The Cube Heist (BWWM Interracial Romance and Crime) (2 page)

Her apartment was on the third floor. They stood at different ends of the lift. Looking at them it would have been hard for someone to believe that they were working together. The lift stopped and Lisa walked out, not looking back at Harper.

She flung the door open and graciously beckoned for Harper to enter. Lisa stifled a laugh as Harper blinked against the light. Her apartment had that effect. One entire side of the living room was glass, thus as soon as daylight struck, it was bathed in light. That was the reason why Lisa was happy to pay exorbitant rent for the one bedroom apartment.

Harper drew a loud breath.

“Wow, your apartment is…eh interesting.” He was looking around her sparse furnishings.

Lisa felt a wave of embarrassment when she looked at her living room as Harper might. It looked like one of those holiday furnished apartments. Sparsely furnished and no hint of personality or anything that could give away as to who lived there. Lisa’s living room consisted of two couches, a coffee table and a small dining table. No paintings or photographs, nothing to make it looked lived in.

“You moved in recently?” Harper ventured.

“No.” Lisa snapped. “I’ll take a quick shower then we can go. Oh and why are you here so early, thought we agreed you come at half seven?”

Harper shrugged and when it became clear he wasn’t going to give her any explanation, Lisa stomped off. She was showered and ready to go in ten minutes.

“You must be the only female who can get ready in less than fifteen minutes.” Harper commented, when Lisa came out.

“Ten.” She said and felt oddly proud at the compliment.

Outside the sun was warm and inviting. Lisa wore a cap which hid her face from view. She slid into the van. Harper started the van and they were off. She stared at him furtively, enjoying looking at him when his attention was on driving. He wore a plain white t-shirt, exposing the well-defined muscles on his arms. His hands were hairy and Lisa fought the urge to run a finger over his bare arms.

Confused at the direction of her thoughts, Lisa shook her head. Why the hell would she want to touch Harper, he was loathsome and rude as far as she was concerned.

Harper turned to face her, and for a second their eyes held. To her shame, her heart caught and she thought it would stop, right there and then.

Stop it! Lisa scolded herself. Sure it had been long since she had dated anybody, but hell, that was no excuse to drool over Harper. She smoothened out her gray jogging pants and congratulated herself on not dressing to please. The fact that five minutes had been spent putting on her make-up and combing her hair, while the usual Lisa style was shower, a dash of lipstick and out of the house in five minutes. She shrugged it off and concentrated on the traffic ahead.

The Diamond bank was on corporate street sandwiched between a leather goods store and a sandwich deli. Luck was on their side as right opposite was an empty parking space. Harper guided the van into it and killed the engine.

It was a two story building, with an intimidating presence because of the armed guards standing outside. They were two, one on each side of the heavy brass doors. At eight sharp, the doors swung open with flourish. The bank was now open for business. It was busy, with many people streaming in and out. At about eight-thirty, a police car stopped in front of the bank and two burly cops came out of the car.

They walked up the steps to the entrance of the bank and spoke a little with the guards. To trained eyes like Lisa’s and Harpers, they saw the way the two cops eyed the street up and down. They entered the bank and came out shortly after apparently satisfied. They spoke a few more words to the guards and left.

This was the one part of the job that Lisa detested. She hated sitting still. Her body craved activity and staking out a potential job drove her crazy. She constantly reminded herself that it was a necessary part of the job. Once she had trusted a partner she was working with and lived to suffer the consequences. At the time she had just started out and trusted people more. He had chronicled the movements of a couple, the owners of a mansion which held invaluable pieces of art. The couple were private collectors and was foolish enough to keep many of their pieces of art in their home. They were going on holiday and Lisa’s partner assured her that the house would be empty.

Her colleague failed to notice the gardener, an old man who lived on the premises. In the midst of scaling the back wall to the second floor, the gardener had walked out and walked just below Lisa. He picked something like a rake near the house and then returned to his quarters. In shock Lisa had slipped and then made a scraping noise as she fought to regain her balance. She had held her breath. The man had continued walking nonchalantly. Later she had concluded that he was deaf. How else could he not have heard that scraping noise?

She stifled a yawn an hour later and fought the urge to fidget. She glanced at Harper. His eyes were glued to the bank, with no signs of boredom. She envied him. At twelve, Harper went out for sandwiches and coffee in the deli next door to the bank. She devoured hers hungrily and then settled back to continue with their watch.

Every hour, there was a police patrol. The same two burly policemen came every hour until two o’clock when their shifts changed and another duo took over. Lisa timed their patrol. It was quick, between three and five minutes, but it was thorough.

The banks closed the doors for the day at five.

“You look beat.” Harper said, his face creased with concern. “Let me drop you home and then come back for a couple more hours.”

“No,” Lisa said with vehemence. “I’m OK, I can handle a few more hours.”

Resolutely she stared straight ahead, though she could feel Harper’s eyes boring into her face. She would sit here until they both went home; the last thing Lisa wanted was preferential treatment because she was a female.

“Alright.” Harper said with a sigh.

* * *

Lisa woke with a start to complete darkness and in panic fumbled around. Her hand came up against a solid mass and she tried to push it away.

“Easy now” A deep voice said soothingly. “It’s me, Harper, you fell asleep.”

“Oh Shit.” Lisa said.

Harper laughed a deep sound that seemed to come from his stomach.

“What time is it?” Lisa said rubbing her eyes and trying to peer out of the van. It was total dark outside and she couldn’t figure out where they were.

“Where are we?”             

“It’s ten and we are parked further down the street. The bank is up there, see?” Harper said, pointing a finger. “We’d stayed in that position for too long. We are lucky we weren’t spotted.”

Lisa could feel the stickiness of saliva on her cheek. She wiped off the drool with the back of her hand and felt glad for the darkness. She hated to imagine how she looked with saliva dribbling down her chin like a toddler. It was bad enough that she’d dozed off on a watch. It was so unprofessional.

“It’s cool,” Harper said. ‘It’s happened to the best of us.”

“Yeah thanks.” Lisa mumbled, feeling her skin grow hot.

“Let’s call it a day shall we? We’ll start again tomorrow at the same time.”

“OK.” Lisa said.

When they pulled up to Lisa’s block, she jumped out of the van quickly and waved goodbye. She wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. She felt stiff as she rode the elevator up to the third floor. She closed her door, grateful to be in the safety of her apartment. She took out a vegetable salad from the fridge and ate it while standing. Ten minutes later, she was out again, headed to the 24hour gym, a couple of blocks away.

“What do you want to do today?” Rambo asked her.

He was her trainer at the gym and so called for the huge muscles that adorned his chest.

“The ring” Lisa said.

“Why did I think you’d say that?” Rambo said with a smile, leading her to the back of the gym, where the boxing ring was.

He helped Lisa with her gloves and her head gear and they went for it. There was something refreshing about getting into the ring and sparring. She loved throwing punches and evading them. It beat lifting weights although she occasionally did. An hour later, she was back home. After a shower and a glass of milk, Lisa went to bed. After a night session at the ring, she normally managed to sleep immediately her head hit the pillow.

But tonight, sleep was evasive. She found her thoughts returning to Harper and trying to figure him out. He was different from most guys who found silence threatening. She and Harper had not exchanged more than ten sentences all day, yet he had not felt the urge to fill the silence with conversation. Lisa found herself curious about his personal life. Was he married? Did he have children?

Intrigued, she vowed to find out the following day.

The next morning Harper was gracious enough to pick her up at the agreed time. Lisa felt surprisingly fresh as she took the elevator to the ground floor. She looked for the white van. It was nowhere to be seen and she settled on the side walk to wait for Harper. A sharp hoot sounded and she looked towards a blue sedan. Not recognizing it, Lisa turned away. It hooted again, and on looking closer, she recognized Harper.

“Hey,” Lisa said, sliding into the passenger seat. “Who is this?”

“We needed a different car today, and this seemed as good a choice as any.” Harper said.

They stopped for take away coffee. This time they were not so lucky. They got a parking space a bit further away from the bank. Still, they had a pretty good view. Lisa found her attention on the two shops that neighbored their target. On the left was leather goods store and on the right was the deli.

Like the day before, the cops patrolled the bank on the hour and two uniformed guards stood at the entrance.

“It’s going to be difficult to gain entry through the bank.” Lisa said.

Harper nodded. “My thoughts exactly; I’m thinking either of the two shops; the leather shop or the deli.”

“The deli seems easier.” Lisa added.

“They use one huge padlock to lock up. You shouldn’t find that too hard—”

“To pick” Lisa finished.

They broke out into laughter. Lisa looked at Harper and loved the way his laugh reached his eyes and the loud noisy laugh he had. He should laugh more often, Lisa thought. It softened his face and made him approachable.

Lisa stopped laughing suddenly and looked away. Crap! She must stop thinking about Harper as if he was a potential lover. She remembered his words when they first met.
You don’t interest me as a woman
. That dismissal had hurt and it still did. With that sharp reminder of what Harper thought of her, she turned stony faced and promised herself to concentrate on the business at hand.

The deli was busy especially with lunch time approaching. Lisa offered to go get their lunch sandwiches. She pulled her cap low and took off to the deli. She pushed open the glass door and walked in. The counter was manned by four employees, each decked out in a crisp white apron. The back of the counter shared a wall with the bank.

Lisa ordered their sandwiches and coffee and left. They ate their lunch in an uncomfortable silence. After lunch, Lisa slipped out again, this time to take a look inside the leather store. Approaching the entrance Lisa deduced that it would not make a good target. The huge, thick door manning the entrance appeared to be laced with alarms and though disabling the alarm was possible, it would take too much time.

She didn’t bother to enter; instead she found her way to the back alley to the service entrance of the deli. Sure enough, the padlock hanging on the back door of the deli was just as flimsy as the front one. Lisa guessed that no one would bother to break into a deli to steal food, and they were bound to have emptied their cash registers every night.

There wasn’t much activity at the back. The bank was sealed at the back with an impenetrable wall and she only gave it a cursory glance. She knew the security at the back was even tighter than at the front.

“Say we infiltrate the bank through the deli, how long would it take to drill the wall?” Lisa asked.

Harper switched on the laptop he always had and showed Lisa an image of a wall.

“I think it’s been fortified inside the bank so it could take a couple of hours.” Harper said. “Tonight I’m thinking we watch the back. That’s probably where we’ll access the deli from.”

“I’m thinking there must be cleaning staff?” Lisa said.

“Yeah, me too and they probably come in at night. The deli closes around nine o’clock.” Harper said.

This information reminded Lisa that she’d fallen asleep the night before. She could have kicked herself. Tonight she was determined to remain professional. The last thing she wanted was for Harper to think that working with her was a mistake.

When night came, Harper drove the car to the back and looked for an unobtrusive unlit spot. At nine, they observed the deli workers leaving for home. At ten, two women alighted from a van marked as a cleaning van. As soon as they got off, the van drove off. They had their own key to the deli. Two hours later they emerged and as they were locking up, the cleaning van appeared. They went in and the van drove off, its wheels skidding on the road.