Drea's was a small box, located near the floor. She had to squat to insert the key. The young teller inserted the bank's key, turned both of them, and unlocked the door. Drea murmured her thanks and the young woman smiled as she left, leaving Drea alone.
Getting out what she needed took just a minute. She removed her clothing from the tote, then from the safe-deposit box she took the velvet bag containing her jewelry, and dropped it in the tote. The only other item in the box was the manila envelope containing the paperwork on her accounts. That, too, went into the bag. Then she stuffed her discarded clothing in the safe-deposit box, relocked it, and dropped the key in her bag.
She left the bank without looking left or right, intent on getting out of sight. Once out on the sidewalk, she hailed yet another cab and asked the driver to take her to a respectable motel. He grunted in reply. While he drove, Drea got out her BlackBerry and her account information, and set to work.
Five minutes later, it was done. Two million dollars had been wired to her account in Grissom, Kansas, and a hundred thousand dollars to her small account at the bank she'd just left. It was too late for her account to be credited with it today, but it would be there first thing in the morning. She'd wait until after she'd used the BlackBerry to confirm that the transactions had been posted before she disposed of the PDA. She sighed; she would miss the little gizmo.
She turned off the BlackBerry, and sighed again as she leaned back in the seat. It was done. She had moved fast, and she was as exhausted as if she'd run a marathon. With luck, Amado was just now beginning to be worried and impatient. He hadn't called her, so he definitely hadn't yet gone looking for her. Soon, though. When she didn't answer the phone, he'd go looking for her, figuring maybe something in the library blocked cell calls, the way casinos did.
When he didn't find her in the library, he'd get worried. Because he thought she'd been sick, he'd get the library personnel to check all the bathrooms. After that failed, he'd call Rafael.
Given Rafael's suspicious nature, he'd first have Hector check her bedroom, to see if she'd taken her things. Only when Hector reported that her makeup was still in the bathroom, her laptop was still there, her television was still on, and that she hadn't taken any luggage with her would Rafael begin to think that something might have happened to her and he'd have his men start searching for her. They would concentrate on the area around the library. If some honest soul had found her discarded wallet and turned it in to the library personnel, then he might even call the cops.
Now there was an entertaining scenario: Rafael Salinas, going to the police for help. She'd almost pay money to see that.
He'd check with the hotels in the area, to see if she'd registered. Given how much he thought of her brainpower, he'd expect her to do something obvious, which was a big point in her favor.
She wasn't that far away in terms of actual distance, but she was in a different state, and Rafael would never in a million years think she'd go to Elizabeth, New Jersey. He wouldn't even expect her to leave Manhattan.
Later, when he discovered that she'd robbed him blind, he would focus on her hometown. She knew he'd had her investigated, that he knew her real name and all that, but that didn't matter because she wasn't going back to her hometown. She had no intentions of ever going back to that place. She thought some cousins still lived there, but she hadn't contacted them since she'd left and had no reason to ever get in touch with them.
Jimbo, her older brother, had left before she had, and she'd never heard from him again. Good riddance, anyway. He was nothing but a loser. Her parents were divorced and had both sort of drifted away, too, focusing on their own lives and not much caring about their two offspring. Drea had deliberately cut ties with them, too. She had only herself, which was the way she liked it.
The taxi deposited her at a motel that at least looked clean, which was the best she could say for it. For just one night, she figured she could stand a lot worse than this.
She registered with a fake name, and paid cash. The bored clerk rattled off a list of rules and instructions, and slid a key to her. She was on the second floor, which was fine with her as she didn't have any luggage to haul up and down.
The carpet in the room was stained and worn, the furniture was rickety, but at least the room didn't stink. Drea ignored her surroundings and looked for a phone book. When she finally found it-secured on a chain-she flipped to the yellow pages and looked for a hair salon that was close to the bank, then she began calling. She called four before she found one that could give her an appointment at ten in the morning.
That was that. When the bank opened in the morning, she would withdraw her hundred thousand dollars, then go straight to the hair salon to have her hair cut and colored, and she'd be good to go. She'd buy some secondhand car, pay cash, and head west.
She was free.
Chapter Eight
RAFAEL TRIED TO LET ONLY ANGER SHOW; HE DIDN'T WANT any of his men to think Drea was actually important to him. Anger, though, was the smallest part of what he was feeling. Uppermost was fear, a gut-wrenching fear that he couldn't shake. Until Amado showed him Drea's wallet, which some kid had found behind a trash can outside the library and turned in-honest little fucker-Rafael had thought Drea was maybe trying to teach him a lesson, except that was foreign to everything he knew about her. But now he couldn't console himself with that theory, what with the evidence of her wallet, which was empty of cash and ID, but all her credit cards were still there.
A stupid thief would take the cash and the credit cards and go on a spending spree that would lead the cops right to him. A smart thief would take the cash and leave the cards. Her driver's license was gone, too. Identity theft was a big business, and a valid driver's license was a valuable thing to have. When he added Drea's disappearance to the fact that the credit cards were right there, not a single one missing, the most probable scenario wasn't a good one. He couldn't even hope the feds had picked her up-though fat lot of good Drea would have done them, unless they wanted to find out all she knew about shopping-because they wouldn't have stolen her cash and tossed the wallet.