So she was not accustomed to being struck by men of any color; did not invite it, would not tolerate it, and believed with every fiber in swift, unmitigated retribution. Which is why she couldn’t get her mind off the shotgun in the trunk of Tom Krome’s Honda.
“You got a plan yet?” she said. “Because I’ve got one if you don’t.”
Krome said, “I’m sure you do.”
He’d dropped back to put some distance between them and the red pickup truck, which was weaving slightly and accelerating in unpredictable bursts. The driver was bombed—even a rookie patrolman could have spotted it. Krome didn’t want the rednecks to crash into anybody, but he also didn’t want them to get pulled over on a DUI. Who knew what they might do to a cop? And if they allowed themselves to be tossed in jail, it might be weeks before they got out, depending on how many felony warrants were outstanding. JoLayne Lucks didn’t have that much time.
Krome’s plan was to follow the two men to where they lived, and to case the place.
“In other words, we’re stalking,” JoLayne said.
Krome hoped her tone was one of impatience and not derision. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the goal was to retrieve your Lotto ticket. If you’d rather just shoot these morons and go home, let me know so I can bail out.”
She raised her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You’re angry. I’d be angry, too.”
“Furious,” she said.
“Stay cool. We’re close.”
“You memorized the license tag?”
“I told you before. Yes,” Krome said.
“Hey, they’re speeding up again.”
“So I noticed.”
“Don’t lose ’em.”
“JoLayne!”
“Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”
They tailed the truck all the way to Homestead. On the way, it stopped three times along the side of the highway, where one or both of the rednecks nonchalantly got out to urinate. Whenever that happened, Krome kept driving. Once he got ahead, he’d quickly pull over in an unlit spot and wait for the pickup to pass by again. Eventually the rednecks turned east off Highway One, then south on a dirt road that bisected a tomato farm. Here there was no other traffic—only a rolling dust cloud kicked up by the truck. The dust smelled faintly of pesticide.
JoLayne poked her head from the car and pretended to drink the air. “Green acres! Men of the soil!” she exclaimed.
Krome slowed and turned off the headlights, so the rednecks wouldn’t spot them in the rearview. After a few miles the tomato fields gave way to palmetto scrub and Dade County pines. Gradually the road turned and ran parallel to a wide drainage canal. Across the rippled water, JoLayne was able to make out the shapes of rough shacks, small house trailers and abandoned cars.
A half mile ahead on the dirt road, the pickup’s brake lights flashed brightly through the whorls of dust. Krome immediately stopped the Honda and killed the engine. The silence announced that the driver of the truck had done the same.
Krome said, “Nice neighborhood.”
“It’s not exactly Star Island.” JoLayne touched his arm. “Can we please open the trunk now?”
“In a second.”
They couldn’t see the red truck, but they heard the doors slam. Then came a man’s voice, booming down the canal through the darkness.
JoLayne whispered: “What’s that all about?”
Before Tom Krome could answer, the night was split open by gunfire.
Alone in the middle of nowhere, Shiner had wigged out. The noises were the same as those in the woods outside Grange—frogs, crickets, raccoons—but here every peep and rustle seemed louder and more ominous. Shiner couldn’t stop thinking about all those NATO troops bivouacked in the Bahamas.
Just eighty miles that away, Bodean Gazzer had said, pointing, acrost the Gulf Stream.
Stunted as it was, Shiner’s imagination had no difficulty conjuring a specter of blue-helmeted enemy soldiers poised on an advancing flotilla. He became consumed with the idea that the United States of America might be invaded at any minute, while Bode and Chub were off drinking beer.
Acting against orders, Shiner got the AR-15 out of Chub’s mobile home and climbed a trellis to the flimsy roof. There, in his moldy bush hat and new camouflage parka, he waited. And while he couldn’t see as far as the Bahama Islands, he had an excellent view of the dirt road and the farm canal.