I was only gone fifteen minutes. Shoving the pair of coffees in the crook of my elbow so I could get the room key, I noticed the door was cracked. Then I heard a muffled cry inside. I dropped the coffees and shouldered the door open like a battering ram.
The guy had Jo up against a wall, a hand over her mouth as she writhed and twisted in his grip. I was on him in a second, tearing him off of her and hurling him to the floor. Only then did I register him as the front desk clerk, the scrawny guy who had checked us in the night before.
“Evan, behind you,” Jo cried. “There’s one m—”
I whipped around as a second guy took a swing at my face. He popped me under the left eye. Adrenaline and rage surging in my limbs, I seized him by the shirt front and threw everything I had into my punch. Pain flared along my knuckles as they struck his jaw. The guy’s head whipped left and blood spattered. His body followed his head and he hit the floor with a groan.
Jo screamed my name and then a stabbing shard of pain dug into my side. The desk clerk had landed a kick to my kidney. I whirled around with a right jab to his gut and he doubled over.
The second guy had pulled himself into a crouch and was scrambling for the door. He’d call for help or the cops and we’d be fucked. I started after him but froze when I heard a clanging thud and a choked cry behind me.
Jo was standing over the desk clerk, the bedside lamp in her hand. The clerk was out cold, a lump rising on his brow. Jo’s face had drained of color and her eyes stared wide.
“Oh my God, is he dead?” she whispered.
The clerk’s scrawny chest rose and fell with a soft moan.
“He’s not dead,” I said, taking the lamp from her hand. “Did they hurt you? Did either of these fuckers hurt you?”
She shook her head. “They knew about us. That one…” She pointed at the clerk. “He said he knew who we were. Said we probably had money from robbing a bank or something.” She looked wide-eyed at me. “He said he called the cops but he wanted a re-reward first. Our money. I told him we had nothing but they didn’t listen.”
“Shh.” I held her close to me for a moment, holding her together. “We have to go. We’re leaving right now.”
Our things were scattered all over—clothes and sundry items littering the bed and floor. I started grabbing everything I could see and stuffing it into my duffel, expecting the cops to bust in the door at any minute.
Jo hadn’t moved. She stared down at the unconscious clerk murmuring, “Something’s not right.”
“Get your stuff, Jo,” I said.
“In the kitchen,” she murmured. “Lee…He hit me in the kitchen. But I was holding…” Her gaze lifted and met mine. “No, you were holding it. The skillet. In the living r—”
“Josephine!” I barked.
Her eyes cleared and she shook her head, coming back to now.
“Get your stuff,” I said. “We’re leaving right the fuck now.”
She spurred into action, helping me grab the rest of our things, and we ran from the room to the parking lot. I didn’t see the clerk’s accomplice, and I prayed he took off in the opposite direction. If he had the make and model of our car and the license plate, we’d be screwed. In the far distance, I heard the sound of sirens.
I tossed our bags in the back seats as Jo scrambled in. She was still buckling her seatbelt as I hauled the little car out of the parking lot. I forced myself to drive the speed limit down East Douglas, hopefully blending in with morning traffic. I glanced at the rearview and saw a patrol car screech into the hotel driveway, only a block and a half behind us.
The damn hatchback started to stall at the first stoplight, but after a few pumps of the gas, it lurched through the intersection. The 135 interchange was just a few traffic lights ahead. I prayed for the signals to stay green. Snowball did fine on the move. She’d stall in stop-and-go traffic.
Our luck held and I turned onto the entry ramp. Only when we were heading north at 55 miles an hour did I breathe a shallow sigh of relief. No cops in the rearview mirror, but that might not last. I didn’t dare push Snowball over 55 or she’d overheat.
“Are you okay?” I asked Jo. “Tell me the truth, did either of them touch you?”
Her hands trembled in her lap but she seemed okay. “No. They were after our money. You came in before they got it but…Oh shit, Evan, the burner phone. Where is it?”
“Gone,” I said. “I took care of it.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Jo exhaled.
So did I.
Snowball took us north for about four hours, then the temperature needle began to climb. As we drove through a tiny town called Franklin, just across the Nebraska border, the car was threatening to stall at every stoplight and smoke was coming out the air vents.
Evan pulled into the parking lot of the first motel he saw.
“Think it’s safe?” I asked.