Taken

by Mia Ford

  “You will do nothing, little brother,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving it a hard squeeze to remind him of the pecking order. “I’ve got this. You just focus on the job and try not to fuck anything up in the meantime.”

  “You’d better be right,” he said, unamused. He jerked his shoulder from beneath my hand and looked me in the eye. “If she becomes a problem, you’d better take care of it or I will.”

  * * *

  “We need to talk,” I said, sliding onto a bar stool with my go-bag in my hand. I set the bag on the stool next to me and folded my arms on the bar.

  Sandy gave me and the bag an apprehensive look. “Okay, that doesn’t sound good. Do you want a drink?”

  “No, and it’s nothing bad,” I said, giving her the smile that she said curled her toes. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What would you say to getting away for a while?”

  “You mean away from this place or the city?”

  “I mean get away as in you and I getting on a plane and never looking back. We go somewhere sunny and warm, Belize maybe, or Tahiti, and we start again.”

  She blinked at me for a moment. “I… I don’t know. I mean, what’s brought this one?” She nodded at the bag. “And what’s in the bag?”

  I dragged the bag onto the bar and unzipped it so she could see inside. “Money, a new passport and ID, clothes.” I zipped it up. “It’s my go-bag.”

  “Go-bag?”

  “The bag I grab when I have to go. Quickly.”

  A look of fear washed over her eyes. She put a hand to her lips and lowered her voice. “Why would you have to go?” she asked.

  I glanced around the bar. It was late and the place was empty except for a couple of bikers and one old biker whore shooting pool. Eddie and the crew were out somewhere doing God knows what. I just hoped they didn’t get caught. The Crown job was in two days. I needed them sharp if we were going to pull this off.

  “I want to start a new life,” I said, leaning over my elbows on the bar and lowering my voice so only she could hear me. “And I want you to come with me.”

  “Okay. When would we go?”

  I took a deep breath. I trusted her as much as I had ever trusted anyone in my life. I prayed Eddie wasn’t right, that my cock was not doing the thinking for my brain.

  I said, “I am about to make a big score, one that will set me for life. It happens Friday. I’ll wrap up the details Saturday and be ready to go on Sunday. I want you to come with me.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she said. “What kind of score?”

  “I can’t tell you that. You just have to trust me.”

  She looked deeply into my eyes. “Will anyone get hurt?”

  “What? No, of course not. I don’t hurt people, you know that.”

  “But your brother does.” She said the words and clenched her teeth.

  I frowned at the look of fear in her eyes. “Why would you say that?”

  “I’ve heard him talk about hurting people,” she said. “He brags about it.”

  I tried to muster a reassuring smile for her. “Nobody gets hurt when I’m in charge,” I said. “You have my promise.”

  She stared at the bag. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Stow it in the trunk of your car. Pack one of your own. I will call you Friday after the job and have you meet me. We’ll take your car and get out of town, then figure out where we want to go and fly away.”

  She held out her hand and I wrapped my fingers around it.

  “This is so sudden,” she said. “Can I think about it?”

  “Yes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “You have until Friday.”

  SANDY

  I was sitting at my kitchen table staring into a cup of lukewarm coffee, replaying in my head the conversation I’d had with Rick the night before when the doorbell rang.

  He was going to make a big score on Friday, he said, one that would set him up for life. He wanted to leave the city and never return. He wanted to start a new life. And he wanted me to go with him.

  I took a sip of the coffee and wondered how things had happened so fast. And gotten so far out of hand.

  A week ago, I was Sandy Duval, an innocent girl who was grieving over her dead fiancé and plotting revenge on the men who had killed him.

  Now, I was a criminal’s girlfriend who was thinking about running away with him after he committed his next crime. Funny, how things can change so quickly, how morals can loosen and logic can wane; all because Eddie Wright put a bullet in Brent’s head and Rick Wright put his cock in me.

  The doorbell rang again. I ignored it long enough to finish my coffee and set the cup in the sink. It was just after eight in the morning. I knew it wasn’t Rick at the door because he was out of town on business (god, that almost sounds legit) and wouldn’t be back until Friday. I wondered if Eddie was with him…

  The doorbell rang again, this time making me jump. I was wearing a bathrobe with nothing on underneath, just as Rick had left me an hour before. I tightened the sash around my waist and pulled the lapels over my breasts as I went to answer the door.

  I checked the peephole. It wasn’t Rick or Eddie. It was a tall, thin woman whose distorted features through the peephole looked vaguely familiar. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Duval?” The woman at the door looked me up and down as if she didn’t recognize me. I didn’t recognize her either until she held up a detective’s badge.

  “I’m Detective Cochran,” she said, tucking the badge inside her gray jacket. “I was the detective that spoke with you after your fiancé’s murder.”

  I lifted my chin and tried to swallow the piece of my heart that had wedged in my throat. Having a cop show up at my door wouldn’t have unnerved me a week ago. Now, I had to fight the urge to slam the door and run out the back. I wasn’t guilty of anything other than plotting revenge, but it sure felt like it.

  “Yes. I remember. Please. Come in.” I put my hands in the robe’s pockets to keep them from shaking, then stepped aside to let her pass.

  She followed me to the kitchen and took a seat at the table. She refused my offer of coffee. She took out a small notepad and pen as she waited for me to sit down.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?” I asked.

  Her eyes went around my face again. She glanced at my hair and the diamond stud in my nose. I had never felt more self-conscious. Thank God, the robe covered my tattoos.

  She tapped the tip of the pen to the paper and stared at me as she spoke. “Well, ma’am, for starters, you can tell me what you’re doing hanging around the people that we think killed your fiancé.”

  I suddenly felt like a criminal myself, as if I’d just been caught committing a major crime. I said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket and brought out five Polaroid mugshots and lay them out on the table one by one as if she were dealing cards. The five mugshots were of Rick’s crew. The first one was Rick and the last one was Eddie. Chunk, Ronnie, and Pete were the middle three.

  She tapped a fingernail on the table. “Miss Duval, can you identify any of these men?”

  I didn’t look down at the photos. I looked her in the eye and said, “No.”

  Her eyebrows shot up like window shades. She grinned at me. “No?”

  “No.”

  “Miss Duval, have you been working at a dive bar called Dick’s Place for the past week or so?” She asked the question and gave me a stern look, waiting to see if I was going to lie. I clenched my teeth together and tried not to cry.

  “Are you following me?” I asked quietly.

  She ignored the question to ask, “Have you seen any of these men at the bar?”

  When I didn’t answer, she put the cap on the pen and tossed it on the table. She leaned back with her arms over her chest and swept her eyes over me again.

  She said, “You’ve certainly changed your looks since I last saw you.”


  “I just thought I’d try something new,” I said shyly, tucking my hair behind my ears. I tried not to sound defensive, which was hard since she seemed to have the ability to see right through me. I tried to hold her gaze. I tried not to blink. My eyes started to water.

  “This one, Eddie Wright,” she said, tapping the fingernail to Eddie’s mugshot. He was grinning. The silver tooth on display. “We’re pretty sure this is the one who killed your fiancé.”

  She tapped on Ronnie’s mugshot.

  “This was the guy who was with him. We have the surveillance video from the shooting to match them for height and weight, a description of the car, and a confidential informant ready to testify that they were criminal associates of the clerk. It was a deal gone wrong. At least that’s what I thought until I got the report from the surveillance team that’s been watching them for a week.”

  She let the words hang in the air for a moment.

  I said, “I don’t understand.”

  “This one, the one you’re sleeping with.” She tapped the fingernail to Rick’s photo and left it there. “I believe the other two were following his orders. He was responsible for your fiancé’s death, Miss Duval, and now you’re fucking him. It makes me wonder, were you in on the murder, too? I know your fiancé had a sizable life insurance policy. Did you conspire with The Wright Brothers to kill Brent Griffin? Because that’s the way it looks to me and I’m pretty sure the D.A. will see it the same way.”

  “No… I would never… I loved Brent…”

  “You’ve got a damn funny way of showing it,” she said, her voice filled with disgust.

  That did it.

  My resolve broke and my eyes slowly lowered to Rick’s mugshot. I couldn’t believe that he had anything to do with Brent’s murder. I had convinced myself that it wasn’t possible. Rick was a good man, regardless of what she was saying. Or was he just good at deceiving stupid women who fell for his charms hook, line and sinker?

  She picked up the pen and took off the cap, then leaned into the table. “Miss Duval, I’m going to give you one chance to make things right, for the sake of Brent Griffin, a man you once claimed to love. If you had anything to do with his death, or if this is just one huge coincidence, you have one chance to come clean. Otherwise, you’re going down with the rest of these pieces of shit.”

  I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and took a deep, shuddering breath. For Brent’s sake, I said, “I just wanted to kill them all…”

  RICK

  Chunk was behind the wheel of the panel van he had stolen for the Crown job. It was pale blue when he stole it from a Wal-Mart parking lot two days ago. Now it was white with a fake license plate and a City Electric magnet on the side.

  I was in the passenger seat. Eddie, Ronnie, and Pete were in the back. Dottie was sleeping peacefully in Barstow at the Motor Inn. Sandy was probably at home. Waiting for my call.

  The plan was for Chunk to drop us off at the curb in front of Crown’s, then remain behind the wheel with the motor running, parked half a block down. Me, Eddie, and Ronnie would go inside. Ronnie would take out the security guard with a stun gun and Eddie would watch over anyone that happened to be inside. I would force old man Crown to hand over the diamonds. Pete would stand watch on the sidewalk and alert us if any trouble headed our way.

  We had to be in and out in less than three minutes because that was the average response time for LAPD in this part of town. Any longer and our chances of getting caught increased exponentially.

  I had one firm rule when we were pulling a job that involved people. No guns. Ronnie had the stun gun, Eddie and I had the telescopic steel batons; neither of which were considered a deadly weapon by the state’s legal system. The reason I did not allow guns on a job like this was the amount of time you’d serve if you got caught in the act of robbery with a deadly weapon.

  Get convicted of robbery with a gun in your hand and the minimum sentence was five years and the average was fifteen.

  Get caught with a stun gun or a baton and you’d be out in twenty-four months; eighteen with good behavior.

  Eddie always said he could do eighteen months standing on his head.

  I’d never been in jail, but I imagined it wasn’t as easy as Eddie let on. Nothing ever was.

  * * *

  We sat down the block for half an hour, watching people and traffic come and go. Crown’s was relatively quiet. No one had gone in or come out in the last half hour. I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. Dottie had told me the armored car always came at 5 o’clock on Friday. Old man Crown usually spent a couple of hours getting the shipments ready in a locked back room, meaning the diamonds would not be in a safe. Ronnie could crack a safe, but not in three minutes, which was all we had. I had yet to find a locked door I couldn’t put my foot through in a couple of seconds.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” I said. I looked over my shoulder and made eye contact with Eddie. “Everybody be cool, do what you’re supposed to, and we’ll be in and out in no time.”

  Chunk pulled out of the parking space and stopped directly in front of Crown Jewelers. Me, Eddie, and Ronnie pulled our black ski masks down over our faces, put on black latex gloves, and made it from the van to the store’s front door in three seconds. Chunk pulled away and Pete stood casually on the sidewalk outside.

  We came through the door so quickly that the guard barely had time to react before Ronnie shoved the stun gun into his meaty neck and knocked him out cold. Ronnie took the guard’s gun and emptied the rounds from the chamber, then slid the gun back into its holster. He pulled the guard’s hands behind his back and zip-tied them.

  I set the timer on my watch to three minutes. Eddie locked the door and flipped the Open sign to Closed. We were all relieved to find no one else in the showroom. I went directly around the display case and into the doorway that led to a short hall. On the left were an office and a restroom. On the right was a door with two deadbolts installed.

  “Fucking deadbolts,” Eddie said with a grin. “Seriously?”

  I rolled my eyes, then lined up and put the heel of my right boot into the door, next to the knob. The door frame cracked, but the door didn’t open. I lined up and kicked it again, this time next to the deadbolts. The door frame splintered and the door flew open.

  Old man Crown was sitting at a long table with a diamond loop in his eye and a horrified look on his face. On the table in front of him were a dozen tidy little piles of loose diamonds.

  Eddie and I looked at each other and smiled.

  * * *

  I set the black duffel bag I’d carried in on the table while Eddie put the old man on the floor and zip-tied his hands. Crown didn’t say a word. He just held up his hands and complied with Eddie’s commands. I guess his six or seven decades in the jewelry business had taught him not to resist during a robbery, especially when everything we were stealing was probably over-insured.

  Inside the duffel was a pair of sweats and an old pair of tennis shoes with socks stuffed inside. I tugged out the socks, then carefully scooped up each pile of diamonds and slid them into the toes of the tennis shoes, which were lined with plastic. Once I had every diamond from the table inside the shoes, I shoved the socks back into the shoes and zipped the duffel bag. I glanced at my watch. We had thirty seconds to go.

  “That’s it,” I said, grinning at Eddie. I picked up the duffel and held out a hand to motion him to the door. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, little brother.”

  Eddie grinned back at me. He ran his tongue over the silver tooth and pulled the small walkie-talkie off his belt. “Chunk, you fat motherfucker,” he said happily. “Pick us up.”

  * * *

  Ronnie was waiting by the door. When he saw Eddie and I emerge from the back room, he grinned and unlocked the front door and led the way out.

  The white van skidded to a stop in front of us. I saw Chunk behind the wheel, but I didn’t see Pete, who was supposed to be standing lookout on the sidewalk. I assumed that he
was already in the van. I’d give him hell for breaking protocol once we were safely away.

  “Where the fuck’s Pete?” Eddie asked as he reached for the van’s side door.

  “Beats me, let’s just go,” I said, looking up and down the street. A feeling I’d never felt before came over me, like a cold wind blowing down my neck. I glanced at Chunk. He had tears in his eyes. He lifted his left hand from the steering wheel to show me the handcuff around his wrist. The other end of the cuff was clipped to the steering wheel.

  The van’s side door slid open with a loud metal clank. Inside the van were three SWAT members in full black Ninja gear. They all had M-4 automatic rifles, one each aimed at Ronnie, Eddie, and me. Little red laser dots danced across our chests. One of them grinned and put the dot between my eyes, blinding me. He said, “Gotcha, motherfucker.”

  The sidewalk around us quickly filled with black uniforms. I dropped the duffel bag and held up my hands. I told Eddie and Ronnie to do the same.

  It was over.

  The Wright Brothers had pulled their last job.

  Oddly enough, all I could think about was Sandy, waiting for my call, ready to run away with me to start a new life.

  I wondered how long she would be willing to wait.

  SANDY

  Eighteen months was a long time to wait for someone; especially when that someone didn’t even want to see or speak to you.

  I had tried to visit Rick every month since he went away, but he always refused to see me. I drove to the prison on visitation day and sat patiently at a metal table for hours waiting for him to appear. But it was the same thing every time. The guard would eventually come over to tell me that the prisoner did not want to speak with me and that I shouldn’t come back again.

  But I did come back, every month for eighteen months.