clean the house out and head for the highway. We can be in Nebraska by noon tomorrow. People won’t be able to see the car so well after dark . . . How much gas we got now?”
Cox thought running was the best idea, right up until they pulled back into the rented house’s driveway, activated the door to the garage, and found Deese’s truck inside.
“Holy shit,” Cole said. “He got out.”
* * *
—
DEESE WASN’T HURT. And nobody had been killed at the mall. Five people had been wounded, but nobody had yet died. Deese was standing in front of the television, which was tuned to a channel showing a helicopter hovering to the west of the mall, cameras aiming down at the squadrons of cop cars.
“They got pictures of all three of us,” Deese said.
“What?”
“Watch for a minute, they’ll show them again. They’ll go from the helicopter, to the anchor lady, to the video cameras. Then they’ll talk about who’s to blame. I mean, which cops are to blame for this whole fuckup.”
One minute later, the station cut from the helicopter feed to the anchorwoman, who introduced the video from the mall. Cox, Deese, and Cole had worn hats and sunglasses, so the videos weren’t great. The most recognizable shot was of Cox, who’d looked up at a camera as they’d run down the hall. “I didn’t mean to look up. I wasn’t looking for a camera.”
Cole said, “We need to cut your hair and get you in a dress. Everybody will be taking a look at a blonde with long hair. We need to punk you out. After we cut it, we’ll go red. We can buy some hair stuff on the way out of town, dye your hair at a motel.”
“We got Harrelson,” Deese said. “He’s still got that money.”
Cox: “What? We’re not doing that. Are you crazy?”
“Why not? The cops don’t know where we’re at. We hit him tonight, an hour from now, get the money, and take off,” Deese said. “The time between that and taking off is only about an hour, in the middle of the night. We could pack up and not need to even come back here.”
They thought about it for a minute, then Cole said to Cox, “We need the cash. That hasn’t changed. We’re still in the game.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Bob called Lucas from the mall’s video monitoring station. “Get the guys out to the car. The lookouts and Deese came in separate cars and we’ve spotted both of them. Vegas has stoplight cameras. We ought to be able to track them for a while. We might not get right on top of them, but the Vegas operations guys could get us close.”
“I’ll get them down there,” Lucas said. “See you at the car.”
Rae was still working with Tremanty, who now seemed dazed.
Lucas had once been tracking an assassin named Clara Rinker and, with the cooperation of the FBI, had managed to con her into making a call to an organized crime figure who had betrayed her.
Or so they thought.
In actuality, Rinker knew exactly what was happening. She’d sent a burner phone to the target, saying that she didn’t want to give him her real number in advance because she was afraid he could track it. She would call him on the burner.
A friend of hers, an Army ordnance sergeant, had put a pea-sized wad of C4 inside the phone, triggered by pressing a cell phone button. Lucas and the feds, eager to listen to the call, had gathered around the mafioso as the call came in, with FBI technical people waiting to trace it. Instead, Rinker had triggered the tiny bomb. The mafioso’s head had been mostly blown off and his brains hit Lucas square in the face.
Lucas had freaked. “Get it off me, get it off me . . .”
* * *
—
HE REMEMBERED that moment as he looked at Tremanty, still covered in the woman’s blood, from a bullet meant for the FBI man.
Lucas said to Rae, “We might be able to track them. Get Sandro back to his hotel. We can talk to you on a phone and you can catch us with a cab or a cop car. I think our boy needs to chill for a while.”
“I’m okay,” Tremanty said, but the glazed looked never left his eyes.
“No, you’re not,” Lucas said. “I’ve been where you’re at and it’ll take time to get straight. So go get straight. Run in place, do some pushups, take a shower.”