“Please, faster!” Mary said to the driver as they sped down Columbus Boulevard. She sat on the edge of the passenger’s seat, with Grady and her parents in the back. Rain pelted the windshield, but Mary finally spotted the red awning of Roux. “There it is! Pull up. Hurry!”
“Okay.” The driver slowed behind another cab, and all of a sudden its back door opened. Fiorella scooted out and scurried toward an empty lot next to Roux.
“Fiorella!” Mary pointed. “Where the hell is she going?”
“That’s her!” her father cried, as Mary flung open her door, blinking against the rain.
“Stop! Let me out! Let me out!”
“Hold on!” The cab lurched to a halt, and Mary jumped out and ran after Fiorella. The cold rain hit her like an ice shower and she could barely see where she was going. There were lights down to the right, toward a loading dock, and Fiorella hustled toward it like a much younger woman, her stilettos stutter-stepping across the shiny asphalt.
“Fiorella!” Mary yelled, into the storm. Rain drenched her face and clothes. Grady and her parents were shouting, behind her.
Mary plunged into a dark aisle between two tractor trailers, running through it like a cattle chute, using her hands against the wet steel to keep her balance. She heard shouting from the loading dock, where she could barely make out Fiorella and some dark figures beyond her, illuminated by a pool of light.
Mary froze when the figures came into focus. Bennie had a gun on Judy, and Alice had a gun on Bennie, in a terrifying stand-off. Time slowed down, and Mary heard her heart thudding in her ears. Grady and her parents stopped next to her, making a horrified tableau.
Mary looked again, in confusion. Suddenly she didn’t know which woman was Bennie. Her brain struggled to process it on the spot. Both of the women looked like Bennie, but neither could be Bennie, because Bennie would never pull a gun on anybody.
Then she realized one of the women had to be Bennie, and one had to be Alice, and she knew exactly who was who.
Because Bennie would never pull a gun on Judy. Ever.
So Bennie was really Alice.
Judy had been right, all along. And now she was about to die for it.