A Sneak Peek

Into my next upcoming novel, title hesitantly posed as The Heist

Thirty. Thirty seconds left. I looked up from my wristwatch. Time was racing away like a duck hell-bent on escaping the shotgun blast from a hunter. I had only a minute from when the silent alarm triggered until the cops arrived on the scene. And that alarm triggered thirty seconds ago. Everything was running so smoothly until the bank manager was murdered. In the panic of him dying, one of the tellers snatched the opportunity to slap the silent alarm unnoticed.

I wouldn’t have known if not for my inside man at the police dispatch center. As soon as the alarm triggered, a text message buzzed across my phone from an unknown number. 5-0 notified. A simple text, only two words. But enough to cause my heart to miss a beat. I couldn’t accelerate the plan, I could only pray it would play out before things escalated. My plan was to leave the hired thugs behind anyways. They shouldn’t know who I was, I’d never met any of them before, and would like nothing more than to see none of them again.

From the first time the leader of the Russian gang blew his fruit loop-flavored vape cloud, I should have taken that splendid indicator for the street sign it was. These guys turned a difficult situation into a downright disastrous one. So much meticulous planning went into this heist, planning that was torn to pieces once they started behaving like gangsters shooting up a club.

Twenty. I need to leave in the next ten seconds. If I left when the timer hit one, it would be too late and the building would be surrounded. There were no police cruisers outside yet, only pedestrians walking past the wall of one-way glass, unaware of the bodies painting the ceramic floor only feet from them. They could see the armed security guards loading up the armored cash van idling by the curb, but there was nothing unusual about that.

My heavy breathing had built up a layer of moisture inside the ski mask pulled on over my face. Its sticky moisture clinging to my cheeks, threatening me with an early heart attack induced by claustrophobia. I ached to rip it off, but the wide-eyed woman staring at me from where she lay prone on the floor was a sharp reminder I needed to keep my anonymity.