Samantha didn't know whether the nitroglycerine or Joseph's temper was more volatile. "How the hell did they wake up?" he kept asking as he drove. "That combination should have put them down for at least a week."
"I don't know," Samantha kept saying. Every time, she leaned over to look into the mirror. A shot of Joe's potion had turned the skin around her eye a pale white, although she still remembered it swollen and purple. She brushed a tress of platinum hair over the eye. She didn't dare say anything else out of fear he might vent his anger on her.
"And how did they untie themselves? I checked those knots myself. There's no way a little kid and some fat chick could get out of those."
"Maybe they had some help," Samantha suggested.
"Who? My father was still asleep. Mrs. Schulman was still out. What, some random stranger passed by to untie them?"
"I don't know," she said again.
"This is just fucking great," Joseph said. "All that planning for nothing. All that work out the window. We should have killed those brats when we had the chance."
"I'm sorry," she said.
He turned to her and at last the tide of rage broke. "It's not your fault," he said.
"What do we do now?" she asked. She hoped he would say they would keep driving until found somewhere safe to begin a new life. She hoped he would forget all about bank robberies and focus on the two of them.
"There's another bank nearby in a place called Pinecrest. It shouldn't be much different."
Samantha knew better than to suggest they give up on the bank robbery plan. He wouldn't give up now, not with them so close. To give up would be to acknowledge someone had outsmarted him, beaten him at his own game. "When?" she asked.
"We'll do it tonight. It'll take the sheriff some time to get everything together even if your friends went to the cops."
"You think they wouldn't go to the police?"
"These kids aren't like us. They don't know anything about the outside world. They're Amish for God's sake. They don't know whom they can trust. By the time they figure things out, we'll be long gone."
Samantha reached across the seat to put a reassuring hand on Joseph's thigh. Everything would work out fine in the end. They would rob the bank and then leave all this behind. With the money they could find some remote place in the desert or mountains where Joseph could do his work and she could look after him. In time they'd add children as beautiful as her and smart as Joseph. Everything would be perfect.