A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  “Yikes. Good luck.”

  That was days ago now.

  The hotel was done up in a Swiss style, meant to resemble an alpine ski lodge. It looked tacky but was charming in a rustic sort of way: raw wood painted to look blackened with age, with old wooden skis on the wall and antlers from gigantic bucks dominating the rafters. It was unsettling, all that death looking down at her. She slid the keycard into a doorway off the main lobby and slipped inside. Looking first one way, and then the other, Marcey hurried up the hallway.

  They’d taken a room on the first floor, ostensibly to do some late-season hiking on snowshoes. Gwen had even bothered to rent some from the hotel to make it look extra legitimate on top of Kim’s idiot tourist ploy. They sat stacked up in a corner of their shared hotel room. On the books, the entire thing looked legit, save for the constant back and forth from the city. In the middle of the night two nights ago now, they’d delivered Kat’s horrible painting to the room to await the job.

  The theft itself was going to be complicated. Marcey was relishing the final planning stages, finding them exhilarating. Never before had she taken to something so quickly, fitting easily into the role of planner with the team’s help.

  Gwen spent the better part of the last few days clad in camouflage, traipsing around the snowy mountainside, inspecting from every side the house where their mark lived. The snow hindered her progress, and the mud, which started to appear as the fresh snow melted on a warm, sunny day, was even worse. She came back to the room mud splattered, her teeth chattering with the cold. Kat would make her tea, and Marcey would watch them eye each other warily over their hotel-issued mugs as Gwen relayed what she’d seen.

  “He keeps dogs.” Gwen sipped her tea. She’d thrown her jacket, streaked with mud, into the base of the closet. Kim picked it up gingerly and moved to hang it in the en suite. She reappeared just as Gwen rolled up her sleeve to reveal two long scratches, raised and bloody against her dark skin. Kat tutted, reaching for her arm. Gwen flinched away from her. It would take a lot more than tenderness and tea to heal that relationship. “Big, vicious dogs.”

  “So, eliminate them,” Kat said. She got to her feet, smoothing her sweater flat and bending to rummage in her purse for a bottle of hand sanitizer and small box of Band-Aids. She tossed both to Gwen. “They’re just animals.”

  Marcey opened her mouth to reply that this was supposed to be a simple in and out, a walk away nothing more, but Kim beat her to the punch. “We can’t just go and fucking off his dogs. The whole point is that nothing’s amiss and that he doesn’t realize we’ve done the switch.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Wasn’t this your plan?”

  “No,” Kat replied snippily, shooting a dark look at Kim. “It was Charlie’s.”

  “Charlie wouldn’t fuck with dogs like that. He loved dogs.” Kim scowled.

  Gwen nodded grimly. “I don’t mind dogs, but guard dogs? I don’t mess with those.”

  Kat folded her arms smugly across her chest. “So, what do we do?”

  Marcey smiled. “I knew about the dogs. It, er…was in Charlie’s notes, actually.” She crossed the room to the closet. Her duffle was streaked with mud, thanks to Gwen’s jacket. She wrinkled her nose before unzipping it. “We’ll need to get some hamburger or raw meat of some kind, but I picked these up before I left, figured they’d be useful.” She turned, holding up a small baggie with four pills inside it. “Now, this is provided they’re not the annoying sort of dog that knows how to eat around a pill, but we should be able to knock them out with these.”

  “Never out of the drug trade, were you, Mar?” Kim joked.

  Rolling her eyes, Marcey tossed her the pills. “Don’t work on humans. Strictly for animals. I saw on the schematics that there was a doghouse and made a point of picking these up a few weeks ago from a buddy after I confirmed that Charlie’s notes indicated that there’d be two.”

  “And you never thought to mention it?” Gwen scowled. “Like, I’d like a damn heads-up before I go down into a place like that to potentially get my throat ripped out.”

  “They’ll be knocked out. If not from the pills then I have a backup tranq gun.” Marcey pulled the darts and gun from her bag. Gwen took half a step back as Marcey waved the gun in a broad arc. “They’re meant for bears. They won’t kill the dogs but knock ’em out for a long while. I’m a good shot. That was the summer camp I did go to, and I’ve kept up with it. Needed it in college.”

  “We never use guns,” Kat said quietly. “Never.”

  “Well, the dogs threw a wrench into things. Sorry I didn’t say anything about them directly. I figured just removing them from the equation was a better option.”

  Gwen stared down at her muddy boots and toed them off gingerly. She got up, moving them to the tile floor by the door. “I’m fine with it. But they’d better be out cold before you expect me to go in there.”

  “I’ll go see about some meat.” Marcey headed back to the door.

  When she returned nearly three hours later, having had to drive practically out of the forest to find a grocery store that was still open, a quarter pound of ground chuck and a Coke on the seat beside her, Marcey found Gwen freshly showered, and Kat, stopwatch in hand, perched on the end of the bed they’d shoved into the corner for more space. Gwen’s breath came in slow gasps. Her fingers flew, piecing together worn, ancient panes of wood with nails rusted over. The hammer she used was padded with leather, so as not to disturb the rust patterns.

  “Twenty seconds,” Kat called when Gwen put down the bar and held up her hands. “That’s not terrible.”

  “It should only take fifteen,” Gwen replied. She glanced at Marcey before moving to disassemble the frame once more. “Especially since the wood we will be using will be a lot older and stiffer.”

  Marcey leaned against the door, bag from the grocery store resting heavily against her leg. “What if you were to use the ground to hammer it together?”

  “Oh, you’re back,” Kat said. She smiled at Marcey, but it was entirely put-on. “I would have thought you’d be gone longer.”

  She noticed Marcey from the moment Marcey walked in. She just hadn’t let on. Marcey was almost weary of Kat Barber’s games, over the past few days, finding them circular and yet unable to pull herself away. Kat wanted Marcey drawn in, unable to extricate herself and more than willing to linger at the periphery. Marcey didn’t know what was right and what was wrong anymore when it came to Kat. Whatever was happening between them seemed genuine. Kat liked Marcey; Marcey liked Kat. That was where it had to end. It couldn’t continue past that. Marcey wouldn’t do that to anyone. Not after she’d already fucked it up twice.

  Marcey glanced at her watch. “It’s been more than two hours. You guys lose track of time?”

  They glanced at each other before shrugging almost in unison. Marcey was glad they were working together, and so well. It meant that the heist itself would come easier.

  “I suppose we must have,” Gwen answered. “I think we have this close to down. Why don’t you get Kim and we can get dinner? I want to try this one or two more times.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Roof.” Kat grunted. Getting to her feet, she took the frame from Gwen and disassembled it in what had to have only been about ten seconds. Marcey frowned. Should Kat be the one to go and do the exchange? Would Gwen go for that?

  Crossing to the mini-fridge, Marcey put away the ground chuck and the Coke. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and glanced sideways at Kat. Despite the games and the stolen kisses of the past few days, Marcey could not shake the feeling of guilt every time Kat’s fingers lingered too long or her lips brushed against Marcey’s neck or cheek in passing. There was something so visceral, so painfully awful about the fact that she was ruining something so tender and pure between Topeté and Kat. Marcey was the homewrecker and she didn’t want to be, but Kat was like a drug she couldn’t refuse. All through high school, and into college, Marcey had wondered how Rebecca c
ould have fallen into drugs like that. She knew now. Kat’s smile warmed her soul.

  It felt like cheating. It was cheating, and Marcey hated how good it made her feel, how powerful. She had no reason to hate Topeté, when everything about her seemed like a woman possessed of similar values to the rest of them, albeit on the other side of legality. But even that seemed in question after what Marcey’d read in Charlie’s book. She hated that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Topeté. That she was just someone Kat loved and who loved Kat.

  Secrets had a way of ruining everything,

  And Kat? Kat was hiding far more than one secret. A team on a job like this needed complete trust, and they already didn’t have it because Kat wasn’t as welcome in the group as Marcey would have liked. Still, the dynamic was relaxing. Everyone was calming down and falling into the job as they prepped.

  Marcey slipped out the door. Kat was speaking to Gwen: “Try for seventeen seconds this time?”

  “Can do.”

  Worry over what they were about to do and Gwen’s apparent inability to complete the task ached in Marcey’s stomach. It was the ache of winter, the brisk cold outside that still clung to her bones despite being inside and warm for some time. Nervousness walked hand in hand, and the other contingency, the one that she would never mention to anyone, was squirreled away at the bottom of her duffle bag—where hopefully no one would think to use it. The gun belonged to her mother, unregistered on account of the city’s laws. Her mother was a single woman living with a young daughter in New York City. She’d learned to shoot in college out of necessity. She’d taught Marcey when Marcey was younger, driving long hours up out of the city and into northwestern Connecticut to go to ranges where no one would look twice. Marcey never blamed her mother. She’d grown up during the worst time in the city’s history, when crime and drugs and poverty threatened to overwhelm the five boroughs and transform the city Marcey knew and loved into something else entirely. Perhaps that was why she had reacted so poorly to Darius, and to Marcey’s arrest. She remembered what it was like before. Or she was just fucking racist. Either way, Marcey had borrowed the gun when this whole business started up, and she’d had it with her when she left.

  She didn’t know how she was going to process that. Avoiding it seemed the best option.

  The roof was empty save for a multi-tool-wielding Kim crouched behind the hotel’s satellite dish, her laptop set up on a dry patch of roof beside her. The fuse box behind the satellite was broken open, and Kim clenched a zip tie in her teeth as she sorted through wires. She looked up, eyes narrowed and halfway into a crouch to flee, when Marcey pushed the door open.

  “How’s it going up here?”

  “Better than downstairs.” Kim spat out the zip tie. It landed at her foot. She twisted her multi-tool and cut two wires, taking the zip tie and lashing their exposed ends together. “Anything is better than sitting down there watching Gwen and Kat try very hard to be nice to each other when you just know they fucking hate each other’s guts. I don’t blame Gwen either. I wouldn’t trust Kat Barber if she offered me the world on a silver platter.”

  The desire to tell Kim about what she overheard before they left was overwhelming. Marcey bit her lip, fighting against the urge. Sometimes sharing was too much, and people were better off if they didn’t know the truth. It was the only way they could stay sane and work could be cohesive. “Really, the whole world?”

  She said it like it was a joke, but the truth of the matter bit at Marcey’s stomach and sent it plummeting. Kat had Marcey. Her fingers hooked like the still-healing bruises on Marcey’s hips and thighs, rubbing away the concealer at her neck. Marcey was ensnared; Kat had her tethers in Marcey’s soul. Pieces of a game where Marcey didn’t know the rules.

  It was a game, Marcey thought, which was setting up to where she was the perfect fall guy.

  “—something.” Kim waved her multi-tool in Marcey’s face. “Are you even listening to me?”

  Marcey shook her head. “Sorry, what?”

  “I just said that we have to be careful if the build is still messing Gwen up. I can only buy us so much time.”

  “They’ve got their build down to twenty seconds.”

  “That’s something.” Kim spat on the ground. “But it needs to be shorter. We don’t know how long the door’ll take.”

  “They wanted to get food.”

  “Then they should get it,” Kim replied. She gestured toward her laptop and the mess of wires. “I need to finish this.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you want anything in particular, or did you just come up here to bother me?” Kim asked, turning her attention back to the tangle of wires in her lap.

  “Maybe I thought you were hungry and would want to eat with everyone else.”

  Something flashed across Kim’s face. Something that made her look very young and very vulnerable. Marcey wanted to reach out, to take her hand and promise her that this was a good idea. That everything would be fine; they’d all get very rich, no one would get hurt. She wanted to tell her she knew everything was going to be fine. But that was a lie, and Marcey wasn’t about to lie to anyone just yet. Not if she could help it.

  There were enough liars around, after all.

  CHAPTER 26

  Wei, Watching the Unraveling

  Wei had never liked Linda Johnson. She was too sharp, too quick to judge, and too aware of all the small details that had led to Wei working with her for Wei to ever feel comfortable around her. She saw too much to ever allow Wei to relax around her. She saw too much without ever giving anything away about her agenda.

  Johnson’s office was as cluttered as ever. The campaign posters were removed, probably a conflict of interest, and replaced with the telltale smell of mold and cats. Wei wrinkled her nose, sitting opposite Johnson. The smell was the worst part of being called in to speak to her knowledge of the case. The smell and being in Johnson’s presence in the first place. Wei was well aware of how petty she was and how deep her hatred could run. She wanted nothing more than to avoid Johnson’s bad side.

  She sat fidgeting, annoyed that it fell to her to break the silence Johnson certainly would not be breaking. Johnson liked that, the surrender of the upper hand before the conversation began. But there was no helping it.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Johnson glanced up from her paperwork and smiled, the pretty, petty smile of a career politician. Wei clenched her teeth. She had to be careful; so much of the plan was hanging on this moment. Shelly had warned her of the additional emotional baggage Johnson carried when it came to the Daniels girl, and Wei was inclined to believe it. The woman had a weak point in her diamond-hard persona, and it came in the shape of her daughter. It was something Wei intended to exploit. When the time was right.

  “I did, thank you for coming.” Johnson made another note, her handwriting slashing and masculine. “I wanted to talk to you about Kathryn Barber.”

  Her face had to be perfectly still. Wei bit the inside of her cheek and met Johnson’s gaze evenly. “What about her?” Wei forced her tone to stay light, gentle. The casualness of it set her on edge. This was serious.

  “William came to me this morning and told me that he needed to go to New Hampshire to follow up on a lead. A lead that you failed to mention.” Johnson glared. “Marcey Daniels.”

  The absence of Marcey Daniels from anywhere in the city stuck out like a sore thumb. Johnson’s ire at losing track of her was evident in the way her nostrils flared and her gnarled hands gripped her pen. But this was an old hurt, the kind that was never truly forgiven. Wei knew it well. It was the sting of personal humiliation.

  She had to play it off though, pretend like she wasn’t smarting from what Kat had done, what she continued to do, with Marcey Daniels. “She’s no one,” Wei answered. “A potential lead, perhaps, someone Barber is interested in for reasons I’ve yet to discern.” Wei paused, as though thinking. “Wait, didn’t William arrest her for being at the Perôt
when someone attempted to break into it a few weeks ago? Didn’t he let her walk?”

  The why are you blaming me then? hung heavy in the rank air of Johnson’s office.

  “He had no reason to keep her,” Johnson said dismissively. “She hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then why accuse me of being neglectful? I’m here to ensure that the book is found. I don’t care about some kid running around with people who could get her sent to jail.” Johnson exhausted Wei. Pushing back against the woman’s iron will was draining. “William is free to go running off to New Hampshire if he wants, but I’d rather focus on the city, on Devon Austin Jackson, and the actual truth of this investigation, rather than rumor and hearsay.”

  Johnson pulled a file from underneath her legal pad and passed it over to Wei. “I think you’ll find, Agent Topeté, that you’re the one chasing shadows.”

  Inside was a series of photographs taken at a nondescript office building. Marcey Daniels was shorter than Wei expected, standing beside Shelly as she bent over a locked door in an alcove just off a fairly busy atrium. Wei flipped through them, before glancing up at Johnson. “So she’s stealing things?”

  “Breaking and entering secure facilities at the least. And interacting with three, maybe four, of Charlie Mock’s known associates. Logic says she has his book.” Johnson sniffed. “Honestly, Wei, I thought you were sharper than this. I know that your…entanglement with Barber is good for Interpol, but you have to consider that she’s blinded you to what’s right in front of your nose. I can’t stand deliberate ignorance. And if you’re looking the other way for Barber…”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then go to New Hampshire with LePage and fetch me back that book. The girl has it. I want it.” Johnson waved her hand, effectively ending the conversation.

  Wei got to her feet but paused. “Can I ask you something, ma’am?”

  Johnson’s stony silence was permission enough.

  “Why go to all this trouble? Charlie Mock is dead. His legacy doesn’t mean much to you here in America. He operated mostly overseas. Most of his associates aren’t American. You’d have very little ability to prosecute them.” The question was a gambit, one that Wei wasn’t sure she really could ask without giving herself away. Johnson’s motivations had always been something of a mystery to Wei; she never could quite put her finger on what Johnson wanted. “And Marcey Daniels? Isn’t that Super PAC supporting your campaign using her as a poster child for how you’re tough on crime? Isn’t that illegal?”