Page 68 of Hellbent

She handed him the plastic bag.

Joey was waiting outside, her arms crossed, staring through a patch of skinny trees down the long ramp to the freeway.

“What?” Evan asked.

She flicked her chin.

A hunter-green 4Runner exited the freeway and started up the slope toward the service plaza.

30

Do Your Business

Evan pulled Joey around the side of the building. They stood on the browning grass beneath the window of the men’s room, peering around the corner at the travel plaza’s entrance. A good vantage.

“That truck,” she said. “Kept time with us for at least forty miles.”

He thought of her bobbing in her seat, singing along to the radio. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.”

“That’s my superpower.”

“What?”

“Being underestimated.”

The men’s-room window above them was cracked open, emitting the pungent scent of urinal cakes. Through the gap they heard someone whistle, spit, and unzip. Evan set the shopping bag on the ground.

They waited.

The 4Runner finally came into view, cresting the rise.

It crept along the line of parked vehicles, slowing as it passed the Civic. The driver eased forward, closer to the pumps, and stopped with the grille pointed at the on-ramp below.

“Hmm,” Joey said.

Evan leaned closer to the building’s edge, Joey’s hair brushing his neck. They were thirty or so yards away from the 4Runner.

Leaving the truck running, the driver climbed out, scratching at the scraggly blond tufts of his beard. Cowboy boots clicking on the asphalt, he walked back to the Civic, approaching it from behind. As he neared, he untucked his shirt. His hand reached back toward his kidney, sliding under the fabric. He hooked the grip of a handgun, slid it partway out of the waistband.

It looked like a big-bore semiauto, maybe a Desert Eagle.

Not a law-enforcement gun.

The man approached cautiously, peering through the windows, checking that the car was empty. Then he let his shirt fall back over the gun and entered the travel plaza.

“He didn’t see us,” Evan said. “Not directly, not from behind us on the freeway. At best he could tell that we were a man and a young woman. He’s trying to confirm ID.”

“So what do we do?”

“You don’t do anything.”

“I could handle that guy.”

“He’s bigger than you,” Evan said. “Stronger, too.”

In the bathroom a toilet flushed, the rush of water amplified in the cinder-block walls. A moment later they heard the creak of hinges and then the hiss of the hydraulic door opener. A sunburned man waddled into sight around the corner and headed off toward his car.

Joey snapped her gum. “I could handle him,” she said again.