Catch.44

Tes, Kara, and Dawn wait in a booth at the target diner, hoping to intercept a drug handoff orchestrated by their boss Mel. They pass the time with idle chatter while Tes positions herself as the leader. The tension builds as the late-night stakeout stretches into the early hours.

Tes tries to assert her role as leader, but Kara challenges her authority and Dawn remains detached. The dynamic among the trio underscores the fragile cohesion of their team. Their plan relies on Tes's confidence to hold the group together.

Tes argues that nothing happens in the diner without the owner Francine knowing about it. Kara pressures Francine with a gun while Dawn keeps watch at the door. The trio tries to force a handoff by leveraging Francine's implied involvement.

A violent sequence unfolds: Francine shoots Kara with a shotgun, taking her out. Dawn retaliates by shooting Francine, and a drifter in the diner fires at Dawn. Tes then shoots the drifter to stop the bloodshed.

Going back a few days, Tes works as a strip club dancer and is pursued by a patron. She resists and instead steals wallets for petty cash, revealing a more casual crime-life beneath her confident exterior. The memory hints at the personal costs of Tes’s line of work.

Tes, Kara, and Dawn work for Mel on a drug shipment scheme: a driver picks up at the coast and drives to the diner, where another driver waits with the money. The three women do not realize or acknowledge how their parts connect in the larger operation. The plan relies on misdirection and separate gangland pieces.

Tes receives a call from Mel at a public telephone booth, instructing her to be at the diner before 2:30 AM. The warning tightens the timeline and sets the stakes for the upcoming confrontation. The call confirms that someone is orchestrating events from afar.

Ronny travels the same highway toward the diner, his intent sharpened by the plan’s fragility. He lures a Sheriff under false pretenses, shoots him, and steals the car to close the distance. His presence foreshadows a deadly twist to come.

Ronny pulls up behind the girls in a stolen cop car and shoots a grocery store attendant to disrupt their routine. He stops them on the highway, posing as a Sheriff, and forces them to reveal the name of their ‘relative’—Uncle Mel—while Kara drives and tries to pass the car off as belonging to her brother.

Cop Connors discovers the grocery shop shooting and starts to piece together that the mission around the diner is compromised. The earlier misdirection and Ronny’s stunt begin to look suspicious, hinting that Mel may be coordinating a larger trap. The crew’s arrangement starts to unravel.

Back in the present, Billy— Francine’s partner— confronts Tes from the kitchen with a loaded tension. Billy implies Mel’s larger scheme and denies the existence of a real shipment, setting the stage for a violent reveal. D2 then steps in to reveal his true identity.

D2 steps forward: his real name is Ronny, and he explains he has protected Tes in the past. He reveals the motive behind the ambush and makes a case that Mel has always intended to remove Tes. Tes is both startled and unsettled by this long-ago kinship.

Ronny pressures Tes to shoot Billy, insisting he is playing a game. Tes hesitates, then opens fire as the room erupts in gunfire from all sides. The standoff climaxes with chaos and shifting loyalties as Tes fights for control.

Mel arrives to find only Ronny alive with a neck wound; he kills Ronny for double-crossing. Tes survives the chaos and shoots Mel, escaping with the money he brought to pay off Billy. The film closes with Tes fleeing into the night, money in hand and danger still close behind.