Sudden Prey Read Free Page A

coming, but Candy had. She was Dick’s woman, all right, but wasn’t above building extracurricular loyalty for a time when it might be needed.
    “Drive,” Georgie said from the back. And to Candy: “You set?”
    “I’m set.”
    “This should be a good one,” Georgie said.
    “Should be great,” Candy said. Ten o’clock on a payday morning. The paychecks were issued at eleven. The first employees would be sneaking out to cash their checks by eleven-oh-one. That’d be an hour too late.
    “There’s the nigger again,” Duane said, distractedly.
    A giant black man had come into Ham’s before Candy had gotten there, ordered a slice, asked if he could pay with food stamps. When told that he couldn’t, he’d reluctantly taken two crumpled dollar bills out of his pocket and pushed them across the counter.
    “Food stamps,” Georgia said in disgust. “He’s one of those screwballs. Look at him talk to himself.”
    Franklin, shambling along the street, said, “One block, fifteen seconds.”
     
     
     
    DUANE SAID, “ THERE it is,” and his voice may have trembled when he said it. Georgie and Candy turned away from the black man and looked down the street at the yellow brick building with the plastic sign, and the short stoop out front.
    “Remember what I said, Duane. We’ll be in there for one minute,” Georgie said. She leaned forward and spoke softly into his ear, and when Duane tried to turn his head away, she caught his earlobe and tugged it back, pinched it between her nails. Duane flinched, and she said, “If you drive away, one of us will hunt you down and kill you. If you drive, Duane, you’re dead. Isn’t that right, Candy?”
    “That’s right,” Candy said, looking at him. She let some ice show, then switched to her God-Duane-I’d-Love-to-Fuck-You-But-I-Gotta-Be-True-to-Dickie look. “But he won’t drive. Duane’s okay.” She patted his thigh.
    “Oh, I’ll do it,” Duane said. He looked like a trapped rat. “I mean, I’ll do it. I did it in Rice Lake, didn’t I?”
    He pulled the van to the curb and Georgie gave him a look, then the two women pulled nude nylon stockings over their faces and took the pistols out of their coat pockets.
    “Let’s go,” Georgie said. She climbed out, and Candy followed a step behind; it passed through Georgie’s mind that Candy looked radiant.
    “I feel like I might pop one,” Candy said to Georgie, as they climbed the four steps to the Credit Union door.
     
     
     
    FRANKLIN WAS HALFWAY down the block when they went inside and he said, “The two women are inside. Pulled the nylons over their heads. It’s going down.”
    Five seconds later, Del and Kupicek stopped at the corner behind him, then eased forward so they could see the back of the Chevy van and Cale’s head. They were forty yards away.
    Sloan stopped at the next corner up, and eased forward until he could see the front of the truck. “You set?” Lucas asked. He cracked the back door.
    “Yeah.” Sloan nodded, looked almost sleepy and yawned. Tension.
    “Let’s go,” Lucas said. And in the handset he said, “Go.”
     
     
     
    GEORGIE AND CANDY went in hard, very large, very loud, screaming, masks, guns, Georgie first:
    “On the wall,” she screamed, “on the wall,” and Candy behind her, vaulting to the top of the cash counter, screaming, the gun big in her hand, the hole at the muzzle looking for eyes. “On the wall . . .”
    Four women employees and a single customer, a man in a black ski jacket and tinted eyeglasses, were inside the credit union. The woman closest to Candy looked like a carp, her mouth opening and closing, opening and closing, hands coming up, then waving, as though she could wave away a bullet. She wore a pink sweater with hand-darned blue flax blossoms in a line across the chest. Another woman curled up and turned away, looking back at them over her shoulder, and stepped against the back wall, next to a filing cabinet. She wouldn’t look at Candy.