Stolen Prey

immediately, on the parole violation, and was returned to her job in the cafeteria. She did well with it, and was content. Bird was held in the Ramsey County jail pending sentencing, with a recommended sentence of six years.Waters would get a similar amount of time tacked onto her original sentence.
    S ANDERSON AND K LINE met at a Caribou Coffee in downtown Minneapolis.
    “The attorney says we’re good. They’re not going to prosecute,” Kline said, as they huddled over their table. “He thinks we ought to sue the cops for putting those Mexicans on me. If it wasn’t for the cops, I never would have gotten shot.”
    Sanderson said, “Are you crazy? You get into court, you’d have to perjure yourself, you’d have to—”
    “I told him I wasn’t interested. I just want to get away from everything,” Kline said. “I told him I want to travel, maybe get a job on the West Coast.”
    “Good,” Sanderson said. “You think we’re safe?”
    “The cops say the Mexicans aren’t interested anymore. The government’s got the gold.”
    Sanderson thought about it for a moment, then said, “We’ll have to go to the farm sooner or later. When the cops are
sure
that we don’t have anything.”
    “That’ll be weeks. Maybe months,” Kline said.
    “Nobody’s touched the place for years. We should be fine.”
    “What about Edie?” Kline asked.
    “If she really has no memory, then I guess we split her share,” Sanderson said. “But if she gets her memory back, we cut it three ways, and she gets a million and a third.”
    “I hated giving back all that gold,” Kline said. “Maybe we should have kept
three
million each.”
    “They wouldn’t have bought that,” Sanderson said. “I was worried they wouldn’t buy eighteen million,” Sanderson said. “And giving it back killed any motive they had to keep looking for it.”
    “Yeah. Still. We were almost
really
rich.”
    A LBITIS’S FATHER bought a plane ticket that would take his daughter back to Tel Aviv. She got out of the hospital, spent three days in a downtown hotel, making sure she was well enough to fly.
    On the last day, as she was crossing the hotel lobby, she saw Sanderson watching from a side hall. She went that way, and Sanderson backed up, into a phone niche.
    Albitis took a last look around, stepped into the niche, and grabbed Sanderson by the blouse. Sanderson smiled and said, “How’re you feeling, Edie?”
    Albitis leaned into her face: “Where’s my money, bitch?”