The Tomorrow Heist

by Jack Soren

  Emily stepped out of the limo and waved. Jonathan smiled and looked at Lew.

  “Told you we were the good guys,” Fahd said from behind them. “Natalie’s in the car too.” Then he headed into a nearby building.

  Jonathan watched Lew move faster than he thought he could on his crutches. When he got to Emily, he dropped the crutches and grabbed her. He picked her up and swung her around, hopping on one foot.

  “Your friend’s quite a guy,” Maggie said. The chopper was winding down behind them, but the noise still forced them to speak loudly. Jonathan looked at Emily and Lew kiss, then back at Maggie.

  “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you,” Jonathan said.

  “It’s okay,” Maggie said, but he could tell from her tone that it wasn’t. He hadn’t told Maggie anything about his life—­not about being The Monarch or about being a dad. There hadn’t been time. Until now. He wasn’t sure he’d ever tell her about the art-­theft side of his life—­she was still in MI-­6, after all. But there was a part of his life he knew he wanted to share. He owed her that, at least.

  “After I knew you weren’t dead, and you were released, I wanted to contact you. I even dialed a few times. But, I was in a different place. I had someone who needed me. All of me. I couldn’t . . . God, this sounds lame.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Maggie said, looking down. “I get it, I do. We were great, but we were then. You moved on. I would have done the same thing.”

  “You’re not hearing me,” Jonathan said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Natalie stepped from the car. Jonathan meant to run to her, but the sight of her sapped the strength from his legs. It was the first time he’d seen his daughter in over a year, now looking like a tall version of her mother. The realization hit Jonathan by surprise, and by the time Natalie had run over to him, his tears were flowing. He held her tight and kissed the crown of her head.

  After a long embrace, both of them laughing and wiping tears away, he looked over at Maggie. She was more than a little confused. Jonathan put his arm around Natalie and led her over to the chopper.

  “Maggie, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Natalie.”

  Acknowledgments

  THANKS TO ALL my friends and family for their love and support, especially Barb Einarsen and Kiersten Soderstrom.

  Thanks to all the readers, bloggers, reviewers, librarians and booksellers who not only enjoy books but seek them out and prop them up.

  Big thanks to Dan Mallory, Joanne Minutillo, Danielle Bartlett and the entire Witness Impulse team for getting the word out about my books.

  Huge thanks to my editor, Chelsey Emmelhainz, who helped me take this book from title to completion. Your expertise, patience and threats of bodily harm cannot be highlighted enough in this process. May you dream of Lew.

  And special thanks to Tasha DiZazzo for everything else.

  Want more Jonathan and Lew?

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Jack Soren’s debut international thriller

  The Monarch

  Available now wherever ebooks are sold.

  An Excerpt From

  The Monarch

  12:20 P.M.

  JONATHAN WATCHED EMILY Burrows clumsily answer questions from the reporters about The Monarch—­a situation he found more than a little surreal—­when he heard his name. He saw Lew ignoring Miss Burrows and looking up at one of the huge displays overhead. When Jonathan saw what Lew was looking at the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

  “ . . . a photographer from Tallahassee, Florida. It’s not yet known what motivated this mild-­mannered family man to take up a ritualistic killing spree. Again, for those just tuning in, the killer known as The Monarch has been identified by the FBI as Jonathan Hall . . .”

  A fist slammed into Jonathan’s face just below his right eye. The world swam, and Jonathan was only peripherally aware that someone grabbed him and dragged him away. Even in his delirious state all he could think about was Natalie. If that broadcast wasn’t nationwide now, it would be in minutes. Soon, everyone in Tallahassee would see it. He’d lose her for sure.

  As more and more of his senses returned, Jonathan knew he had only one chance. Get to Natalie as soon as he could. If he could just explain things, maybe she’d understand. Either way, they could run. Whether that was any kind of life for an eleven-­year-­old would be something he’d anguish over later. Right now he needed to stay out of a prison cell.

  “Get your shit together, Jonny,” Lew said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  Jonathan’s vision returned as Lew led him toward the door. He looked down at Lew’s hands gripping his arm and noticed they were bloody and bruised. He looked back and saw two men with earpieces lying on the ground, bloody and broken. Past them, he saw that four armed men had jumped out of the crowd and up onto the raised platform by the podium. The FBI agent called Wagner and the NYPD chief of police were on the ground, not moving. Two of the men had their guns pointed over the crowd, and were intermittently shouting and firing into the air.

  Two other men had Emily Burrows and were dragging her out like they’d tried to drag him. If not for Natalie, he might try to help her, then a thought occurred to him. He got his feet under him, shook off the remaining bells in his ears, and pushed Lew off him. A few more bullets thunked into the ceiling and pieces of cement crashed around them. They raised their arms over their heads to deflect the debris, the crowd screaming and running every which way. Jonathan’s was the only face up on that screen right now. They—­thugs and cops alike—­would only be after him right now. He had to keep it that way.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lew asked.

  “Get Burrows. She’s in danger.”

  “Who the fuck isn’t? Come on,” Lew said, trying to grab Jonathan’s arm. Jonathan’s wits and reflexes were back and he slipped out of the grab easily.

  “I’m serious, Lew. Go help her. Something’s fucked up here and I’ll be damned if I’ll let one more person get hurt in our name,” he lied.

  Lew hesitated for a second, then said, “Aw, fuck!” and ran over to help Emily.

  Jonathan turned and pushed his way through the crowd out of the building and into the concourse. He had to get out of there and as far away from Lew as he could.

  He dodged through the ­people in the plaza, fighting off the odd person who made the connection between the images on the big screens mounted overhead and this lunatic running by. It wasn’t hard, but if the crowd got too thick he wouldn’t have room to maneuver. It would be pile-­on-­the-­serial-­killer, and he knew there wouldn’t be enough left of him to pour into a jar for a court date. But even if he got through them and to the street, he’d still be up shit’s creek.

  I need a diversion.

  Just then the front windows of the federal building exploded in a mass of noise, smoke, and glass, the blast wave hitting Jonathan in the back and knocking him to the ground. His senses dulled by the concussion, he distantly heard screams of pain and panic, bodies both slamming and flopping to the ground around him like someone had opened a window high overhead and alternately pushed and thrown them out.

  By the time he raised his face off the pavement again, his ears were ringing just slightly louder than the sound of all the car alarms around him going off.

  He got up, shaking the dust and glass off himself. He had been far enough away from the blast seat that the crowd had blocked the worst of the projectiles from him. Then he saw the carnage. It was horrific. Half the ­people who had been standing in the plaza—­the ­people he’d just run through—­were all on the ground, either deathly still or writhing in moist pain. Blood was everywhere. The glass had cut them to shreds. He knew the ­people inside the concourse were probably worse off, but smoke still filled the enclosed area and he couldn’t see anything.

  “Lew!” Jonathan called, jumping up on on
e of the serpentine benches, trying to see inside. “Lew!” He waited, fearing the worst. After what seemed like forever, a dusty and bloody figure stumbled out over the bodies wearing a duster. Thank God.

  “There he is!” Two men over to the side started toward Jonathan. Their appearance and unwounded state said they hadn’t been here for the explosion. It still wasn’t safe to be around him. Knowing Lew was alive, Jonathan turned and ran.

  When he got to the street, a limo came screeching to a halt in front of him. The back door flew open and a man with a gun inside said, “Get in or you’re dead.”

  Jonathan kicked the door closed, turned, and ran up the sidewalk.

  LEW TRIED TO run but he was still too fuzzy and just ended up falling onto someone on the ground. He pushed himself up and looked into a woman’s panicked eyes. Glass from the explosion had sliced into her face and neck. Blood gurgled out of her wounds as she fought for breath.

  “Help . . . hel . . .” And then she was gone. The dead and dying littered the plaza. He shook his head and got back up to his feet.

  When the windows exploded he’d been standing behind the company directory. The initial fireball had eaten all the oxygen in the area and sucked in more hungrily, slamming him headfirst into the structure. He reached up and touched the pain in his head and his fingers came away warm and wet. It wasn’t the first time he’d cracked his skull, but it always hurt like a mother.

  Through the smoke he saw Jonathan kick a car door closed and take off up the sidewalk. Then the car peeled out, jumped the curb, and drove after him. Lew was running before he realized it, cutting across the plaza, stepping around the human obstacles scattered before him. He had no idea where the Burrows woman had been during the explosion, but he didn’t care anymore. Whoever had done this was after the closest thing to a brother he had.

  But he only had one emotion right now, and it was pure rage. He didn’t know who all was involved in this despicable event, but he knew some of them were in that car.

  He left the plaza and sprinted across the road, his lungs screaming. He hadn’t run full-­out in a long time. He’d let the only thing he’d ever really been able to count on atrophy over the past few years, but he still had the skills to put the pain into a corner of his mind and lock it away. His heart would have to explode before he’d stop running.

  He rounded the corner and saw Jonathan turn around just as the car caught up to him. He thought it was going to run him down, but at the last moment it swerved and a door on the car opened, slamming Jonathan to the pavement like a ragdoll. Lew kept running.

  Someone got out and scooped Jonathan up, carried him over to the car, and tossed him in. The man looked up and saw Lew coming like a locomotive. He pulled a gun and fired a few wild shots as he backed into the car after Jonathan. And still, Lew kept running.

  The door closed and the car pulled off of the sidewalk, but had to stop as traffic cut it off. Horns blared and ­people shouted. The limo slammed into the car blocking its exit, then backed up so it could take off using the space it had created. Lew reached the car just as it was backing up and before it could take off, he leaped onto the roof.

  The car sped away through the gap it had created with Lew on top. He gripped the sides and hung on, wishing he had any weapon besides his hard head. He’d be shaken off if the car ever got out of the lunch hour traffic, so he balled up his fist, wound up, and slammed it into the driver’s door window. The window exploded into the car and Lew felt the bones in two fingers break. He put that pain away too.

  Someone shouted and then two bullets fired up through the roof from inside the limo. They missed him and went through his duster. He rolled to the side as two more shots blasted through the roof where he had just been a moment ago. Then he heard a shot inside the car and the shooting stopped. Lew was even more frantic, but his busted hand was making it hard to hang on. As if they’d heard his thoughts, the limo start careening from one side of the street to the other, bouncing off the parked cars as it went.

  On the third bounce, Lew lost his grip and found himself airborne. He slammed into the side of a parked truck and felt consciousness slip from him before he landed on the pavement.

  JONATHAN, WEDGED DOWN on the floor of the backseat of the limo, plastic ties around his ankles and wrists, watched Lew fly off the roof of the car. Beside Jonathan lay the man who had grabbed him and tied him up—­dead with a bullet through his forehead.

  While he’d been shooting at Lew on the roof, Jonathan pulled his knees tight to his chest and kicked out. The shooter turned, rage in his eyes, and pointed his gun at Jonathan. A second later, without even turning his head, the driver had swung a gun around and killed his accomplice.

  “That’s a hell of a guard dog you’ve got there, mate,” the driver said now. He had an Australian accent, but not a thick one, like he’d been away from home for a long time.

  “You have no idea,” Jonathan said.

  “Just sit back, be quiet, and we’ll have no problems,” the driver said.

  “No more problems, you mean,” Jonathan said. The driver didn’t physically react, but his silence told Jonathan he was right. This little operation might have netted him, but it hadn’t played out as planned. “Relax, I know how missions can go sometimes. You can’t foresee everything. I’m sure your boss will understand.”

  “I’m not going to tell you again, mate. Shut it.” Jonathan was getting to him. He was taking a bigger risk than he normally would, but after seeing the driver kill his partner for threatening him, he’d lay odds he was wanted alive and well. Then he remembered, just before all hell had broken loose, a ­couple of thugs going after Emily Burrows.

  “No problem,” Jonathan said, and then after a beat, “Miss Burrows probably wasn’t that important to him, anyways.”

  “You were warned,” the driver said, swinging his arm back with the gun gripped in his fist.

  “Wait—­” Jonathan had forgotten alive and well didn’t necessarily mean conscious. The gun slammed into the side of his head and a bright explosion in his mind radiated out until his brain overloaded and everything went dark.

  About the Author

  JACK SOREN was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Before becoming a thriller novelist, Jack wrote software manuals, drove a cab, and spent six months as a really terrible private investigator. His debut novel The Monarch was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer national book award and the Silver Falchion Reader’s Choice Award. He lives in the Toronto area.

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from The Monarch copyright © 2014 by Martin R. Soderstrom.

  THE TOMORROW HEIST. Copyright © 2015 by Martin R. Soderstrom. All rights reserved under International and Pan-­American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-­book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-­engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Harper­Collins e-­books.

  EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780062365200

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780062365217

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