Not a husband, he told himself. Not a father.
Just a man with a task.
6:59.
He closed his eyes.
That’s when he heard the scream.
Bob gasped breathlessly, a giant plastic bucket of quarters slipping from his hand and exploding onto the carpet, sending out a jangly spout of coins. His face taut and red, he grabbed his left arm and pinwheeled off a Hold ’Em table, staggering forward, dragging the red velvet rope and the shocked dealer with him. A creak issuing from his mouth, he collapsed onto the pit table, which toppled, spilling tray after tray loaded with casino chips.
Molly clutched at her yellow curls and let out another piercing scream. ‘My husband! Oh, my God, his heart, his heart! Someone help!’
Everyone in the vicinity had frozen at once, as if by design. The only movement was that of the coins and chips rolling past ankles and chairs and beneath slot machines, forty thousand and change expanding like a swarm of rats across a hypnotically busy carpet pattern. An elderly man in a battered snap-brim hat crouched to pluck up a black-and-green hundred-dollar chip, and his creaky movement broke the spell, the statue garden springing to life, jostling, shoving, grabbing. Filled fists jammed into pockets. Coin buckets bounced cheerily on crooked arms like Easter baskets. Loafers and high heels trampled hands and kicked coins. The dealer was trying to untangle himself from Bob, who flopped and screeched, clutching his left arm as though it were going to fall off. Security swarmed the area, chasing down chips, manhandling patrons, shouting into radios. Molly’s shrieks grew so strident that a few people, jostled along by the undercurrent, covered their ears.
Standing hip-deep in the chaos, the pit boss touched a finger to his earpiece and spoke into his sleeve. ‘Surveillance, you better be getting this.’
The surveillance suite was pure mayhem, monitors flashing, hands toggling joysticks, frenzied pacing. Half the screens were focused on the commotion below, recording it from every slant.
The director was shouting, his voice high and thin, ‘Could be a diversion! Get the software up and start grabbing faces!’
‘Already running!’ one of the supervisors shouted across.
‘What do you got?’
‘Nothing so f-’ An alert chimed from the speakers of the supervisor’s computer. He stood abruptly, one nervous hand mussing his spiky black hair, a deodorant ring staining his shirt beneath the arm. ‘The guy having the heart attack is a twice-convicted con artist.’
The director stormed over. ‘And the woman?’
There she was, listed under the con man’s associates.
‘Who else?’ the director yelled. ‘I want a sweep of the whole goddamned floor – now!’
Another alert sounded. ‘Okay,’ the supervisor said, ‘we hit on another known associate.’ The facial-recognition software pulled a third face from the muddle. Shepherd White, lurking by the bank, eyeing the vault through the crossed bars of the cage. ‘This one’s a safecracker.’
‘Shift cameras ten through sixty to the vault,’ the director said. ‘I want every angle covered. Have security move now and roll up the crew. And get Boss Man on the phone. He’s gonna want to hear this.’
Mike shoved the drop cart hurriedly across the floor, keeping to the perimeter as commotion reigned by the tables. The weighty gym bag resting inside the cart clanked as the wheels bounced from walkway to carpet. To his left, a bartender was standing on a stool for a better vantage, the FIREWATER sign blinking down on his crooked headdress.
Mike reached the door leading back to the offices and unzipped the top of his gym bag. First up, a spray lubricant, the thin red straw already inserted into the nozzle. He blasted the keyhole, then dropped the can into the cart and tugged from the bag a pull-handle pick gun. Slipping the thin tip into the lubed lock, he clicked the device on. The tip whirred, twisting in the metal channel like a snake in a fist, the internal pins clattering as they jumped above the shear line. With a click, the lock yielded and he was in.
He shoved the cart through and closed the door behind him.
Down the hall one door was ajar, a fall of light lying across the carpet.
Mike lost a heartbeat. He breathed in once, deep, then pushed the drop cart down the hall. As he passed the open door, a woman with wire spectacles glanced up from her desk.
Barely slowing, Mike said, ‘We got a security mess on the floor. McAvoy called – he wants all nonessential workers to clear out before it escalates.’ His voice was slightly distorted from the chewing gum, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Everyone all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I heard that a few guys flashed guns.’
She grabbed her purse and bolted. He kept on down the hall. The end office had McAvoy’s name etched across a brass placard. The lock was a fat Medeco – way too complex for the pick gun. But fortunately Shep had planned for this contingency as well. Mike reached into the gym bag and came up with an electric hand drill, already fitted with a hard carbide bit. He jammed the point into the cylinder core right above the keyway, tightened his finger, and shoved. The drill chuck screeched and sparks showered his forearms, but he made steady progress, decimating the lock pins, the tumblers and springs falling down out of place. The cored lock yielded, the door rotating inward before he even had to shove.
Wheeling the cart before him, he crossed the corner office. The furnishings were top-notch – walnut desk, Baccarat horse sculpture, gold-framed portrait of McAvoy with a fetching younger wife and twin boys.
And there was the painting, just as Graham had described. An Indian healer, rendered in oil, staring Mike down from across the room. The man’s gaze was timeless and his hands raised to show his palms, a gesture that seemed at once passive and empowered. Mike grabbed the wooden frame, said a silent prayer, and ripped it from the wall.
An exhale hissed through his gritted teeth. Graham hadn’t lied. Mike flattened a palm against the wall safe, feeling the cool of the impenetrable blue-steel facade.
Withdrawing a hammer from the gym bag, he punched holes in the drywall around the safe, then he tore it away, the leather gloves protecting his hands. The last item in the gym bag was a cordless reciprocating saw, the straight blade about six inches long. He clipped in the battery pack and revved it up. Rather than attacking the safe, he dug into the two-by-fours that the safe was mounted to, avoiding the thick bolts. The wood gave readily under the jagged teeth. Sweat ran into his eyes. At any moment Dodge could stroll through the office door with its destroyed lock. Mike forced himself to stop checking his watch. It would take however long it took.
He left the bottom two-by-four for last. Positioning the cart flat against the wall beneath the safe, he flicked the saw blade at the supporting beam until it splintered under the weight of the safe. The metal unit tumbled from the wall into the drop cart with a crash, denting the bed.
Too much of the last two-by-four had torn free with the safe, so he severed the protruding end, trimming it as close to the blue steel as he could. Opening the empty gym bag, he laid it over the safe, hiding it. Leaving the tools scattered on McAvoy’s fine Persian rug, he shouldered into the drop cart. With a faint complaint from the wheels, it started moving for the door.
Everyone’s attention, it seemed, was directed at the aftermath by the poker tables. A fresh outburst of excitement rippled across the casino floor, and Mike glanced up in time to see Shep on the run, sprinting between the craps tables, four or five security guards on his heels. He slid beneath a Wheel of Fortune table, popped up, knocking over a cocktail waitress in an Indian-print shift, and bolted into the keno lounge. Reinforcements followed. He didn’t have long.