being toyed with and kept alive.
“Jimmy, you fool,” Lauren said, pulling the trigger.
The hammer clicked on the empty chamber, as she'd known it would. Both men roared again. 'She went for it,' Carl said. 'Her own fucking husband. Who'd have believed it?'
'Thanks, doll,' Jimmy grinned at her. 'You just won me fifty bucks.'
'Collect it in Hell,' Lauren said, and tossed the gun toward him. Reflex made him grab for it as she pulled the Glock out of her waistband, tucked around the back where her jacket had kept it covered. She was a lousy shot and she knew it, but out of the four she blasted off in Jimmy's direction, one of them found a mark while he was still fumbling.
Jimmy was on the floor and making noises like a drain as she walked to the edge of the stage and stepped down before Carl. The white chick had shrieked and run and Carl was still struggling up out of his seat as Lauren drove him back into it with a single round, close range.
He clutched at his chest and cursed her.
She said. 'That's no way to speak to a grieving widow,' and shot him again. She saw no sign of the duffel bag.
She found it with the skinny dancer in a back office. More mirrors. The woman was under the desk and the phone was off the hook, the emergency dispatcher still on the line. Lauren cradled the receiver and pulled the stripper out of hiding.
'Nice try,' she said, retrieving her property. 'But your act needs work. Trust me. I've been there. Same club, same logo, different city.' On the desk lay a bunch of keys with a BMW fob. She scooped them up and left the dancer sobbing.
For the second time that night, she drove back toward the crime scene.
The trail that she'd left — diner, car wreck, titty bar — would point the cops in a southbound direction. So she headed north, observed the speed limit, and put on her most innocent face.
Two motorcycle cops were now in attendance at the multiple wreck caused by Felipe's Impala, and they'd laid down flares to create a perimeter. One cop was waving cars through with a lightstick while the other checked distances with a laser tool.
At the diner, she slowed again. Here they'd shut off the entire road, and were diverting traffic around the block. News helicopters were jostling for airspace overhead. As she went by she could see bright lights and technicians in their scene suits, carrying bags of evidence out to waiting vehicles.
From the next gas station, she made a payphone call. The FBI operator took almost a minute to connect her to a cell.
'Hank,' she said, 'you bastard.'
'Lauren,' he said. 'Way to break a two-year silence. I'm heading for Chicago. Your work, I assume.'
'You're running up here to take the credit?'
'To seize a recording. Seems a woman was caught on camera outside the diner.'
'You never meant for me to inform on Jimmy. You sent me in to ruin his luck.'
'I never meant for you to marry him either, but you're a woman who can't keep her pants on her ass or her hands off easy money. I never saw a femme so fucking fatale. You're fast and you're toxic and you didn't disappoint. It was a joy to see you burn your way through the entire chain of command in just three days.'
'So why rat me out at the end? So no one would get to walk away, including me?'
There was silence.
Then Hank said, 'Keep the money, Lauren. You've earned it.' And ended the call.
Before leaving the gas station she picked up a new duffel bag. Carl's blood was all over the first.
Later, in a Mom and Pop motel somewhere near Black River Falls, Lauren switched on a bedside light and closed the drapes and laid Felipe's bag on the covers. She opened the zip and reached in to transfer her money.
Lauren pulled out a bundle. It wasn't cash. She unrolled it.
It was a set of chef's whites, rolled up around a set of kitchen knives.
She rummaged about in disbelief but there was nothing else in the bag. Felipe hadn't run with the money.
Felipe had merely run.
She swore. She paced the room for a while. Remembering the sight of those crime scene techs, carrying evidence out of the diner. Then she opened the drapes and stood looking out into the night. The first signs of daylight were beginning to appear in the sky.
She'd have to bury or burn the whites and the duffel bag. But the knives, she'd keep. She'd find a use for them. She would hold onto the BMW for a while longer, but she'd change the plates.
Lauren Blaine stayed at the window for a long time, lost in her own thoughts.
Making her plans for Hank.
