You're Next

Nagel print.

At the sight of them, Mike let off the throttle and hit the hand brake, the little scooter chirping to a halt. ‘Them?’ he said. ‘Those two are your big tough accomplices?’

‘Yup,’ Shep said. ‘Bob and Molly.’

Mike’s mouth was sour with fear and second thoughts. He was glad he’d delivered Hank’s cash earlier in the day – one less thing to ride his conscience into the not-so-sweet hereafter if he got killed tonight. Hank had squeezed his hand an extra beat at the door and promised he’d be waiting by the phone. If Mike made it out to call him.

Mike readjusted his leather gloves nervously. The couple waved and started over. Bob’s face was shiny and sunburned. Molly toyed with the strand of Mardi Gras beads around her neck.

As the couple neared, Shep asked, ‘You got my gear to the warehouse?’

Molly’s smile was improbably wide. ‘That we did.’

Bob flipped Mike the keys to the van, then made cartoon running arms toward the casino doors. ‘Shall we?’

Molly said, ‘Okeydokey.’

Mike swallowed dryly and nodded. Splitting off toward different entrances, they headed for the building. At the south door, Mike got jammed up with a few other mobility scooters. There was a lot of angry huffing, either because the others were old and cranky or because Mike was lacking in scooter etiquette, but he managed his way through. Once inside, he puttered over past the cage, making sure that the empty metal drop carts were parked behind the low counter where he’d seen them on his last visit. There were three carts awaiting the next shift end, when they would be squired from slot machine to slot machine to collect the full coin buckets.

Steering across the vast casino floor, he did his best not to think of all the cameras angled down from the ceiling. He was the weakest link, the only nonprofessional. If someone spotted him, he was dead. And Kat was lost.

He buzzed into the bathroom, an elderly man holding the door for him, and steered into the wide handicap stall. He closed and bolted the door behind him, the lap robe slipping to the tile, revealing the Nike gym bag he’d hidden on the wide footrest platform beneath his legs. He ripped off his hat and glasses and dumped them, with the lap robe, into the scooter’s front basket. In his innocuous black slacks and white gift-shop polo sporting the casino decal, he looked like your average Deer Creek worker.

As Two-Hawks had pointed out, a bathroom was the only place in a casino without surveillance cameras.

Except, Mike hoped, the CEO’s office.

His watch read 6:53. Seven minutes to liftoff.

He shoved four squares of Bubblicious into his mouth, chewed rigorously, and worked the gum into his cheeks and lips. All the better to defy the facial-recognition software now that he no longer had a hat brim to hide beneath.

6:54.

Leaving the dead bolt locked, he shoved the heavy Nike bag under the wall into the neighboring stall, then followed it. Someone flushed a toilet, and then he heard running water. Bag in hand, he stood in the relative quiet and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

6:56.

Time to move.

He exited the bathroom, nodding at a few guys stumbling in, their free drinks slopping onto their wrists. Navigating through the clusters of slots and green-felt tables, he did his best to walk casually. Going on tiptoe, he stared nervously across the vast room at that door leading back to the offices. Two-Hawks’s intel had predicted the rooms beyond to be empty by now. Predictions were helpful, sure. Not perfect.

Mike paused near the cage and put his back to the wall, his breaths coming harder now, puffing his cheeks. The heft of the equipment in the gym bag was reassuring, but still, there were more variables than could be accounted for with all the gear in the world. The drop carts remained behind the counter, so close he could reach across and tap one of them. His jitters sharpened until he was perched on a knife edge of panic.

Not a husband, he told himself. Not a father.

Just a man with a task.

6:59.

He closed his eyes.

That’s when he heard the scream.

Bob gasped breathlessly, a giant plastic bucket of quarters slipping from his hand and exploding onto the carpet, sending out a jangly spout of coins. His face taut and red, he grabbed his left arm and pinwheeled off a Hold ’Em table, staggering forward, dragging the red velvet rope and the shocked dealer with him. A creak issuing from his mouth, he collapsed onto the pit table, which toppled, spilling tray after tray loaded with casino chips.

Molly clutched at her yellow curls and let out another piercing scream. ‘My husband! Oh, my God, his heart, his heart! Someone help!’

Everyone in the vicinity had frozen at once, as if by design. The only movement was that of the coins and chips rolling past ankles and chairs and beneath slot machines, forty thousand and change expanding like a swarm of rats across a hypnotically busy carpet pattern. An elderly man in a battered snap-brim hat crouched to pluck up a black-and-green hundred-dollar chip, and his creaky movement broke the spell, the statue garden springing to life, jostling, shoving, grabbing. Filled fists jammed into pockets. Coin buckets bounced cheerily on crooked arms like Easter baskets. Loafers and high heels trampled hands and kicked coins. The dealer was trying to untangle himself from Bob, who flopped and screeched, clutching his left arm as though it were going to fall off. Security swarmed the area, chasing down chips, manhandling patrons, shouting into radios. Molly’s shrieks grew so strident that a few people, jostled along by the undercurrent, covered their ears.

Standing hip-deep in the chaos, the pit boss touched a finger to his earpiece and spoke into his sleeve. ‘Surveillance, you better be getting this.’

The surveillance suite was pure mayhem, monitors flashing, hands toggling joysticks, frenzied pacing. Half the screens were focused on the commotion below, recording it from every slant.

The director was shouting, his voice high and thin, ‘Could be a diversion! Get the software up and start grabbing faces!’

‘Already running!’ one of the supervisors shouted across.

‘What do you got?’

‘Nothing so f-’ An alert chimed from the speakers of the supervisor’s computer. He stood abruptly, one nervous hand mussing his spiky black hair, a deodorant ring staining his shirt beneath the arm. ‘The guy having the heart attack is a twice-convicted con artist.’

The director stormed over. ‘And the woman?’

There she was, listed under the con man’s associates.

‘Who else?’ the director yelled. ‘I want a sweep of the whole goddamned floor – now!’

Another alert sounded. ‘Okay,’ the supervisor said, ‘we hit on another known associate.’ The facial-recognition software pulled a third face from the muddle. Shepherd White, lurking by the bank, eyeing the vault through the crossed bars of the cage. ‘This one’s a safecracker.’

‘Shift cameras ten through sixty to the vault,’ the director said. ‘I want every angle covered. Have security move now and roll up the crew. And get Boss Man on the phone. He’s gonna want to hear this.’

Mike shoved the drop cart hurriedly across the floor, keeping to the perimeter as commotion reigned by the tables. The weighty gym bag resting inside the cart clanked as the wheels bounced from walkway to carpet. To his left, a bartender was standing on a stool for a better vantage, the FIREWATER sign blinking down on his crooked headdress.