Thief

When Nick and I reach the back of the building, I count and wait for the camera to move. I’ve been watching the security footage, and I know exactly when the camera will point in this direction before moving to the next position, giving us a thirty second window to move.

“You ready?” I look to Nick, and he nods his head.

When the time is up and I hear the camera move, we slip to the back door and I scan my pass. I was able to steal a pass from someone on the cleaning crew, duplicate it, and place it in the bathroom for an employee to locate, making it seem as if the cleaning crew member misplaced it for only a short time. The hassle to replace the keypad coding for all employees on their passes is a huge pain in the ass and not something they would have done for just a minor slip up.

As I scan the pass, the light turns green, and I use the key I copied from Tessa to unlock the back door.

Nick and I slip inside silently, closing the door behind us before the camera can turn back to us. Once we’re inside, the motion sensor goes off, and slow beeps build up to louder, faster beeps. We have fifteen seconds to enter in the ten-digit code. Otherwise, the alarms will go off and the authorities will be notified.

I watch Nick as he goes over to the keypad and punches in the code. Afterwards, we wait with our breaths held until two small beeps and a flash of green light indicate the motion sensor alarm is off.

“I’ll be five minutes, tops. Wait here.”

Nick nods and stands by the back door. He’s a piece of shit, but he doesn’t want to go to jail either, so I’m not worried about him making a scene and possibly fucking up his pay day.

I walk through the back hall and make my way to the lobby of the bank. Once there, I start with the surrounding offices and any desks that customer service employees sit at.

At each location, there’s a camera and a button they can push to alert the authorities of a situation. There’s also one inside the vault, but we aren’t getting in there tonight.

Each button is individually monitored, so I’d have no way of controlling all of them on the day of the job. Manually coming in and cutting them is the best option right now.

I take out my wire snips and count off as I make my way around the room, locating every alarm button and clipping the connecting wire. At least if shit goes south tomorrow, someone can’t run to their station or their desk and hit the button in panic.

Once I’m finished doing the offices, I make my way down the teller line, clipping each one. When I get to Tessa’s area, I hold the snips there, hesitating, but I don’t know why. It’s as if I’m afraid she won’t be safe if I do it, but I don’t have a choice.

I clip the wire. I move out from behind the desks and make my way back down the hall. This is as much as we can do tonight without pushing our luck.

When I reach Nick, he’s in the same spot as before and ready to go.

“We all good?”

“Yeah. Everything’s in place for tomorrow.” Nick goes to turn, but I grab his arm, pulling him back. “The code?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gives me a wicked smile, like he was just going to bust out of here, set off the alarm and leave me to clean up. This fucker is looking to get shot, and I’ll be all too glad to handle it when the job is done.

He goes over to the keypad and enters the code, and we wait for the beep. Once the red light flashes, we’ve got ten seconds to exit before the motion alarm is back in place.

I scan my pass on the inside panel and use the key to unlock the door. I count before opening it, making sure the camera is facing away.

Once we’re in the clear, we exit, and I seal the door behind me before making a run to get around the corner in time.

When we reach the other side of the wall, we walk away like nothing happened. We’re both cool and collected as we make it to my car and get in.

Pulling away from the curb, I look over to see Nick looking at me.

“Easy peasy, Sparrow. Now let’s see how well you do tomorrow.”

I don’t like the darkness I see in his eyes. Not one bit.

Chapter 17

Tessa

“You look…” Harper pauses as she runs her eyes over me, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know how she thinks I look. She never fails to take a jab at me. Besides, she looks like hell herself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this out of sorts. It looks like she went on an all-night bender and has yet to wash off her make-up from the day before.

Her shirt is covered in what I can only guess is food. She can get a little sloppy sometimes, but this is past that for her.

“This place is a mess.” I cut her off. One weekend away and the whole apartment looks to have fallen apart. The coffee table is littered with soda cans and a variety of junk food. There are even chips smashed into the rug. I have to clench my jaw to stop me from saying something.

“I’ll get to it later.” Harper waves her hand at the mess like it’s no big deal, but for some reason that just pisses me off more. Maybe because I don’t want to be here. I want to be back in Sean’s apartment, lying in his bed.

“Where have you been?” I can tell she’s prying for information about Sean. She had her eyes all over him when she opened the door, but he paid her no mind, his eyes never leaving me. I’d noticed that a lot about him.

Even when we’d gone out on Saturday, women always seemed to be looking at him. Not that I can blame them. He stands out in a room. Hell, I think a waitress even tried to hit on him when we were having lunch, but he didn’t seem to notice. His full attention was always on me, like no one else was around, and I found myself not caring that they looked at him, because it didn’t matter.