The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) (18 page)

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. You know. Who doesn’t prefer a confession?” Odin said, eying me. “It’s a closure thing.”

I lay my head on Thor’s shoulder. “I trust you guys.” I flicked my gaze to Odin. I’d decided to trust. To trust in everything. I hated that Odin had that bad feeling, but that’s something I had to live with. I had thrown in with them all the way. I didn’t tell them I hadn’t slept all the night before.

Thor put his arm around me and kissed my hair. “We got you,” he whispered.

I smiled. “Woe betide anyone who fucks with the God Pack.”

Odin laughed, but more of a courtesy laugh. He seemed distracted, but we all got a little weird before a big job—pulling into ourselves or sometimes out of ourselves. You had to kind of go somewhere before a heist. That was the thing I’d realized over the months with my hunky robbers. You had to prepare your soul for the intensity burst.

But this seemed like more. “Something up?” I asked him.

“I’m thinking we could put Thor out here with you.”

“What?” Thor protested. “During the job? I’m bag man.”

“We’re in there for so long,” he said. “Leaving Ice unprotected.”

Thor said, “Ice can protect herself.”

“Yeah, you know you can trust me out here,” I protested, feeling a little hurt. “I can handle it. You know I’m on board one hundred percent—”

“It’s not that,” Odin said. “It’s simply…we’ve got Matteo inside, so why not be safe? There’s the fact that Sleazy Travis didn’t confess, and I can’t stop thinking about that feather,” he admitted. “So dirty and dusty. And the pig’s blood…”

“Wait, are you worried it isn’t him?” I asked. “That it isn’t Travis? Like the feather guy is still out there? Because if he’s still out there—”
We shouldn’t do the Prime,
I was thinking.

Odin touched my hair. “It’s this bad feeling, that’s all,” he said. “I’m looking for every hole and patching it.”

“If he’s still out there,” I said, “it means he’s way smarter than we ever could’ve imagined.” I looked back and forth between him and Thor. “He’d know everything about us. He’d be a threat in every way—to all of us.”

“So we put Thor out here. Both of you alert and armed. Anyway, I’m quite sure it’s Travis.”

“But not certain,” I said.

“Nothing’s ever certain,” Thor said. “If feather guy’s out there, let him come at us. I’d like to see it.”

Matteo was back. Odin floated the idea of Thor staying out. Matteo liked the idea. “We’re lighter inside that way, but it’s extra muscle outside if we need an assist.” Yeah, he’d never fully trusted me alone on the outside.

The three of them felt it was a good way to adjust the team. I wasn’t so sure.

I wondered if the call of it was getting too strong. The riches of it. The beautiful vengeance.

Odin met Zeus in the park over lunch and cleared the new configuration with him. They had to re-jigger the plans. In one way it was harder, but they were used to going in with three guys.

Matteo, Thor, Odin, and I waited in the Navigator.

Five o’clock. Almost go time. Zeus was inside the bank, of course, working on the HVAC repairs like a good technician…a good technician about to go bad.

With a deep breath, I climbed out of the car and went to the nearby Starbucks, where I purchased a coffee and did a preventative pee. I’d be stuck in that SUV for at least three hours, likely more, and there’d be no leaving. Thor, being a guy, could rely on Snapple bottles.

For this phase, I wore my long blonde wig as well as a Christian Dior gown, as if I were on my way to some party. If the shit hit the fan, nobody would expect a woman dressed like that to have firearms stashed up and down her legs.

We watched the HVAC crew leave—in a hurry. Their hurried exit meant that the “emergency call” Odin had arranged for them to receive had worked.

It meant Zeus had been left behind to secure things with one other guy.

Over the next half hour, the bank employees drifted out, too.

The call came. Thor grabbed it. After a terse exchange, he clicked off.

“Go time.”

It meant that Zeus had done his part of the job—he’d forced the man left behind with him to leave a message with his family telling them he was hitting a bar after work. The guy would be out cold, now, and he wouldn’t be waking up with hunky woodland guys in tights chasing him. Probably for the better.

Matteo and Odin had keys to the building next door. They were going to zipline across. The only sightline to the angle of entry was from the east, and at 5:45 precisely, the blinding sun would obscure them via window glare.

“Wait.” I kissed Odin like I’d kissed Zeus this morning, with all the passion I had. “Set that fucker on fire,” I said.

“You be safe, goddess,” he said.

“Always,” I said, trying not to cry. “You, too.”

“Always,” he whispered.

I let him go, feeling like my heart might break. I wanted, suddenly, to tell him how much I loved him, to tell them all. But we never talked like that, and it seemed a bad time to start. I wouldn’t jinx the job with teary
I love you
proclamations.

I shook hands with Matteo, who grumbled jokingly about not getting a kiss.

And just like that, they were gone.

I settled back with Thor, who turned on the radio low. The plan was for the two of them to get onto the roof of the bank. Zeus would let them into the mechanical ceiling area. At that point, Odin would go to work dismantling one of the four security systems in operation, activating the virus Zeus had planted yesterday. We had the purloined codes—another level of security, thanks to that guard with a gambling problem that Matteo and the Gigis knew. It would take another hour or two to get into the safety deposit boxes where the really expensive jewels were kept.

We were to move the SUV every hour to different pre-planned spots. When they were ready to run, they’d call and we were to drive to the back of the building next to the bank—that’s where they’d come out if everything went smoothly. If things didn’t go smoothly, there were plans B, C, and D.

About twenty minutes after they’d left, Thor got a ping on his phone. He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

“Shit,” he said.

“What?”

“Lupe’s in labor.”

I straightened up. “She’s not due for…”

“I know.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “Is she okay?”

“For now. Contractions are still far apart. It could be hours. A day.” His thumbs flew over the keypad. They used some sort of free IM app to communicate, and I waited as the messages bounced back and forth. He swore.

“You need to be there?”

He flicked his eyes to the Prime. “Sort of.”

“Go. It was always going to be just me,” I said.

“What about feather guy?”

“I’m on a public street, armed like Rambo in a locked and bulletproof SUV,” I said with a bravery I didn’t entirely feel. “Let him try me. Anyway, look, Travis had all that evidence in his garbage. He ran. A bad feeling never killed anyone,” I said, echoing Odin.

Thor looked down at his phone.

“She’s our fugitive sister. Take the Camaro.” We had cars stashed around the area. “It’s Friday rush hour. You don’t have time to waste.”

“I don’t know.”

“It was always going to be just me out here,” I repeated. “This is how we trained it.”

“Stay alert.”

“No, I’m going to take a nap,” I joked.

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You sure?”

“Our beautiful sister in crime is having a baby,” I said. “I’ll stay here and make our enemies wish we were dead for both of us.”

He took off. I tried to tell myself it was good luck that he went. Doing something positive would result in a positive robbery outcome.

Five minutes later, A/V Robert Manning was knocking on the passenger window.

I stared in confusion as Manning knocked on the window again and again. What the hell was he doing? I didn’t want to unlock the door and let him in, but I couldn’t have him out there drawing attention to me—I still had forty-five minutes to go in the spot. I cracked the window. “What’s going on?”

“Hello, miss. I just noticed it was you.” He smiled the smile of a man confident of his charms. In some universe, maybe. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“I can’t talk,” I said, all terse and businesslike.

He didn’t leave.

My heart pounded. How could he not get it? He was in the scene. Not only in the scene, a highly trained military man and security guy.

A cop car crawled down the street, slowly.

“Catch you later,” I said, a pretty direct message. “Okay?”

He launched into something about the hookup for the front door camera and a rain shield, whatever that was. He wanted to swing by and check out this rain shield. He thought it could short out the whatever thingy, though to give him his due, he used more technical sounding words than that.

It wasn’t his words that set the cold, cold feeling spreading through me.

It was me knowing it was him, suddenly. I knew it deep in my bones.

Manning was the feather guy.

He seemed to recognize right when I got it. I tried to put up the window, but he shoved a gun muzzle in there. Shit!

A scratching at the door. He was picking the lock.

I could practically feel the blood drain from my cheeks.

With shaking hands, I grabbed the keys, fit them into the ignition, and started the engine. He wouldn’t shoot me—not out here. Before I could throw it into drive, he was sliding into the passenger seat, gun on me, end fat with a silencer.

I grabbed the phone, thinking to give the abort code.

“Don’t you dare, bitch.” In a flash, Manning had the phone. But it gave me the opportunity to grab the barrel of his gun. Quickly I got both hands involved, twisting it so that it pointed out the windshield. My arms and hands strained, trying to get the gun. He started forcing it around slowly. I put all my might into not letting him, but he was too strong, too big. I let go when he pointed it back at me.

“That was stupid. You want me to pull the trigger?” he asked, close to me now, breath stinky and warm.

“You’d get arrested.”

“Oh, I don’t know. They might be a lot more interested in what’s happening inside the Prime. If I were to tell them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll say I’m here stopping you.”

My blood went cold.

“I’ll say you’re part of the gang,” I said. “And that I’m here to stop
you
.”

“Is that your story? Because I’m willing to take that chance. I think they’ll believe an ex-Navy SEAL over the word of a Stockholm Syndrome hostage, but you go ahead and roll those dice.”

“Thor.”

“Yes, that was me. He’ll be stuck in traffic right about now. It’ll be at least three hours before he figures this out, but we’ll be gone. And if you do anything fucked up whatsoever, I’m going to have the cops in there so fast—you understand?”

I glared over his shoulder at the sidewalk. That was all the answer he’d get from me.

“Hands on the wheel.”

I complied, mind whirling with fear.

He grabbed my purse and rummaged through. Going through my purse. Oh, I wanted this guy to
die
.

My heart raced as I discarded one idea for vanquishing him after another. He had me hostage in the worst way. He could bring us all down so fast.

He pulled out a stick of lipstick and handed it to me.

“You’re going to write a message,” he said. “On the rearview mirror.”

“What?” I asked, horrified.

“
I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry
,” he dictated. “I’d have you write more, but the space is a bit limited.”

Just like their first girlfriend, Venus—she’d written that lipstick message on the bathroom mirror just before she went off and killed herself. “I won’t do that to them.”

“I think you will.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed, thinking lavishly of the guns strapped up and down my leg.

“That’s exactly what Venus said.”

My mouth fell open in shock.

He made a big mock frown, more a smile-frown. “All this time, the poor tortured gods.”

My heart pounded. A/V Robert Manning had killed Venus? She hadn’t killed herself after all? My guys had felt responsible for her death. It had nearly broken them—especially Zeus. All those years of guilt over her suicide. I wanted to gouge out this asshole’s eyes for what he’d put my guys through.

“They know I’d never write that. They won’t buy it.”

“That’s not the point I’m trying to make to them. The point, the lesson I have for them, is that they could’ve prevented this if they hadn’t let their emotions get away with them. If only they’d been paying more attention,” he said mockingly. “If only they hadn’t been so focused on vengeance.”

The horror sunk in deep. That
was
what they’d say. They’d blame themselves.

“They let vengeance blind them,” he continued, “even as their precious Isis begged them to pull their heads out of their asses. Vengeance never sleeps. Can’t even take a nap apparently.”

So he’d wired the truck.

He pressed the gun against my arm. “Write it. Or do I have to move to plan B?”

The chess moves between us became preternaturally clear at this point. I’d write the message to buy time and keep him from raising the alarm about my guys inside the bank.

He’d make me go somewhere with him in his vehicle, leaving the empty SUV with the message in it. And I’d go, just to get us the hell out of the area. Because the alternative was getting my guys busted and probably killed, and we were a pack. We watched out for each other.

We protected each other with everything.

And it wasn’t as if I were helpless: I was pretty dramatically armed. But Manning would know that, too. He was smart—obviously smarter than any of us had realized. He had tactics, being a SEAL and all. And insider information.

But every one of those moves was the lesser of two evils. It was a decision tree I had to follow his way if I loved my guys.

So I wrote the lipstick note to buy time, hands shaking with anger. I got out of our big tinted-windows Navigator and walked with him a half a block down to his pickup truck, even though getting into a bad guy’s vehicle is the worst thing you can do, odds-wise.