Free Gathering Prey by John Sandford Page A

Dakota.
    •   •   •
    “THIS IS SURE AS HELL the long way around,” Kristen said, looking out at the arrow-straight I-90.
    Pilate said, “Well, we couldn’t go back through North Dakota. That cop was on us like Holy on the Pope.”
    “Could have pulled the trigger on him,” Kristen said.
    “And spend the rest of your life in a hole somewhere,” Pilate said. “Those cops are wired for sound and video. We wouldn’t have had a chance. Lucky you kept your fuckin’ mouth shut.”
    They’d been hassled by a North Dakota highway patrolman. He’d been called after an argument about a restaurant bill. They hadn’t been moving at the time, so he hadn’t been able to give them a ticket, and he was late for dinner, but told them if he saw them driving in his state, they were going to jail. He said, “I’ll get a drug dog on your ass, lickety-split. We don’t care for your sort in North Dakota.”
    The cop had a good eye. At that point, they’d still had a pound of meth stashed in the RV, and if the cop had pushed a search, he would have gotten both the dope and the money.
    “This is not our territory, and we gotta remember that,” Pilate told his disciples, as they crossed the line into South Dakota, and set up camp. “We don’t look like these people up here, and they don’t like people who look like us. We gotta be careful when we’re hauling dope. We gotta keep the dope and the money in different vehicles.”
    “Hate to be pushed by those fuckers,” Kristen said. “Fuckin’ cops. We oughta kill one sometime.”
    “We will,” Pilate said.
    •   •   •
    AS IT TURNED OUT, South Dakota had been as bad as North Dakota. Sturgis had almost as many cops as it did bikers, although they tried to stay out of sight. Then they got into the coke, and when they left Sturgis, they had only a little more than four thousand dollars. Pilate had another connection in Wisconsin, hooked into him through a guy they knew in L.A. He could deliver wholesale coke, which they could have retailed for enough to get them back to the West Coast; except that they’d blown the money for the coke back in Sturgis.
    Then there was the whole thing with Henry Fuller.
    “Maybe had
too
much fun,” Pilate confided to Kristen, as they rolled on east. “I wish we’d put a boulder on top of that kid. Hold him down.”
    “I’m worried about Laine,” Kristen said. “I could see her pullin’ back.”
    “Well, it was her first time,” Pilate said.
    “If we run into some cops, somewhere, she could talk. That’s what worries me.”
    Pilate leaned back in the passenger seat, looking out at the gray-dirt sails of the Badlands, considering the problem. He said, finally, “She’s got that golden pussy. That’s what I’d hate to give up.”
    “Pussy isn’t a problem. You said it yourself: pussy is more common than TV.”
    Pilate yawned and said, “I’ll think about it.”
    “We could have a really good time with her,” Kristen said. She looked hungry around the eyes.
    “I’ll think about it,” Pilate said. Kristen could be a little scary.
    He did think about it, though. What he thought was, if they took Laine off somewhere and cut her up, that could damage morale; the disciples all liked her, and might start wondering who was next.
    He turned his head to take in Kristen. She might be down on Laine because Laine had that golden pussy. And the fact was, Kristen was the assistant principal in the group, the one who kicked ass. If they were going to have fun with anyone, maybe it should be Kristen: that’d probably
help
morale, instead of damaging it.
    He half dozed, entertaining himself with fantasies of cutting up Kristen. The fine-woven treachery of the idea turned him on.
    They’d killed a dozen people now and the numbers made him feel both powerful and comfortable. Powerful because he
could
do it, and make the others go along; and comfortable because he
had
done it, and it wouldn’t be something he’d miss in