The Con (13 page)

"I'm doing horribly. I've broken every one
of your rules."

"You've only broken two."

I turn in my chair to look at him. "I'm
pretty sure by breaking rule one and two, I automatically broke
rule number three. I'm not cut out for this kind of career."

"Lucky for you, you'll never have to do this
kind of thing again. One and done."

The door behind Cheyenne's desk opens and
she walks in holding a black medium size duffle bag. Behind her is
a young man around my age holding two more duffle bags of equal
size. He places them down on the desk in front of us and then
leaves through the same door. Cheyenne places her duffle bag down
beside the other two.

"Here's the five million you requested. It's
mostly in large bills, but half a million of it is in
twenties."

"That's no problem," Jagger says, standing
up from his chair. He fastens the button on his suit before shaking
Cheyenne's hand. I follow his lead and stand up, shaking her hand
as well.

We're almost finished. Thank God.

"It was a pleasure helping you today, Mr.
and Mrs. Esposito. I hope to see you again soon." She smiles her
fake smile at us again, but this time I notice something that
wasn't there earlier. She's nervous. She wasn't nervous before.
Something changed from when she left to go count the money, to when
she came back with the money.

I look over to Jagger to see if he notices
this, too, but a commotion coming from the other side of the closed
door that's directly behind us grabs both of our attention.

Jagger rushes over to the door and peels it
open, peeking between the opening of the wooden door and trim. His
body goes still for just a split second, enough for me to notice
the change, and then he's moving. He closes the door and locks it
from inside. He turns, his eyes falling on mine and even though his
sunglasses are back on, I can tell he's panicked.

"Is there a back entrance out of here?" His
voice comes out fast and assertive.

Cheyenne looks back and forth between Jagger
and me before stuttering out her words. "Ye–yes... b...but he'll
kill me... me... if I let you escape out... out that w–way."

Who will? Who will kill her? Who is out
there?

So quickly it takes a second for my brain to
catch up with what I'm seeing, Jagger's hand slips into the back
waistband of his pants and comes forward with a semi-automatic
black revolver. He points it right at Cheyenne.

"And I'll kill you if you don't." He grabs
one of the duffle bags and walks toward Cheyenne, resting the
muzzle of the gun in the center of her forehead. "Now you're going
to open that door behind you and get us out of here, before the men
out in the lobby even know we're missing."

"O–okay," she mumbles and then we're off. I
go to reach for the other duffle bags on the desk, but Jagger stops
me from taking them.

"Leave the bags and come on, twinkle toes,"
he whispers loudly and I follow behind him out the back entrance of
Cheyenne's office.

A gun goes off from somewhere behind me and
I start to run, Jagger and Cheyenne now running, too. We run down a
brightly lit hallway and straight to the back exit door of the
bank. As soon as we break through the door we're in the back
alleyway of the bank and an alarm goes off, alerting everyone
inside of our exit.

Cheyenne stands in the doorway as Jagger
grabs one of my hands with his free hand and we start to run, my
ankle aching from trying to run in these heels. We're dodging from
one alley to the next until we approach an abandoned car. Jagger
checks the doors but they're locked so we continue to run.

I keep looking behind me, waiting for
whoever is after us to catch up, but no one is behind us... yet.
There's a white van ahead of us and we sprint forward. Jagger
checks the driver's side and this time the door opens freely, so he
throws the duffle bag in and then he grabs me by the waist, picking
me up so I can climb inside. As soon as I'm over the seat he's
climbing in behind me.

There are no keys in the van, but to my
surprise Jagger is able to start it up in less than a minute.

"Hold on tight," he yells anxiously, and I
listen. I hold onto the handle above the passenger window and
buckle myself in with my free hand, as Jagger pulls out of the
alley and onto the side road. He's driving like a maniac but I
don’t tell him to slow down. I won't. Whatever he saw must have
been enough for us to abandon two bags of money, to abandon
everything, just to make an escape.

Was it the cops? Was it Angelo? I'm not
sure, but I know right now is not the time to ask. I'll ask once
Jagger's driving has calmed down and it looks like our immediate
danger is behind us.

Literally.

"Why didn't we just take the Bentley?"

"Because we couldn't go to the front of the
bank," he replies calmly before taking one hand off the wheel and
reaching for his sunglasses. He takes them off, tossing them up on
the gray dashboard of the van.

I take mine off, too, glad to have that
small mask ripped away, and then my hands meet at the back of my
neck to undo my bun. I let my long hair fall across my shoulders
and then I bring my hands to the buttons of my pale violet blouse,
unbuttoning the top two buttons so I can physically relax a
little.

Jagger pulls out onto Interstate 17 and then
we're speeding, going even faster than before and as far away from
Phoenix as possible. I notice we're not going south, which is the
direction of home, but instead we're headed north.

I want to ask him where we're going.
Shouldn't we be meeting up with Angelo? But deep down inside I know
wherever we're going is the right decision because Jagger promised
to protect me. Wherever we're going must be because he wants to
keep me safe. He wants to keep us safe.

Chapter Eleven

After driving for a few hours in silence
it's getting dark and I have to pee. I try to distract myself by
singing A Bad Dream by Keane, a song that has been stuck in my head
all day.

After about the thirteenth round Jagger
pulls off the road and into a town called Tuba City. The town is
small, with a Navajo Trading Post and a few shops. He pulls into a
gas station to fuel up and I finally find words to say to him.

"I've got to use the washroom." Not exactly
the first thing I imagined leaving my lips after the long drive,
but my bladder is doing the talking right now.

He doesn't look at me as he grabs the handle
at the gas pump and starts to fill up. "I'm sure they have one
inside. I'll meet you in there."

I turn away from him and walk inside,
ignoring the chill in the evening air. Jagger seems like he might
need a minute to be alone so he can take back control of the
situation. I just hope he doesn’t leave me here.

Wait, he wouldn’t leave me here stranded.
Would he?

This new thought has me peeing at a prize
horse pace and then I'm out the door and in the store section of
the gas station. Jagger is at the counter with two sodas and a bag
of gummy bears in front of him. The cashier behind the counter
pulls down a pack of smokes and hands them over to Jagger and I
walk up beside him, waiting silently as the man rings him up.

"Your purchase along with gas will be forty
seven dollars and twelve cents." Jagger pulls out a wallet from the
front pocket of his Calvin Klein dress pants and hands over a
credit card. I only get a glance at it, but it's enough to see the
credit card isn't in Jagger's name.

He hands me a soda and the bag of gummy
bears as he pockets the cigarettes and opens his soda to take a
sip. The cashier hands Jagger the card back and his receipt, then
we're back out the door and headed to the stolen van. When we get
inside I decide to finally break my silence.

"I'm starting to really freak out, Jagger.
You need to fill me in on what is going on."

He grips the steering wheel tightly, his
knuckles go white before he releases it and starts the van again
without a key. "I will, twinkle toes. Just let me take care of a
few more things and I'll tell you everything."

We pull out of the gas station and head down
a dimly lit road in this unknown town. My eyes fall on the black
duffle bag on the floor near my feet. "Why did you use a stolen
credit card when we have a bag of cash in here?"

"Old habit," he says shortly as his eyes
wander out over the dark road, searching for something. A few
minutes later we pull over to the curb and he puts the van in park.
"Grab your stuff."

He grabs his soda and sunglasses before
reaching over and grabbing the duffle bag underneath my feet.
Grabbing my sunglasses, soda and the gummy bears he handed me
earlier, I join him outside of the van.

As he's walking away from the van he
whispers over his shoulder, "Follow me."

We walk several blocks, the only light
coming from the sporadic street lamps we walk under. When we hit
another patch of pitch black, Jagger stops walking and approaches a
maroon Sedan. It's locked so he plays with the door a little and is
able to get it open after a few tries. He tosses the duffle bag in
the back seat and unlocks the passenger door, telling me to get
in.

So I do.

He rummages through the middle console and
then the glove compartment before his hand is filled with a set of
keys. "Amateurs," he chuckles out under his breath before starting
the car and driving down the dark street.

"Why did we fill up the van if you were
planning on switching vehicles?" I ask from the passenger seat.

"Because we needed to be prepared just in
case we weren’t able to switch vehicles like I wanted to. Part of
my job is to be ready for any scenario. My quick thinking is what
got us out of the bank when we did."

His words bring my focus back on the hand
gun he has in the back of his pants and the complete shock I felt
when I realized he was carrying a gun in the first place.

"Jagger? Did you mean it when you told
Cheyenne you'd kill her if she didn't help?"

He doesn't answer me and continues driving
until he hops onto Route 160 and we head northeast out of
Arizona.

"Are you going to kill me?"

He swerves slightly off the road, clearly
startled by my question, before straightening the vehicle out and
continuing on the road. "Why would you think I'd kill you, twinkle
toes?"

"Because you don’t like to work with a
partner and the job went bad."

"So?"

"Cause two can keep a secret if one of them
is dead," I sing out.

"What?" He looks over at me as he raises an
eyebrow in question.

"It's a song. It's part of the theme song to
Pretty Little Liars."

"Pretty little, huh?"

"You know, the show?" He's watching me
dumbfounded "Oh, you don't know the show. Do you not watch
television? It's one of the best shows on TV. I'm sure one of the
many trailer tramps you date has seen it."

"Can we not talk about the girls I sleep
with and get back to the point? You thought I might kill you
because I brought you in on this con and now you know too
much?"

"Well... yeah."

"Twinkle toes, I would never hurt you.
You've got to believe that." His voice sounds so broken and
sincere, like the thought of hurting me would physically hurt him,
too.

I think about everything I know about
Jagger, from that first moment I met him eleven years ago, to the
way he protected me today at the bank. There's honesty in every
word he's ever spoken to me. He wouldn't hurt me. I know he's
telling the truth.

"You're right. I know you wouldn't kill me.
I was just being silly and letting a show, and everything I know
about criminals, get to me."

The car grows silent again and I need to
fill the silence with something. I reach over and turn the dial on
the radio until the stereo is on. Coldplay's U.F.O. is playing
through the speakers. Closing my eyes I breathe in the lyrics and
let them saturate my soul.

"I wouldn't have hurt Cheyenne either. I may
be a criminal, but I'm not a murderer."

"I know," I reply, my eyes still closed as I
try to listen to the next song that comes through the speakers. I
have no idea where our next destination will be, but I'm choosing
to trust wherever Jagger is taking us, and that thought is what's
making it so easy to sit back with my eyes closed and relax.

I drift off to sleep and don't wake up until
a few hours later when we're pulling into a seedy motel. "Where are
we?" I ask groggily, stretching my arms out above my head.

"Cortez, Colorado. We're going to stay here
for the night and then hit the road sometime tomorrow. We need to
find a city to stay in for a few days until we figure out what
we're going to do. If we drive to a big city it'll be easier to
hide out."

"Oh."

He looks over and smiles at me before
reaching out and tucking the loose strands of my hair behind my
ear. "I'm going to go get us a room. Wait here until I get
back."

Opening the driver side door he slips out
and I watch his backside as he makes his way to the motel office. A
green vacancy sign is glowing in the window. I notice he didn't
take any cash from the duffle bag this time either.

I look around the parking lot where all
different types of makes and models of cars are parked sporadically
across the asphalt. Some of these people are staying the night,
some probably live here, and I bet even a few are renting a room by
the hour, just enough time to get laid and leave. Two vending
machines light up a small walkway that divides the motel in two
halves and my stomach growls for the first time today.

I'm famished.

Thoughts of burger and greasy pizza consume
me when the driver side door opens again and Jagger slides behind
the wheel. "We're in room one twenty six."