She looked at him. It was almost as if Sammy were beside her. She wondered if all men were the same. Her mind concentrated on the men she had known — her father, the ugly years with him in the small, cluttered waterfront apartment. The few casual boy friends. Sammy.
There was a hollow, drawn feeling in her stomach. She searched for an explanation. When she could find none she began to cry softly.
Womack noticed her crying and said, “What’s the matter?”
“Can’t you see?” Her voice was distant. “I’m frightened.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Go ahead and cry, then. It’ll do you good.”
“They’re going to catch us.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No it’s not. We can’t possibly carry this much money around without being caught. Boxes of it. It’s so... unbelievable... somehow.”
“We’ll hide the money.”
“It won’t do any good,” she said tonelessly.
“Dammit! Knock it off. We’ve got no choice now.” His anger surfaced quickly and then subsided. He said quietly, “We’re both tired. We should stop for the night.”
They lapsed back into silence. The fog grew thicker. He could no longer make out the sand dunes to the left of the road. But he could still hear the ocean, and the wind had an odor of seaweed.
In Santa Barbara they looked for a place to stay. The first four motels were full. The fifth one had a room left and he registered as man and wife. It was a small room, but clean, with twin beds.
“It’s the only one they had,” he said when they were inside.
“Is it?”
Her sarcastic tone unsettled him.
He said, “I stopped because I thought you were tired. We can drive all night for all I care.”
She gave a forced laugh.
Angrily, he turned and went into the bathroom. When he returned, a few minutes later, the room was empty. The door stood open. He cursed savagely and ran outside, his face white as plaster, his head filled with one thought.
She sat waiting for him, the engine running, headlights cutting yellowly through the fog. He got inside and was slammed against the seat as she jerked the car forward. In a moment they were back on the highway.
“You could have driven off without me,” Womack said.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wanted you with me.”
Her voice sounded different. Her face, too, was different. He studied her face. It really was, he thought, remarkably beautiful. The passing headlights and the wind coming in through the open window played tricks in her hair. He wanted to touch it, to feel it against his face, and he discovered that it wasn’t just the money that made him glad she had waited.
He wondered if she had meant what she said. That she had wanted him with her...
Womack looked back at the road and saw the car. It came at them out of the fog. It wasn’t until the headlights were almost on top of them that he realized that Lila wasn’t in her own lane, that she was heading straight for the other car, so close that there was no time even to turn the wheel.
During the last few seconds, even as the darkness washed its black waves over and around him, the questions formed in his mind.
Was it an accident? Had she gotten confused in the fog?
Or was this the reason she had waited for him...
23
Later, the police estimated that nearly a thousand dollars had been picked up by the thrill-seekers who stopped to look at the wreckage. But the rest of it was recovered by an alert state trooper who found the cardboard cartons in a shallow gully about thirty feet from the point of impact.
The trooper — his name was Carter-locked the money into the trunk of the patrol car and radioed into headquarters. He was instructed to make a thorough search of the area.
Another patrol car pulled off the highway behind Carter. He knew the two troopers who emerged. He told them about the money as they moved down into the gully.
The Ford sedan lay on its side. Most of the people crowded around it. The front end was completely pushed in. The trunk lid had sprung open.
“Anyone alive?” one of the troopers asked.
Carter said, “The woman in the Ford keeps moving. We’ll have to wait for the wrecker so we can cut ’em loose.”
The trooper shone his light on the lipstick-scrawled writing. He whistled through his teeth.
“Poor bastards.” They heard a moan from inside the car. “But in a way it was a break for us.”
“Huh?”
They walked over to where an old-model pick-up truck lay on its back. The body of a man was pinned underneath. The body of another man lay under a blanket nearby.
Carter shone his light on the man under the truck. He wasn’t a man, really; just a kid, barely out of his teens. Carter said, “If it hadn’t been for the accident, we might never have caught them.”
“It don’t seem possible, somehow.”
“What doesn’t?”
“That a couple of juvenile delinquents could pull off one of the biggest heists of the century... and with a broken-down pick-up.”
They walked back up to wait for the wrecker.