“I’ve got a couple here. That one isn’t mine. Kevin was driving it when he got here.”
Val pivoted slowly, gracefully, and then sauntered to the stairs. Alex couldn’t tell if she was going to pack or headed up to catch a nap. Val didn’t believe her.
Alex’s mind was racing in a hundred different directions. They’d have to get a new car quickly and dump the one Kevin knew about. There were so many details she had to think through, and she had to do it fast.
Alex turned and hurried back to the guest room. She had to pack, too.
And think. She hadn’t planned for this. She should have.
Daniel followed her down the hallway. “Tell me what I need to do,” he said as they walked through the door.
“Can you get everything back into the duffel bags? I… I need to think for a few minutes. We can’t afford any mistakes today. Just let me concentrate, okay?”
“Of course.”
Alex lay down on the bed, then crossed both arms over her face. Daniel worked quietly in the corner; the noise wasn’t distracting. She tried to think through all the moves they had available to them, everything Kevin didn’t know.
There wasn’t much. She couldn’t even go back for Lola—Kevin had picked the boarding facility.
She took another centering breath and put that thought away. There was no time for sadness now.
It would be small motels for a while. Cash only. Luckily she had plenty of Kevin’s drug money. They’d be able to keep their heads down.
Of course, Carston would expect that. Her face and Daniel’s would end up on a police flyer e-mailed to all the potential stops for a thousand miles. Since they’d already rolled the Daniel story, maybe they’d cast her as his captive. It would be hard to sell the other version, given Alex’s and Daniel’s relative sizes.
They could camp out of whatever car they found, as they’d done before. The scrutiny would be intense. Once Carston’s people located Kevin’s vehicle, they’d trace every used car sold, every want ad, every stolen car for a hundred miles in any direction. Any description that fit the scenario would go onto a list, and if a cop reported that vehicle, Carston’s people wouldn’t be far behind.
Maybe it was time to go back to Chicago. Maybe Joey Giancardi wouldn’t kill her immediately. Maybe he’d be willing to trade some kind of indentured servitude for two sets of facial reconstruction. Or maybe he’d get one whiff of her desperation and know there was good money to be made in selling her back to the people who wanted her.
She had identities that Kevin knew nothing about, but Daniel didn’t. The documents she’d grabbed from Kevin’s mobile Batcave wouldn’t be safe.
Unless Daniel acted fast enough.
She uncovered her face and sat up.
“Do you think you’ve grasped the basic principles of hide-and-seek?”
Daniel turned with two clear bags of ammo in his hands. “Maybe the very most basic of the basics.”
Alex nodded. “You’re smart, though. You speak Spanish pretty well, right?”
“I can get by. You want to go to Mexico?”
“I wish I could. Mexico probably isn’t totally safe for your face since you’ve been there so many times, but there are a lot of good hiding places in South America. It’s cheap, too, so you won’t run out of money for a while. You won’t blend in, but there are lots of expats…”
Daniel hesitated for a second, then carefully placed the ammo in one of the duffels. He came to stand next to her.
“Alex, you’re using a lot of second-person pronouns there. Are you… talking about us splitting up right now?”
“You’ll be safer outside the country, Daniel. If you laid low in a quiet little place somewhere in Uruguay, they might never find—”
“Then why can’t we go together? Is it because they’ll be looking for a couple… if… if Kevin talks?”
She hunched her shoulders; it was half a shrug, half a defensive motion. “It’s because I don’t have a passport.”
“You don’t think they’ll be waiting for Daniel Beach to try to board a plane?”
“You won’t be Daniel Beach. I’ve got a couple of Kevin’s ID sets. It will be a long while till they get around to asking him about false identities, if they ever do. You’ll have plenty of time to catch a flight to Chile tonight.”
His expression was suddenly hard, almost angry. He looked like Kevin, and she was surprised at how sad that made her.
“So I just save myself, then? Leave you behind?”
Another almost-shrug. “Like you said, they’ll be looking for a couple. I’ll slip through the holes in the net.”
“They’ll be looking for you, Alex. I won’t—”
“Okay, okay,” she interrupted. “Let me think some more. I’ll come up with something.”
Daniel locked eyes with her for a long second. Slowly, his expression softened until he looked like himself again. Finally, his shoulders slumped and his eyes closed.