Gregg Hurwitz - You're Next

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.

Wielding the drop cart before him, Mike wanted to sprint to the bathroom but forced himself to hold to a hurried walk. When he finally arrived, he used the end of the cart to bang open the door. He practically rode the thing across the tile, smashing into the far wall by the handicap stall. The place was empty, no one bothering with a bathroom break given the three-ring security circus raging on the floor.

Mike slid under the stall door, unlocked it, and drew the cart in beside the mobility scooter, still parked where he’d left it. Lifting with his legs and groaning under the weight, he transferred the wall safe from the drop cart onto the scooter’s footrest platform. Donning his sunglasses and hat, he mounted the scooter, throwing the eagle lap robe over his legs and the safe. The safe was wider than he’d hoped, so his feet stuck out a little on either side, but he prayed that no one would notice.

He motored out of the bathroom and through the heart of the casino, heading for the nearest entrance. The jagged ends of the two-by-fours shoved splinters into his legs.

In his peripheral vision, he saw five guards drag Shep from the keno lounge, Shep letting himself go limp to make the job harder for them. ‘I didn’t do nuthin’!’ he bellowed, playing up the impaired blur of his words. ‘Lee’ me alone. You’re hurting me.’

A number of patrons watched with dismay and sympathy.

Mike kept his head forward and his hand on the throttle, but given the peewee motor and the weight of the safe, the scooter seemed to creep at a snail’s pace. He realized with alarm that the cadre of guards surrounding Shep was moving directly at him, putting them on a collision course. His hand ached against the throttle, but he couldn’t make the scooter go faster. For a brief stretch of walkway, their paths converged, Mike veering off onto the carpet to avoid getting knocked over. Shep’s head reared up into sight for an instant, time enough for his and Mike’s eyes to meet before the guards swept him off again.

Mike clanked back onto the walkway and pointed the scooter’s nose at the glass doors twenty yards away. The safe shifted slightly, and he clamped his legs around it, the lap robe starting to slip. Up ahead he saw Dodge and William storming through the entrance, McAvoy between them. They started toward Mike, and for a moment he was terrified that he’d been made. Lowering his head so the brim of his cap blocked his face, he teased a lump of gum from his cheek and worked it anxiously between his teeth. The overtaxed engine gave off a whine. His leg was cramping under the weight of the slipping safe. He prayed his legs weren’t sticking out too far, that the stupid eagle fleece would hold in place, that he hadn’t in fact been spotted.

He didn’t dare risk a peek, but he felt the weight of the wind as they swept past. His breath burst from him with a shudder, the scooter wheezing forward with comedic slowness. At last the automatic doors peeled open and he was out, the night air chilling the sweat on his face.

Near the knocked-over table, numerous guards had corralled Shep, Bob, and Molly, along with the majority of the casino chips. Despite management’s best efforts, onlookers remained, standing a cautious distance back, pointing, and plucking the occasional quarter from underfoot.

Ducati helmet tucked casually under an arm, McAvoy approached the mass, offering Shep a collegial nod. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘Dunno,’ Shep said. ‘I thought you tribesmen hung together.’

McAvoy’s left eye flickered a little. He turned calmly to one of the guards. ‘Why haven’t you moved him like I asked?’

The head security guard said, ‘We just rounded ’em up.’

Bob waved to a concerned gaggle of older women. ‘I’m feeling much better now, thank goodness.’ He held up an orange bottle. ‘Got my nitrate pill.’

McAvoy pointed at Shep, ‘Take him.’

Dodge stepped into view, and Shep nodded at him. ‘How’s your neck?’

Dodge’s head swiveled slightly, those eyes fastening on Shep but offering neither recognition nor acknowledgment.

‘We can talk about that in a minute,’ William said. ‘In private.’

The guards grabbed Shep by the arms and tugged him forward.

The crowd stirred, and then several uniformed officers shoved through to the front.

McAvoy squared to them. ‘I didn’t authorize you to enter my property.’

A lieutenant flipped open his wallet, let his badge dangle. ‘You’re staring at three felons, Mr McAvoy,’ he said. ‘And they’re wanted in custody.’

A stare-down seemed imminent, but McAvoy didn’t let it get to that. Showing the lieutenant his palms, he stepped aside and smiled cordially. ‘Officers.’

The cops took control of Shep, Bob, and Molly and started hustling them out through the crowd.

William stepped around McAvoy and put a hand on Shep’s chest as he passed, halting the procession. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘Graham’ll have you back to us in no time.’

‘Yeah,’ Shep said, ‘good luck with that.’

Dodge followed them a few paces toward the exit, then stood, blocking the walkway, staring after them with dull, lifeless eyes.

By the time Mike reached Bob and Molly’s van at the far edge of the parking lot, the safe and the scooter were barely holding on. He thumbed a button on the key chain, and the van’s rolling door slid open automatically. A second button unfolded the wheelchair lift from the side of the vehicle. The dying scooter lurched up beside the lowered lift, Mike’s trembling leg gave way, and the safe plopped out and landed with a clang on the metal. With another touch of the button, the wheelchair lift rose, conveying the safe, still bolted to the severed two-by-fours, into the belly of the van.