by Korry Smith
“So, what’s your plan to get us out of here?” He flicked at the garment bags draped over my shoulder. “These are new.”
“Yeah, it’s our reason to be here.”
“It looks like dry-cleaning?”
“It is dry-cleaning.”
He laughed. “That’s your grand plan?”
I shot a hateful look. “You have a better idea that doesn’t involve getting shot?”
He threw up his hands in mock surrender and shook his head.
“Then shut up!”
“Damn, kid, you’re fucking sexy when you’re angry.” Rushing behind me as I sped-walked down the hall, he wrapped his arms around my waist. “I’m an asshole.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Don’t be mad.” He bent down and pressed his mouth to my throat. “I just don’t see us getting out of...”
I jerked my head away. “Don’t do that.”
“What am I doing?” He brought me back, closer than before, and his lips vibrated along the surface of my skin, igniting an infinity of goosebumps.
Alex was good. I’d give him that. The gorgeous jerk knew what his touch did to me, but my self-preservation exceeded my arousal.
What good was the promise of sex if the police arrested us?
“That! You’re distracting me. I need you to stop.”
“Are you sure?” Gliding his hands up the side of my body, forming and palming my breasts, he kissed the shell of my ear. “This might be the last time we’re together.”
“So, what? You’re just going to bang me in the foyer until Papa Ryan comes home?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time he heard us fucking.” He smiled against my neck. “Although, it would be the first time he would see me between your legs.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can we focus, please?”
“Sure, kid, whatever you want,” he said, stepping away from me, and my traitorous body objected to the injustice.
It screamed for him to come back, but my mind overruled it. I needed to stop being so fucking weak for him.
After that, we kept a reasonable distance and didn’t talk much. We took turns looking out the peephole, assessing the enemy in the hall, and devising our plan.
There were three guards, all middle-aged and massive, dressed in black suits. Their pistols tucked underneath their blazers, and I saw the handles poking out every time they moved.
Laughing and joking around while playing cards, they seemed well-fed and at ease.
I felt a small glimmer of hope that my plan might work.
“Maybe when we get out there, I should do the talking.” I glanced over at Alex, and he was rubbing the back of his neck, brows knitted with uncertainty. “What is it?”
“They’re going to pat us down.”
“Yeah, and?”
He lifted his jacket and gestured towards the Colt. “And it’s not customary for the help to be carrying.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit is right.”
“Maybe we could...” I looked around the room and contemplated the possibility of stashing the guns somewhere.
Alex caught on to my train of thought and shook his head. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to ditch my gun here.”
“If we get arrested, you’ll lose it anyway.”
“I know that…and I already lost Tanya to those fuckers.”
He had to rub that damn car in my face. It’d been over two months, and he was still sulking.
I was losing my patience.
“Look, what’s more important? Your stupid gun?”
He glared.
“Or your freedom?” I smirked. “You choose.”
“Give me a second to think.”
“For sure, take your time. This is a life and death decision.”
Alex paced the floor and murmured to himself. After a minute or so, he stopped, eyes wide and set on mine. “I’ve got an idea.” Taking the bags from my arm, he laid them down on the foyer table and opened one to expose a beautiful silver-gray suit.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m putting our guns in the inner pocket of this jacket. I don’t think they’ll pat down the senator’s dry-cleaning.” He smiled up at me. “You think?”
“I think it’ll weigh the bag down.”
“Maybe,” he said, sliding the Colt into the pocket, and securing the safety of his most precious possession. He held out his hand. “Your Glock?”
Suppressing a sigh, I unbuttoned my dress and took out my gun. Alex hid it in another pocket of the suit, adding the folder he stole from the safe before zipping the bag up.
“All right.” His eyes flashed to me. “Hold out your arms.”
I did, and he picked up the ‘dry-cleaning’ and folded them in a neat and precise manner, dispersing the weight evenly.
“How does that feel?”
“It’s okay. I can’t feel the guns, but what if they open the bags and end up finding—"
“Madison, listen to me,” he interrupted. “It’ll work, okay? All you got to do is keep the weight of the guns high on your arms. Can you handle that, tough guy?”
Alex was back to his self-assured and bossy self, taking charge of the situation and telling me what to do.
It turned me on.
“Fine.” I fought the urge to smile and flicked my eyes to the floor. “Whatever.”
“I guess we’re ready then, yeah?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I guess so.”
“You guess so?” Alex grumbled and stopped at the door with his hand on the handle. “Well, are you coming?”
“Ladies first?” I asked with mock surprise in his chivalry.
“Just you.” He leaned down and placed soft pecks on my lips, nose, eyelids, and finally my forehead. The last one lingering the longest. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I whispered.
We stood there, quiet, and reflective, knowing what waited for us outside the door would either lead to twenty years to life or an elevator trip to the lobby.
“Don’t do anything to get yourself shot; you got me?” I wanted to scoff at him, but when he held my face, his eyes imploring mine, so deep and penetrating, it stopped my heart. “Madi. Please.”
“I’ll be good.” Enclosing my fingers around his wrists, I pulled his hands down from my face and held them to my chest. “That’s a fucking promise.”
“Thank you,” he said and kissed me one more time. “Here we go.”
We said one last silent prayer, then with a deep breath, we opened the door and walked out into the hall. Time moved in slow motion, but my mind was quick, picking up every fragment of detail. From the mundane, like the eggshell painted walls, to the most crucial, like the way the guards didn’t even look up at us. They were in conversation about the senator and how miserable their lives were going to be in twenty minutes when he got home. I didn’t know whether to clue them in on their sudden company or try to sneak by them unnoticed.
Fate decided for me when the door closed behind Alex, locking and beeping. All eyes shot up and were on us, alarmed and confused by our presence. It was some young guy, who wasn’t there ten minutes ago, who jumped up first. His hand wrapped around the handle of his gun, ready to pull it out at a moment’s notice. The other three stayed seated, but they were as prepared to shoot if either one of us made a threatening move.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he asked.
“My name is Mary Jackson,” I said, according to my name tag, “and this is…” I paused, glancing back at Alex. “…Tony Guarani.”
The young guy narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing in Senator Ryan’s apartment?”
I lifted my arm and gestured to the bags. “Mrs. Ryan needed some dry-cleaning done for an event tonight.”
I had no idea if that was true or not, but it sounded legit, and the faces of the seated guards relaxed, their hands moving away from their guns.
“All right
, raise your arms and spread your legs,” the young and cocky one ordered.
He patted Alex and me down with no issues, but then he dropped to a squat before me and put his hands on my legs, edging them higher and higher until he was half-way up my dress. Alex tensed, and I could feel the fury radiating from him. It wasn’t me we had to worry about going off the deep end and getting us killed, but the touchy-feely guard and my old man’s possessive nature.
“What’s in these?” he asked, rising to his feet, and unzipping the bags before I could even answer him.
“It’s the dry-cleaning,” Alex spoke up for the first time, and I could hear the hatred and anger seeping through each syllable. If he had his gun, I’m pretty sure the guy’s brains would be splattered all over the wall and his comrades’ faces.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he snapped, barely skimming over the suit before being satisfied and zipping the bag closed. “I know what the girl is doing here, what about you? What’s your deal?”
Alex breathed heavily through his nose to keep his cool. “She’s new. I’m training her.”
“Uh huh, is that right?”
“Yes,” Alex said, and his knuckles cracked under the duress of his tightly clenched fists.
Believing he was no longer a threat, the guard turned his attention back to me. “How old are you?”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Alex hissed under his breath.
“Sixteen,” I said with a pleased smile.
It made me old enough to work but too fucking illegal for him to touch.
That changed his demeanor towards me, and it was back to suspicion. He snatched a book off a table and fingered through it. “What did you say your names were again?”
“Mary Jackson and Tony Guarani,” I said.
“Hmm, well, your names aren’t on the list,” he said, snapping the book shut and handing it to the pudgy guard behind him.
“It was a last-minute decision,” I said. “Mrs. Ryan called an hour ago.”
“Mrs. Ryan called you? From where? The airplane?” He laughed, thinking he caught me in a lie.
This was what he needed to prove we didn’t belong, and I could see the satisfaction in his eyes—as if the senator was going to award him with a medal for being the best darn security guard there ever was.
I had to bite back my laughter.
Little did he know.
“No, she called from the apartment.”
He scoffed. “This apartment?”
“Yes, she’s the one who let us in. You can go talk to her if you like.” I could feel Alex’s eyes on me. “But she’s lying down for a nap and asked not to be disturbed.”
He didn’t know what to say, glancing back at his colleagues and they shook their heads. They were unprepared for us but also knew better than to question the senator and his wife. It was the only thing I had going for me because if they did go up there, they would find Lorelei Ryan, and in her sleepy haze, she would corroborate my story.
“Give it a rest, Lee. She’s a kid,” the burly guy with tired eyes and white hair said. “Let them do their job so we can do ours.”
“Fine,” Lee huffed, holding his hand out to me. “But I am taking your keys.”
“We don’t have any keys,” I said with slight bitterness.
Ramon had the keys, and that fucking asshole left us high and dry with no possibility of an escape.
“No keys? Then how in the hell did you get up here?” Lee asked.
“I let them up.”
We all turned toward the sound of the unexpected voice. Shocked beyond comprehension, I found Ramon standing there by the elevator with Damien.
“And I came back up here because picking up dry-cleaning shouldn’t be taking this long,” Ramon continued, his eyes narrowed with contempt at a squirming Lee. “Imagine my surprise to find out that you’re harassing my employees.”
“They weren’t on the list, and we didn’t know they were here. You know how it is with the senator every time he’s issued a high alert watch. I was being cautious,” he rambled.
Ramon waved him off. “Yeah, but now you’ve put my workers behind, and if that dry-cleaning isn’t done on time for tonight’s charity benefit, it’s your ass on the chopping block, not mine. You got that?”
Lee nodded and stepped back. “Sorry, Ramon, but I had to be sure.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, grabbing my arm, and leading me away with Alex close behind. “Next time call me if you got questions about my employees.”
“Yeah, we’ll make sure that this shit doesn’t happen again,” the pudgy one said, giving Lee a hostile glare.
They were bickering with each other, placing blame, when the elevator opened and all four of us got on. The door closed, silencing the arguing guards for good and bombarding my ears with Mozart—the generic version.
I’d never been so happy to hear such shitty music.
“Holy fuck!” Alex said, attacking me with his arms, all the weight of his body making me stagger back to the nearest wall. He breathed deep and burrowed his face in my neck. “I was so close to strangling that fucking rent-a-cop for touching you.”
Clutching the back of his blazer, relishing the feel of the itchy and stiff fabric under my fingertips, I smiled. “I know.”
Ramon laughed. “You pinche pendejaos are crazy.”
I turned around and studied this contradicting enigma. He swooped in at the eleventh hour and saved the day. For reasons that were still a mystery to me.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
Ramon raised an eyebrow in question. “Do what?”
“Come back.”
“It was essential for all the parties involved that you two get away,” he said with a noncommittal shrug.
Alex’s hands rested on my hips as his fingers clutched at my dress. “Cut the fucking martyr act. You were saving your own ass.”
“Well, a bird does not change one’s feathers, does it?” Ramon replied, not even denying it, and I frowned at him. “What? We’re you thinking it was a noble act?”
“I thought maybe…maybe you liked us.” It was childish, even I knew that, but hell, I thought there might be some camaraderie and loyalty between criminals.
I was wrong.
“It doesn’t matter if I like you or not, my main concern was whether or not I’d be linked to you,” he said. “And I would have been.”
I glanced down at my fake name tag. “They would have come to you and asked how we got these uniforms.”
“Precisely,” he said. “It was an error of judgment on my part, and I apologize.”
“For ditching us?”
“No,” he clarified. “For lending you the uniforms. I should have had a better plan to get you by security.” Noticing my appalled look, he rushed to defend himself. “Hey, it’s nothing personal, Kid. It’s business.”
Alex bobbed his head in total agreement with Ramon, but I was still on the fence.
“So, if we did get caught upstairs and there was no tie to you—"
“I’d be the first person to testify against you at your trial.”
There it was, simple and concise.
I couldn’t keep the spiteful tenor out of my voice. “And if I killed you because you were testifying against me?”
The elevator doors dinged open, and he locked eyes with me, sharing a mutual understanding of each other for the first time.
“No hard feelings, Kid.”
Unzipping the garment bag sprawled across Ramon’s desk, Alex removed our belongings from the inner pockets of the expensive suit. He smiled, reinserting the magazine into my gun, and handing it back to me. It was strange, but a sentimental feeling came over me when that cold metal and rough grip hit my palm.
I hadn’t realized until then how attached I’d become to having it.
Tucking the Glock into the waistband of my jeans, I covered it with my shirt and jacket. My clothes were still damp and had a distinct smell of rain, but it was familiar, and I welcomed the
known with fervor. The unknown was outside that door, itching to bombard Alex and me with unrelenting hell and turmoil.
The sane Madi wanted to cower away and hide, but the more prominent and crazy Kid, she couldn’t wait to get out there.
Alex snagged the black sweatshirt from my hands and threw them over his head, messing up his perfectly gelled hair, and giving it a tousled look. When he slipped into his leather jacket, I needed life support because, holy shit!
My guy was rough and dangerous, an unlawful disaster.
Pushing random papers and a pencil holder to the side, I hopped up on the desk and beckoned Alex to play with me. He took the bait, making his way over, but a soft knock on the door stopped him mid-step.
“You guys decent?” Ramon asked, voice muffled by wood.
Alex smirked with his eyes on me. “Later.”
I nodded with displeasure, pulling the beanie over my head, and shoving strands of hair underneath it.
“Yeah, come on in!” Alex shouted back, grabbing the garment bags off the side table, and tossing them over his shoulder.
We figured the Prada would come in handy for the bank heist.
Ramon opened the door slowly, shooting a wary glance around the room. He dropped his shoulders with relief when he found us dressed. Closing the door behind him, he bobbed his head in my direction, still seated on the edge of his desk.
“I have something for you,” he said.
I pointed to my chest, and he laughed, crossing the room, and squeezing past me to get to one of the drawers.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a parting gift.” He pulled out a baggie filled with a white, powdery substance. I knew what it was even before he said it. “Wildcat.”
Alex was shaking his head no. Hardcore drugs weren’t our game.
“Here, take it,” Ramon said, placing it in my hand.
There was a curiosity within me to try the wildcat and see why so many were clamoring over it, risking their jobs and lives for a line.
“Thanks,” I said, closing my fingers around it.
There was a loud groan and swearing behind me, but it was already a done deal. Whether or not I’d have the guts to do it depended all on Alex and what he wanted. I never did anything without him.