Reese couldn’t deny that Alice was pretty. Then again, so was Juliet, and he’d never had any interest in her. But there was something different about Alice. Maybe it was the confidence. He liked that in a woman. Even when he put her through the test back at the roadside diner, she hadn’t been flustered. Even when Vanguard wasted the troopers, she had sat there and kept quiet and didn’t panic once. Compared to Dwight, she was a model of calm. Hell, she had given him a run for his money in the stoic department all day.
“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.