Hard Cash

16

She unfolded the plastic sheet. It had come off a roll and had been folded up like a huge tablecloth. She’d bought it months ago, at a paint store, with today’s purpose in mind. She began spreading the sheet across the floor, and when she was done, it covered nearly half the room — from the doorway, past the couch, on to the edge of the fireplace. She smoothed it, as though making a bed. Then she moved to the other side of the room and sat at the picnic-style table over near the bar. The windows in the cottage were shuttered, and none of the lights were turned on; there was nothing to catch the plastic surface and reflect. They wouldn’t notice the sheet of plastic when they came in, not until they’d stepped on it, heard it crinkle underfoot, and they wouldn’t begin to have time to realize that the plastic was there to catch the bloody mess they’d make, dying. Because they’d be dead already. The moment they stepped in the door.

She got herself a drink.

Her hand was steady, or as steady as could be expected, anyway. She would admit to butterflies in her stomach, but she wasn’t what you’d call nervous, not really; not any worse than waiting to go on stage in one of those beauty pageants she’d been in years before. Anyway, the Scotch and soda felt good going down. Warm, despite the ice. It settled her, calmed her.

She glanced at her watch: 7:55. The robbery itself should be over by now. They’d be getting in the van soon (if they weren’t already) and driving down the alley and into the car wash. They could be here in fifteen minutes. Twenty, at most. At the very most.

The hairy part was she liked them. The young one, especially. Jon. George was right: Jon really was just a boy, a decent kid who’d somehow gotten mixed up with the older guy, the man she knew as Logan. If she could have thought of a way to spare the boy, she would have. And she’d take no pleasure in killing Nolan, either. She felt a sort of kinship with the man, though she didn’t really understand why. She felt she had something in common with him, that they were somehow alike.

But she wasn’t about to let any soft feelings about those two make it hard for her; killing them was an unpleasant but necessary part of what she and George set out to do. So it would be done.

And it would sure as hell be easier than this morning, she thought, sipping her Scotch, shaking her head.

She hadn’t planned to be there with George, in the beginning. Ideally, George should have been able to carry out that end of it himself. But the more she’d thought about it, the more she knew he wouldn’t be up to it without her beside him, supporting him, putting the gun in his hands. All but pulling the damn trigger for him.

It had been a risk, her being there. She’d made sure no one had any chance of seeing her go in or out of the place, but it was still a risk. Though after seeing how George had handled it, she was goddamn glad she’d been there. Oh, he’d managed to do it, managed to shoot the bitch, all right, but he’d gotten flaky as hell afterwards. Off his fucking nut. Thank God she’d been there to soothe him, to get him on his feet for the rest of the ordeal.

She looked at her watch again: not long now. Ten minutes and they could be here.

She finished her drink, got up from the table, and went into the bedroom.

The shotgun lay on the bed.

Twin barrels. Twin triggers. Sleek, black gun with walnut stock.

She’d practiced with it, in the wooded area around the cottage. Nothing elaborate; aim at a tree and hit it, that’s all she needed to be able to do. It’d be close range. Just so she had the feel of the gun — was used to its kick. She’d have to fire twice, after all, and had to be ready to reload and shoot again, if something should go wrong.

In a few minutes, it would all be over — all but the final few grisly steps. She and George would transfer the bodies to the van; George would return to Port City to play bereaved widower; and she, after nightfall, would drive the van and its gory cargo and leave it along the side of a nearby (but not too nearby) back road. The shotgun would be thrown in the river. The authorities would be looking for the nonexistent third member of the robbery team, the man who had “held Cora Rigley hostage” while Nolan and Jon looted the bank, the man who killed Cora Rigley when she tried to take a gun from her jewelry drawer and defend herself, the man who then double-crossed and killed his two partners and disappeared with all that money.

It gave her a sense of satisfaction to have fooled a pro like Nolan. The crucial thing had been to make him accept the idea of Cora Rigley as hostage. George had insisted to Nolan it was necessary; he’d said that a bank president who is the victim of two bank robberies within so short a span of time is going to look somewhat silly and incompetent no matter what, but at least with his wife in jeopardy, some sympathy would be aroused. Besides, it would keep everyone at the bank from contacting the police right away. Nolan, of course, had balked at involving George’s wife, but George had explained she wouldn’t be involved at all — that Cora was a drunk who slept till noon; that he would cut their phone wires the morning of the robbery; that their second car was in the shop, leaving Cora stranded there at home.

“What about later,” Nolan had wanted to know, “when your wife is questioned about being a hostage and knows nothing about it?”

George had explained, “I’ll say you people grabbed me outside the house and that I never actually saw one of the thieves with my wife.”

And, finally, Nolan had agreed the wife-as-hostage angle was worth including.

And it certainly was.

She smiled, sat on the bed, and cradled the shotgun in her lap, thinking about what life would be like as a millionaire’s wife.

When she walked out with the shotgun into the other room, she was totally unprepared for the door to open and the two figures in hunting jackets to enter. It was too early. She hadn’t heard the van approach. They couldn’t be here yet.

But they were.

She fired the shotgun.

One barrel at a time.

And the two men in hunting jackets, the older man and the young one, too, caught the full blast and lifted off the floor and flopped bloodily back down again on the crinkly plastic shroud.