“Thanks!” she puffed as she dropped the exact change into the slot. The woman merely grunted. She floored the gas just enough to make Krissy stumble and grab for a handhold. Krissy was sure that it was deliberate, but she let it go. The woman had at least held the bus for her. Anyway, bitching about it would just give the driver more reason to remember her than she already had. Krissy plopped herself down on an empty seat. There were a lot of empty seats at this hour, with only four or five other people on the bus with her, all looking bored and half asleep. Even so she took care to make sure that her coat covered her up and no one could get a look at the red dress she still wore underneath it. She sat quietly and caught her breath as the bus crawled along its route. She was feeling a bit lightheaded, what with the excitement of the score, the jogging through the darkened city streets and the mad dash to catch the bus. It was a good feeling, but she needed to be calm and level-headed when she met Tito. He might not look that sharp, but he always knew when someone wasn’t concentrating on business. He could burn you pretty badly if you weren’t paying attention. She practiced some breathing exercises a yoga instructor had once taught her. It always helped. She remembered the stretching exercises the woman had taught her as well, but she didn’t try them anywhere near as often.
By the time the bus arrived at her stop, Krissy felt very, very calm. She made sure that the credit cards she’d taken were readily accessible so that she could hand them over to Tito. She’d take the pilfered jewelry to a fence she knew sometime next month. It would be safer to dispose of it then, and she’d get a lot more for it than if she tried to sell them right away. She rose from her seat and left by the side door. Tito’s was still open, but hardly anything else in the neighborhood was.
“Kristina Saunders?”
Krissy turned to face whoever had spoken. She saw a tall, slender woman with long dark hair and hard dark eyes approaching her, walking like a tiger stalking prey.
“Who wants to know?” Krissy demanded.
The woman flashed a badge. “Detective Palmieri, vice,” she said. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
‘We’? Krissy looked around and only then noticed the heavyset man in the ill-fitting suit. He smiled at her. It made her skin crawl. “Am I being arrested?” she asked. Frantically, she tried to think of any way in which she might have slipped up. She’d been so careful for so long that she hadn’t believed that what seemed to be happening now could ever happen to her. She must have made a mistake, but what was it?
“No,” the woman replied. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
“Uh-huh,” Krissy nodded. “Look, now’s not a good time. How about I come down to the station tomorrow? Just tell me where and when.” She didn’t like this at all, not at all. She felt like running, but that wouldn’t work, would it? If they knew who she was, they knew where she lived, so she couldn’t run home. It was unlikely that they knew about the locker she kept at the bus station where she stashed her getaway kit. Give her a good start and she could certainly outrun the guy. The woman, with her long, long legs, was another matter, even if she was wearing knee-high boots with chunky heels that weren’t intended for running. But what if all they really wanted to do was ask her a few questions, and she ran…
“I’m afraid that we need to talk to you now,” the woman shook her head. She stopped a few feet away from Krissy. “Really, it won’t take long, and we’ll give you a ride home afterwards.”
Krissy didn’t believe her. An accomplished liar herself, she knew when someone else was lying to her. There was more to this than just answering some questions. Even if that’s all there was to it, she had some very incriminating items on her.
Then it struck her that she’d been set up, and who had done it to her. It had to be Tito. She’d told him she’d be coming to see him tonight. But how could he toss her to the cops without incriminating himself? Unless…he knew these cops, somehow, and had worked out a deal that left him out of it.
She whirled to run, but the woman must have seen something in her eyes that warned her. Before Krissy could take her first step, the woman had lunged forward and grabbed her by her hair. Krissy squalled at the sudden, painful yank as she was swung around, dragged a few steps, and then slammed against the side of a car. The woman pushed her down, bending her over onto the hood, which was still warm.
“Kristina Lynn Saunders,” the dark-haired woman recited mechanically as she let go of Krissy’s hair to pull her arms behind her, “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right…”
She’d heard it all before on any number of cop shows on television, but this was the first time Krissy had ever heard it in person. Stunned, and feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, she put up no resistance as the woman deftly locked the handcuffs around her wrists while she finished reciting the street catechism to her. Once she was cuffed, the woman stood her back up while her partner opened the rear door of the car. “Do you understand all these rights as I’ve told them to you?” the woman almost snickered as she gave Krissy a push towards the opened door. All Krissy could do was nod.
“Answer me, you little bitch!” the woman snarled, giving Krissy a rough shake.
“Yes. Yes!” Krissy yelled back. She’d thought about what she could do if she was ever in this situation, but she’d never thought all that much about it, since it was such an unpleasant thing to contemplate. Instead, she’d put a lot of thought into planning how not to get caught in the first place.
She still had something of a chance. When they searched her, the evidence that they’d find would be absolutely damning. But unless they had some way to link her to all of the other little jobs that she’d pulled she could always plead that this was her first offense. Even with a public defender pleading her case, with any luck she’d get probation and not prison. She’d play nice for a month or two, and then gather up her stuff and skip town. It would be a setback, but she could survive it.