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Vegas at the wrong time. If they stopped, they were vulnerable. And there was two hundred thousand dollars in cash in the trunk. It wasn’t that people didn’t drive into Las Vegas with two hundred thousand in cash every day, it was that a pair of shitheels in a six-year-old Hyundai didn’t. If anything happened to separate them from the endless, anonymous current of traffic-if they had to get out to push the car to the shoulder and sit there with it while everybody stared at them in pity-then they would probably find themselves talking to a tow-truck driver or a cop. It wasn’t fair. This should have been simple.
    At first everything had been quick and easy. He and Hobart had been working together for about a year, and they were sure of each other. There was no indecision when they saw Philip Kramer come out of the house after the meeting. Hobart said, “We’ll take him in his car so we don’t have a body lying on the ground that we have to drag out of sight. Go find a place with a clear shot at the left side of his car.”
    That was not as easy as it sounded. A parked car has to be stopped with its right side to the curb and its left to the street. That didn’t suggest a lot of hiding places. But Tim knew that Hobart never spoke idly, and not doing what he said was the same to Hobart as refusing to do it.
    Tim Whitley ran down the street toward the place where Phil Kramer had left his Toyota sedan, and searched. The only hiding place he could find to the left of Kramer’s car was inside the van parked across the street. Tim was a car thief, and he had his slim-jim with him. By the time Kramer came up the dark street, Tim Whitley was crouched down in the back of the van right behind the driver’s seat. When Kramer’s door opened, Tim heard it. He went to the window of the van and fired.
    Tim felt good about it. It wasn’t Hobart this time, with Tim only there to steal a car to use in the job and drive away afterward. This time Tim was the shooter. Hobart’s only part in the job had been to walk up the street behind Kramer to keep him preoccupied and under the impression that he knew what to be afraid of.
    Tim Whitley sensed a change in Hobart, who was shifting in his seat, trying to see around the car ahead. “What do you see?”
    “Cars are getting off up there.”
    “That’s probably good, isn’t it?” Whitley said. “We’ve finally come to what’s holding up the traffic. It’s got to be an accident. Once we get past that, we’ll be home-free.” He kept watching Hobart for a reaction.
    “I don’t see an accident. They’re just getting off. Like a detour.”
    Tim could see it now, too. There was an exit ramp far ahead, and cars were moving to the right to take it-not a huge stream of cars, but maybe one in ten. They climbed to a narrow road above, turned left to cross an overpass, and drove off somewhere to the left and away into the rocky hills.
    He knew that Hobart was going to take that road, just from looking at his face. Nine out of ten drivers were staying on the interstate, but the one-tenth that were willing to veer off onto a road that was only two lanes at its widest would surely include Hobart. He had the peculiar, rare quality of absolute confidence in himself and depthless contempt for everybody else.
    Hobart took the exit ramp and accelerated up the incline to the other road. He stopped only for an instant, not because he had to look to the right-nobody was coming from that direction, nor had there been since Whitley had first seen the exit-but just to look at the desert from up here.
    “Jerry?”
    “What?”
    “Do you happen to know where this goes?”
    “No. But you can get anywhere from anywhere else, if you’re moving. Those people back there aren’t.”
    Tim knew it wasn’t a good idea to ask anything else for the moment. He knew that it wasn’t manly to keep expressing uncertainty, to keep demanding information that he had not earned by waiting and seeing. He did not