Jaden had been trying to hold in his laughter the whole time I’d been talking, but it emerged violently once I’d finished—a strand of saliva spraying from his mouth and oozing like a centipede down his chin.
“This must be really serious, Brother. Really serious for you to be talking this way.” He paused as another fit seized him. “And something tells me when I figure out what it is I’m going to have more than equal leverage. ’Cause let’s face it, your stock’s not that high anymore. How long has it been since you were the star quarterback that everyone was fawning over? One year, two years? Help me out here.”
I felt a far-off, almost imperceptible jolt of fear prickle down the curve of my neck.
“Oh right, three. That’s a long time to be falling into obscurity. At some point you stop and you’re just there. Ha. I’ve asked around, and no one cares about you anymore. You can’t protect me. I’ve been doing that all by myself.”
“I’ve been doing more than you know.”
At least I had been, but because of how busy I’d been building Syd and casing houses, I hadn’t been screening for him like I’d used to, going out of my way to be friendly and helpful to the people who didn’t like him.
“I doubt it.”
“Try me.”
He stared at me with his coal-colored eyes, then half-smiled. “Hmm. I guess I believe you could let me get flagged, but you really wouldn’t want to, not because it would hurt me, but because it would hurt Mom and Dad. It would be quite the shock to them considering how aloof they are—Mom, anyways—seeing my name scarlet-lettered forever like that. And the fact that you’re so scared about them finding out what you’re up to that you’d resort to that has got me even more curious.”
My biggest fear was, indeed, that Mom and Dad would turn on the GPS in my film, something they’d already threatened to do if my grades and extra-curricular scores dropped further. I’d known Jaden might get tricky when he got tired of running interference for me, but I hadn’t counted on it happening so soon.
“So . . .”
“So what?” I asked.
“So when I am I going to get what you promised me?”
Chapter 12
“I got it. It’s right here. They didn’t even bother hiding it.”
I moved down the hallway on the tailwind of a deep breath, feeling alive in a way I’d only felt twice before. For as long as I could remember there’d been voices screaming in my head, telling me I wasn’t worth the air I was breathing; but by being here, doing what I was doing, I was slamming the door on all of them. Or at least drowning out the loudest, angriest ones. “It’s just right there in the closet. You’d think they’d put it in a drawer or behind something, especially since there’s no alarm,” Ethan said into my bug as I passed a century-old davenport paired with an Ikea stool. Far from Mrs. Moore’s keen decorative eye—with stacks of clutter and books wallpapering the rooms—the house was a more an improvised storage space, where the owners had simply scattered about their previous possessions.
“Usually people don’t suspect they’re gonna be robbed.”
“They should,” Ethan replied, turning around and leading me into the closet. The safe was smooth and shiny, sitting in plain sight among rows of shoes. “And they shouldn’t make it this easy.”
“It’s not easy.”
But it was better than the Moores’, not simply because I’d seen this kind of safe before but because I knew now, truly, how much the plan meant to me. I was screwed up after the first houses, though when I went back to school and the vividness of what we’d done started to be eclipsed by dull, meaningless coursework, I was more certain than ever that I had nothing to lose. That I wasn’t going out further on a limb, climbing the trellis and opening another window—but cracking back into an existence that, for once, actually mattered.
“He’s got strong locks on the doors. But he should’ve figured someone might watch his daughter open them.”
Ignoring Ethan, I connected the resistor to the electronic safe’s battery, so the device could start simulating key presses and measure the corresponding power draw.
“Aren’t you supposed to be downstairs?” I asked after a few moments, when Ethan remained lurking in the doorway. He was staring at the floor, tapping one gloved hand against the other one, as if trying to will me to move faster.
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun up here.”
I pressed a button and watched as the wave frequencies started flying across the oscilloscope’s flexi-screen. Satisfied that it was working, I put the device down and brushed past Ethan into the bedroom, mentally reproaching Martin and Abigail and everyone at Lawrence for making us have to do this kind of thing to catch up with them. I knew they were in their own world, but what the hell did they think was going to happen when they started Revising? Was everyone else just supposed to stand still and watch it happen—happily floating off into oblivion?
I glanced out the window and saw the backyard was still empty. Good. We were a little pinched for time—the girl was due back in about fifteen minutes—but things were going faster since we knew where everything was. Michael had unwittingly upgraded Syd enough to conduct a proper casing; she could fly into a house all by herself now, map out the insides, and test for motion and laser alarms. We knew what the safe model was beforehand, our escape route, and had an even better idea of the residents’ routines. It made me want to build something smaller, like a fly or a gnat, to get under doors and into keyholes, so we wouldn’t have to rely on someone forgetting to put batteries in their window sensors. But I’d need Michael even more for that, and he was already suspicious.
“I’m just worried about you,” he’d said groggily late last night, neck deep in code.
“Don’t be.”
“Your mom chatted with me for like ten minutes at the front door. She’s really concerned, Dorian. I think you should talk to her.”
“I will.”
“And your brother, too. He’s been asking questions about you at school.”
My faced scrunched up. “What about?”
Michael paused, as if he were deciding how much he should say. “Oh, just what you’ve been up to and things like that.”
“That little shit needs to mind his own business,” I said, scowling as I shook my head. “Did . . . did he mention anything else, like . . .” I had to be careful how I put this.
“Just who you’ve been hanging out with and, you know, what we’ve been doing with Syd,” said Michael.
“What we’ve been doing with Syd?”
“Yeah, he sounded curious.”
Even though he was my brother and seemed genuinely grateful for all I’d done to help him stay off the registry, I should’ve known this would be more trouble than it was worth. “Right, right.”
“I’m just saying, as your friend, people are worried about you. It’s really weird seeing you like this.”
“I’m fine. I appreciate it, I really do, but there’s nothing wrong.”
“And if you put all of your hope in this girl and it doesn’t work out, I just want you to keep your head on straight.”
“I know the odds aren’t too hot . . . but Mikey,” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could. “How often are you, like, talking to my brother? He doesn’t strike me as someone you’d exactly be hitting it off with.”
“Oh, just that once. Though I’ve seen him talk to Spencer a couple of times, which . . . I thought was a little strange.”
“As in our Spencer? Spencer Price?”
“Yeah, in the hallway. But then again I’ve seen him talking to a lot of people lately: seems like he’s finally starting to make friends. Which’s good, don’t you think?”
My mouth felt dry. “Yeah, that’s good.”
The sound of the device beeping snapped me even with the moment and I jolted back from the window, not wanting to be seen by a neighbor. I moved toward the closet and whispered into my bug, “It’s unlocked.”
“That’s it?” asked Ethan, arriving behind me a few moments later as I pulled it open. “That’s freaking it?”
I took out some folded letters, but there wasn’t much behind them: a few plates, earrings and brooches, and a small collection of gold and silver coins. Only the latter being numerous and indistinct enough to chance taking.
“We should just grab it all,” Ethan whispered.
“You’re smarter than that,” I said.
“Smarter than what? Why should we spend all this time on something just to leave once we’ve found it?”
Consistent with our rule not to take more than ten percent of anything that was minted, I’d only grabbed two of the Saint-Gaudens coins. “We freaking talked about this,” I hissed.
He shifted his weight forward as his eyes darted around the contours of the small closet.
“It just means we do a better job casing it out next time,” I continued, irritated, my face getting warmer. The air conditioning was off and the insulated siding was cooking, suffusing us both in an angry, restless heat. “After the first time, you’d think you’d wanna be more careful.”
“That was just unlucky.”
I wanted to snap at him, but the more we talked, the less chance we’d hear a car pulling into the driveway, so I just thought instead.
The thing was, we had done a good job researching. From the papers he’d written, I knew Dr. Hoffman was a survivalist technophobe who didn’t believe in electronic markets, and when he became the university’s economic advisor on the State Planning Commission, he’d had to divest all land holdings that weren’t his primary residence. The money had to have gone somewhere.
“I don’t think this is it.”
I walked back out of the closet, running my gloved hands along the walls from high to low. “That safe has just enough stuff inside to make you think you got it all, but I . . .”
“The daughter’s going to be back from school in ten minutes,” Ethan said, checking his watch.
I stepped into the bedroom. “I know.”
“And there are a lot of places where he could’ve parked his money.”
“Not if he doesn’t trust banks or own other property. He likes hard assets.”
Ethan followed through the doorway and joined me—running his hands up the wall, mirroring me from the other side.
“He’s suspicious of the government, right, like my uncle?”
“Suspicious of everybody. I bet he keeps it somewhere where he can keep an eye on it. Close to where he sleeps.”
“Inside the mattress?”
“Too obvious.” I opened an heirloom dresser and felt around inside.
“But if he’s as suspicious of people as you say, why doesn’t he have a better alarm system? Or cameras?”
“Probably worried they’ll be hacked. That’s why he’s our mark,” I quipped, as my knuckles made a hollow sound against the dresser’s wood backboard. I pulled my hand out of the stack of clothes and slid the entire drawer off its railings. “And boom, we’ve gotta false back!”
Ethan crouched down beside me. It was too dark to see in, so I unclipped the penlight from my belt.
It took another second for me to register. “Holy fucking shit . . . this can’t be real!”
Stacked in neat rows were about fifteen Valcambi gold bars. They sparkled as the flashlight brushed over them, the beam seeming to hit every particle of dust loosed from the wood I’d removed.
“Oh, it’s real.”
It was the best kind of real, too, because we could keep them all. The Currency Consolidation Act of 2029 had made gold ownership in this quantity illegal, just like FDR had done in 1933, so even if we took everything it wasn’t likely the professor would want to go to the police.
“And it’s all ours, baby,” Ethan hooted. “Unless you wanna leave him a few, since you’re such a bro?”
I smiled under my ski mask. Our plan was waking up. I’d entered it a dream, but it was leading back to reality—a better reality. The bars making me feel lighter—relevant and, not wanting to slip backwards into slumber, I crammed them all into my backpack.
It would all be lost, though, if we didn’t leave before the daughter got home. As we had with the Moores, we’d entered the house within thirty minutes of the residents expected return time so we wouldn’t get flagged by a thermal scan—while still maintaining our alibi from Mrs. Katzenmeyer’s study hall.
There was no perfect way to do it given both constraints, yet that logic still seemed aggressive. Over the previous week, the girl had returned at 3:18, 3:21, 3:17, 3:24, and 3:21. It was 3:12 already and I was still fumbling with the drawer, trying to get it back on its rails.
“Just leave it. It’s gold, it’s illegal; he can’t do anything about it. In fact,” Ethan continued, aiming a kick at a wooden chair, “we could even trash the place and it wouldn’t matter.” He made a move to sweep a row of bronze statuettes off the desk, but I spun him around before I could even think, mashing up his collar in my fists.
My entire body went hot and then cold as we locked eyes, our faces inches from each other. It came back to me in a rush how Ethan had mentioned suicide that one time in his basement. I hadn’t thought he’d do it in a conventional, razorblade kind of way, but I could see him being more circumspect. A half-conscious recklessness. A rash disregard for protocol that sometimes appeared haphazard, but sometimes had the faint tinge of self-destruction.
I really didn’t want to be around when it happened. I didn’t want to be collateral damage. I was about to tell him something to that effect when I remembered where I did want to be, and suddenly Lena was by my side, her judgment fusing with my own. I thought of how stupid I’d look then, bickering with my partner when we only had a couple minutes to get out of the house.
I had to do better than that. Revision or no Revision, I was going to have to try harder than I’d ever tried before if I was going to have a chance with her.
His muscles relaxed as my grip loosened. “I was only joking,” he said.
“I’m not.”
I double-checked the closet to make sure I’d picked up all my equipment—my breath slowly starting to normalize. “Did you leave anything anywhere?”
“I didn’t bring anything to leave.”
“Check the front.”
With the gold clinking behind me, I walked across the hallway to the spare bedroom in the rear of the house and looked out the window. No sign of her in the backyard. The way the side curved around, she wouldn’t be able to see the trellis until she was at the patio, so if we left now we’d make it. “We’re clear back here.”
“Front’s good, too. Let’s roll.”
We met in the hallway and paced down toward the open window. I was about to back out of it when Ethan grabbed my shoulder. “Toss down your backpack.”
“What?” I asked.
“Your backpack. Toss it down. You’ve got one hundred and fifty pounds of bullion on you. No way that little trellis holds you up.”
Straddling the window, I judged how loud the sound would be hitting the grass, then let my bag drop. Ethan’s landed, ringing, about a second afterward, but the gold was packed tight enough, and a neighbor’s automated mower was loud enough, that I don’t think anyone heard.
“Now go,” said Ethan.
I resumed backing down, stepping on the wooden ties, again trying to make myself light. But the trellis was groaning under my weight, regardless, and after twelve feet I’d heard enough and pushed off with both legs, tucking into a roll as I hit the ground. After regaining my bearings a few seconds later, I looked up, expecting to see Ethan close behind—but he was still three quarters of the way up, frozen, pressed up against the vines of honeysuckle. My heart pounded faster and I looked around frantically, but everything was quiet outside, save for the sound of the distant lawnmower.
I magnified my film onto Ethan and saw that his eyes weren’t tracking movement—whatever he was watching was just as still as he was. I felt an im
pulse to run over and peek around the other side of the retaining wall, out onto the patio and the rest of the backyard, but checked myself.
When I looked up again Ethan was flying towards me, taut and narrow, like a diver leaping from a helicopter.
He landed with a snapping sound. I expected him to cry out, but he just contorted and crumpled forward—writhing in the grass. It wasn’t until I got to his side that I heard a sharp intake of breath, as though he were breaking the surface after minutes underwater.
“What was it?”
He clawed at his ski mask, trying to rip it off. His lips were moving but he must’ve had the wind knocked out of him because nothing was coming out. I checked the retaining wall, but no one was there. “Did you . . .”
Ethan shook his head furiously. “She’s walking . . . walking across the park . . . but she didn’t see me.” He propped himself up on his elbows, then his knees, and a few seconds later he was on his feet. I looked at the spot on the grass where he’d landed and saw a large stick lying there, broken in two. “Let’s go.”
We grabbed the bags and crept along the side of the house, crawling under the windows since the first story had an open floor plan. Hugging a crop of trees in the front yard, we strode onto the sidewalk, trying to act casual. I was vaguely aware that the afternoon sun was hot and the gold was heavy, but in that moment every care was strained out. I felt like I could run miles through a desert, shimmy up drainpipes, and jump out of third-story windows. Everything I’d ever need was strapped to my back, and all I needed to do now was make it through the next few minutes.
The streets were empty as far as we could see: the same sun that made track practices hellish, made daylight robberies plausible.
Walking down bright sidewalks, framed by close-cropped hedgerows and manicured tree belts, we disappeared into the open. I had the community drone network pulled up on my film and there was nothing recording for a whole two-block radius.
Sunlight 24 Page 10
