Blake Crouch: Grab

$5,000,000 per cart.

Six carts.

$30,000,000.

Give or take.

Something so satisfying about dropping them into the duffel, the smell of ink and paper filling the room.

Letty could feel the eyes of the guards on her as she worked. Stu was already through the third lock, and she and Jerrod had nearly filled the second duffel.

"Report," Isaiah called from the door.

"Cruising, brother," Stu said. "What's our time in?"

"Two minutes, fifty-five seconds."

Jerrod zipped the first two duffles, pushed them aside.

They started in on the third cage.

Aside from the whine of the drill, they worked with a quiet intensity. The minutes whirred past with a staggering paradox of speed and timelessness.

So much adrenaline raging through Letty's system it felt like they'd been in this room for hours.

Stu drilled out the last lock. Then he lifted something that resembled a TSA wand and started moving it slowly over the duffle bags.

"We got company," Isaiah said. "One guy."

"Need an assist?" Jerrod asked.

"What are you implying, brother?"

"Armed?"

"Just stay on task. I got this."

There was a knock at the door.

Letty looked up. Would've missed the entire thing if she'd blinked.

Isaiah opened the door, dragged a good-looking Latino into the suite, and turned his lights out with an elbow strike.

Ten seconds later, the man was bound and gagged with the rest of them.

Isaiah jogged over as Stu was wanding the last cage.

"We happy?"

"Yeah, none of the cash is chipped."

"What does that mean?" Letty asked.

"It means they can't track it."

Letty packed the last armful of stacks into a duffel and zipped it up. Isaiah, Stu, and Jerrod had already carried most of the bags into the bathroom. Letty tried to lift one, but it didn't weigh much less than she did. It was all she could do to drag it across the carpet.

Halfway to the bedroom, she heard the guard's radio.

A man's voice. Deep, raspy.

"Matt, did your camera show up, over?"

Letty dropped the duffel, rushed back. She turned Matt over, unfastened his ball-gag, and grabbed the radio. The closest weapon was a MAC-10 lying on the coffee table.

She grabbed it, held it under the man's chin.

"Matt, do you copy, over?"

She said, "Tell him he just showed up and that you'll be back online momentarily. Say just those exact words."

"Letty, what's up?" Isaiah from the bedroom.

She held up her finger.

Stared straight into Matt's eyes, saw plenty of steel there, but some fear too.

Hopefully enough.

As she held the radio to his mouth, it suddenly occurred to her what she was doing. That she was threatening a man with his life. Of course she wouldn't pull the trigger if he sold them out, but still—a line had appeared and she'd crossed it.

Without hesitation.

Pure reaction.

Her first armed robbery.

You have no choice. You have to get out of this hotel right now.

Matt spoke into the radio, "He just showed up. We're installing it now. Be back online momentarily. Over?"

"Copy that."

She took the radio and bolted back into the bedroom.

The duffels were gone and Jerrod was just lowering himself down through the crawlspace.

She stopped at the edge of the gaping hole and got down onto her knees. Isaiah gave her a hand over the lip of the marble. She found her footing in the crawlspace, the urge to be out of this mess, out of this hotel, this city, overpowering.

A sense of panic, of time running out enveloping her.

Then she was climbing down the ladder into room 968, listening to the marble slab slide back into place. The soles of Isaiah's BDUs descended toward her as he maneuvered through the ductwork.

18

It took Letty four tries to get her left leg through the harness.

Isaiah watching her from the window.

He said, "You gotta lock that shit down."

"Lock what down?"

"Your panic."

Stu had rappelled out the window four minutes ago. Jerrod right on his heels. Now Ize had the last three duffle bags on belay, smoothly lowering two hundred and fifty pounds of cash—$12,000,000—to the convention center roof.

The radio crackled again.

A rod of tension shot through Letty's entire body.

Isaiah unclipped his locking carabiner from his harness and moved over to the bed.

"Matt, we still have no visual, over?"

Isaiah lifted the radio, pulled off a passable impersonation.

"This one doesn't work either, over."

"Are you messing with me? Over."

"Nope. Over."

"I'm bringing one up personally. Over."

"Copy that."

"See you in five."

Isaiah said, "Now you can panic." He grabbed her harness, gave it a hard tug. "Ever rappelled before?"

"No." She could feel a wave of nausea coming on.

"Easiest thing in the world."

"I'm sure."

As they approached the gaping hole in the window, Letty felt the night-heat of Vegas and the smell of the Strip and the desert ripping through. Sage and car and restaurant exhaust.

Isaiah had rigged a sophisticated anchor system out of webbing to the bed frame.

"I don't want to die," Letty said.

A black rope had been halved and thrown out the window.

"Go ahead, look," Isaiah said. "You need to see where you're going."

She edged up to the glass, poked her head through.

"Oh Jesus Christ."

Stomach swirling. Body in full revolt against this.

Stu and Jerrod the size of Lego men far below.

The curve of the building a dizzying mindfuck.

"We should've gone over this before," Letty said.

Isaiah grabbed her belay device, threaded the rope through, then locked everything into the carabiner on her harness.

"I'm scared," she said.

"I hear that. But personally...I'd rather fall and die than be in this room when hotel security busts through. You feel me?"

She nodded.

He grabbed her hands, put her left on the rope near the belay device, her right on the rope further back.

"This belay device is your friend, your brake. When the rope is back here," he touched her right hand to her hip, "you won't move. When you raise it up, it'll allow the rope to feed through. You'll drop."

Her heart was going like mad.

"Two things. Do not let your left hand get too close to the belay device. It'll chew it up. You'll let go and die."

The radio crackled. "On my way, Matt. Say, did you ever send Mario down? He never showed, isn't responding, over."

Isaiah said, "Look in my eyes." She did. "You go down in a sitting position. Control your speed."

"I can't do this."

"You have to do this." He helped her up onto the lip of the glass.

"I can't," she said.

"You been through worse than this. Put your right hand in the brake position." She clutched it, held it to her hip. "You ain't gotta squeeze so hard. Relax. Now lean back."

"I can't."

"Stop saying that."

"Matt, do you copy, over?"

"Lean. Back."

She hung her ass out over the gaping darkness, her stomach turning itself inside out.

"Now raise your right hand slowly, until you feel the rope begin to glide through the belay device."

"I—"

"Do it!"

"Matt, do you copy, over?"

She raised the rope off her hip.

Isaiah smiled at her from inside the room, said, "There you go, now let it slide through your grasp, but not too fast."

She opened her fingers, felt the rope move through.

She dropped a foot.

"Keep it going," Isaiah said, "and I hate to rush you, but I do need you to hurry the fuck up."

She descended in erratic bursts.

The sensation of plummeting to her death never out of her mind.

Twenty feet below their window, she lowered past a room where the curtains had not been drawn. Glimpsed a couple watching television in bed less than ten feet away, their faced awash in high-def glow.