Jackie watched the clock on the car stereo. Hands tight on the wheel. It was cold and there was a ragged stratum of ice curling up the windshield. She sat in a fog of her own breath.
Engine running, heater off.
She wanted to stay alert.
“Come on, asshole,” she whispered. “Don’t take all day.”
She watched the door and she watched the clock. The parking lot was empty. She felt as if she were the only person in the world.
ATM machines blinking.
Deposit slips mouldering in the ornamental rosemary.
She leaned across and pushed open the passenger door.
The front doors opened and James ran down the handicap ramp with a reusable Trader Joe’s bag in one hand and a silver revolver in the other. The bag was burdened underneath. Handles taut. His mask was crooked and he tripped coming off the ramp but he didn’t fall, just tumbled haphazardly over the asphalt and through the open car door.
Jackie didn’t wait for him to get settled.
She hit the gas and white smoke spit from the rear tires.
At the intersection there was a white Toyota making a lazy turn onto Graham Hill Road. She launched through and cut around the car. The Toyota hit the brakes and the driver looked around bewildered.
Jackie never took her foot off the floor.
James reached in the bag and pulled out a fistfull of cash.
“What took so long?” she said.
“I hit all the registers, baby. Every one.”
“Three?”
“Yep.”
“Should be twelve grand in there.”
“Looks like it,” said James. He was digging in the bag like it was Halloween. “How long will that last?”
“In Baja? Depends on how much junk you smoke.”
“I just wanna chill out, Jackie. Weed and Corona.”
“Heard that before. Anything go wrong in there?”
James tilted his head back and forth as if deciding what she’d consider wrong. “It was chill. Except for the last part.”
“Tell me.”
James stammered, trying to put it a certain way.
“Just tell me,” said Jackie.
“You remember that girl Becka from high school?”
“Becka Simms?”
“No, the other Becka.”
“Becka big tits?”
James put his hands in the air, wavering. “I guess.”
“Don’t tell me you never called her that,” said Jackie. They were a mile up Highway 9 and the roads were clear in both directions. Just another mile would do it.
“I think she recognized me.”
“You’re fucking kidding. What’d she say?”
“She looked into my eyes, Jackie. It was the last register by the door. I wasn’t going to hit her up but the first two were so easy. She was looking right through me.”
“Then what?”
“She said my name.”
“She said James?”
“No. She said my full name. James Ritchie.”
Jackie cut onto Summit Road.
They parked on the bluff. The sun had crested the trees and the frost on the windshield was subtracting to the cowl. Jackie slipped one hand on James’s knee and the other on the grip of the revolver in the center console.
“What are you doing, baby?” said James.
“Should have been more careful, babe.”
James laughed, then his eyes widened.
Jackie thumbed the hammer back.
“Becky’s cool, baby. She won’t say nothing.”
Jackie looked him over. He’d be handsome if he wasn’t such an idiot. It was too bad he’d never outgrow it. She pulled the trigger and the passenger window shattered. The bullet went through his neck and cut his spine. He made a quick nod and fell forward onto the dashboard like a felled tree. A formless jet pumping over his collarbone.
She took the money and put the car in neutral. When she stepped out, the car rolled silently down the hill toward the sheer drop at the end of the bluff.
“Told you to wear your fucking sunglasses,” she said.
Jackie walked to the road.
The switch car sat beneath an old-growth redwood tree.
She spun the keychain on her finger and lifted the money bag as if judging its weight. Ten hours to the border.
~ fin ~
C.W. Blackwell is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His recent work has appeared with Down and Out Books, Shotgun Honey, Tough Magazine, and Reckon Review. He is a 2021 Derringer award winner and 2022 Derringer finalist. His debut fiction novella Song of the Red Squire was published in 2022 from Nosetouch Press, followed by Hard Mountain Clay from Shotgun Honey Books.
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