Jeremy was such a horndog.
“Hi,” Ivy said, lifting her fingers, her gaze centered on Jeremy’s.
“Jer, this is Ivy, you remember, and, Ivy, you know Jeremy and Bianca.”
“Yeah.” Still appraising her, Jeremy was nodding enthusiastically.
“Hi,” Bianca said. “Sorry . . . sorry about your mom and dad, er, stepdad.”
“Thanks.”
“You hungry?” Pescoli asked. “Dinner’s still a few hours off, but help yourself to anything in the fridge.”
Ivy hesitated, but Jeremy, still near the stove, was quick to the rescue. He opened the door of the refrigerator. “Coke? Water? What else do we have?” He held the door open, leaning inside like a big goof. But he came up with a tub of hummus and Mom found some crackers.
Ivy smiled, almost shyly. “Thanks,” she said softly as he handed her a bottle of water and practically melted under her gaze.
This was no good, Bianca thought with an inner groan. In fact it was big trouble. Jeremy had always wanted to play the part of the hero. Hell, he’d even gotten an award for saving Mom’s life once, and he was always rescuing someone or something. Girls were his favorite, of course. And Ivy, the girl who’d lost her parents so brutally, would be the perfect new mission.
Even though he had a new girlfriend, one no one in the family had met yet. All anyone knew about her was her name. Becca Johnson, someone who had recently moved to Grizzly Falls. He’d seemed all about her as recently as yesterday. But maybe things had changed since Ivy was flirting with him and Jeremy, that jerk-wad, was eating it up, flirting back, laughing a little too loud, his eyes riveted to Ivy’s pretty, but sly face.
In fact, from the way Jeremy was hanging on Ivy’s every word, it looked like Rebecca Johnson might be history.
And Bianca thought that could be real bad news.
Chapter 19
“This was not supposed to go down this way!”
TRonny Stillwell pounded on the steering wheel with one hand and glanced at Boxer in the passenger seat of the stolen truck. “We are so fucked. You know? So fucked!”
Troy noticed the speedometer needle inching over eighty-five. “Just keep it under the speed limit. We’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” Ronny croaked. “Fine? Are you fucking kidding me? We’ll never be fine again!” Instead of slowing he punched it, the truck flying along the highway. They were in Montana now with the dust of California, Nevada, and Idaho in their rearview. They’d entered Montana west of Yellowstone with a change of clothes, tools, weapons, and the contents of the Lathams’ safes and were heading north toward Missoula. Theirs wasn’t the quickest route to their destination, but Boxer figured it might be the safest, with less traffic and fewer cops. They hoped no law officer would notice their stolen pickup, an eight-year-old Chevy Silverado they’d found in a parking garage in Oakland with a spare key hidden in a wheel well. They’d placed Paul Latham’s gun collection, all cased up, into the bed of the truck, then slid into the cab, with Troy at the wheel. In Reno they’d switched drivers and license plates, stealing from a like-modeled truck in a public parking lot near a casino. Once they’d slipped into Montana, they’d done the same thing, so that the pickup they were driving was equipped with Montana plates. The only trouble was that this time, though they’d traded plates of the same make and model truck, this one was navy blue rather than black, so on close inspection, it might not pass muster.
It had taken time to find plates in the different states, extending the length of their road trip, but Boxer figured it was worth it to elude detection. That part had made sense. Dragging Stillwell along and into this whole mess had been a mistake. From the get-go Stillwell had been nervous. Antsy. Worse yet, on this trip, he’d gotten more hyped up rather than calming down the closer they got to their destination. As the desert of Nevada and most of Idaho had given way to grassland and finally the forested hills surrounding the Bitterroot Valley, Boxer had thought Stillwell would chill out. He’d expected Stillwell to breathe a little easier as the miles between them and San Francisco and the murder investigation had lengthened. But no way.
“We were cool,” he said now as he eyed the passing countryside. Hills and mountains, stark white in the coming night, cut upward and framed this valley with its meandering, icy river.
“You think we’re cool?” Stillwell gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles blanched and, in the illumination from the dashboard, his face was a mask of dread, skin pulled tight over his bony features, his eyes ever-shaded from the bill of a baseball cap with a New York Yankees logo.
“I think we should be,” Boxer said as the beams of headlights from an oncoming semi washed through the cabin. “As long as we cover each other’s ass, the cops can’t get us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then we should have stayed, man. Instead of stealing vehicles and running. We should have just stayed.”
“Too late now.” And it wouldn’t have worked. Ronny had already been ready to turn on him back in San Francisco. Troy had seen it in his eyes.
The trouble was that Stillwell was weak. The weakest link in all of this.
“We’re fucked.”
“You’ve said it enough.”
“I don’t know how I got into this in the first place.”