The Carrier by Preston Lang Page B

knows?”
    “ Maybe they’re going to call
the whole thing off.”
    “ No, it’s too much money for
them to just leave on the table.”
    It was still a very difficult job,
Marcus realized. Even if the courier and his armed girlfriend were
making the pickup, it was going to be tough to track them, and even
if they could be tracked, how were Marcus and Danny supposed to
disarm the girl and grab the money? It was clear Danny was
thinking, but Marcus had learned that not all of Danny’s plans were
simple and safe.

CHAPTER 17
     
    Duane heard the steps coming up the
stairs, and then the man appeared on the landing: Tony Braxton.
Duane took an overhand swing, like splitting a log, and felt the
solid contact with a skull. He swung again, and then kicked the
body down the stairs and sprang on top of it. Tony’s gun was about
ten feet away, on the floor of the lobby. The motionless body was
now a problem for Inez. Duane picked up the gun, left the building,
and walked back to his car.
     
    ***
     
    Five minutes after she’d heard the
thump, Inez walked down the stairs carefully, gun in hand. When she
got to the lobby, there was the mess. Tony lying flat—dead?—on his
stomach. She kicked him once, and he didn’t move but he didn’t feel
dead. She stooped over him—he was breathing.
    Great, just skip out on your
responsibilities, Duane. But you couldn’t really hold it against
him, though. What did she want from him, exactly? They should play
house in this stranger’s apartment? No, she’d taken Duane home
because she’d gotten pretty sick of games with plastic toys. With
her gun tucked in her pants, she dragged Tony out of the apartment
building. He wasn’t heavy.
     
    ***
     
    Later, still very early that morning,
she collected her possessions—a laptop, a change of clothes,
toiletries—and she left Newburgh for good without anyone ever
learning her name.
    She’d thrown out Tony’s wallet, but
she held onto his cellphone, checking the messages as she drove.
She didn’t have a clear destination yet, but she wanted to put a
few miles between herself and this town before she had breakfast.
She’d only eaten half a pancake the night before, and it had her
thinking about how tasty a real breakfast can be.
    Inez was not a good driver, and she
nearly drove over the center line while operating the phone. There
was a good reason they told you not to text and drive, and she
decided to wait until she stopped for breakfast before checking the
messages. She didn’t actually have a driver’s license. Growing up
she took the subway everywhere—who needed a car? A written test? A
road test? For the time being, she just had to hope she didn’t get
stopped.
    She had breakfast in
Connecticut, a few miles across the border. Pancakes—a whole stack
that belonged to her, no sharing. Next she checked Tony’s phone.
There were a few cryptic texts and two voice messages. The newest
one was from Duane calling from the Denny’s— Hey, call me if you need me. The
other was also from Duane, but he sounded a lot less
tough.
    “ Hey. I’d just like to know
what’s going on. Because I’m going to move soon. So . . . please
call me back,” he said.
    She listened to it again.
No, it wasn’t Duane, but, damn, it really sounded a lot like him.
Who was it? And who talked that way— So
please call me back . This was the business
phone, so it had to be someone on Tony’s payroll. Could it be the
driver he was going to use? A driver who sounded a lot like Duane.
That was something. She’d hang onto the phone a while longer and
see who else called.
    In the next two days the driver called
back twice. He wasn’t stupid enough to call from a phone registered
in his own name, but the third time he called a number popped
up.
    “ The trip is on Monday. So
please let me know what you can before that day,” he said in his
message.
    This was a lot more specific than a
message should be. She called the number back about an hour later.
It