Hadley & Grace(17)

Crap.

“Why?” Mrs. Torelli mumbles through her tears as her head continues to shake.

“Why what?” Grace says, losing patience. Miles is in the car, and now that things are what they are, she really wants to get as far away from this place as possible.

“Why are you helping me?”

“I have no idea,” Grace says, thinking she should have just left her on the bathroom floor. She’s about to tell Mrs. Torelli to forget it when the woman pushes onto her haunches and holds out her arms. With great effort, Grace lifts her to her feet, then helps her the rest of the way to the SUV.

A minute later, they are parked beside her Honda.

Grace nearly cries with relief when she finds Miles exactly as she left him, peacefully asleep in his car seat.

She carries it to the SUV.

“You brought your baby to a robbery?” Mrs. Torelli says as Grace straps him in behind her.

“You wore stilettos to a robbery?” Grace shoots back. Then she slams the door and walks back to the Honda.





13





HADLEY


Hadley stares at the baby, watching him as he breathes. She is alone in the passenger seat of her own car at the scene of a robbery with a stranger’s baby.

She shakes her head. Of all the ways she’s imagined this night could have gone, she can honestly say she never imagined this.

She flexes her ankle, and fresh tears fill her eyes. She can’t walk. She can’t drive. She has no money. She’s not even out of Orange County, and any hope she had of escape has been quashed. Her best option now is to follow Frank’s plan and hope he never finds out she was a part of this.

She bites her lip to keep her emotions inside, knowing babies are very sensitive to the emotions of others, even when they’re asleep.

The door opens, and Grace climbs in, her cheeks flushed from walking from wherever it is she’s stowed her car and from carrying the bag with the money.

“Where to?” she asks.

“The Ayres Hotel on El Toro,” Hadley mumbles.

Grace glances back at the loaded trunk.

“We’re leaving,” Hadley says. “Or at least we were.”

Grace says nothing. Without a word, she starts the car and pulls onto the road.

After a few minutes, Hadley says, “That’s why I was taking the money. To get away.”

“I’m not giving you my money,” Grace says flatly.

“I wasn’t asking you to.” Hadley huffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I was just trying to explain what I was doing tonight, why I was trying to get my money.”

The car turns suddenly, cutting right so sharply Hadley slides sideways and needs to catch herself with her hand.

“You want anything?” Grace says as she pulls into the drive-through for In-N-Out.

“I have no money,” Hadley snipes.

“My treat,” Grace offers without an ounce of pity.

“No, thank you.”

Grace orders two cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and a chocolate milkshake, and Hadley hates her a little more. If Hadley ate like that, she’d be the size of a walrus in a week. Meanwhile Grace can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.

Grace sets the food on the console between them, and the smell of grease and salt wafts seductively past Hadley’s nose.

“You sure you don’t want something?”

Hadley shakes her head as her stomach groans in protest.

Grace pulls back onto the road but a block later veers to the curb and stops. Her hands grip the steering wheel, and her eyes are fixed on the black sky through the windshield, looking at it so intently Hadley wonders what she’s looking for.

Finally, with a great exhale through her nose, she turns. “We need to split it,” she says.

Hadley blinks.

“The money,” Grace says. “The deal was fifty-fifty. So, you need to take half.”

Hadley squints in distrust. “Why?” she says.

“Karma,” Grace says plainly. “I believe in it. It might make me a fool, but I feel like if I don’t give you your half, I’m going to regret it, that it will come back to haunt me, so you need to take your share.”





14





GRACE


Grace is huffing and puffing by the time she gets back to Mrs. Torelli’s room, carrying Miles in his car seat, the diaper bag full of money, her bag of food from In-N-Out, and the grocery bag with Miles’s diapers, bottles, and formula.

Mrs. Torelli sits in the chair beside the bed, her foot propped on the mattress, the ankle already swollen and blue.

Grace sets Miles on the bed, climbs up beside him, and dumps the diaper bag onto the quilt, creating a mound of cash—bundles of twenties, fifties, and hundreds. And the gun.

Her eyes slide from the gun to Mrs. Torelli.

“Sorry,” Mrs. Torelli mumbles. “I wouldn’t have actually shot you.”

She appears really upset, and Grace feels a little bad for her. Mrs. Torelli looks like the kind of woman who would have a hard time squashing a bug, and before tonight, she’s probably never even touched a gun.

Grace slides the gun back in the bag, where it’s out of sight, and turns back to the money. She stares at it, a queasy feeling in her gut. In her whole life, Grace has never had more than a month’s rent in her account, and now, inches away, is enough money to buy a whole new life. Money that isn’t hers.