You're Next

A stare-down seemed imminent, but McAvoy didn’t let it get to that. Showing the lieutenant his palms, he stepped aside and smiled cordially. ‘Officers.’

The cops took control of Shep, Bob, and Molly and started hustling them out through the crowd.

William stepped around McAvoy and put a hand on Shep’s chest as he passed, halting the procession. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘Graham’ll have you back to us in no time.’

‘Yeah,’ Shep said, ‘good luck with that.’

Dodge followed them a few paces toward the exit, then stood, blocking the walkway, staring after them with dull, lifeless eyes.

By the time Mike reached Bob and Molly’s van at the far edge of the parking lot, the safe and the scooter were barely holding on. He thumbed a button on the key chain, and the van’s rolling door slid open automatically. A second button unfolded the wheelchair lift from the side of the vehicle. The dying scooter lurched up beside the lowered lift, Mike’s trembling leg gave way, and the safe plopped out and landed with a clang on the metal. With another touch of the button, the wheelchair lift rose, conveying the safe, still bolted to the severed two-by-fours, into the belly of the van.

Leaving the scooter keeled over on the asphalt, Mike hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled out, passing a second wave of arriving squad cars.

Turning onto the main road, he rolled down his window and spit his chewing gum to the wind.

The surveillance room smelled of coffee and body odor. McAvoy had the director play back the recording a third time. The footage showed Shep leaning against the wall near the vault, relaxed as could be, tilting his face up as if into a warm sun.

‘That’s it?’ McAvoy asked. ‘He just stood there?’

‘Yeah,’ the director said. ‘He didn’t make a move for the vault, nothing. I think it might have all gone down too fast for him.’

‘And he had no gear.’

‘No gear.’

McAvoy stared at the image. Shep pointing his face at the ceiling. No – at the hidden cameras.

As if he wanted the facial-recognition software to pick him up.

‘Wait a minute,’ McAvoy said. ‘Give me that clip on screen twenty-seven again.’

The director complied. Five guards dragged Shep from the keno lounge and across the casino floor. ‘Pause,’ McAvoy said. ‘No, back. Now. Now. There. Stop.’

A frozen image of Shep’s head bucking up above the guards, his gaze focused.

‘What are you looking at?’ McAvoy mumbled. He stepped forward, traced a line in the direction Shep was facing until his finger hit the side of the monitor. ‘Show me camera twenty-eight, same time stamp.’

The director complied. The screen showed an old vet, wearing a beat-up hat and sunglasses, riding a medical scooter. His legs poked out the sides as if they were broken. The hand on the throttle was gloved.

McAvoy paled.

‘Boss,’ the director said, ‘what’s wr-’

McAvoy bolted for the door, motorcycle helmet swinging at his side.

His pace was brisk across the casino floor. He barreled into the admin hall, keying immediately to his door at the end, slightly ajar. He stepped into his office, drawing up short at the edge of the rug.

The Ducati helmet slipped from his hand and cracked on the floorboards.

Chapter 51

When the ragged warehouse door screeched back on its tracks, Mike raised an arm against the light, though the pale dusk glow was far from bright. He’d been inside the dingy warehouse for seventeen hours, trying not to obsess over the limitless ways the plan could go to shit.

Given the low sun at his back, Shep was a perfect shadow, one arm extended, his hand hooked on the handle of the rolling door.

‘’Bout time,’ Mike said.

Passing the day alone had been torturous. The smell of damp concrete had lodged as a taste in the back of his throat. Empty cans of SpaghettiOs rolled at his feet. The deserted warehouse was cavernous, which made the emptiness resonant, living, gothic. Bats in the rafters. Cobwebs. A rusty faucet dripping into a wide, paint-stained basin.

In the middle of the cracked floor was the pallet of heavy crates that Bob and Molly had delivered the previous day. Though Mike sat leaning against the boxes, he hadn’t so much as popped a lid; he knew better than to handle Shep’s gear. Pulling himself to his feet, he set a foot on McAvoy’s wall safe, a game hunter posing over vanquished prey.

Shep stepped inside. ‘Cops grilled me all day.’

‘What’d you say?’

‘“What?” mostly,’ Shep answered with a faint smirk. ‘I did nothing wrong. I was in a casino, minding my own business when I got manhandled. The bigger concern was my association with Mike Wingate. But of course that’s all years in the past.’ He rattled the door closed behind him. ‘I’d never hang around with the likes of you now.’

‘So that’s it? They just let you go?’

‘As promised, Two-Hawks lined up a pricey Injun lawyer for me.’ Shep produced a taupe business card and flicked it, showing off the fine stock. ‘Plus, it seems that the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok Casino bought a few new squad cars for the Susanville PD last year. For once in our lives, we were on the right side of a favor. With no Graham riding in to pull rank, they released me.’

‘And Bob and Molly?’

‘In the clear. Probably back in Reno by now.’ Shep circled the pallet, appraising the boxes. ‘Not that we haven’t become “persons of interest,” as they like to say. You are one wanted man.’

He started opening crates, unpacking equipment, most of which had been wrapped in moving blankets. Strings of flood-lights hooked onto T-bar stands, which in turn plugged into a generator he had Mike wheel over from the rear of the pallet. With the click of a switch, the center of the warehouse was as bright as day. Shep positioned the floodlights around the wall safe, so it was lit up like some sort of industrial sculpture. Stepping this way and that like a finicky film director, he adjusted the floodlights to reduce glare. Watching Shep work brought Mike back to studying SAT vocab words while Shep whaled away on that wall safe from Valley Liquors, the Couch Mother bellowing down the hall. Not your traditional Hallmark moment, but still, the memory was a comfort.

Shep walked a few paces toward the safe and sat cross-legged, confronting it. ‘We can’t use explosives, since we’re dealing with paper in there, not coins or gold bars.’ His eyes were closed. ‘The overpressure and detonation would torch the photographs.’

Mike said, ‘Right.’

Shep lay flat on his belly and propped his chin on his fists, staring at the safe like a kid watching TV.

‘Don’t you know how to break into this brand of safe?’ Mike asked.

‘It’s custom,’ Shep said.

‘What’s that mean for us?’

Shep crawled forward and put his face flat against the metal door. ‘It means we have to listen to it.’ He fingered the combination dial. Fondled the thick handle. Knocked the walls, cocking his head at the dull ring.

Mike watched and stayed out of the way, trying not to worry about Shep’s fussing and his troubled expression.

After twenty or so minutes of this, Shep said, ‘The fact that it’s a custom safe means it could be booby-trapped to destroy its contents if it’s messed with. So there’s that.’

‘Okay…’

‘It has at least three locking lugs. But I’m not sure where. And carving around the frame to guess would be risky business. Could set off that booby trap. Or fuck up the photo negatives.’

‘So what are we gonna do?’