by Zoey Parker
Chapter 9
Carter
The coupe zoomed down the highway like a rocket ship breaking free of Earth's gravity.
Carter kept his gun aimed at Billie, hoping it would banish the smile from her face and make her take him seriously. Instead, her grin seemed to get wider each time her eyes darted over to the weapon.
“You don't need to keep pointing that at me,” Billie laughed. “I've always wanted to be a getaway driver, so this whole thing is like a dream come true. Besides, if you shoot me, then what? The car will plow into a corn field or get wrapped around a tree, and then Panzie will catch up to you for sure.”
“First of all, lady, you're not a getaway driver, you're a hostage,” Carter pointed out. “And second, who the fuck is Panzie?”
“Aw, don't call me 'lady,'” Billie said, pouting. “I told you my name last night at the bar. Billie, remember?”
Despite his gun and his gruff talk, Carter could see that she still wasn't frightened, and he started to feel a little uneasy. Just who the hell was this girl, anyway? He'd seen how wild and outgoing she was the previous night when he’d flirted with her, but what kind of woman reacted to a carjacking like it was some kind of rollercoaster ride? Was she crazy or what?
“And Panzie's the name of that fat sheriff you and your friends just tried to ventilate,” Billie continued matter-of-factly, as though she was casually pointing out some local landmark. “You guys really should have cut him some slack back there, by the way. He can be kind of a dork sometimes, but he's an okay guy once you get to know him, and all those bullets you tossed in his direction probably made him shit his pants.” She giggled at this thought. “Besides, it's not like he'd have actually shot you. He can't aim for shit. I should know, I've been to the range with him enough times—”
“Okay, I'm going to need you to close your goddamn mouth now,” Carter said, interrupting her. “I'm trying to focus, and your yapping is distracting as fuck.”
Billie shrugged. “Suit yourself. I never would have thought bank robbers would be so cranky, though. Jeez.”
The car slowed down, and Carter realized that Billie was about to turn onto a side road. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “I didn't tell you to slow down or take a different road!”
“You didn't have to,” she said slowly, as though she was talking to a slow-witted child. “Even if Panzie can't catch up to us, he'll still have radioed ahead to the Highway Patrol by now so they can cut you off. If we take the side roads, we have a better chance of getting past them. Unless you want to get caught, in which case, hey, full speed ahead.”
Carter hated to concede that she had a point. “Fine, fine, just keep driving,” he said.
She took the side road. It was mostly unpaved, and tall corn stalks closed in on them from both sides. Carter had to admit to himself that this was a better route in terms of keeping them hidden.
“I know you said you don't want to hear from me...” Billie began.
“And yet you're still fucking talking for some reason,” Carter growled.
“...but this would be a lot easier if I knew where we were going,” she finished.
Carter let out a frustrated sigh. He'd been in a car with her for a handful of minutes, and it already felt like it had been all day. He knew he'd have to tell her their destination unless he was willing to throw her out of the car and take over the driving himself. If it were anyone else, he would trust that they'd be scared enough of his gun to comply.
But what if she didn't? She clearly wasn't intimidated by him, and if she resisted, was he really prepared to shoot her?
Billie raised an eyebrow at him playfully as though she could hear his thoughts. “Come on, you may as well tell me. Your voice sounds sexy when you try to make it sound all scary and gravelly, but you're clearly not some psycho murderer.”
“Oh? What makes you so sure?” Carter countered.
“Am I wrong?” she asked, smiling. “If I am and you're just planning to steal my car and leave me in a ditch with a bullet in my head, then I may as well not drive you any further, right?” The car started to slow down.
Carter clenched his teeth. He'd committed a lot of armed robberies in his life and he'd once killed a man in self-defense, but no, he wasn't inclined to shoot some unarmed woman no matter how infuriating she was.
“There's a motel south of here,” he said. “The Whippoorwill Motor Lodge. It's in a town called Blue Lace.”
“I know where that is,” she nodded. “If we mostly stick to the back roads, I should be able to get you there in about two hours.”
“Then we'd better find a place to stop and switch cars first,” Carter grunted. “They'll have state police helicopters in the air in thirty minutes once they realize we're not on the highway, and this little red girlie-mobile you've got is going to be easy to spot.”
“No problem,” Billie assured him. “There's an office park on Sidewinder Road up ahead. We should be able to find something in the parking lot there without anyone spotting us. Hey, can I choose the car we swap this out for?”
“No, you fucking can't,” Carter replied, looking at her incredulously. “What the hell is your deal, anyway? Are you from another planet or something? Don't you get how much danger you're in right now, or do you get carjacked at gunpoint every week?”
“Are you kidding? This is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me!” she gushed. “On the run from the cops with an armed outlaw? It's like something out of a movie.”
“This ain't no movie, lady,” Carter snapped.
“'Grr, this ain't no movie, lady,'” she retorted, trying to mimic his tone. “Wow. So cool. Do you practice that voice when you're alone? Does it usually scare people into doing what you say? I mean, you've already got the gun, so...oh, hey, here we go, here's Sidewinder.” She turned the car onto an even narrower dirt road.
A few minutes later, she pulled into a parking lot situated between a cluster of squat gray office buildings. Billie cut the engine, then pointed to a nondescript white sedan. It was a model from the mid-'80s, and based on the thick layers of dust and grime clinging to it, Carter assumed it hadn't been cleaned in the decades since then.
“I know you're not exactly eager for my input, but if I were you, I'd take that one,” Billie said.
“That shitheap?” Carter asked. “You've got to be kidding me. If the cops start chasing us and we need to pour on the speed, that thing looks like it'll cough up its engine and crap out on us.”
“That's just the outside,” she answered. “But it belongs to Henry Sunday, and he used to use it for drag racing a few years ago. Under the hood, it's a powerhouse. It'll easily outrun any cop car, guaranteed.”
“Bullshit,” Carter said. “You're fucking with me so I'll pick a shitty car and get caught.”
Billie rolled her eyes. “Fine, don't believe me. But if you take a quick peek at the engine, you'll see I'm right.”
“All right,” Carter retorted, “I'll check. But I swear, if I find out you're lying and trying to sabotage me...”
“You'll what?” she smirked. “Shoot me? Like I said, I don't believe you've got it in you. Fuck me? I was willing to jump into bed with you last night if you rode the bull, so that wouldn't be much of a punishment, now would it?”
“Maybe you wouldn't like it the way I do it,” Carter threatened. He had no real intention of committing such an assault against her or anyone, but goddamn it, there had to be something that would scare her into shutting up.
“Aw. Small dick?” she asked pleasantly, holding up her pinkie finger by way of demonstration.
“I do not have a small dick!” he roared.
“You sure?” she continued. “Because a lot of guys don't necessarily realize they've got a small one. They just assume it's average-sized. I mean, I've seen plenty, so if you're not sure, you can unzip and I'll tell you how it stacks up...”
“Just get the fuck out of the car and follow me,” Carter hissed. He could f
eel his face turning red under the ski mask and yanked it off angrily as he stepped out of the coupe and stalked over to the white sedan.
He knew he couldn't shoot Billie, but he didn't know how much longer he could endure her taunts and flippant attitude either. He desperately wanted to leave her by the side of the road, but then what? She still knew what he and the others looked like.
They approached the grimy white sedan. Carter kept his gun hanging low and behind his thigh so that casual observers wouldn't spot it, but as he looked around the parking lot, he realized he didn't need to be so careful—there weren't any other people out here, just rows of cars baking in the hot sun.
When they got to the car, Carter opened the hood and peered in. Sure enough, the inner workings were spotless, and they looked like they'd been lovingly customized so the unassuming machine would run like a race car.
He let out a low whistle of appreciation. This engine was a thing of beauty.
“Since you apparently know this guy so well, aren't you going to feel bad about stealing his car?” Carter asked.
“Nah, Henry's a jerk,” Billie said. “He used to yank on my pigtails when we were in third grade. Take your time, by the way,” she added. “It's not like the cops are after you or anything.”
Carter slammed the hood back down with a growl and walked over to the driver's side window. He took another look around to make sure the coast was clear, then smashed the window in with the butt of his gun and reached in to unlock the door.
“Get behind the wheel,” he brushing the bits of broken glass from the seat.
“Sure,” she replied, hopping into the driver's seat as Carter ran around to get in on the passenger's side. He examined the dashboard for a brief moment, then reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a pair of pliers.
“You always have those with you?” Billie asked.
“Pliers, duct tape, and superglue,” Carter said, leaning over and using the tool to pry the panel away from the ignition slot. “My mom always said those were the three things that held the world together, and she was right. Now let me concentrate.”
Billie opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.
Carter located the right wires, stripped their ends down to the copper, then twisted them together gingerly with his fingertips. The engine awoke with a smooth purr and Carter pumped his fist in the air triumphantly.
“Yes!” He turned to her. “Now drive. Get us down to Blue Lace as fast as you can.”
“And after that?” Billie asked, pulling the car out of its space and heading for the dirt road again.
“After that, we'll see,” Carter answered sourly. He wished he knew how things would shake out now that he'd taken her as a hostage, but he'd never needed to do anything like that before, and he had no idea what would happen next.
“No more questions or chatter,” Carter said. “Just drive, okay?”
“Can we turn on the radio?” she asked.
“That sounds dangerously like a question,” Carter said through gritted teeth. “What did I just say about that?”
“As long as we're not talking, I just figured...”
“Fine, fine,” he agreed, “listen to the radio if you want. Just keep your mouth shut, all right? Damn.”
Billie switched on the radio, and they kept driving as Steve Miller crooned about two young lovers who decided to cut loose.
At one point, they heard the thwup-thwup-thwup of a helicopter overhead, and when Carter risked a look up at it, he saw state police markings on its fuselage. For a tense moment, he expected to hear voices emanate from bullhorns above them, ordering them to pull over to the side of the road.
But after hovering over them briefly, the chopper veered off and whirred away, and Carter let out a sigh of relief.
“That was a close one,” Billie commented.
Carter didn't answer.
Chapter 10
Panzer
Panzer looked around helplessly as state police troopers and federal agents took over his usually empty office. Half of them were on their cell phones, and the other half were jabbering to each other in acronyms and law enforcement lingo that was so foreign to him they may as well have been speaking Chinese.
Special Agent Roland Harbaugh sat across from Panzer, staring at him threateningly as he licked his thumb and flipped backward through the pages of his small notepad. Harbaugh was a tall and cadaverous man in his early fifties, with iron-gray hair clipped into a flat-topped buzz cut and piercing black eyes surrounded by webs of crow's feet. He wore an expensive-looking suit, and his FBI credentials hung from a lanyard around his neck.
Deputy Broyles stood next to Panzer, trying to adopt a protective posture despite his sloped shoulders, scrawny arms, and sunken chest.
“Okay,” Harbaugh rumbled in his deep voice, looking down at his notes. “Let me just review your statement with you quickly, to make sure I've got everything right.” He cleared his throat. “Yesterday, you received a fax with a description of the three bikers who have robbed four banks in four different states over the past few weeks.”
“Uh, technically we didn't get no descriptions?” Broyles drawled. “On account of how them boys was wearin' masks?” Whenever Broyles spoke, the ends of his sentences always seemed to rise into questions, even if he wasn't asking anything. The sound of his voice usually made Panzer feel like punching him, but he took a deep breath and reminded himself that right now, Broyles was the only person in this room—in the town, maybe even in the whole damn world—who was on his side.
Harbaugh scowled at Broyles. “They were bikers, and there were three of them. That's a description.” He turned his attention to Panzer again. “Last night, you went to the local bar and saw three men who you suspected might be the robbers. Instead of acting on this in any way or even looking at them closely enough to be able to provide accurate descriptions later, you chose to ignore your suspicions and just wander off.”
“Aw, now see, the thing you gotta remember is, he didn't really suspect-suspect them fellas?” Broyles interjected again. “He just said that 'cause he was tryin' to impress Billie, seein' as how he's been kinda sweet on her since high school an' all...”
“Broyles, please don't help me,” Panzer murmured, putting his fingertips up to his temples and pressing on them. He felt a whopper of a headache coming on.
“To continue,” Harbaugh said, flipping to the next page in his notepad, “you later decided, in your infinite wisdom, that these men might be the robbers after all. But instead of alerting the FBI, the state police, or even the bank's manager, you felt that your best course of action was to keep it to yourself, park your cruiser almost a full block away from the bank, and wait to see if anything happened.”
“That's right, sir,” Panzer said. Beads of sweat were forming on his brow and his upper lip. He'd never felt this stupid before in his life, and given how many humiliations he'd endured over the years, that was saying something.
“No, it may be accurate, but it's certainly not 'right,'” Harbaugh corrected him. “Then, once you heard gunshots from the direction of the bank, you radioed this—gentleman—for backup.” Harbaugh shot a disdainful glance at Broyles.
“I'm his only deputy,” Broyles said proudly, hooking his thumbs into his belt.
Harbaugh kept going. “You waited for the robbers to leave the bank...”
“So they wouldn't try to take any of the tellers or customers as hostages, yes, sir.”
“...and exchanged gunfire with them,” Harbaugh growled, “during which time, you managed to empty two full clips of ammunition without hitting any of them.”
Panzer shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
“Finally, two of the robbers fled on their motorcycles while the third one rode off with this Billie person who, for some reason, was parked directly in front of the bank watching the whole thing. And when he took off with her, you pursued them...” Harbaugh looked down at his notepad dourly. “...on foot. Now, have I got a
ll that right, or are there any more examples of your profound stupidity that you'd like me to include for the official report?”
Panzer gulped. “No, sir, that's everything.”
“I just have one last question for you, Sheriff Panzer,” Harbaugh sneered. “Were you required to undergo any kind of law enforcement training to get that badge, or did you find it at the bottom of a cereal box?”
Panzer remained silent.
“I've been tracking these men for almost a month,” Harbaugh continued. “During that time, I've had to work with every podunk cop shop from here to Twiddle-Your-Ballsack Arkansas. But you are, without a doubt, the most useless yokel ever to put on a uniform. If it were up to me, you'd spend the rest of your life as a fucking meter maid, and you wouldn't be allowed to carry anything more dangerous than a water gun.”
