Robin in the Hood (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 1) (20 page)

I knew this was a big step for Creek. He was used to leading the way, controlling every second so nobody got hurt. But this kind of intel didn’t come along every day.

I stepped into the faded gray coveralls that Creek had brought and slipped on a dowdy wig. It was shaggy and dishwater blonde, designed to make me invisible. Part of the plan was that we were to look like the cleaning crew—substituting for Jarrod’s Cleaning Service that normally comes on Thursdays, but sometimes has another company fill in on Fridays. From observing the security guard for months who only covered Friday night, Creek knew the guy didn’t pay much attention to his job for the first half hour. The minute he arrived for work, he liked to spend his time texting the strippers he’d just ogled at the Gilded Lily that closed down at two am. Creek said he always pestered the women with obnoxious phone calls while walking up to the bank, then feverishly sent them texts to follow up.

Which was exactly what he was doing right now.

“Hey Starla, what’s happenin’?” we could hear him say, a dark figure striding slowly across the parking lot to the back of the bank. “What? Amber gave me your number. No, not to get me off her back—Starla?
S
t
a
r
l
a
. . . fuck it!”

I could see the guy shake his head and swiftly punch more numbers into his cell. Creek was zipping his coveralls after throwing on a short, brown wig and stuffing in his hair. Then he hid our motorcycle behind some trash cans and returned, clutching my hand and giving it a squeeze.

“Let’s do this,” he said in a rough whisper.

And he surprised me by giving me a kiss.

A deep, thrill-you-to-your-bones but utterly frightening kiss.

Because everything about it said,
I
f
a
n
y
t
h
i
n
g
g
o
e
s
w
r
o
n
g
,
b
a
b
y
,
j
u
s
t
r
e
m
e
m
b
e
r
—
I
l
o
v
e
y
o
u
.

And I’d never gotten one of those in my entire life!

As much as I wanted to melt right then and there into the pavement, I was too flat-out scared.

Creek broke away, his hands still wrapped around my cheeks, holding me steady. He just gazed at me, like he wanted to tuck my face into his heart. My pulse felt like a speeding bullet. Then we both took really deep breaths and turned to walk single file to the back door of the bank with our heads down like we’d planned, as though we’d been doing this crappy job for years and we hated it.

Gulping hard, I could feel the apprehension swelling in my throat as big as a fist.

When we reached the door, I lifted my hand to punch in the code, but Creek snatched my wrist—

“No,” he whispered. “The cleaning crew wouldn’t know the code.”

Duh!

I nodded at him and bit my lip, spotting the buzzer. I pressed it and glanced again at Creek, memorizing the name “John” on his fake nametag. I was “Sue,” and we “usually” worked for Sunshine Cleaning Service, but we’d “agreed” to fill in tonight for Jarrod. Creek had fake paperwork in his pocket that claimed we were bonded. I didn’t even ask him where he’d stolen it from.

But it turns out we didn’t need it, because the security guard was too busy chomping on a big bag of chips and finishing up a heated conversation on his cell to pay any attention to us.

“Yeah? Well screw that!” he grumbled, letting us inside the door. As soon as he saw our nametags, he didn’t bother to ask for more. Creek merely muttered, “We’re the fill-ins for Jarrod,” as we stepped inside, and that was enough to get us rolling.

I quickly tugged on Creek’s arm to follow me to the cleaning closet. It was a door on the right where Laura had first tried to kiss me, but I’d kept her at bay by slipping behind a bucket and shoving a mop between us. “This isn’t quite the right place,” I’d giggled at the time, like I was teasing her.

But now it was no joke.

Hands trembling, I picked out an aerosol can and a feather duster from the closet while Creek pulled out the vacuum. The thought occurred to me that I’d never used these things before, and I watched in awe as Creek appeared to know exactly where the cord was hidden on his industrial-sized machine. He yanked it out like a pro and plugged it in, nodding at me to continue down a hall. When he turned on the power, the vacuum roared like a freight train.

Perfect!

Now security guy wouldn’t hear a thing.

And I felt my pulse calm down a little. So far everything was working out. I shook my duster at random surfaces, trying to act like I knew what I was doing, and headed towards the lobby, an area I figured most cleaning crews started with first. Creek followed behind me, running the vacuum over the carpet. We kept our noses to the grindstone and methodically covered the whole lobby, then slipped behind where the tellers normally worked. I wasn’t sure whether there might still be cash in the drawers to steal—our original plan, since Creek had said this particular bank had gotten arrogant and sloppy and didn’t even use dye packs. I reached up to try and open one to check. But then I felt Creek bump me so hard that I lost my grip.

Startled, I saw him shake his head and point towards a hall at the back.

The vault.

Looking into his eyes, I nodded. Why bother with cash drawers when I had the vault code?

We both proceeded toward a set of mahogany double doors. As soon as we stepped through, Creek braced the large vacuum against the doors and left it running.

Oh God, this is it! I thought, shaking a little as we headed down another hall. But I smirked while Creek walked towards an enormous, round steel door at the end, the kind of vault you always see in movies. Since the building was over a hundred years old, and a historical landmark in the city, most people assumed that it was the only vault. But Laura Ritter had shown me differently.

I whistled loudly at Creek, enjoying the surprise in his eyes when he turned around.

Pointing to a plain metal door on the side, I motioned him to come over.

“This is the secret
vault,” I said when Creek got close. It was very unassuming—in fact, everything in this part of the bank was kind of ragged, compared to the elegant entrance with its showy crystal and marble, designed to put customers in awe. The carpet here was threadbare, as if it hadn’t been changed in decades, and the secret vault door was hardly state of the art. It looked like something designed years ago when maybe keypads were still considered “hi tech.” Nevertheless, when Laura showed it to me, she was proud.

“All the employees think the other vault is the main one,” she revealed with a knowing smile. “But here’s where my daddy stores special deposits.” She whispered her name as she typed into the keypad like an idiot. “Daddy lets me study in here sometimes, because it’s so
p
r
i
v
a
t
e
,” she said as seductively as the geekiest girl on campus could manage. “You know, if you ever wanted to meet me to study, we wouldn’t even have to come in the front door.” She licked her lips. “’Cause I just reverse the code for the back. It could be like our own little tryst.” With a sly wink, she spun the turnstile handle and opened the vault door wide.

“What about security cameras. Wouldn’t people see us make out in here?” I asked, pretending to be interested. In reality, I couldn’t wait
to split.

“Oh, nobody looks at those,” Laura waved her hand. “The images are too fuzzy anyway. Get real—my dad said nobody’s dared to rob his bank in over fifty years.”

At that moment, I thought Laura’s bragging was a total snore, even when she showed me some exotic gold coins her dad kept inside. But after holding my breath now beside Creek and typing into the keypad to open the vault, the bland gray interior all of a sudden looked like heaven to me.

Forget rare gold coins that could be easily traced—

What made my heart race were the bags.

Beautiful bags of cash.

God only knows who they belonged to. Laura had said most of the bank’s safe deposit boxes were in the circular-door vault, with the exception of her dad’s special holdings. But ownership wasn’t exactly on our minds as Creek and I quickly picked up one bag each and stuffed them into our shirts inside our coveralls. Then Creek gripped my hand and yanked me from the room.

“Ow!” I yelped.

“Move!” he said. “The less time we spend in here, the less likely we are to get into trouble.”

He slammed the door behind us and spun the handle, then tugged me down the hall towards his running vacuum.

I couldn’t believe it—I actually had thousands of dollars of cash bumping up against against my Pinnacle-issue bra. Sure, I wouldn’t have minded taking a few more bags, but I could see Creek’s logic as he grabbed the vacuum and moved it from the double doors, proceeding to keep cleaning the floor while we headed our way back towards the bank teller area.

With my feather duster and aerosol can in hand, I sprayed and wiped with a fury, sneezing a couple of times. Secretly, I snickered a bit at the fact that this was the first time I’d ever cleaned anything. But my heart nearly leaped to the rafters when I saw the security guard slowly stroll into the lobby. He began to walk in little angry circles underneath the giant chandelier, cussing.

“Goddammit!” he fumed, typing into his cell phone.

I did my best to look haggard and bored, the way I assumed most cleaning ladies must, fluffing my feather duster over a cabinet and keeping my eye on Creek nearby. Casually, he continued to rake his vacuum beneath a desk.

“Three hundred lousy bucks into her thong, and the bitch wouldn’t even talk to me!”

I couldn’t help giggling a little, and I saw Creek smirk too, shaking his head. We were nearly home free. All we had to do was linger here a while longer—act like we were still doing a good job—and then head to the back door.

Creek gazed up and nodded at me to veer left away from the lobby, and I followed his lead, until I heard the security guy stop swearing.

His long silence froze me in place.

With a quick glance, I saw him staring directly at us with a disturbed look on his face, so I kept my eyes glued to my feather duster on a windowsill, swishing vigorously.

“Hey!” he barked over the sound of Creek’s vacuum.

I thought my heart might explode—

“Don’t you guys need some better light?”

All around us, the bank had recessed amber lights for a subtle radiance that enabled us to walk around the building and do an okay job cleaning, but hardly enough to pass a white glove test. Obviously, it hadn’t been in our interest to throw on the daytime switches.

But that idea occurred to the security guy now.

All at once, the lobby was flooded with the searing white glow of the giant crystal chandelier. It was so bright it stung my eyes, and I threw my elbow over my face. As my eyes adjusted and I lowered my arm, I could hear Creek turn off the vacuum and drag it close to me to plug it into another socket. But before he could edge past me, I suddenly saw it—

“My house!”

I couldn’t help it—those shocked words left my lips as I spied, right in front of me on the marble wall, a poster of my house in Indian Hill. It was supposed to be foreclosed and auctioned off when my dad’s law firm went under. But instead, there was a picture of our mansion that had bright gold lettering below it that read:

§ SPRING FUNDRAISER BALL §

April 3
^rd
at the elegant home

of Charles & Chloe Tweedle

“What?” I cried. “What the hell’s Tweedle doing with my house if the law firm went belly up? That son of a bitch—he’s the one who must’ve been embezzling . . .”

Despite the fact that my rage made me see only red in that moment, all at once I realized that it was so quiet now that you could hear a pin drop.

And before I knew what hit me, a pair of strong arms had grabbed me and practically thrown me from the lobby down the hall facing the back of the bank.

It was Creek. And all he said was, “Run! Run like hell!”

He was racing beside me, our money bags bouncing hard against our chests. My legs were moving as fast as I could carry them—while I was still coming to grips with my stupid outburst. How could I possibly have been such an idiot?

“Stop right there!” the security guard called out.

But we were mere feet from the door and not about to halt now. Creek shoved me in front of him, and that’s when I heard a deafening blast—

The echo thundered against the walls, so loud I thought it might crack my head open.

It had to be a gun! Oh God, I was far too scared to turn around and check. I heard Creek’s voice say, “Open the door!”

I wrangled with the handle and shoved my body against it, bursting into the cold night air when I heard another shot—

“Creek!” I cried, swiveling to see if he was okay.

But the guy I saw coming out the door was a bloody mess.

“Oh my God!” I screamed in shock as he raced towards me.

Creek yelled, “Move—move NOW!” His body only inches from mine—

But just then I heard another blast.

I felt him fall hard against me.

And that’s when everything went black.

“See, it’s your
s
o
u
l
that’s marked,” I heard Granny Tinker cackle. She was wearing black boots and a long, red velvet coat with white ruffles sticking out of her sleeves like some bohemian circus ringmaster. Oddly enough, she stood beside a giant Wheel of Fortune with a bullwhip in her hand. Cracking her whip, she looked at me like she meant business and gave the wheel a turn. “You can’t run away from yer fate even if you tried, darlin’.”