The Heist

He needed to at least broach the subject of coyote communication with O’Hare. Get the whole insane idea out of his head and into hers so he could get some sleep.
    He crossed the small room, cautioning himself not to go off babbling like some drooling moron, but to calmly suggest that she look into the possibility. Not that he actually believed there were Viboras out there, but to simply suggest she keep her ears attuned to the coyote nuances.
    He opened his door, and at the same instant a hooded Vibora gunman kicked open the cabin’s front door and was immediately shot twice in the chest by O’Hare, who had leapt up from the couch and fired in one smooth motion.
    “What?” Burnside said, not able to process what was happening, or determine if it was even real, since he knew it was insane to think the Viboras were there, and yet there was one riddled with bullets on the floor in front of him.
    He saw a series of flashes in the darkness outside the open door, simultaneously heard a string of muffled pops, and O’Hare staggered forward, eyes wide in shock and fear. She fell face-first onto the couch, her gun slipping from her lifeless fingers onto the floor, and he saw four bullet holes in her back, oozing blood.
    Burnside dove to the floor to retrieve O’Hare’s gun. He grabbed the gun and was rolling onto his side to shoot the first Vibora son of a bitch that came through the door when he felt the silencer against his forehead. He looked up into the cold eyes that peered through the slits of the black ski mask worn by the Vibora killer standing over him, and his heart did a painful contraction.
    “I don’t know where Derek Griffin is,” Burnside said, struggling to breathe, dropping the gun. “He doesn’t have your money.”
    A second gunman yanked Burnside to his feet, pulled the lawyer’s arms behind his back, bound his wrists together with duct tape, tore a strip off the roll and slapped it over his mouth, and put a black hood over his head. Burnside was pulled outside and forced to walk in his bare feet on the sharp stones and twigs until he came to an abrupt and painful stop when his shins hit what he suspected was the rear bumper of a car. The trunk was opened and he was shoved inside, unable to see or to use his hands to cushion his fall. His ankles were bound with the duct tape and the trunk slammed shut. A moment later the car sped away over the unpaved road, bumping and jostling Burnside so hard against the trunk lid and the floor that it felt like a beating. And as this nightmare was unfolding, there was just one thought he couldn’t get out of his head:
    I can’t believe I was right
.

Nick, Chet, and Tom drove away from the safe house in a plain-wrap Camry with Willie at the wheel and Burnside in the trunk. Kate had chosen a Camry as their ride because it was the bestselling, most commonly seen car on the road, a staple of rental fleets, and therefore the hardest vehicle to single out and identify, not that there’d been any witnesses to the abduction.
    Five minutes earlier, it was Chet who had been the first one through the cabin door, once again getting to play the dead Vibora, and it was Nick who’d held the gun on Burnside. Tom came in last to bind Burnside and put the hood over his head.
    After the Camry disappeared down the road, Kate shucked her wet shirt and carefully peeled off the blood pack, which was basically a sheet of interlocking plastic bags that had been filled with red-dyed corn syrup and stuck to her back with heavy-duty bandage tape. On the surface of each blood bag were thin charges with tiny wires attached to them that led to a battery-operatedreceiver hidden in her pocket. Nick used a remote control to set off the charges, which burst her blood packs and tore holes in her shirt at the same time he fired the blanks from his silenced gun.
    Kate pulled a black Hefty trash bag from under the kitchen sink, dropped her soaked shirt and the blood pack into it, collected her gun and flashlight, and then, wearing only her bra and slacks, carried the bundle outside to her car, popped the trunk, and dropped everything inside. She took out the clean T-shirt that she’d stowed earlier in the trunk and pulled it over her head. She opened her gun locker, put the gun loaded with blanks inside, and took out an identical gun, this one loaded with live ammo, and stuck it into her belt-holster.
    It wasn’t until she was sitting in the front seat of her car, key in hand and ready