“Look in the bag,” Merker said. “That’ll take your mind off food.”

I heard the zipper of the gym bag, then Leo say, “Holy shit. There’s lots and lots of money in here! Like, even more than I thought!”

“Pretty good, huh?” Merker’s nose was twitching.

My last-ditch plan, to turn Leo Edgars against Gary Merker and persuade Leo to let me go, had failed. I had pretty much run out of ideas.

But there was something in the back of my mind. Something Trixie had mentioned. When we’d first gotten together and she’d told me about her problems with a reporter from the Suburban.

Somewhere behind us, I thought I heard sirens.

“Hey, Gary, you hear that?” Leo said.

“Yeah, I hear it. Nobody’s going to catch us, buddy. We got ourselves a kick-ass getaway car here today.”

I wondered just how many witnesses there were to Merker’s misdeeds, other than myself. Sarah and Katie, the customers at the Burger Crisp, the other drivers out in Oakwood who’d seen him bulldoze another car out of the way with his pickup truck. And that was just today. The evidence and eyewitness testimony that could be used against Merker and Leo—clearly not a couple of rocket scientists—had to be overwhelming. You didn’t have to be a genius to bring misery to a great many people. The question was how many more people’s lives they’d ruin before it all caught up with them.

“What are we gonna do with all this money?” Leo asked.

“Retire,” Merker said, reaching down into the console for Trixie’s yellow wooden pencil. “We’re going to retire.” He turned the pencil around so the eraser end was pointed away from him. An extraction aid. I couldn’t look.

“I like the sound of that,” Leo said. “I don’t have much of a pension, you know.”

The sirens were getting louder. Merker glanced into the rearview mirror. “Leo, I can’t take my eyes off the road. Whaddya see behind us?”

“Nothing much,” Leo said. “Nobody’s coming after—hang on.”

“What?”

“I can see a flashing light way back there.”

Merker turned abruptly down a side street. The car was made to corner. He’d only gone a block when he turned again. The belt cut into my neck as the tires squealed. I made a hacking noise.

We’d been having coffee, Trixie and I, in one of those joints where if you order just a regular coffee they look at you like you just got off the boat. She’d just picked up her mail. Said something about how, in her line of work, a post office box was the way to go. The less mail coming to your actual house, the better.

“I think you lost him,” Leo said. “Nice going.”