She looked straight ahead as she passed between the Employee of the Month’s car and a van parked in the handicap spot. It too had backed in, the sliding door by her left shoulder now, and she imagined the sound it would make as it was pulled open and hands reached out and yanked her inside.
She passed the van and a long black SUV approached from her right. She watched with a strangely detached fascination as the driver’s tinted window slid down and the driver thrust his arm through the opening even before the window had completed its journey down into the door slot. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt cuff peeking out at the wrist. She hadn’t thought to reach into her bag for the gun or at least try to run back behind the van for cover before his arm reached full extension, a cigarette nestled between the index and middle fingers as he exhaled a grateful plume of smoke, his head pressed against the headrest. He shot her a lazy grin as he passed, as if to say, It’s all about the little pleasures, ain’t it?
After he rolled past, she put her hand in her bag, thumbed the safety off the P380, and kept her hand there as she reached the Range Rover. She opened the door with her left hand and climbed inside. Put the bag on the front passenger seat and the gun on the console beside her, finger still on the trigger, safety off. She said, “You still there?”
“Had a few birthdays while you were gone,” he said mildly. “Fucking took you so long?”
“Really?” She removed her finger from the trigger, thumbed the safety back on, and put the gun in the space between her seat and the console. “That’s my greeting?”
“Gosh, hon, you look beautiful. Is that a new something? You look like you dropped a few pounds too. Not that you ever needed to.”
“Fuck you,” she said, surprised to hear a chuckle trail the words.
He laughed. “My bad. How’d everything go? Should probably start the engine, by the way, and do the phone trick if we’re going to keep talking.”
She turned the car on. “Couldn’t they assume I’m going hands-free on the cell?”
“You’re not wearing a headset and you’re driving a car from 1992.”
She put the phone to her ear. “Touché.”
“Was there a plant in the bank?”
She pulled out of the slot, turned toward the exit. “Hard to tell. There was a girl in the waiting area I’m still unsure about.”
“How about the parking lot?”
“One guy in a car in the employee section. Couldn’t tell if he was watching us or not.”
She reached the road.
“Turn right,” Brian said.
They drove up a mild incline and then passed a cluster of clapboard houses—most red, a few blue, the rest faded to the brown-gray of old baseballs. Once they passed the houses, they hit a straightaway between two pastures that unfurled for miles. The sky that rose before her was a blue she’d seen only in dreams and old Technicolor movies. A bank of white clouds formed in the southeast corner but cast no shadow on the fields. She could see why Brian had chosen this road—there were no crossroads for miles. What was left of Johnston’s farming community, it appeared, was right here.
“Well,” Brian said after about two miles.
“Well what?” She laughed for some reason.
“You see anyone in the rearview?”
She glanced up. The road behind her was a gunmetal ribbon with nothing on it. “No.”
“How far back can you see?”
“I’d guess about two miles.”
After another minute, he said, “Now?”
She looked again. “Nothing. Nobody.”
“Rachel.”
“Brian.”
“Rachel,” he said again.
“Brian . . .”
He sat up in the backseat and the smile that broke across his face was almost too big for the car.
“How do you feel about yourself today?” he asked. “Right now? Pretty fucking bad or pretty fucking good?”
She caught his eyes in the rearview and presumed hers were as adrenalized as his. “I feel . . .”
“Speak it.”
“Pretty fucking good.”
He clapped his hands together and whooped.
She stepped on the gas and punched the roof and let out a howl.
In another ten minutes, they reached another small strip mall. She’d clocked it on the way in; it contained a post office, a sub shop, a liquor store, a Marshalls, and a Laundromat.
“What’re we doing here?” Brian peered at the low-slung buildings, all gray except for the Marshalls, which was white fading to eggshell.
“I need to run a quick errand.”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“Rachel,” he said, and failed to keep a whiff of condescension out of his voice, “we don’t have time to—”
“Argue?” she said. “I agree. Be right back.”
She left the key in the ignition and the bag she’d carried out of the bank at his feet. It took her ten minutes in Marshalls to change out of her Nicole Rosovich outfit and into a pair of jeans, cranberry V-neck tee, and black cashmere cardigan. She handed the tags to the cashier, transferred her previous outfit to a plastic store bag, paid up, and left.
Brian watched her exit and started to sit up, but then his face darkened as she gave him a quick four-finger wave and entered the post office.
She came back out five minutes later. Brian looked a lot paler when she got behind the wheel. Smaller, too, and a little sickly. Her bag still sat at his feet, but he’d clearly gone through it—a stack of bills peeked through the opening.
“You went through my bag,” she said. “So much for trust.”
“Trust?” It came out sharp and high like a hiccup. “My passport isn’t in there. Neither is yours.”
“No.”
“So where are they?”
“I have mine,” she assured him.
“That’s wonderful.”
“I think so.”
“Rachel.”
“Brian.”
His voice was nearly a whisper. “Where’s my fucking passport?”
She reached into the Marshalls bag and retrieved a shipping label, handed it to him.
He smoothed it on his thigh and stared at it for some time. “What’s this?”
“It’s a shipping label. Global Express. Guaranteed from the United States Postal Service. That’s your tracking number right there in the upper right corner.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I can also see you addressed it to yourself as a guest of the Intercontinental Hotel in Amsterdam.”
She nodded. “Is that a good hotel? Have you ever stayed there? It looked good on the website, so I went with it.”
He looked at her like he was thinking about hitting something. Her, perhaps. Or himself. The dashboard possibly.
Probably her, though.
“What did you mail to the Intercontinental Hotel in Amsterdam, Rachel?”
“Your passport.” She started the Range Rover and pulled out of the parking lot.
“What do you mean, my passport?” His voice was, if possible, even quieter. It was how he got in an argument just before he exploded.
“I mean,” she said with the slowness one reserved for very young children, “I mailed your passport to Amsterdam. Which is where I plan to be by tomorrow night. You, on the other hand, will still be here in the States.”
“You can’t do this,” he said.
She looked over at him. “I kinda already did.”