Coin Heist (21 page)

Thirty-Three

DAKOTA

“Everyone in?” Rankin
asked.

We were all crammed into the van, trying to get settled. Benny must have been trying to find room for his legs, because he inadvertently kicked my side.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Copping a feel, Ben-Ben?” Jason asked from the other end.

“Give me a break. And for the millionth time, that's not my name.”

“Shut up, Jason.” I sighed, sick of everyone. “Shut up both of you!”

“I'm just trying to make light of the situation. Calm down,” Jason said.

“Why don't
you
calm down?” I snapped. “Some situations can't be lightened.”

Then Alice had to turn around from her perch in the passenger seat, exchanging some kind of look with Jason, like,
isn't she crazy
?

I was over it. All of them. Because really? Squeezing the three of us and my Zac Posen dress into the back of the van and riding around without my seatbelt on were just the icing on this whole horrific cake. I'd gone from feeling amazing on stage, finally feeling like myself for once, to this?

By now, I didn't even care about missing the after-party with Dylan and the rest of them. I'd thought he was going to be really angry with me, and I was all prepared for a big scene, but when I'd told him I wasn't feeling well, he'd just shrugged and said, “You're missing out.”

No, I really wasn't. That, at least, I knew. Maybe he'd hook up with someone else, and we could finally admit to ourselves that our whole thing was just a showmance—we were together because we thought we had to be, not because we had any real feelings for each other.

Who knew where Rankin was taking us now? It was obvious that we were on our way to some kind of deadly punishment. And either way, our parents were going to find out. I was finished. Completely finished.

I was going to be sent away—and probably to a place much worse than Bertrand Academy. I'd screwed up big time. And all of a sudden I couldn't, for the life of me, remember why I'd gotten involved with this thing in the first place. Was it to get back at my parents? Or to prove I was a badass? Because, clearly, I was not cut out to be a badass. I was a stressed-out mess with the worst possible urge to throw up the few bites of salad I'd eaten at the prom.

Where was Dr. Pollard now?
Okay, Valium breath. Focus on something. Anything.

I tried to count the streetlights, but we were going too fast. I looked at the back of Rankin's head, which I'd never really looked at before, not in this detail. His hair was thinning on the top, and he had a little scar or birthmark or something under his right ear, just barely visible in the dim light. None of these details should have been surprising, but they were, because up until tonight he hadn't really been a real person to me.

I corrected myself. Of course he had been. I just never thought of him that way. Well, that's what Benny had basically said, wasn't it? That I was a narcissist, just focused on myself. Only I was always pretending to be something I wasn't, which was even worse. Benny was the real deal, and I was a big fake. No wonder I was in a fake relationship with a fake guy. Dylan and I deserved each other.

We were out of the city now, having wound our way past the boat houses on Kelly Drive. Next was the even windier Lincoln Drive, which was throwing us back and forth, so that one moment Jason was in my lap and the next I was draped all over Benny. Awkward.

I remember my dad telling me that when he was growing up, it was a game to see who could travel from one end of this road to the other without braking on any of the hairpin curves. It sounded pretty scary. Then again, it was probably nothing compared to robbing the Mint.

Oh God. My dad.

I'd never been on this road because Lincoln Drive was on the other side of the river from where all of us lived—except for Benny, of course. And his neighborhood was way back in the other direction. I wondered what he was thinking about now, if he was freaking out anywhere near as much as I was.

“Where are you taking us?” I blurted finally, unable to stand the suspense. “What's happening?”

Mr. Rankin didn't say anything.

“Are you kidnapping us to chain us to the water heater in your scary basement?” Jason asked.

How could Jason be joking at a time like this?

Rankin laughed. “That's a thought. No, I don't think my wife would appreciate me showing up unannounced with prisoner-guests.”

“What then? Mr. Rankin, please, don't play games with us,” I pleaded. “Are you taking us to the police?”

Mr. Rankin was definitely trying to drive us over the edge, keeping quiet. I wished like anything that I had never gotten involved in Operation EagleFly, that I'd minded my own business like any other kid at school and just let the place close down, moved on. Why'd I have to go and act like I could make a difference? I mean, if a genie had shown up right then, I would've given away all my other wishes—forget going to Harvard or anything else—and just focused on going back in time and erasing the worst decision I'd ever made.

Rankin turned off Lincoln Drive and onto a tree-lined street. Chestnut Hill. This was a fancy neighborhood, just as fancy as Bryn Mawr, with lots of cobblestone streets and preppy people. The kind of place where New England wannabes wore whale belts, pink pants, and Docksiders.

As we pulled into a long driveway, I felt myself shaking. Benny must have sensed it, too, because he put a hand on my knee to settle it. It felt nice, a way of letting me know it was going to be okay. How is it that just having him next to me could make me feel calm even in
this
situation?

Rankin pulled into a cul-de-sac and parked in front of an old carriage house. He shut off the engine. “Okay, guys. Out of the car.”

Alice and Jason went first, slowly, and Benny and I followed. We walked in a single line down the front path, as if going to our own funerals. Which we sort of were.

Where were we? The house was huge and made of stone, with wrought iron balconies and darkened windows stretching out into the distance, a cold sea of darkness. None of the lights were on, except one glowing at the far end of the downstairs right wing. I could just about glimpse the shape of a man sitting at a desk inside.

Rankin rang the doorbell, which echoed throughout the house. At least two and possibly three large dogs started barking, and I heard their claws scraping on the floor as they sprinted to the door.

Then the shout of a man's voice: “Janet! Mary! Quiet!”

“Whose house is this?” I asked.

“Harold Smerconish,” Jason whispered to the rest of us. “The head of the Board of Trustees.”

The door opened to a tall and balding man wearing a baby blue sweater vest, his paunch bulging out slightly over his belt buckle. Janet and Mary were dogs, apparently, sleek Rhodesian ridgebacks.

“Rankin.” His voice was deep and craggy. “Come in. Come in.”

He led us down a long hallway, past a living room, a den, and a family room, and then through another room that could have been another living room or den or family room, but by then I'd run out of possible names for it. It wasn't much bigger than my house, but it was older, more formal, and definitely emptier. Then he opened a mahogany door and revealed the room I'd seen from outside. A library of sorts, or an office. Well, he probably had both in this place, and a billiards room, too.

“I'm sorry I don't have enough seating for all of you,” Smerconish said, extending an open palm to the Persian-carpeted area in front of his desk. We nervously piled into the room.

But maybe this
was
good. It wasn't the police station, after all.

Then, before I knew it, Smerconish pushed the heavy door to his office closed. He came back in front of us, leaned back on his huge mahogany desk with his ankles crossed.

“Now, Rankin says you kids got yourselves into a bit of trouble tonight?”

No one said anything.

He continued, speaking very slowly. “I can't help you unless you talk to me. I need to know exactly what happened, from the very beginning, down to the second you crossed the threshold into my study.” He picked up a gold-plated letter opener and started tapping it methodically on his open palm. “Now, who wants to go first?”

Thirty-Four

BENNY

So there we
were, sitting in this swagged-out mansion in the middle of the night, facing this WASP-y old man, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He was wearing argyle socks, and there were Ivy League diplomas on the wall. Smerconish? What kind of name was that?

My eyes fell on a picture on his desk, him standing in front of a big building with the sign
smerconish realty
. That's when I remembered where I'd seen that name before—those signs were all over the city. They owned everything except the freaking Liberty Bell, and maybe even that, too.

Smerconish, who was leaning against his desk, started pacing in front of us, jiggling his hands in his pockets, acting like he was thinking, but not saying a word. Every now and then he looked up, waiting for someone to speak. The silence was excruciating.

“We wanted to save the school,” Jason blurted, finally. “We thought we could make some coins, cash them in, and keep the doors open.”

Smerconish still didn't say anything, just looked at Jason inquisitively.

“And we had the perfect plan—except I couldn't find a way to fence them, and we all got into a fight, so we called it off, but then we found there was a computer error . . .”

Couldn't Jason see this was the oldest trick in the book? All you had to do was watch any cop show, any episode of
Law & Order
, and they were on every damn night, to recognize that this was how they got you to talk. And it worked. He told the guy everything he wanted to hear, from the very beginning, how we'd planned the heist, to our backup scenarios, to how we broke up and then had to get back together for GroundEagleFly.

“And then . . .” Smerconish prompted.

“I walked in on them in the middle of it,” Rankin said. “That was right before I called you. So now what?”

There was more to the story, of course—how the machines went berserk and how we ended up with a couple thousand more error coins than we meant to, how we had to roll out the motherlode in the amp cases, but Rankin seemed to want to cut to the chase. It was late, and we were all tired. The room was quiet for a few minutes, deadly quiet.

Finally, Smerconish tapped his shiny shoe on the floor and coughed into his pink fist. “Well, you did the right thing in bringing them to me.” He clapped his hands together. “We all agree that this situation is a difficult one. Frankly, I'm concerned about what's left of the school's reputation. I certainly don't want to see HF students getting tangled up with the law. May I see the coins, if you don't mind?”

Rankin opened his palm. Inside it were at least eight quarters. So Rankin had pocketed some when we weren't looking? It was only a fistful, but what the hell? Smerconish took one and held it up to the light. “Very nice. Very nice job here.” He paused, then studied them even closer. He raised his eyebrows and looked up. “Well, I think I can help.”

“How?” I asked. Ever since I spoke up at the Mint, it was like I couldn't stop. I was a talking machine. Mostly, I didn't want anyone else speaking for me.

“I'll take care of it,” Smerconish said.

“I thought we said we were going to find a way to return them with immunity for the kids,” Rankin said. “That's what you said on the phone.”

“Yes, well, I have a better idea now.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“A way everyone wins,” Smerconish said, smiling at the coins.
Our
coins! “This will definitely net quite a bit with collectors.”

So Smerconish was gonna fence them, selling only a few like we were supposed to in the beginning, so they wouldn't flood the market or raise suspicions.

“You're stealing our idea,” I said. Which sucked. But I knew it as well as anyone else—we couldn't take credit for our plan even if we could've fenced the coins ourselves, which, clearly, we couldn't.

“Jason said you guys had trouble figuring out the end game. Well, I know just what to do,” Smerconish said. “These aren't worth fifty million, but it should be enough to keep us operational for the year, and maybe next. Buy us some time to raise more funds. We can save the school, and our campus expansion project, too.” He waved his hand toward a set of blueprints on his desk.

“This was serious, what you did, don't get me wrong. But it showed ingenuity. You all have a bright future ahead of you,” he added. “And now, with my plan, you'll still have it. What do you say?”

I glanced around at the others. Jason looked like he was trying to hold in a smile, and Alice was wide-eyed. Dakota frowned in the way you do when you're listening very closely. We were getting off the hook. This guy was going to take care of everything for us. No consequences. It was almost too good to be true. And I had to agree: this
was
the best option. Way better than going to jail. I couldn't actually be mad that our asses were being saved.

I slowly sank back into my chair and let out all the air I'd been holding in my chest.

Only Rankin had a funny look on his face, like he was surprised, or angry, or both.

“That's it?” he asked.

“That's it.” Smerconish nodded happily. “So tell me, these are all the coins you took, right?”

Jason started to speak, but Rankin talked over him. “You've got all of them.”

A flat-out lie. That was weird. What was he trying to cover up? Why didn't he tell Smerconish about the rest?

But given the fact that this was gonna clean up our whole mess, I didn't see why I should question it, and no one else did, either. I think we were all just psyched to get out of there and go home. Rankin probably too.

“Now,” Smerconish was saying. “I'll take care of everything. It's late. You should all go home, get a good night's sleep. You've been through the wringer. Tom, I'll be in touch.” He got up, opened the door, and led us all back out into his enormous hallway.

I shook his hand, along with everyone else, still in shock.

Rankin said he'd drive us all home, so we piled back into the van, Dakota sitting between me and Jason this time. There was a nervous buzz between us, all of us afraid to pop the bubble. Had we really just gotten away with everything? Were we dreaming?

Rankin was the first one to break the silence. “Shit.
Shit
.” He hit the steering wheel, sounding disgusted as he peeled out of the driveway. “I can't believe that guy.”

“What?” I asked. “Wasn't that your plan, to have him help us out?”

“I thought he could help me deal with this within the school system so you wouldn't have to go to jail. But I didn't think he was going to fence the coins himself. I didn't think he was going to legitimize this plan of yours.”

“He did what was good for him,” I said. “People act in their own self-interest.”

“Whatever. His plan is good for everyone,” Jason argued. “He'll save the school. And this way, we won't get caught.”

“That's not the point,” Rankin said. “The point is there should be consequences for you guys. He's an adult. He should know that.”

“The point is that we did what we originally set out to do,” Dakota said. “HF will stay open, and in the end we all benefit, right? Even you, Mr. Rankin.”

He couldn't argue there. “I guess.”

“But you kept the rest of the coins from him,” I pointed out. “How come?”

“They need to be destroyed,” Rankin said.

“And you didn't trust he would do that?”

“After what I saw in there? Who knows what he could have done if he knew how many you had?”

“Don't worry. We'll take care of it,” Alice said. “We're the real masterminds here anyway.”

Oh snap! Harry Potter in the house!

“I just wish he didn't get to be the one to save the day,” I said.

“We know what we did,” Dakota said. “Isn't that enough?”

I felt it then, the fact that the heist meant something to all of us, much more than whatever it was we were trying to do in the first place. And we'd stuck it out, working together to make it happen, our messed-up little team.

I was suddenly so tired, so freaking exhausted. I closed my eyes and tried to hold on to this weirdest of moments on a very weird night. So much had happened, and so fast. I thought I felt skin touching mine, smooth and cool.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw the trees rushing past us, a dark blur against the navy blue sky. We were riding through sleepy suburban streets, and inside the van, where no one could see, Dakota's hand covered mine like a secret.