by Sienna Mynx
“Think? That’s right, it’s what I pay your for. To think, to plan, to execute, not to dictate how I run my business or my woman.” Lee’s anger was venomous and exact. He was on edge. Tonight was not the night to test his patience. “A word of advice, friend. Her success is to your benefit, her failure everyone’s demise.”
The car stopped. Lee tossed open the door and was out before his parting words sank in. Abahti glared after him, pounding his fist on his knee. With no other choice, he followed.
***
“Where is it?” Kumar wiped at the sweat above his lips. His eyes darted from dial to dial. “Where did I…I don’t know? I don’t….”
“What’s wrong?” Sasha asked.
“Shut up! Shut up, damn it! I can’t concentrate with you breathing down my neck!”
Her breath caught in her throat, and her mouth closed in silent compliance. She blinked through her hurt feelings but saw him clearly. He was coming down. He was crashing. Oh no! She’d seen it with Pops too many times to count. Kumar had used again, on this night of all nights.
“Are you high? Did you get high?” she stammered.
Kumar ran his hand through his hair. He unraveled before her eyes, his lips dry and his face pale. There was a slight tremor that accompanied his every move. Finally, those glassy irises were focused on her.
“Did you fuck Lee?” he seethed, spittle coating his lips. “Did you?” he shouted, huffing air so fast his cheeks puffed and deflated as his chest rose and fell.
***
Michelle was running through the tunnel, feeling each minute tick past. Then she heard the question and nearly stumbled over her own two feet. Panting, her heart leapt to her throat, and she strained to hear Kumar again. Strained to make sure she didn’t hear what she thought she’d heard.
“Did you fuck Lee?” he shouted.
***
“Have you fried every brain cell in your stupid head! If Lee finds out you’ve been using tonight he’ll kill you! Damn it, Kumar, you could get my sister killed! Why now?”
“Answer me! Answer me! Did you fuck him? Did you?”
Sasha rubbed her hand hard against her brow. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.” Her vision blurred as her eyes misted over.
“So it was all a game to you. The kidnapping, Rawhead’s job—this, all of it. Nothing matters to you, does it, Sasha? You set Chocolat up and you set me up.”
She smacked him hard. Kumar’s head was knocked back. The look he gave her stopped her heart. “Kumar, listen to me.” She reached and he jerked away from her touch. She covered her mouth, so afraid for Michelle, and now for his life. “My sister is in there now. You have to help her. You have to calm down. We can deal with this later. I swear it. But not now.”
“Shut up! Don’t say another word out of your lying fucking mouth!” He pointed a finger in her face. Sasha drew back as his finger curled into his hand, making a tight fist. He wanted to strike her. She saw it in his eyes. Instead, he put his shaking hands to his temples.
“Are you still fucking him?” he managed. “Just answer me that one question. Are you still fucking him behind my back?”
“Kumar, please—”
“Are you?”
“No, it didn’t happen like that. I swear it. Before he hooked up with Michelle, before I met you. We had a thing but nothing more, and I hate myself for it.”
***
Michelle rolled her neck, wishing she could rip the microphone from her ears. She had to keep a cool head. She couldn’t deal with her shock and pain over her sister’s final betrayal. The blow would cripple her confidence. The grief for Lee’s betrayal had shredded her already weakened heart. She was a fool to love him, Pops warned her and still she went into it blindly. Every night, she convinced herself she had a greater plan. She was playing Lee. The truth was there was no plan outside of her love for him. And now her heartache left her no one else to blame, but herself.
Tears caused her goggles to fog over. Mentally, she checked herself and warned herself this was just ‘Lee.’ His usual M.O. She didn’t trust him anyway, so why be hurt now? But it was all a lie. She had started to believe again in them. Now she knew better. She felt unimaginable pain, the deepest, most profound loss. He’d screwed her sister. She was a fool to ever believe in them.
She looked up at the tunnel and back the way she came. She lifted her goggles from her head and wiped her eyes, then slipped them back on and started running again.
***
“Kumar, I love you.”
“Go to hell!”
Sasha began to cry in frustration and fear. “Kumar, please, you of all people know what Lee did to me. He tricked me, baby. I went to him to strike a bargain. He was to pretend to kidnap me, so that Michelle would be fooled enough to break into the museum and steal the Jesus Stones. But he turned the tables on me. We didn’t have sex, not really, it was...it’s hard to explain.”
“How do you not really have sex?”
“Lee drugged me, he kidnapped me. You were there. He chained me in a room, Kumar. He did it to make us both indebted to him. How would I know I would meet you? How would I know that months later we’d end up here? I couldn’t tell you, baby. How could I tell you what he’d done, what I’d done? Lee is the reason…I found you. All these lies are the reason we fell in love.”
The door to the trailer opened. She and Kumar froze. Instinctively, they knew. Sasha tried to wipe away the evidence of their meltdown from her face.
Lee stepped through the trailer. His soft footfalls were like thunder to her now, and she tensed under his approach. Stealing a glance at Kumar, who was rigid and locked tight in his seat, Sasha did her best to recover.
“What is it?” Lee asked.
“It’s cool. She’s in, boss,” Kumar managed.
Lee looked from one of them to the other. “What’s going on between you two? Is it Michelle?”
“No boss, she’s fine.” Kumar’s eyes dropped to the green light on his dashboard. It indicated Michelle could hear them all. “She’s on the line, boss. She can hear you.”
Sasha’s stiffened. Her gaze lowered to the green light in horror. The muscles near her mouth twitched as she suppressed the gasp, kept it from escaping. She pressed her lips together and fought the sob in her throat back down. Lee stepped in closer, and she made sure he couldn’t see her face. But Kumar began to fidget once more. The tension in the trailer was so thick it was hard to breathe.
“Then what’s between you two?”
“Nothing. We just had a little fight, Lee. We’re cool. Right?” She nudged Kumar.
“Yeah. Cool,” he mumbled, wiping his hand down his face to clear his eyes from the stinging sweat.
***
“I see it. The maintenance ladder,” Michelle said.
It was just an inch above her head. She stepped back and surveyed the climb, then ran forward and leapt, catching the ladder by the second-to-last rung. She grunted as her fingers tightened on the oily, cool steel. Careful of her own weight, she began to pull herself up one rung at a time until her foot could reach the last one.
***
Lee felt such comfort from the sound of her voice, the small grunts she made as she climbed upward. He could see her in his mind. He took a step closer, his eyes darting from one monitor to the next. A wave of déjà-vu broke over him. The last job he’d been fool enough to play with her freedom, her life. He wasn’t a praying man, but he uttered one anyway. He prayed hard.
Several fingers pecked away at the keys at once. The top monitors switched to the cameras mounted in the security rooms. He was watching them through the bank’s own security feed. Surprisingly, in its arrogance, the bank had outdated surveillance equipment that was under five years old. Bypassing it was the easiest part of the job. So why was he sweating and panting?
Lee’s gaze dropped down to him curiously.
Kumar cleared his throat. “I’m in. I’ll start switching the feeds to the recorded ones. Give me ten
seconds,” he croaked and his voice broke.
Lee’s eyes never left him. There was an evident tremor to his hands when his fingers paused and lingered over a key. His tech man was usually in his element, but now he was nearly pissing himself like a rookie?
“You cool?” Lee asked.
“Lee?” Sasha leaned forward in her chair, blocking his view. He was forced to address her. From the corner of Lee’s eye, he saw his tech stiffen and fumble awkwardly over the keys. He felt his chest tighten with worry. “I think we figured out the locking mechanism. Kumar added a trigger to shut down the phantom one I was worried about. The vault would default to the manual mode. I got the sequence worked out, but, well, it requires concentration. I’m really nervous on this one, Lee. I mean, can you give us a little privacy? When it’s time to concentrate on the vault I mean, you will be posted by the minute.”
Lee didn’t blink. He stood there, rigid and watchful.
She couldn’t gauge his thoughts, just the danger in his penetrating stare. How her sister managed to keep such a viper like him in line was beyond Sasha. One minute alone in his office, she was behaving obscenely. It confused and awed her in conflicting ways.
“Please?”
Lee gave her a nod of approval, then returned his eyes to Kumar. His hand rested upon her lover’s shoulder with a firm, warning squeeze. “Don’t let me down, Kumar. I want her to walk out of there just as she went in.”
“Got it, boss. Got it.”
When Lee left and the door to the trailer closed behind him, Sasha let go a deep sigh.
***
Michelle closed her eyes. She made the climb with feline grace. In her all-black bodysuit, she remained undetected, just like the shadows she crept within. Unwanted flashes of betrayal played behind her closed lids. Sasha and Lee in each other’s arms, laughing at her. Sasha and Lee plotting against her, over and over again. She sucked in a deep breath and opened her eyes once more, but tears soaked her ski mask.
“I’m…I’m here,” she said softly.
***
Kumar scratched his head. He looked at one dial, then the other, trying to remember his code.
“Kumar, I’m here,” Michelle said.
“Concentrate. Just concentrate,” Sasha whispered.
He glared at her. Counting down his anxiety, he then closed his eyes and reopened them. Punching in the code, he nearly pissed himself when the binary numbers flashed over the screen.
“Disengaged.”
***
Michelle reached above and turned the grip counter-clockwise. The lock released with a whoosh of compressed air. The floor bottom popped up on an automatic lever that moved aside. Above her was darkness. “You did it. I’m in,” she said dryly.
She took no satisfaction at all in the victory; her heart bled for so many losses. She pushed up and looked around. It was a maintenance room. Pipes roped above, generators were bolted to the wall. The stench of oil and grease over bleach mixed with the musky heat greeted her. A loud hum covered her climb out of the access tunnel, and she was soon on her feet.
“How are we?” She checked her watch.
“Good on time. Halls two, three, six, nine, and seven are clear. We got forty-five minutes.”
Michelle nodded.
Game. Set. Match.
It was time.
***
Lee paced. Like a caged panther, he moved back and forth along the side of the trailer. Instincts. He built his empire off of his instincts. Now he could feel nothing but fear and worry. Abahti appeared before him. Lee’s anxiety didn’t ease at his arrival. His trusted friend seemed just as anxious as Kumar and Sasha. There was something wrong with his team. He could feel it.
“We got word. Cumminskey’s men were spotted near the bank. Our boys say he’s covering the place.”
“And you’re just hearing of this now?”
“I’ve been....”
“What the fuck are you keeping from me?” Lee snapped. “What!” he yelled. The men all tensed. “What!” he repeated at everyone gathered.
Abahti’s nostrils flared but he remained silent.
Lee stepped back. He clenched his fist.
“We can make a move on them, boss.”
“With her in there?”
“We have to act. I need the order to do so. We’ll keep it clean.”
Lee looked back to the trailer and smelled a setup. “How convenient.” He chuckled. “So I’m to sacrifice Chocolat and leave her to Cumminskey or get in a street battle that will send us all to jail.”
“Eddie’s been plotting.”
Lee nodded. “Right, Eddie’s been plotting. My question is how did he know that this was the night we’d go in? That this was the place?”
“Boss, I have to say it.” Abahti stepped closer, and lowered his voice. “Chocolat could have sold you out. She could have cut a deal with Eddie when he had her, tipped him off to your plan. I think the setup is for you to get caught and for her to get away.”
“That’s what you think, huh?” Lee looked him over suspiciously.
“I wouldn’t betray you. We both know she would. That’s not my game.”
“Of course not, old friend, that’s not your game,” he said. Left with nothing and no one to trust but his own feelings, he focused. She loved him. He had to believe in that. If he didn’t, he was a dead man anyway.
***
Michelle noticed all the halls were as Kumar had detailed. The numbering of each was etched into her brain. Like a rat in a maze, she chased the cheese along the path Kumar had dictated. No guards. Just silence. Her feet were light and barely heard as she ran the race. The race for the Chalice.
Then she heard Lee’s voice through her earpiece.
“Get her out of there! Now!”
***
Kumar and Sasha looked back at him, both confused by the order.
“She’s in. She’s—” Kumar stammered.
“I see it. I’m at the vault,” Michelle shouted.
Every eye in the room went to the monitor. They saw her readying to do the break. Michelle removed her gear. She stepped in closer to the double-steel doors.
Lee pushed Kumar out of his way. “Michelle, listen to me, sweetheart. We’ve been made. You have to get out.”
Michelle found the camera. She looked up to the lens. “What do you mean? The alarms?”
“Cumminskey. He knows you’re in there. I can’t protect you without bringing heat. We need to abort.”
“I’m here…I’m right here, Lee.”
“No, damn it!” he snapped. “It’s too big of a risk! Get the hell out of there!”
“Too late for that,” she shot back, glaring into the monitor. “Too late for everything. You either help me now or watch me go to prison.”
Lee leaned on the dash and brought his face closer to the monitor as if she could see his desperation. “Did you hear what I said? I can’t protect you.”
Michelle shook her head, and a bitter laugh escaped her. “You never cared enough to protect me. You’ve never cared about anyone or thing but yourself. Why should this be any different? Sasha! Are you there?”
“I am, but if Lee says—”
“Sasha!” Michelle snapped.
“Yes, I’m here, sis.”
“You ready?”
“Michelle, I’m sorry, please don’t do this. I can’t lose you. Please,” Sasha began.
Lee frowned at her then the monitor.
“Are you ready?” Michelle demanded.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Then let’s go.”
Lee turned and stormed out.
“Tell me what you see?” Sasha asked.
Michelle put her hand to the cool steel. “Six locks. From the ceiling to the floor. A keypad. No dial. A lever. It’s like the picture we had, just like it.”
“Okay, good…good,” Sasha said. “Use the magnet as I showed you, careful of its placement. Tell me when the digital display goes to zero. It’s set to manual no
w. All the triggers have been tripped temporarily.”
Michelle removed the cylinder-shaped magnet. It was unlike anything she’d ever used. She tried to remember what Pops and Sasha said it would do. They practiced against the new technological improvements on locks and safes. Sasha had an assortment of gadgets, and she swore by their power. To Michelle, it seemed implausible that a simple magnet could impact a million-dollar locking device such as this, but in the strangeness of her shared universe with Pops, it was true.
With care, she placed the magnet on the steel near the keypad, right between the buttons and the display. The digital dial scrambled immediately then went to zero. Michelle released the tight breath she held in her lungs. “Well, I’ll be damned. It worked. Sasha, I’m ready. What next?”
Sasha dropped her face in her hands and shook her head, then exhaled a deep breath. “Michelle, please, you sure you want to do this? I’ve never done it this way.”
“Too late for that now, Sasha! What’s next?”
“Okay, okay. Follow my instructions to the tee. I mean it—to the tee.”
“Fine. I think I can listen to you better than you’ve ever listened to me,” Michelle mumbled. She cracked her knuckles and released another calming breath. “Let’s do this.”
***
“She’s not coming out.” Lee breezed past Abahti in search of his men. He approached several others standing near one of his transport vans. “Give me a piece.”
Abahti hurried over just as a hired hit man passed Lee his .38 and another handed off his .45. Lee checked the chambers and approved of them both. He turned on his heel and shed his black trench coat.
“What are you doing?”
“Going after her. What does it look like?”
“Wait. That’s suicide.”