Carter
As they drove down the highway, Carter was still having a difficult time believing he was going along with this. It seemed insane that someone who was a regular citizen the day before yesterday was suddenly so desperate to commit a felony.
But did it really?
He thought back to when he'd gotten out of the Army and decided to join the Hobgoblins. The life of freedom and adventure had appealed to him, and he'd known that the skills the military had taught him would be assets. Had he been upset by the thought of the crimes that would naturally accompany such a life?
No, he realized, he hadn't. He'd accepted that part of it quite easily. Iraq had made him comfortable with violence, and when he engaged in it on behalf of the Hobgoblins, it was always necessary—never random or unprovoked, never aimed at anyone who was some blameless citizen. Selling drugs and running guns hadn't bothered him, either. People would always want those things, he reasoned, so he may as well be the one to supply them and profit from them. And as for the robberies, the banks and stores he hit were generally insured, and no one got hurt.
The more he considered it, the more he understood that when the time had come all those years ago, he'd stepped across the line from civilian to criminal with hardly any hesitation at all. It had seemed a small price to pay to abandon a former life he'd never really felt like he'd belonged to anyway and become part of a group who looked out for each other.
So who was he to judge Billie for making that same choice? Maybe she wasn't just some bored thrill-seeker out for a joyride with an outlaw. Maybe she truly felt the need to leave her old self behind and find a new one instead.
“What about there?” Billie asked, pointing out the windshield at a liquor store.
“No good,” he said, shaking his head. “Liquor stores are too risky. They get robbed a lot, so there are always lots of security measures in place, and the clerks are generally armed to the teeth. Also, see how the window is covered up with all those posters and signs? That means we won't be able to scope it out from a distance first, to see what we'll be dealing with.”
“Okay,” said Billie. “So what kinds of places are we looking for?”
“Well, keep in mind that usually, if you're planning a robbery like this, you'd want to check the place out a few days in advance,” Carter began. It felt strange, explaining this to another person. Most of the guys he'd rolled with already had experience with this stuff. “That would let you figure out who works during which shifts, when the place will be emptiest, all that. But since we can't really do that this time, we need a small store with a big window. It'll let us see how many people are inside and what the layout is.”
“What else?” Billie asked eagerly.
“Our best bet is probably a gas station,” he said. “We shouldn't have to shoot more than once—at the beginning, like you said, to plant the bullet and also to freak them out enough to cooperate. But if there are gas pumps around, it'll make the clerk too nervous to resist. He won't know how crazy or stupid we are, so he won't risk anything that would make us blast off and blow the whole place to hell.”
“There's a gas station over there,” she said, pointing again.
Sure enough, there was a filling station ahead with a tiny convenience store attached to it. There were no cars parked at the pumps, and even though the main window was tinted, it was easy to see inside.
“That could work,” Carter agreed. He pulled the car over to the side of the road across from the station and rolled down his window, looking over at the store. Through the window, he could see an elderly black man behind the counter. He appeared to be the only one there.
“So now what?” she asked. “Should we go for it?”
“Maybe,” he said. “The clerk sure looks like he'd be a pushover. But first, we should hang back to watch the place, so we can see how often people show up. Could be we just caught it during a quiet moment.”
Carter untwisted the wires in the dashboard to kill the engine, so it wouldn't overheat the car or drain the battery. They watched the place for almost forty-five minutes. In all that time, no one stopped at the station. Several times, it looked like the clerk might start dozing off.
“All right, this should do it,” Carter said. “Are you really sure you want to do this? Once you do, there's no turning back.”
“That suits me just fine,” Billie said, grinning. “Here, let me get this bandana tied on you.”
Carter shifted around in his seat and Billie folded the bandana into a triangle, tying the ends behind his head so his nose and mouth were hidden.
“All done,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he asked, gently touching the knot.
“Yeah.”
“It feels kind of loose to me,” he said.
“It's fine,” she insisted. “It'll definitely stay there.” She reached into the saddlebag, pulled out the ski mask, and put it on. “What do you think?”
“You look ready for a weekend in Aspen,” he smirked.
She stuck her tongue out at him through the mouth hole.
“We're going to drive up around the side of the place, then come in fast so he doesn't see our approach,” Carter said. “The second we're through the door, you fire straight up into the ceiling. Then you keep one eye on the rest of the store, and the other eye on the door so you can let me know if anyone's coming. I'll keep my gun on him and get him to hand over the cash. If we do this right, we should be in and out in less than sixty seconds. Any questions?”
Billie shook her head.
“Here we go,” Carter said. He twisted the wires together to start the engine, then drove the car across the street and pulled up next to the store.