NINETY-ONE

NINETY-ONE

"SO WHERE THE HELL did she go?" Silas shouts into his earbud as he puts his car in gear. "We have to find her!"

"Yeah, Silas, I know," says Blair through the earbuds. "The question is how."

Silas pulls out of the U-Move parking lot down the street from the bank just before police barricades go up, cordoning off the entire block because of the bomb threat.

"Well, you're the FBI! Can't you — I don't know — block the highway exits or something?"

"On what ground? Can't exactly advertise what I'm doing, can I?"

"Can't you track her?"

"I just tried. Her cell phone's off."

"So she definitely thought this through." Silas punches the steering wheel. "Are we sure she took a car?"

"I'm not sure of anything," Blair says. "But it's the only thing that makes sense. With all that money and those luggage carriers, how far could she expect to get on foot?"

"Do we — I mean, do we even know she took the money?"

"The safe-deposit boxes are empty, and the duffel bags are gone. So you tell me."

Right. Right. "So what the fuck do we do now?"

Blair doesn't immediately answer. Silas grips the wheel with white knuckles, ready to pull it off its mooring.

"Best guess, she's taking her kids and making a run for it with the money," says Blair. "I'm heading to the hospital. That's where the kids are. She won't go anywhere without those kids."

Silas races his car around the streets north of Spring-field Avenue, looking for anything out of the ordinary, any car speeding, someone running on foot. "What about me? What do I do?"

"Take a look around there locally. I doubt she's still in Champaign, but take a look around the surrounding neighborhood. Who knows?"

"Roger that."

"Don't do anything stupid if you find her, Silas," Blair says. "Remember, the money's the important part. Marcie I can deal with later."

"Easy for you to say."

"I'm telling you, I have her spooked."

"Is that right, Frankie? Does she seem spooked right now?"

"I don't know what's going on with her, okay? She surprised me. But I know this much — her husband might not survive, and she can't go to prison and leave her kids high and dry. She'll gladly trade the money to avoid that. I have all the leverage. If you go and kill her, you create a lot of headaches for me. We can still salvage this."

Silas doesn't respond.

Salvage this? Sure, Blair can just go back to his shitty job and his shitty life. His reputation will be intact. He'll have a pension. Maybe not his half of the money, but something, at least.

But Silas? Silas doesn't have shit. He's been on the run for the last fifteen years. He needs this money or it's game over for him.

And Marcie? She knows he's alive.

"Are you listening to me, Silas? Don't fucking kill her!"

Silas disconnects the phone call.

"Not until I get the money I won't," he says to himself. "But then she's all mine."