Twelve thousand dollars. Kimbra had wanted to leave town with more, had wanted enough to walk into a car dealership and pull out a stack of bills and buy herself a vehicle that would never break down, that would get them out west with no fear of failure.

Well. She and KT would have to take their chances in her creaking Pontiac. If things got tight on the road to Los Angeles, Kimbra supposed he could do some of the work she had long suspected he’d gotten up to in Dallas.

The girl wasn’t an idiot. Every weekend when KT went on a business trip, he’d left Bentley with the same amount of product, taken it to a guy he said he’d met online—Kimbra didn’t know who, nor did she want to. Then, after hanging in the city for the weekend to keep up the front that he was at the coast, KT would return Sunday evening. The only problem? He always left with the same amount of product, but returned with different sums of cash.

He’d explained this away by saying that sometimes his guy was a little short of money, and then sometimes he was paying him back what he owed, but Kimbra had never quite bought this. When KT had first come to her with his plan he’d sworn—sworn up and down—that he wasn’t actually dealing drugs like Garrett, just carrying them to someone in the city who wanted a steady, white-skinned supplier who could carry a large amount of product unmolested up the highway. “When was the last time I got pulled over?” KT had told her with a laugh. “You know how special I am to them?”

So if this guy in Dallas was such a big shot, such a sure thing, how come he never had their pre-agreed amount?

Kimbra knew that KT left Bentley with the same amount of product on every trip because she had been the one to unpack it. Every other week a plain brown box arrived at the hardware store with a return address in Seattle. Her father never unpacked any boxes, thank God. If he did, he might have discovered a vacuum-sealed foil bag that weighed a little under two ounces and bore the cryptic words SEALED FOR MY FRESHNESS.

Kimbra had never opened a single pouch. She didn’t want to know what was inside. When KT had come to her in the spring with a half-formed plan he had hatched with Garrett Mason, that had been her one stipulation: she never wanted to see whatever it was they were moving.

So if KT had driven to Dallas with the same amount of product on Fridays and returned with different sums of money on Sundays, Kimbra knew that in between KT hadn’t just been “waiting for his guy to sell our shit,” as he’d told her. No. KT was earning extra on top. The sight of the escorting ad that Whiskey Brazos sent her yesterday had solved a number of suspicions. Kimbra would recognize that dick anywhere. Ah well.