Lucky(15)

The bus was starting to slow. It turned, and she could see the canyon off in the distance.

Soon, she walked off the bus along with everyone else; the strangely familiar man was up ahead, and soon she lost sight of him and felt relief. There was no crisis, nothing to worry about; he was just some guy. She moved slowly along behind everyone else, pretending to organize her things. Then, when no one was looking at her—and no one had really been looking at her anyway—she turned and headed in the opposite direction.

For about half a mile, she walked along the side of the road without seeing more than a few trucks. She followed the signs for Tusayan. It was steaming hot and she was rationing her water, but eventually she decided it was time for a break and a long drink: perhaps she’d walk faster if she stopped thinking about how thirsty she was. She slid the backpack off her shoulders, then bent over and searched for the large water bottle she had purchased before getting on the bus.

She was just lifting the bottle to her lips when someone hit her from behind. The bottle flew from her fingers and onto the dirt in front of her, lidless, hemorrhaging its contents. She felt a hand clamping down on her forearm like a vise.

Cold metal against her neck. A switchblade. She looked into the eyes of the man from the bus, and realized in an instant that she had seen him before—twice. He had been in the poker game with her two nights before, and in the poker game she had been watching yesterday, while scoping out the kid.

With the hand that was not holding the knife he ripped the belt bag from her waist. “Hello again.”

“Hello,” she said politely, trying to maintain her Bonnie Skinner the Tourist veneer. “Could you please let me go? You’re hurting me.”

He laughed an ugly laugh. “You can drop the act,” he said. “I know who you are.”

Lucky noticed a truck way off in the distance, hurtling toward them.

“It is you, isn’t it? I thought so, yeah. Those eyes aren’t forgettable. Neither are your tits, even under that big T-shirt.” She remembered him ogling her when she’d been playing poker two days before. He had seemed a harmless annoyance. She didn’t normally underestimate people like this. “Saw you hanging around at the poker table yesterday, and there was something about you. I realized you were the same broad who had bluffed us all out. Takes a scammer to know one, right? Then I realized I’d seen a face just like yours on television.” He was moving the blade slowly along her neck, stopping at each freckle, a slow and dangerous pause. “I never forget a face,” he said. “It’s my talent.” His knife snagged on the chain around her neck. He tugged. “What’s this?” he asked, touching the gold cross.

“Costume jewelry.” He tugged again, but the chain held. He dumped out the belt pack and the lottery ticket blew away. Instinctively, she snagged it with her foot and stood on it.

“Where is it? All that money you stole from that kid? All that money you stole from those folks they were talking about on the TV?” He dumped her backpack now. “Where ya hidin’ it? Come on.” He pulled her by the arm down an embankment and she was forced to stumble forward and lift her foot. The lottery ticket blew into some sagebrush. She lost sight of it as he dragged her behind a line of trees. The road disappeared from view, too.

She considered her options. She could raise her knee, hit him hard between the legs, then start to run and hopefully make it to the roadside by the time the truck passed by. But what if her timing was off, or what if the driver didn’t stop, or what if the driver also recognized her and called the police? Or what if she didn’t hit the man hard enough and he stabbed her? There were too many variables.

And she had waited too long. She heard the truck pass. The man pressed the knife into her neck so hard it stung. “We can do this the hard way,” he said, and he was so close she could smell his oily hair and his rank breath. “Or the easy way.” He pulled at her T-shirt, and it ripped at her collarbone. “I know you have more than what you’re telling me.”

Lucky held up a hand, palm out, in front of herself, feeble protection. “Okay, okay. Just hang on. Let me get it. The money, I’m getting it.” She reached into her bra while he watched too closely. She pulled out the first wad of cash from her bra, then the second one from her pockets. She handed both to him and he lowered the knife and counted the money.

“Bullshit,” he said when he was done counting. “That’s not all of it.”

“I only took what I needed from the kid. I spent some of it on a bus ticket and—”

“Bullshit. You know what? Take off your clothes. Everything. Take it all off, show me what you’re hiding.”

“Listen, I swear, that’s all the money I have. My partner ran off with the money from the Boise scam.”

“Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”

Lucky had grown up knowing there were some things you just had to do, like swallowing medicine or jumping off a high diving board into deep water or stealing from people you wanted to love.

But this was not one of them.

She straightened to her full height, which was about an inch taller than the man. She swept her gaze over him. He was nothing; he was no one. “You have it all there,” Lucky said, her voice stern and commanding. “All my money. Everything. And what’s there, that’s not bad for a day’s work. But I can give you something else—”