Smoke looked at his large workman’s hands.
He had the strength. He could do it.
“You see, I don’t often hit girls,” Moss was saying. “I don’t like doing it.”
They were driving north along Interstate 95, Moss’s big hands gripping the wheel. All around them, the darkness had closed in. Cruz marveled at how the city simply ended and the country began. There was nothing to see out here but trees. It was like driving off a cliff into complete darkness.
Well, they’d let all that smoke clear back there, and hide the girls somewhere Dugan couldn’t try to get at them. In the morning, they could go and collect Dugan, provided the cops hadn’t already done so. Or they could make Dugan wait a little while. Fear him up that they were going to kill his girls.
In fact, Cruz wasn’t sure what to do next.
He thought of the money again.
How many times? How many times had he put down someone who thought they could run? Too many. No amount of money was enough. Certainly not a couple mil.
He glanced sidelong at Moss. That thick, solid skull. It wouldn’t stop a bullet.
Would it?
“So,” Moss said. “You know, the girl is kicking me and hitting me, and I’m not fighting back.” He shrugged. “You know?”
Cruz lit a cigarette. “I know. But you think we ought to shoot this other one.”
Moss looked at him. “Don’t you?”
It was Cruz’s turn to shrug.
“Anyway, it’s one thing to hit a girl,” Moss said. “It’s another thing to shoot somebody. Shooting’s easier.”
“Very true.”
A half-hour passed, each lost in his own thoughts. They got off the highway and cruised slowly down the dark and quiet exit ramp and along a feeder road. There was not another car on the road. They turned at an intersection, empty except for a hanging streetlight that blinked red in all four directions. The area was deserted this late in the tourist season. The road ahead was winding, two lane blacktop. Moss drove along between dense stands of forest. Cruz wasn’t sure what he was looking for – he figured he’d know it when he saw it.
And see it he did.
“There,” he said. “Stop in there.”
A sign said: COUNTRY HOME MOTEL amp; COTTAGES – Open Through Thanksgiving.
A long winding driveway led up from the road to the motel compound.
“Let’s go up there and see if it’s quiet.”