The Loot

by Schaefer, Craig

  She stood at his bedside.

  “You were right. When Mom was dying, after she passed, I could have come home. I could have taken compassionate leave. I just . . .” She lifted her open hands, then let them fall. “I couldn’t. I bailed. To be honest, fighting a war was easier than dealing with losing her. And that’s bad enough, but I bailed on you too. That’s the part I can’t forgive myself for.”

  “Everybody,” he breathed, “everybody grieves their own way.”

  “But we’re a family. And family is supposed to be there for each other.”

  She turned away. She looked up to the corner, to the ghosts of their reflections in the dead television screen.

  “I found a way to get the money. To take care of your debt to Jimmy Lassiter.”

  “The . . . Charlie, that’s . . . twenty thousand dollars. How? What are you—”

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “You don’t want to know.”

  He didn’t have a response to that. The implications of her words seemed to press his battered body down into the mattress. She steeled herself, then turned to look him in the eye.

  “But this is the last time.”

  “Charlie—”

  “No. You listen to me.” Her voice was tight, strained with the weight of time. “I remember when I was a kid. How the power would sometimes go out, because you ‘forgot to pay the bill.’ Or Mom scraping together change from the sofa cushions to get me something to eat. I didn’t understand until I was older.”

  “I got it under control.”

  “No, Dad. You didn’t. You stopped for a week here, a week there, maybe a month. Usually when Mom threatened to walk out. Somewhere along the line, I think you figured out she was never going to. Somewhere along the line, so did I. She was strong enough to watch you kill yourself. I wasn’t. So I left.”

  Charlie jabbed her finger at him, talking faster now, the words she’d kept bottled up for years bursting free.

  “But the things you’ve done, the choices you made, that is not on me. I won’t take the blame for your failures. So this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to bail you out with Jimmy Lassiter. And you are going to get your shit together. I’ll help. I’ll help you find a therapist, drive you to meetings, whatever kind of support you need to kick the habit for good. But you are going to get your shit together.”

  She leaned over the bedside rail and dropped her voice to a deadly whisper.

  “Because if this ever happens again, I won’t be there to bail you out. I love you, Dad. I love you so damn much. But I won’t be there. I’m not going to put my life and my freedom on the line to pay for your mistakes. Not after tomorrow, anyway.”

  “Charlie . . . what are you going to do?”

  “Told you,” she said, “you don’t want to know. It’s just going to be handled, okay? And when it’s done, I’ll take you home, and we can try to get back to something like normal. Like a family again. If you want that.”

  He lifted one shaky arm. His hand closed over hers, feather light. He shut his good eye.

  “I want that,” he said.

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Then she let him sleep.

  Charlie caught a few hours’ fleeting sleep in her father’s empty house. She washed away the night under the spray of an icy-cold shower and had her boots laced up by dawn. No time for a morning run. That was fine. Her heart was already pumping, strong and clear and ready to fight.

  They’d agreed on a public site for the trade: the Boston Public Market, on the ground floor of Haymarket Station. It was an indoor marketplace, a roomy supermarket with over forty different vendors, sporting clean, spacious aisles under open ductwork and hooded lights. The Public Market showcased the best of New England; everything was locally sourced, from fresh produce to prime cuts of meat and artisanal cheeses to flower stalls and wine displays.

  Most importantly, it opened at eight in the morning and always drew a crowd. A crowd meant cover for the handoff, and a threat the police wouldn’t ignore once the anonymous call went out. A warning about three potential shooters running loose on the market floor would bring a heavy response in a heartbeat.

  For the kidnappers’ part, Charlie assumed they liked the number of exits. The market connected to the street, to the Haymarket mass transit station, and to a parking garage, offering plenty of ways to slip away with the loot.

  Not that they were ever going to touch those diamonds. Charlie almost felt bad, until she remembered who they were dealing with. Then all she felt was a sense of wary resolve. They were about to go up against three armed killers with nothing to lose; no matter how good the trap, that meant Sally and her crew still held the balance of power. And she was just crazy enough to start shooting if she felt cornered, no matter who was in the path of her bullets. From this moment forward, every move they made, every split-second decision, had to be the exact right one.

  At five minutes to eight, Charlie stood in a growing and eager crowd outside the market’s doors. Dom and Beckett hung on opposite edges of the fray, eyes sharp behind their dark sunglasses, checking the street in both directions. They’d laid out their roles ahead of time, and everyone knew their job.

  Charlie held the diamonds. That and the .38 revolver she’d stolen from Grillo, snug under a battered olive jacket. Ideally she wouldn’t have to draw it, but if things went south, she didn’t want to be caught without a weapon. As grateful as she was for Beckett’s gift of the ASP Key Defender, after her last experience, she wasn’t about to unleash military-grade pepper spray in the heart of a crowded market. It sat snug in her hip pocket, still fitted with the harmless blue training insert.

  Dom was her backup. She slid close as the doors unlocked and the crowd surged inside, staying tight at Charlie’s shoulder. Armed and ready for a fight if the situation came down to it, but it was Charlie’s job to make sure that didn’t happen. If they were going to save Sean Ellis’s life, they’d have to do so with words and wits, not bullets. Beckett hung back and kept a low profile. His job was overwatch, spotting the kidnappers from a distance if he could and making the crucial phone call to the police.

  Perfect plan. The only problem with perfect plans, as Charlie knew from experience, was how fast they fell apart under the cold, hard light of reality.

  They passed a baker’s stall, the air warm and laden with the buttery, mouthwatering scent of fresh-baked bread. Charlie’s stomach rumbled as she eyed a tray of flaky croissants. Then she locked onto a glimmer of movement up the aisle. Fifty feet ahead, passing a produce display, Sally and Leon were on the move and closing in fast.

  “Left, behind the florist’s stall,” Dom muttered. Charlie flicked her glance to one side. Farther back, Sean Ellis’s face looked pale and strained as he stood motionless behind a spray of bright wildflowers. Brock just loomed behind him, squinting, his double chin tucked low like his broad shoulders were trying to swallow his head. One brick-size hand clamped down on Sean’s shoulder. The other was out of sight behind his back.

  In the middle of the aisle, Sally and Leon came to a dead stop. Charlie and Dom squared off five feet away, like gunfighters preparing for a showdown.

  “Where’re our diamonds?” Leon asked.

  “Where’s our client?” Charlie replied, as if she hadn’t already seen him.

  Sally nodded back over her shoulder in Sean and Brock’s general direction. “There. Safe. Hand them over, we let him go.”

  Beckett, Charlie knew, had already ducked into a quiet stall to make his phone call. He’d bought a prepaid burner last night just for the job, and once he was done, he’d toss it in the nearest trash can.

  The timer was ticking. Her job was to keep the kidnappers talking and keep Sean alive until the police showed up. If she could get Sean closer and away from Brock so they could defend him in a standoff, all the better. There were no guaranteed victories, not now; all Charlie could do was what Dom had taught her. Minimize the risk.

  One wrong move, one stray bullet, and h
er entire plan would go down in flames.

  FORTY

  The market bustled around them. Shoppers, tourists, innocent people going about their daily lives, unaware of the vipers in their midst.

  “Bring him over,” Charlie said, locking eyes with Sean from across the crowded market stalls.

  “You see him,” Leon said. “He’s alive and he’s safe. What else do you want?”

  “She doesn’t have the diamonds,” Sally said. Her lips twitched at the corners. “This is a setup, I told you this was a setup—”

  Sally was getting agitated, and that was the last thing they wanted. The last time she’d gotten agitated, she’d put three bullets into her former professor without blinking. Charlie held up one open hand.

  “I’ll show you. I’m going to reach into my pocket, all right? Is that okay?”

  Sally’s nose twitched in time with her lips, like her face was trying to crawl off her skull. She looked to Leon. His hand edged closer to his own unseasonably heavy jacket and to the bulge just underneath.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Slow, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  Slow was fine with Charlie. She was playing for time.

  The leather pouch slithered from her pocket, nestling in the palm of her hand. She tugged the drawstring like the wires of a bomb. The leather folds slowly parted, overhead lights snaking inside to dazzle off the mound of precious stones within. Leon’s eyes went wide as saucers, and his fingers twitched at his sides. Sally swallowed hard, torn between the promise of treasure and her hunger for revenge.

  “Give us Sean,” Charlie said, “and it’s all yours.”

  She tugged the drawstring once, hard, and sealed the gate to paradise.

  Leon held out his hand. “Diamonds first.”

  “Uh-uh,” Dom said. “You, we can maybe trust. Your psycho pal here, not so much. Wouldn’t put it past her to pump a couple of bullets into our client on her way out the door.”

  “She won’t.” Leon looked sidelong at Sally. “You won’t.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sally said. If there were an award for least convincing lie, she would have taken home the trophy.

  But she wouldn’t be taking the diamonds. Charlie kept a tight hold on the pouch and chanced a quick glance at the milling crowd behind the kidnappers, hoping to see uniforms closing in. Can’t be long now, she told herself. Just keep them talking, keep them distracted.

  “What guarantee do we have that this little feud of yours is over?” she demanded. “For all we know, you’ll be back to take another shot at our client next week.”

  Leon spoke fast, before Sally could get a word out.

  “Because she’ll be with me. Somewhere far, far away from here, in a country with no extradition agreement. Trust me, the farther away from here we can get, the happier we’ll be.”

  Sally gave him a “Speak for yourself” glare, but she held her silence. Something caught Charlie’s eye: a flicker of movement behind Sally and Leon’s shoulders, off to the right.

  Beckett was low, the big man crouched behind a glass butcher’s display case. His eyes were wide, and as they locked with Charlie’s, he made a frantic slashing motion across his throat.

  Something was wrong. Beckett could see something they couldn’t farther up the aisle, something bad enough that he wanted to abort their best and only shot at getting their client back alive. Charlie’s mind raced. No time to figure it out. She had to trust him and break this off, fast. That meant getting some distance.

  “Okay,” she said, taking a step back. “You have a deal. Wait right here; I’ll get the rest of the diamonds.”

  “The rest?” Leon said, boggling at her.

  Charlie eased back. She tried not to be obvious as her gaze flicked over Leon’s shoulder, heartbeat quick. Crowds, shoppers, tourists, nothing out of the ordinary. She forced a disappointed smile.

  “You didn’t know? Damn, Dom, we could have walked away with half the loot, and they never would have guessed.”

  There was an edge in Dom’s voice and a sharp glint in her wary eyes. She’d seen Beckett’s warning too. “Oh well. Fair’s fair. Go grab the rest of the loot. I’ll stay here with our new friends until you get back.”

  She knew what Dom was doing. Sacrificing herself to whatever trouble was coming their way and covering Charlie’s retreat. Noble, but Charlie didn’t leave people behind. She stepped along the aisle, hands at her sides, nice and easy, while she scrambled to come up with a plan.

  She looked back and saw what Beckett had seen. A swarm of uniforms cutting through the crowd like sharks on a blood trail, just like they wanted.

  And Malloy, smirking like a cat who’d just found his way into a birdcage, was with them.

  No time to figure out how or why, no time for questions. Charlie had ten seconds, tops, before the cops made their move, and they’d all be leaving in handcuffs. She was acutely aware of two things—the illegal, unlicensed .38 in her waistband, and the pouch of stolen diamonds in her fist—and she’d have just enough time to deal with one of them.

  “We stashed it over here,” she said to Leon and Sally, stepping just out of sight behind a produce display.

  Charlie made her choice. She tugged the drawstring, yanked the pouch open, and crouched down. She hiked up one leg of her cargo pants as the lead officer’s shout cracked over the market air like a bullwhip: “Everybody! On the ground! Show me your hands!”

  The pinpoint diamonds poured into her boot in a shimmering cascade. She wriggled her foot around, working them down under her heel and toes, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth as she prayed for just a few more seconds.

  She tossed the empty pouch behind a head of lettuce and stood up. She was reaching under her jacket, hoping to ditch the gun, when rough hands clamped down on her arms and wrenched them behind her back. She hit the floor on her knees, hard enough to send jolts of electric pain up her legs. Metal bracelets clicked tight around her wrists.

  Riley Glass had been a lot friendlier when Charlie had been on the right side of the law. The fox-faced detective was still cordial, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes the way it had when they’d first met. His sharp nose twitched when she talked, like he could smell the lies on her from the other side of the stainless steel interview table. They’d been talking for two hours, no company in the cramped brick room but a single dangling light and a one-way mirror, and she’d repeated her story backward and forward.

  Not the true story, but close enough.

  They’d searched her on the spot, of course. Plucked the .38 from her waistband, the gun she didn’t have a permit to carry. She was still in her street clothes, though, and her left boot was smuggling a small fortune in diamonds. They had settled, mostly, nestling under her foot. Every step felt like walking on thumbtacks.

  She’d walk on thumbtacks for miles if that was the only way out of here.

  “You have to understand how this looks from our perspective,” Riley told her.

  “I’d very much like to,” she replied. “Tell me.”

  “Sean Ellis, your company’s client, is missing. The last place he was seen was at his condominium. That same night, a reliable informant places you, Mr. Beckett, and Ms. Da Costa at the scene—”

  “Considering he’s our client, that seems odd to you?”

  Riley held up a finger. “The morning after, despite him, yes, being your client, and despite having paid for around-the-clock security, no one from Boston Asset Protection escorted him to his workplace. Your boss can’t explain the discrepancy, nor can he explain why no one filed a missing persons report on the spot.”

  Sean Ellis hadn’t been seen, all right. Probing, asking as many questions as she could without showing her hand, Charlie had quickly learned the score: She, Beckett, and Dom had been arrested. The kidnappers had walked away free in the commotion and took their hostage with them. Sean had been standing right there, right under the cops’ noses, but thanks to Malloy’s interference they’d develop
ed a case of tunnel vision.

  “Our informant,” Riley continued, “alleges that you and your friends have been sniffing around Mr. Ellis’s personal life and finances. Right around the same time that Mr. Ellis received a number of phone calls attempting to extort him.”

  “Maybe I’m not too bright,” Charlie said. “That’s a whole lot of dots and allegedlys. Mind connecting them for me?”

  Riley rested his palms flat on the brushed-steel table. The metal caught the gleam from the overhead light and cast a white halo around his outstretched fingertips.

  “One interpretation is that this was an inside job. That you and your friends kidnapped Mr. Ellis, and your boss is either in on the scam or covering it up.”

  “Can I offer an alternative interpretation of the facts?” she asked.

  “Please do.”

  “Your ‘reliable informant’ is a scumbag. Malloy was a dirty cop, he is a lying asshole, and shame on you for giving him one ounce of credence.”

  Direct hit. Riley glanced away, just for a second, down and to the left. A flicker of regret crossed his face before it turned back to a mask of professional stone.

  “Some people,” he said, with an emphasis on some, “think he was framed.”

  “Some people think the earth is flat. I don’t think you’re one of them, though.”

  That side-glance again. He took a deep breath.

  “Malloy has . . . some friends on the force. High up the food chain.”

  “Higher than you,” Charlie said.

  “When you were a soldier,” he asked, “you ever have to follow really dumb orders from people who never left their cushy offices?”

  “Every damn day.”

  He turned his palms to the dangling light and spread them wide. Enough said.

  “Another theory,” Charlie said, “is that we’re trying to recover our client quietly and safely, and that involving the police could get him killed.”

  “Is that what happened?”