by D. L. Wood
As they crossed at the light and turned left towards the storage facility, Chloe could almost feel Riley’s eyes on them. Was he using the binoculars he’d brought? she wondered. Probably not. Too conspicuous.
The parking lot that stretched in front of Bio-Tite and the adjacent strip malls was sparsely filled with cars. Though she couldn’t see him doing it, she was sure Jack was once again scanning the area from behind his sunglasses.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Jack nodded. “So far so good.” He stopped to listen to the Bluetooth earpiece around his left ear. “Riley says you’re doing great, stop worrying.”
“Thanks, Riley,” she said, elevating her voice to be sure he could hear her.
“He says stop yelling at him.”
Chloe smiled.
A bell jingled delicately as they opened Bio-Tite’s steel front door, in striking contrast to how thick and heavy it was to move. The lobby was quite wide, but only about eight feet deep. A counter took up the whole of the left side, behind which stood a thirty-something, red-haired man in a suit he’d probably outgrown several hamburgers ago. To the right was a waiting area consisting of two groupings of several leather-padded chairs spaced around free-form, shiny metal coffee tables. It had an antiseptic feel to it, with stark white walls and floors and no artwork to add color. Two large plastic bubbles, likely concealing video cameras, faced each other from opposite ends of the ceiling. A security guard, dressed in a black uniform resembling a police officer’s, stood watch in a far corner opposite the desk.
“Good morning,” the clerk said, placing his hands on the counter and interlocking his fingers. Though he was pleasant-looking, well-groomed, and not the least bit scary, Chloe’s nerves began elevating by the second.
“Morning,” Jack replied. Chloe cleared her throat anxiously.
“Hi, um,” she said, and cleared her throat again, “I need to access my box, please.”
The clerk nodded. “Certainly,” he answered, with a supercilious precision that obviously wasn’t natural. He waited, as if expecting a follow-up from her. When nothing happened, he fidgeted. “Do you need assistance?”
She nodded. “Please.”
Jack put his hand on Chloe’s arm. “We haven’t been here before. Someone else set this up for her to safeguard some items. So we’d appreciate a tutorial, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” he answered with a smile that did not quite hide the slight annoyance he apparently felt at having to leave his spot behind the counter. Exiting through a narrow swinging divider, he pointed Chloe and Jack to another steel door on the back wall, directly opposite the front door.
“You enter through this booth,” he said, pointing at the door. “It’s the only way in and out of the vault. Once you enter, the door will lock from the inside. You can come back through, but no one else can enter. There’s a terminal inside. Place your right hand flat on the glass so it can scan your prints. Once it matches them, it will ask for your passcode. Enter it into the terminal. Once accepted, it will buzz you through to the vault. Your box will be the one with the green light activated. Retrieve it and choose any of the three privacy rooms on the right of the vault to conduct your business. The privacy room door will lock behind you. When you are finished, press the return button inside the privacy room. If someone else has entered the vault in the meantime, I’ll buzz you back into the vault as soon as they’ve left it. Once you’re back in the vault, replace your deposit box, then exit through the booth. Questions?”
“No, I think we’ve got it,” Chloe replied.
The clerk nodded. “Well, just buzz me if you have any problems. There are intercoms inside each location.”
Chloe nodded as Jack opened the booth door, and said, “After you.”
They stepped inside the booth, which was maybe double the size of a standard phone booth. The terminal to the left reminded Chloe of a self-scanner register at a grocery store. Instructions flashed on the mini-screen above it. Following them, she placed her right hand flat on the scanner and waited.
“I don’t know, Riley,” Jack said spontaneously, then, after listening for a bit, asked Chloe, “Riley wants to know how Tate got your prints to set this up?”
Chloe snorted. “Seriously? That would’ve been easy. He probably just took something from the house the last time he was there. A glass maybe? Who knows. It wouldn’t be hard.” The instructions asked her to place her right thumb on the scanner and she complied.
“But all five from one hand?”
The terminal pinged and a colored diagram of a right hand with the forefinger and thumb highlighted appeared on the screen.
“Guess he didn’t need all five,” Chloe noted. A grid containing digits zero through nine replaced the hand diagram, and the screen instructed her to enter her passcode. “Okay, then, here we go,” she said.
“She’s putting in the code,” Jack muttered for Riley’s benefit.
With her hand slightly shaking from nerves, Chloe entered the code they’d taken from the pendant.
* * * * *
The truck’s cab grew stuffy as the mid-morning sun rose higher in the sky, prompting Riley to roll down the driver’s side window. Traffic rolled steadily by, the sounds louder now with the open window. A light breeze fluttered through the truck as he remained laser-focused on Bio-Tite.
“Still all quiet out here,” Riley reported. A steady number of vehicles streamed through Bio-Tite’s lot, but all of them headed to businesses in the strip malls. None had shown any interest in Bio-Tite.
“We’re through,” Jack relayed, relief and excitement evident in his voice.
“Well, all right,” Riley said. “Keep it up and—” He stopped mid-sentence. A red Civic had pulled into one of the spots directly in front of Bio-Tite.
“You’ve got company, I think,” he said, retrieving the miniature binoculars from the seat beside him. “Two people. A guy and—I think, yeah—a girl driving. A blonde. She’s staying in the car. Red Civic. There’s a dog in the back. The guy is getting out. He’s going in.”
“Should we be worried?”
Riley shook his head, “Well, never say never, but this looks pretty harmless.”
Jack didn’t bother to ask if Riley could see what was happening inside the lobby, since it had no windows.
“Just keep an eye on it,” Jack muttered to Riley.
“10-4.”
* * * * *
Upon accepting the code, the door on the backside of the booth unlocked automatically. They went through into the vault, which turned out to be a large room with three entire walls lined with hundreds of deposit boxes. Rows of more boxes filled the interior. To their right, three doors were marked Privacy Room #1, #2, and #3, respectively.
The faces of the deposit boxes lacked the traditional two keyholes and numbers. Instead, each one was unmarked, with the exception of a small round, unlit indicator about the size of a pencil eraser. Jack and Chloe each turned on their spots, quickly scanning the plates for the one green light that would signify Chloe’s box. When she moved past the first row, she saw it.
“There!” Chloe gasped, pointing to a narrow box on the left side, about two-thirds of the way up the inside of the first row. Its indicator light was glowing a bright, neon green. Jack reached up and pulled it out by its handle, nodding Chloe through to the first privacy room.
“We’ve got the box,” he told Riley. “Should be just a couple more minutes. What’s going on out there?”
“Nothing new,” Riley replied. “Blonde’s still waiting.”
They hustled inside, and Jack closed the door behind them. A soft click told them they’d been locked out of the vault. On the wall was a panel with a button labeled, “VAULT RETURN.” The room was empty except for a bar height steel table, its center covered by a padded, carpet-like material. Chloe dropped the box onto it with a thud, flipped the latch, and opened it. Crushed black velvet lined the interior, and on it lay a single business card f
or “Fourth Bank of Grand Cayman.” It contained no employee name, just the bank’s contact information. She flipped it over.
“It’s an account number,” declared Jack, eyeing the first string of handwritten numbers as he pulled out his cell and snapped a photo of the back of the card.
“And the amount,” Chloe said, referring to the figure, “17,244,292.00,” scrawled beneath the account number. A date was jotted beside it, presumably indicating when that balance had been accurate. “And it’s grown since then. Renny said twenty million.” Their eyes flicked to the card again, neither one able to voice the rest of what was written there.
You finally have it all. Love you, Tate.
Jack flipped the card back over, took a photo of the front, then handed it to Chloe, who put it in her pocket. “Okay,” Jack said, “now the envelope.”
From another pocket, Chloe pulled a small, white envelope. Although they hadn’t known exactly what they’d find inside the box, they assumed it would be some sort of instructions on how to proceed. So, they’d faked a letter from Tate telling Chloe he’d wired the money to a Swiss bank and that further instructions awaited her at a hotel in Zurich.
“I still say that sounds ridiculous,” Chloe opined as Jack tossed the envelope inside the box and slapped its lid shut.
“This whole thing is ridiculous,” he shot back, snatching up the box and depressing the vault return button. “But leaving something in here might buy us a little time if they do find it.” After a few seconds the door unlatched and they went through. “You get all that, Riley?” Jack asked.
“Copied most. You headed out?”
Jack replaced the box and the light turned green before blinking out completely. “Almost,” he said, taking Chloe’s hand and pulling her back towards the booth.
* * * * *
Riley was starting to sweat. Drops beaded on his forehead, and he wiped them away with a napkin leftover from one of his late night taco runs.
“We’ve got it,” Jack buzzed in his ear. “Coming out now.”
“Roger,” confirmed Riley.
“Things all clear?”
“No change. The guy inside is still—” Riley stopped suddenly as the taillight on the Civic flicked on. “Hold on—”
“Riley . . . what?”
“There’s movement out here.” Sure enough, the red car backed out in such a hurry that it nearly took out a pedestrian carrying a box from the copy store located one storefront over.
“Riley,” Jack repeated urgently, as he pushed through the steel door leading back into the lobby, “what kind of mov—”
“The girl in the car—she left. Without the guy. And in a hurry. I don’t like—”
* * * * *
Jack pulled Chloe into the lobby close behind him. He knew something was wrong as soon as the door closed after them.
“—don’t like it,” Riley was bellowing in his ear.
The guard was gone. And the clerk—
A masked man, standing where the clerk should have been, raised a semi-automatic pistol and fired.
FORTY-TWO
“Jack!” Chloe screamed as he went down simultaneously with the muffled pffft from the barrel of the silenced 9mm. Before she could react, the clerk strode around the counter, threw her away from Jack and stomped on Jack’s right hand. Jack roared, red beginning to spread from his right thigh onto the pearl-white tile floor.
Chloe’s mind spun frantically, unable to formulate a coherent thought for the shock.
“He’s bleeding out fast,” said the shooter, now standing over Jack with the barrel pointed at his head. “Looks like I may have nicked an artery. You come with me without a struggle, and I leave him to his chances. You don’t, and I pop him in the head right now and take you anyway.”
“No!” Jack yelled and reached for the shooter’s ankle, the only thing within reach.
He kicked Jack’s hand away, then kicked him in the head. Hard. The earpiece flew off to the side, and Jack stopped yelling. He was out.
“No—No!” Chloe cried. “Stop! I’ll go, I’ll go!” Was that Riley’s muffled voice she heard yelling out of Jack’s earpiece? Where was he! Did he understand what was happening?
“Who’s got whatever was in the box—him or you?” the shooter barked.
“What?” she cried, shell-shocked and uncomprehending until he jabbed the gun at Jack again and clarity struck. “Wait—yes! Yes! I’ve got it.”
“Toss your weapon—I know you’ve got one somewhere—and your cell on the floor.”
As she complied, a bang sounded as the front door shuddered. It was locked and bolted shut.
“Jack!” Riley shouted frantically, his voice muted by the thick steel.
“Not a word!” the shooter growled. “Out the back,” he ordered, gesturing toward the door behind the counter. “Go!”
With a final glance towards Jack, unconscious, his life pouring out of him second by second, Chloe obeyed.
* * * * *
“Chloe! Jack!” Riley yelled, banging on the front door over and over. It was drawing attention, but he didn’t know what else to do. This development wasn’t something they had anticipated. They’d figured that DiMeico might make a discreet attempt to catch them on the way out, or enlist a quiet tail to ambush them down some side street—but an all-out assault on the building? In broad daylight?
Why didn’t I see it? That dog completely threw me . . .
He shook off the thoughts. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was getting to them.
Jack wouldn’t respond over the Bluetooth. He’d said nothing that Riley could make out since the screaming started. It wasn’t a good sign. And where was Chloe? He pulled out his gun, to try, well, he didn’t know what, when the lock clicked and, after the sound of a bolt sliding, the door opened.
Riley tumbled through the door and spotted his friend on the floor. “Jack! Aww, no!”
“Are you the police?” the red-haired clerk, now very sweaty and disheveled, asked in a panic. “I called as soon as they left—Abe’s been shot, but I think he’ll be okay. That man made me lock him up in the back. Kept me out here behind the counter, told me he’d kill me if I made a sound. Said he needed me to operate—”
Riley was barely listening. “Jack!” he said, flopping down beside him. “Jack!”
He spun to face the clerk. “What happened!” His head snapped side to side, searching. “Where’s Chloe! The girl! Where’s the girl!”
“They left—the guy made her leave with him. Through the back. Said he’d kill him,” he nodded towards Jack, “if she didn’t.”
Riley felt for a pulse. It was weak. Slipping off his belt, he wrapped it around Jack’s thigh and tightened it as much as he could to staunch the flow of blood. In the distance, sirens sounded.
“Stay with him,” he ordered the clerk. “Press here.” He indicated the belt.
“I can’t with this on,” he said, holding up his hands, bound together with a cable tie. “Can you—” Before he could finish, Riley had whipped out a blade and sliced deftly throughout the tie.
“Do it,” Riley barked, and ran for the back door.
FORTY-THREE
Jack. Chloe whispered his name into the darkness of the trunk the shooter had forced her into. Please, God, not Jack. Please save him.
The shooter was ready for us. Somehow, he had known. And he had planned his escape well. After he had ushered her out of Bio-Tite through the employee’s entrance at the rear, he’d made her climb into the trunk of a car parked in the alleyway behind one of the strip-malls. Riley had checked there this morning for anything suspicious before heading to the fast food parking lot. She even remembered seeing this car as they had navigated through the alley. But, like the other vehicles parked back there, it had been empty and not the least bit suspicious. So there hadn’t been a lot of concern.
And what could they have done anyway? There was only so much they could do with just the three of them. They’d known it was a ri
sky move, going in there at all, but they hadn’t had any choice. And now—now it was over. Riley would never catch up in time, if he even found her at all.
Her mind raced through the possibilities of what the driver was planning. It seemed like they’d been traveling for at least half an hour already. Where were they going? Most likely, they were headed right back to DiMeico’s. More panic erupted in her belly. What would DiMeico do with her? That one seemed obvious, because, unlike before, now she had no bargaining chip. She knew where the money was, and they knew she knew it. Which meant DiMeico would soon know, and then he wouldn’t need her anymore.
He drove for another ten minutes then slowed. She wondered if she should yell for help, but reconsidered. She didn’t want some bystander getting hurt because of her. Not ever again. Eventually the car came to a stop. The trunk latch clicked and light spilled inside. He was standing over her, a cell phone to his ear. His mask was gone. She immediately recognized him as the man from DiMeico’s called “Vargas,” who had played and replayed Tate’s video for her.
“It’s Vargas,” he was saying into the phone, clearly annoyed. “Where were you? . . . Well I had to handle it myself . . . Yeah. No, it’s done. Hold on.” He turned his attention to her.
“Whatever was in the box, hand it over.”
Chloe hesitated. He groaned darkly. “Now, or I’ll just shoot you and search for it myself.”
Chloe pulled the business card from her pocket and gave her last hope away. She choked back a sob. Jack. Jack, I’m so sorry.
The man looked it over, and flipped it to the reverse. A thin smile stretched through his lips.
“Korrigan? I’ve got it. All of it . . . No, Grand Cayman, Fourth Bank of. You ready?” he asked, and then rattled off the account number. He paused, apparently listening. “No that’s it. You should be able to—” he paused again. “Why your place? I can just head to the office and we can talk there—” Cut short, he waited, listening, and Chloe had the horrible thought that maybe he was receiving instructions on exactly how to dispose of her.