Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) (5 page)

“Edward.” Raul straightened my lapels and kissed my forehead. He had a bouquet of carnations in one arm, which he’d be handing out randomly once he got to the coffee shop. He’d told me it was one of his favorite ways to pass the time, putting smiles on people’s faces and coaxing their guard down. He’d learned more about people while giving away flowers than at any other time. I had a prop of my own, apart from the briefcase and cane: a cup of coffee. Cold, of course, I didn’t want to cause any burns with it. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be listening, and if you need help, I’ll come rescue you.” He looked seriously at me. “You know I wouldn’t let you down again.”

That was Raul’s greatest fear: the idea that I’d be in trouble and he wouldn’t be there to help me. Last year I’d almost been killed by Pinball, a former colleague of Raul’s, and I’d been saved by Freight Train when Raul had been unavailable. Not long after that I’d been arrested, and Dr. Steuben, the prison’s resident shrink–slash–mad scientist, had had time to hook my brain up to an experimental thought-reading machine and torture me into Super status before my rescue.

Needless to say, neither of us liked to remember those times. I didn’t like him thinking of me like that—helpless and needing rescue—and I certainly didn’t want that to be on his mind right now. “I know.” I kissed him back, as firm and confident as I could. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in an hour.” I adjusted my hat, then slumped down a bit. “How do I look?”

“Forgettable,” Raul said approvingly. “Utterly forgettable, darling.”

“You say the sweetest things.” I was the first to turn away, walking at a slow stroll down toward the bank. By the time I got there, the manager should be about ten minutes out. I could kill that time pretending to drink my cold coffee, being busy on my smartphone, and doing my best not to freak out. Yeah. Piece of cake.

Apart from a woman with lavender hair in a pantsuit who exchanged nods with me as we passed each other, I managed to avoid eye contact with the other people on the sidewalk, and I was feeling pretty good by the time I got to the bank. I set down my briefcase and locked the cane into the custom slot at the top of it, pulled out my smartphone, then pretended to screw around with the screen while I discreetly looked over my gear to check that all my tech was working. Earpiece connecting me to Raul, check. Cane of many secret compartments and special uses, check. Biometric lock to hold in my loot, all ready.

I had to be good too, though—I had to keep myself together. Now that I was on my own, no reassuring Raul in sight, I was barely keeping myself from hyperventilating. My coffee sloshed around the cup like it was being sucked into a waterspout, and the wall between Inside Me and Outside Me was too thin to trust. That wasn’t helpful. I had to be calm if I wanted this job to go well. That was the emotion I wanted to communicate, not the nervousness.

I’d picked my own bank to rob in the hopes that the familiar setting would make it easier. But now all I could think about was that I’d be coming face-to-face with former friends, deceiving and betraying them even further. That didn’t sit well, but it was too late to change the plan. I needed to do this; I had to know that I could. If that meant burning a few more bridges on the way, well, then I’d have to learn to live with that.

The manager showed up right on schedule at 8:45. It was Larry Bries, the only manager who’d never been amenable to switching shifts with anyone else. Larry was regimental in the extreme, right down to timing bathroom trips and actually re-ironing his shirts over his lunch break. He was also a neat freak, and exactly the sort of person I wanted in charge today.

Larry unlocked the door and nodded to the night security guard, who immediately headed for the break room. It was, after all, the end of his shift. I watched him go, then took a deep breath, caught the door a second before it shut and followed Larry inside.

“Excuse me?”

Larry turned with a frown on his face. “I’m sorry, sir, the bank isn’t open for business for another fourteen and a half minutes. You’ll have to wait outside.”

“I know, I know, but I have a nine-o-clock meeting that I mustn’t be late for,” I said apologetically, moving carefully closer to him. “It won’t take but a moment.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Please leave.”

One more refusal and he’d be on his guard. I had to close the deal. “I will, I certainly, will, I just have to—” I bobbled my balancing act with briefcase, cane, and coffee, and stumbled over nothing, sending my coffee cup flying at Larry. The lid popped open and sprayed the front of his lavender dress shirt with pale-brown sludge. “Oh no, what have I done?”

Larry appeared stunned into immobility, which was perfect because it gave me the time to take his hand. I packed all my anxiety about the job into Inside Me and took a deep breath, filling Outside Me with a sense of profound peace. The lines in Larry’s forehead smoothed instantly, and he didn’t yell for the guard.

So far, so good. I needed to move fast from here on out: my reverse-empathy didn’t let me put words into someone else’s head, and my ability to control actions remained limited and unreliable. I was in charge of Larry’s emotional state while I was touching him, but that close proximity would be hard to maintain once the bank filled up. “We’re going to go to the vault, Larry. How’s that sound?”

“Oh, I love the vault,” Larry confided happily. “It’s like an enormous spreadsheet, only better because the numbers never change.”

His response drew a smile out of me—it was such a Larry thing to say. I tapped my earpiece. “On my way to the vault.”

“Good work.” Raul sounded genuinely pleased, if surprised. I tried not to be annoyed by that.

I let Larry lead the way, keeping a light grip on his wrist as we made our way to the vault. We made it past the guard room without its occupant even raising his head, thankfully, and by the time we got to the back I was feeling pretty buoyant.

The vault’s door had a combination biometric and traditional lock, which was why I had to have Larry with me, instead of picking his pocket and going back myself. Larry pulled out his key ring and started thumbing through them, searching for the right one. He made a distressed sound at their damp, coffee-drenched state.

“Hey, it’s all fine,” I murmured, pushing more peacefulness at him. My own, less sanguine emotions thrum beneath my barrier, struggling against it. I shut my eyes for a moment and shoved them away. “The keys will work fine as they are.”

“They will once I tidy them up a bit,” Larry agreed, reaching for his pocket square. That was wet too, and he frowned at it. Given the amount of Zen I was channeling, he must have been really disturbed by the state of his shirt.

“Open the door and we’ll dry them off inside the vault.”

“But that will get coffee inside the locking mechanism!”

Distantly I heard the front door open, and a few new voices enter. Tellers. We needed to move. “Here, give them to me.” Larry handed me the keys and I awkwardly cleaned them off with the end of my tie. “There, good as new.”

“That wasn’t sanitary. You’re an older individual; you need to be more cautious about bacteria.”

Well, at least my disguise was working. “I don’t plan on putting my tie in my mouth any time soon, so I think I’ll be okay. Go ahead and open the door.”

“I . . . all right, then.” He started thumbing through the keys again.

“Mr. Bries?” a familiar voice called down the hall. I winced. It was Wendy, who wasn’t supposed to be working today according to my surveillance and the fact that she’d loathed working weekends ever since the Pinball incident. “Are you back here? There’s a coffee cup on the floor in the lobby, is it— Oh!” She came around the corner and started, one hand going to her chest. “I didn’t know you were with a client!”

“We have to get into the vault!” Larry cheerfully informed her.

“I see.” She came a bit closer. “Can I bring you anything, Mr. . . .?”

“Johnson,” I said, making my voice a bit hoarse. “No, I’m fine.”

“Not even a chair? It seems like you might be having some trouble standing,” she said apologetically, glancing at my hand on Larry’s arm. I could see how it could be interpreted as using Larry as a prop. “You could wait in one of the offices while Mr. Bries retrieves your items.”

“No, thank you.” I shook my head slightly, and silently prayed for Larry to find the damn key, fast. “I’ll be fine.”

Just then, the door to the vault swung open. Larry hummed with satisfaction, stepped inside, and I followed him. Wendy left after another moment of hovering, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. We were in the clear.

Random boxes, random boxes . . . “What are your favorite numbers, Larry?”

“Oh, I love the primes,” he gushed. “So orderly, but so unique!”

An entire category of numbers was his favorite. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Okay then, I need to see inside box . . .” I cast my gaze around. “Twenty-Nine.”

“An excellent choice.” He grabbed a new key, then used it and his thumbprint—the boxes were a lot smaller than the door, a whole palm wouldn’t fit—to pull Twenty-Nine out.

“Great.” Still holding him with one hand, I opened my briefcase and laid it on the floor. “Set that in here for me, please.”

Larry made a face. “That would leave a hole.”

And of course that was distressing to him. “You can empty it in there and put it back, then.” Successful heist jobs, they were all about compromise. Larry opened the box and poured a bundle of passports, some euros and a gold watch into the briefcase.

“Thank you,” I told him.

“My pleasure.” And it looked like it was. Given enough calm feelings, Larry seemed to appreciate being told what to do. That was so helpful.

“How about box . . . One Fifty-One?”

“Beautiful symmetry,” Larry agreed as he retrieved it. This one held a bunch of baggies of gemstones, separated out by color. Score. He added them to the briefcase, replaced the box, and returned to me expectantly.

I glanced around and smirked. “How about number Sixty-Nine?”

Larry’s back stiffened, and he glowered at me. “Don’t be vulgar, sir.”

“Sorry. Um . . . Sixty-Seven?”

“Better.” He went to open it, and naturally—naturally—that was when Wendy reappeared in the hallway.

“Mr. Bries? Mr. Johnson? Is everything all right?”

“Perfectly all right,” I said, maintaining my composed front even though my knees felt weak.

“Really?” Her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Bries, what happened to your shirt?”

“My shirt?” He seemed to remember it again, glancing down in horror at the muddy lavender. “Oh, good heavens!”

“Come on out of there and you can go get the spare in your office while I sit with Mr. Johnson,” she suggested.

No, no, we couldn’t have any delays. I’d make do with what I had. “That’s not necessary,” I said, still holding onto Larry’s wrist and feeding as much Zen as I could into him. Calm, relaxed, easygoing . . . “My business is finished. Mr. Bries was about to show me out.”

“Was he?” Wendy took another step in, and what happened next—I couldn’t help myself. Wendy was a hugger and I’d never liked being the recipient of her octopus arms. I instinctively stood up straight and leaned away from her, and her eyes opened wide as she got a better look at my face. “It’s . . . Oh my god, it’s you, isn’t it? Edward!”

Oh, no. “Wendy, wait—”

“Oh my god, are you robbing our bank, what the hell?” I made a grab for her but missed, and she jumped back out of reach and, with panic on her face, slammed the vault door shut on me and Larry. “I’m calling the cops!” I barely heard her shout. “And don’t you dare hurt Mr. Bries!”

Oh, for the love of . . . What kind of Villain did she think I was? “I wouldn’t do that!” I shouted back, but she either didn’t bother to reply or hadn’t heard me. “I wouldn’t do that,” I said to Larry, who was rather pale.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said weakly. Apparently all sharing my emotions could do at this point was keep him from collapsing into a heap. Inside Me was having a freaking fit, and that made it a lot harder for Outside Me to maintain my calm.

I already knew I wouldn’t make it through this by myself. It was a bitter pill, but I wasn’t going to get caught because I was too proud to acknowledge when I was out of my element. I tapped my free hand against my earpiece. “I need help.”

“Where are you?”

“Trapped in the vault.”

“Is it sealed from the inside or the outside?”

“From the outside.” For now, that was.

“You need to ensure that no one else get in. Burn the lock closed, and I’ll be there in five minutes,” Raul promised.

Oh, God. “Burn it closed?”

“With the Chap stick.” When I didn’t say anything, I heard Raul sigh. “I made it with you in mind, remember? It’s perfectly safe. Just touch some to the locking mechanism and use your taser on it.”

“I can do that.”

“Do it now.”

His voice was implacable. I knew he was right, I just . . . I bit my lip, then took out the tube and gingerly smeared it over the digital keypad. I tucked it away again, then pulled Larry and I back from the door, aimed the taser at it, and gave it a jolt.

The compound caught fire and glowed with liquid heat, burning so hot that the mechanism slagged in seconds beneath it. It was out just as quickly, and my shoulders slowly descended from beside my ears. “It worked.”

“Naturally. I’m on my way, Edward.”

“Don’t use the front door.”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t planning to. Five minutes.”

Five minutes. Okay. I could do that. Larry gaped at me disapprovingly, despite the calm feelings I passed to him, but at least he didn’t actually make a fuss. That was good. I didn’t feel up to another scolding at the moment.

The fuss came when a Hero showed up to come to the aid of the bank. Firebolt, to be precise. I could tell by the way a patch of molten metal slowly appeared in the middle of the vault door, bursting through in the shape of a thin, triangular blade of fire. Liquid metal and brutally hot fire burst forth from the door, and Larry and I both had to jump back. It wasn’t very safety conscious of the Hero, considering I had what amounted to a hostage in with me.