John Sandford - Wicked Prey

They popped out of the van, Cruz and Cohn together, and walked through the gilt front doors of the hotel, toward the two women still behind the desk. Except for the Muzak-playing an orchestral arrangement of "A Hard Day's Night," heavy on the strings-the hotel was utterly silent.

Cohn stepped up to the desk and said, "Good evening, ladies," smiling, and they smiled back, and Cohn lifted the gun and said, "This is a robbery-If you don't do exactly what I tell you, I'll kill you. I'm not joking."

They moved the two stunned, frightened women into the darkened nondenominational chapel, which featured a small group of pews looking at a stand with nothing on it. Cruz pulled down her mask-the stocking obscured her features, while still allowing her to see. They ordered the two women into one of the pews, and Cruz said, "If you make a sound, we will kill you. Do you understand that?"

They both nodded, and Cruz said, "I want you to say, "Yes," that you understand. We can't have any mistakes here."

"Yes," they both said.

"Okay. Now, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do…"

As she was talking, Cohn pulled the mask over his own face and walked over to the restaurant, where the two drunks were still talking. "Gentlemen, I have to ask you to come with me."

"Who're you?"

"I'm the robber who's sticking up the hotel," Cohn said. "If either one of you makes a single fucking noise, I'll kill you."

He took the two men into the chapel and made them stand in the aisle, facing the two desk clerks, as though they were about to be married.

He pointed the gun at the younger man, a chubby, apple-cheeked blond who'd started to sweat: "What's your name, and what do you do for a living?" Cohn asked.

"My name is Rob Benedict, and I'm a consultant at Schumer and White."

"What's Schumer and White?" Cohn asked.

"We're a law firm ' in Washington."

Cohn pointed at the older man, a heavyset, weather-beaten farmer-looking guy. "What about you?"

"I'm a farmer, from Nebraska."

"What're you doing here?" Cohn asked.

"I'm a delegate."

"How'd you two get together?" Cohn asked. "You queer?"

The farmer seemed about to object, but then said, "We were the last ones in the bar. They kicked us out. We were too cranked up to go to sleep."

"Okay," Cohn said. He considered for a moment, then shot the consultant in the forehead. As the consultant went down, the farmer jumped back, then half-turned away, waiting for the bullet, and the two women made soft screeching sounds in their throats until Cruz put a finger to her lips.

"Sit in the pew," Cohn said to the farmer.

The farmer sat in the pew. The dead man was stretched down the middle of the aisle, on his back.

"I don't actually like killing people, but I won't hesitate to do it," Cohn told the three of them. "I needed to make that point, and the consultant seemed like a more worthless piece of shit than a farmer. But, I got nothing against killing farmers or desk clerks or anyone else. That clear?"

They all nodded.

Cohn said, "Now, one of you girls is going with my friend. The other one will sit here with me. With me and the farmer. Which one of you two handles the safe-deposit boxes?"

One of the women glanced at the other, and Cruz picked it up. "Okay, Ann. You handle the boxes? You stay here. Karen, you come with me, like I told you."

Cruz and Karen walked out to the front door, and Cruz waved at Lane, who shut down the van and got the tool and weapons bag from the back.

He followed them inside, and Cruz put Karen back behind the desk, and took up a station in the hallway, behind her.

"Remember, dear, if you try to run, or if somebody comes in here and you give us away, I'll kill both you and them. Do you understand, Karen?"

"Don't hurt me; I have a daughter," Karen whimpered.

"We won't hurt you if you do what we tell you," Cruz said. "We shot that other man to make the point-we don't want a massacre here, but we want you to believe us. We'll kill you if we have to."

While she was giving the little lecture, Lane went back to the chapel, looked at Cohn, who nodded to Ann. Lane squatted in the aisle, his masked face a few inches from Ann's, and said, "Which are the biggest money boxes? Just judging what you think, from what people put in them."

"Oh, God," she said, her chin trembling. She glanced at the dead man. "Honest, I don't know many of them. I think-wait-sixty-six. And maybe, uh, forty-two. And one. I think one."

"Okay. I'm going to go open those," Lane said. "If they're empty, something bad might happen to you. If they're not empty, if they're good-well, you should try to think of more numbers before I get back."

"There might be something in two. An old man keeps stuff there, he keeps it in his hand in his pocket, so it's something, but I don't know what."

"Keep thinking," Lane said, and he touched her face with his gloved left hand, which made her flinch.

"Time's a-wastin'," Cohn said cheerfully. Lane picked up his bag, got the strong-room key from Cruz, who'd gotten it from Karen, and went inside.

The room was just as shown in Cruz's photos, with a wall of steel boxes set in a concrete wall. He put the bag down, picked up the oversized drill, plugged it in, and started on the lock on Box 2, the old man's box, just out of curiosity. He timed the cut.

Forty-eight seconds, and the lock cylinder was gone. "Excellent," Lane breathed. He could do all of them in an hour.

He flipped open the outer door, pulled the box-slowly, it was heavy, so heavy that he thought something was holding it in the slot. He stopped, and looked to see what was binding, saw nothing, and with some effort, pulled it the rest of the way out, and sagged with the weight of it. He put it on the floor, and popped the lid: and found, from front to back, a stack of small gold bars. Each was two inches wide, four or five inches long. They were laid three across, three down the length of the box. He dug them out: five deep. Forty-five bars that must weigh a couple of pounds each.

"Holy shit," he said. He put them in the tool bag, hefted the bag. He could carry it, he could even run with it, but not far. "Holy shit."

He went on to Box 1.

Cruz played the part of the late-night executive woman, a step up from an ordinary desk clerk; you saw them in all the better hotels. If she stayed back, lingering in the hall, nobody would pick up the mask. And she was close enough to control Karen. Karen was not holding up well, clutching at her hands, on the edge of weeping. Cruz was watching her closely, and the two men coming in from behind, down the stairwell, almost took her by surprise.

When she heard them, she instinctively stepped toward Karen, so the men wouldn't see the mask, walked behind the desk and then out the other side, and one of the men said to Karen, "Hey, is there anyplace we ' are you all right?"

Cruz turned and saw them, two guys in ruffled shirts and tux pants, one still wearing a cummerbund, the other without, and she pointed her gun at them and said, "If you move or make any noise I will kill you. This is a robbery…" and before they could react, she half-shouted, "Jim."

Lane popped out of the strong room behind them, and they turned, scared now, and saw Lane with the heavy black mask and the Uzi, and one of them said, "Oh, my gosh," and the other one, "Oh, Jesus," and Lane said, "Into the chapel. Right there, across the hall, into the chapel. You won't be hurt if you pay attention…"

They moved into the chapel and Cohn took them: "Glad to see you fellas. Notice the dead man lying in the aisle…"

Lane went back to his drill, and Cruz, back in the hall, with one eye on the stairway now, looked at her watch. Twelve minutes. Seemed like an eternity.