38
Ted
“ Holy shit, ” I muttered for the third time as I scrolled up on my phone.
“ Oh my god, what is it? ” Andy asked, finally irritated enough to get his drunk ass up off the cooler and march over to where I sat on a rock beneath the lean-to shelter.
I shook my head, half-regretting saying anything. But the news story had caught me completely off-guard. This was unbelievable.
“ The bus driver,” I said, setting down the warm beer I ’ d been nursing for the last hour, checking myself over mentally to make sure I wasn ’ t drunk anymore. The cooler was almost empty, but that was mostly Andy ’ s doing. Despite my warnings, he ’ d slogged down nearly the entire stash. I was pretty pissed about it, actually. I was doing the ransom pickup, but he couldn ’ t be so shit-faced he lost his cool if somebody came around the quarry while I was away.
“ What about the bus driver?” Andy slurred and took another step toward me, belching and patting his thick middle, then tossing his empty can in front of him and smashing it with a crack.
I stared at the mug shot in front of me. “ She’s a felon, dude. Look at this.” I held the phone out so he could see the news headline. “ The police just named her a person of interest. They think she did this.” I pointed in the direction of the buried bunker.
Andy let out a wet belch of sound that was half-burp, half-laugh. “ No way. No way. ” He kicked his latest smashed beer can and ran his fingers through his long, dirty hair. “ We have to use this, dude. This is too perfect. Like, God giving us a sign or something, right?” He belched again, long and loud, then guffawed. “ She could take the blame for the whole thing,” he said, talking faster and faster like the one time we ’ d done a bump together. “ They ’ d never come for us if they thought she did it.”
I shook my head. “ Shh, okay?” He was practically yelling now. And he wasn ’ t thinking straight. “ Nah. Even if she takes the blame, the kids are gonna remember the two dudes with pantyhose on their heads who marched them off their bus …”
“ But only if we let them out …” Andy trailed off in a singsong, stopping in front of me and looking me dead in the eyes. With his hands still tugging his hair upward into a crazy-looking ponytail, his belly spilling over the top of his jeans, and his eyes popping wide in his scruffy face, I had to stop myself from cringing away from him. He looked—and sounded—like a nutcase.
“ No,” I said firmly. “ We already decided. Nobody gets hurt.”
Andy snorted and kicked another empty beer can my way, like we were playing a game together.
For a second, I was afraid to meet his eyes. I knew now deep in my gut that I shouldn ’ t have told him about the news article. Or tried to pull this plan off with him, my brain hissed.
“ Just hear me out,” Andy said, still hell-bent on this new plan. His eyes gleamed, alcohol-shiny. “ We could convince them that the lady bus driver was the mastermind behind the whole thing. She doesn ’ t look like a mastermind, not with that face, but if the cops already think it …” He lowered his voice and followed my gaze to the sheet metal lying in the dirt at the edge of The Pit. “ We could take her out of the hole and talk to her like she ’ s in on the whole thing, so the kids hear, then put a gun to her head and …”
My mouth went dry. Impossibly, Andy ’ s eyes went even wider and shinier. “ This is such a good idea,” he hissed. “ Do you have some paper? We could make her read something to the kids. Like … like about how we ’ d fucked everything up and she wasn ’ t gonna share any of the ransom money with us anymore because we ’ re incompetent dipshits. Fire two gunshots, like she killed us both, only we ’ d fire them right into her head. The kids would tell the cops the lady bus driver killed us and then got away.”
“ And then what?” I mumbled, even though the knot in my stomach told me exactly where this conversation was headed: Right off the rails.
“ And then we could, you know, disappear her body into The Pit and get away with the money,” Andy screeched softly, swaying in front of me and all but clapping his hands with glee.
He looked at me expectantly, like surely I couldn ’ t object to this brilliant plan.
I stood up from the rock and backed away a few steps, glancing in the direction of the buried bunker yet again. It was time for a subject change. I didn ’ t want to kill anybody. “ Come on. We need to leave for Little Eddy. We ’ re going to be late.” I took a step toward his Honda Civic. “ We can talk in the car.”
“ We? ” Andy narrowed his eyes and laughed. “ Hold on, I thought you were going to pick up the money.” He belched as if to prove it.
I thought fast, trying to come up with a reason. He was right. The plan—before he got fired and lost the airport shuttle—was for me to pick up the money while he stayed behind at the quarry. When we plotted all the final details of that plan weeks ago, I ’ d couched it like I was doing him a favor. He could stay put and drink beer. I ’ d be putting myself at risk by going out into the open a second time.
But the truth was, I ’ d never trusted him to pull off the money pickup by himself. Andy was impulsive, especially when he was drunk. If something went sideways, I wanted it to happen on my watch—not his.
Which was the same reason I didn ’ t trust him to stay here alone with the kids by himself anymore, either. Not after what he ’ d just said, not with that plan baking in his stewed mind.
There was a red, flashing warning in my head that if I left him to his own devices with his current thoughts worming through his drunk brain, I ’ d come back to a scene that all the money in the world couldn ’ t cover.
I couldn ’ t leave him here. I couldn ’ t let him drive, though—he was way too drunk for that.
Think. Apply yourself, Ted.
“ Dude, your Honda is a wreck,” I said, latching onto a semi-solid reason he needed to come with me. “ I was supposed to drive the airport shuttle, remember?” I ad-libbed, gaining momentum with the train of thought. Unlike the van, the Civic was an automatic, so I could technically drive it, but the ignition was messed up, and I ’ d seen Andy spend ten minutes swearing at it, trying to bully it into starting, after he picked me up for work from the trailer park.
Andy considered this thought and took another swig of beer. I wanted to rip it out of his hand and slap him.
“ Oh for shit ’ s sake.” I barked. “ Just get in the car.”
“ That sounds like it ’ d suck …” he drawled, and my stomach dropped even further. “ I ’ m gonna stay here and relax.” He turned away from me and kept staring at that covered hole near The Pit.
I gritted my teeth and tried not to panic. Shit, shit, shit. We were so close to finishing this. I was so close to getting out of here with the money—and a halfway clean conscience. Clean enough for me, anyway.
As if reading my mind, Andy darted his eyes toward me and lifted an eyebrow, reaching for the handle of the gun shoved sideways into his belt. “ You ’ re such a bleeding heart, Teddy Bear. It ’ d be so easy to do it my way…” he trailed off, slurring.
“ It’s a bad time to improvise,” I insisted.
He laughed softly then stood, cocking his head like he ’ d just had a new, brilliant thought. “ Maybe you ’ re riiiiight.” He finally lowered his voice and dropped his shoulders. “ We ’ re not done talking about this, though. Think about it. She ’ s just a dumb bitch. She killed her husband, for Christ ’ s sake,” he said, grabbing me by the arm. “ It ’ s just too perfect. God is practically dropping this in our laps.”
I kept my face neutral. It wasn ’ t perfect. Not by a longshot, and I doubted God was pleased with anything we were doing. Besides, even if I were on board, this wasn ’ t the kind of plan we could throw together on a whim. “ Let ’ s just get the ransom,” I insisted again. “ Come on. We can talk in the car—”
“ Fine, ” Andy said, and to my relief he stretched and turned to follow me.
I moved toward the Civic, eager to get in and drive. I was sure I could talk him down if I just had a little time. We didn ’ t have to hurt anybody. This could still work.
After a couple of steps though, I heard Andy mutter something under his breath.
My stomach tightened and I spun around to see what the holdup was.
But instead of looking back at me, Andy was lifting up a finger and pointing at the other side of the dirt road, in the opposite direction of the Civic.
“ What?” I asked in confusion, craning my neck thinking that maybe Paul or somebody else was back again, trying to access the slag rock or something.
Andy ignored me and took an unsteady step in the opposite direction, angling toward the van. “ Those little shits .”
“ Andy, come on , we ’ re seriously going to miss the actual money drop,” I burst out, starting to get mad now. We didn ’ t have time for this bullshit.
I stepped forward and grabbed his arm, but he shrugged it off and kept moving toward the gray van, walking fast, pointing at something. “ Those little shits,” he said again, louder. “ Look what they did.”
I jogged to catch up with his stumbling walk, trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at.
Then I saw it.
My insides turned to rubber cement.
There was a quarter-sized hole scratched into the black paint we ’ d used to coat the inside of the van. The setting sun was coming through the back windows at a slant, which meant that the angle was just right to make a faint little white halo in the shadows gathering behind the bumper.
“ Fucking hell,” I breathed, feeling like the ground was shifting under my feet and my mind was trying to swim faster and faster to keep from being dragged under some invisible current.
Andy opened the van door and hoisted himself inside.
Half a second later, the hole in the paint disappeared, replaced by the pupil of his wide brown eye staring back at me.
My stomach seized. How much had those stupid kids seen? I scrambled to think through every second that Andy and I had taken off our pantyhose before we marched the kids into the hole. I ’ d kept mine on, but he ’ d been barefaced when I got back to the quarry.
And if Andy ’ s cover was blown, so was mine.
Fucking hell. Shit, shit, shit.
“ You still think we can just let them all go ? ” Andy muttered, the sound muffled from within the van. “ They saw our faces. Shit, we should cover up the air hose right now, go get the money and just drive away. Nobody will ever find them—or us.”
Acid burned its way up my windpipe and the undertow in my gut pulled harder.
This was bad.
This was really, really, really bad.
“ We still need to talk this over,” I stammered and tilted my chin toward The Pit. As much as I hated to admit it, I was feeling pretty damn rattled now, too.
Andy reopened the back door of the van and fixed me with an unreadable expression that made me take a step back.
For the first time, I seriously considered whether he ’ d do something to me , if he didn ’ t get his way. If his back went against the wrong wall.
“ They ’ re not going anywhere until we get back here,” I managed, forcing my voice to stay as steady and steely as his. “ Let ’ s just get the money and then do what we have to do, okay?” Sheena Halverson wasn ’ t expecting us to actually have the kids with us at the cash drop. She knew she had to make the Bitcoin transfer first, and then wait for instructions regarding their release. We still had a little time to figure this out.
He stared at me from the back of the van with a cocked eyebrow. “ Okay, Teddy Bear. If you say so. Let ’ s go.”