Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19985 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19985 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
“You’re late,” Danny says, mouth full of burrito.
“I’m two minutes early.”
“Which is late for you.” He grins at me. Danny is thirty-one, wiry, good with his hands, and quick with his mouth. We met eight years back in a job in Phoenix that went sideways. Together, we managed to get out without being busted. He’s also a degenerate gambler but is the closest thing I have to a friend in this business. “You eat yet?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine,” he scoffs. “You know what fine really means? It means you haven’t eaten yet cause you’re too lazy to get something.” He tosses me a foil-wrapped burrito with a wink. “Carne asada with guac.”
I catch it one-handed and take a seat in front of him. “Let’s get started.”
Marco turns from the corkboard and comes over. Marco Silvia. Forty-four, former military, and the calmest guy I’ve ever worked with. Never raises his voice, never loses his temper, and never moves faster than he needs to. He drives, handles logistics, and has inhuman patience. He’s been married to the same woman for nineteen years and has two daughters. They think he installs commercial fire alarms for a living.
“Bank’s clean,” Marco says. “No unusual foot traffic. No new cameras we don’t already know about. We’re good.”
I pull the blueprints from the tube and spread them across the table. The schematic shows the ground floor of Pacific Waves Bank and Trust, a mid-sized branch in the financial district with a vault that holds just over three million bucks on any given Monday.
“Monday morning,” I say, tracing the entry point with my finger. “We go in at nine-oh-five. They’ll have a skeleton staff, minimal customers. I’ll take the floor and employees, Danny, you take the vault, and Marco, you’re outside with the engine running. Ten minutes, in and out.”
Danny smirks, looking pumped and ready. “What’s the take?”
“Conservative estimate, three point two. Split three ways after expenses, that’s a million each.”
“Hell yeah.” Danny sits back, grinning like a skull. “Lisa’s been on me about a house in La Jolla. One with a pool where we can…have a little fun, if you catch my drift. After this, I’ll get it for her.”
Marco nods. “Carmen wants to open a bakery. She’s been talking about it for years. My youngest needs braces too. Gonna take care of all of that.”
I listen to them talk. Danny and his wife’s dream house. Marco and Carmen’s bakery. They’re not talking about money like it’s money; they’re talking about it like it’s a future. A life for them and the people they love.
I’ve never seen it that way.
For me, money has always meant survival. A means to get from one place to the next. But now, they’ve got me thinking…
About a gorgeous girl I met briefly who has made her way into my head, and I can’t get her out.
What am I thinking?
I focus my attention back on the blueprints, channeling the clean focus I need at this stage of a job. But it’s not there. All I feel is the empty house I’m going back to tonight.
“Yo, Chris?” I look up. Danny’s watching me, burrito paused mid-bite. “You good?”
“Fine.”
“You’re spacing out, brother.” He takes another bite. “That’s not like you.”
He’s right. It’s not like me. I don’t space out. My mind doesn’t wander. I’m always focused on the job. That’s what keeps me alive. What keeps me free. But for ten seconds just now, I wasn’t thinking about the job. I was back in the bookshop, sitting in the leather chair, watching a stunning girl with chestnut hair and warm brown eyes hand me a cup of coffee.
“What you spending your cut on?” Marco asks. “New car? That cabin in Colorado you mentioned?”
A cabin in Colorado. I said that once, years ago, after a job in Salt Lake City. I was just speculating on what it would be like to live somewhere clean and quiet, no neighbors and no history. Nobody who knows my name. Danny remembers because Danny remembers everything. Especially things you wish he’d forget.
“Haven’t decided yet,” I reply. Which is the truth.
I haven’t decided yet because there’s no reason to. No one in my life is pushing me for anything. Danny has Lisa. Marco has Carmen and the girls. I don’t even have parents. Dad died in prison when I was fifteen, and Mom ran off with some drug dealer six months later.
All I’ve got is a bag full of cash and a lease I can break with a phone call. A million bucks to me is just another million bucks in the stash. It can buy things but not the one thing that truly matters. Someone to share your life with.
No strings. No attachments. Nothing that could potentially land you behind bars.
My mantra runs through my head like it always does, but for the first time in years, it doesn’t quite land. Because underneath it, where my discipline lives, something else is taking up space. Something with a cute laugh that I only heard once but can’t stop replaying.