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Oh. Oh, shit —
“Marcie, wait!” he shouts, but the line goes dead.
He keeps his binoculars trained on her. Marcie walks to the far end of the row of duffel bags, squats down, and with both hands shoves a duffel bag forward until —
“No! No!”
— until it disappears off the edge, through the gap in the bridge, tumbling end over end into the tumultuous waters of the Cotton River, where it smacks the surface and bobs along the waves, the current carrying it downstream.
And then she pushes the next one over the edge, anothersplatas it hits the river water.
He races to his car and jumps in, moving down the sloping road too fast, nearly losing control as he navigates around one of the ROAD CLOSED barriers, knocking the other one away. With the bridge in sight, he sees another bag tumble into the waters below, bobbing for a moment before the current carries it downstream.
He looks across the river and sees Silas’s car on the opposite bluff, beginning its winding descent toward the bridge.
He dials Silas’s number as he drives. “She’s dumping the money!” he yells into the phone. “She’s dumping all of it!”
ONE HUNDRED FOUR
THE CARS COME SPEEDING toward me from both directions as I finish pushing the seventh duffel bag over the edge, watching it smack the perilous water below. The previous six bags have begun their trip down the river like a small armada, bouncing and bobbing. If my quick online research holds, each of those bags will eventually sink to the river bottom. But I don’t really care.
The car coming from the north end, which must be Silas, won’t be able to reach me, what with the large gap in the roadway. But Blair, coming from the south end and traveling north, won’t have that problem.
I finalize my preparations, one click of the handcuffs, and slowly rise to my feet as Blair’s car — the first to reach me — skids to a halt about ten yards away, not far from my rental SUV.
Blair pops out, shuffling toward me, his gun up and trained on me, the wind instantly pummeling his coat andwhipping his hair in his face. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yells.
“Don’t come any closer!” I yell to Blair. “You shoot me, and I take the rest of the money with me into the river!”
Blair looks down and registers what I mean. Each of the remaining four duffel bags is joined to its neighbor by handcuffs. And the last of them is handcuffed to my right wrist. We are one long chain, the four bags and me.
Blair holds up a hand as I hear, behind me, another car skidding to a stop. I glance back at Silas as he jumps out of the car, looking worse for wear, the right side of his face badly swollen and a makeshift bandage covering the wound, holding a firearm two-handed. He stops at the gap in the road, separating us by around ten yards.
Blair’s hand signal is for Silas’s benefit.Hold off,he’s saying.Let me handle this.
Blair’s in charge. That’s what I figured.
“Be smart, Marcie!” Blair says. “We can work this out. Everyone can win.”
“The police are coming!” I shout through the swirling wind at Blair.
“Yeah? Fine with me. I can explain everything. Including how you and David stole that money. And David won’t be here to deny it, will he?”
The mention of my dead husband sends something spiraling inside me. “Are you sure you can explain everything to the cops, Blair? Including what your buddy is doing here?”
Blair blinks. Glances at Silas.
In the distance, finally — later than I expected — the faint sound of sirens. Blair’s head turns slightly when he hears it, squinting as his hair whips into his eyes.
Then he looks at me. “This was all just a ruse, right?” he says. “Luring me and Silas onto a bridge so we’d have no escape?”
I shrug. “Afraid so.”
He nods, almost grudgingly. Then he pivots and fires the gun three times in rapid succession.
Silas staggers backward, three gaping holes in his chest, before hitting the roadway hard, the gun skittering from his hand.
Finally, Silas Renfrow is truly dead.
