The Big Run-Off (Holden Burke #1)

Ten

We drove back across town, silent most of the way. I cracked the window and let the stuffy midnight wind whip at my face. James Mclaurie had a hardened scowl that had been bought for free instead of with five hundred thousand dollars.

'So, what was your plan, anyway?' I asked, to fill the void of his frustrated silence.

'Just fuck off, pig,' he mumbled. He was looking dead out the at the road, at all the colourful specks of light passing up and along the windshield.

'I guess it doesn't matter,' I said. 'I was just curious. Did you cook this up together, all four of you?'

'We had a system.'

'I'll bet you did. I'll bet it made total sense in theory, too. So Anthony Ramsey was never kidnapped, then?'

He said nothing.

'Is he waiting back there for you with the others?—What does he need half a million more for?'

Nothing.

'Is he close by? In the student unit?'

James Mclaurie let air out his nose. I nodded. We drove on.

At one in the morning, he stopped outside the apartment building. 'Here's the new game plan,' I said. 'You take the bag. You walk to where your comrades are. I follow behind you. You walk slow. Any funny business, the police get your names. Got it?'

He snorted.

'Yeah,' I said, 'I don't like the cops either. So let's keep this between you, me and the rest of the group, okay? Move.'

The two of us walked carefully up the path, into the lobby, up two flights of stairs. He moved with a sluggish persistence, clutching the straps of the vinyl bag in his hands. Somehow I didn't blame him, if I knew I had something pretty damn good in reach and let someone drag me away from it.

He stopped outside a room at the end of the hall, and turned his eyes bitterly to me.

I nodded toward the door.

'Just go in?' he snorted.

I nodded again, my eyes raised.

He let out another sigh, and I felt remarkably like the parent of a moody teenager. He turned the knob and went inside. I stuck to the outside wall and listened in.

There was a clattering of feet across the floor; I could hear the exited murmurations of Darcy and Sheyenne breaking out in the hush of self-congratulations. I had a picture in my mind of the two of them looking at the bag hanging from James' fingers, and not at the crisp expression on his face.

'This is it,' Darcy said. 'We've got it. We take a look, then we move to the next location, like we planned.'

'Oh, Darcy!' the girl squealed.

'Quiet. We don't lose our heads from pride now, hear me? Remember what I said: we save it till we've got the money safe.'

'Can I open it, Darcy?'

'No.'

The sound of the bag hefting onto the floor, the zipper running down the spine. A momentary hush of breath. A pause. Then:

'What—'

'What the fuck is this?'

'Darcy—'

'You idiot —How did you fuck this up?'

'Darcy—it's a set-up...'

'Darcy, what happened?'