The Bodies Left Behind

take care of the women but let the girl be.”
    But, funny, Lewis was bothered by something else.
    “One thing I want to say. I should’ve before. But . . .”
    “Go on, Comp.”
    “That robbery I told you about?”
    “The robbery?”
    “The bank.”
    In the snow, Hart remembered. Where he’d traded shots with the bank guard who was a former cop. “Yeah?”
    “Wasn’t quite honest with you.”
    “That right?”
    “Something’s been eating at me, Hart.”
    He was no longer the sarcastic “my friend.” And hadn’t been for hours. He said, “Go ahead, Comp. What is it?”
    “Truth is . . . we didn’t get away with fifty thousand. Or whatever I said. Was closer to . . . okay, it was closer to three. Really two and some change. And, okay, it wasn’t a bank. Was a guard refilling the ATM outside . . . and I only fired to scare him. He dropped his gun. And peed his pants, I think. He didn’t have any backup piece either. . . . I boost things up sometimes, exaggerate, you know. Got into the habit around my brother. Kind of had to, growing up . . . got disrespected a lot. So. There you have it.”
    “That’s it, the confession?”
    “Guess so.”
    “Hell, Comp, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody didn’t have a healthy ego. Way you can look at it, you made two thousand bucks for, what, two minutes’ work?”
    “’Bout that.”
    “That’s about sixty thousand an hour. And he peedhis pants? Hell, that made it worth it right there.” Hart laughed.
    Lewis asked shyly, “You still interested in doing a heist together, you and me?”
    “You bet I am. Sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can start planning some jobs that don’t crash and burn. One hundred ten percent.”
    Repressing a grin, Lewis tapped his cigarettes again, like a good Catholic blessing himself.

    THE TREK WAS much harder than she’d anticipated.
    The hillside was so steep in places that it couldn’t be climbed, at least not with a nine-year-old in tow. Brynn frequently had to find alternative routes.
    “How about there?”
    Brynn glanced at the place where Michelle was pointing. It seemed to be a fairly level path between a rock ledge and a dense cluster of trees. Brynn considered it but that way would leave them completely exposed from below, with no escape routes. They had to bypass the path, taking precious minutes to find a way around. Brynn wasn’t entirely confident that Hart had bought the ploy about Point of Rocks. She was beginning to feel an itching sensation on the back of her neck, as if the men were drawing close.
    The women continued upward, looping around aformation of limestone, twenty feet high. Brynn could see that rock climbers had been here. Metal spikes had been pounded into the cracks. Tonight the hobby struck her as pure madness. Something Joey would try. But she put her son out of her head. Concentrate, she told herself.
    A brief respite as they traversed a fairly level trail. Then upward again, gasping for breath, all three of them.
    The sound of the Snake running through the gorge on their right grew softer as they moved higher. Brynn guessed they were now sixty feet or so above the river.
    “Oh, no,” Michelle whispered. Brynn too stopped. Their level plain suddenly ended in a sheer rock wall, a dead end. To the right, the ground extended to a steep drop-off into the gorge. Brynn walked toward it slowly. Dizzy, uncomfortable with the height, she didn’t get to the edge itself but returned quickly. “We can’t go that way.”
    She sighed in frustration. The men couldn’t be more than a half mile from the interstate but the hike was taking forever. To go back and find a way around the wall would add another ten minutes.
    Brynn looked back, then surveyed the wall. It was about twenty feet high and not completely vertical. The slope was probably seventy degrees in most places and the surface was cracked and craggy. She asked Michelle, “Can you do it?”
    “Damn right, I can.”
    Brynn smiled, said to Amy, “You remember when you were little, Amy? You and I’ll climb together. We’ll play piggyback?”
    “I guess. Rudy wants me to ride piggyback sometimes. I don’t like it. He smells bad.”
    Brynn shot a glance to Michelle, who grimaced in disgust. But Brynn smiled at Amy. “Well, I probably don’t smell too good either. But it’ll be fun. Come on. Let’s go.” Brynn turned around. She whispered to Michelle, “I’ll go up first. If something happens, I drop