Reese exchanged a fifth glance with Dwight.
“How are you going to get the locations to your friends?” Reese asked her.
“You’re going to let me borrow your phone,” Allie said.
“Not going to happen,” Dwight said.
She gave him an amused look. “Are you afraid I’m going to turn you in, Dwight? After all the fun we’ve been through?”
He grunted. “You’re damn straight.”
“The phone’s a no-go,” Reese said.
Allie sighed. “Then write it down on a piece of paper, and I’ll mail it to my friend.”
“Snail mail?”
“Unless you’re going to hand deliver it for me, then yeah.”
Reese chuckled and looked over at Dwight. “I guess you’re going to need to pick up some stamps when you go look for the sewing needle and thread.”
Dwight made a face. “Goddammit, you’re going to make me suture your wound, aren’t you?”
“I would do it for you, partner — and in fact, I believe I have.”
Dwight groaned. “Fuck this partnership.”
“That’s the spirit,” Reese smiled.
“Do we have a deal?” Allie asked.
They looked back at her simultaneously.
“You got some balls on you, Alice in Wonderland, I’ll give you that,” Dwight said.
“Do we have a deal or not?”
“Well, you’re still alive,” Dwight said. “What does that tell you?”
Eighteen
“Where did you get the money?” Reese asked.
“I got it from someone who didn’t need it anymore,” Alice said.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“So not an inheritance, then?”
“That depends on your definition of inheritance.”
He smiled. He liked the way she answered his questions by never really answering them.
“What’s to prevent Dwight and me from just taking it from you?” he asked. “We know where you’re keeping it, and we have the account number… All we need is the password to access it.”
She smiled back at him. “You could try, though I should warn you, Reese, I have a very long history of disappointing men. It usually ends in violent ways, and as you can see, I’m still here and they’re not.”
He chuckled, but he believed her. Reese had always wondered what he would do when he ever came across a woman who so completely intrigued him. He didn’t think that day would ever happen — there had been a lot of women, in a lot of places — but here she was, throwing everything he tried back at him.
Dwight’s right. She just might be the death of me.
He stood in the back hallway of the motel, wiping away the traces of blood clinging to his hands and pants. He’d checked his bandages inside the bathroom, and they were still bloodless. Dwight had done a good job with the gunshot despite complaining through the whole thing. Reese realized he probably needed an actual medical professional to look at the wound, but if hospitals were out of the question before, they were even more so now. Even the underground medicals couldn’t help them; he didn’t for one second think their employers hadn’t already spread the word about them, most likely with a generous dose of reward money as incentive. That meant their access to the local criminal underworld, and all the assets there, was now out of their reach.
Just the two of us against the world. Well, three, now.
He tossed the towel away and pulled on a fresh shirt and did up the buttons. Alice sat on the bed, eating bad Chinese food from a Styrofoam carryout plate. She hadn’t bothered with the chopsticks and went straight to spearing pieces of orange chicken with a cheap plastic fork. She looked noticeably more comfortable after taking two more painkillers, but he would still catch her wincing in pain every now and then, mostly when she didn’t think he was watching. The lack of broken bones, even ribs, was a miracle, but the aches and bruises were going to last for a while.
Better than a bullet hole, Alice.
The motel room they were in now was a lot cleaner and smelled better than the last one. It was also bigger, with two twin beds instead of just one queen-size. Not that they expected to stay here for very long, but it was nice to have options. Even as she ate, trying to make up for the lack of food the previous day, Alice kept one eye on the windows.
“How long before he’s back?” she asked.
“It’ll take him some time to collect everything we need,” Reese said.
“What are the chances he’ll take off and leave you here?”
Reese chuckled. “Seventy-thirty that he comes back.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a partnership to me.”
“In this business, seventy-thirty is borderline miraculous.”
She stabbed two more pieces of orange chicken with one try and chewed them down. Fast food was never his thing, and Chinese fast food was even lower on the totem pole of things he would voluntarily eat. But then, he’d developed a taste for the real thing during too many jobs in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to count, so maybe he was being a bit of a food snob.
“When was the last time you were home?” she asked.
The question surprised him. “Home?”
“England.”
“It’s been a while. The job’s kept me busy.”
“I didn’t know ferrying stolen girls was such a demanding job.”
He shrugged. “It’s a job. If Dwight and I didn’t do it, someone else would.”
“Is that how you justify it?”
“I’m not trying to justify anything,” he said, realizing just how unconvincing to his own ears all of that sounded. “It is what it is.”
“I don’t know what’s happening in the camps; I’m just following orders, right?”
Reese smiled. She was clearly trying to push his buttons, but Reese didn’t bite and said, “What about you, Alice?”
“What about me?”
“Do you really think what you’re doing here will make any difference? There is more than one organization out there fighting for control of the market. You managed to save those girls yesterday, but what about the others that will be following in their footsteps? The people we worked for will just double their efforts to make up for the loss.”
He watched her face closely and knew he had struck a chord, knew she had never considered that particular consequence of her actions.
He continued: “You don’t really think any of this — yesterday, today, or tomorrow — will make even a dent in what’s happening out there, do you?”
“It’s better than doing nothing. Or contributing to it.”
“Like I said, if we didn’t do it, someone else would. It’s admirable what you’re doing. I mean that. But this thing is bigger than you, me, and Dwight. We’re insignificant in the larger scheme of things.”
“Just keep telling yourself that,” Alice said. She closed the Styrofoam container and put it on the nightstand. Then: “I need a gun.”
“I won’t even give you a phone; what makes you think I’ll give you a gun?”
She looked over at him. “How far are we from the house? The one you think they might have taken Faith to two years ago?”
“It’s across the state line. Six hours, give or take.”
“When we get there, you’ll need all the help you can get. So, I’ll need a gun.” Then, before he could respond, “Are you afraid I’ll use it on you?”
“The thought’s crossed my mind.”
“Why so paranoid, Reese?”
He glanced down at his bandaged side, then back up at her. “Oh, I don’t know. Just call it a hunch.”
“I want to find Faith. Even if that means dealing with the devil.”
“I take it I’m the devil?”