If you think I actually own any of this, you're wrong. It's the brain child of Angela Robinson and the property of Sony Pictures.
Chapter 13:
"Okay, floor's clear," Scud announced, "I'm looping the tape now."
"All right," I whispered, pulling the bill of my cap lower over my eyes, "now, we go."
The three of us slid into the hallway. We actually needed Ronnie this time. The anal-retentive bastard hadn't let us know the combination for the vault. Guess he wanted to make sure we didn't dupe him.
Janet had rigged the door beautifully. I probably couldn't have done it better myself. Well, I probably could've, but I wouldn't have told her that. I pulled it open, and the three of us stepped into the vault room. I glanced over at the desk on off to the side. Yeah, all the pieces were in play.
"How much time do we have?" I asked.
"Anywhere between seven and thirteen minutes," Scud's voice replied.
"Crap," I whispered. I took a knee next to the cage door and got to work on the lock. Janet and Dominique weren't going to move in until I was actually inside the vault.
The lock was being annoying, again. My hands were shaking a little as I tried to gently nudge the tumblers into position.
"Um, Lucy," Amy said gently, "are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," I muttered sharply.
"Time is short, Lucinda," Ronnie told me.
"Look, if you can pick it any faster, you're welcome to try," I snapped at him without turning around to face him.
With a sharp click, the lock snapped opened, and I slid the door to the cage open.
"Is either guard making a move for the elevator?" I asked.
"Not yet," Scud replied.
"Okay," I turned to Amy, "guess it's my turn to go under the beams." I pulled the spraycan out of the duffel bag, and again filled the cage with a thin mist as Amy again attached a strong magnet to the base of the vault door.
It was a tight squeeze. It was weird seeing these bright emerald beams a fraction of an inch in front of my nose. If I broke one of them, then this entire heist would come to a rather sudden end. The cops would get involved a little early. But Amy and Ronnie were able to drag me under them without either of us breaking one of the beams.
Okay, lemme just take a minute to point out that I'm not as agile as I used to be. Twisting and contorting my way to a standing position next to the vault door was a bit of a challenge. Four years ago, it would barely even have slowed me down. Use it or lose it, I guess.
"Combination, please," I twisted around to face Ronnie. Now we find out how good a job Scud did.
"Eight, four, seven, seven, two, nine, three, one, six," Ronnie read out the numbers as I tapped them into the console.
The change was subtle at first, then slowly, I heard the eleven five-inch bolts withdraw and with a soft hiss, the door bumped gently against my back.
There's always that moment in a heist, when it hits you that you've broken into somewhere where you're not supposed to be. For me, it's usually when you open the safe, or in this case, the vault. I guess you could say I'm the goal-oriented type. I slid into the vault as the bright fluorescent lights of the vault snapped on, giving the room a metallic, sterile feel.
It was actually a fairly small room. Maybe ten feet square, but each wall was lined with metal lock boxes. Some were small, others large and deep. At the front wall, right next to the vault door, was a small telephone, a direct line to Tippmann so that someone could call for help if he'd accidentally locked himself inside the vault. I quickly memorized the position of lock box 137. It was a larger box in the back corner.
"What's the box number?" I asked.
"Fourteen," Ronnie replied.
I sat down and looked at the lock. Yeah, I could open this.
"Guys, the guard's on the move," Scud announced.
"Shit!" I yelled. Good job, Janet. I heard the distinctive click of a round being chambered. "Ronnie, no!" I yelled. I poked my head out of the vault door. "We can work with this."
"Give me an option," he said coldly, holding the Glock firmly in his hands. I closed my eyes, trying to look as if I was frantically trying to come up with something.
"Lucy!" Amy hissed frantically.
"Lock me in," I said quickly, as if it had just occurred to me.
"What?" Ronnie's gun dropped.
"Take everything back to the elevator and lock me in the vault. Close the cage, but don't lock it. I'll crack the lock box while the guard's checking this floor." I explained frantically. If Janet was doing her job right, she'd wait until Amy and Ronnie cleared the floor before she went up; but if she took too long, Ronnie was going to get suspicious. "You can't open the vault from the inside," Ronnie said.
"Amy can let me out, just get the hell out of here," I snapped. I watched as they frantically started to throw all our equipment into the duffel bag.
With a heave, I pulled the heavy vault door closed.
Yeah, turns out there was something I hadn't planned on. As soon as the vault door closed, all the lights turned off. It was like a refrigerator.
"Shit," I muttered.
"What is it," I heard Ronnie's voice over my earphone.
"Are you back in the shaft?"
"Yes, what is it?" Ronnie asked again.
"Okay, you're going to have to sit tight for a little while. The lights just went out in here, picking this lock may take me a little longer."
"How much longer?"
"I don't know," I told him, "I'll keep updating you every few minutes, but the guard may have to make a few trips up here before I'm done."
"I'll wait, Lucinda," Ronnie replied, "but not for long."
-x-
Even blind, the lockbox only took me about fifteen minutes. Enough that I just came up against Janet's third trip up to the sixth floor. I've I'd been able to see, I could've done it in five flat. I did the mental arithmetic and smiled. If we'd still had our OCD guard, I could've stolen the diamond. Nice to know I still had it.
"Are you done yet?" Ronnie asked for about the fourteenth time.
"Just about," I replied as I slid the box open, "give me about five more minutes."
"Guard's on the way up again," Scud announced.
I smiled, right on time. Janet had just bought me another ten minutes, and that would be plenty.
"Box is open. As soon as she's done on the sixth floor, you can come in," I quickly darted over to the vault door, leaving the lock box open.
This one would be a little hard to do by touch, but I'd gone over it so many times that I figured I could do it. I quickly sat down and yanked my right shoe off. Then, I carefully teased the shoelace between my thumb and forefinger until the tiny end of a wire protruded through the fabric of the shoelace.
I carefully pulled it free, and put it between my teeth as I set about disassembling the emergency phone next to the vault door.
Once the plate on the side of the phone was removed, I gently felt around for a pair of electronic contacts. And with the wire, I created a jumper circuit between them. If Scud was right (and he hadn't led me wrong before) that would fool the system into thinking that the phone was off the hook, without actually opening a phone line.
I took a deep breath as I prepared for the endgame.
-x-
I ducked down as the bright, harsh light flooded the vault. Sitting in pitch black for almost a half-hour will do that to you, I guess. I looked over to the vault which was just barely cracked open, and opened it just enough that I could lean my upper body out. Bastard was already dragging Amy back under the laser beams. I guess he didn't want to take any chances.
"Okay, send the fake in," I told him.
"No way, send the real one out first," He countered. Behind him, I could see Amy kneel down next to the desk while his attention was on me.
"Fine," I muttered.
I walked over to the lock box, carefully sliding it out of its slot before I opened the lid.
Forty carats of diamond doesn't sound like much, but it filled the palm of my hand. It was exquisitely carved in a perfect oval shape. I held it up to the light, spinning it in between my fingertips. It was perfectly symmetrical; its thousands of facets bounced the harsh fluorescent light into the walls around me. "Unicorn," I whispered.
"What was that?" Ronnie asked.
"Nothing," I said quickly. I ran back to the vault door, then rolled the diamond across the cage, under the laser beams where Ronnie was waiting. Ronnie slid the diamond in his pocket before he turned around and walked to the duffel bag. Amy was standing right behind him, and the two ran into each other.
The Glock fell from Ronnie's jacket and clattered to the floor. For a split second, they both looked down at the semi-automatic pistol on the floor before they both reached for it.
Amy was a fraction faster.
She snatched the pistol from the ground training it on Ronnie for a moment. For a split-second, I actually believed she was going to shoot him. She flipped the gun around, holding it butt-first out to him. "I guess I'm not like you," she said to him, then she turned to face me, "either of you."
Ronnie slid the gun back into his jacket and knelt by the duffel bag as he produced the fake.
I gotta admit, whoever he had doing the forgery had done a bang-up job. If I hadn't known that it was a fake, I would've been fooled. Even a trained jeweler would have trouble telling the difference. As I looked at the fake, I again watched as Amy knelt beside the desk while Ronnie's attention was on me. "Good fake," I admitted, trying to draw Ronnie's attention for a few extra seconds.
"Only the best," Ronnie replied.
I disappeared back into the vault, and I dropped the fake into the lock box before I closed it and locked it. Finally, I slid back out of the vault.
I froze as I stepped into the cage. Ronnie's Glock was pointed directly at Amy's chest.
"I owed you this," Ronnie told me. "I was sent to jail, and I lost a very good friend last time." Very deliberately, he squeezed the trigger four times. Ronnie wasn't a terribly good shot, but at that range, he didn't need to be. Amy sagged to the ground, a neat circle of bullet holes forming around the center of her chest, a dark stain forming on her jumpsuit.
I took a step forward, then halted, as he lifted the gun to point at me. "We're even," he said simply. "Step into the vault. You'll be caught tomorrow, you'll go to jail, and thanks largely to your efforts, there's no evidence that I was ever here."
"You think I'm just gonna let myself get caught?" I asked.
"You have two choices," Ronnie said simply, "you can lock yourself in that vault, or I can shoot you now." His eyes narrowed, "but you won't do that; because I know you better than that. No, you'll go to jail, you'll live, because you know that as long as you're breathing, you have a chance to get back at me." He waved the gun at Amy's lifeless body, crumpled on the floor, "and don't fret over the DEB," he added, "we both know that girls like that are a dime a dozen." He raised the gun so that it pointed at the center of my forehead, "now, step into the vault, please."
With a look of unmitigated fury, I slid back into the vault, pulling it closed behind me.