Wicked Prey

went inside.
    The room was just as shown in Cruz’s photos, with a wall of steel boxes set in a concrete wall. He put the bag down, picked up the oversized drill, plugged it in, and started on the lock on Box 2, the old man’s box, just out of curiosity. He timed the cut.
    Forty-eight seconds, and the lock cylinder was gone. “Excellent,” Lane breathed. He could do all of them in an hour.
    He flipped open the outer door, pulled the box—slowly, it was heavy, so heavy that he thought something was holding it in the slot. He stopped, and looked to see what was binding, saw nothing, and with some effort, pulled it the rest of the way out, and sagged with the weight of it. He put it on the floor, and popped the lid: and found, from front to back, a stack of small gold bars. Each was two inches wide, four or five inches long. They were laid three across, three down the length of the box. He dug them out: five deep. Forty-five bars that must weigh a couple of pounds each.
    “Holy shit,” he said. He put them in the tool bag, hefted the bag. He could carry it, he could even run with it, but not far. “Holy shit.”
    He went on to Box 1.
    * * *
     
    CRUZ PLAYED the part of the late-night executive woman, a step up from an ordinary desk clerk; you saw them in all the better hotels. If she stayed back, lingering in the hall, nobody would pick up the mask. And she was close enough to control Karen. Karen was not holding up well, clutching at her hands, on the edge of weeping. Cruz was watching her closely, and the two men coming in from behind, down the stairwell, almost took her by surprise.
    When she heard them, she instinctively stepped toward Karen, so the men wouldn’t see the mask, walked behind the desk and then out the other side, and one of the men said to Karen, “Hey, is there anyplace we . . . are you all right?”
    Cruz turned and saw them, two guys in ruffled shirts and tux pants, one still wearing a cummerbund, the other without, and she pointed her gun at them and said, “If you move or make any noise I will kill you. This is a robbery . . .” and before they could react, she half-shouted, “ Jim. ”
    Lane popped out of the strong room behind them, and they turned, scared now, and saw Lane with the heavy black mask and the Uzi, and one of them said, “Oh, my gosh,” and the other one, “Oh, Jesus,” and Lane said, “Into the chapel. Right there, across the hall, into the chapel. You won’t be hurt if you pay attention . . .”
    They moved into the chapel and Cohn took them: “Glad to see you fellas. Notice the dead man lying in the aisle . . .”
    * * *
    LANE WENT back to his drill, and Cruz, back in the hall, with one eye on the stairway now, looked at her watch. Twelve minutes. Seemed like an eternity.
    Karen started shaking again, and there was a gust of odor from her direction, and Cruz said, “Did you . . .”
    Karen started crying and nodded and said, “I peed my pants.”
    “Ah, Jesus,” Cruz said. “Get in the chapel. Get in the chapel.”
    “Don’t shoot me . . .”
    * * *
     
    KAREN WAS replaced by Ann, who seemed calmer.
    “There’s no reason to be afraid, as long as you do what we tell you,” Cruz explained, with some asperity. “There was no reason for Karen to do that.”
    “She’s scared,” Ann said. She had a little accent, which made Cruz think she was from somewhere else, like Armenia or Russia. A peasant, like Cruz’s own mother: peasants were tough, and needed watching. “There’s nothing to be scared about.”
    “Then why’s there a dead man in there?” Ann asked. A man and his wife, both in formal dress, pushed through the door.
    Cruz said quietly, so only Ann could hear, “Good evening. Can we help you?”
    Ann smiled at them and said, “Good evening,” and Cruz moved back out of sight, and heard the man say, “Hi,” and the two of them went on past the desk and down the hall to the elevators. A minute later, they were gone.
    “See, that was easy,” Cruz said. She looked at her watch. Eighteen minutes. She said to the desk clerk, “Come here. Just to the strong-room door.”
    The woman followed her back, not too close, and Cruz pushed the door open with a foot and asked, “How’re we doing?”
    “I’m working in a fuckin’ gold mine in here,” Lane said. He was sweating over the drill, had rolled the mask away from his face. “I can’t believe it. A fuckin’ gold mine.”
    And he hit the next box with the drill.

24
    LUCAS WOKE IN