopped, seemed to think about it, then finished with, “We knew each other from this place we used to attend. One day she told me about her daughter and how the cops weren’t doing anything, and I just knew we had to, because we could. And Allie agreed.” The kid looked over at him. “You did it too, right? Back when you were a cop?”
“I guess you could say that, but there’s a big difference. I was paid to do it. It was my job. Allie and you, on the other hand, you guys are doing this because you want to, on your own dime. That’s pretty goddamn impressive, kid. Excuse my French.”
“I don’t think that was French,” she smiled.
He chuckled. “Probably not.” Then, “I’m sure Allie’s fine.”
“I know she is,” Lucy said without hesitation. “She’s probably the toughest woman I know. If it weren’t for her… Well, I owe her a lot.”
“You said before she was your guardian?”
“I remember saying she was my unofficial guardian.”
“Yeah. So what does that mean?”
“Didn’t your cop friend tell you?”
He looked over at her. “What cop friend?”
“When you left the motel room. I saw you go into the manager’s office. I’m assuming you went there to use his phone since you were in there for a while.”
He grunted. “And here I thought I was being clever.”
“Nope.”
He sighed, then said, “She couldn’t find anything on you because she doesn’t know your last name. You wanna fill me in?”
“Nah,” Lucy said.
“Figures. By the way, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I’m on summer break.”
“Summer came and went months ago.”
“I’m on a long summer break,” Lucy said. “Relax; I’m going back to school. Eventually. I’m not going to drop out or anything. That would be stupid. It’s just that Allie needed my help on this one.”
“What did the school say?”
“They think I moved.”
“So you lied.”
“Well, duh. Otherwise they’d send cops or something to my official guardian’s house.”
“They don’t send cops, kid. They send truant officers.”
“Same difference.”
“I know you’re a tough kid and you have Underdog back there to keep you safe, but didn’t Allie think this might be a little too dangerous for you? She just left you behind at the motel and ran off with two killers.”
“I can take care of myself. Allie’s taught me a few things.”
“What kind of things?”